Deep Dump

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I get ideas. Some of them are a occasionally not shallow. Most of them don't turn into essays. But I've started making notes of them. Here's the last month's set.

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The attraction of the reincarnation notion is that previous lives imply subsequent lives. Regression promises immortality.

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Three types of people are impressed by wisecracks: children, jerks, and americans.

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Ostentations disinterest hides discomfort.

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Ally and rival, friend and enemy - these are relative terms. In any alliance, you need to know when to stop trusting your ally, and when to use your enemy.

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Willing slaves hate the unwilling.

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The difference between crazy and stupid is that crazy can be logical.

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You know how conspiracy theorists always claim there's a masterplan executed by hyper- competent, all-powerful puppeteers? Well, there's a flipside - people delude themselves they *are* hyper-competent, all-powerful puppeteers with a masterplan.

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If someone tells you exacly what you want to hear, ask yourself why they're lying to you.

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If the victor finds no glory in defeating a weak opponant, surely the victim finds no shame in being defeated by a strong oppressor.

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Belief is not acceptance of a proposition with optional emotional colouring. Belief is an emotion. You don't get angry with a pundit because you disagree with them, your disagreement is a form of anger.

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If you keep trying to measure something and keep getting different results, it may be because you're trying to measure something that doesn't exist.

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To pray is to ask a deity to do something, because you can't do it yourself. So prayer can be a declaration that you won't, disguised as an admission that you can't, disguised as a petition that someone else will. If you're only pretending to want something, pray for it.

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Are ethical claims testable? Z is the desired outcome. X is the action. it is testable that X leads to Z. Thus the imperative W to perform X to lead to Z can be judged "just" in light of Z (considered as an imperative directed at the world).

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No one evades the question unless they're dimly aware of the answer, and don't like it.

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A crazy person is one incapable of hypocrisy. A too-sane person is the same. The difference is that the former turns ad-hoc rationalisations into eternal principles, while the latter drops principles which conflict.

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A ritual is a procedure with an asserted false purpose, and a denied real one.

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We can believe that we believe things that we believe are false. This makes ideology possible.

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The concept of the original, pure, authentic lost world is an empty category, created by dissatisfaction with the present world. We think we've lost paradise, we know we want it back, but all we know about it is it's not what we know.

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You don't need a person to have a cult of personality.

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