Can you imagine a civilization that knows how to build rockets and spacecraft and has mastered orbital mechanics, but holds a consensus belief in astrological interpretations of the universe? Ie they can get to Mars, but their reason to go there is to meet the god of war?
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Often both get abstracted away. The Hindu ritual to launch projects (from new factories to space missions) is to crack a coconut as an offering to Ganesha in his role as obstacle-remover god (Vighneshvara). It’s a nonspecific prayer that can later be used to explain good luck.
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Reason I’m thinking about this is that under digital modernity, since ~2000, our means have vastly expanded. There’s a vast ecosystem of how-to instrumental education around everything from SEO and blogging to machine learning and startups. But our ends-thinking hasn’t budged.
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We approach the potential of the internet like a spacefaring culture of literalist astrologers. Where space missions are planned seriously at the level of “Crewed Dragon mission launched by a Falcon Heavy with 5 mission specialists and one cult-of-Mars priest”
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Eg. What should you do: “follow your passion!” How should you do it: “Learn how to build websites, run Kickstarter campaigns, fine-tune conversion funnels, and use agile methods to iterate quickly, testing rigorously along the way” See an impedance mismatch there?
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Much of internet tech is a means to access inner space. You can become more kinds of very different person. If your life were a space mission, with different destinations being different possible versions of future you, you should probably construct better maps of becoming.
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Currently possibility space for future you are described by the following “planets”, each with a better-than random playbook for heading there, but Mercury: god of follow-your-passion Venus: god of fuck-you-money Mars: god of Medium-post spiritual journeys
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Asteroid belt: god of Waldenponding Jupiter: god of gig-economy Saturn: god of reach and freeze peach Uranus: god of awokening Neptune: god of gonzo shitposting Pluto: god of nerddom and nerdsniping Kuiper belt: chadvirginstacy
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These goal-gods who induce ends to match overpowered means are kinda silly but they are better than nothing if they get you moving. Superstition is a symptom of grasp exceeding reach (cf “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s a heaven for” which is backwards)
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Having any reason to go to Neptune is better than no reason, but a good reason is better than a nonsensical one, and more likely to catalyze success by a meaningful means-ends chicken egg virtuous feedback. Having an accurate sense of ends helps refine the means and vice versa
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End of conversation
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Isn't it like saying a civilization that can make socks should not have lucky socks? I don't see anything paradoxical if the pentagon some day chooses to put an administrative base on Mars for cultural resonance reasons when technology is so advanced that- why not?
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