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April 11, 2021

Invisible Planets

Invisible Planets is edited and translated by Ken Liu and features 13 awesome sci-fi stories from China.

Just like Broken Stars, Lui features an interesting casts of writers. All can be classified as somewhat sci-fi but differ a lot in the types of stories.

Read: 1x | First: April 2021

—

Here are the stories with mini-notes:

Chen Qiufan

  • The Year of the Rat (ok, not my story)
  • The Fish of Lijiang (interesting concept, faster time for productivity, slower for old age) *
  • The Flower of Shazui

Xia Jia

  • A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight
  • Tongtong’s Summer (human-controlled robot-helpers, good take – random business idea: sensors on grandparents for safety but also for grandchildren to connect to toy that has their heart-beat etc)
  • Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse

Ma Boyong

  • The City of Silence (inspired by 1984, good story) *

Hao Jingfang

  • Invisible Planets (title of book, but not my type of story)
  • Folding Beijing (could easily turn into a sci-fi movie, very good) *

Tang Fei

  • Call Girl (interesting) *

Cheng Jingbo

  • Grave of the Fireflies

Liu Cixin

  • The Circle (adapted from Three Body Problem) *
  • Taking Care of God (very Liu Cixin – small premise, big story)

—

Some great sentences I came across:

  • “The biggest fear is for someone else to understand what you really fear” (p62)
  • “A man is such a strange animal: fear and desire are expressed by the same organ.” (p63)
  • “… technology is neutral. But the progress of technology will cause a free world to become ever freer, and a totalitarian world to become ever more repressive.” (p182)
  • “[his father] had held fast to the thin reed of opportunity as the tide of humanity surged and then receded around him until at last he found himself a survivor on the dry beach.” (p231)
  • “Morning climbs in through the window as shadow recedes from Tang Xiaoyi’s body like a green tide imbued with the fragrance of trees.”
  • “Each individual’s behavior is so simple, yet together, they can produce such complex intelligence.” (p314)
April 11, 2021

Public Commitment 2021 – Update 1

This years theme is Serial Tasking. The goal is to be more focussed and work on the things I’m saying I will work on.

Recently I’ve been listening a lot to the podcast by Cal Newport (Deep Work) and the biggest concept from there is time blocking. Something I do, but then am not as good at enforcing as I should be.

In my own words, time blocking means planning out your day (according to your weekly plan, which is building on your monthly/quarterly plan). And then doing exactly that which you had planned in that time.

Ways I can improve on doing this (vs switching to different tasks), is to have either my notebook open (where I make the planner on paper), and/or the iPad open with Toggl running (which indicates the time block that is ongoing). I think that I should also start discussing the day with Onno, Queal co-founder, again.

Ok, enough rambling, onto the goals for this year.

Goal 1: Write something every day

I have been writing things, but not consistently every day. I now have that time-blocked in the morning so that I can focus on writing before I jump into email and all that.

I have also started using Calendly to start grouping calls on Thursdays so I have more time also on other days to write.

One big thing that will help with writing is that the database should be nearing the finish line so I should, after that, have more time to focus on writing each day.

And just to note, this could be anything as small as a few paragraphs about a psychedelic term, to a long book review (or part of an essay that I can publish independently – I think the metric should be to publish something each day).

Goal 2: Promote my work

I’ve been doing this ok-ish on Twitter for Blossom. There are still many more ways to do this that I know of already.

Another way to become better at this, is to partner with someone who has more feeling for this. But I think the first part is, that I block time (during my end-of-work checklist <- I’ve been making a few of these) each day to see/check if I’ve shared my work that day.

Another part of the things that I want to share is more art work. But for now, I fear that I wont have enough time to do that.

Goal 3: Meditate daily

Going very well. I don’t know how much transfers to being more aware during the day, but is a good start of the day (followed by some exercises).

Goal 5: Learn 3 songs on the harmonica

I have been practicing some, but less than I wanted. Still, I think I can already play 3 songs if I’m looking at the notes.

This month I’ve switched my goal from playing each day (which wasn’t working), to playing 3x p/w.

