The Paradox of Reality and Other Acts of Faith
This article was originally published December 1, 2023. Updated July 15, 2024.
Note: This article, given my recent disclosure, gives me pause when trying to decide whether to delete it, unlist it, or leave it up. On one hand, this is strangely one of the most-read articles I have ever written, but it is also one written in the deepest depths of mental illness, so I am really, really conflicted about keeping it up on my profile.
Since it reflects a significant part of what happened to me last winter, I am settling on an abbreviated version of the original article, and perhaps I will publish the rest of it somewhere else. Maybe in the next installment of Liars. A Mostly True Story, which is still in progress. And because it still reflects on my favorite trio: philosophy, physics, and perception. I can also follow why I wrote it. When I first published it, I had just reread Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, which I wrote about here, and read for the first time Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by philosopher and historian Yuval Noah Harari, which I wrote about here and here. I was also heavily influenced by the work of Dr. Donald D. Hoffman, Professor of Cognitive Sciences, the University of California, Irvine.
