I plan to learn more about oriental philosophies aging 1000+ years. Frankly that seems to be more relevant to my daily life than ideologies from last century. Yes I see the major shifting from western philosophies to eastern philosophies in this century.

I disagree. Eastern philosophies existed a way before capitalism and communism. It bodes well with living in harmony with nature. And it doesn’t promote free meal or hunger for more power, either.

@stonebat

I disagree. Eastern philosophies existed a way before capitalism and communism. It bodes well with living in harmony with nature. And it doesn’t promote free meal or hunger for more power, either.

You are just beginning to research history of philosophies. All this old thingies actually promoted that had been nice for their ruling class. Some modern books try to drive away attention to it, as modern western ruling class found it nice way to channel educated guys into them during 60-70th years.

Confucianism was a bit for ruling classes. Tao Te Ching was not.

No one can engage fully in daily life and know what is really going on in the world at the same time. Especially in this time of rising AI, spending more time in philosophies can be more fulfilling than discussing more about one of many possibilities of future.

That may be true for western philosophies. But not true for eastern philosophies that have been ignored for many years.

Tao Te Ching says nature have things that cannot be described in words and it’s perfectly ok. Many things in life and nature are adjectives, not nouns.

See the fall sky. “Wow so blue.” That is perfect. One could describe autumn sky with gozillions of scientific terms and elements. But there are always some mysteries and unknowns, and one has to work relentlessly to find “it” which is often quite subjective. And opinions become convictions then conflicts then propaganda. If one can’t find their own convictions, life becomes meaningless then embraces post modernism cultures to find meaning out of seemingly chaotic world. That’s sad.

“So blue” is enough for me.

@stonebat

See the fall sky. “Wow so blue.”

It reminds me our our cult song that fits perfectly here

As long as braggarts live among the men,
We ought to praise our lucky fate no end!

Oh, such a blue sky makes me wonder,
We're not proponents of armed plunder:
For blowhard you don't need a knife,
Just let him hear your fawning fife,
And he is yours for life!

As long as avid folks pervade the lands,
We won't let our fortune out of hands!

Oh, such a blue sky makes me wonder,
We're not proponents of armed plunder:
For meanie you don't need a knife,
Just show him silver dime or five,
And he will sell his wife!

As long as fools exist, (Lord, bless their souls!)
Deception will be our way to roll!

Oh, such a blue sky makes me wonder,
We're not proponents of armed plunder:
To deal with fool a knife won't do,
Just tell him one tall tale or two
To make him fall for you!

Oh, such an azure sky above us,
These three live on, and fortune loves us.
Thank God, for they will never end,
And as they say, the game will tend
To walk straight into bag!

See how perfect the narrative and words fits the ruling class main purpose :-)

Suppose all those things have been lies. And you know damn well those are lies. 100% conviction! Zero doubt! Then what did you do today other than googling for finding more evidences to assure yourself so that you know you are right? And who cares if you are right or wrong other than yourself? I’m not saying you are necessarily wrong. But I’m pointing out the spiral cycle. This gets so complex.

I took a walk yesterday and saw the sky. So blue. Simple and true. There is nothing more or less to say. Nope I don’t need to google either, and I don’t need to work hard to convince anyone about sky being so blue.

The level of complexity I’m talking about is something like this

It got comments: “I want this guy to represent us when aliens show up” “This is like watching 100 Ted talks in one seating.”

When you know so much about so many things, you’d realize our current world is just one of many possibilities. Not so great. No so terrible either. And you are so smart to project all possibilities in the future. But it’s so many that it’s as if not speaking at all. For example, “Here are 1000 possibilities. Each one carries same probability. So pick any one with 0.1% of getting it right.”

Let’s say someone says “Here are only two futures. This or that. This one is evil, and that one is good.” Crystal clear! Nice! But I am 99.9% sure that the person is likely to be wrong.

I didn’t say either Friedman or his guest is correct.

You can narrow down to only a few choices and pick one with high conviction. Or you can broaden choices to many possibilities and increase the chance to include one possibility that matches to actual event when it happens. But it’s very hard to pick one possibility with high conviction and get it actually right at the end.