Erik P. Hoel

1 week ago | theintrinsicperspective.com | Erik P. Hoel

When you become a new parent, you must re-explain the world, and therefore see it afresh yourself. A child starts with only ancestral memories of archetypes: mother, air, warmth, danger. But none of the specifics. For them, life is like beginning to read some grand fantasy trilogy, one filled with lore and histories and intricate maps. Yet the lore of our world is far grander, because everything here is real. Stars are real. Money is real. Brazil is real.

2 weeks ago | theintrinsicperspective.com | Erik P. Hoel

The Desiderata series is a regular roundup of links and commentary, and an open thread for the community. Today, it’s sponsored by the Berggruen Institute, and so is available for all subscribers. $50,000 essay contest about consciousness. AI enters its scheming vizier phase. Sperm whale speech mirrors human language. I’m serializing a book here on Substack. People rate the 2020s as bad for culture, but good for cuisine. UFO rumors were a Pentagon hazing ritual. Visualizing humanity’s tech tree.

3 weeks ago | theintrinsicperspective.com | Erik P. Hoel

It’s a funny thing, finding out you’re a lamplighter. Apparently, we’ve all been trudging through the evening streets of an 1890s London, tending our gas lamps, watching from afar as the new electric ones flicker into existence. One by one they render us redundant. A change, we are told, we will eventually be thankful for.

1 month ago | theintrinsicperspective.com | Erik P. Hoel

Over a year has passed since I began teaching my toddler—then two years old—how to read (a process chronicled here). Now, I’m prepared to answer a burning scientific question that has kept absolutely zero researchers up at night: Can a three-year-old read The Hobbit? Turns out: yeah, pretty much. Here’s Roman reading from Chapter 1:In a hole, in the ground, there lived a hobbit.

1 month ago | theintrinsicperspective.com | Erik P. Hoel

The summer solstice comes. In just over a month, the sun’s rays will hike to their northernmost peak. At Stonehenge, the sunrise will summit the Heel Stone, turning the stone’s shadow into a long blade that pierces between the monoliths and touches the Altar Stone. There, amid the cramped tourist encampments, Fey creatures will have made their annual pilgrimage. Wearing faces so perfectly average they slip from memory, the Fey will sip their coffees and be jostled amid the crowd.