Conversation

Human understanding of the universe grows at a fairly slow rate, even with exponentially growing production of raw knowledge. We understand what it *means* much more slowly. So in say 80 years between birth and death human species-level self-understanding grows by maybe 1%...
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By the time you get to some version of the species leading edge of self-understandings (there’s no consensus but it takes till around 40 to get to any of the edge nodes) you’re acutely aware that the line of scrimmage between us and universe won’t move much more in your lifetime
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So you have a choice once you get to the edge. Accept a snails pace of further growth tracking shared understandings or move faster with less sharing but higher risk of deeper understanding being wrong. This is solipsistic dark growth.
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At the edge, “faster alone, farther together” breaks down because you don’t have the time. So there’s a strong temptation to break off from the herd and go farther alone in the time left. Old crackpots, unlike young ones, kinda consciously choose to go somewhat crazy 😝