Author: Atanu Dey

It’s been a while since the last AMA post. Actually, I’ve been hugely distracted with the presidential race. I end up spending inordinate amounts of time on X and on YouTube.

And on top of that, I am easily distracted. If I see an interesting book, it immediately goes on my reading list. When comes time to get some work done, I decide to just dip into the pile of books just for a few minutes, and the next thing I know is that I’ve spent hours reading.

But that has its rewards. I learn stuff. Learning stuff is joy. Here’s something I enjoyed. Continue reading “AMA – the Very Large Numbers edition”

In just 11 days, on Nov 5th, it will be time once again for the US to elect its next president. It appears to me that the die is cast and there’s unlikely to be an October Surprise to change anyone’s mind on whom to vote for.

I am in the Trump camp. It’s a no-brainer for me because his opponent Harris is a cackling retard. Trump is no John von Neumann, for sure. But he’s clearly better than Harris. What matters to me the most is the fabulous team that Trump will bring to his administration if he’s elected. Here they are: Continue reading “The US Presidential Elections”

Are there limits to growth? There must be because the planet we live on is finite. Therefore, it must be that there are limits to growth. But I believe that there are no practical limits to growth. The distinction between the theoretical and practical is important because it has implications regarding our moral imperatives.

In this bit, I continue my reply to Akshay’s comment. The previous bit was Energy and Power. In his comment, Akshay wrote: Continue reading “Limits to Growth”

Growth is a feature of the natural world. All sorts of processes at various scales — from the molecular to the galactic — lead to growth. Plants and animals grow through their life cycles, as do stars and galaxies. The opposite process of degrowth is also part of the natural world. Growth invariably leads to dissolution and death. Nothing lasts forever. Whatever has a beginning has an end. Creation and destruction are inextricably linked. Shiva, as Nataraja, ceaselessly dances the universe into existence and also dances it out of existence.[1]

Though growth and its opposite continue, overall growth wins over degrowth. The universe and its various subsystems grow with the passage of time.

Narrowing our focus to the processes that are involved in the evolution of life on earth, we see the same cyclical story: birth, growth, dissolution and death followed by renewal. All these processes are by definition dynamic and therefore have the potential to be creative. Continue reading “Economic Growth and Degrowth”

In the first bit I distinguished between religions and the dharmas, and argued that Hinduism (and the related traditions of Buddhism and Jainism) is not a religion. Furthermore, religions have a concept of god (and strictly only one god) but dharmas have no related concept of god, neither one nor many. Thus Dharmas are godless, and therefore by the strict definition of the term, the dharmas are atheistic.

As I’m an atheist — a person who does not believe in god — I am godless and therefore irreligious. I assume that much was clear by now if you’ve been following my posts.

In this series (see Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3), I am exploring why I’m a Hindu, and intellectually and morally justifying my choice of my dharmic identity. Continue reading “Why I’m a Hindu – Part 4”

The Swedish economist Johan Norberg is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He is a passionate advocate of capitalism. In his 2023 book The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World he argues for free markets and freedom.

Among his 20 books are In Defense of Global Capitalism, Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, and Open: The Story of Human Progress. Those two books were recognized as the 2016 and 2020 book of the year, respectively, by The Economist . Continue reading “Johan Norberg on China”