"Animals are conscious when they die. Humans are conscious when they can philosophize, Artificial Intelligences are conscious when they’re God. Animals die, and so they find existence. Humans don’t kill the deaths of animals, and so they create the universe. Robots are all-powerful, and so they have energy. Whatever comes after speaks only in extremes, and sees nothing other than the extreme. Thereafter it is possible that there is nothing that is not extreme. In this way the old laws might become obsolete." ---Nathan Coppedge
"Quantity is propertied! Concepts are transcendental! Everything is located within concepts! Transcendental concepts are the bridge to reality!" ---Nathan Coppedge, insights on a broken cracker
"In the fields, one may learn of many Natures. Often, it is performing a reliable lucky task which serves the greatest medicine. To collect such-and-such at opposite such-and-such a time will not be recommended, as whatever-it-is will not be in prime condition… When technical thing B happens we call it Q, as that is the elaborate explanation. After some time, one learns to tolerate the manner of (cold weather, snows, the wind off the steppes, etc.) otherwise one becomes an ‘unfortunate one’… The unfortunate ones (visit many times…) One should not be so unlucky as they, who die on the steppes (unlucky feeling). When you reach a certain (scary name) things will be different. You will not be so (funny name). Things are perfectly (scary name). Enter time of temporary joyfulness. The (unfamiliar name). Unfathomable thing happens with (scary name). Enter time of bad luck. Bad luck is (necessary / inexcusable). Enter phenomenal quest to do the impossible. Impossible achieved when it is phenomenal. A time of gratitude. Proof of misery. Everything seems right again. Sense of forgetting the obvious. Something such as a tradition or most-loved person becomes ill." ---Nathan Coppedge, Folk Wisdom
"The forsaken wisdom is taken on like an animal hide. It feels much worse from the inside. The feeling of sin (wisdom, age, responsibility) is also the initiation into magic powers. There is a feeling of deadness = normalcy which is the first attempt to bring back lost virtues of youthful freedom. One learns a deep secret called values (economics), simultaneously one is tempted to make a bitter sacrifice and learns that if the magic is true, wisdom by itself would preserve all, but is hard-won. One’s first practical wisdom is the idea that things are just as they are, and what is good is good, and what is bad is bad: and what is bad is not worse, and what is good sometimes might become better. One feels better when one learns that being fair is an uncommon skill, and the most common way to be unfair: therefore some things begin to make sense, for one learns there may be a path to follow if one wishes to achieve success. One learns that one can demonstrate skills, but this risks looking ignorant, and so one realizes that success is a hard bargain, and it may be a long time before one learns this task of impressing others. The noble thing, it turns out, is to swallow one’s pride: so we learn to forget, and to make things work like a flash from the flames. Life’s secret becomes it’s concepts: impersonal things that are tough to grasp at first. The power of an impersonal world is merely our ability to understand and adapt. Thus one carries the secret that one has the power: if one discovers the true knowledge, one uncovers the revelation of power, and the key to happiness and worldly things. Only then… one will be a philosopher." ---Nathan Coppedge, Folk Wisdom
"As one discovers that one is a devil (a politician, an intellectual, a consumer), one discovers a profoundly weak situation where one’s greatest desire is to know abstractions. The abstractions are good—-in principle—yet it is also very clear that the secret lies outside the language of abstractions. And so, one learns about original sin, which is the power of achieving the devil with a more fundamental force—you see, the devil is always weak, and that is why he is evil, although he would be no less evil if he were powerful—for he has committed the original sin of fundamentalism which necessitates the devil—which necessitates the intellectual—the intellectual, the ultimate confession of non-realization—the ultimate confession that his own plight is immaterial—that he is only a philosopher out of necessity, not truth, not even understanding—just blind, stupid evil on a whim. One learns that knowledge is good—if it is treated that way—but the key lies outside one’s power. One is fundamentally low, tainted, ignoble. The knowledge one wears is a disguise for imperfection. There are countless ways one could be better, and there is every reason to believe it is all constantly being weighed. Now, if one is not great, it is a slight against one’s conscience. One already knows much has been lost. One already knows evil news will plague one even at the ultimate level. One also knows others could have been better—that