Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 25
If you want a serious understanding of politics you should read every book in my book list about politics and history. Last month I added dozens of amazing books on politics to my book list. These are the books that I used to develop my own understanding.
Stop watching political videos and start reading quality books. That is the way. The political analysis you get on social media is too shallow and too biased, regardless of which side it is. You must read serious books.
This is a great explanation of how calculation is mechanized, which is the basis for all computers.
The key insight here was that calculation does not require mental cognition but just the turning of some cleverly designed gears. It's amazing how far this one simple insight has taken us. Which shows you the power of just one good insight. One good insight is worth a mountain of gold.
This mechanical process beautifully shows the relationship between addition and multiplication, and subtraction and division.
Also, interestingly, if you were in doubt about Terrence Howard's lunatic claims about multiplication (that 1x1=2), the mechanical implementation in this video takes the question of what is proper multiplication out of the realm of human opinion. You can know what multiplication is by designing a set of gears to do it.
This is an amazing, eye-opening recounting of the corruption and depravity behind US war policy. I recommend listening to the whole 10 hours. It's quite accurate based on my own research and readings.
Note: Scott Horton is a libertarian and I disagree with many of his libertarian and conservative views. However, his recounting of US foreign policy in this video is very good. We can find common ground with libertarians on being anti-war, anti-imperialism, while rejecting their other bad ideas, such as privatization of everything. Libertarians are excellent on foreign policy but terrible on domestic policy.
What's ironic is that if you just go back to the earliest Western and Eastern philosophers in written history and take their ideas as true, you will have the correct answer to the deepest philosophical, ontological, and spiritual questions.
- Heraclitus
- Anaxagoras
- Lao Tzu
- Mahavira
- The Vedas/Vedanta
It is amazing that mankind knew ultimate reality from day one of recorded history! And yet today's philosophers are like lost children, arguing over materialist nonsense and simulation theory. Mankind figured all this shit out 2500 years ago but no one bothers to care.
It is useful to look at explicit definitions of materialism and idealism. This helps clear up many things. So...
Materialism: "Is the claim that consciousness is entirely physical, solely the product of biological brains, and all mental states can be fully reduced to, or wholly explained by, physical states — which, at their deepest levels, are fields and particles of fundamental physics. In short, materialism, in its many forms and flavors, gives a completely physicalist account of phenomenal consciousness."
Idealism: "Is the claim that consciousness is ultimate reality, the deepest level of all existence, the singular fundamental existent. It is the theory of consciousness that takes consciousness to its maximum meaning. Ultimate reality is mind or awareness or thought, while everything else, including all physical worlds and universes and all that they contain, are derivative and illusory."
Materialism is false. Idealism is true. But you need to discover this for yourself, don't just take my word for it.
The real question is not whether idealism is true. The real question is: What are all the ways that idealism plays itself out? What's needed is a deep investigation into the mechanics of idealism. How does idealism work? That's the real philosophical work.
Credit: Robert Lawrence Kuhn for articulating the definitions
On the theme of cosmic horror.
Love this.
Humans are too small-minded to appreciate the beauty of monsters. Especially Christians. Consciousness/God delights in inventing monsters because they are beautiful. Radical openmindedness is required to appreciate a monster.
One of the ways you know Christianity is false is because it is incapable of integrating and loving demons, monsters, and cosmic horrors. God's Love requires love of the monsters that Consciousness can imagine. Christians are too ignorant and closedminded to understand this. That's why Christians demonize things and people they fail to understand.
Even the demonization of literal demons is an epistemic error. It must be, since if God created everything, God created demons. And who are you to judge God's Creation?
This is delicious:
Jorge Luis Borges is one of the coolest fiction writers. His writing explores strange-loopy metaphysical themes.