05 JAN 2023 by ideonexus
Recipe for Modernism
Here is the recipe:
Look at a complex and confusing reality, such as the social dynamics of an old city
Fail to understand all the subtleties of how the complex reality works
Attribute that failure to the irrationality of what you are looking at, rather than your own limitations
Come up with an idealized blank-slate vision of what that reality ought to look like
Argue that the relative simplicity and platonic orderliness of the vision represents rationality
Use authoritarian power to imp... 1 
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notes30 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
Whole Earth Catalog Purpose
We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this p... 1 notes
notes03 JUN 2016 by ideonexus
The FLOW State
How does it feel to be in "the flow"?
Completely involved, focused, concentrating - with this either due to innate curiosity or as the result of training
Sense of ecstasy - of being outside everyday reality
Great inner clarity - knowing what needs to be done and how well it is going
Knowing the activity is doable - that the skills are adequate, and neither anxious or bored
Sense of serenity - no worries about self, feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of ego - afterwards feeling of trans...
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2 19 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Hyperlinks as Conversation
Hyperlinks are fine-grained, bidirectional, and extrinsic. Frequently, an argument is not with a document or chapter as a whole. It is with a particular point that someone made at a particular place in the text. For example, someone refers to the fourth law of thermodynamics, and someone else writes a criticism saying there is no fourth law of thermodynamics, linking it to the original. The fine-grained property allows the link to designate the particular piece of text with which one is takin... 1 notes
notesFrom Mark S. Miller's "The Open Society and Its Media"
03 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
nodus tollens
n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore—that although you thought you were following the arc of the story, you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand, that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre—which requires you to go back and reread the chapters you had originally skimmed through to get to the good parts, only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure. 1 notes
notesAn interesting perspective on the idea that our lives have inherent purpose beyond that we determine for ourselves, and that sometimes this delusion is shattered, leaving us lost.
21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Verbosity is Like a Cuttlefish
A multitude of words doth rather obscure than illustrate, they being a burden to the memory, and the first apt to be forgotten, before we come to the last. So that he that uses many words for the explaining of any subject, doth, like the cuttle-fish, hide himself, for the most part, in his own ink. Folksonomies: verbosity
Folksonomies: verbosity
1 notes
notesHiding meaning in its own ink.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Morals are Natural
It would appear... that moral phenomena, when observed on a great scale, are found to resemble physical phenomena; and we thus arrive, in inquiries of this kind, at the fundamental principle, that the greater the number of individuals observed, the more do individual peculiarities, whether physical or moral, become effaced, and leave in a prominent point of view the general facts, by virtue of which society exists and is preserved.Folksonomies: civilization
Folksonomies: civilization
1 notes
notesThat's what I take from this quote, which talks about the normative nature of habits that appear when our sample size is large enough and those habits make civilization possible.
09 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
The Candle as an Introduction to Natural Philosophy
I purpose, in return for the honour you do us by coming to see what are our proceedings here, to bring before you, in the course of these lectures, the Chemical History of a Candle. I have taken this subject on a former occasion; and were it left to my own will, I should prefer to repeat it almost every year—so abundant is the interest that attaches itself to the subject, so wonderful are the varieties of outlet which it offers into the various departments of philosophy. There is not a law ... 1 notes
notesFaraday considered it the best example to begin with.
08 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
The Line Between Good and Evil Runs Through All Our Hearts
It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best ...There are not good and bad people who may be easily distinguished, but competing forces within each of us.
25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Take Hope in the Complexity of Nature
Meantime, let no man be alarmed at the multitude of particulars, but let this rather encourage him to hope. For the particular phenomena of art and nature are but a handful to the inventions of the wit, when disjoined and separated from the evidence of things. Moreover, this road has an issue in the open ground and not far off; the other has no issue at all, but endless entanglement. For men hitherto have made but short stay with experience, but passing her lightly by, have wasted an infinity... 1 notes
notesWhile humans have wasted time on meditations and exercises of wit, there is an endless world of experience awaiting them.
