Fellow Interintellect Vidhika Bansal invites you to chat about the art and science of conversation — across mediums, cultures, and contexts Conversations happen on so many different continuums: from eagerly anticipated ones to outright dreaded ones, synchronous to asynchronous, planned to impromptu, familiar to foreign, brief to lengthy, one-on-one to in groups, regular to sporadic,…
Fellow Interintellect Linus Lu invites you to fearlessly investigate what makes things interesting What makes something interesting? Why do different people find different things interesting? What are some universal characteristics that make things interesting? We'll explore if and how things can be intrinsically interesting, and the process in which people develop interests through personal experiences,…
Interintellect Anwar AlKandari explores different aspects of perfectionism, the overpower it has on us, and useful ways to cope with it. “If one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by…
Courage, loyalty, tolerance. Perseverance, empathy, autonomy... Most of us agree that the values we consider of highest importance in our lives don't only influence but should actively guide our living arrangements, our career choices, and our private relationships. Yet few of us possess the frameworks of introspection needed to clearly define our personal values for…
“Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.” ~Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian From Socraties to Galileo to Hitchens, contrarians have always made life more, well, interesting (for themselves as well as everyone else).But in a noisy combative world of hot-takes and meme-stocks where every second Silicon Valley talking-head is a self-described…
In this salon, fellow Interintellect Daniel Golliher will consider local politics, its prestige deficit, its aesthetic failings, and its hurdles to engagement; he and attendees will discuss why these things arise, but–more interestingly–how they might disappear. When you think of local politics, you likely think of blank-faced people sitting in metal foldout chairs in some dilapidated civic…
After a very enjoyable first Silent Salon, we continue this new tradition. Bring a book, your studies, your work to-do's, or your meditation practice, and let's spend 3 calm hours together, undistracted, in silence... *** If the early 21st century seemed hellbent on depriving us from silence, the current pandemic, with its various types of…
Fellow Interintellect Maybe Gray explores the world of comparison that is so often hidden within the ways we think about ourselves, others Certainty and clarity are incredibly rare phenomena. In a wide variety of contexts we are all forced to make do without clear objective guides for understanding concepts. In the absence of objective information…
Étienne Fortier-Dubois leads a series of thematic discussions on the work of science fiction author Ted Chiang. In part 2, we discuss stories that imagine the world as if God were a observable scientific fact. Ted Chiang ranks among the best living authors of science fiction. Though he cannot be described as prolific — his…
This new track of monthly Interintellect Salons by Ben Fleming address the issues of how to be a physically fit and healthy intellectual: what’s beyond sitting and thinking? Save the date: this track of ii Salons will run on the first Monday of every month. The stereotypical intellectual is not a physically fit person. But it is…
In this Interintellect Salon, Taylor Pullinger will lead a discussion on resilience – in people, in nature, in systems. Sometimes things go wrong – it’s how we respond that makes all the difference. In the face of adversity we could break down and give up, we could rigidly stand firm against it, or we could…
Fellow Interintellect Alex Yao explores how polymaths and Internet remix culture use combinatory play to create new works. "Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought." — Albert Einstein Nothing is original, everything is a remix. We build on what came before, and create by taking bits and pieces from our knowledge,…
