How a Philosopher You've Never Heard of Predicted The End of The World
Without even knowing it...
Way back when, a philosopher named Donald Davidson wrote a handful of essays, including one with a wicked title, “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs.” He didn’t know it at the time, but he predicted the end of the world.
(If you’ve heard of him, you get a gold star.)
Over the course of these essays, Davidson explained the foundations of human communication. I’ll paraphrase:
In order to have a meaningful conversation with someone, you have to assume they’re a pretty reasonable person with reasonable beliefs. You have to share the same world, the same reality. You have to respect each other.
Well, so much for that.
Donald Davidson died in 2003, before smartphones and social media, a few months after the invasion of Iraq. He probably never even heard of the phrase “echo chamber,” at least not the way we use it now. He never experienced the dopamine high from demolishing a troll online, followed by the letdown when you realized they were just a bot. He never had …