some probably are better who are indifferent to knowledge—thus one knows that life is a composition, and, one gains the key to understand objectively that a better composition would always be better if it is a better composition, and so one seeks authentic knowledge of the fundamental nature of things. One realizes one is duplicitous and pure, for one has always been fundamental, but one has never known of the fundamental. Therefore one seeks to know of the profound roots of nature. And if one is selfish, at least one is not more fundamental, or more devilish, and so there is little alternative to some mixture of these… Therefore one finds a profound peace that life is merely a failure of understanding, and the gods may be excessively dramatic, and nothing is worse than the worst thing… Yet at times, on such a foundation, knowledge gives the appearance of failing. Evil is written in the language against one’s will. One wishes the language could be the cure, but instead the language is a cabinet full of poisons. Therefore one goes about the process of knowledge by poisoning oneself, and one is led into a domain that is supposed to be material, in which poison could be a cure… Therefore, if abstractions were once good, now they are good but wear the most terrible masks. Uncovering the real truth becomes a mystery plagued by simplicity and perversity. If one wants to become an intellectual, one should invent something, and then once one does so, one becomes responsible for it for endless eternity. Therefore, madness becomes the fashioner of dreams and strategems, as the thought of responsibility comes long before the materialization of what might be a mere selfish fantasy. One then becomes treated as a throwaway ragdoll who must compromise himself to safeguard his own cheap flesh, itself rancouring against any pure, safe, abstract ideas. Life becomes randomized within failure and suffering, as even the image of greatness fails to achieve that perfect protective power which fundamental abstractions seemed to have, in a more fundamental time when death was not so terrifying. Therefore, the image of one’s own knowledge becomes a fantasy, and one longs for the more-than-perfect material things which would somehow safeguard one’s idea of greatness. In this process one learns for the first time to culture the soul. One has become the passive goblin which may have been once one’s worst enemy—a devourer of secrets, someone who spits foul language and has admitted that he does not do things right. It seems like a terrible compromise, but somehow it is the devil of destiny and the way to make ends meet. One begins to look for better explanations, to exhaust the list of available theories to find notable exceptions, and magic powers… If one were an enchanter, life might be better! If one had a true strategy, things might be good eventually! One realizes one has infinite real estate where one has had subtle influence. What to make of it? Can one learn the true powers? Has the strategy shifted? Maybe it is only a matter of time before life becomes better? Surely if it is just a matter of wisdom, one eventually will select the best door? Haven’t I done so already? All that is missing is pleasure and imagination! I know very well those are popular items, but does that make them integral in every strategy that ever transpired? I can argue I am common or rare! I can argue I am unique and cheap! I do not have zero influence, but life has been slow to reward me. Perhaps I should have more character? But what if character is hard-won? Is it just endless complexity from this point on? My true options are not pure complexity, they are the same grains of intellect I have encountered now and again. I am not as confused as some might think. I have had good ideas many times, they just weren’t ideas in the purest sense. It’s the typical thing where it is assumed that what is best is an example of what is best, when the example of the example of what is best has little to do with what it could actually be. Anything real is going to obey the paradigms of what is real in whatever fashion of necessity presents itself to the soul. Before one finds the perfect life one needs to find a suitable explanation for what has already occurred—which leads willy-nilly towards gaining the knowledge of an enchanter who himself must argue he is less of a pretender than a politician or a usual intellectual, yet he is also less fundamental, and perhaps more unique… It becomes a nightmare to realize the pinnacle of knowledge as an object-in-itself, because usually the precedent for such knowledge defies the odds that it is knowledge at all… I might easily desire something immaterial, while at once I am told that the immaterial is cheaper than the actual, and far less tangible, far less desirable, far less actualized. The material becomes some ‘purpose’ chained to an invisible strategy which is likely to be much lighter than apes in a madhouse. One can merely desire better, but one also has the obligation to