Top Highlights

• A motto of Rick’s that I’d like to unpack, which is, “If someone asserts it, try denying it and see if that makes sense. If someone denies it, try asserting it and see if that makes sense.”
• someone would say something and Rick would turn it around and say, “Is the opposite true?” Then he would ask, “Well isn’t also the opposite of what you’re saying true?”
• If you just question it just with pure intellectual curiosity, is it true if we turn it around? Usually it’s not, but often it is. That’s how you get new insights. If you just have that as a habit, yeah, this is definitely good advice for anyone in a creative industry or in the academic world. Just try turning things around.
• There is some truth. It’s not that anything goes, there is some truth. Here’s where we’re bringing the second kind of abstract but really powerful concept, which is anthropocentric truth. That means something can be true relative to humans, to who we are. If intelligent aliens come to our solar system, they will find that the Earth is the third pla...
• We had kind of a feud over this because he has a whole book about the landscape of morality arguing that moral truths are like the truths of chemistry. I say no. They are anthropocentric truths. This is from a philosopher David Wiggins. There are things that are true because of the creatures we are. There are things that are beautiful because of ou...

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