About

Hi! My name is Michael, and this is my blog.
I may occasionally write my thoughts here, review some books, or post general life updates (without getting too personal).

About me

I am a young male, living in Europe, with a BA in Liberal Arts, specializing in Social Sciences, and a MSc in Business Administration / Marketing.
What fascinates me is human behavior and psychology, especially the role that people's beliefs and decisions play in the overall state of society (and how they can potentially be influenced). I am also interested in philosophy, in particular transhumanism.

FAQ

Q: Why the pseudonym "Quaerendo"?
A: It is a reference to Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, wherein the author advises the reader with the words "quaerendo invenietis", meaning "by seeking you will discover" -- which itself is a reference to a puzzle canon in J. S. Bach's The Musical Offering.

Q: Why the title "Omne ignotum pro magnifico"?
A: The Latin phrase means something like "everything unknown appears magnificent" or "every unknown thing is taken as grand/splendid". It is a reference to three things: (1) Eliezer Yudkowsky's conception of "Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions"; (2) a video on YouTube by QualiaSoup called "Putting faith in its place", which had a big impact on me when I was younger; and (3) Sherlock Holmes.

Q: Why the URL "perpetualcanon ..."?
A: It refers to the so-called perpetual canons from J. S. Bach's The Musical Offering.

Q: What is the background picture called?
A: It is Print Gallery (1956 lithograph) by M. C. Escher.

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Book Review: Stuart Sutherland, "Irrationality", Pinter & Martin, 2007. Back in 1992, the British writer and professor of psychology Stuart Sutherland (now deceased) published a book simply titled Irrationality , which foreshadowed Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow by nearly two decades. Recently, I finished reading the second (2007) edition, although a newer edition (2013) is also available. In the preface, Sutherland states his mission: to demonstrate, using research from psychology, that irrational behavior is the norm (not the exception) in our everyday lives. And this book covers a wide range of irrational phenomena, many of which will be familiar to those who've read Kahneman or who follow rationalist blogs like Less Wrong . And if you're not familiar with the literature, this book will convince you that indeed, humans are probably not rational creatures (in case you needed to be convinced of that). Since I believe this topic is so im
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