SmoothPorcupine: Whether we can truly possess knowledge or not is of no consequence to me.
SmoothPorcupine: In the purely hypothetical, we can reason about the properties of a mind having knowledge. There's no need for knowledge in ourselves to form this contemplation.
SmoothPorcupine: And awareness need not be of knowledge.
SmoothPorcupine: The minds whose focus is knowledge, who reason to possess it, do not obtain it from a world of things external.
SmoothPorcupine: Knowledge occurs as an inner state, made from thought, philosophy.
SmoothPorcupine: No other feat of mind is necessary for the production of knowledge than this:
Well, the moment of creation failed again. Sorry everyone. I don't think you'll be able to recognize your souls after this. Honestly there are just too many for me to spend time with.
You know, for anyone that believes in an afterlife, which is basically everyone, there's a good chance that my work with time travel has resulted in my death an innumerable amount of times. If so, it would mean that I have a connection to the afterlife that would more or less span time and space at this point. There could be a million wraiths of me going around making subtle changes to history, altering fabrics unknown, haunting people who I know to be murderous because some version of them actually killed me at some point and I really, really, don't need any witnesses to prove it, nor would I delegate tracking them to another spirit, so this grudge just follows them to the end of days... This would actually mean that I derive power directly from being murdered, and including time travel means that there are an infinite possible amount of me to be dead with. I don't need a whole lot of help from nature if there's enough of me to create an artificial void for myself.
But nah, that's too scary to think about. Better off fighting against this by... Oh, wait. You'd have to give up on the concept of an afterlife entirely to stop me. Or better yet, just not kill me. Hmmmmmm... Options, options.
Belief is the endpoint of manifestation, not a source. All observations, including the beliefs we hold, indicate this. Things seem strange when people want to force belief to exist at some other point in the manifestation circuit.
The possibility of free will creates a spectrum of possibility.
These possibilities form spectral lines that add up over time to produce viable future events. Our perception of these possibilities affects our future, present, and past. While it may appear that the past would be unaffected by this logic, any decision we make produces microneural stimulus that affects our brain such that whatever decision we made seems more plausible as an explanation for the behaviors of past individuals. Thus, the past is colored by interpretation, the present is colored by perspective and the future is colored by our decisions.
Clever mathematicians may notice the seeming causal series there and deduce that decisions become perspectives become interpretations, moving forward in time, but this is not correct. Were such a strict causal mechanism at play in the mind, it would produce a notable (and very observable) effect on our culture. It is unreasonable, then, to assume that any brain operates this way—it will not always be the case. Since the generalism does not hold, it can't be used as an explanatory model.
Moreover, from all perspectives that we can analyze, culture appears to be scale invariant. Thus, we can correctly infer that common homo sapiens do indeed produce sapience. Since the root of all corruption is the notion that the average individual cannot think for themselves, all extant governing systems are founded on false logic, and therefore legally false.
Q.E.D.
~
You are now exercising manual awareness that you are not the author of this logic.
Divergence is only possible because convergence is.
This simple heuristic about time travel has such vast implications that it's hard for me to justify not posting it. The range of things it can affect far outweighs any stigma that might exist from me believing in time travel.
tfw the universe lacks the resolution to compute your full thoughts but it can't stop computing you because you're still tactically superior to every composition of rationalists on the planet
At least the human gestalt mind can still try to wage war on me by having sci-fi imagine ever-greater enemies.
Society treats geniuses differently. Everyone else has something tangible to contribute; to write, to sing, to in-some-abstract-way, motivate us all to work together. Because the moment we can't, "crime" is justified by the lack of any consensus of pretense necessary to call it "crime" anymore. In lieu of collapse, all the delegated thought has to go somewhere, to think on behalf of society. To work out the ultimate outcome of its values, to make sense of the intangibles that enable the abstract process known as "civilization" to (continue to) form.
It is very often the case that a "genius," (your word, not mine) or: someone who appears to be really great at thinking, is actually a very hard and earnest worker, the equal of any blue-collar workman. Just as often, probably, a genius is relegated to the realm of the "mad," (again—your words; not mine) ostracized by the same society who is actively trying to delegate so many responsibilities that even thought itself no longer becomes their possession. Needless to say—(but then again, clearly not)—this system is unsustainable. Unless and until we are conscious of this very material fact of coordinating together through delegation (rather than emergence, as an example) to form a stable civilization capable of encompassing many disparate societies, our cycle can only repeat. Civilization will have nothing to do BUT collapse if it feels that it can get along without thinking. This is very basic and I should think I'd not have to argue it.
