About
My name is Alexandru Ioan Căbuz and I am a Romanian currently living in Bucharest, Romania. For my educational and professional background see my LinkedIn public profile.
On this site will appear articles on issues ranging from current events to science and philosophy. Some of the entries may be written in Romanian or in French. Some of the articles will have the form of editorials, while others will be longer. For long articles requiring a bibliography an executive summary will be posted on the site and a link to the pdf file will be provided. I give the motivation for this choice of structure here.
I outline several important features of my thinking:
Very broadly speaking I am a pragmatic skeptic. Everything happens for a reason and I see indignation as a symptom and indicator of ignorance. I avoid faith or belief when it is not necessary. On the other hand, absolute knowledge is impossible, so faith is often necessary in order to be able to function; for instance faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, that one will be alive tomorrow, etc.
I am interested in very many subjects but my thinking is generally speaking empirical and pragmatic. I ask “why” more often than “how” even though I am aware that whenever I ask “why” the answer I actually obtain is most often the answer to the “how”.
I am not superstitious (even though I don’t believe that the Celestine Prophecy is a waste of time). I believe religion has important roles for social and psychological stability. I often refer to myself as a traditionalist, for both personal and rational reasons. The human instinctive need for continuity and stability, in both the personal and social theaters, is undeniable and irresistible.
My favorite film by far is Fight Club. I often quote from it or make reference to it. Its unique cocktail of existentialism, consumer alienation and eastern philosophical abandon provides for a seemingly endless and always fertile intellectual playground of interconnections.
I believe one of the most underrated sources of wisdom in modern literature is Douglas Adams’ Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I see it as an epic fable of unique vision and ambition, which, in time, will find its place next to the works of Aristophanes, La Fontaine or Kafka.
I am a proud user of Debian Linux, the largest and most completely free (as in freedom) Linux distribution in existence. I am a believer in free software and I donate regularly to Wikipedia.
Everything I say is by definition an opinion, and the confident tone only means that I have been wrong so many times in the past that it no longer scares me. Being wrong is the process by which we become purified of bad ideas, and I welcome it. It is far preferable to learn one is wrong than to find out through experience, for such experiences are often painful. Besides, for any idea that dies a thousand more surge up to take its place, so it’s no tragedy.
Above all, if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you can never come up with anything new or original. Full credit to Ken Robinson for that truth. See his brilliant TED talk.
The best way to contact me is through this form.
Unless noted otherwise, the content of this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Alexandru Ioan Căbuz 2008, 2009.
