the “hopelessly lost” aspect of the matrix bears here. You are disinclined to doubt the reality of a game that you are successful in. Without that doubt you won’t escape it. So success becomes failure because it directly increases your lostness.

Video games lack that “hopelessly lost” aspect. I mean, nobody mistakes them for reality and never comes back. (Right?). So I’m excluding them.

That’s a big if. And “real world” is shakey too. Yr running with a stretchy hypothetical here.

Except for poetry. When you wake up from your dreamcoffin you’ll still have your poetry skills and a few memorized poems.

First : the algorithm predicts thar our behavior today will be like our behavior yesterday. Which makes sense.

Second : what you eat determines how you poop. And they do control what we eat. So that makes sense too.

So both work together.

Actually I don’t know anybody who hates trans people. Tbf it’s a pretty dull subject.

It might be voice to text. It sometimes gets carried away.

Just put little silver skulls on the front of your hats already.

It could be inherently flawed. We look at a picture or a symbol and pretend it’s real. That’s insane. I mean, I know that’s kinda how it works, but still. Insane.

Or maybe it’s imprecise to call it a flaw. Maybe call it a trap, to be careful of. But nobody’s careful. (So that’s maybe an “out of control” situation)

(I know I’m not. I mean case in point. I’m watching this movie “don’t look up” right now and I’m getting all teary-eyed and stuff. It’s a fucking movie. An illusion of flickering images and bullshit. I know with great certainty that it’s just a fantasy but I’m still having this reaction. So that’s insane)

Is it inherently bad? Out of control? Something else?

We could order understanding by quality.

First there is perception. That’s the closest. Then there is thought about that. Then there is the secondhand form of that, gotten from a friend. Then gotten from a mere associate. Then a stranger. Thirdhand and fourthhand. And so on.

Close to far. That close kind you don’t even have to think or talk about it.

Perceptions like rightness, beauty, gut make a good guide. Art and invention are proof of that. Call it a good source of truth.

Not too good for building objective consensuses tho.

Hypothetically, one could step away from the whole internet/media/information system. Stick with firsthand experience and the testimony of trusted friends.

To what degree would that include “science”?

What would that look like. Amish?

“informed”

Lol

But I kid. Your logic fails to escape the box I propose, I think. I think that only direct observation achieves good reliability. That and maybe conversation with personal friends.

Beyond that, big nope. It’s the epistemological equivalent of drinking out of lead cups except the damage is quicker.

Everybody say it all together now…

I’m an intelligent, autonomous, free-thinking individual!

I appreciate your concern. But to your first point.

Intelligence is biased towards intelligent expression and interpretation. That limits it, in expression and perspective. Seeing through intelligence-colored glasses. Expressing though an intelligence-preferring filter.

But we are larger than our intelligence. And this larger form has its own expressions.

Though we, as individuals and a culture, are in the habit of ignoring this larger self. It exists. Like the invisible part of an iceberg underwater.

If you had to guess, what form would this “loss of social skills and non-mating” take in a human population?