My fellow retards,
Base stimulation is the first mover. In or out?
Motility evolves because it gets cells closer to food and comfort, and further from pain and predation. Very useful.
A lot has been built on top of this, but it all comes back as answers to a simple question; more or less of that thing over there? Attraction or avoidance?
Humans are pretty think-y. They can predict and contextualize and abstract things to a point where they can spend years on end doing something because it promises satisfaction. This is a superpower some of the time.
Other times, people while away their years because comfort and predictability are more attractive to them than the potential to fail. The prediction mechanism tells them “better not risk it, this is good enough for me” and they spend decades at a job they hate, they marry someone who doesn’t make them sing and swoon, and they die alone and unloved in a nursing home, at best humbly thankful because it could always have been worse.
Things can always be way fucking worse, and still you can deserve better and act towards it.
Pyramids don’t exist because humans are generally super-attracted to stacking big rocks—a few individuals inflicted their will on the world around them, For better and for worse that is how the world tends to operate. People put themselves into pre-made boxes because that’s what most everyone around them does, or at least anybody anyone serious would take seriously…
There are people who want humans to exist along a single axis—people who fit into pre-ordained boxes on one side, and people who live in cardboard boxes on the other.. Autist-adjacent technocrats generally prefer people to be more of a collection of relationships and use functions than a human of nature, with spirit and desire—one who seeks something for their own sake.
If you’re sitting there with a 20 year plan that involves things like mass transportation, finance and present-day geopolitics you’ve got more than elves in your head…
At some point time expires for everyone and everything that man can observe. If your plan is for long-term avoidance of bad stuff, or attraction to some distant future where you are retired and can finally do something you really want—please ditch that plan. Almost anything else would be more likely to bring you joy and fulfilment. Sit alone in a dark room until you either go crazy or know for sure what the next step is for you and yours. If you are out here running the “degree, paycheck, mortgage, iIRA” safe-play without at least diverting some effort into a plan with actual upside so that maybe your kids can wind up not trapped under the wheel…well that’s your right, and you deserve what you get, same as everyone in the end.
There are definitely worse plans than all-Phonon.
phon/ongod out.