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Analects

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Analects

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On Aesthetics

stuff On things that are beautiful

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Without time-travel, evolutionary narratives can only identify theories that <em>don’t</em> make sense (like death drives). It can’t tell you what theories <em>do</em> make sense, because you can make many to explain the same thing. All they do is let you see what people wish the world was like.

Evolution is overrated

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People love a good evolutionary narrative. I wouldn’t be able to count the number of times I’ve heard “back in our evolutionary past…”. Somewhere along the line, evolutionary theories went from a useful way to fix psychological theories, to a generator of some of the most superficially idiotic. And I think, reading between the lines, we can find a new use for them. But first, let me convince you that evolutionary narratives aren’t usually worth very much.

Without time-travel, evolutionary narratives can only identify theories that don’t make sense (like death drives). It can’t tell you what theories do make sense, because you can make many to explain the same thing. All they do is let you see what people wish the world was like.

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betterment on-aesthetics on-the-nature-of-things on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture thought-architecture

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Cynosure is the idea betterment is empty without gratification and connection. No true betterment can occur without celebrating the fruits of our success and betterment is only meaningful in its reflection in the lives of others. Everyone agrees.

On Cynosure

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I use a lot of odd words around here, to mark out my interpretation of things to others. But they aren’t unique ideas. And mapping them to where I found them is one way of explaining them. So here I explain the idea of cynosure: the three values I hold closest, and the three things I think we should all focus on.

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betterment connection gratification on-(un)happiness on-aesthetics on-thinking-and-reasoning

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Cultural and aesthetic ‘facts’ are as real as any ‘objective’ truths. They’re just centred on different kinds of meaning. Trivialising them because they ‘go against’ the evidence is failing to recognise what evidence they care about.

Aesthetics are facts too

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Facts are just a special kind of belief… Because there isn’t really anything tangible that distinguishes a belief from a fact. Cultural and aesthetic beliefs are facts too, in a certain light—we’re tracing the fuzzy boundaries of our religions, theories, and convictions to put certain meaningful aspects of the world at the centre. They’re just as true as the facts that are more stable, and objective. They’re just centring on something different.

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collective-architecture gratification on-aesthetics on-being-fruitful on-culture thought-architecture

article

Social media use probably isn’t the problem. Social media use is probably just the most obvious manifestation of lots of problems. And in fact, social media could probably be a solution. It’s up to you.

It's not social media, life is just worse

Article

It has been pretty trendy for the last little while to notice that mental health problems are on the rise, and also social media use is on the rise, and so probably mental health problems are on the rise because social media is an attention sucking monster. But research on the topic doesn’t seem to find any obvious connection between the two. Lots of people are talking about this now, so I will run you through the ‘social media isn’t actually that bad’ thing then give you some other things to stress about instead.

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digital-architecture gratification on-(un)happiness on-aesthetics on-culture on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture

article

We see short light waves as blue, medium as green, and long as red. When the brain senses short (blue) and long (red) but not medium (green), it ‘makes up’ a colour to fill in the blank.

Purple doesn't exist

Article

There is this funny kind of way in which the colour purple doesn’t really exist. It obviously does—we see purple all the time. But it doesn’t so much correspond to something, but the absence of something. Let me explain what I mean.

We see short light waves as blue, medium as green, and long as red. When the brain senses short (blue) and long (red) but not medium (green), it ‘makes up’ a colour to fill in the blank.

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gratification on-aesthetics somatic-architecture

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