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"Hell, I'll kill a man in a fair fight... or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight, or if he bothers me, or if there's a woman, or if I'm gettin' paid - mostly only when I'm gettin' paid." - Jayne, Firefly

"I am like a being thrown from another planet on this dark terrestrial ball, an alien, a pilgrim among its possessors." - Thomas Carlyle

bookmarks:
alexithymia television (tv shows)
gideon books (2024)
a ~ books (braindump)
notes (favourites 2024)
notes (solo date inspo & things to do alone)
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  • What are the most and least prevalent intelligences of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences tests - 1. universally, 2. by region (country, state, city), 3. by gender?
  • Ontological design
  • Antoine Artaud
  • How to improve focus
    • Experiment, sure, but don't abandon the experiment midway or you'll never attain pure results
      • PURE RESULTS?!?! bahahahahahaha fine, live in a clean room, bitches!
  • How to efficiently make decisions
  • How to learn more efficiently and better retain information
  • Climate effects on personal psychology - in terms of long-term residence
    • "Nobody ever mentions the weather can make or break your day..." (Oasis)
  • Climate effects on personal physiology - in terms of long-term residence
  • What can we do with all this big data?
    • How can we view it in relevant ways? How do we determine which ways are relevant? How do we begin to analyze this data? How can we present it so it's focused and digestable to the linear mind? How can we rationalize the world of information we new have access to? What are the best, most efficient processes to examine these new bodies of data without becoming lost in the labyrinth forever?
    • Are there really just lies, damned lies and statistics?
  • Why have IQ results shifted 2 points, on average, between 1930 and 2000? How were the tests administered? Could social stigmas affect the results? How have our values changed? How has our educational system changed? What exactly is said IQ test attempting to measure - and what is it measuring in reality?
    • Perhaps it's all irrelevant, because I think that conventional IQ tests are fascist.
  • How precise IS the food-craving mechanism of the body?
  • Can we truly sustain ourselves on this?
  • Is Nietzsche right and empiricism is just a bunch of BS in the first place?
  • What determines where a new window will open on your screen? Or on another screen, if you're running 2-3 monitors? How does the computer intuit where to open the window? Because it isn't based entirely on the position the window was in when you last closed it.
  • What are cultural values around the world, culture by culture? What does each culture most value at its core?
  • How does parenting differ from one culture to the next? What is expected of children? What do children expect? What is the outcome?
  • What political/economic structures provide alternatives to capitalism and socialism? Are they feasible?
  • What would a post-scarcity world look like? How would overpopulation be managed? What would the darwinian effect be?
  • How is love viewed around the world? How is marriage viewed?
  • How do taxes work? How much of my income is actually taxed? How have taxes worked throughout U.S. history? How are taxes applied in other countries, now and how have they been applied in the past?
  • What are the alternatives to capitalism? and Socialism? Which are viable?
    • Is it truly inevitable that the struggle for power between the High, the Middle and the Low shall be played out for eternity, persistently made cyclical by the nature of human greed - or perhaps a force even more universal and omnipotent?
    • Is there any purpose to rallying against this inevitability? Can the greatest human minds work out a solution? Has anyone already? And if so, how can the less-inspired, less altruistic masses be expected/persuaded to assist in the execution of such a plan with the effortless accidental competence required for success?

More Personally

  • At what point does it become desirable, acceptable, absent of regret, to withdraw into the countryside and live as simply and frugally as possible - to withdraw from the body of social activity, the 5-star social scene, and exposure to politics and the moving masses of humanity at all castes?
    • Can I be more effective in the wilderness, living inexpensively, than in the belly of the beast, grappling constantly for each month's rent, where all stakes are raised and possibilities of both tremendous opportunity and defeat are ever present?
    • Can I be effective at all? If I leave this high stakes, high pressure environment, will my thoughts ever contribute to anything of value or use? Or will the opposite happen - the constant pressure knock of the corners of my resistance, and make me content with any sort of drudgery that pays the bills, disenchanted, even more cynical and nihilistic? Will I, through the lingering inability to pursue my passions, find that these passions atrophy here, and that I am left with nothing of interest or great emotion?
      • If this happens, then it is because of my weakness. I was simply unfit to be of great value to anyone, and so all of these ideas are useless. I didn't have the stomach for pressure, and I didn't have the courage of my convictions to leave and work independently in seclusion, either. One way or another, I must choose, commit and not look back, and the sooner the better, because time is a'wasting...
    • Will anything I do be of value in the first place, whether here or there? Should I value and pursue the height of my socially-endorsed academic potential, what will come of it? Or should I simply live by my own values and do nothing more than what brings me amusement and pleasure over the years, will I regret that I didn't try harder to become a voice of influence and aspire to some sort of socially endorsed power, privilege and/or publicly persuasive voice?
  • In the first world we fight for individuality, the right to express ourselves freely. We want equal opportunity for transhumanists in the workforce, and if affirmative action folded us in, then the conservative fucktards would be forced to get used to us, because they'd see us everywhere. Now the opposing arguments are as follows:
    • Transhumanism isn't like skin color or sexual preference - it's something you choose, an aesthetic decision, so you can make the decision to look weird just like you can make the decision to murder someone; that's not to say that you shouldn't have to live with the consequences. This is a fashion decision, not an innate trait.
      • Refutation part one: Exactly. Why do we have to argue over this stupid shit? Oh, sorry, religious right - you're losing the battle on religion and homosexuality, so now I guess the only thing left to squabble over is an individual's right to self-expression. At least this time you've got corporate america on your side, who prefer nearly-indistinguishable cogs for ease of use and streamlined processes, and since corporate america doubles as the government, you may actually win this fight for the next several decades, and since the next final decades might spell the end of humankind, you might even get the final say on whether or not an individual has the right to work with purple hair. Okay, sure, you might win - but why the hell are you in this fight? Don't we have bigger fish to fry, like world hunger?
    • Okay, the same can be said of me - why am I bringing up this argument? It's almost too petty to get into. Anyone who can't accept your self-expression is an uptight, dogmatic fossil. Unfortunately, that's the majority of the workforce!
    • So you want to get something done in the world, but to achieve any status to accomplish these things, to be taken seriously, you should at least pretend to be like the people who are in charge and kiss a bit of ass--if not with words and manner, than at least compromise by looking like them so they trust you, the sheep-costumed wolf, and let you into positions in which you have some authority. So if you are at all a serious academic, looking to work in a hospital, go to court, etc., then you ought to be less aberrant to gain traction. This bit is politics.
    • Visible self-expression is really no difference than freedom of speech - if you say you're going to kill someone, then it's really no different than if you appear that way, or if there is a preconception of your appearance which most people associate with murderous intentions. And you have the option not to appear that way - in most situations, this can be defined as etiquette. And, admit it, you don't look this way in most situations, because you want to look like a harmless cupcake. You do this because you have the intestinal fortitude to brazenly stand out and combat society's stupid prejudices, emphasis on 'stupid'.
    • Who are you to determine what is innate and superficial and what is not? The superficial can represent an intrinsic aspect of someone.
      • part 2: Even if it is superficial, it's absurd to equate it to murder, or actually any crime at all, because it doesn't hurt anyone.
      • conservative rebuttal: it's offputting.
      • It would not be offputting if it were more universally accepted. To make our life choices, albeit aesthetic, more accepted, discrimination of this sort should be outlawed. OR someone should write a very good sitcom about a transhumanist family that even Baptists will chuckle at, in spite of themselves, then all this fuss will be behind us.
dec 3 2013 ∞
apr 7 2015 +