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How to live an intellectually rich life

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Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#281

Post by int_19h »

mediaman wrote: post #131
DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would have loved to see some non native English speaking authors on the list. (instead of listing some authors twice - as great as they are). There were 2 Russians that stood out but no Camus, Feuchtwanger, Remarque, Musil, Borges, ...

Yes, it's kind of a strange slice - we get Faulkner three times and we get Joseph Conrad no fewer than four times(!), but not a single book from Dostoevsky or Tolstoy? No Bulgakov, no Turgenev? No Flaubert?

FWIW, I would argue that Tolstoy is extremely overrated as a writer (but agree with your other suggestions).

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#282

Post by int_19h »

ysofunny wrote: post #83
noduerme wrote: post #5

Just because you can prove mathematically that most link chains "end" at "philosophy" doesn't mean that's the end you should end up at. I spend at least 2 nights a week just reading links through wikipedia as I'm falling asleep, and I almost inevitably end up at languages and cultures or historical events that I knew little about. Philosophy isn't an end, and it's pretty meaningless without some stone cold knowledge…

personally I believe that philosophy helps to "compress" more knowledge about the world into "less" knowledge by shifting quantity of data into difficulty from advanced conceptual abstractions

Unfortunately it is also a very lossy compression. Often so much so that it renders the knowledge useless or even actively harmful.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#283

Post by AngryData »

concerndc1tizen wrote: post #259
monero-xmr wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just have no idea how incredibly enormous and empty the US is

And yet, every viable plot of land is used for farming. Similarly, I would argue that you should not underestimate the harmful and wide-reaching effects of industry.

Ehh US farmland usage has been dropping for many decades. That said, it is only because we are more than ever reliant upon fossil fuel derived fertilizer and over utilize a lot of arid/desert farming

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#284

Post by hollerith »

concerndc1tizen wrote: post #259
monero-xmr wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just have no idea how incredibly enormous and empty the US is

And yet, every viable plot of land is used for farming. Similarly, I would argue that you should not underestimate the harmful and wide-reaching effects of industry.

>every viable plot of land is used for farming.

It is? Not in the US!

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#285

Post by jebarker »

I appreciate the spirit of this essay, but I think it overstates the idea that intellectual pursuits are an escape from modern dissatisfaction. I've spent most of my life driven by curiosity, forming my identity around being someone who seeks knowledge. But over time I’ve come to see how that, too, can become a kind of consumerism—chasing ideas for the dopamine hit of a new insight, then feeling the letdown and scrambling for the next one.

The essay frames an intellectually rich life as a kind of antidote to consumer culture, but for me it often mirrors the same patterns: FOMO, compulsiveness, neglect of relationships, a deep anxiety that I’ll never learn enough. The awareness that I’ll only ever scratch the surface of all there is to know has become a source of existential stress, not peace.

This isn’t to say intellectual life isn’t meaningful—but it's not a cure-all. It can be just as prone to distortion as anything else if pursued as a form of escape.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#286

Post by sepositus »

concerndc1tizen wrote: post #262
sepositus wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't communism influenced heavily by being anti-capitalist? They fundamentally disagreed with the tenants that the United States stood on. Your comment, if I'm understanding it correctly, makes it look like the communists were just trying to do their own thing in their own countries and the big bad U.S came in and bullied them out of existence. I'm not defending either sides here. I'm not a Reaganot. But to think m…

That is fair; I think the reality is nuanced and that different opinions existed at the same time and were warring internally in the Soviet Union. In particular, IIUC, Trotsky thought that "a socialist revolution must spread internationally to succeed and cannot be confined to one nation" (OpenAI) - but he was also assassinated by Stalin's order, and the assassin was honored by Brezhnev. Stalin was assassinated as we…

> But yes, European countries were heavily influenced by communist ideology, which continues to shape our values today, about well-regulated free markets, fair taxation, public service, and so on

So this is the first time I've seen well-regulated free markets and fair taxation as being associated with communist ideology. Granted, I'm not well-studied here, but I recall being taught quite the opposite.

I did some preliminary research uisng Gemini Research to see if I could surface anything that might suggest this has been universally regarded as true and it came back with the opposite on the first (well-regulated free markets) and ambiguity on the second (not universally associated with communism).

Would you be able to reference a place where I can learn more about these relationships?

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#287

Post by sepositus »

jebarker wrote: post #285

I appreciate the spirit of this essay, but I think it overstates the idea that intellectual pursuits are an escape from modern dissatisfaction. I've spent most of my life driven by curiosity, forming my identity around being someone who seeks knowledge. But over time I’ve come to see how that, too, can become a kind of consumerism—chasing ideas for the dopamine hit of a new insight, then feeling the letdown and scram…

I appreciate this perspective as it matches mine and I think comes from experience. I imagine myself sitting on my peak and seeing millions, maybe billions, of other peaks and the desire to traverse them propels me forward. However, as soon as I'm a quarter of the way up one, I start to think, what am I missing on the other peaks? That's the FOMO. Then I spend the next five years of my life partially breaching a thousand ideas and never experiencing satisfaction.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#288

Post by sepositus »

andrepd wrote: post #276
sepositus wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize Early Christianity had a monopoly on the destruction of books? As far as I know the burning of rival civilizations has been happening for thousands of years.

I'm speaking specifically about Western classics (esp. Roman).

I would say that material decay, neglect, economic collapse, war, and changing cultural priorities played a far greater role in the loss of these texts rather than the ones lost to zealous Christians. It's just weird to single that group out when their actions represent a minority in the overall loss of these ancient texts.

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#289

Post by jahbrewski »

sepositus wrote: post #287
jebarker wrote: post #285

I appreciate the spirit of this essay, but I think it overstates the idea that intellectual pursuits are an escape from modern dissatisfaction. I've spent most of my life driven by curiosity, forming my identity around being someone who seeks knowledge. But over time I’ve come to see how that, too, can become a kind of consumerism—chasing ideas for the dopamine hit of a new insight, then feeling the letdown and scram…

I appreciate this perspective as it matches mine and I think comes from experience. I imagine myself sitting on my peak and seeing millions, maybe billions, of other peaks and the desire to traverse them propels me forward. However, as soon as I'm a quarter of the way up one, I start to think, what am I missing on the other peaks? That's the FOMO. Then I spend the next five years of my life partially breaching a thou…

Are you American, by chance? I am, and this resonates with something a Japanese woman recently told me.

I asked her what she thought some of the negative traits of Americans are, and here’s the first thing she said:

“You bounce around too much. From thing to thing to thing.”

Re: How to live an intellectually rich life

#290

Post by lolinder »

andrepd wrote: post #276
sepositus wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize Early Christianity had a monopoly on the destruction of books? As far as I know the burning of rival civilizations has been happening for thousands of years.

I'm speaking specifically about Western classics (esp. Roman).

Which centuries did you have in mind? In what countries were these purgings? Which authors were purged and by which sects of early Christianity?

I ask because "Early Christianity" as a period ends with the First Council of Nicea, and Christians before Nicea were (a) not at all unified and therefore had very different opinions on things like pre-Christian literature and (b) not very politically powerful and therefore unlikely to have had a major impact on book survival.

If you have specific citations for when and where these systematic and catastrophic destructions are purported to have taken place I'd love to hear it, otherwise I'm more inclined to chalk it up to "most texts don't survive from most eras for all kinds of reasons".

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