A short reading guide to Humble Knowledge
Important reading so you can understand what this Substack is about
One of the challenges of publishing on a blog platform is that old posts tend to get quickly forgotten. This is no problem if the content is a running commentary on current affairs. However, my project here is to build out an intellectual project, so what I have written in the past continues to be highly relevant.
I have now published too much here to produce a useful, comprehensive guide that covers everything. So, instead, here is a short overview of the most important, or interesting, articles. In short, if you read these then you’ll have a good overview of my project - and, I hope, encounter some provocative ideas that get you thinking. This guide is in three parts: Philosophy; Reflections on our Human Condition; and Technology.
Philosophy
If you only read one article here, I would strongly suggest the following. It is a summary of my core ideas about what knowledge is and how it works - and links other articles to look at.
What we can know about knowledge
From the start of this year, much of my writing here has focused on building a new epistemology based on humility and limits. I have been examining aspects of what human knowledge is, and what it isn't, in order to rethink our understanding of knowledge. Given this has evolved over many different posts, I thought it would be helpful to bring it all toge…
My second recommendation for philosophical articles are a series of ‘Epistemic Histories of Western Thought’, currently in three parts: (i) up to the 17th century, (ii) more recent core philosophers, and (iii) the development of science.
A brief epistemic history of Western thought (Part 1)
This post covers lots of ground - from Socrates to the beginning of the ‘Modern’ period - in very little detail. Consider it a historical sketch of the way epistemic confidence and humility have shifted in Western thinking that will get extended and also filled in with more detail in future posts (although likely not one of the next few). Comments and …
There are also articles on types of reasoning, critical theory, different paradoxes, causation and categories, mathematics, postmodernism, ethics, political theory, chaos theory and quantum physics.
Reflections on our Human Condition
Amongst articles on story-telling, creativity, cognitive biases, brain hemispheres, everyday humility and misinformation, I’d recommend the following two articles as a useful - and perhaps provocative - starting point.
Why it is hard to change your mind
There is a reliable stream of online commentary about human irrationality and why people refuse to change their mind despite what, to the author, seems like clear evidence. The culprit is sometimes fingered as cognitive biases, or social status, conspiracies
Can our feelings help us know?
If asked to imagine an ideal for a reliable source of knowledge or information, we would typically think of a rational, careful and unemotional person. Through investigations of people who have sustained different types of brain damage, neurologist Antonio Damasio uncovered cases that call this stereotype into question.
Technology
The big story of the last couple of year has been generative Artificial Intelligence. If you’re interested in a philosophically informed view based on the structure of AI information processing, and consequences for what it can and can’t do, you can check out these two articles.
AI is an alien intelligence
Public and regulatory debates about the future of AI are often dominated by the split between the “accelerationists” and the “doomers”. That is, between those, like the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, who see the rapid development of AI as vital to the future of humanity
Generative AI might dream, but it cannot hallucinate
2023 has undoubtably been, in the popular imagination, the year of AI. ChatGPT set the record for the fastest growth in users of any technology ever and worries about existential threats posed by AI have gone mainstream. However, all of these types of generative AI (which also includes art generators like
Decision making and Policy
A common theme here is what the limits on our knowledge mean for how we make decisions - including government or policy decisions. Topics have included the group dynamics and societal cohesion, the impacts of writing norms, incentives in academia, and systems of government.
However, two key posts that are broadly relevant are the following:
Learning from science for better decisions and policies
The scientific method has, over time, proven to be an effective approach for testing ideas and improving our understanding of the world. The rhetoric we often hear about science is its success is because it deals with data, facts and observations. However, we often hear less about the foundational role of theory in scie…
Check theories, not facts
After my recent post on fact checking, I've had a few questions about what we can do to convince people to change their minds, when that is important. There is no simple answer to this - humans in the real world are complex and have a lot going on - but there are some insights we can draw from the structure of knowledge an…
This was last updated on 2 January 2025.