037 Dogma

Dogma

The Amazing Things & Ideas List

• Charles Darwin's Golden Rule:
  
  “I had, also, during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from memory than favorable ones.
  
  Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views which I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer.”
   
• Richard Dawkins' book on his favorite books:
  Books Do Furnish A Life by Richard Dawkins
  
  This book is divided by theme, including celebrating nature, exploring humanity, and interrogating faith (the most interesting of them all for me).
  
  It brings together Dawkins' forewords, afterwords and introductions to the work of some of the leading thinkers of our age with a selection of his book reviews.
  
  It also includes conversations with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Steven Pinker, Matt Ridley and more (I liked the audiobook version on which I could listen to the original conversations).
  
  Just FYI, yesterday was Dawkin's 81st birthday.
   
• Richard Feynman on not questioning:
  
  "The problem is not people being uneducated.
  
  The problem is that people are educated just enough to believe what they have been taught, and not educated enough to question anything from what they have been taught."

• Learnings to Unlearn (#149):
  This post delves into my criticism of the general view of happiness, certainty, linearity, education and, authority. And more importantly into why the perspective of unlearning is probably more important than that of learning.
  Read full post here.
   
• Nullius in verba (#148):
  It’s easy to accept the most irrational ideas when one doesn’t give them any thought and blindly accepts them because they’re the most obvious ones. This post is about taking nobody's word for it. Not even your own. 
  Read full post here.

p.s. if you want a nice laugh, read this tweet.

Thank you for reading.

Onward, 
Arjun

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