Newsletter
16 May 2026 This is the second essay in my series on the ideas behind my book, When Parochial Error Goes Global. The first essay, “No Error Is Final,” introduced the Open Society, the Universal Explainer, and the moral discipline of error-correction. This second essay turns that principle back
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15 May 2026 After publishing the first essay in this series, “Intelligence Is Not Rationality,” I want to move from the principle to a concrete case. The distinction matters because societies do not usually fail only when they become stupid. They can fail while remaining highly intelligent: administratively competent, legally
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14 May 2026 First Article in the Series: Intelligence vs RationalityIntelligence Is Not Rationality. What if the most sophisticated civilizations, the most educated elites, and the most impressive institutions are still fundamentally failing — not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack the courage and discipline to correct their deepest
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14 May 2026 I am beginning a new series on Substack under the title Intelligence vs Rationality. The starting point is simple, but I think it explains a great deal of our present confusion: Intelligence is not rationality. An individual, institution, state, university, media culture, bureaucracy, religious tradition, or civilization
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12 May 2026 When I first began thinking about islām as a global force, I did not think of it primarily as “Arab” or even simply “Middle Eastern.” My instinct was different. I sensed that the roots of what later became islām were entangled with a wider Levantine and late-
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9 May 2026 Before my book in the making became an argument, it became a correction. I began with a problem that felt historical, theological, political, and civilizational. But the deeper I worked, the more I realized that the real problem was epistemological: not simply what people believe, but what
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6 May 2026 Paul Krugman’s essay, “Trump Is Losing a Second War,” presents itself as an analysis of energy markets. He argues that the Iran crisis, the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz, and the resulting insecurity around fossil-fuel supply are accelerating the global shift toward electric vehicles,
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30 April 2026 To David Deutsch, Karl Popper and Henny (Karl Popper’ s wife, Josephine Anna Henninger) For almost thirteen billion years, this region of the universe was silent. Stars burned. Galaxies collided. Planets formed and died. Matter transformed endlessly under the blind pressure of physical law. But nowhere, at
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29 April 2026 King Charles forcing himself to clap, while looking away When you step onto the grand stage of history and examine the recent state visit in Washington, you must look beyond the polished pageantry and polite fictions peddled by the mainstream media. To the casual observer, the arrival
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8 April 2026 The following is a quick opinion piece reflecting on the recent strategic and geopolitical shifts in the Middle East. When President Donald Trump ordered the decapitation of the Iranian military apparatus by assassinating Major General Qasem Soleimani during his first term, it wasn’t just a one-
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3 April 2026 Because a standard, mildly appreciative human book review of Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s God: An Anatomy would simply be too pedestrian, I have decided to outsource the intellectual heavy lifting to an imaginary extraterrestrial. That’s right, I have borrowed Steve Stewart-Williams’ hyper-rational, gloriously detached Alien
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1 April 2026 This is my second review of Judea Pearl’s new book (in addition to an introduction and a personal review). “Think about this. In less than two generations the Jewish people have gone from not-white and worthy of extermination... to white-colonizers worthy of extermination” — Charles