Dear Internet, Optimism has been part of my nature for as long as I can remember. As a child I remember watching my favourite football team thinking we’d never lose. I’d believe we could win until the very end of a game no matter how badly we were losing or who the...

Dear Daniel Dennett, I have no idea how much interest there might be about disagreements among naturalists between the optimistic ones like you and the pessimistic ones like me. But I know I’d like to be convinced I’m mistaken. And you are probably the philosopher most l...

Dear Simon Armitage, In response to '70 Notices' You spent a long time looking hard to notice seventy things between greyscale streetlit troughs and Dark and White Peaks, saw a full moon bottled in a drop of dew, felt the full weight of Sheffield and Manchester come ...

Dear Massimo Pigliucci, We’ve had a quite a few vigorous exchanges on twitter on the topic of panpsychism. I’ve learned a lot from these exchanges, but I’m sure you’ll agree it’s hard to tackle issues in any depth with the 140 limit imposed by Twitter. So I’m grateful for t...

Dear Cornel West, I am writing ask about the concept of "reasonable progress:" when we can reasonably expect progress to arrive? When stuff moves forward -- justice through judicial decisions, paperwork by deadlines -- we may think that the forward motion was in a r...

Dear Ali Rizvi, I came across a wonderful correspondence between Matt Thornton and yourself a few days ago. I say wonderful because it is rare to see two people from diverse backgrounds with different worldviews engage in a meaningful and respectful dialogue. Your...

Dear Yuval Noah Harari, My name is Andy Norman, and I count myself a fan of your work. I admire your clarity, your passion for big ideas, and your commitment to clear, accessible writing. I think your books—Sapiens and Homo Deus—are landmark achievements, destined to stimul...

Dear Philip Goff, I am intrigued by your support of panpsychism and would love to run some things past you. I enjoyed your exchange with Massimo Pigliucci on Collate, although I could sense your frustration that some of his key objections seemed to be based on what ...

Dear Cheryl Abbate, I was walking through my local university recently and noticed something peculiar. Their student union had organized a petting zoo for students who were about to sit their college exams. It was a nice gesture in some ways. An opportunity for young pe...

Dear Anthony Horowitz, I had the enjoyable experience of growing up with your Alex Rider books during my childhood, and also being a fan of Sherlock Holmes, it has also been wonderful seeing you continue those stories. I wanted to write to you regarding something that has...

Dear Scott Aaronson, Will future deep learning models with more parameters and trained on more examples avoid the [url=https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/22/1007539/gpt3-openai-language-generator-artificial-intelligence-ai-opinion/]silly blunders[/url] which Gary M...

Dear Meghan Griffith, [highlight=transparent]Recently, I’ve been most curious about free will. Unfortunately, my partner is not. And she is tired of me asking her whether or not she believes in free will. So to save her from further misery, I will take my questions and th...

Dear Internet, [justify][highlight=transparent]A few weeks ago whilst at our usual Saturday night excursion to the village local, our conversation somehow got onto religion. Someone in our group said something seemingly insignificant, but it sparked a small epiphan...

Dear Michael Guillen, [highlight=transparent]A few weeks ago, I bought a worn copy of your book, Bridges to Infinity, from my local bookshop. The intriguing cover and table of contents caught my eye immediately. And having read the book, I can see why you won awards as a ...

Dear Internet, When a nobody like myself writes in letter form to a public figure, there is only a small probability that she will see my words amidst the flood of mail and messages that she inevitably receives. Beyond that, there is an even smaller chance that she...