Alexandr Dugin
This is an Aurelian take on Alexandr Dugin. Alexandr Dugin is a controversial Russian political philosopher known for his neo-Eurasianist views and deep influence on Russian geopolitics. Introducing Alexandr Dugin Alexandr Dugin is a prominent Russian philosopher, political analyst, and strategist. Born in 1962, he is best known for his advocacy of the “Eurasianist” ideology, Read the full article…
Martin Heidegger
This is an Aurelian take on Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher known for his work in existentialism and phenomenology. He explored the concept of “Being” and its significance to human existence, emphasizing the importance of authenticity and the confrontation with our own mortality. Introducing Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger was a 20th-century German philosopher, widely recognized Read the full article…
Jacques Derrida
This is an Aurelian take on Jacques Derrida, a philosopher best known for developing deconstruction. Derrida challenges traditional ideas about certainty, identity, and truth. His approach invites us to question our perceptions and understandings, aligning with Aurelian principles of openness and depth. Introducing Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida was a 20th-century French philosopher who founded the Read the full article…
Maya Angelou
This is an Aurelian take on Maya Angelou, a remarkable figure whose life and works embody the essence of human depth, resilience, and the transcendent power of words. Her journey from adversity to acclaim offers profound insights into the human condition, inviting us to explore the depths of our own inner strength. Introducing Maya Angelou Read the full article…
Can Stress Cause MS?
MS = Multiple Sclerosis, an autoimmune disorder that specifically affects the brain and spinal cord. Its symptoms and prognosis are pretty diverse, making causal research challenging but not impossible. According to the National MS Society, almost one million people are living with MS in the United States. Most are diagnosed between the ages of 20 Read the full article…
Is History against Humanity?
History shows how we got here, not how we should go on. We need to apply what we may learn from the past to a future that will be radically different ― probably most so through the advent of super-A.I. For humanity, business as usual may not be enough to make it through. This may Read the full article…
The Absurd Simplicity of War
Two armies fight each other. Both see the other side’s fighters as mortal enemies for eventually no reason but perchance being on the other side. That’s not rational. It’s absurd, even more so because it seems reasonable to most people (soldiers and civilians) on both sides. It’s simple. Seen from any of the two parties, Read the full article…
Importance of Symbolic Reality
In the West, most people live in a rather exclusively conceptual (view upon) reality. The negligence of the symbolic (view upon) reality leads to mental impoverishment and suffering. Symbolic reality is everywhere. This is because complexity is everywhere. That makes reality (the human environment) too intractable for merely conceptual communication in both directions. This means Read the full article…
Quality of Depth
Most people would agree that ‘quality of depth’ is profoundly relevant to them personally. At the same time, many may disagree about what it entails. It’s a challenging concept. It’s already challenging to grasp ‘human depth’ since subconceptual processing – therefore also the difficulty to conceptually get it – is an inextricable feature. ‘Deep’ itself Read the full article…
Many Intelligences
Intelligence can take many forms to such a diverse degree that talking about many intelligences is appropriate. Where does this thinking lead us to? This is not a discussion about whether or not there is ‘plant intelligence.’ More important is the thinking about your intelligence. Are you simply a being that enjoys the ‘phenomenon of Read the full article…
How Compassion Leads to Motivation
Compassion changes people from the inside out as nothing else does. If you haven’t done so yet, then please read about Compassion, basically before continuing. From the inside out True motivation starts deep inside — this is, with broadly distributed mental-neuronal patterns (MNPs) acting in parallel. In Compassion, we see substantially more overlap of MNPs Read the full article…
From Compression to Prediction
Compressing information can intriguingly lead to enhanced predictive capabilities. This general scheme is recognizable in many contexts ― organic and artificial. Life itself Life can be understood as a local defense against universal entropy (chaos or heightening of chaos). Within any bubble of life, there is a concentration of resources to this aim. At the Read the full article…
Believe in Your Self!
Unfortunately, many people are not inclined to deeply believe in their <Inner Strength>. Nevertheless, especially nowadays, global fate depends on it. This unbelief is not typical to a specific culture. Its ubiquity means that either: It’s a natural given, making people genetically predisposed to not believe in themselves. It’s a cultural thing in a general Read the full article…
The Path from Implicit to Explicit Knowledge
Implicit: It’s there, but we don’t readily know how, neither why it works. Explicit: We can readily follow each step. This is more or less the same move as from intractable to tractable or from competence to comprehension. But how? Emergence If something comes out, it must have been in ― one way or another. Read the full article…
When Enlightenment becomes Dark
Talking about Western Enlightenment, logically, things tend to become darker when pushing reason forward on a defunct view of the human being. You may already know I’m talking about the subconceptual level of mental processing. If you don’t, please make sure to first read some blogs about it. Smartness is not enough. Being able to Read the full article…
About Confabulation
Depending on how exact you want inferences to be, humans are born confabulators. Not surprisingly, we also see much confabulation in present-day generative pre-trained transformers (GPT). Confabulation is a look-alike but inexact information. Note that in the GPT field, this is nowadays called hallucination. Confabulation is inherent to mental ‘parallel distributed processing’ (PDP). Humans and Read the full article…
Parallel Distributed Processing
In the mental sphere, Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) is nature’s way to reach ever more complexity. It’s also the title of a phenomenal book (edited) by Rumelhart & McClelland, published in 1986 — my mind-opener a few years later. Much AURELIS-thinking started then. Subconceptual In PDP, the basic units of mental processing are not the Read the full article…