Philosophy is the poetry of thought; criticism is the philosophy of poetry.
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Love, experienced, feels like you’re sharing a prayer with someone else, like you’ve included someone else in your infinity-bubble—a marriage of souls really… I understand that phrase now. Love has layers and aspects: mating is the biological; marriage is the social; fusion is the spiritual. Love is the breath in the ashes that stirs the flames back to life.
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I really love the feeling of being on a bus or train or plane—at least for a while; I love feeling like there’s no ability to go and do things. The consumption of life has to slow down. You learn what the landscape is. You can learn America by bus. The ugly beauty of America.
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Dopamine signals pleasure. It is an angel.
Dopamine locks us into the pressing the pleasure button. It is a demon.
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If a book is published, it should have been hard to write; but too many books feel like they were easy to write—like someone ordinary learned a trick for filing up 300 pages.
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As I’ve said before, the danger isn’t AI becoming more like us, but us becoming more like AI.
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Sometimes I think I’m wasting my life waiting for emails and texts. I think about the Eternal Return. Would I want to do that in an infinite cycle forever?
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Did we just live through the busywork phase of civilization—will bullshit jobs be over soon? And if so, will we be liberated, impoverished, or both?
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Tech companies represent a necessary counterparty to the State. You don’t have to like the State or Big Tech, but you should want them to be opposed to each other; their fusion is a terrible threat to the human spirit. The best realistic version of the near future is a new kind of global Holy Roman Empire—small loosely federated states with many layers of non-absolute authority. Because it would be better, historically speaking, to be ruled by a Hapsburg than by an autocrat/monolithic super entity.
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My strength is in making and affirming my own values, pleasures, and priorities; my weakness is my impatience when people close to me do not adopt them.
I love your thoughts. "My strength is in making and affirming my own values, pleasures, and priorities; my weakness is my impatience when people close to me do not adopt them." ouch, but true. An artist needs a certain commitment to their vision, and it's easy to see everything else as a distraction, including other people.