analects noun, pl

/ˈan.ə.lɛkts/

a collection of ideas, extracts, or teachings.

Humans Aren't Special

stuff On minds beyond the human

show:

analects under the categories btrmt. believes in, as set out in the manifesto

analects organised according to the fundamental quesions of philosophy

sequences of articles gathered around a more focused idea

  • ai-shaped stuff 13 Jun 2026 [article] We keep waiting for AI to get good enough. That’s backwards. The bottleneck is human: work that isn’t AI-shaped, verification we’re bad at,...
  • atavism isn't the answer 7 Feb 2026 [audio + edited transcript] Seed oils, raw milk, cold plunges, tradwives—one template runs them all: name a modern ill, invent an ancestral past, sell the return as cur...
  • stupid questions: consciousness 10 Jan 2026 [audio + edited transcript] The hard problem of consciousness isn’t a problem. It’s a beautiful argument with no stakes. Behaviour is what matters, not the ghost behind...
  • stupid questions 1 Jan 2026 [article] Nature is just nurture over time, and nurture is far more obviously in charge; nothing changes if free will isn’t real; and the same is true...
  • stupid questions: nature/nurture 13 Dec 2025 [audio + edited transcript] Nature is just nurture given time, and nurture is obviously the one in charge. The whole debate is Gladwell bait: superficially sexy, practi...
  • ai hallucination is just man-guessing 1 Nov 2025 [article] Human reasoning isn’t flawed, it’s a social tool we use in the wrong places. It’s about sharing and evaluating intuitive claims, not generat...
  • there is no authentic self 11 Apr 2025 [article] There’s no hidden version of you. If anything, we are a collection of bits and pieces that we weave together from the stories we learn from...
  • ai is never human-like 14 Mar 2025 [article] AI has human-like output, but a very different environment and different values for than environment, and until all three align, they will n...
  • ai isn't that scary 22 Jun 2024 [article] AI alarmism thrives on speculative, worst-case scenarios, but our understanding of AI’s fundamentally alien nature and the complex forms of...
  • panpsychism isn't that fun 22 Sep 2023 [article] Panpsychists reckon they’ve one-upped materialists and non-materialists in explaining how consciousness might have come to be by telling us...
  • the colour of the inhuman world 7 Nov 2022 [article] Humans imagine that there is no other way of being than the way that we conceive of, and all experiences are ultimately relative to ours. Th...
  • spirituality of mind 29 Aug 2022 [article] The secular world replaced the soul with a mind in the brain. Modern science of mind finds no such thing, but a collection of mini-minds whi...
  • animals first 10 Oct 2021 [article] When we use the architecture of the brain to scaffold our thinking about the mind, we come to learn that humans are primarily animals first.
  • autopoiesis: the origin of complex thought 4 Feb 2021 [article]
  • genetics is nurture 11 Jan 2021 [article]
  • consciousness vs conscious access 25 Nov 2020 [article]
  • the flaws of the human perspective 29 Oct 2020 [article]
  • honey-bees are smarter than they should be 29 Mar 2020 [article] Animals show glimpses of cognitive abilities that challenge our traditional notions of higher-order thinking, making us question what truly...
  • how reading (good) non-fiction books builds your empathy 1 Jan 2016 [article]
  • why kids can't lie but you can (the key to emotional intelligence) 30 Dec 2015 [article]
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