Time investment? There is also no context? Fiction, nonfiction? As a reader how would I know what I am getting myself into? and how would I know on first click this a talented artist.
If you are a Sci-Fi fan, then you should now already or learn now, that Philip K. Dick is "a talented artist" in the American canon. Or you could ask Wikipedia who he was. Or chatGPT if you don't mind fake knowledge.
That is what makes the essay interesting, not the mildly paranoid musings about synchronicity, fakes, human kindness and drug dealing.
If you're not a Philip K. Dick fan or a Sci-Fi fan, walk on.
> Popular films based on his works include Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (adapted twice: in 1990 and in 2012), Screamers (1995), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), and Radio Free Albemuth (2010).
If you’ve not heard of P.K. Dick before it’s kind of weird to be worried about “is this a talented artist”… you really need to push your boundaries in any way possible.
I was about to agree with you and lay on them too, then I asked myself why I alt-tabbed to read HN comments midway through.
If that was printed or I was reading it on my e-reader, I'd probably enjoy it just like I did enjoy reading some of his novels, but as of now I'm not lounging on a couch with a cup of tea and some cookies. Reading on a screen is way less comfortable and many of us will be reading HN stories as a momentary distraction as work - attention spans not primed for this sort of long-form writing.
Hope that answers your question as to why someone would not read it right now. Since we're human it is no surprise one would be curious as to what it is about anyways - and request a summary.
Artists aren't infallible; their intentions don't have to be held sacred. There is nothing wrong with someone not caring for a particular piece of PKD's writing or any of it for that matter.
I would argue that this text is very hard to compress as it is already a compressed version of PKD's thoughts on reality, religion, perception, philosophy, and more.
Did you read the article? It's still Philip K. Dick. It's absolutely bonkers. It starts normal, story about a dog biting the garbage man from PoV of the dog, story about surgeons discovering reality altering tape in a man, the question of what is reality, then descends into PKDs ramblings about being stuck in Satan's Tesseract Labyrinth, that it's actually AD 50 and people wearing pisces are real Jesus' followers, that his son is reincarnation of a prophet, and so on.
Here are these gems:
The answer I have come up with may not be correct, but it is the only answer I have. It has to do with time. My theory is this: In some certain important sense, time is not real (snip) it, specifically, is the period immediately following the death and resurrection of Christ; it is, in other words, the time period of the Book of Acts.
“I am a fisherman. I fish for fish.” Christopher, at four, had found the sign I did not find until I was forty-five years old.
In all fairness, it is a long article. Articles submitted to HN should ideally not be much longer than the title, because people don't have time nowadays - time has somehow shrunk to the point of near disappearance. It's not an accusation, it's just an observation, a fact of life. But once in a while a wormhole to another existence opens where there is still time to read a whole story, not sure how but some people seem to be able to. Alien tech?
> time has somehow shrunk to the point of near disappearance
"The Magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873. Their splendor lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city. In those days, the only public conveyance was the street car. A lady could whistle to it from an upstairs window, and the car would halt and wait as she shut the window, went downstairs, put on her hat, found an umbrella and told the girl what to have for dinner. Too slow for us nowadays, for the faster we are carried, the less time we have to spare."
I thought about why I'd want an AI summary or even a human-made summary of a long text and realized there's a deep wrongness this need stems from..
I like a summary so I can know if I like the article and agree with it. If I would like and agree with the summary (thus reinforcing my worldview) I'll most likely read the whole article. If the summary is uninteresting or does not support my worldview, I'm more likely to skip the article.
And this is the grave problem of the matter. I'm selecting things to read and learn about that I am already familiar with and agree to. That's no way to learn new things and new perspectives. This action repeated over many times over many days and years leads to a person who's very closed minded and starts to think of themselves as the main character of their reality. I'm noticing that in myself and it's really hard not to do.
I can add a use-case for that. I'm trying to read Joe Dispenza "Breaking a Habit of Being Yourself". The book starts with Joe Dispenza views on a quantum nature of our world, and I see that the author knows about quantum even less then me. Moreover he tries to make me to believe in something similar to Philip K. Dick, except everything unexplainable is explained not by references to Holy Spirit, but by slipping a word "quantum" somewhere in a sentence. He kinda believe in a magic world where you can change the world by thinking hard about the desired change, but instead of "magic" he says "quantum". Sometimes he uses word "quantum" twice in one sentence.
