Democracy, Cancel Culture, and Western Values.

There are a couple of ideas running through my mind today. One is the shifting of our democratic institutions from one of representative democracy to one of direct democracy. Why can’t we all vote for every issue on our phones? Why shouldn’t we? Two is that cancel culture and mobbings are here to stay for as long as the technology which enables it continues to exist. Social media facilitates cancel culture and mobbings. The two go hand in hand. Three,Read More→

How much of an activist should one be?

Lockdowns, police brutality and violence, curfews, a loss of freedoms, student loans. These are a few things that deeply bother me. So far, I’ve been using instagram as an outlet to vent, because I “have to do something.” And yet, there was a question within me: how much of an activist should I be? To be an activist is to be someone who “campaigns to bring about political or social change.” And in my own way, I was being anRead More→

My Personal Vaccine Hesitancy

I had an appointment booked for this Thursday to get the vaccine, but cancelled at the last minute. I don’t feel confident about the jab just yet. There are two reasons for why. First, I can’t properly weigh all of the risks. Second, I don’t trust the leaders who are deploying the vaccine. When you don’t know what a course of action’s risks are, you generally don’t take the action. If you’re about to take an international flight and suspectRead More→

Style Fundamentals

By Tim Dessaint. Alright! Let’s learn about fashion. It’s very stressful for me to shop for clothes. The stress comes from worrying about how other people view you. But despite the stress, looking good is a virtue that must be cultivated. So I will try to learn about fashion, whatever that means. One video I watched by Tim Dessaint gave me a taxonomy which I could use to help me evaluate and understand clothing. I can ask myself about theRead More→

The Ontology of Political Philosophy

The question I have is this: what is the nature of a claim made in political philosophy? It’s a super cool and interesting question because political philosophical truths are not literal exactly. They’re not exactly falsifiable either. They’re more like paradigms through which we view a particular government or state. They are more like beliefs of action rather than empirical beliefs. They’re also timeless. So they’re not falsifiable. But perhaps they are. Let’s take Rawls as an example. To recapRead More→

Beyond Order by J.B. Peterson – Summary/Notes

Overture: This book was written while struggling through the pandemic, sicknesses in his daughter, his wife, and himself. He first started using benzodiazepines to help with his anxiety in 2016. He took more in March 2019 because his anxiety skyrocketed during Mikhaila’s surgery and his wife’s surgeries. He switched off of benzos and tried ketamine instead in May of 2019 because the benzos weren’t reducing his anxiety. Then came the withdrawal symptoms – akathisia. So he went back on theRead More→

A Call to Disobey COVID Restrictions

Either a law is just or unjust. If it’s unjust, it should be opposed. Civil disobedience, protests, and writing a letter to your representative in Parliament are all different ways to oppose an unjust law. For me in Montreal, it is illegal to visit another person at their residence. It is also illegal to leave my residence between the hours of 8 pm and 5 am. I think both the visitation restriction and the curfew are unjust. And I thinkRead More→

Should I visit Philippe? Pt. II

In my last post, I outlined the scope of my research. In this post, I’ll try and specify what information I need to find in order to answer my research question: “is the government’s prohibition that I do not visit Philippe a legitimate one?” Well, I can think of a few different ways to address this. The first is legal. We could ask whether a health officer is legally allowed to make ordinances. We could ask whether the opposition andRead More→

Should I visit Philippe?

It’s time that I paid more attention to how my governments are responding to COVID-19. I’ve supported the status-quo for the last few months: masks should be mandatory indoors, nobody should attend gatherings, and if you must meet with other people, it needs to be an exclusive group of people (a “personal bubble”). I had three reasons for this. One, I don’t want to get COVID-19 because it’ll shorten my lifespan. Thanks to Bret and Heather from the Darkhorse podcastRead More→

COVID: November 23

Well, I started writing a couple of months ago about my thoughts/predictions regarding COVID 19. Here are blogs one, two, and three. Re-reading them now is so damn interesting! It’s so interesting to be a part of history like this! I wish I had kept it up and had written one new blog post per week. On Friday, I’ll be recording a podcast with Matt Strauss – an MD. He argues against lockdowns, and I figured I should get myRead More→

The Two Types of Claims

There are two types of claims: descriptive and active. Take the following claim: “Canada is a meritocratic country.” This is an empirical claim. You can question and falsify this belief in many ways. You can check how much income mobility there is. You can see what the best predictors of success are – your family’s income? Or your IQ? All of these things help describe how accurately this belief describes the world. That’s what makes it a descriptive claim. ButRead More→

var embedVars = { epGuid: ‘9937c405-38eb-4c4e-a4e2-3512eff092db’, rssUrl: ‘https://anchor.fm/s/20237164/podcast/rss’, backgroundColor: ‘white’, fontColor: undefined, speakerFontColor: undefined, height: ‘600px’, showEditButton: false, showSpeakers: true, showTimestamps: true }; https://app.podscribe.ai/static/js/embed.js