by John Allen Paulos

I recall a party game I once wrote about. The game, described by philosopher Daniel C. Dennett in his book “Consciousness Explained,” is a variant of the familiar childhood game requiring that one try to determine by means of Yes or No questions a secretly chosen number between one and one million. (Twenty questions are sufficient.)

In Dennett’s more interesting and suggestive game, one person is selected from a group of people at a party and asked to leave the room. He (or she) is told that in his absence one of the other partygoers will relate a recent dream to the other attendees. The person selected returns to the party and is then told that, through a sequence of Yes or No questions about the dream, he should try to do two things: reconstruct the dream and identify whose dream it was.

The punch line is that no one has related any dream. When asked, the individual partygoers are instructed to respond either Yes or No to the subject’s questions according to some completely arbitrary rule. Any rule will do, but should be supplemented by a non-contradiction clause so that no answer directly contradicts an earlier answer or contradicts obvious facts. The Yes or No requirement can also be loosened to allow for an occasional Maybe.

Now let me change the scene. Instead of the unlucky partygoer, consider an ardent QAnon member. Instead of the other partygoers let’s substitute people who pretend to be from the news media (to rouse the member’s antagonism) but who agree to be governed by similar arbitrary rules. Finally, rather than having the subject try to reconstruct the dream and identifying the dreamer, let’s examine whatever disgusting scandal the QAnon member believes to be the case and to whom he attributes it.

Clearly this is more a thought experiment than an empirical result, but I would guess that the likely outcome in both cases is that the subject, impelled by his (or her) own obsessions, will often concoct an outlandish dream or gruesome story in response to the random answers he elicits from the partygoers or the “media” people. The situation is a kind of Rorschach test without the inkblots. Read more »

Sughra Raza. Shadow Self-Portrait in a Reflection of a Window in a Window.

Oolloo House, Vermont. October 22, 2022.

Digital photograph.

by Joan Harvey

POZZO: Which of you smells so bad?

ESTRAGON: He has stinking breath and I have stinking feet.

POZZO: I must go.

― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

There are many perplexing things in the world, but one of the more perplexing, only recently discovered by me, is that a substantial number of people, most of whom I assume to be women, wish to smell like old books. While it is easy to have a passion for, say, invertebrates, or designer sneakers, without necessarily wanting to smell like a pink-faced broad-nosed weevil or a favorite pair of old Nikes, apparently book lovers are different. It appears that for some bookworms, parting with their yellowing bound volumes is so distressing they need a way to carry the reminder with them though the day. And one way to carry around these literary longings is to douse themselves in the scent of books or sometimes whole libraries.

I came across the phrase “excessive bibliophilia” in Wayne Koestenbaum’s book Ultramarine. A newish book, so one without much smell. Koestenbaum was referring to Queen Christina, but I wonder if excessive bibliophilia doesn’t equally apply to those who feel they must smell like old libraries even in the boudoir. Perhaps while reading de Sade’s Philosophy in the Boudoir? After looking into book-themed perfumes I’m surprised there isn’t one with that name. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by David J. Lobina

I must say that, for someone who is a sort-of linguist and typically pays attention to the latest linguistic customs, I was quite surprised by the recent, sudden transformation of Kiev into Kyiv in the English-speaking media. Now, I’m not as obsessive about all things language as some of my fellow linguists, who seem to be able to notice every detail and nuance in the way language is used today everywhere they go – on posters in the underground, in the media, by eavesdropping on people’s conversations, etc. (TimeOut used to publish a section called Overheard in London, and I’m sure some of my friends followed it religiously) – but I have been following the Russo-Ukrainian War, as Wikipedia calls it, to some extent since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and even more so since Russia’s invasion of mainland Ukraine in February 2022 (236 days and counting, as I start this piece), and whilst I am sure that I was already aware of the use of the word ‘Kyiv’ to refer to the capital of Ukraine, I have nevertheless been taken aback by the fact that it has now become nearly universal in the English-speaking press to use the word ‘Kyiv’ instead of ‘Kiev’, even though employing the latter had been the norm for decades before current events.[1]

I especially mention “the English-speaking media” because the situation is rather different in other languages; this is clearly the case in the publications I follow in Italian and Spanish, where the use of the word ‘Kiev’ remains by far the most common, if not in fact as universal in these languages as ‘Kyiv’ has now become in English. Read more »

by Charlie Huenemann

It was announced last week that scientists have integrated neurons from human brains into infant rat brains, resulting in new insights about how our brain cells grow and connect, and some hope of a deeper understanding of neural disorders. Full story here. And while no scientist would admit they are working toward the development of some Rat Man who will escape the lab and wreak havoc on some faraway island or in the subways, it’s impossible not to wonder.

