[A] flaw ... inheres in any attempt any attempt to predict the course of multiple and intercausative phenomena such as makes up the life of a nation or planet. We can extend the graph curve of present trends and be certain that existent vitalities will decline, but we cannot conceive of the new, of the entities born by intricate synthesis from collisions of the broadly known. Models of the future tend therefore to be streamlined models of the present, the present with its corners cut off. But it is these very corners that move into the center and become the future. They move unexpectedly and perhaps unpredictably...
John Updike — Preface to the 1977 edition of Poorhouse Fair.
Our society is now discussing, or more properly, reacting, exhorting, teaching, positioning and shamings over the issue of gender. The interesting thing is that we have no idea at the present time how this will paly itself out, not only socially in terms of bathrooms, discrimination and dress, but also personally, as how will my reactions to such issues be changing in the future.
If you make money in a capitalist economy should you be allowed to keep it?
Certainly not in all circumstances.
Not if you stole it, or (perhaps) you inherited it or came form a position of privilege, you worked off the labor of slaves or exploited people, you create a condition where you can permanently control future wealth.
But what if you worked fair and hard, competed well, and used your native intelligence.
Even here, did you in any way deserve your native intelligence.
Do you want your life to be a good story?
And if it's not?
You could always watch a good story on television.
NOTE
As of July 2017 I am making this front page (above) a combination of aphorisms and longer, less arresting, thoughts. More streams of knoweldgeness, puddles on a bleak landscape. We shall see.
I am intolerant of the intolerant.
I deny inner life to those who deny inner life,
Many coastal cities can be like Venice.
There will be tours of "Underwater New York," on see-through submarines.
so, about my philosophy book:
and furthermore:
Surely with so many intelligent people of goodwill, we can figure this out. Short term, tax reform, balancing the budget, lowering the disparity between the super-rich, Instead we have let unintelligent people with a low-priority for intelligent governance.
It is harder to accept that she loves me.
I can't usually do that.
and then answering them.
Pity.
But ahh the lovely fish!
There is a person
it is within my weak powers to please.
What a gift.
If she lets me I am going down with her.
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering-sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
— Francis Cornford
Or you think that just because you like crap, it is not crap.
the mindless
the careful
the prudent
the this makes me better
the aaawwwww
the how can you not
the lower brainstem
the obligatory
the dumb
the guilty
the unspoken like
the classical
the honorific
the fake
the obligatory
the mom
the right thing to do
the how can it hurt
the careless
the thoughtless
the really
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
But we have to go on like this.
It alters it to understand it.
Sitting and Thinking in America.
People are invited to sit in public spaces and share their thoughts about America, their community community, what they think, and where (we think) we are.
Don't ask me. I just live here.
I am living on thin ice.
What about: This election is irrational!
We live blindly.
We can shine a flashlight of consciousness and onto the inner machinery, but we have no idea how all this works.
The problem is that language is used to communicate among humans, with all their excrescences and foolishness.
to pass the time away?
Mason Williams
Mat Johnson on Twitter 8/13/16
I too might vote for Trump... if he were running as a Democrat... and I a little more thoughtless.
There is a race between miscegenation and race.
... The human mind,
consisting of the conscious mind
and and the processes working to create a conscious mind,
is an entity that is constantly multi-tasking.
We are unaware of most of these "tasks"
and furthermore it is not to be taken for granted that we can adequately speak | think of them.
[ read more here ]
As robots become able to handle more and more of human tasks, what will become of humans? When only robots work, what happens to the dignity of work?
As robots become able to drive, they will drive better and be highly coordinated. Humans will not be able to keep up and will be excluded from the Robots-Only roads. Another skill becomes a hobby. The interaction on the road is a real part of my respect for my fellow human beings. It is certainly not from reading the comment thread about politics.
Swarms.
Robots can do swarms
and swarms frighten us deeply.
Appeal of Zombie movies:
Though the media and the religions tell my fellow humans are is wonderful, witty and scared,
they often seem dumb as zombies. And the media shows me a mindful of instances where they can be dangerous.
Skills rotting on the vine.
Finding. Knowing.
("I'll just Google it.")
Skills are optional.
Building on skills are no longer possible.
We do not have skills in common.
We have an unknown number of hooks for crowds,
for being in
and for being afraid of.
God is an atheist.
It simplifies our life to keep others simple.
Thinking stops thinking.
Be suspicious of things that make the world so simple you can understand it.
Of course authoritarianism is coming.
iHuman: We are more danger from genetically engineered humans than robots.
it is one thing to say philosophy sucks, another to engage in non-suck philosophy.
Please don't substitute action for thinking. It is easier to blow it up and knock it down, and enter the simpler world of action, pain, danger.
Sleep is insidious. You wake up and suddenly it's later!
I am constantly reinventing myself, even though I have yet to invent myself.
as ignorant as a computer.
The mind is not the smartest organ in the body.
The mind is clickbait.
We think without thinking.
We tend to anthropomorphize humans.
The hatchet, buried or not, flies back into the hand.
The danger of thinking outside the box is that most of the people you want to speak to are in the box.
plus ça change...
We think in nets even as we think we think in names.
The limits of language is not as interesting as what goes on right in the middle of language.
I trust society because the people in my society ignore me.
You can say it but you can't understand it.
The meaning may be the use, but we cannot describe the use.
We often substitute knowing how to find the answer for the answer.
We think something thing is like something else that is many ways isn't like that thing at all! How are we able to do that? Why is that?
The past is always safe.
You cannot get out of your culture becuause you cannot de-educate yourself.
If you think you understand Wittgenstein, you don't understand Wittgenstein because you don't understand "understand."
What would it be like to have a different history? Isn't history just something we have been told?
It's organized but you cannot comprehend it. The truth cannot be put into words. Or into a sentence. Of course it can be said. Anything can be said in words.But words are not the truth. | reality. Stream of consciousness is a river, rivers of consciousness. Make the Multiple things going on: partial things.
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