20 Comments

This is a phenomenal piece of writing and thinking.

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So good. <3

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Wow, Visceral Adventure! Thank you for this spectacularly comprehensive theory mashup. I’ve covered almost all of these in different posts (e.g., Obedience and Stanford Prison experiments in “Letter to a Colluder”: https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-a-colluder-stop-enabling), but having them consolidated all in one place is a great help!

And thank you for introducing me to the Stockdale Paradox—that describes my philosophy/approach perfectly!!

Regarding optimism, I highly recommend Oliver Burkeman’s “The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking,” which draws heavily from Stoicism.

“Schrödinger’s Lot” is genius, BTW!

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The “Murray Gell-Man Amnesia Effect” is 100% Crichton. He explains where the “Murray Gell-Mann” label came from in this excellent speech introducing the concept to his audience:

https://www.docdroid.net/4wgVecr/why-speculate-michael-crichton-pdf

The whole “the world will soon be automated and everyone will be laying about with nothing to do” is an argument that has existed since the beginning of the industrial age. It will never happen. There will always be ways for clever monkeys to employ themselves, and we are capable of exceeding cleverness. It remains to be seen whether we will *survive* our cleverness, as nothing represents a greater risk to our continued survival than runaway machines, whether they’re made of steel, silicon or DNA.

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What a compendium/arsenal of thought! Coming to it a loooong time after you wrote it (well, it FEELS like a long time) but so happy to have read it. This should be required reading for... for... hell, for everyone, actually.

Proud to know ya, Tonika. xox

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Dec 18, 2022Liked by Visceral Adventure

This is a wonderful compilation of wisdom from a wide variety of folks. I stumbled my way here by way of RTE chaos agents 2 (I think). May I suggest you have someone check for spelling errors? There are several here of the type a typical spell checker app won’t pick up. (Former editor here, just wanting to be of assistance.)

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Oh, and those “optimists” weren’t optimists, they were fools. Optimism is knowing you’ll prevail, not knowing you’ll prevail by Tuesday.

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deletedJul 3, 2022·edited Jul 3, 2022Liked by Visceral Adventure
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