It was bad enough so I was fighting my desire to stop reading the book and to never try it again. I persisted because his bullshit was far outside of his supposed area of expertise and I thought he could become better when he gets to a point. But then Dispenza refers to a study showing that you can change past with a prayer: if you pray for a random sample of patients from a decade ago, then this random sample does better than a general population[1]. Then he refers to a study showing that people can unwound DNA by a force of mind[2]. Dispenza starts his book by asking a reader to keep an open mind, but there are limits of mind openness, and if you go beyond the limits then what is the point of having a mind? Am I ready to break a habit of being myself and start believing in bullshit?
After I'd found [1] and [2] with a search engine, I searched for Joe Dispenza. He is not a neuroscientist but a fraud[3]. I think I need to make my fraud detector more sensitive. But the point is: if I had an AI summary, I'd probably never wasted my time trying to read the book. Though I'd better get from an AI not a summary, but a chat, so I could ask questions about the book and get answers (was it a butler who did this? lol).
Btw, reading Philip K. Dick I noticed that I can read through such a concentrated bullshit without fighting an urge to stop wasting my time. I'm still thinking what is the key difference in my attitude to different authors. For now I think it is about my expectations: Philip K. Dick started with a question what is real, and so I'm happy to give him a license to talk some bullshit, while I expect from a scientist to have beliefs compatible with science.
I was curious how well it would work, so here's the summarize result from Kagi:
Philip K. Dick explores questions about what is real and how reality can be manipulated through advanced technology and propaganda. He is fascinated by these topics and writes fiction exploring them.
Dick believes that bombardment by fake realities can turn people into "spurious humans" who no longer know what is real. Fake realities breed fake humans.
Scenes and elements from Dick's novels sometimes mirrored or predicted real events, even though he did not intend them to. This included mirroring biblical stories which he was unfamiliar with.
Dick had vivid experiences where he seemed to relive or foresee scenes from his own novels, like a man hiding behind a tree outside his home.
He wonders if our universe started as an illusion but God is slowly making it real through love and wisdom.
Manipulating words is a powerful tool for manipulating reality, as George Orwell showed in 1984.
Reality and fiction blur together, with fiction mimicking truth and truth mimicking fiction.
Ancient philosophers like Heraclitus, Xenophanes and others had insightful views on reality and God's role that modern people simplify.
Ordinary people say no to tyrants through small acts of resistance like Dick mailing a fortune cookie slip to the White House.
A metal lantern Dick was given echoed the shape of a fish, reminding him of biblical stories in strange ways.
Fascinating! Kagi managed to automatically omit and abstract away all the Christian-specific perspective leaving us with something purely deist in its presentation.
I wonder if that’s a coincidence, or something inherent in the way LLM synthesizes word frequencies from the trainer’s chosen corpus that leads to that tendency/outcome.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Great quote.
So great I even posted it to my twitter account (my other bookmarking service)
But the paste dropped the end quote mark and added a comma to the front.
HN did not and did the above paste just fine.
But the quote is only great on one level. If we give it some thought it is not so great. Why?
Because our mind evolved as a tool for survival of our self which is to say as a tool for survival of that which may pass on the genes which create said mind.
This mind is, by default, full of illusions, full of a particularly biased view of the world and the content of that view does not go away when we stop believing in it and looks to us just like reality.
This is the whole point of meditation, but even if you do not believe in meditation yet, it can be observed in yourself and in others.
In short the statement is only true for the rather small subset of things that can be scientifically investigated and on that level beliefs are not a category of concern anyway. It‘s a statement about the content of the world without an observer, but the observer-world interface is the more interesting part, the observer cannot be removed and any beliefs come from the observer in the first place.
Only physical facts that do not affect our subjective consciousness. For example if the earth is flat or round.
Actually, let me make a stronger statement than before: Even for scientific facts the statement is weak. If I stop believing that the world is round, then what does it mean that the „roundness“ will not go away? From my point of view it certainly goes away and the world _will be_ flat. In order to accept that it is, objectively, not flat I have to accept other information, often information that I do not check or verify myself.
But subjectively, if I really stop believing the world is round then for sure it will start to feel flat.
So this criterion is not a good one.
I think it only is useful in the world of „succeeding“. So for example I may believe that a vaccination is dangerous and as a consequence I may die if unvaccinated. This is an example of reality not going away. Or I may believe that I can pass a test without studying but then I don‘t and so that‘s reality, again.
That just means beliefs about things that do not or will not ever affect you, er, don’t affect you. It seems like a trivial point.
You’re still accumulating risk though. You don’t know when a false belief will lead yo to make a consequential error, and also false beliefs could lead you to adopt faulty attitudes or ways of thinking that could lead you towards false beliefs in consequential ways. Or you could propagate such false beliefs to others, which may be consequential for them.
It‘s not more trivial than „Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.“ which is a useless criterion even for scientific facts.