Goal 6: Add 2 features to this website

The dark mode is done (can of course improve it, but no priority now).

I do have plans for adding more search functions to the book reviews and have already added my Obsidian notes so that I can find them here too.

Goal 7: Improve my learning process

The addition of Obsidian should help with this process. Still, I don’t (very) regularly make notes there.

One thing that has been going well is studying my Anki notes, and I plan to add more notes to there to really keep the spaced repetition going.

Goal 8: Move more money towards effective charities

This is something for later months, but for now I’ve made the post for GWWC and plan to publish my blog for the EA forum sometime soon.

—

And, some more concrete goals for Blossom and Queal

Queal

  1. Increase revenue by 20%
    1. Ongoing, did some experiments in the first few months of this year
    2. Brexit has not been nice to us, but hopefully all solved by next week

Blossom

  1. Launch/run Blossom Analysis (ongoing!)
    1. Weekly updates
    2. Database
    3. Essays (psychedelics and …)
  2. Launch/run Blossom Guides (later, if we’re vaccinated)
    1. 2 to 3 sessions per week by mid 2021
    2. Possibly together with other coaches
  3. Launch/run smaller projects (first two going well, last two in statis)
    1. PsychedelicsBooks
    2. PsychedelicsCourses
    3. PsychedelicsDirectory
    4. PsychedelicsProtocol
  4. Launch/Kickstart PsychedeliCards (no, not enough time, maybe before holidays)
    1. First half of 2021

—

Finally, some goals that are more for fun/relaxation/habit

  1. Do sports 5 out of every 7 days (yes)
    • Same for mobility training (yes, but only short)
  2. Achieve <12% bodyfat (not currently main focus)
  3. Play videogames for more than 100 hours (estimate 2020: <10 hours) (going well)
  4. Drink fewer alcoholic drinks than last year (estimate/log 2020: sum 559, average 1.5, median 0 (more days no drinks), max 15, 10+ 5 times, ~56.000kcal ~18 days of energy) (90 so far, so on schedule)
  5. Learn to ride a motorcycle (first exam done, two more to go)
April 9, 2021

Managing Oneself

Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker is a short booklet (monograph I think) on how to live a good and productive life. It provides some ways of thinking about how to manage your own life (vs being lived/going with the Flow).

Read: 1x | First: February 2021

—

Finding Your Strength

We are often clueless about what our strengths are. Drucker advises to write down what you expected to happen at a key decision, and then to review that. Or in other words, to make a prediction and see which predictions came true, finding your strengths.

From this feedback analysis, he finds several implications:

  1. Concentrate on your strengths, where they can produce results
  2. Work on improving your strengths, fill the gaps in your knowledge
  3. Find where you’re ignorant, and work on this to enable your strength to really shine

Applied: I do monthly and quarterly OKRs (Measure What Matters) where I also make predictions on what I will do. Although this has less to do with decisions, it allows me to plan what to work on and identify what needs to change to realize it.

The last point also made me think about your personality/skills as described in the Early Retirement Extreme. Here, from memory, I think the author described your personality to be a T-shape (or inverted T-shape). One where you are ok in many skills (vs being bad) and very good at only one skill.

This is not to say that you should focus your energy everywhere (or nowhere as there is limited time). No, you should work only on those things that help you improve your strength. 1) execute your strengths, 2) improve them, 3) remove blockages.

What Environment Allows me to Perform Well

So, how do I perform? Is the next question in the booklet. Here Drucker proposes a few different ways of working. The first is ‘reader vs listener’. How do you ingest knowledge to make decisions? The second is the way you learn (e.g. writing, speaking, sketching). The third is your style/level of cooperation, do you work well together or prefer to work alone? The fourth is a distinction between advising and leading/making decisions.

Why ask these questions? Because you’re unlikely to change yourself, but you can choose the environment you’re working in. To find an environment where you thrive, not one where you have to go against your instincts all the time.

