Leon on Everything

A few nights ago, I finally got around to watching something on Netflix. It was a show called “Altered Carbon”. You might have heard of it, it is Big. The basic premise of the show is that in some distant future people have a device inserted into the connection between the spinal cord and the brain called the “Stack”. This “Stack” stores all the electric signals that happen in the brain. When someone dies, his “Stack” gets inserted into another body and animates the brain. As such the other body will have the consciousness of the previous person and so, they claim, people end up living forever. Of course, with sci-fi scenery, sex, drugs and violence you suspend disbelief and get on with the story, which is entertaining. But this post is not about entertainment, it is about a branch of philosophy long seen as a form of mental masturbation: Metaphysics. So, let us step in the world of the consciousness metaphysicist armed with his favorite tool: A thought experiment. Let us imagin...

The single thing that has characterized the Israeli Palestinian conflict is how intractable it has been to solve. People on the different sides have ascribed this intractability to “The Other Side” not willing to compromise. Other parties from the West have taken a higher ground and blamed both sides equally for their problems. I think assigning blame is a good exercise for historians to ponder when there aren’t such political or national interests at stake. Where the people are concerned, however, what really matters is an expedient solution that allows both sides to live and enjoy the maximal amount of well being. This might not be a “two State Solution”. Maybe to end the conflict, it should be done so on one party’s terms. Maybe that means a one-state solution, but only for one party. And a “No State” solution for the other. Is that possible? As the saying goes to the victor goes the spoils. The Jews being the consistent victors in the various wars waged against them (or by th...

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways - Saint Paul A week or so ago a story was circulated in Lebanese Facebook circles. Apparently, school children at the Lycee Français in Lebanon were told that Lebanon borders Israel by their French teacher. It was a hard truth for one school girl to swallow. She promptly corrected her teacher that the country that Lebanon borders to its south is “Palestine”. Of course, a search on Google Maps will reveal the hard truth to that schoolgirl. The Lebanese authorities have opened an investigation into this story and are looking into legal actions. The Arab World has been faced with hard truths for over 100 years now. And most recently when American President Donald Trump declared Jerusalem the capital of the Jewish state, the whole Middle East went out in flames. You would think that this fact like the reality of Google Maps shouldn’t come as any shock...

                                “The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.” Eliezer Yudkowsky AI is a very hot topic today, mainly because of the revolution in pattern recognition which comes under the heading of Deep Learning. Hollywood conditioned us to think of Artificial intelligence as a dangerous technology that will bring forth the end of human civilization. If you are a fan of these ideas, then Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence will not disappoint. In his book, the author asks the question “What would happen when machines achieve a level of intelligence far beyond anything that humans are capable of?”, he calls this ability Superintelligence. Before we get to the review, a little background is in order. First, there is a wide cons...

Every international body agrees that the solution for the Israel Palestine conflict is the so called "two state solution". It divides the land of Historic Israel into two nations: one for the Arabs and the other for the jews. It is taken for granted that if this solution is not achieved neither side will ever have peace and they will both be stuck in a state of perpetual war. That may be the case, but what should not be taken for granted is that the state of perpetual war- at least for the foreseeable future- isn't what both sides want. Yes, the people on the ground, especially in Palestine are suffering and paying a heavy toll in this conflict.  But I will argue that there are strong vested interests and strong incentives to keep the conflict going on for as long as possible. For a start, a look at the Israeli policies tell us that there are at least two alternatives to the two state solution. The first is the ignominious one state solution that will turn Israel in...

In Lebanon, our private school system is usually dominated by one language: French. We learn French in kindergarten and from the very first grade all throughout the school years. In it, we learn the sciences, mathematics, history and pretty much every school subject. Arabic is also taught but relegated to Arabic literature, Arab history, and geography courses. French literature has the same grade weight as Arabic on the report card. Some people even use French to speak to their young children, who in turn pick up the language earlier than the rest (the same people also use it with to talk to pets, but that’s another topic). Now other schools use English instead of French for the same reason, they are more of a special case, and I won’t mention them here further here. At some point in the academic course, a third language makes an appearance. The world most indispensable language: English. It is taught later in the academic course, and its role and its grade weight are small in th...

The famous 19th century german philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel coined the term “End of History” to signify the point in time when all fundamental human issues relating to existence have been resolved. He believed that History had ended when Napoleon beat the prussian army in the battle of Jena. For Hegel Napoleon signified the aspirations of the french revolution for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Secularism. These are the fundamental human values that solve all human issues. Francis Fukuyama the Neoconservative american political scientist would claim that history has ended in the 1990s with the end of the cold war. For him, western democracy and capitalism are the triumphant principles that all human beings will aspire to implement in their nations. Yet, today writing in 2015 we see that history is doesn’t seem to have ended. Secular Democracy is challenged in the islamic world with the concepts of islamic democracy and islamic theocracy. ISIS while being ...