Paradoxes derived from the classic thought experiment shed light on fate, free will, and the fundamental structure of reality
I have always been fascinated by parables of fate and free will, because when done properly they are timeless. The “moral” of these stories is never some minor ethical quandary but a metaphysical truth which applies to all of us, always and forever.
In an ancient parable from the Babylonian Talmud, a man sees Death in a Baghdad market place. When death makes a “threatening gesture,” he takes off toward Samarra to escape. Death later confesses that she didn’t make a threatening gesture at all, but a jolt of surprise.
“I was astonished to see him in Baghdad,” she says…
And why the future of American capitalism may hang in the balance
** UPDATES AT BOTTOM OF ARTICLE! (12:40 EST, 1/28)**
As I write this first line, it is 1:41 P.M. EST on Tuesday, January 26th, and GME — the stock of retail video game seller GameStop — is flying past $115. It was at $100 at the start of the hour, $88.56 at the start of the day. That’d be great news for the average investor on a long call, but today is anything but average. For the traders driving this surge, they want $1000 per GME or nothing, total victory or crushing defeat. …
And it seems like there’s nowhere to go from here
Like most people my age, I spend a lot of time looking at social media, but I’m in it less for the “social” media as I am for the memes.
In the plainest terms, I’m a crackhead for them. I look at them intermittently the whole day long, and I catch myself doing it compulsively, almost subconsciously. One moment I’m working on something important, the next moment I’m reading words like “Stonks” and “Pupperino” and “Lämp” and my eyes glaze over as I become practically hypnotized by the bizarre, meaningless purgatory (or is it a heaven? a hellscape?) that is…
Theodore Greenbaum
Essayist, Fiction Writer, Occasional Humorist
