The Suicide Note to end all others

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I'm trying not to skip, I think that the first 100 pages were good enough to taken in the whole thing. He compares asperger's to hyper-masculinity? Does he put it in a way similar to "Asperger's is the post-biological answer for the people of the technological world?" In the earlier parts he's basically saying that God doesn't exist because we haven't created him yet, and I believe that is what part of this work is trying to explain, the chronological step's human kind is taking to invent a real God, beginning with the exodus of the Hebrew's from Egypt.

Not to be cruel, but any person with the TIME to pen a 1,905-page suicide note likely committed suicide for that reason alone.

Honestly...the TIME it takes to do that...to that level of detail...he already had no life.

"Modernity itself seems to have Asperger’s Syndrome in its Newtonian basis in modern physics and its analytical breakdown of pre-modern familial and kinship relationships into isolated individualism."

As far as if he's making the point that we have to create god, I think he's not quite right. I think the expression that he really should have been looking for was that we should be looking to make ourselves god as it is the natural form and movement in our society and culture. Transhumanism.

I don't think you're being cruel. I laughed when I first saw the article saying what he did. I still think it's pretty melodramatic but his writing is pretty interesting from a philosophical point (historical interpretations not withstanding).

Suicide noteworthy topic

Hollywood will get ahold of this.

That would be just as he would have wanted.

It is hard to be cruel to someone who no longer exists. And I highly doubt that someone capable of making such egregiously absurd historical interpretations as his would simulataneously be capable of meaningful philosophical insight.

Actually, BS history is perfectly fine, and a lot of non-historians will engage in totally BS history, but still remain good in their specialty. I think philosopher John Gray's history is questionable(as is some of his science as he held to "Gaia" notions) but he is not terrible in his philosophical insights. Rodney Stark is considered to have BS history of science, but is considered a good sociologist. If you hold to mainstream Biblical scholarship, then it is reasonable to point out that Michael Martin is a mythicist, however, he is a very good philosopher of religion, I think. Michel Foucault is sometimes called a great philosopher, but he has obviously abused history.

Ok, I started reading it. The author isn't dumb, but everything is put together in a questionable manner. I don't like the writing style that much, but I guess it isn't that horrible either.

The author actually has made his history essential when it is questionable though:

"The Saxon/Norman origin of liberal democracy in the English-speaking world is the key to understanding why the discoveries of sociobiology have appeared to be so congenitally politically controversial."

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Secondly, the claim of suppression seems strange:
"If my hypothesis is correct, this work will be repressed."

This seems strange as I doubt that anything will be done to significantly suppress the work. Really, the author's work(at least what I have read so far) doesn't seem very different from the current political philosopher John Gray's work, and John Gray publishes actual books that are reviewed, and even contributes to magazines as well, which is a large degree of non-suppression. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Gray

So, basically, his hypothesis of suppression seems falsified before he killed himself.

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While it is understandable for a person about to commit suicide, too much is made of "fear of death":

"For most people, fear of death is the unquestionable master that establishes all other hierarchies — both social hierarchies, and the hierarchies within one’s own mind."

I mean, I don't think this fear establishes all hierarchies, but rather that hierarchy is an organizational trait, while fear of death is a motivational characteristic.

"Opening one’s mind to death emerges from the attempt to unshackle one’s mind from the limitations of all borders. It leads to overcoming all biological boundaries, including borders between the “self” and the larger world. It reaches towards the elimination of biologically based prejudices altogether, including prejudice towards biological self preservation."

Once again, this seems false. Writing about the goodness of suicide isn't new. Arthur Schopenhauer actually has done just that, but it is doubtful that he has "transcended". Even further, talk about "transcendence" is usually just a load of hooey. A lot of people believe they have transcended something and almost none of them have. I think it is more likely that "transcendence" is just our mind's way of working through the basic essentialist framework that already exists, rather than something that can really occur, and so talking like this just seems a fantasy to me.

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The dualism between unbiasedness and natural law is overblown. There are middle-grounds with the Pragmatists and other similar people. Not only that, but there is no reason, even rationalistically, to question every desire. Economists, the most rationalistic of social scientists, take desires as given. Psychologists take them as a result of a system. This bias can easily live in the corners we make for ourselves as human beings, even if we are members of a larger species.

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I am stopping at page 25 so far as I will just get tired of rebutting if I continue.

Yes, he was. The note claims the rise of Nazism is a direct result of Germany never having been conquered by the French Normans. He was an idiot.

Orwell, there is a difference between wrong and dumb. I mean, yes, that idea is incredibly stupid, however, I doubt anyone incredibly stupid would actually have managed to slog out a book of this length.

How is volume a better indication of intelligence than substance is?

There is a difference between wrong and dumb, but the two correlate between each other fairly well, especially when we're talking about ideas that are so profoundly wrong.

The substance also indicates high intelligence. It just indicates a lack of training, and that the author isn't *that* intelligent.

However, I still would hold that the author isn't incredibly stupid. Orwell, this kind of work is above the high school level, and the level of the average college student.

Orwell, haven't you ever read that one essay by Michael Shermer on why smart people believe weird things?

As a matter of fact, I'm sort of harbouring this hypothesis that really absurd beliefs are held either by the incredibly stupid or the incredibly intelligent.

I agree with Master_Pedant on that hypothesis. I haven't read the essay though, so I would be glad if M_P could post a link. However, honestly, I would just guess that you, Orwell, have just a terrible conception of what it means to be intelligent. Intelligence is a matter of cognitive processing, not conclusions, and even I have to admit that I've gone through periods where I have come up with *ridonculous* ideas. The issue is that the unintelligent are not going to create a researched paper with relatively unique ideas.

Actually, I don't think I have read that particular essay. Do you have a link? It sounds interesting.

It indicates extremely shallow and disjointed thought.


Perhaps I have a skewed perception of what constitutes normal intelligence, but in this instance I prefer to retain my delusions of belonging to an intelligent species rather than admit how severely mentally underpowered humans generally are. Almost all of the people I interact with on a daily basis are in about the top 5%, and even the dumb ones are probably mostly in the top 10% or so. I like to imagine that the people I know are typical.