It would be easy for us, if we do not learn to understand the world and appreciate the rights, privileges and duties of all other countries and peoples, to represent in our power the same danger to the world that Fascism did.
—Ernest Hemingway
Hell is
Hell is having to watch
good things end.
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More energy
Most people will expend more energy to rationalize their audacious mendacity than on almost anything else.
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The only form
My drowsy browsing is the only form of worship I'll acknowledge.
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Dualistic
Separating ways of thinking into dualistic and non-dualistic is itself a fundamentally dualistic exercise.
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The question now is
The question now is, can our models improve until we can't distinguish them from what they are meant to simulate?
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The context
I lack the context to know
the context I lack.
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Absolute certainty
I believe with absolute certainty
that I cannot say anything
with absolute certainty.
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Curiosity
What does curiosity not excuse?
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On poetry
Poetry is intimacy.
And vice versa.
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Avoidance
I must avoid the impulse to avoidance.
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Harder
Desire is hard;
expectation, harder.
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We needn't wriggle
When we find ourselves standing barefoot in shit, we needn't wriggle our toes for a bit before stepping out.
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What doesn't?
What doesn't require judgment?
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Transgress
Transgress, or be less.
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How could we not
How could we not grow bitter
when we're all forced to walk in the same direction?
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Experience
Experience is discontinuous, gratuitous.
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On consciousness
Consciousness that isn't partial cannot be conscious.
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For a reason
Every word is there for a reason,
but I won't defend every reason.
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Concurrence
Concurrence is a weak correlation, yet often a necessary one for convergence.
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You begin to wonder
When they tell you long enough that they can't handle the truth, you begin to wonder if they shouldn't be trusted with it.
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At all costs
The society that takes more from you than it gives you is a society that must be overturned at all costs.
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Aphorism
There is nothing wrong with thinking in aphorism, so long as you don't
only think in aphorism.
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A partner
A partner is a shelter with feet.
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Do you?
Do you decide to believe,
or do you only believe you decide?
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Is to
Ambivalence is to certainty
as inertia is to entropy.
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Hyperbole
Hyperbole is absurd
until it hits the mark.
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If I am wrong
If I am wrong about everything,
still I have tried to understand.
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Which parts
Which parts of the everything you cannot be
are you not?
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The booby prize
Orgasm is the booby prize.
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I don't believe
I don't believe in believing things just because I want to believe them.
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The part I play
The part I play is to refuse to play the part I play.
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Do our part (Woolf)
As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship...as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the sufferings of our fellow-prisoners...decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
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A choice is always a sacrifice
A choice is always a sacrifice
of more options than are chosen.
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Believe only
Believe only in what does not require your belief.
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We make our claims
We make our claims within the context of our experience.
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I don't like to pretend
I don't like to pretend, when I'm pretending, that my pretending is anything other than pretending.
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Truer than
That sensation is truer than emotion
doesn't make it true.
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What we worship
What we worship is the idea of certainty.
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The reward for being
Being is the reward for being.
Everything else is the cost.
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If you can't control
If you can't control what you want, how can you be expected to control (by which they mean curtail)
that you want what you want?
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Alien
What would be most alien would be one who didn't try to make sense of things, and didn't try to make sense
of their trying to make sense of things.
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So much
Much that is here should not be;
much that should be is not.
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Not all
Not all oscillation is vacillation.
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The distance
Life is about discovering the distance between seems and is. This would not seem to rise to the level of purpose.
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To be aware
To be aware is to beware.
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Is there more?
Is there more to meaning than description and association?
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A bias
Love is a bias against the unloved.
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What I know
I know I want to know what I don't know I don't know.
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What if I only
What if I only think that I think?
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Ambiguity
Ambiguity shelters where clarity evicts.
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Haven
Haven, not heaven.
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On uncertainty
Uncertainty is a frenemy.
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On metaphor
Metaphor is not a replacement for reason.
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Building towards anything (exurb1a)
And if we have a purpose, if the human experiment is building towards anything,
Objective truth sounds fun,
But aren't we here to construct a world where it's possible to play all the time and never die?
exurb1a (Alexander McKechnie), from "Paradigm Blindness"
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Equalities
It's facile to offer equality of opportunity, because it's so much easier to achieve than equality of outcome. And yet we can't even manage that.
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Prelude
Everything is prelude to nothing.
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Neurogenesis
Neurogenesis is bliss.
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Easier
It is easier to worship a shrine to the self than it is to worship the self.
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On love
You discover love; you don't
decide it.
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We will love AI
We will love AI as much because we can't trust them as because we can.
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To solving
We must put our best minds to solving the problems created by our worst minds.
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Who said
Who said dissonance must be discordant?
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How is it
How is it that I am shattered
and eternity intact?
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Though it is the living (Macfarlane)
We are often more tender to the dead than to the living, though it is the living who need our tenderness most.
Robert Macfarlane, Underland
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Remember
Remember that memory is imagination.
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They begin
The moment they depart
they begin to forget.
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Separation
We think coherence is born of cohesion,
but much is defined by separation.
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No one is free
No one is free who must adhere to an alien chronology.
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More free will
Free will does not exist, not because we don't have it but because it is not a logically-consistent concept.
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Free will
Free will is incompatible with influence.
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Nothing
Nothing interests me less than posthumous compensation.
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Natural
Even the deviant is natural.
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