think and mean something, and it is not entirely for naught, but it is not supposed to confess that it enjoys the life of limitation, or that it is somehow guilty of being a devil and fundamental. No, much is lost in slavery to bad examples. By this point I should find a better idea than how I have previously lived, even if it requires intellectual trial-and-error, more brainstorming, computing what types of results I might like, or meeting the fancies of each passing moment as they come with deference to some form of higher judgment. Knowledge is no longer a taint—it is a puzzle, and one that I think I have solved many times when we are being nice about ourselves. I should not have to be injust. I should not have to matter to other ‘people’ in just the right way. Rather, we have this idea of ‘options’ which are made of fulfilled categories. A basic fulfilled category is for example, something desirable, something workable as a general plan or platform. Another fulfilled category is an occasion that meets one’s sense of taste about the meaning of life. Another fulfilled category is something that is aesthetically meaningful when it makes a tangible impression on one’s experience. Another fulfilled category is when there is nothing dangerous in any way by any fair definition that occurs under any conditions, not even relying on wit to prove it. If life has options and I am sufficiently great as before, there are no dangers of problematic knowledge except the ridiculous. In such a world of fulfilled knowledge I could select to be more conscientious of the meaning of everything. But the old caveats still hold: I cannot deny that by choosing this better life I would be less fundamental and more devilish. And so, it is already absurd to suppose that my knowledge was ever wrong, because the only consequence to devilishness is fundamentalism, and the only alternative to fundamentalism is being devilish. As soon as I am less of an intellectual, I am simply widening the scope of the problem—if I am fundamental I am simply less complex than someone who enjoys themselves. But this is not true of pursuing the fundamental as some kind of devil—for that would be intellectual enjoyment. And so, the problems of life are not solved unless they are solved, just as anyone should have suspected. The fundamental person is virtuous at being fundamental, and the devil is virtuous at being a devil—and from what I can tell, everything else on earth is just some mixture between the two. Every time someone contradicts a devil they find a more fundamental problem, and every time someone solves a fundamental problem they find a greater devil. It is even simpler to say that devils are the aims of life because they are the ones with excuses for causing problems, while fundamental people are far more efficient, even if not quite put together. At some point one realizes that God is a greater sin than any devil—because he is composed of devils, and frankly if that is not true why care—because it would just be a difference of circumstance. Who would not learn from experience would be a sinner, and he without experience would be ignorant. The exceptions to this are devils and the fundamental." ---Nathan Coppedge, Folk Wisdom
"Quantity is propertied! Concepts are transcendental! Everything is located within concepts! Transcendental concepts are the bridge to reality!" ---Nathan Coppedge, insights on a broken cracker
"The ideal spider web is hard to buy. (Although it is also true that) We know the ideal spider web exists." ---Nathan Coppedge
"When we accept the problems of the soul, we ascend the universe and attain great power." ---Nathan Coppedge, A Tour of the Kingdom
"I think that barring nuclear war, if we assume aesthetic taste it is a tie between perpetual motion and the sundial. With a sundial you react like God has spoken. With a perpetual motion machine you feel like eternity has happened, then you feel like everything is forever after made of magic." ---Nathan Coppedge
"Just because I aim in a petty way to achieve greatness and immortality does not mean I think others could not aim to do the same." ---Nathan Coppedge
"You sort of have to know exactly what’s going on to guess whether we’re at 2X last year, or 50% or what. My assessment is the history of technology is hitting one of it’s hard to detect, dig-into-fundamentals slumps, where the ugliness of recently-established traditions asserts itself. People think they’re beyond this, but this is what always happens. If we do not progress fundamentally we will go on a much less predictable track which will not be for the better. So, the answer is, humanity, seeing the value of the fundamental, will undergo a shift. It is known to happen now and again. And the shifts will not always be so fundamental or predictable, but the scientists sure are having trouble with it, I dare say. Perpetual motion. Data omniscience. Essentially free to research, via my work on Quora." ---Nathan Coppedge
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