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Jeremy Sherman – Cradle-to-grave research from the origins of life to our grave situation. Jeremy Sherman – Cradle-to-grave research from the origins of life to our grave situation.
  • js@jeremysherman.com
What is trying and how did it start?
All organisms struggle for their existence, trying to stay alive. Natural selection explains how trying evolves but not what trying is.  Nothing in physics or chemistry is trying to do anything. Nothing we struggling organisms do defies physical law. Trying is something different from nothing but physical chemistry.  To understand trying, I work with top researchers to explain the emergence of trying from simple chemistry.
Cradle
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How to spot and stop assholes?
While there are plenty of animal predators, being an a-hole is a human thing, a product of having words by which we can claim the last word. A-holery, dressed up in whatever cause, could well lead to our extinction. The first rule of the game of life has always been to adapt to reality or die. A-holery and its plural "cult" is the anti-adaptive streak in humans made possible by language which exposes us to too many possibilities and affords us a way to escape into make-believe worlds of our own making. 
Grave
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How do part/whole relationships evolve?

We assume reality's emergent nested levels, for example, from physics to chemistry, to biology to psychology to society. With each new level, new properties emerge from nothing but the lower levels. 
We know emergence happens, but how? How to explain changes in what's likely, when wholes become parts of larger wholes. 
Synergenesis

How does adapting to reality change under the influence of language?

Words have us humans living in two worlds, the real one common to all organisms occupy and our language-fueled imaginations. We humans are more visionary and delusional than other critters because language enables us to think about what's not present or even real. 
Language overwhelms us with possibilities and affords us easy ways to escape the overwhelm. "To name it is to tame it" in two senses: To make sense of things or to tame what feels threatening to us. 
MYOPIUM

How best to adapt to reality's reversals?

What solves problems in one situation creates problems in others. Reality is peppered with paradoxes and reversals. Life gives us dilemmas, but we tend to want to oversimplify, virtue-maximizing and vice-minimizing as though we should always maximize connection and minimize connection. No one does or should, but we talk like we should and do.
Vice-Versatility

How can we make escapism safe?

For humans, escapism is inescapable. Reality is too hard. Escaping it is too easy. We need to get better at taking our diverse flights of fancy but with a return ticket to reality secure in our heart pockets. Or else we end up pretending away the reality to which we must adapt or we'll die.
Optimal Illusion

How best to shop among interpretations?

We're all interpreting, guessing what means what. For credibility, we sometimes posture as though we're neutral observers coming to the only possible conclusions about the facts, but that's not really credible. Everything is open to interpretation so the question becomes how to interpret as wisely as possible. Philosophy means the love of wisdom. Any fool can claim to love wisdom.
Sophology would be the study of wisdom: what it is, how it works, how to cultivate it.
Sophology

How can we wise up our words of wisdom?

Everyone's a folk scientist. We've got to be to survive. Our folk scientific method could use some improvement, as could our professional scientific method. What generic, non-partisan enhancements can yet be had and how can we get them into people's hands?
Smarticulate