Applied: I’m definitely a reader and in work thrive by reading something and then (slowly) exploring those ideas (vs directly responding). And I’m a writer, learning by trying to explain something (meta: as I’m doing here). I like to work together, at a distance, and cooperate with many people whilst having long stretches of time to work on my own. In those relationships, I like to be the leader/decision-maker. And I like to work in small organizations (start-ups) in a somewhat structured environment.

Your Values

“What kind of person do I want to see in the mirror in the morning?” This is what Drucker has dubbed the mirror test, and it shows you something about your values.

This part of the booklet goes deeper into the values or worldview that you bring into work. This can be a long-term vision vs short-term profits, or values around work-life balance that you have.

Your values and strengths don’t always align. For Drucker this resulted in him leaving his financial job (during the Great Depression) and started building his consulting business.

Applied: I value understanding above most other things. Money is something that can enable this, but isn’t a goal in itself. Transparency, honesty, speed of execution, trust, using thinking tools, being critical, are some of the other values/words that come to mind. In time, I should have more on this on the ‘Me‘ page.

Where to take your Strengths, Performance, and Values?

Drucker posits that not many gifted people know where they belong before their late twenties. By knowing what you’re good at, you can become better at knowing where you don’t belong. And it allows you to better say no to opportunities that look good on paper, but don’t match with you specifically.

Applied: I know that my skills won’t do (that) well within large organizations. I love my freedom (to spend my time where I want it) too much. I also wouldn’t do well if I had to work on something that doesn’t have much value to add to the world (e.g. improving the flavour of biscuit X).

What Should I Contribute?

The answer to this question should address three elements.

  1. What does the situation/environment require?
  2. Given my strengths/performance/values how can I add the most? (unique contribution)
  3. What results have to be achieved to make a difference?

Drucker further specifies that the results you plan for can only be 18 months into the future, should be hard to achieve (stretch goals), but still within reach. The results should be meaningful, make a difference, visible, and measurable. Or, to put it in 21st-century lingo, to be SMART goals.

Applied: Currently my goals are related to building out Blossom. Here my competitive advantage is my ability to build something from nothing. And to execute on that vision and build. I have recruited a small team which I will expand, as I will do with the resources. I know that I’m not the best at promotion and should find someone else to help with that part. The results that need to be achieved are the completion of the database and then to add new features. This then needs to be used by everyone from researchers to legislators and help them move the field forward faster.

Building Responsible Relationships

You’re almost never working alone. The first thing about working with others is that you should know they are different (values, strengths, etc). The second lesson is that you should ask them what they are doing and how they do their work (i.e. communication). Or as I have learned from running a study association to my personal life (where, of course, it’s the most difficult) to over-communicate.

“Even people who understand the importance of taking responsibility for relationships often do not communicate sufficiently with their associates.”

By telling others how you work (and asking them how they work), you gain valuable information and learn how to better work together. I think this is the strength of tools like the MBTI, learning that other people are different.

Building responsible relationships is about building trust (The Speed of Trust). Knowing who you are and how others think, helps build that trust.

Applied: When starting to work together with others, it could be good to ask them about their values and ways of working. Currently I don’t have a framework for this, but based on this book and other tools like the MBTI could develop something that we could use as a guideline for a conversation.

A Second Career

Drucker thinks that the midlife crisis of 45 year old executives is caused by boredom. He proposes three ways of starting a second career:

  1. Start in a new field (to challenge yourself again)
  2. Develop a parallel career (e.g. help at church)
  3. Become a social entrepreneur (start a non-profit)

“You must begin long before you enter [your second career].”

Developing a second career is also a good way to shield yourself from a setback. If things at work don’t progress, you can find challenge and joy in your volunteer work for instance.

Applied: In a way, I’m already working on the second career, second start-up. But as meant in the booklet, I think that I would want to become a social entrepreneur in the field of psychedelics for mental health improvements. But let’s first see how the field develops.

March 14, 2021

Sustainability and Consumption

On Wednesday 10th of March 2021, the Effective Altruism (EA) Rotterdam group hosted their 16th reading & discussion group.

This is our deeper dive into EA topics to learn and take action to change the world for the better.

