1. all of history is people stretching their brain + stimulating themselves over and over again until something happens => creating habits out of those results => creating culture our of those habits => allowing others access to those ideas so we can continue evolving (associated quote: Jacob Bronowski 1973: "The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better.) -> good ideas are evolutionarily important -> also to say that our process for generating and sharing ideas today is so much more effective than our evolutionary process, so we are much more likely now to alter our environment before we let the environment alter us (genetically) sub-note: ants, mice, fish etc sometimes can be infected by parasites that take over their brain and make them behave in unusual ways that benefit the parasite, not the host, which sometimes can even lead to that insect/animal committing suicide (like ants being eaten by cows because the ultimate goal of the parasite is to enter the cow). -> humans can have similar "infestations," but interestingly the things that seem to trump our genetic inclinations are man-made: ideas, religion, capitalism, etc. one person can create an idea that can then infest many people. -> is what sets us aside from all other beings the fact that we can transcend our genetic predispositions/imperatives as we please, choosing to die for an idea, for a place, a text, etc.? --- 2. in a world of non-truth/ capital t truth> capital T Truth, how much do we embody Actor traits? misinformation + knowledge terrorism -> should we ask not how similar AI is to us (human consciousness) but how similar we are to our understanding of AI (Simulator traits, truth is whatever most people say is truth)? --- 3. a beautiful paradox about the world: you have your biggest, most serious realizations, you answer your hardest questions, reach full awareness on something not during a deep thinking session, but rather in your most mundane moments. one must work and think, yes, but one must also watch TV, take a bath, go on a walk, trim a plant, be adrift with friends. direct questions that are asked can help plant some seed, but if asked too directly or with the goal of an immediate answer, they will most likely just be beaten to death --- 4. our parents' generation: they say "whatever" in a very different way from how our (their kids) generation says "whatever." parents say "whatever" in that they do not question so much why they work a certain job, how they are perceived, etc. (they are unmoved in the face of questions which might attempt to uproot fundamental things about their world and life). kids say "whatever" in that they always feel fundamentally uprooted by the world and its challenges, because everything can be altered and should be questioned. --- 5. 1930 -- two Tibetan peasants went on a pilgrimage to Lhasa but became lost in a snowstorm and ended up in Southeastern China where they were captured by bandits, and taken to Northern China to join the communists. They later escaped and, after several years, ended up in Central Russia, where they were conscripted into the Russian army and sent to the Eastern Front during the German invasion of Russia. They were then captured by the Germans, transported to a concentration camp in Poland and later inducted into the German army, eventually ending up in Normandy. Throughout the whole journey, the two peasants were displaying a ridiculously profound passivity -- because they had thought they were dead for the past ten years and actually saw their suffering as a test and a path to Nirvana. They thought their experiences were a part of a journey through the netherworld, where bodily survival was not a goal. As seen in: ![[IMG_6917 1.png]] which, as I thinking now, is reminding me also of this beautiful little poem by Anryu Suharu: ![[IMG_6941.jpg]] --- 6. interesting to consider how AI might alter the way we understand businesses. will we shift from corporations, conglomerates to silos of small teams doing niche work with the help of additional models that reduce the need for large, centralized organizations with extensive human resources (all coming together, ultimately, to work as an orchestra at the societal scale, contributing in their own little way to the same bigger structure we have now)? -> have we consistently moved away, as a society, from worshipping large-scale structures? think: drastic downfall of celebrity culture, the decrease in popularity of malls, large brands, large political organizations etc. Seems a potential next step, with the help of models, could be to shift away from the thousand+ employee company structures that still exist today? -> if that is the case, and we are moving in that direction, this should provide some level of optimism. small scale businesses dominating over large corporations could provide the ideal backdrop for a world in which we move towards smaller, more sustainable and resilient communities --- 7. does knowing more improve your chances of getting what you value? --- 8. design of refugee camps: there is an intentional desire to not give the residents an actual sense of permanence, which is done particularly through a lack in the amenities and structures that would encourage long-term settlement. it can even break international agreements to do so -- humane infrastructure can be interpreted as conditions that suggest permanent settlement, which can go against intl. refugee law --- 9. using oysters to clean up bodies of water (ex: in cities, like making rivers such as in Paris, Bucharest, etc. clean and swimmable)