WWB Trainer
WWB Takeaways
Timeless ideas at the intersections of science, philosophy, critical thinking, and history.
MODE:
~
5 minutes
of takeaways.
10 takeaways. Ten complete ideas.
1.
From History: 500 BCE
circa 450 BCE
By 450 BCE, Anaxagoras and others understood that the moon was not a god but a rock like Earth. They knew the moon reflected the Sun’s light and the true nature of eclipses and lunar phases.
2.
From History: 1.8 million years ago
Homo habilis emerged about 2.3 million years ago. They started using toothpicks by about 1.84 million years ago. This suggests their cognitive abilities and cultural use of those abilities evolved during that half million years.
3.
From History: born 1473
Lived 1473 to 1543, aged 70.
Copernicus was not a public rebel or celebrity thinker. He was a cautious scholar who spent decades refining an idea he feared releasing. By placing the Sun at the center, he didn’t just revise astronomy—he modeled a new way of thinking: slow, mathematical, and willing to let evidence outrank tradition.
4.
Quote:
- Laozi.
- circa 550 BCE.
The Unknowable Dao is the idea that our ideas about the material world are not the material world itself, but a reflection or description of it. Our ideas are always incomplete. Therefore, the material world is always unknowable. This is the “split” in my Idea of Ideas and Kant’s phenomena versus noumena.
5.
Quote:
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr..
- 1858.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. reminded us that we are not forged in a vacuum. We are born into a family with a family view, and into a society with a societal view. Long before we can choose our own beliefs, we inherit them. Our traditions, our education, and our early experiences shape how the world first makes sense to us. In this very real way, we are products of our upbringing.
6.
Quote:
- Carl Sagan.
- circa 1980.
Carl Sagan reminds us that we are intimately connected to the universe. The particles that form our bodies are borrowed from a cosmic pool of just 17 particles and four forces. Even more humbling, the molecules within us were forged in the hearts of stars, linking us directly to the vast cosmos that surrounds us.
7.
Confirmation bias is our tendency to favor information that aligns with our beliefs, which is perfectly fine for old information. The key? Make a strong effort to freshly evaluate new information. Challenge assumptions, seek opposing viewpoints, and ask yourself if you’re interpreting facts or fulfilling desires.
8.
Artificial intelligence evolved from Symbolic AI to Inference AI in the 1970s. Recently it has evolved to LLMs but the future will be a hybrid of these approaches combined with other things like Reinforcement Learning (RLs).
9.
The Enlightenment didn’t begin in lecture halls; it began in prison cells. Voltaire’s story reminds us that ideas often emerge under pressure, not comfort. Suppression doesn’t kill truth—it tests it. When expression is punished, courage becomes the engine of progress, and wit becomes a weapon against power.
10.
Plato’s Academy was not the first university. While it’s often called one, it didn’t offer formal degrees or structured courses like modern institutions. The first true universities didn’t emerge until the 12th century, but Plato’s Academy was important to philosophy and an important school of philosophy.
“Done.” Refresh for another set.
WWB Trainer
(c) 2025-2026 TouchstoneTruth.
Writing and coding by Michael Alan Prestwood.
(c) 2025-2026 TouchstoneTruth.
Writing and coding by Michael Alan Prestwood.