Join our next meetup!

Every SECOND WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH

The topic for this event was Sustainable Consumption.

During the evening we discussed ways consumption (buying/using products/services) and sustainability are at odds. We looked at this through a personal and societal (global CO2) lens. And we asked what, if anything, we can or should do.

The presentation was held by Laurin and was interjected with a lively discussion of these topics.

The event was digital and at its peak was attended by eight people.

Here are the presentation, questions, reading materials, and my personal summary of the event.

Go to our Meetup page to sign up for our next event.

Presentation of Sustainability and Consumption

We started the evening with a presentation by Laurin. The round-table discussion was held after each third of the presentation.

Download the presentation

1. Individual Consumption or Footprint

The average US citizen consumes (or rather, produces) 16.3 Tons of CO2 (or CO2 equivalents) per year.

If you’re really conscious (as you can see in this YouTube video) about your consumption, you may cut that in half to about 6.9 Tons per year.

  • Noted should be that he could even cut this number in half again if he didn’t take one long flight each year

If you want to reduce your CO2 footprint, Laurin had the following tips:

  1. You can roughly half the food emissions by changing to a predominantly plant-based diet
    • 1.5 Tons / Year
  2. You can drastically improve heating/cooling and home energy emissions by using renewable energy
    • 2 Tons / Year
  3. Avoid driving a car or flights
    • 2.5 Tons / Year
    • 0.25 Tons / Hour Flying (e.g. 8 hours flying = 2 Tons (and 2 for the way back))
  4. Buy less, buy things that last, buy second hand

2. Global CO2

Laurin showed the difference between the target of 1.5 ton per year and what is actually happening. Even if we’re saving on emissions, we’re not getting there anytime soon.

Developing countries like India are already surpassing this target, and that should be celebrated in some sense.

And some people have a larger CO2 footprint than others, such as Paris Hilton.

The pollution and where we can save aren’t mapped one-on-one. There is a lot we can save with food (not throwing it away in many places in the food chain), but less in buildings and transport.

3. What To Do About Greenhouse Gas Emissions?

There are many things we can do that have a large impact. The solutions (see slide 11) have to do with land use, nuclear energy, and refrigerant management. But not with ridesharing, trains, or green roofs.

Round-Table Discussion

1. Have you changed anything in your life to reduce your carbon footprint?

During the meetup, we discussed changes such as going vegetarian or vegan and that being motivated (in part) by environmental reasons. We also discussed the need for policy changes, as that can drive personal choices (e.g. via taxes).

—

I’ve calculated my own carbon footprint at CarbonFootprint.com and came to the following numbers and realizations:

  • Total 8.96 t p/y
  • House 2.05 t p/y
    • Electricity 300 kWh = 0.14 tons per month
    • Natural gas 1136 kWh (from 100 m3 with this calculator) = 0.21 tons
    • But: divide by 2 as I’m living together = 0.17 t p/m = 2.04 t p/y
    • And get green energy but haven’t looked at the impact of that
  • Flights 3.73 t p/y
    • Example flight to Asia, beaches of Bali (with radiative forcing, from Amsterdam) 3.73 t
    • Example flight (not included) to Istanbul 0.62 t
    • Example flight (not included) to Vancouver Canada 2.15 t
  • Car X (no car, only very occasional rental for IKEA trip or the like)
  • Motorbike 0.31 t p/y
    • (aspirational, working on drivers license)
    • Based on 4000 km on a medium motorbike
    • Apparently, only 1.3% of motorbikes are currently electric, but if you’re using renewable energy, it should be near emissions-free
  • Bus & Rail 0.07 t p/y
    • Based on 2000 km per year in train
    • (could be lower if using motorbike)
  • Secondary 4.58 t p/y
    • Food (vegetarian, but mostly vegan) 1.4 t (or 1.06 t)
    • Mortgage 1.46 (hmm, don’t know why that is, if it’s because of the house or the money that then is invested in CO2 producing things?)
    • Computer/tech stuff 0.48 t (based on €500 per year)
    • Recreational, cultural, sports 0.79 t (based on €3000 p/y)
  • Total ideas
    • A large part is contained in flying, something that will of course increase over the years (for the world as people get richer)
    • Motorbike doesn’t really matter much

3. Global CO2 and what to do?

After showing that the global target is 1.5 ton per year, we understood that changing one’s behaviour is not going to cut it. Negatively, it means that we will not get there. Positively, it means that by changing your behaviour (and influencing others to do so too), we’re giving ourselves more runway. More runway for newer technologies, carbon capture, and other things to deal with/prevent climate change.