What you‘re suggesting about a false belief is an „unknown unknown“ so again the criteria of the quote is pretty useless in practice.
> From my point of view it certainly goes away and the world _will be_ flat.
No, it simply means that you will start to build on a flawed premise and will run into the limitations of your knowledge sooner rather than later. Being informed about the world allows you to make better decisions and to reach further in the achievement of your goals. That is why the scientific method is so successful and why science and not obstinacy has driven us forward further in the last 500 years than in all of the preceding millennia together.
Things that can't be scientifically verified (i.e. can it make predictions and are predictions falsifiable), goes especially for things that require several test universes to test out.
For example what is the purpose of the universe? Is this the only universe? Is it a simulation? Is everything predetermined?
If it would be, we could scientifically test for the limits of the experimentation model.
You can say, all of science is doing this effectivly. So far, no flaws have been found. If there were flaws, then within our models, so we adapt them, systematically approaching reality.
Now sure, if there would be an allmighty god, we would have no chance proofing him or her, that is tautological. But if it would be "just" aliens of a higher level, doing rat lab experiments with our universe, we could figure that out eventually.
I think one way to falsify simulation hypothesis, assuming universe running simulation have similar physics, is by finding limits of computation required to run the simulation, at some point we can find a bug or a glitch
> It‘s a statement about the content of the world without an observer, but the observer-world interface is the more interesting part, the observer cannot be removed and any beliefs come from the observer in the first place.
It’s literally a statement ABOUT the observer-world interface. In general, assuming anything from Dick is pedestrian is kind of foolish.
Well that‘s exactly why I‘m criticizing that statement. It places an undue amount of trust in the state of our mind regardless of what that state may be at any time and calls that truth.
We can safely drop "biased" from the quote, because an unbiased view is a mirror. A useless thing.
> statement is only true for the rather small subset of things that can be scientifically investigated
Science is not a reality, it is one more view of a reality. It is easy to see if you look at the history of science. Scientific beliefs come to be replaced by others. Phlogiston is not real, it existed as a scientific belief, but ceased to exist when the belief was debunked.
> the observer cannot be removed and any beliefs come from the observer in the first place.
Yes, we cannot talk about reality without being observers of reality. We cannot talk about reality itself, we talk about beliefs/illusions/whatever.
> even if you do not believe in meditation yet, it can be observed in yourself and in others.
I do not believe in it, I tried it and what I believe it is impossible and people fake it. It is real but as a myth: I do not believe in this myth but it exists nevertheless, so it is real.
> the observer cannot be removed
Doesn't it mean that reality doesn't exist without an observer?
> I do not believe in it, I tried it and what I believe it is impossible and people fake it. It is real but as a myth: I do not believe in this myth but it exists nevertheless, so it is real.
I agree with your second point, but not with the first point. How is it impossible? Just sit and observe. _That_ is certainly possible. So you seem to imply that the experience was not what you expected it to be so I need to ask: What did you expect it to be?
> Doesn't it mean that reality doesn't exist without an observer?
No, it only means that observations cannot be made without an observer.
You cannot make observations without an observer. Furthermore any imagined world without an observer is necessarily largely shaped by that very observer who imagines it.
>Because our mind evolved as a tool for survival of our self which is to say as a tool for survival of that which may pass on the genes which create said mind.
That is probably one of the most heavily chemically driven attractions I would say, even. There is a very high evolutionary demand for stopping people from abandoning their screaming, smelling, sleep depriving child.
Well uh.. yeah that's an excellent point. I suppose it would make everything real since otherwise it wouldn't exist at all.
If we make the hard distinction with subjective experiences vs. objective observations, then I suppose love isn't real. But there are still people and animals doing actions that objectively count as love regardless of their subjective experience of it. I suppose it again depends on the definition. Like, if you had a bunch of robots programmed to act with deep affection towards each other, does that qualify? I'm not sure.
In the given example you may choose to believe that slapping others' children is acceptable but when you do so you're going to experience physical violence and no amount of belief is going to change that.
In this manner, love is real because the consequences are real.
If I stop believing in love, and you experience love, then clearly love has not gone away when I stopped believing in it, unless I’m missing something?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Great quote.
I've always liked this one:
"I substitute your view of reality for my own."
This is true in so many ways. The world as I see it, is not what it is: at most, it is reality, as perceived by my senses, processed by my brain. Which are different from someone else's.
So even if that underlying reality is the same (the simplest assumption), then your view & my view of it are different.
This holds even in science: if 2 scientists take a measurement from the same object, using 2 different instruments, what they're recording is not the object's state, but its effect on the instrument measuring it. Worse: not even that, but the state of that instrument, as perceived by the scientist's senses & processed by their brain. Worse: that processing converted back into words, or writings, and perceived by someone else hearing or reading those.
