What Do I Know When the Machine Knows for Me? Montaigne asked one of philosophy’s smallest and most durable questions: Que sais-je? What do I know? In the age of artificial intelligence, that question has become newly urgent. AI can now produce an answer to almost anything in seconds. It can defend a position, attack it, summarize the debate, generate counterarguments, cite sources, and sound…
The Chätsy Effect Mark Twain once wrote: “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.” That was in 1887. Twain had one decisive advantage. He had never met Roman Chätsy. Roman is walking down Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. Headphones in. Good mood. A Swiss tele vision presenter sticks a microphone in front of him. What are you listening to? A podcast. About what? AI.…
On Using Tinder for Executive Research There are sentences that should be kept in museums. Not because they are especially wise. Because they show the exact moment language leaves reality and hides in a Swiss mountain bunker. A former chief executive of one of Switzerland’s largest banks is back in court again. The accusations are pretty serious: hidden business interests, questionable deals,…
Freedom Has No Reset Button I had another one of my weak moments and opened a tabloid. The great sensation of the day was that a mid-forties influencer now had a six-pack. Fair enough. What interested me more was the philosophy attached to it: “Change your energy and your habits. Create a new identity. Just make the decision. Every day, you can choose again who you want to be.” It sounds…
Multiculturalism Needs a “We” The best vision of a multicultural society is not one in which people erase their differences. It is one in which people with different histories decide to build something together. One person brings a language, another a religion, another memories of another country. In an open society, nobody should have to surrender their past at the border. Difference can enrich a…
Change the Context A few days ago, I bought a second-hand wetsuit for almost nothing. I want to swim in natural lakes more often this autumn. Before then, I needed to know whether the suit fit. It was the middle of summer. The temperature outside had reached about thirty-four degrees Celsius. I live in an old wooden house that traps heat on days like this. The plan was simple. Put the wetsuit on.…
Moral Theatre There are professions in which you are asked what you can do. And there are professions in which you are asked who you are. Social work belongs unmistakably to the second category. Anyone applying for a position as a social worker will sooner or later be asked: “Why did you become a social worker?” The question sounds harmless. Yet it often asks for more than professional motivation.…
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The Sleepwalkers Today, on a Sunday, I only wanted to buy a few yogurts. Instead, I found myself watching a small experiment in human nature. A few weeks ago, the first 24-hour Migros supermarket in Switzerland opened in my village. There are no cashiers, no staff standing around to help. You scan your loyalty card or a QR code to enter, pick up your groceries, pay at the self-checkout, and leave.…
Context Is the Real Product A few weeks ago, the first 24-hour Migros store in Switzerland opened in my town. It is a small supermarket without staff. You enter by scanning your Cumulus card or an app. Curious to see how it worked, I went there on the opening day. Instead of finding people shopping, I found a crowd standing outside the entrance. Nobody could get in. The reason was almost comical.…
The Courage to Intervene One of the first things I learned as a social worker was that techniques are overrated. Not because they are useless. Every profession needs methods, concepts and frameworks. They help us organise experience and give younger professionals something to build upon instead of forcing every generation to begin from scratch. But after sitting with hundreds of people over the…
The Pilgrimage I have been listening to a lecture series by the historian Teofilo Ruiz. His own life is remarkable. As a young man in Cuba, he joined the revolution against Batista. When he became disillusioned with the Castro regime, he opposed it, was imprisoned, and eventually left his country to begin again in the United States. He worked ordinary jobs, studied at night, and eventually became…
Oversteering Yesterday, while I was on holiday in Istria, Croatia, a man suddenly collapsed in the restaurant where we were having dinner. He lost consciousness twice. During the second collapse he was completely unconscious. Within seconds, people around him began to panic. His partner immediately reached for a glass of water. She was convinced that the heat was to blame and that he simply had…
Switzerland Should Not Exist Years ago, while studying in Zurich, I wrote a paper about William Tell. At the time, I argued that Tell was one of the key figures holding Switzerland together. Here was a country divided by language, religion, culture, and geography, yet somehow united by a shared story. Tell, I wrote, provided a common symbol around which Swiss identity could form. Looking back, I…
The Question Nobody Wants to Ask At some point, I realized that I am often preoccupied with a different question than most people. Not because I am particularly philosophical. But because I am a social worker who takes his profession seriously. When someone sits across from me and says, “My life isn't working.” I can immediately reach for interventions. Program A. Program B. Coaching. Therapy.…
The Goal Is Not Obedience One of the first disappointments of childhood is discovering that your parents do not know nearly as much as you once believed. For a time, parents appear almost omniscient. They know where everything is, how things work, and what to do when problems arise. To a young child, they seem remarkably certain about the world. Eventually, however, the illusion begins to crack.…
The Dreamer There is a bakery near where I live. The pastries are good, the coffee is good, and the service is efficient. Yet if I am honest, none of those things is the main reason I go there. The real reason is a woman from the Dominican Republic who works behind the counter. I have known her for years, though not in any meaningful sense. Ours is the sort of acquaintance that develops naturally…
The Bible Shelf The other day I visited Aligro, a Swiss cash-and-carry supermarket. If you have never been to one, imagine a place where everything is sold in quantities suggesting that you are either running a restaurant or preparing for the collapse of civilization. Ten liters of ketchup. Twenty kilograms of flour. Coffee measured in units normally associated with industrial production. I like…
Beyond Authenticity Authenticity is one of the great ideals of our time. We are told to find ourselves. To follow our inner voice. To discover who we really are. Every age has its guiding promise. The Middle Ages promised salvation. The nineteenth century promised progress. Our age seems to promise authenticity. The assumption is simple enough. Somewhere beneath expectations, obligations, social…
Friendly Faces When I was a child, it was usually obvious who the authority figures were. The teacher was the authority. The police officer was the authority. The doctor was the authority. The government official was the authority. You might have liked it or disliked it, but at least you knew where you stood. Today something has changed. Not the power. The language. The boss no longer speaks about…
Build Systems That Can Correct Themselves Many people spend their lives looking for the answer. The right philosophy. The right diet. The right career. The right relationship. The right political ideology. The right productivity method. The right supplement. The assumption behind all these searches is simple: if we can just find the correct answer, life will finally fall into place. The problem is…
The Difference Between "God Believed" and Faith One of the most provocative statements Werner Erhard reportedly made during est was: "God believed is a lie." At first glance, it sounds like an attack on religion. I no longer think it is. In fact, I suspect it points toward a distinction that many religious traditions have understood for centuries. The distinction between believing in something and…
The Apocalypse Will Not Be Trending The apocalypse will not be trending. It will not arrive with sirens. It will not interrupt your programming. It will not appear as breaking news. There will be no dramatic music. No countdown clock. No final warning. The apocalypse will not crash the system. The apocalypse will be the system. The apocalypse will not arrive on horseback. It will arrive as a…
Reducing the Gap Between Map and Territory One of the most important tasks in life is reducing the gap between our map and the territory. The territory is reality. The map is our understanding of reality. The problem is not merely that our map is incomplete. The deeper problem is that we often forget it is a map at all. We assume that what we see is what is there. More importantly, we assume that…
The Unexpected Lesson of Marte Meo Many years ago, when my daughter was still very young, I came across the Dutch approach known as Marte Meo. The name means "by one's own strength," and the method is often used with children and families. One of its central ideas is surprisingly simple. Instead of merely doing things, you narrate what you are doing. You make the invisible visible. You tell the…