One example of the positive impact of personal choice was that of cultured meat. There is a demand (from rich people) that is driving the innovation, and something in which the Chinese (largest growing market for meat) government is now investing (source, via 80k podcast).

3. What Should We Do?

The discussion boiled down to the following recommendations:

  1. Donate (you can more than offset your impact)
    • See recommendations here
    • Estimates are between a few cents and $5 per ton CO2
  2. Influence politics/policies (largen your impact)
    • Vote green/progressive
  3. Reduce (it’s still part of the solution, and probably your identity too)
    • Flying is the big one, but know that your impact with donations can be 100x larger so don’t get bogged down in the details

Putting sustainability into context

Air pollution is killing 7 million people each year. So this might be a more pressing problem, yet also something that correlates with adding more green energies and removing polluting energies (both CO2 and local-level pollutions).

Compared to global health, the donation impact is probably smaller per QALY (added qualitative year), but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do anything about climate change.

Conclusion

It was another great evening that thought us many things about our personal impact, what we can do (and can’t), and what projects may be effective in reducing CO2 emissions.

Resources

✦ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bvhXtOps4MM (video, 12 min, My Carbon Footprint is Broken)
✦ https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/johannes-ackva-an-update-to-our-thinking-on-climate-change/
✦ https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yhKnbcX6YmTgLpfwJ/climate-change-donation-recommendations
✦ https://medium.com/@tsloane/applying-effective-altruism-to-climate-change-e2d703f6414f
✦ https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

February 19, 2021

Intelligence is Partly Genetic

Intelligence (how high you score on IQ tests, or smartness measured in other ways) is partly based on genetics.

The problem is that we, as a society, value intelligence greatly and try and get everyone to be as smart as possible.

But, as it’s (partly) inborn, we fail miserably.

We should try and get everyone to level X. Don’t judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree.

Respect the diversity, whilst optimising for the reduction of suffering (not happiness, let’s leave that for another time).

Source

Book Review – The Cult of Smart – Scott Alexander

More Notes

There are of course differences to be found and created with regards to education and its outcomes. But as a society we focus too much on the maliability and the expectation of that, vs seeing that other opportunities (not dependent on ‘raw’ intelligence’) are also possible.

February 18, 2021

Use These 3 Questions to Talk About Death

We should talk more about death.

Because it helps us better plan for it and do it with more dignity.

See more notes at Being Mortal by Atul Gawande.

One way to talk about death is with these ‘simple’ questions, preferably over dinner:

  1. Has anyone died in your family?
  2. How did that make you feel?
  3. How do you want to have your death experience to be?

Sources

PT231 – Dr. Hassan Tetteh – Human Care Over Health Care – Starting at 29min

  • Conversation with perfect strangers, now still friends with the people
  • Liked that it was with perfect strangers, being able to be open and have a deep conversation

What happens when death is what’s for dinner? – TEDMED talk

I Have Died Many Times – CGP Grey

More Notes

Of people who want to die at home, only a third do (25% instead of 75%). Or 20-80% from here.

Another way of looking at death, looking at our history, is that we die many times. Our lives are ever evolving and we are not the person we were a few years ago. This will probably deserve its own page sometime.

February 18, 2021

Live for Now and Forever

I think you can think of your life in two different timeframes.

A part of you should live life for the now (and really be in the now, learn this via meditation). Be happy, strive for pleasure.

Another part of you should live for the future. It should assume that you live forever. That means you need to learn, retain that information, build your knowledge, relationships, and wealth.