Now of course science is extremely good at making such measurements match. 2 Scientists may read the same instrument, or each other's. One may take the scientist out of the equation by having the instrument record directly. But in this case it's 'the instrument's view of reality' that it records. You have replaced a scientist + their instrument with an instrument alone. An experiment may be set up such, that [whatever is measured] & instrument measuring it, are considered to be the same. But it doesn't do away with the fundamental problem: reality passing through layers & layers of filtering and perception.
That is: if underlying reality is the same for all of us. Occam's razor would say so, and it seems very likely, but again this is fundamentally an assumption.
That said: what most of us can agree on after objective measurements using well designed instruments, photographs, comparing notes etc, is good enough for me. When I walk through a forest & smell the air, feel free to perceive that forest in whatever is your view of reality. Just don't try to convince me that forest isn't there or doesn't have a smell. I'll see a doctor when I think my eyes, nose or brain isn't working properly, thank you very much!
Reality is what people with power and influence agree it is.
Sometimes - as in science - many of those people are trying to understand it in good faith. The output is still subjective in the sense that it's filtered through the limitations of human perception and cognition. But it's reliable and consistent for most humans.
Sometimes - as in politics, religion, and economics - "reality" is a story told by actors with vested interests, usually promoted for their own benefit.
>Reality is what people with power and influence agree it is.
The Great Heresiarchs of Phantaz agreed that the binding of men to Earth was such that the rational mind would allow one to be free of it, and to defy even gravity if such was the desire.
Confirmed in the correctness of their philosophy they walked as a group off the great cliff of Meresyp.
Unfortunately their ideas did not die with them, for ideas are immortal whereas men are not.
It's funny that this has become a sort of slogan for tough-nosed agnosticism, when you look at the rest of the context of the essay. The consequences of his wild experiences didn't go away, despite his attempts at "not believing in them" (give more prosaic, less cosmic explanations for them, something he definitively tried).
You could of course say that he failed to disbelieve in them, and that if he'd succeeded it would have gone away, but I suspect PKD could no more choose to disbelieve in the famous "pink space laser" than he could disbelieve in having a nose in the middle of his face.
> “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Funny thing is that it seems to apply to intersubjective phenomena too. For example, a "limited liability corporation" is made entirely out of shared delusions of people, but is a real thing under this quote, in the sense that it remains even if you or I stop believing in it. However, if sufficiently many people stop believing at once, it will go away.
(And so will things like money, rule of law, or civilization.)
Even if all humans suddenly vanished, many artifacts for those "beliefs" will remain: coins and bills will still be there, and the documents, books, and computer data with laws and LLC documentation will still be there too. So I don't see how you can call them a "shared delusion"; they're real things that people invented, though ultimately they're just shared agreements backed up by some kind of documentation rather than word-of-mouth communication.
The ideas that "homosexuality is perfectly ok" (in some societies) or "homosexuality is horrible and those who practice it must be punished or even murdered" (in some other societies) are shared "delusions" (aka "ideas" or "opinions"), though these ideas usually also result in actual laws (written in books). So I guess you could say that peoples' shared "delusions" (ideas) about how a society should operate are then codified and written down in the form of laws to be used to enforce those ideas on others.
Even casually throughout his stories. There's a great scene in Ubik where a group plans a heist and the there's a weird shift in reality just in the middle of a conversation basically.
Dick was fantastic at creating these disorienting, unnerving situations.
I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos.
However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart.
I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem.
I have a secret love of chaos.
There should be more of it.
Do not believe — and I am dead serious when I say this — do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe.
If you like Pkd you should for sure read Borges work. He wrote a lot about this. Labyrinths is a great collection of his work lots of world building that falls apart.
"But the problem is a real one, not a mere intellectual game. Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups — and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener."
""" The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows
what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing
it. He will refuse to do it, even if this brings down dread
consequences to him and to those whom he loves. This, to me, is
the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to
the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this
resistance. Their deeds may be small, and almost always
unnoticed, unmarked by history. Their names are not remembered,
nor did these authentic humans expect their names to be
remembered. I see their authenticity in an odd way: not in
their willingness to perform great heroic deeds but in their
quiet refusals. In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what
they are not. - P.K Dick """
This underpins my selective abstinence from certain areas of
technological life. It lets me laugh at "inevitability" and
"necessity, fear no "inconvenience" or being "left behind" or "out of
the loop", and I could hardly care less that some others have a
"competitive advantage". " I simply follow my own path, using the
tools that work for me, the ones I understand, as I see fit for my own
aims. And I feel oddly happy that most of what I do, my parochial
craft, will be washed away and forgotten.