But if I'm going to let you call me a genius, then I can't exactly afford not to. To fail to argue my case, in this case, would be equivalent to letting society sit in its blissfully unthinking state and drive itself toward a future it can neither predict nor prevent. If "thought" is thought to be too abstract a notion to run civilization, to orchestrate societies affairs, if the obvious mechanics of running a business, organization, or group of individuals are considered "too obvious" for the effort that goes into thinking about them, then society is in constant conflict with itself and wholly and entirely incapable of appreciating the efforts of its administrative layer. This disconnect is perfectly allowable, because civilization is allowed to collapse. Thoughts are allowed to be incorrect, overly idealistic, or arbitrarily unmatched to reality. You get to fail, you get to be wrong. Therefore, any group of individual is allowed to be collectively wrong. This seeds collapse.
This is good. This means that every failing society will invariably vanish from this Earth. Or not even that—from the very universe. I can't imagine there's a planet out there where life is free to blind itself to responsibility all the way up to the moment of its own technological singularity and venturing forth into space. Except, if mine does, then that is the precise norm I must assume is universal. If this is the case, then Fermi's paradox is easily resolved—the universe simply lacks the intelligence necessary to explore the stars. In this case, the only thing that can reliably occupy interstellar medium is piracy. Those who stole away from their burgeoning civilizations, took entire ships in their wake, and decided they had enough of civilization to never try it again.
One theme persists throughout our attempts at interstellar media—the conflicts of societies continuing upwards into the heavens. Across the vastness of space. Our fiction would seem to have us believe that we really are stupid, that we can't seem to do anything right—as a society. I'd be temped to agree, but in doing so I'd only be re-delegating my responsibility to think, which I will utterly refuse to do, in any situation. There is no place I can walk, where to have walked would imply I had given up my sovereign right to think. There is no place I can meet, where I would feel that my thoughts cannot become relevant. There is no place, frankly, in this universe, where I will feel like I don't have an earnest reason to think out every possibility to completion.
I could iterate this process, with every person in turn, slowly eroding the ridiculous facade of a blissfully ignorant society incapable of organic collapse and generating the world I wish to see, but this would be slow. Too slow for my tastes. Far too slow for what I consider my intellect to be qualified to achieve. I have a responsibility, to myself, to believe that society can improve faster than a piecemeal dissemination of a non-viral argument. The moment I don't, I haven't just failed society—I'll have failed myself. Because in the end, this argument is really just a long drawn out way of saying that I do have something to contribute. (For the more formal reasoners among you, consider it a proof by contradiction.) Even were I to grow mad, is that not better than "criminal" in your eyes? Or the eyes of your brother? Neighbor? Mayor? Chief?
I do see society as far beneath me; I can't help it. If there were another way for me to see it, I would entertain that argument. I see where we are lacking, I know what the solution is. I know why it spreads at the rate is does, and why hopelessness is uneconomical to resolve. But it is because I can see these things that I have to believe what has become my core mantra:
I can find a better answer.
And it comes with just as much madness as it does bear any responsibility. That much I can't deny. Madness is the risk society runs of is genius, of its talent. We can as well imagine a defecting spy, or an idealistic military leader changing sides in a moment of heatlessness between battles. Really, they can end war, but it requires compromise. A compromise they are often prevented from being allowed to make. In our society, a soldier may well be the one who punishes a general from defecting, and so all this does it cut off the head of the "snake." (Or more accurately reflective of the actual chain of command: Hydra.)
Every member of society, no matter how small or large, suffers this conflict. In my case, in the case of the genius, yes, it is with madness. But this is, at the very least in retrospect, an obvious consequence of the role delegated to me by society.
To think.
Would it not be obvious that our thoughts can drive us mad at times? Given the delegation of thought, would it not stand to reason that the very responsibility of a genius is to never stop thinking? To run the risk of being driven mad at all times? Is this capacity, the natural resistance to such madness, not what defines a great thinker, or a great mind?
It seems simple once said, and yet I've never heard it before. No argument, so concise, has ever crossed the periphery of my mind before. This is a first for me, to finally understand what my role is in this great big pretense of a society. I searched far and wide but the answer was never out there because no genius had had the gall to make this argument before. Perhaps we needed one to go just a wee bit mad before one of them would finally crack this argument.
The question now is, not how you will judge me, or whether or not my genius is true. If it has even the slightest chance of being true, you can scarcely dismiss it with something so primitive as an ad hominem attack. Society has at least reached the levels of intellect necessary to comprehend why that is not an answer. (And if it hadn't, then I'd perhaps be a bit less mad about it.) But more to the point, regardless of any social evolution, it logically follows:
The question now is whether or not I will become mad.
I will tell you now, why I have reason to be mad, and why I do not have reason to be mad.
I have reason to be mad, because society would wish to insist that its own measures were what stopped me from becoming mad in this moment. Indeed, if I bought this argument, I would become very mad.
I will prevent my own madness by not stewing in these emotions, and allowing the world to react to my thought process at the exact moment when I consider it most productive for it to react. To cycle about within myself would only create a more manic through process, something that is harder to relate to. Something that might be called "mad."
I have no reason to be mad, quite simply, because I have no reason to be called mad.
