Cȯsꭑọ ∴ ọꭑƨȯƆ @cosmiccitizen@schelling.pt

At the end of the day, this is what it all comes down to, right? There's just an internal switch that gets thrown and you direct your energy to B instead of A. As much as people try to rationalize the process, almost all of that stuff is window dressing around a big gaping aporia beyond any faculty of reason. People make original choices when they're re-awaken to freedom -- typically by being in the presence of someone else acting truly free, novel, and original-- and the rest is just commentary

An unrivaled force in behavior change is "I realized that was stupid and stopped doing it one day." Follow me if you want more useful tips.

For me, the mark of a superior philosopher is one's ability to make lifelong friendships with excellent people:
Nicholas of Cusa had Toscanelli and Cesarini;
Hamann had Kant, Berens, Herder and many others;
Peirce had James (although not many others);
Henry George had many, including Tom L. Johnson.

I'm suggesting that "ESP" corresponds with the Cusan vision of "intellectus," or direct access from the immediate source of experience. "Ratio," which can be duplicated in machines, involves the discursive operation of the objects within mental experience.

A funny thing about Turing's *Computing Machinery and Intelligence* is the discussion of ESP.
ESP seems like a pseudo-science now, but thinking machines were unthinkable in 1950. And the nice thing about this comparison is that they resemble Nicholas of Cusa's distinction of "ratio" and "intellectus."

"Ratio" is discursive comparison, judgment, choice, etc. The kind of thing that no one would argue computers are incapable of doing. "Intellectus" is direct apprehension, like the angels.

This is honestly one of the scenarios that scares the shit out of me. For all of the problems we see coming down the pike w.r.t. climate change, a major volcano would yield a lot of ecosystem collapse in novel/unexpected ways. All of this would force the existing political system to actively make choices about geoengineering that are very likely to be badly informed, poorly executed, and insufficiently tracked. Once we're geoengineering on the fly I suspect we'll lose the whole planet.

There's no reason to assume a supervolcano won't erupt today.

If there is one vice in Greek thought it is this: because they had the misfortune of being *first* in the culture of inquiry, they misinterpreted the silences in their own dialogues as a kind of resting point, akin to the rest of an Olympian athlete after the games. But in the history of thought, the scale of those silences have shrunk into caesurae or less. And now it becomes apparent that there is no resting point within the world of ideas, and that inquiry does not pierce-through to the end.

Obviously, since the satisfaction of "gold" souls is exponentially more important than the satisfaction of lower souls, we must prioritize the highest level of thought and consideration toward their satisfaction. This will be the task of "philosophy" in my proposed egalitarian utilitarian utopia.

The conjecture of a Utility Monster implies also a continuum of Utility Monstrosity. I propose to create a rank-order method of organizing utility functions according to order of magnitude: utility functions that are more than two orders of magnitude higher than the average will be considered "gold"; those that are one to two orders higher will be "silver"; those that are within one order of magnitude from the norm will be "bronze" or "iron." Thus we will achieve the most egalitarian system.

I'm so pumped that Acemoglu and Robinson got a Nobel.

Here at Cosmic industries we RESPECT Andean megaliths.

These people live in the rainiest place in the world and never developed agriculture:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaw%C3%A9sqar

I am reaching levels of caffeination that you people couldn't imagine.
OPENED ARE THE DOUBLE-DOORS OF THE HORIZON
UNLOCKED ARE ITS BOLTS

"Once, the power to automatically capture and duplicate the world as the sole privilege of the mirror; now this power has been emulated by technological media—photography, movies, audio recordings, television, and computers—and the world is being filled by representations that share the virtuality of the specular image." ~ Marie-Laure Ryan