But (quietly and not that it matters), I also suspect that such an
"authentic" attitude is something the great organising Moloch machine
shits its pants in fear of, because the authentic human cannot coexist
with it and thus requires its destruction.
It's the mirror image to "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.". Unfortunately history has taught us that P.K. Dick's view is rarely the prevailing one and that even if plenty of people are exactly like that too many of them are not and they will happily do that which they instinctively know they should not do. Especially if there is money or authority involved.
Subtle difference, Dick's statement doesn't say that "good men should do nothing", but that "good men should refuse to do bad things". Setting boundaries, in other words.
> Unfortunately history has taught us... the prevailing plenty of
people will happily do that which they instinctively know they
should not do ... if there is money or authority involved.
The authentic human escapes this, for s/he does not care one jot what
the "plenty" think, feel or do. Not out of callousness, indifference
or individual narcissism/solipsism, or even because authenticity
exists despite and outside of that frame - but that it flourishes
through and in it.
Sartre put is as; "One always has a choice". It's an existential truth
that even if you are on your knees in front of a ditch, with a gun to
your head and the choice "comply and live, or die on principle", you
can always choose to die. That's the essence of choice, not a mere
toss up between two picnics.
And once that threshold of understanding is passed -- that _choice_ is
the one thing that cannot be taken from you -- it is possible to see
further into Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" and "Sickness Unto
Death", in which that choice allows one to become not merely a gadfly
but "an error, stubbornly and indelibly written into the text of
consensual reality... one that refuses to be erased". The harder the
system scratches at it the more the itch spreads.
Obviously there's a lot of Christianity at the base of this, and
returning to the GP, P. K. Dick is clearly immersed in that. Maybe
that says Christianity is still a relevant religion in the
technological age? I also find it bizarre that Nietzsche, who saw
Christianity as mere bloody-minded resentment, still arrived at the
same basic idea of all-too-human authenticity. So it goes deep.
Every age is a technological age. The technology (per se) of a paleolithic human is no less complex and involved that the technology of today.
Technology is about process and supply chain complexity, not knowledge. The paleolithic human was short on knowledge, but their supply chains were as global, complex and fragile as the ones we have today.
I think in 1800 you would have got away with that argument. But for
me, living after 2000, when I say "technological age" I'm speaking of
the Anthropocene [0].
There's a qualitative difference of systematic complexity.
My point is: 'authentic humans' are in short supply, we have the real ones instead and that's what we should deal with. How theoretically authentic humans behave in books of SF authors isn't going to make a huge difference if in the real world such role models are few and far between especially if we count on their numbers to make up the difference between their individual powers and those wielded by your average ruler.
That's why you can keep a society of millions under control with only a few tens of thousands of dedicated assholes.
So, by giving that example you show that you have not understood anything of the discussion so far.
Let me spell it out: that's the defining moment of Tank Man's life, you have zero clue about what happened prior to that moment. And that's because really nobody seems to have a clue about who he really was, what his life was like up to that moment and so on. It's a singular act of bravery and one that I very much feel moved by. But I have zero illusion that Tank Man's life was nothing but an endless succession of moments like these where at every opportunity he did the right thing. And that's perfectly normal, doesn't make him any less, in fact it makes him more: because ordinary people making an actually stand when it matters is very powerful, no matter what their lives were like up to that point.
How exactly are you defining "authentic human"? It sounds like you're defining it as someone who always does the right thing without exception, who of course doesn't exist, QED.
What point are you trying to make, actually? Your argument seems to be that "authentic humans," however that's defined, are not just rare but nonexistent, even if other quietly heroic people who fill the same role do exist. I'm not sure what end you're trying to reach here.
The key sentence in TFA is "In essence, they cannot be compelled to be what they are not.". That's a highly theoretical argument and I simply differ of opinion. In essence everybody can be compelled to be what they are not, all it takes is the right circumstances and your Saint will be a sinner and the other way around.
I'm far more interested in the interplay between people and their circumstances than I am in labeling a particular human as authentic or not, it smacks of a value judgment in a vacuum, whereas IRL there is no such thing.
I gave an example of someone who stood up despite the consequences and did so in anonymity.
Your problem is that you stated such people don't exist despite the vast historical evidence to the contrary. Hitler's own officers wanted to kill him. Think about Harriet Tubman, or the underground railway. ad nauseum.
Let's be charitable and steelman your parent comment, and Tank Man too
(quite literally).
Character is important.
As you say we don't know much about Tank Man. It was probably more
than the defining moment of his life, it was the last day of it.
