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The red pill-blue pill concept was introduced by the Wachowski Brothers in their 1991 blockbuster The Matrix. Following a series of surreal misadventures, the main character is confronted with the choice to take a Red Pill and “see how deep the rabbit-hole goes”, or take a Blue Pill and wake up thinking it was all [...]

We see them all the time. On television, newscasters nod deferentially while Very Serious People tell us what to believe. On the street, we see them wearing their suits, scowls on their faces, always running off to their next Powerpoint Presentation. Who are these mysterious people? Why are they always so miserable and guarded? I [...]

Happiness is mysterious and elusive: we like to associate it with things like wealth, status, and success, and yet we see people wealthier than us, higher status than us, and more successful than us, who don’t seem particularly thrilled with their lives. At the same time, people who have nothing are perfectly capable of just [...]

In no particular order… 1. Having a great dream, and remembering it vividly after waking up. 2. Sharing a smile with a cute stranger. 3. Getting invited to a party. 4. Making new friends and hanging out with old ones. 5. Publishing a great article. 6. Solving a tough math exercise I’ve been stuck on. [...]

This is a follow-up to my previous article, Reality Escapes. Here is a list of one hundred things which might be classified as Reality Escapes. Such classification is arbitrary and subjective. The point of the list is for you to ask yourself which items you look down on. Every item on this list, has the [...]

The thing about reality escapes is, there is no such thing. It’s not like you can run away from the universe, because even if you could, the universe would just expand definitionally to include your new location. When I play We Love Katamari for hours at a time, I’m not escaping from “the reality”, because [...]

A hedonist is someone who actively pursues pleasure. In a sense, we’re all hedonists, for even Mother Teresa made the sacrifices she made because ultimately she calculated that was how to maximize her own pleasure. A more precise title for this article would be: “Ten Reasons to be a Conscious Hedonist”. 1. Joy and Happiness. [...]

A common argument invoked by critics of an all-powerful deity is: “Why does God let bad things happen?” The idea is that if the universe were run by a super-god with infinite power, then surely He wouldn’t let kids starve to death in Africa. It’s very interesting and illuminating to look at this question using [...]

Idle hands, it’s said, are the Devil’s workshop. Let me say, though, if the Devil is still relying on human handwork, then he’s extremely behind on technology! Someone should tell him we’ve invented computers and robotics, and he can start shutting down some of those idle hand workshops and laying off the workers. A Work [...]

All my goals and ambitions are the offspring of one selfish master goal: happiness. Does that make me greedy? Well, if it does, then there isn’t a non-greedy person in the whole world. The only difference between me and the critic of hedonism is that I’m consciously aware of my overarching desire for joy. Someone [...]