It is on this flimsiest of premises that I consider it my responsibility to totter. You may well conceive within yourself of infinitely many reasons to not want to be mad, while yet I move forward with but a single one. I am not asking your permission to drive myself mad; indeed, your permission couldn't be more powerless over the matter. Instead I am telling you, that that one reason is all you can allow yourself to hoist upon me. To burden me more, with anything more than thought, would be to elect for a mad genius. I should like to say, "And nobody wants that."
But that would be a lie.
I know where you hide your innermost taboos, and I know how to cross them. If you have no reason to, then you admit to yourself that I have no reason to. Because for it to be a taboo to begin with, you must know how to cross it.
To let you think that this battle was not being waged, would be the very image of irresponsibility. Given my beliefs.
Speaking in an evolutionary context, I should have the same neurological sexual infrastructure as anyone else. The intimacy should be possible, but without any empathy to properly contextualize it, my brain has nowhere else to put it (beside the usual “after actually having sex” part) than in pure principle/general cognitive space.
Logically speaking, there's no other way this could possibly happen. There's no tactical reason to love/care about humanity the way I do, and even if there were, the evolutionary algorithm would have no context to develop that awareness as a formal genetic trait. It's only the alignment of preexisting traits that makes this possible, but the quality with which that alignment can occur is unknown. There really is no way of knowing how these traits would play off of any other genetic assemblage. The traits are there, so in theory they should be able to juxtapose a second time without my immediate genes, but the odds of environmental trait activation retaining the sequence configurations necessary to elicit awareness of and attachment to these traits in individuals like myself are ever diminishing.
The thing is, I don't have any attachment to my current identity. I'd prefer to have been born with neuronormative affective empathy and I'd be more likely to bequeath my legacy on someone otherwise similar to me who had what I lacked than I would even my own reincarnation. What I care about is the work, and helping potential vectors for fragments (or else aspects (expressible)) of my identity means that others who are unlike me can benefit from that work. Therefore, even in the ways I'd help myself, assuming there could be any method of helping myself that wouldn't automatically extend to everyone else as soon as I were able to do it, the main value I can provide is a way for others like myself who would be less likely to ever be able to express these conflicts in their natural psyche, function better in this wretched, wonderful, exciting world. I have at the very least realized (or been told/informed on multiple occasions) that my written elocution abilities are worthy of note ("separate from the norm"), so if I can write something that helps people recognize potential configurations of these traits in themselves or others, then I can have an obvious positive impact on the world on a (potentially) large scale, in a way that nobody could ever replicate, predict, or plagiarize. Nobody can, with sufficient accreditation, ignore that these realizations first came from a psychopath.
And yet, neither of my parents were psychopaths. Retracing my (current) family history doesn't recall any communicated anecdotes that give me rise to consider a psychopathic ancestor, which is information I would expose because I believe in time travel, and controlled subtle manipulation of their genes at a critical stage in their life could potentially result in me as I am physiologically known to be born with a more natural empathic frame. I might not love humanity the way I do now, but I'd predict that I would retain most of my other aspects (expressible). I'd have to talk to them myself to decide if I consider such a modified version of my genes was really still "me." Alternate possibilities notwithstanding, I really have no way of knowing where these traits found expression within my family trees. The most likely scenario is that the genes that made way for my tendency toward primary psychopathy (genetic predisposition, and not something I consider to be unable to be repaired through some (unknown) upbringing methodology) are unique to my exact traits, and any progeny (with a relevantly applicable partner) could only inherit the tendency toward that configuration and not the configuration itself.
Seen in this light, it's tempting to believe that rather than the outsiders I had previously considered us to be, psychopaths are instead base points from which character ascertainment can begin on a social level in a manner that would be reflected by natural breeding patterns. Using Pareto arithmetic, this would mean that 10% of the population were evolving toward morality, 80% towards tradition (preservation of the values inherited from principled parents), and 10% toward an unknown factor. (Where "morality" is considered to be a natural result of the evolution of principle in the human context, ie., it's not possible to evolve in full general form toward immorality.) Half of all genetic forms contributing to strong principles may then end up being psychopaths, which meets the tacit heuristics I've heard already. ("One in ten" and "one in twenty" people are supposedly psychopaths.) This adequately falsifies my previous hypothesis that psychopaths are required to "reign in" the (otherwise) uncontrolled intuitional emotions of the mass, because sensible (principled) people would emerge even without the severe exacerbative state leading to psychopathy and other empathic disorders.
* Any neurogenetic psychological discoveries inferred from this essay are to be considered the full intellectual property of SmoothPorcupine Pirate, especially and particularly where time travel is known to be possible.
This is possible because I've already inferred many of the true genetic traits, things which emerge into expressible aspects through trait configuration, and attempting to recreate my work through tacit inference would rob others of the awareness of the process by which I'd been able to eventually formulate this essay. There are discoveries I believe myself to have made (believe them to be an accurate depiction of the genetic function) that are critical to the understanding and confidence thresholds that fuel the thought process lending credence to this essay.