Isn't it fair to assume that whatever led up to that moment was a life
lived in good character? He may not have lived as an exemplar of
"authenticity", and if it was only a moment in an otherwise selfish
and wasted life, like those "city businessmen" who spontaneously jump
onto a subway track to save a child, we agree it doesn't that subtract
from the authenticity of the act?
As we say around here "carefully pick your hill to die on". But
there's more to the picking than a rash decision in a single moment.
There's everything that built that character too, no?
Yes, which is more or less the whole point of this argument: nobody's perfect, but people can be 'on average' good; but that's not the same as equating them with saints, it just isn't realistic (and even the saints aren't saints in terms of absolute, they are just declared to be so, by people who themselves too are very much flawed).
So let's not resort to theoretical absolutes. I don't know where 'here' is but every culture has similar idioms but at the same time every culture has something about being careful about meeting your heroes.
Would it be impolite to ask if you consider yourself one of these authentic humans?
At least to me the entire sentiment seems to fall into 'no true Scotsman' territory under any individual scrutiny. If we take someone's life apart and look at the individual pieces you'll find authentic and inauthentic moments everywhere.
That's exactly it. Authentic humans are a theoretical construct and there isn't a single real world example of such a being. But on a moment-to-moment basis it has some validity, but even there it should be qualified in that the judgment of 'authenticity' is in itself to a large degree in the eye of the beholder.
“Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? You know, I think you’re taking a lot of things for granted. Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us?”
> Would it be impolite to ask if you consider yourself one of these
authentic humans?
I wouldn't consider it impolite, but would say it's an unproductive
question like all such questions of "identity" that unravel in the
slightest breeze.
Perhaps a useful concept is the Hegelian take on "freedom"; that in
any epoch freedom is defined by the will to overcome the obstacles one
faces. There is no firmer definition of it than "intent".
A better modern word might be "lifestance" [0], a word I learned from
hanging around with Rationalist/Humanist thinkers.
And here's what I think is a beautiful lifestance quote;
""" Act as though you are free, you might get lucky. You might be
free, who knows! Act that way it's worth trying! -- Rick
Roderick """
> At least to me the entire sentiment seems to fall into 'no true Scotsman' territory under any individual scrutiny. If we take someone's life apart and look at the individual pieces you'll find authentic and inauthentic moments everywhere.
The Christian theological view[0] is that no human is perfect (or good), and it is essentially impossible to be perfectly good, but God still wants us to try to be as perfect as we can humanly can.
The most relevant verses on the idea that we are not good is likely Romans chapter 3, starting from verse 9:
What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away, they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. -- Jesus, in Matthew 5:48
Our inauthentic self is forgiven via Christ's sacrifice, which permits us to partake of the new life/creation promised. On the New Creation, see Revelation 21.
Actually this thread inspired me to go read Ecclesiastes again, and
ponder "vanity of wisdom". That's a real mindfuck for seekers of
wisdom (as scientists and the like), but I get it, hopefully never too
late in life. cheers
Nah, Moloch loves the "authentic" humans, because they can be bullshitted into doing anything. Yes, they'll resist any direct attempts at telling them how to live their lives - but they'll do that as much to a tyrant, as to their democratic representatives, or their own community. Inertia is not a virtue - neither for an object, nor for a human.
The way against "authentic" humans' resistance/reactance is something Moloch figured out long ago: take it slow, manipulate their beliefs about themselves and the world. This even scales better than tyranny. Marketers and advertisers know and use this. Politicians and activists and religious leaders know and use this. "Authentic" humans will follow their intuition off a cliff if you make them believe it'll make them feel safe, or fulfill their lust. Easy when you're also responsible for instilling fear and/or desire in them in the first place.
Unfortunately, most humans don't seem to have a good idea of how feedback loops work, they get stuck focusing on a single leg of them "they hurt me, I must get my revenge" instead of noticing the other leg and self-reinforcing nature of the phenomenon "I get my revenge, they feel hurt and now hurt me to get their revenge, ad infinitum".
And Moloch is a personification of a large system of feedback loops.
That's to say - most humans - and therefore, most "authentic" humans - have trouble recognizing Moloch is a thing in the first place.
(FWIW, I don't think it's an issue of capabilities, but rather, of education. Some basics of feedback control should be covered in elementary education, instead of specialized university degrees.)
But you're right, the ability to see how a great network of systems
and subsystems, all trying to make things better, can add up to a
lethal "trap" with its own perverse intelligence (I quite like the Adam
Curtis slant) is elusive.
>Inertia is not a virtue - neither for an object, nor for a human.
What Dick describes is the opposite of inertia.
It takes internal resolve (and force) to stand against all the forces pressuring them to do the wrong thing. Inertia would instead just go with the flow of power -- the path of least resistance that's more comfortamble.
