There’s a bit in That’s 70’s Show where one character says “I’ve decided to major in philosophy.” Another responds, “That’s good because they just opened up that big philosophy factory in green bay.”
If you’ve expressed interest in studying philosophy you’ve likely run into jokes like this. Philosophy is considered a useless subject, less important than those practical topics like engineering or mathematics. This push back is amplified if you love philosophy and are skeptical of universities. If you can’t work a philosophy job within academia what’s even the point?
There’s a problem with this thinking. Philosophy is actually quite…
Recently I sat in on a sales mastermind. Now, I’m not a salesperson, but when I needed help on a pitch email, I reached out to my friend Nick Rundlett. Nick is a sales… well… master, and he invited me to tune into his weekly mastermind chats. The structure was fairly simple. A group of sales-minded folks, get together to talk about sales-related challenges they’re facing and pool their collective brainpower to find solutions. I had an amateurish problem, I wanted feedback on an email I was using to secure a freelance client. I got the feedback I was looking…
Nozick’s Experience Machine
Robert Nozick had a famous thought experiment that can be summed up in the following way: Imagine there was a machine, while in the machine, an algorithm is run that lets you experience anything you want. It seeks to maximize your happiness as fully as possible. The machine is capable of giving you hardship, boredom, heartbreak, etc., provided that it works to maximize your pleasure and joy. While in the machine you forget you are in a false reality. You do not know true reality.
Nozick would ask his students if they would enter the machine. Often they did not…
