Yeah I think it would be preferable if people stopped trying to make everything about love and happiness or whatever and just admit that life is full ...
At the same time though, I would argue that technological advancements have significantly impacted freedom. Mass surveillance, rapid communications an...
I'm having a hard time imagining what a hedonic dip would be like that did not involve some form of suffering. How do I remember that times were bette...
Thank you for responding. I have another question. If humans were to abolish all forms of suffering with technology, as you say, I think the only way ...
Hi David, forgive me if you have already explained this (in which case could you direct me to where you did?), I have a question for you. Do you belie...
I frequently skim discussions, without really paying attention to all the points being made; but I stop when I see an insult, not just because it's us...
I think sometimes ideas are tangled up with the way people are, sometimes you can explain (or try to explain) why someone believes what they do based ...
I think sometimes it's perfectly acceptable to call a spade a spade. If someone's being stupid then they ought to be told they're being stupid, and so...
Thanks for replying, David. I don't want to come across like some neo-Luddite who hates all technology, but: Reprogramming the biosphere etc could res...
David, have you read Jacques Ellul, and if so, what critique do you have against his philosophy of technology? I am unconvinced that technology as it ...
Very interesting, thank you. My only additional thought was that population has increased dramatically, which allows for a broader distribution of lab...
Schopenhauer has persuasively shown that free will is an illusion in his essay, On the Freedom of the Will. His other essay, On the Basis of Morality,...
Didn't people have a lot more free time back in the day? It seems like to me that the machines that we use in agriculture (etc) require a more complex...
No. You will need even more workers to make sure the machines don't break. Or workers to make sure the machines that make sure the other machines don'...
I got into dystopian literature at the end of 2020, which happened to include novels that I missed back in high school. Read: The Road, Cormac McCarth...
Yep. I work in tech and have grown weary of a lot of it, mostly because of how I feel like a drop of water in an ocean. There is also just so much use...
From Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism: I believe that the ideas that underlie fascist actions are best deduced from those actions, for some of them rem...
Found a copy of Strayer's On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State, thanks for the rec. Also picked up Man and Technics by Oswald Spengler and A Sh...
I don't think that is necessarily incorrect, though I am not an expert. From what I have read it seems as though states are inherently based exclusive...
Yeah I think that could be a reasonable story of how it all happened. It's hard to say because at this point we are just speculating. I'm sure there w...
Well, it worked eventually, but only once industrial technology was invented, which facilitated fast and reliable long-distance travel and communicati...
Could you give me a link to this book? I'm interested, and also lots of what I said in this thread comes from a similarly-titled book, Against the Gra...
Completely depending on a single method for obtaining sustenance is extremely risky because it is putting all your eggs in one basket. If you are a Ne...
Humans were practicing agriculture for four to five thousand years prior to the emergence of the first city states in ancient Mesopotamia. Agriculture...
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