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Jasnah Kholin's avatar

"I hope it is clear to you that you will eventually press the button."

nope, disagree. the person i am now maybe will press the button (but maybe not!), but with eternity? i strive to be better then that!

there are a bunch of things when i feel like society say to people "of course you will fail" and it's self-fulfilling prophecy. and when i read fictional description with society that is the opposite of that. that think that Buttons (not in your current meaning here) are serious business, they both desire society to avoid them, consider dealing with them important social role, and TEACH PEOPLE NOT TO DO THAT.

I strive to be the sort of person who do not damn themself to Hell, and expect that if i have the information, will manage to do that.

and i consider sentence like the first one as active sabotage.

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Michael@metaxyalia's avatar

Are you at all familiar with the work of John Vervaeke? Your metaphor about the sirens and lotuses (loti?) is a good one. However, particularly the last sections about how sometimes you benefit from listening to the sirens, as well as your emphasis that we have to walk through the lotus fields every moment of every day, sounds startlingly convergent with a phrase that John often repeats - "the very things that make you adaptively intelligent, also make you perennially prone to self-deception and self-destruction". There's a great deal going on in this phrase, to do with the complexity of reality and our finite ability to cope with it. But I can't help but note the similarities here. The lotus field is a powerful metaphor.

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