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Showing posts from January, 2015

the awful world as one

Question was " What would the world be like if everyone was like you ?" People took a couple of very different scenarios from that: either physical identity (a world of clones, body and mind) or philosophical identity (a world in which everyone shared your values) or both (because of confusion between those two, or some mind-body identity intuition), or even neither (because focussing on behaviour only). One friend asked if Uma Thurman would have a beard like him, a line of inquiry which got obscene very quickly. Most people assumed that 7 billion people would morph overnight, and that the great new Them would have to deal with the world as it is currently (scarcity, egotism, path dependency, cognitive bias), rather than bending any other variables to make e.g. perfect uniform social justice possible. The intuition pump was for people to report the things they see as essential about themselves. (Can someone have your exact values or personality without also having y

wait in room

Buro meets ochlo and neither yields; instead there's a steady faceplant meld of rule with weeping exception. Christ. Reach me a nothing, save me a stay! If you are given pause — if you give me a bed larger than I need and heed the answer retrodicted — you will brush the wrecks of timetables from me, wash my shoulders of lead, and see in me hot and fragile seas. To leave me ungeneralised.

'Rain Clearance' by Dù Fǔ

for Qiu Ji Sky emptied, the autumn cloud thins; A west wind spans a myriad fields. The morning scene is good — cleared: Long rain has left us land. Tight willows show sparse green, Uphill, pears are flowering red. Upstairs, a reed pipe plays; One goose rises in plain air. ************************************************** 雨晴 (一作秋霽) 天水秋雲薄 從西萬里風 今朝好晴景 久雨不妨農 塞柳行疏翠 山梨結小紅 胡笳樓上發 一雁入高空 杜甫 (758 CE)