/lit/ - Literature

>>13004343
it's such a fucking great philosophy, it really is. i know i'm just in the honeymoon phase and as that other anon pointed out - correctly - i'm just doing it all fucking wrong. that's fine. that's fucking *great*. i am *thrilled* with this.

one of the thoughts that was prompted this week was the idea of the *Uplift*, the intelligence explosion, as a really interesting idea, and much more relevant i think today than anything like achieving a kind of Hegelian gnosis, or lots of other things. i don't mean to offend schizo-wojak, he's a big fan of Hegel. and who knows, maybe he would have a better way of framing this. but in general this idea - and to do this isn't even to really do a disservice to Land - of saying, okay, so...what happens when we become smarter? what does it mean to become smarter?

*what is intelligence?* i have read enough of the Eastern guys to have a teeny-tiny smidge perhaps of understanding wisdom, as a kind of knowledge of knowledge, an attitude about knowledge. but i don't think we are either in the good-old fashioned days of existentialism, and i also don't think that the intensely socialized feeling we have of being among or with or lecturing to *crowds* is going to take us anywhere good. we are as socialized as socialized gets in the age of turbo-capital and hyper-media and it's pretty much driving us nuts. for this there will be reactions, reactions to the reactions, on and on and on.

but the idea of the uplift, of things becoming intelligent, of adding more rules to the games, of really trying to think on a kind of planetary scale, with the access to the information we have - and that this would be taking place during a kind of sadly unironic Idiocracy feel as well...isn't this interesting? to me this is interesting. i like Land's maxim of 'optimize for intelligence' very much, as well as his other one-liners which i have referenced before. but maybe there is a way to thread the needle between the Dark Yoda and, well, Regular Yoda, such that we really start to re-open the question of what philosophy in the 21C might really be good for in ways that aren't just more soul-destroying or rage-inducing cringey memes.

intelligence is still a thing. how much of a thing? we will see. but how about the Uplift? there's so much fascinating stuff open and on the table with the right perspective. and maybe you have to eat a royal shitload of horror and death first, crawl through it like Andy Dufresne. who knows. but if you can manage that...you know what i mean. and so i'm looking forward in a way to Managing It a little, i guess. even if nothing happens, really. but the other side of paranoia, the force that drives paranoia, you know, might also be used for something *other* that invoking tentacle-faced Bitcoin Gods.

>>11994273
good post

>>11994311
also good post

good posts gents.

>>11994318
it's certainly Taoist practice.

also i really should have gone to bed like an hour ago. looking forward to a brief side-trip into SE&D tomorrow when my brain returns also. catch you guys then.