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27 May 2026 This is the sixth essay in my series on the ideas behind my upcoming book When Parochial Error Goes Global. The earlier essays traced how a parochial error can travel, why no error is final unless criticism is forbidden, how anti-rational memeplexes capture intelligence, and why
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25 May 2026 There is a moment in David Butterfield’s conversation with Triggernometry when ancient Athens stops being ancient. At first, the interview appears to be a historical discussion: Greece, Rome, democracy, the Persian Wars, the Greek miracle, the fall of Athens. But gradually the subject changes. Or rather,
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22 May 2026 The Open Society does not usually collapse because it has too much compassion. This is the fifth essay in my series on the ideas behind my upcoming book When Parochial Error Goes Global. The earlier essays traced how a parochial error can travel, why no error is
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21 May 2026 Five years ago, shortly after the beheading of Samuel Paty in France, I drafted a long article about Yasir Qadhi’s sermon on “the situation in France.” I never published it. Perhaps the timing was too raw. Perhaps the article was too detailed, too angry, too close
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18 May 2026 This is the fourth essay in the series on the ideas behind my upcoming book When Parochial Error Goes Global. The first essay describe how a Levantine matrix went global and how a parochial error learned to travel. The second essay applied the principle of no error
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17 May 2026 Why the Open Society Must Defend Muslims as Persons While Keeping islām Open to Rational Discussion This is the third essay in my series on the ideas behind my upcoming book When Parochial Error Goes Global. The first essay describe how a Levantine matrix went global and
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16 May 2026 After publishing this essay in an earlier form, I received a criticism that was both friendly and exact. The argument, I was told, was sharp and necessary — but too front-loaded and too generalizing. I had begun too high up in the philosophy. I had spoken too
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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-