>The way against "authentic" humans' resistance/reactance is something Moloch figured out long ago: take it slow, manipulate their beliefs about themselves and the world
History has shown that the worst culprits are not the "authentic humans" but the self-assured smart-asses. The masses might go for this or that BS ocassionally, but it's the "supermen" that promote it and set the terms.
Then again what IS "authenticity"? It depends on your values. It really teeters on the fact that we all deep down share some common goal. Extend all human life? Increase all human happiness? Or maybe just increase my groups happiness? Or just increase my own? "Authenticity" is a buzzword that is more akin to "consistency". You don't flip flop between various values. But then there's the meta-flip flopping of values. Is your MAIN value the ability to BE flexible? That's you're main value and in pursuit of that, you flip flop between many different values as time goes on. To most, you'd appear as in-authentic. To yourself, you'd appear like you're following the same straight and narrow path you always have because you're considering the higher level value you're pursuing.
I'd say that authenticity is actually independent of values (maybe
you're saying that too).
A problem is that one could be an authentic mass murderer.
Bare authenticity alone is insufficient for moral good.
Indeed it may not even be necessary by some moral theories.
But, in saying I value authenticity, I am not claiming
to be moral or right.
I could very well be horribly wrong in everything I think about
technology - a monstrous throwback holding humanity from blessed
Utopia. Time will tell. Meanwhile "authenticity" remains a value I
aspire to.
> Inertia would instead just go with the flow of power
No, inertia is specifically the characteristic of matter to continue in its current state, not the characteristic of not pushing back against another force.
If a stationary object is suddenly pushed by a force, inertia is the property that resists moving.
>No, inertia is specifically the characteristic of matter to continue in its current state, not the characteristic of not pushing back against another force.
In any case, we're not going for physics here, but for parable. After all inertia is not Dick's word for this, it's the [thread's] parent's.
Dick's point is: ordinary people are often the real heroes, not asking to the recognition as heroes nor through doing conventional heroic acts, but through resisting doing a bad thing they're asked to do, when it would be easier to just comply and follow the flow (where the flow is the society/order/army/historical flow towards some bad path).
> Inertia is not a virtue - neither for an object, nor for a human
because inertia is unavoidable. a fact of nature, it's useless to try to judge it as good or bad; however we all do this. and after trying to do this, we all eventually learn that inertia is unrelated to virtue and that everything will be affected by inertia
is this good? or bad? is this a virtue? or a vice? good for subjects? bad for objects?
the answer is no all the way until one realizes that it doesn't matter. it'll still be inertia
I find the worst actors to be the ones that try and fill with you with so much cynicism and mistrust that the "authentic humans" feel debased and consequently second-guess themselves.
It's a fascinating and disturbing phenomenon. FWIW, here's a
discussion/interview I had with a psychologist [0] about why, for
exmaple, some people will say "Privacy is dead. Give up hope. There's
nothing you can do..." yada yada...
And the less they know about the subject technically, the more
insistent and outspoken they are on the matter. It's bugged me for
ages what's behind this, because there's more than Dunning-Kruger
going on.
She names a possible root as "conflict avoidance".
The most vocal denouncers are in fact the most frightened. What they
don't want to face is that they might have to do something, because
that could be dangerous in their minds.
Bear in mind that this was written in 1969. Smart doorknobs were not a thing then, but PKD went right to the "pay per use", a robot programmed to lawfully exploit the common guy, situation.
Humans don't have instincts. That's what separates us from the other, lower animals.
P.S. Urges, drives and desires aren't instincts.
P.P.S. Technically not true, the human being has a couple instincts related to breastfeeding, but they are supposed to disappear after a couple months in a healthy human baby.
Sexual arousal is part of the procreation mechanism, and thus I (not a psychologist) will classify it as instinct. I can think of many different feelings as instinct. When I see my gf crying, I don't 'think' to hug her, I instinctively hug her. When your friend walks two steps ahead of you and falls down, you don't stop to think and feel, you instinctively grab them.
Humans very obviously have instincts, not least because it's humans who invented the concept. You might better argue that it's only humans who differentiate their behaviours so they consider some that are not instinctual.
The "authentic human" sounds like the No True Scotman's Fallacy. One person's authentic may not match another's, yet both are equally authentic. As a case in point, consider vegetarians. Are those who eat animals somehow "inauthentic", even if they agree on every other aspect with other authentic individuals?
Is authenticity externally determined, or internally determined? Is there an external objective or universal standard of authenticity, or is it more of an internal integrity or trueness to one's self-determined values? Or a blend of both?