There are some legitimate and difficult ethical questions in this territory, such as whether we should work toward “curing” all conditions labeled as “disorders”, including those conditions that have become woven into people’s lives so thoroughly that they would rather not lose them. Autism, for example, can be a terrible burden in some cases, but in others it serves as a valued feature of one’s individuality, an element in the core of who they are. It’s difficult to follow the precept of doing no harm as we dig deeper into human natures and find it’s not always obvious what counts as a harm. There is a medical/pharmaceutical mindset that likes to pound down any nail sticking up, which is running into the fact that some nails prefer to stick up, thank you very much.

But as we leave those problems to more insightful minds, I would like to turn instead to an illegitimate and silly worry, which we shall call “Ewww”:

Ewww = What if my neurons end up in a rat brain? Would I feel its whiskers twitching, feel hungry for garbage, and find fulfillment by running endlessly inside a little wheel?

As I said, it’s not a legitimate worry, but it’s hard for many of us not to feel a tug in its direction, because many of us are entranced by illusions about consciousness. Read more »

My heart broke this morning reading a story

about surveillance reels from schools across

America where shooters use military grade

AR15 to tear apart skin and bones, the powers

that be before making the videos public first

edited out the screams of children.

by Rafiq Kathwari

by Mary Hrovat

Visualize a purple dog, the exercise said. Imagine it in great detail; picture it approaching you in a friendly way. So I did. I thought of a spaniel: long silky ears, beautiful coat, all a nice lilac color. Pale purple whiskers. The dog was friendly but not effusive. I’m not a dog person, but I wouldn’t have minded meeting this dog. All right, now what? The exercise went on to say something along the lines of “Wonderful! If you can visualize that purple dog, can’t you imagine your own life as being full of amazing possibilities?”

At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, no, I can’t. In fact, I was somewhat offended at the mild condescension of the exercise and the implicit suggestion that imagining a better life is helpful in and of itself. In my experience, it’s not that simple.

As I thought about why this well-meaning exercise bothered me so much, I realized that picturing the purple dog hadn’t actually been that difficult. I pictured a dog with a soft coat that I suspect could easily be dyed purple. (I wouldn’t advise anyone to dye their dog purple, but I can see how it could be done.) It would have been a bit harder to imagine a purple dog with a short oily coat, but I could see it happening by some kind of genetic engineering.

In any case, the main difference between the purple dog and an ordinary dog was cosmetic. Visualizing myself and my life differently, by contrast, often feels more like trying to imagine a dog, with a dog’s chest and throat and mouth and brain, meowing instead of barking. It’s much easier to imagine a purple dog than to imagine that my depression will vanish, after recurring for 40 years, or that I’ll find work in my city that pays enough to live on but also offers interesting mental challenges. Positive change does happen, even within constraints like mine, or worse. But how? Read more »

by Mindy Clegg

The mid-term elections are less than a month away—voting has begun in many places, including here in Georgia with some of the usual struggles already unfolding. In a normal mid-cycle election like this one, control of the house, senate, or both would flip to the minority party—so says common knowledge. This year seems a toss-up. The polls since this summer have kept swinging back and forth between the Democrats hanging onto the house, and expanding their control over the senate, to the GOP taking both, but barely. Ordinarily, the minority party sweeps Congressional elections and that would make perfect sense—the party in power rarely gets it right when they control Congress and the presidency. But this year, the GOP continues its march toward right-wing authoritarianism. The party is wildly out of lockstep with the majority opinions on most of the major issues facing the country. Yet many voters seem poised to hand over control of at least one house in Congress to them. Why? It seems to largely stem from a mistaken belief the GOP has a better set of economic policies (they don’t) and that inflation is thanks to the Democrat’s recent policies (it largely does not seem to be). Far too many people are treating these upcoming elections as normal, ignoring the plethora of red flags being waved in our face. This is not a full-throated defense of the Democrats, whose policies are a mixed bag. I do believe that we face a serious existential crisis that must be averted. The far right-wing represented by the former president have a stranglehold on the Repubilcan party. Despite the very real limitations of the Democratic party, they are better if we wish to maintain a democratic form of government. We should avoid support for the GOP based on their violent, anti-democratic (small d) rhetoric. Read more »

Rowan berries on a tree in late-afternoon sunlight in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol.

by Mike Bendzela

Hannah was a wide-horned, burgundy-red American Milking Devon heifer, with bug eyes and such a timid disposition you got the impression of a creature permanently bewildered.  You could not approach her; she would just pace off to a corner of the barnyard pasture and stare at you from a distance. And she seemed never to blink: you swore she knew she was doomed.

