Categories
Philosophy

What does AI mean for us all?

An interesting thing about Artificial lntelligence so rapidly acquiring such an eloquent aptitude to mimic, engage and constructively deceive us is that this ensemble of technologies do not in any comprehensive sense actually understand us – we and our intricately stochastic behaviours are merely so many numbers and statistical (as probabilistic) relationships or correlations and […]

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Philosophy

On a Wheel

Cultural processing of information is one of the main tasks we carry out. It is costly and can be very difficult. Our brains are on one hand dedicated to the maintenance and sustainable continuity of the bodily vessels that support them but also must process the symbolic complexity required to sustain the systems of culture […]

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Philosophy

Meaning

We should not be surprised that our collective and individual search for meaning in life is difficult to resolve. The tools of language by which we attempt to plumb the depths of life and existence are unfit for defining or comprehending ultimate meanings in either ourselves or the worlds we inhabit. The language and logic […]

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Philosophy

Meaningless Production

It is worth reflecting upon the unresolvable core of contemporary working life in the post-industrial “West”. This is a suggested contemplative practice that does not seek meaning or purpose so much as it asserte that there is none. Beyond the gravitational center of a system of work, production and consumption that is optimally (if inefficiently) […]

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Philosophy

Meaningless Existence

Today’s brief reflection on the state of humanity is brought to you by a feeling of overwhelming futility and an acute awareness of the pointless, vacuous and utterly narcissistic bullshit that consumes us all. Finding ourselves inhabiting whichever time and place we transiently occupy, and encountering the limiting cognitive language and behavioural repertoire of a […]

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Philosophy

Bewitched

Fictional though it may ultimately be, there’s something that profoundly bewitches intellects in such aspirationally complete future states and through which psychological and tribal identities endlessly and self-reflexively define themselves, invoking meaning as this undiscoverable (or unrecoverable) endpoint or perspectival projection and horizon. After all, what better way to displace plausibly unmanageable complexity in the […]

Categories
life

Purpose in Life

Purpose is really just actualised meaning and just like meaning there is no purpose in life other than that which we make. The reason that most people are looking for meaning or validation and something, anything at all to provide a goal or trajectory around and as which they might wrap their aspirations and goals […]

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Philosophy

Happiness is an Infinite Game

What is ambition, recognition? What do you desire? Will the things that make you happy now still make you happy in five, ten, fifteen years? We are of course here engaged in an infinite and open adversarial game, against an unknown and unseen opponent that is all of a reality – past, present and future […]

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Philosophy

When your job is killing you…

The things we do to survive in life can lead to the inevitable shortening of our lives and through this almost completely defeat the purpose of doing them in the first place. We have all been there and the truth is, in a choice between just scraping by and low income versus sufficient income or […]

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Philosophy

Freedom

There is (perhaps) no greater dream than to for once and for all just extract and abstract ourselves from the source of all our worries, the need to work or to perform any other task which we can as intelligent people quite easily and rapidly identify as being fairly meaningless in the bigger picture of […]

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Philosophy

Panopticon

All inner lives are effective introspection as self-inflected augmentation of perceived external eyes or minds and expectations. It is the value-judgement or criticality (and even, rarely, admiration) that billows and swirls as complex blossoms inside us. Those borrowed drops of liquid Other’s minds or seamless perception might like toxic ink pollute the crystal clear of […]

Categories
Alien Anthropology

Our Tribalism is Endemic but Silly

How to alienate and enrage 99% of the world? Tell them that almost all of their contemporary cultural practices, beliefs, interests, hobbies and pastimes are shallow, superficial assertions of tribal identity that do little more than provide temporary comfort in an ultimately hostile, selfish and uncaring world. It is not that these cultural practices and […]