If it is internally determined, then an objective measure cannot be known to exist. That's the contention I have with the author's thesis, as the author is assuming external/objective authenticity. As an example, consider Hannibal Lecter: Certainly authentic to his self-determined values, yet not compatible with the author's view of authenticity, and would be considered a "bad person" by the rest of humanity.
The great organizing Moloch is really just natural selection, when you think about it. It doesn't particularly care about life or happiness, but at the same time life wouldn't exist without it. I wouldn't say it is afraid of anything, even metaphorically, because it is the very process by which anything prevails over anything else. We only call this process Moloch because we have trouble accepting its amorality.
"In Acts, the disciple Philip baptizes the black man, who then goes away rejoicing. "
These days preaching has been replaced by podcasts. We listen to the new prophets and are baptised when we click on the Subscribe button, rejoicing our newly acquired view of the world
What's the deal with the "headline ... in a California newspaper", "Scientists say that mice cannot be made to look like human beings"? Is this referencing some actual thing or did he just make it up?
I wonder how many of the people commenting on this essay read all the way through. It starts out quite lucid and makes some seemingly insightful points, but as the essay goes on he starts to descend into some strange metaphysical ideas about time not being real and reality being a retelling of parts of the Bible.
I’m not familiar with much of PKD’s works or his life story, but I honestly can’t tell if he had mental health problems or if this essay is supposed to be a sort of self-aware self-referential story about reality breaking down.
> I honestly can’t tell if he had mental health problems or if this essay is supposed to be a sort of self-aware self-referential story about reality breaking down.
Yes.
Less ellipticaly, Dick abused drugs at various points in his life and definitely struggled with his mental health.
He also had mystical experiences that massively influenced his view of reality (beyond just the ones mentioned in this essay, actually - he reported a pink laser telling him his son had a deadly illness, which turned out to be true when he took his son to the hospital, IIRC).
Whether those facts are all the same thing is left as a nontrivial exercise for the reader.
It seems obvious to me that Dick was very aware of the amorphous unverifiability of so many of his life experiences, and that he loved to write about precisely the intersection of such nebulous experiences and the fact that reality is "that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
He seems to have understood better than most that the standard he defined says nothing about falsifiability or knowability. Many possible things could in fact be part of reality without being knowable or falsifiable.
I think our fundamental inability to Know Reality is precisely the theme of most of Dick's glorious fever-dream fiction.
> I’m not familiar with much of PKD’s works or his life story, but I honestly can’t tell if he had mental health problems
Oh he almost certainly had mental health problems. He experienced hallucinations and delusions[1], including an intelligent pink beam of light. He wrote about some of these in an autobiographical way in VALIS[2].
> who the heck knows what is even real. We're here now, whatever this is. YOLO.
I don't disagree, but in this essay PKD seems to say that there is no objective reality, rather everybody has their own experiential reality that is at most somewhat connected to others' experiential realities.
This is a far cry from saying, as I believe, that there is an objective reality and we each experience it subjectively and with whatever fidelity to the underlying reality we're capable of.
The former view seems a lot more hopeless / nihilistic -- what's the point of striving for anything if it mostly only affects our own reality?
For me it’s selfish reasons I guess and I think it’s like that for all life. If it is indeed my reality then I’m gonna do everything and anything to make that reality work for me. But I’m a good person (definition mine) so I operate in a way that is synergy with others.
Why sit on the sidelines when I’m the main subject of the movie or book or whatever this thing my brain is rendering for me
The genre of Hard Science fiction means that the author has enough background knowledge that the physics of the plot and world building is reasonably sound
What's interesting is that early on he talks about when you watch TV the "Words and pictures are synchronized." - then both the Bible quotes and his quoted story have a rhythm, rhyme and alliteration in which to do the same.
I found myself half way through the passages and I've stopped paying direct attention.
He's re-writing our view of the universe by hypnotizing us.
Like any good magician, he's told us the trick, right at the beginning. Like Romeo and Juliet or the opening song of Frozen - and we immediately forgot it - and then we were tricked anyway!
“There must indeed be a mysterious Holy Spirit which has an exact and intimate relation to Christ, which can indwell in human minds, guide and inform them, and even express itself through those humans, even without their awareness.”
When I finally realized this for myself I was rather shocked, not in a bad way, but it surprised me that it hadn’t been talked about more before I came face to face with it… God and Christ are the most well known and “perceivable” when people think of church literature yet ironically the Holy Spirit is the most accessible and influential of the three in the present reality. It wasn’t until I experienced it that I looked back and understood, as if it’s something that can’t be taught in the slightest, to any degree comparable to when the actual manifestation of that indwelling reveals itself.
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