Her adopted mother, Belle (full name: Colonial Williamsburg Belle), was just the opposite—outgoing, ornery, bright, also wide-horned and the burgundy red of the breed. We had had Belle a few years before we bought Hannah as a yearling from a Devon breeder. My husband, Don, had visions of hand-milking a small population of cows and selling the milk and the inevitable bull calves to neighbors and hobbyists. Such a prospect caused me to have visions, period.

But Hannah never calved.

We thought something was wrong with her from the time she was a young cow, when she attempted to nurse off Belle. Even though Belle already had her own calf to feed, she indulged the new yearling. Not even the spiked “weaner” that hung from Hannah’s nose like malevolent jewelry dissuaded her from Belle’s teat. She just learned to flip the weaning device up out of the way and twist her head in such fashion as to permit her access to Belle’s swollen bag.

The near-adult cow nursing off the adopted mother in the barnyard got to be something of a scandal. We even had to pen Belle up in the barn with her calf, Abe, to allow him an unmolested meal. Hannah literally had to grow out of it: After a time, she just could not fit her head and horns under the other cow anymore. Read more »

Editor’s Note: Frans de Waal’s new book, Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist, has generated some controversy and misunderstanding. He will address these issues in a series of short essays which will be published at 3QD and can all be seen in one place here. More comments on these essays can also be seen at Frans de Waal’s Facebook page.

by Frans de Waal

It’s not always easy to talk about bonobos at academic gatherings. There is no issue with fellow primatologists, who are used to straightforward descriptions of sexual behavior and know the recent evidence. But it’s different with people outside my field, such as anthropologists, philosophers, or psychologists. They become fidgety, scratch their heads, snicker, or adopt a puzzled look. Why do bonobos stump them?

One reason for the discomfort is excessive shyness about erotic behavior, which bonobos exhibit in all positions that we can imagine, and even some that we can’t. Moreover, these apes do it in all partner combinations. People assume that animals use sex only for reproduction, but I estimate that three quarters of bonobo sex has nothing to do with it.

But there is a deeper reason why bonobos are the black sheep of our extended family despite being as close to us as chimpanzees. They fail to conform to the traditional model of the human ancestor. Most evolutionary scenarios of our species stress male bonding, male dominance, hunting, aggression, and territorial warfare. This is how our species conquered the earth, it is thought.

Chimpanzee behavior, which can be quite violent, lends support to this narrative. This ape is therefore happily embraced as model. The peaceful, female-dominated bonobo, on the other hand, doesn’t fit. The species is sidelined, such as in “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” in which Steven Pinker calls bonobos “very strange primates.” And Richard Wrangham, in “The Goodness Paradox,” portrays them as an evolutionary offshoot, who “have gone their separate way.” In other words, bonobos may be delightful apes, they are bizarre and irrelevant. Let’s just ignore them! Read more »

by Raji Jayaraman

Scheduled departure at Dulles came and went as we waited for the last passenger to board.  Although the non-smoking section in the rear cabin was full, the smoking section where I sat was half empty. Death by asphyxiation on the flight to Paris was a distinct possibility but with three empty, adjacent seats in the centre nave there was some chance that my obituary might read, “She died peacefully, in recumbent sleep.”

A threat to abandon the tardy passenger filtered from the departure gate through the hull of the aircraft. Five minutes later, just as the pilot was threatening to offload his luggage, the no-show showed. Buckling under the weight of duty-free shopping bags, he made his way apologetically down the far aisle of the cabin, pausing at my row. From behind my paper, I listened to the sound of the overhead locker being opened and then clicked shut. My hopes for a good night’s rest sank with the soft thump at the far end of my four-seater.

