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Mass Tourism Needs to Die

September 16, 2024

Society

capitalism, ignorance, social masses, social media, society

Greece has many beautiful places, and though I’m Greek and I spent the first 20 or so years of my life there, I of course haven’t visited its every corner. I recently spent a few days on Crete, and let me tell you, it was an eye-opening experience. Mass tourism needs to die, yesterday!

You might have recently seen how Spanish citizens in Malaga and other places have protested mass tourism. If you live in any remotely touristy location – let alone a place like Rome, Paris, or Venice – you surely know first-hand how damaging mass tourism can be.

I was so affected by my own experiences – which I’ll talk about more in a while – that I decided to write this post. I was always against mass tourism, but now I am absolutely adamant: Mass tourism must die!

mass tourism needs to die. image of tourists in Louvre
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My (Somewhat) Revised Approach to Religion

August 26, 2024

Philosophy, Society

ignorance, knowledge, philosophy, society

Just to make this immediately clear: I am an atheist. I have revised nothing in terms of what I think regarding the existence of a supreme being. And because I consider the current evidence overwhelmingly against the existence of such a being, I do not accept theists’ rational explanations behind it, either. However, I have lately revised my approach to religion in terms of theists’ irrational acceptance.

Much more importantly, in my somewhat revised approach to religion I now place significant weight on such acceptance being a conscious choice.

I will explain all this in more detail in this post – I believe there is merit in establishing such contact lines for the benefit of society – but here’s the general gist: I don’t believe in a supreme being, and – with existing evidence – there’s nothing anyone can do to convince me. More still, if they believe from a rational perspective (“God made humans because how else, intelligent design, blah blah”), I’m entirely unimpressed.

However, if they say “I fully understand science is on the right track, a God doesn’t make sense, but I choose to believe anyway”, then they at least have my sympathy (even empathy, in this flawed life), and we can communicate.

revised approach to religion. image of an unimpressed cat
“There’s only one God, me…”
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“Am I the Asshole?”: The Art of Self-Assessment

July 15, 2024

Experiencing, Society

art, experiencing, ignorance, society, writing

There is an often quoted claim suggesting that if you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole, but if you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole. This isn’t always true – there are never black-and-white answers – for reasons we will examine, but it implicitly focuses on an important issue: How do we determine whether we’re right or wrong? How do we determine, “am I the asshole”?

There’s even a Reddit thread where people share incidents with strangers and expect them to answer, “Am I the asshole”? Of course Reddit, like the internet at large, relies on consensus. If 10,000 people insists you’re wrong, they must be right… Right? At least that’s what the bandwagon fallacy would like us to think. Obviously enough, this takes us back to the “assholes all day” problem.

But again, there are never easy answers.

So in this post, let’s try to unpack all this. Let’s see why we can’t rely on public consensus to figure out whether we’re right or not, and what we can do about it.

Am I the Asshole? blurry image of people
Humans are social animals. We want others’ approval. But what if others are wrong?
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