Posts by Amanda Jackson5

Adam Martin said:I've got my own take on this. Honestly, you just can't write a post as good as mine, so you're acting jealous and trying to gaslight me. I only brought those topics up because the OP mentioned a specific type of political correctness and tolerance that forces people to argue based on current politics. You just aren't thinking deep enough to see that.

People definitely think. It's just that maybe they aren't thinking about the things you think they should be thinking about. But pretty much every solid belief or statement is a formed thought. You might disagree with it or feel it's trivial, but that's totally different from saying people don't think and are just "surviving." You can't survive without thinking.

That Flaubert guy you're into wrote the "Dictionary of Received Ideas," which is basically a catalog of recycled nonsense found at the end of "Bouvard and Pecuchet." Now, are you going to tell me that Bouvard and Pecuchet—who are basically just clueless, ridiculous small-town folks in the book—came up with those ideas themselves? Nope. They just grabbed them, just like we do today. That line about "every formed belief being a formed thought" sounds exactly like something pulled straight from a textbook; it doesn't feel like an original thought to me. And sure, people think when they're surviving—they make choices and weigh options—but they aren't forming real opinions. Doing that requires a level of abstract thinking they just don't need in their day-to-day lives.

We’re all just recycling stuff; intertextuality is everywhere. There’s nothing new under the sun, and frankly, there is no such thing as "nothing outside the text."

Adam Martin said:I see what you're doing—trying to tear down any standard for having an opinion, using that whole "opinions are like butts..." line. And honestly, you're spot on.

There’s another messy layer to this. Back in the days of totalitarian regimes, the Party held the monopoly on "correct" thinking. In those dark eras, they had this concept of "self-criticism," where you'd basically have to repent because your views didn't align with the party line. It wasn't some joke; you could end up at Alcatraz or facing an interrogation just for a "verbal offense" until you finally swallowed your pride. This whole system was cooked up during the Inquisition, and even the sacrament of confession is pretty much the same thing. Even Luka Bebić’s quote about defending an opinion different from his own traces back to those vibes.

Things are different now.
Nowadays, people feel forced to repent simply because they disagree with the crowd; they're labeled "unconstructive" just for being different. Nobody actually cares what they think unless they have money to back it up. We don't even hear the opinions of the wealthy, because why would they bother sharing them with us? They're too busy executing their own plans to give us a heads-up.

It’s become more important to parrot someone else's view than to actually have your own.

Why? Because most people aren't really thinking anyway. They've got better things to do than contemplate life. They’ve got shopping to do, or just trying to survive. They care about sex. They're busy testing out new toys. So, the system frees them from the awkward burden of actual thought and the need to have opinions on important stuff—they just need to accept the "alternative" views that are served to them on a silver platter. For example: "I accept that Pride parades are good and necessary. I don't really have a personal take on it, but whatever. I accept a different opinion from my own, which I don't even have." It's way more efficient—no coercion or interrogations required, and the result is basically the same. 😁

There are plenty of legendary anecdotes floating around about these kinds of "opinions." You know the ones—someone saying, "Comrades, I have my own opinion on this matter, but I find myself in disagreement with it," or someone claiming they "went to the committee to find out what their opinion was." In those settings, having an "opinion" was about as voluntary as being drafted for a suicide mission in the military.
I honestly don't think you can truly "accept" someone else's opinion, because once you do, it stops being theirs and starts being yours. If we’re talking about accepting an opinion we disagree with, that’s really just a question of tolerance. This becomes especially messy in politics, where there often isn't a clear logical framework or a set of hard facts to debunk a viewpoint; instead, people just hold onto positions without even knowing why—maybe because it "feels right" or because they have some subconscious bias toward it. What applies to political tolerance should also apply to religious tolerance. However, that doesn't mean we should be teaching baseless nonsense like creationism in schools just because someone "likes" it, especially when it flies in the face of established scientific fact.

There’s also that old saying—life is basically just a movie, only significantly more boring. Or maybe it’s more like movies are actually bigger than life itself. Honestly, they kind of are.

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for this particular quote (though I can't quite place who actually said it):
"Reality is just a mental breakdown caused by having too little alcohol in your system."