At cruising altitude the signs blinked green, and the smokers lit up like runners at their starting blocks upon hearing the shot of the race pistol. The flight attendant rolled the drinks trolly up the aisle. I folded my paper and placed it on the empty seat beside me. As I lowered my tray table, I heard a voice at my far left ask, “Can I use your newspaper, please?” I turned to respond, but the words stuck in my throat as my eyes landed upon the most stunning man I had ever seen—the kind Michelangelo would have immortalized in white marble. He returned my stare with a disarming smile, with all the unselfconscious charm that only those born beautiful possess.

He reached out his right hand. Snatching it, I blurted my name, noticing too late that his outstretched palm had been upturned in anticipation of the paper. Retracting my hand clumsily, I retrieved the paper and handed it to him. He took it but laid it on the empty seat beside him without so much as a glance. “Thank you,” he said, “But please can you repeat: what is your name?” “Raji,” I repeated, more articulately this time. “My name is Raji.” It was his turn to be dumbstruck. Read more »

Talking with my Guru

….. — Nothing and Emptiness

Me: What is emptiness?

G: What do you mean by emptiness?

Me: I mean nothing.

G: Then why are we discussing it?
…. Take your tiny Tao shears
…. and snip emptiness out of Webster’s
…. and heave it into the void. It’s another
…. self-serving tool like time
…. and collateral damage

…. Cut wood, draw water
…. and stop sound-biting life & death,
…. and travel light (and lightly)
…. until no sun remains

…. Nothing and Emptiness
…. are for advanced students
…. with nothing left to lose or gain

Jim Culleny
October 2007

by Ada Bronowski

Indifference is an attitude first theorised as a philosophical stance by ancient Greek Stoic philosophers from the 3^rd century BC. It was conceived as the right attitude to cultivate in reaction to indifferent things. What was surprising were the things the Stoics considered to be indifferent and hence require us to be indifferent to. Not your usual ‘whether the number of hairs on your head is odd or pair’, or the number of billions of stars in the galaxy, or even what colour underwear your boss wears – though in some circumstances, the latter can start becoming titillating. And titillation is of course what it’s all about. It’s the tickle that spurs the Stoic to resist it. Resisting what exactly? Feeling, uncontrolled gratification, heart-melting, giving in, touching, kiss-&-make-up-ing.

The quintessential titillation is pleasure, sensorial or otherwise. The first Greek Stoics, pioneers of austere indifference, doubted there even really was such a thing: ‘pleasure, if it even exists’ reports of them their most stalwart chronicler, Diogenes Laertius[1]. But the more world-wise Romans, whose genius, after all, was to find pleasure in every aspect of everyday life from grooming to the delivery of justice in an orgy of spectacular blood, could not echo such a flat denial. The Roman Stoics we still know of, happen mostly to be from amongst the most prominent, wealthy and powerful figures of their time who could not but make full fruition of the gamut of pleasures life had on offer. It was the Roman Stoics who transformed the Stoic possibly non-existent pleasure into a tickle. Read more »

by Rebecca Baumgartner

We prefer not to think about our own ignorance. We hope it sorts itself out as we get older and presumably wiser. We especially resent having it pointed out to us – which of course is very counterproductive if the goal is to get rid of it. The better approach is to cultivate an appreciation for our ignorance, get comfortable with it and look at it very closely, disentangling it as much as possible from our ego to see what’s really there (or not there). 

* * *

This is the moral lesson in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which isn’t really about Christmas, of course, despite the yuletide trappings; the emotional heart of the story is a man discarding his attachment to pride and expanding the definition of himself to make room for new knowledge about the world. In other words, it’s about the importance of learning, and the courage it takes to learn and change.

The Ghost of Christmas Present makes this explicit when he shows Scrooge two filthy urchins crouching at his feet, a boy symbolizing Ignorance and a girl symbolizing Want. The Spirit makes it clear that Ignorance is the greater threat of the two: “On his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

We’re very good at ignoring our ignorance. It took several supernatural interventions just for Scrooge to start to admit that his conception of the world was flawed. We might give him a hard time about this, but in reality all of us are bad about seeing what we don’t want to see. That’s why the Spirits had to be so heavy-handed – it required a series of guilt-trips bordering on psychological warfare for Scrooge (and the audience) to see the extent of the problem. 

“Deny it!” the Spirit says sarcastically. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end!” In other words, go ahead and stay in denial about your ignorance and impugn those who point it out – go on, he says, I dare you to brush this aside and see where it gets you. Read more »

Deborah Roberts. Shankia and Grace. 2021.

Collage and mixed media.

More here, here, and currently at ICA Boston..