Find a balance that works for you.

If you’re at one extreme, you’re addicted to heroin and working on getting the next hit.

If you’re at the other extreme, you’re busting your ass until you retire and find that you have wasted your life.

More Notes

This is not an original idea, so I should take some time to find other sources and possibly refine this idea.

February 18, 2021

Comment Activation Energy

Online comments are but a very small sample of readers/watches of some media.

The comments reflect the extremes, the ones who really liked or disliked something.

The insight from Cortex that I got was that some comments require more or less ‘activation energy’ to make.

This consists of two parts:

  1. How motivated is someone to comment
  2. How easy is the comment to make

“Someone has to feel 4x as intense, to leave a comment on something 2x complicated.”

References

From Cortex #112 at 1:17

More

Our brain is also dialled to focus on the negative comments. This might have been evolutionary good, but bad now.

You are reading comments in your own voice (in your head), and by that also receiving negative comments as direct critique. So read comments out loud (in a neutral voice), do downscale the personal-ness of them.

January 24, 2021

Calling Bullshit

Calling Bullshit by Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West uses a sceptical, yet fair, perspective to dissect fact from fiction, well reasoned conclusions from bullshit.

This book tries to dissect true scientific claims and bullshit. The focus of the book is on data-driven bullshit. It goes through various forms of (data) bullshit, and offers tools on how we can improve our critical skills.

—

My notes from the awesome reading group by Joeri

Recommended further reading (more philosophical/technical books)

Bernard Wiliams – Truth & Truthfulness

Stephen Toulmin – Return to Reason

Plato – The Republic

Plato was railing against the bullshit of the sophists, they were not concerned with the truth, just with influence, money, fame.

We are currently being fed bullshit by media, bots, etc. This can be seen as a digital cave (filter bubble) ala Plato’s cave.

Another way of framing the cave is as a rave. It’s a comfortable place to be, doing philosophy is (more) difficult. We like to distract ourselves, not do the hard work.

Parrhesia – the ancient word for talking truth to power.

Instead of social justice warriors, we have to become epistemic justice warriors

Believing is a form of acting -? weighing evidence carefully…

How do we spot (call) bullshit:

  1. Question the source of information
  2. Beware of unfair comparisons
  3. If it seems too good or too bad
  4. …

Refuting bullshit

  1. Use reductio ad absurdum
  2. Be memorable (and funny)
  3. Find counter-examples
  4. Provide analogies
  5. Redraw figures
  6. Deploy a null model
  7. Be correct
  8. Be charitable
  9. Admit fault
  10. Be clear
  11. Be pertinent

One has to use logic.

Although closely interconnected, doubt and belief are characterized by profoundly different feelings: “Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else”

Method of tenacity – which brings comforts and decisiveness but leads to trying to ignore contrary information as if truth is private and not public.

Method of authority – which overcomes disagreements but sometimes brutality

The method of the a prior – only use deduction instead of induction

How to refute bullshit

The method of science – There are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those realities affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as are our relations to the objects, yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really are; and any man, if he have sufficient experience and reason enough about it, will be led to the one true conclusion. The new conception here involved is that of reality.

(Typical of cynicism is that the collective (especially the informed part) is duly aware of wrong, hegemonic and dominating aspects of society and its power-structures, but has either learned to agree with them, or to see the hegemonic forces as unshakable. This means people know there is the possibility and potential to unmask hegemonies as domination or injustice and to reveal false consciousness (and as such are enlightened), but they see every ideal that is offered in replacement of those hegemonies as wishful thinking or naïve. This is what Sloterdijk came to call ‘enlightened false consciousness’, to which cynicism amounts. Any optimism about the future has thus been replaced by cynicism.)

