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What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

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Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#41

Post by hwhehwhehegwggw »

bananaflag wrote: post #38
hwhehwhehegwggw wrote: post #26

Advaita (non duality) is the highest intellectual achievement of the human civilization. The list itself mentioned is interesting but it focuses on content of consciousness and not consciousness itself. The contents keep changing. Consciousness doesn't. In other words humans appearing in consciousness discovering consciousness is more interesting than what appears on consciousness like laws of motion. This is not to…

Why Advaita and not Dzogchen? Just something to think about.

From my understanding they all point to consciousness. I mentioned Advaita because I think it's focus on logic is probably a a good gateway for HN Audience. But for audience who wants more options

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nondualism

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#42

Post by Jtarii »

yen223 wrote: post #23

Whoever figured out writing, all those years ago. The compounded effect of having knowledge recorded for generations to come - thereby unlocking all the other things mentioned on this list - surely should count for something.

I would assume writing evolved with humans over many thousands of years and wasn't just some big invention a guy came up with.

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#43

Post by lukan »

uncanny2 wrote: post #28
lukan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You have trained yourself to see the world as you expect it, and the world you “think feel and believe” Or of course, you know nothing about me, but your root problem is that you believe you are enlightened? You are not the first, though. Also I engaged with various philosophy, meditation, and chaos magic since quite some years and to be honest, I read way more convincing text about the topic of seeing through the i…

How very interesting. It is nice to meet you, know that I am not your savior, I am your undeceiver. Many hundreds of thousands of us have tread the paths for virtue as you have. You were not wrong, you were right! In a way. In a way you could not explain to yourselves coherently, to maintain the civilized stability of your daily existence. Reasons and rationalizations are a well barbed trap in Man’s mind. I am tellin…

"Reasons and rationalizations are a well barbed trap in Man’s mind."

Indeed, so have you ever considered, that the secret war in your mind, could be also caused by a myriad of other things?

So a secret holy war with (or against?) aliens or divine cosmic beings sounds more glamorous, than simply struggling with yourself, so you rationalized your own internal issues with a greater mission on the outside? Simply because it sounds better and therefore that makes you feel better?

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#45

Post by amelius »

hwhehwhehegwggw wrote: post #26

Advaita (non duality) is the highest intellectual achievement of the human civilization. The list itself mentioned is interesting but it focuses on content of consciousness and not consciousness itself. The contents keep changing. Consciousness doesn't. In other words humans appearing in consciousness discovering consciousness is more interesting than what appears on consciousness like laws of motion. This is not to…

Are you sure? After trying to read into it a bit, I'm getting the feeling that this theory does not solve many practical problems and leaves more questions than answers, e.g.: does my AI (or my GPU) have a consciousness, should it have rights, etc.?

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#47

Post by hwhehwhehegwggw »

amelius wrote: post #45
hwhehwhehegwggw wrote: post #26

Advaita (non duality) is the highest intellectual achievement of the human civilization. The list itself mentioned is interesting but it focuses on content of consciousness and not consciousness itself. The contents keep changing. Consciousness doesn't. In other words humans appearing in consciousness discovering consciousness is more interesting than what appears on consciousness like laws of motion. This is not to…

Are you sure? After trying to read into it a bit, I'm getting the feeling that this theory does not solve many practical problems and leaves more questions than answers, e.g.: does my AI (or my GPU) have a consciousness, should it have rights, etc.?

Consciousness belong to nobody. You appear in it.

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#48

Post by [deleted] »

hwhehwhehegwggw wrote: post #47
amelius wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? After trying to read into it a bit, I'm getting the feeling that this theory does not solve many practical problems and leaves more questions than answers, e.g.: does my AI (or my GPU) have a consciousness, should it have rights, etc.?

Consciousness belong to nobody. You appear in it.

[deleted]

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#49

Post by accidentallfact »

irdc wrote: post #32

Self-domestication. That in order to be more successful as a collective species we had to literally breed ourselves to become less violent and more playful and sociable. And the nice part is that it wasn't just one person deciding this but the collective intellectual leap of all those people throughout our history who decided to reproduce with the less violent and more cooperative members of the opposite sex. And it…

That, just isn't true. Many animals live in herds, flocks or other groups. There is a kind of fish that eats debris from the teeth of much bigger fishes. Predators get swarmed.

Re: What have been the greatest intellectual achievements? (2017)

#50

Post by towledev »

Asraelite wrote: post #22
towledev wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it though? All languages have the word 'nothing'. Better candidates: a) place-value numbering aka the positional numeral system, b) the Cartesian coordinate system. Forced to choose, I would pick (b).

"nothing" is not the same the same as "zero". "zero apples" means something different to "nothing", but that difference is subtle and difficult to explain, which is what makes the invention of zero such an achievement.

ok, "no apples."
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