Alethes.net

The Poetry of Socrates

Jose Maanmieli — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 09:12:14 +0000

Socrates is in prison awaiting execution, and he is doing something he had never done before: writing poetry. When his friends ask him why, he explains that he has always had a recurring dream, a voice that told him to “cultivate and make music” (Phaedo 60e). Socrates had always assumed that by “music” the dream […]

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A Scientific Definition of Money

Jose Maanmieli — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 12:06:07 +0000

The importance of trade and what we ambiguously call “money” demonstrates a simple fact: humans are natural cooperators. Evolutionarily, this is no surprise. Agents gain more if they manage to coordinate on mutual contribution than if they act alone. Any subset of a population that succeeds in coordinating on such cooperation will tend to outcompete […]

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Searle’s Hyenas

Jose Maanmieli — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 09:07:28 +0000

In a previous post, I described how a dog’s barking and gaze alternation towards its owner appear to express meaning. The animal seems to ‘tell’ the human what it wants — an unreachable piece of food — and the human, recognising this, may respond. The situation looks like communication. This scene is a good reduction […]

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Who Really Rules in the Abrahamic Religions?

Jose Maanmieli — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 12:27:51 +0000

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are commonly perceived as systems of divine law imposed by God the Father, with men as the mediators of that authority. We picture patriarchs leading households, issuing commands, and binding entire clans and nations to covenants. Yet when we read closely, the stories themselves tell a more ironic tale. Beneath the […]

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Money and the Whore of Babylon

Jose Maanmieli — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 07:02:42 +0000

I first came across this idea in Bernard Lietaer’s The Future of Money. In it Lietaer — one of the architects of the euro — describes how, in ancient Mesopotamia, the temple distributed clay tokens that entitled the bearer to a certain amount of barley. Some writers — beginning with Herodotus — have linked these […]

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Domestication of Humans: Speciation?

Jose Maanmieli — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 07:36:19 +0000

The fossil record continues to grow. And with it, so does the contradiction at the heart of the study of human evolution. Each year brings new hominin fossils—jaws, skulls, infant mandibles—that confuse our picture of early human evolution. Instead of revealing a coherent lineage shaped by adaptive refinement, the evidence points to mounting morphological […]

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Epistemology as a Headache

Jose Maanmieli — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 07:26:46 +0000

“Boy, call Charmides and say that I want to introduce him to a physician, in relation to that ailment he told me he was suffering from yesterday.” Then Critias turned to me and explained, “In fact he said recently that he has a headache when he gets up in the morning, so what is to […]

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Domestication of Humans: Abduction

Jose Maanmieli — Sat, 31 May 2025 10:52:50 +0000

Recent observations of white-faced capuchin monkeys on Jicarón Island in Panama have documented a particularly telling case of a broader behavioural theme. Over a 15-month period, juvenile male capuchins were seen abducting infant howler monkeys. They carried them for days, sometimes until the infants died. This behaviour does not resemble caregiving, nor does it fit […]

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Christianity and the Maternal Fantasy

Jose Maanmieli — Fri, 23 May 2025 09:33:29 +0000

My mother had now come to me. Moved by her faith, she had followed me across sea and land, trusting entirely in You through every danger. When we were at sea, she was the one who comforted the sailors—even though it’s usually the sailors who comfort anxious passengers—because You had shown her in a vision […]

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Freedom and the Unloved

Jose Maanmieli — Tue, 20 May 2025 07:01:58 +0000

Imagine you could go back in time tens of thousands of years, to a time that represents the vast majority of human existence as a species. You find yourself alone in the wilderness, self-sufficient, when a band of hunter-gatherers spots you. What happens next? Assuming they don’t kill you, they are likely to offer you […]

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