anna-gat-metalearn

• Utility tyranny

  • We eat because it’s “healthy” not enjoyable
  • We sleep because it helps productivity
  • We exercise to “improve mental health”
  • Everything is a means to an end. Western civilization does a lot of things, which if you followed through to their logical end, are pretty horrifying

• Arthur Schopenhauer

• There is a level of lexical knowledge that burdens one’s thinking and byeond a point, it begins to hurt the agility of your thought

• You need something to optimize to

• Hypertextual reading

  • Give space in your head for unexpected thoughts to arise

• Letting go of fear of not doing something all the time - to free yourself

• Go beyond the boring everyday thing

• Things that are not utilitarian are the things that make life worth living

• Utility tyranny starts encroaching over individual agency and liberty

  • It turns us into utility “hanging out with friends improves my mental health”
  • Friendships and intimate relationships are better off being inefficient; they serve a respite from the hyper-efficient work life
  • Optimizing can rob you off the sanctity of life

• But then where is it ok to optimize?

• What do people want?

  • R:thoughts-on-peers

• You read so much about your generation, your social class or gender or whatever, and the strongest feeling is: this is not true!

• Intellectual orphan?

• Basic tenets of contractualism

• You are a free human being. Ok. What do you do with it?