An Invitation to Think Slowly

There has never been more to read, and it has rarely been harder to think. Every morning the feeds refill. Every argument arrives pre-sorted into sides. We know more about more things than any generation before us, and many of us feel less sure than ever about the questions that matter most: how to live, what to trust, what we owe each other.

Open Wisdom is our small response to that. Once a week, one of us will publish an essay that tries to slow down and think something through properly. Not a hot take, not a listicle, not ten tips. An argument, made in good faith, with the best objection given a fair hearing.

Two directions, one conversation

We come at the world from different places. I have spent my working life in technology, inside the systems that now mediate so much of how people work, talk and decide. Maria has spent hers in literature, inside the stories people have told for centuries about exactly the same things. We have found that these two vantage points disagree more productively than either does alone.

Information is now abundant. Judgement is not.

So you will find essays here on artificial intelligence and on Tolstoy, on listening and on changing your mind, on what our tools want from us and what we might want from ourselves. They are organised into four topics, but the questions underneath tend to overlap. That is rather the point.

What we ask of you

Read slowly. Argue back in the comments. Tell us where we got it wrong. Wisdom has never been a thing you possess, only a thing you practise, and it is easier to practise in company.