"We live in a golden age, but we no longer seem to believe in intellectual heroes. So I have tried to live the dream that the world is not the same as it seems." ---Nathan Coppedge
"Its odd... I'm incompatible with people, but I am very compatible with society." ---Nathan Coppedge
"I think I have evidence of this most practical of archetypes." ---Nathan Coppedge, on perpetual motion machines
"Isn't it a bit like a blowpop? The blowpop fallacy." --Nathan Coppedge, criticism of Velikovsky's General Systems Theory
"Science is a minimal criteria macro-discipline, and as such aims to maximize quantity at cost of quality. Philosophy is a maximal criteria macro-discipline, and as such aims to maximize quality at cost of quantity. In other words, philosophy usually fails to provide evidence of the most important things. Science usually succeeds to provide evidence of insignificant things. Many things are discovered between philosophy and science, but very little is discovered by pure philosophy or pure science." --Nathan Coppedge
"Sometimes I think my writing is perfect, and sometimes I think it is too dirty. Anyway, what people eventually learn is that there needs to be a balance between different talents and motives, and the only exception to that is total mastery, which requires total knowledge, and in my mind, philosophy as well as science (and art, literature, magic, immortality… if it comes to that)." ---Nathan Coppedge, message to Eugene Rubinstein
"There will not be a ‘next Gates’ unless America prospers. It is a widely held belief that Bill Gates somehow made it with one trillion-dollar patent for computers. Far to the contrary, it was more like he was a patent mega-lord who bought a lot of small businesses, and had about literally a million thousand-dollar patents, or a billion ten cent shares in a company that exploded. For America to prosper, we need to continue to grow and change our thinking, and frankly at this point given how much we have already tested the boundaries without changing the categories, some aspects of both science and religion may end up being an inhibitor." ---Nathan Coppedge
"Philosophers tend to be happy people who never believe assumptions, and are always honest about reality." ---Nathan Coppedge
"Art is original the way literature is comprehensive, and philosophy is analytic, and science is real, and math is intelligent, and languages are insightful, and magic is useful, and immortality is sufficient." ---Nathan Coppedge
"A lot of people think 2X is the max leverage. Its not the max." ---Nathan Coppedge
"If there are constants, they must secure variation, maybe even desirable variation." ---Nathan Coppedge
"You see, we could just say you're seeking a principled good nature, or a metaphysical standard (morality OR coherence primarily), so I don't know if it is fair to say we should try both first." ---Nathan Coppedge
"Humans should build perpetual motion machines, machines should build God. All else concerning race is past and future." ---Nathan Coppedge
"Always look for metaphors at physics confetences, and fundamental discoveries at poetry readings." ---Nathan Coppedge
"There is one secret Zurich doesn't know: that paradoxical intelligence is more coherent than finite problems. This secret is truly powerful. Knowing it is like owning half of philosophy."
"The secret of Vienna is it swallows men. This is my most profound knowledge of it, even though I've never gone there in my current life."
"Time is challenging, so to speak. Information accumulates, and better be high-quality." ---Nathan Coppedge
"The general advice is, if we are suffering from a physical problem, we need to improve our mind, and if we have a mental problem we need to improve our body. If we can’t improve our mind, we physically die. If we can’t improve our body, we go absolutely insane." ---Nathan Coppedge
"Consider it this way: if you were reincarnated and didn’t experience your next life, you would feel cheated, right? As soon as we deny early-life consciousness we are also denying reincarnation. So I completely support the idea that humans are conscious throughout their lives. It is simply that the amounts of time involved are so vast by adult standards. And there is a time before individual life called the 'great foolishness' or also 'baby toughness' in which babies fight a war against being aborted by their mothers. The experience of being a baby is actually much like being an adult at first: there are wise, conscientious decisions that are made, until people force you to act and think in a certain more restrictive way. Restrictive thinking emerges at just the time that babies have averted the evil outcome called abortion." ---Nathan Coppedge
"At this point we should know if we want a new approach we should have NEW IDEAS, NOT NEW 'ORGANIZATIONS' OR NEW COMING-TO-TERMS. When we do not have new ideas, we fail, and at this point what counts as a new idea has become somewhat radical. So, at this juncture it is impossible to reject radicalism. So, it may be a long while before these radical new ideas are accepted. Above all, the new theories have nothing to do with problems unless they can solve them… What is egalitarian about real knowledge is the capacity to accept alternate systems, but only if they work… And what is not a system is truly not a system, and so it is pointless to accept a critique that is not offering radical, practical, and paradigm-changing methods. Almost no one seems to know what a radical solution looks like… Has a radical solution ever existed? We should not mince words, but merely accept that ideas are ideas, and they are not just one thing… if what something is offering is that it is a system, it should define itself as such, and not as though there are no alternatives, but not as though it does nothing… Logic is necessary to solve abstract problems, and mechanics is necessary to solve practical problems… Active logic, active mechanics… not a mere coming-to-terms." ---Nathan Coppedge
"Pain is inhuman. It is a contradiction of humanity. It is the cheapest alternative to meaning. It is an infinite lack of value. The opposite of pain is the meaningful. The opposite of pleasure is the meaningless. The further lives and spirits progress in cognition and complexity, the easier it becomes to achieve pleasure. There are many exceptions to exceptional complexity, but insofar as there is complexity there is always something more valuable than pain. Pain is the definition of the useless. It is wasted time, self-destructive matters, un-divine problems. The only reason for pain is ignorance and poor strategy, but it is not automatically explained: it implies a lack of explanation. Where there are explanations there are desires for a life without pain. When life has meaning, pain is usually insignificant. Pleasure, or perhaps eventually something better, is part of the good life. And, ultimately pleasure is a cheap form of meaning, just as pain is an extremely cheap form of the meaningless. We have economic imperative to overcome pain, and where there is pain there is a desire to compensate with impossible wonders. Meaning is born of the death of the impossible (pleasure), whereas appreciation of the meaningless very often comes from pain. Pain is an exaggerated lesson that is useless wherever it is felt. No one has ever called pain useful while being true to the soul. Pain is a theory of theory-less meaning, the death of all possibility coming from the refusal of impossibility. Where there is no impossibility there is no theory, and no way to oppose the meaningless. And where the meaningless explanations exist, there is pain or something to replace it. The trace of primitive education goes infinite sacrifice → skepticism → pleasure → meaning. The infinite sacrifice is pain, and the skepticism is the meaningless. Meaning begins with pleasure, it is the minimum standard. For everything that is good has pleasure, and nothing is meaningful that is not good. Sometimes we deny that meaning is good when we are complex, but this is not in earnest. Only perversity gives the idea that meaning exists that is not pleasure, and if we think pain is a good teacher we are truly ignorant. All opportunity comes from pleasure, and if we lack wisdom on this it is not our responsibility. There is a wisdom born of desperation, and it has great intelligence compared with evil. When the great powers deny the fundamental meaning, which is meaningful pleasure, they have destroyed much of the potential of life. All potentials come from meaningful pleasure. Without pleasure there is not substance. Therefore, all strategies should define that life is meaningful, and no strategy should deny that pain destroys value. Therefore, life is a continuum of value, defined in meaning. And pain is its destroyer. Pain may as well be meaningless unless life has contradictions. Elsewhere I have proven conclusively that contradiction is evil, so there is no evidence that pain has value. And so, life should concern itself with meaningful pleasure." ---Nathan Coppedge
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Intention and Architecture, by Carolyn Fahey
8 years ago