The socratic method – let people reason it out themselves by asking questions

  • You have to have these characteristics:
    1. Ignorance
    2. Curiosity
    3. Courage
    4. Naivety
    5. Patience
    6. Will to delve deep
    7. Make time
    8. Suspend judgement
    9. Open and empty mind
    10. Rational compassion

Other recommended books during the meetup:

  • Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening – Stephen Batchelor
  • The Feeling of Value: Moral Realism Grounded in Phenomenal Consciousness – Sharon Rawlette
  • On What Matters, Vol. 2 – Derek Parfit
  • The Myth of Morality (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy) – Richard Joyce
January 5, 2021

The God Delusion

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is a spirited, fair, rational, engaging, and vigorous explanation of why God is not there. It methodologically tackles various objections, explains historical quarks, and his reasons for writing such a direct/hostile book.

Read: 1x | First: December 2020

—

As someone who beliefs himself to be a rationalist, this book touched all the right points for me. It goes through various objections and cuts them down without resorting to anything else but reason.

Dawkins has been known to speak his mind, to be a great explainer of science, and one who doesn’t back down in the face of resistance. At the same time, he seems to have developed positive relationships with those from the other side of the argument who are willing to listen, even if they don’t agree on the outcomes.

One may also ask: What good does a book like this do? Does it not speak only to those who are already convinced? Dawkins also dispels this notion and informs us that many religious people (including leaders) have found his arguments compelling and have left the faith.

This book pairs well with Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett.

—

Introduction for the 10th anniversary edition

Life has come forth through (Darwinian) evolution: cumulative natural selection. But that is hard to believe, is there nothing that makes all of this special? A designer? A grand scheme?

That is what theism claims, that there is a God (or gods) that have caused the universe to exist (and made/controlled it to varying degrees). This book explains that there is no ground for such a claim. We don’t need it to explain evolution, humans, nor morality.

Of those who identify as Christian (in the UK), many are completely unaware of what is written in the bible (why doesn’t the church encourage reading it more?). When asked about why they believed, 18% indicated they believed in its teachings. A much larger 46% said it was because they were christened/baptized into religion (see chapter 9). Or in other words, many who identify as Christian, don’t actively engage in behaviour or belief that match the central tenets of its faith.

See this survey here for a primer on the data.

“… you could plausibly argue that the best antidote against all of the three Abrahamic religions is a thorough reading of their holy books. The nasty bits are seldom mentioned in churches or Sunday schools.”

Chapter 1 – A deeply religious non-believer

Dawkins has been described as religious, but a better description would be naturalist (students of the world), atheist (there is no supernatural power, no miracles).

“As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful.”

A theist is someone who believes in a supernatural intelligence that has created the universe and is actively managing it.

A deist only believes that a supernatural intelligence has set up the laws of the universe.

A pantheist only uses God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature (or Universe). (“Pantheism is sexed up atheism”)

This book will speak/criticize only a supernatural God (i.e. not when using God as a metaphor).

Religion should not be protected, it should not be a reason why you can discriminate (against homosexuals) or get special exemptions (taxes, drugs).

Chapter 2 – The God Hypothesis

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

That is quite the statement to start this chapter, and one that gets often quoted. Later on Dawkins points towards all the place in the Old Testament which justify such a paragraph.

God Hypothesis: “there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us.“

Alternative: “Any creative intelligence of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution.“

Also see Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (to review) by Daniel Dennett.

America was founded on secular grounds, but alas because religion ‘evolved’ outside the state, it became such a large (and influential) institution on America.

Being an agnostic is not something we can confidently be when talking about the God Hypothesis. It’s not something where there is no evidence or no priors (e.g. the change of intelligence life on other planets).

We are all atheists, when considering the gods Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, etc. Why not go one God further?

One experiment to prove the existence of God was the Great Prayer Experiment. Without bothering with the details, the ones who were prayed for and who know that this was the case – did worse on medical outcomes.

Chapter 3 – Arguments for God’s existence

Chapter 4 – Why there almost certainly is no God

Chapter 5 – The roots of religion

Chapter 6 – The roots of morality: why are we good?

Chapter 7 – The ‘Good’ Book and the changing moral Zeitgeist

Chapter 8 – What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?

Chapter 9 – Childhood, abuse and the escape from religion

Chapter 10 – A much needed gap?

Afterword by Daniel Dennett

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