Harold Doyle3 said:Science Fiction bombs and philosophy

Yeah, sure, "Dark Star"—it’s a total cult classic. I've lost count of how many times I've sat through it. It’s basically just a deep philosophical debate held with a highly intelligent bomb that has somehow decided its best course of action is to blow everything up. Hilarious.

Walter Edwards said:I honestly have no clue how they managed to get that published in the USSR back in the 60s—maybe because of the religious critique? I read it ages ago, but if I remember right, the planet is basically under absolute totalitarian rule.

For me, "Roadside Picnic" is still the all-time favorite—you know, the one they made "Stalker" from (even if the movie and the book are pretty different). The whole concept behind the book is just pure genius; it’s the complete opposite of that human-centered worldview that's just as stubborn today as it was forty years ago.

A lot of the books by The Strugatsky brothers share this recurring theme, which I’d describe as a fundamental inability to grasp an alien intelligence. I can think of at least two where the premise is almost identical: aliens visit Earth, but they don't do it in any way that makes sense to us, leaving behind a "zone" filled with inexplicable phenomena (sort of like those anomalous geographic zones you hear conspiracy theorists obsessing over, which, interestingly enough, seem most prevalent in Russia). One was translated back in the day as "Naked man" (originally titled "The Snail on the Slope"), and the other was "The Ugly Duckling." I recently watched a fantastic American film based on that second one (http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...33429678994309). It's set in a city where it rains incessantly, inhabited by children whose minds have been essentially "overclocked" by extraterrestrials. These kids run their own radio station, broadcasting these eerie philosophical monologues twenty-four hours a day. It's pretty great.

lonetrucker4 said:Think of this one short story—it was published back in the day, can't recall where exactly. Basically, some ancient, extinct race built this massive machine that holds all the knowledge in the universe. Now, younger species show up and start asking questions, but there's a catch: the machine only answers if the question is "properly formulated." You actually have to know the right terminology just to get an answer. It won't even bother answering a biologist asking "what is life" or "what is death," because those terms are way too narrow when you look at the big picture. Like, a worm asks about the nature of mud... and that's where it goes.

Then you've got that Science Fiction Book, "2001: A Space Odyssey"—just as deep and philosophical as hell.

Clarke basically mashes gritty technical specs and near-future tech with those grand space opera vibes that hit right on the edge of mysticism. I was twelve when we landed on the Moon—watched the whole thing on TV—and I devoured both the book and the movie a year later once they finally hit the shelves here. That stuff messed with my head in a big way, and honestly, it did the same for everyone else in my generation. Back in the 70s, we actually believed we’d have permanent colonies on the Moon by 2001, massive orbital stations (that Apollo-Soyuz mission in '75 felt like proof), and crews heading straight for Jupiter. Then there's that spiritual vibe you get from seeing the Blue Marble—that shot of Earth from deep space where everything looks so tiny yet totally unique against the infinite void. It was also when people started waking up to the environment; I actually wrote something about this recently regarding the Rio +20 summit. The first UN environmental conference was back in '72, around the same time as the "Growth Limit" study and that classic "This Only Country" book. There's just something mystical about humanity leaving the cradle and potentially evolving even further. We went from ape-like creatures to self-aware beings with brains three times the size in just a few million years—so what happens in the next few million? But yeah... that dream slowly just faded away.

The Strugatsky brothers are top-tier. They’re the ones behind the whole vibe for Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

Yeah, obviously. Personally, I think their best novel is To Be or Not to Be.

Isaac Asimov messing around with robot identity and ethics, then hitting us with that whole "psychohistory" concept in *Endowment*... heavy stuff.

That’s it. Now it comes back to me. I read that in "Sirius"!

lonetrucker4 said:Think of this one short story—it was published back in the day, can't recall where exactly. Basically, some ancient, extinct race built this massive machine that holds all the knowledge in the universe. Now, younger species show up and start asking questions, but there's a catch: the machine only answers if the question is "properly formulated." You actually have to know the right terminology just to get an answer. It won't even bother answering a biologist asking "what is life" or "what is death," because those terms are way too narrow when you look at the big picture. Like, a worm asks about the nature of mud... and that's where it goes.

