Comment on How do I make myself smarter?
kakes@sh.itjust.works 11 months agoStep two: Try not to be so pretentious and closed-minded.
Being “smart” comes from the ability to see the world from other perspectives. Perspective is the gift books give us, and the reason you’ll get “smarter” from reading them. You gain nothing from taking the easy route and writing these sorts of things off as “beneath you.”
cameron_vale@lemm.ee 11 months ago
right back at you
kakes@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
If you’re truly looking for some grand “Truth” of the world, the only people that can provide that to you are religions and con-men. So my honest advice in that case would be to go to your choice of religious gathering and talk to the people there.
cameron_vale@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Not looking for truth so much as a method for getting truth. Even the finest logic is only as good as its assumptions. And even the finest ideas are just ideas.
kakes@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
At the end of the day, you’re right - we can only perceive the world from our own flawed perspective. There’s no guarantee to anything, hence Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes struggled with the same foundational thoughts about the world that you seem to be struggling with, and he wrote books to pass on his conclusions to us.
There are, in fact, many people that have had these same struggles throughout history, and there are whole branches of philosophy and logic to address exactly what you’re talking about here.
But the only way to learn what they’ve found is to read what they wrote (or I guess to consume some other media explaining it).
It’s your refusal to seek out and accept this knowledge that makes me worry that you may have symptoms of schizophrenia. I know people dealing with this, and the way you talk about the world being “illusions” and your desire to be “smart” (using an alternative definition) sounds exactly like something they might say. I’m not trying to be an asshole, I just want you to be aware it might be worth looking into, just in case.
That, or you’re 14. I guess that could also do it.