Then you've got that Science Fiction Book, "2001: A Space Odyssey"—just as deep and philosophical as hell.

Clarke basically mashes gritty technical specs and near-future tech with those grand space opera vibes that hit right on the edge of mysticism. I was twelve when we landed on the Moon—watched the whole thing on TV—and I devoured both the book and the movie a year later once they finally hit the shelves here. That stuff messed with my head in a big way, and honestly, it did the same for everyone else in my generation. Back in the 70s, we actually believed we’d have permanent colonies on the Moon by 2001, massive orbital stations (that Apollo-Soyuz mission in '75 felt like proof), and crews heading straight for Jupiter. Then there's that spiritual vibe you get from seeing the Blue Marble—that shot of Earth from deep space where everything looks so tiny yet totally unique against the infinite void. It was also when people started waking up to the environment; I actually wrote something about this recently regarding the Rio +20 summit. The first UN environmental conference was back in '72, around the same time as the "Growth Limit" study and that classic "This Only Country" book. There's just something mystical about humanity leaving the cradle and potentially evolving even further. We went from ape-like creatures to self-aware beings with brains three times the size in just a few million years—so what happens in the next few million? But yeah... that dream slowly just faded away.

The Strugatsky brothers are top-tier. They’re the ones behind the whole vibe for Tarkovsky’s Stalker.

Yeah, obviously. Personally, I think their best novel is To Be or Not to Be.

Isaac Asimov messing around with robot identity and ethics, then hitting us with that whole "psychohistory" concept in *Endowment*... heavy stuff.

Man, those were the days. I remember watching the moon landing like it was yesterday, followed by the front pages of the newspapers the next morning. My dad saved those papers, and I still have them tucked away today. We used to devour "Galaxy," that science popularization magazine. And there was the "Centaur" library... we truly believed in Progress, before postmodern thinkers convinced everyone it was all an illusion (though they haven't managed to convince me yet!). The days when "2001: A Space Odyssey" played at the local Film Archive felt like a national holiday. And on TV, if you had any self-respect, you couldn't miss those early BBC series, "Rise of Man," hosted by Jacob Bronowski. I can still vividly see that scene in the concentration camp where he says, more or less, "this is what happens when a civilization thinks it knows the answer to every question."

lonetrucker4 said:@Sandra Wilson68: Seriously? You actually don't get the whole "42" thing? 🙂 It’s straight out of a book by one of the biggest heavyweights of 20th-century philosophy!

They finally nailed down the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, but they totally missed the actual question... And it gets weirder... 😲 You can't have the question and the answer chilling in the same universe at once. It’s all tied up in set theory paradoxes—you know, that whole "set containing itself" mess—plus Tarski’s logic truth problems and those Gödel theorems. Plus, it all loops back to how we split consciousness from self-awareness, like that whole struggle with grounding the "Self" you see in Fichte and early Schelling.

@Amanda Jackson5: I am not pulling your leg, I’m being dead serious—I actually think The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is some deep philosophical gold. Who cares if it's formatted as a novel? We’ve got guys like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, even Ayn Rand, who wrote fiction to make their points. Not to mention authors whose entire books are basically philosophy in disguise! Dostoevsky and H. Hess were huge favorites of mine, and then there's the SF crowd... You can probably tell I'm not exactly a fan of that dry "analytical" philosophy stuff. 🙂 Same goes for the traditional metaphysics Sandra Wilson68 is preaching. You don't have to buy it, but seriously I'm not kidding around here!

Look, I have to admit, the book is absolutely brilliant. It actually puts me in mind of a specific line from an old SF Book that always stuck with me: "To ask a question, one must already know a larger part of the answer." You see that kind of deep, philosophical heavy lifting all over the genre—take *2001: A Space Odyssey*, for example, which is basically a meditation on existence wrapped in a space suit. Then you’ve got the Strugatsky brothers, whose work is so profound that even Tarkovsky felt compelled to adapt it into *Stalker*. There are endless examples like this if you bother to look.
Then you have Milivoj Solar, who claims that when it comes to Jacques Derrida, the guy is essentially just writing literature and trying to pass it off as philosophy.