This thread is for any question(s), irrespective of its philosophical value.
First one:
What are some alternative ways of augmenting intelligence/brainpower?
I’m aware that reading is considered the primary form, but in my opinion, reading makes one more knowledgeable, yes, but being knowledgeable isn’t identical with intelligence. To me, intelligence is more about the ability to recognize patterns — a certain sensibility to reality.
Irrespective of philosophical value - okay then.
One way is to drink more coffee. Eat more fish? Fish is brain food - is it not?
Another is to simply sit in nature without thinking. Just observing and listening. Notice all the fractals which you can. 
Another is to listen to classical music, listen deeply without any other thought. Let the music drag you down to where it wants you to go.
Intelligence is also about problem solving.
Write a poem. Buy a really difficult craft and put it together. Or a thousand piece puzzle and put that together.
Go to seminars which you find boring but most would find highly interesting. And listen and learn.
Anything which forces the mind to go beyond what the human considers to be its limitations will work.
Wow - my question is: How could one possibly come up with a question when there are oh so very many that could be put out there or in here.
Oh, here’s one.
Will there ever come a time when we will know, I mean, ABSOLUTELY know, without a doubt in our minds, not guessing, not assuming, not believing, not desiring - I mean really KNOWING that there is Something which most call god - and being able to fully understand exactly what that something is and seeing that Something for what it is.
Answer that question if you will. An enquiring mind would like to know.
Ha! You and your coffee 
I eat a lot of fruit, read books everyday and meditate in nature. Those things are def. conducive one’s IQ, but I’m looking for something more intense, I suppose, like some sort of game meant to build-up memory, or pattern recognition abilities.
To answer your question, I think in the future, there will be a way to discover the possible existence of a creator. If there is a God, I think it’s nothing like the anthropomorphic God of the bible, but more akin to the Brahman of Advaita, or the Tao —something more sublime and impersonal.
Perhaps some sort of time machine will be created that can take us back to the big-bang, somehow, and show us what it was like, visually.
Erik_ wrote
From observation, the most intelligent are those who do not need guidance from exact science. Those I remember vividly or I have learned from are those who live in this world aware of the human heart. We are surrounded with the rich stores of knowledge in books and what use is it? I stopped at a cherry farm to buy and had a long conversation with the elderly Italian owners who had been there for thirty years. Everything they ate, they grew themselves, they worked hard and their weather beaten hands and faces were evidence of this, the nails ingrained with the soil. I watched as their hands gathered up the perfect dark red cherries, sprinkled with the fine mist of the early morning rain. These people were open, warm, humor always just below the surface and they were shrewd, but not in the same sense an urbanite is. Their values were in the land and what it would yield. To be independent, to have to answer to no one is the most desirable reality to be in. To know yourself, put away your books, meet, learn from the workers of the world, they will show you truths, if you so desire.
My opinion is that the best practise in building the genius of Albert Einstein was his work in the patent office. Immersing himself in many kinds of propellerheads’ ideas streched his thinking showing him different ways of approaching reality. Plus that he must understand their ideas to respond to them. - If you only read something you can always cheat yourself thinking that you have “practically” understood it, or worse: the writer was wrong!
I came upon this quote by Keats.
What does one think of it?
The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing --to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party.
I would discount the word ONLY here and I can see the wisdom of what he is saying yet at the same time I question:
ALL thoughts - except if we allow some of those ALL lol thoughts to flow away. I would say that refining and being discriminate insofar as thoughts are concerned is important, no?
But I can see the wisdom and intelligence behind allowing the thoughts to flow at first glance and second without any prejudgment or [ ]ing.
The way of the Tao speaks volumes. What is involved in the very posing of this question can be reduced to two, seemingly antithetical processes going on simulteniously. If one can think in doubles, one may see, that there is no worry to think that these can never be united, because the answer seems to be obvious. These two processes are not the same, because they exhibit two sides. I am talking about trust-and distrust (fear). fearing decay, the opposite of growth, entails the distrust of whatever caused this growth to begin. The dissolution of any natural product can take hold the moment this distrust begins to take hold of the organism, the psyche, Whatever. Not far is the fear of the dissolution.
What is incredible is, that these two processes create co create the evolution of the two types of time, the internal one , a much slower gauge of the progression of the change through ascribe le events. The external clock is much different, it becomes a function of varience, the variability of changing markers, as it approaches smaller and smaller increments of conscious measurement , the measurement sort of quantumized, as closer approaches are made through the relational comparison with adjacent ideas and things. this speeding up, makes most everything relational to other movements, rather than one immutable idea. When this happens, the relative way of,looking at things, unbinds, the trust, we have in ourselves, as the harbingers of consciousness. if we can just hold on to the ideal, as a necessary construct of cognition, we can slow down our estrangement from the One, which, becomes an entity through It’s superimposition into and within It’s self. The return, the eternal repetition of this function, can be realized in a flash, from the following:
the fact that there is no alternative to consciousness, (which is not the same thing as nothingness), there is no absolute unconsciousness, is proof positive that there is an eternity of,perceived phenomena. This is guaranteed by facts, which ultimately rest on the idea of the vanishing of everything into the One. That one is a necessary rabbit hole, as it were, through which consciousness can arise.
the question of what is that that ‘It’ is conscious of is irrelevant, because It is always conscious of some thing. That thing in it’s multiform re presentation, is always a plenum, , if it was not, consciousness would not come into being, and the the original presentation would not be possible.
I have heard of renewed interest of the Ontological proof for God’s existence, and what if we conceive ofmGod, as that consciousness which reverts into It’s self. The analogy to the multiform may be reduced to the simple model of the Moebius strip, where the distinction between the two sides becomes a topological puzzle. In fact it is not puzzling at all, it is the same with the feedback systems of a calculus of many variables.
Whe one says it has no beginning or no end,as one of the attributes of creation, the ontological argument gains an insight , that possibility never reaches the level where it could be demonstrated that it has a limit. Even in limits, the closer approaches to that, ‘stretches’ the field into the nothingness. that nothingness, really evaporates, as the finish line is finally interpolated as the sum of all possible differentiated parts. However, this paradox, starting with Meno, has never really been solved, be caused the classical formula of limits pre-conceives a zero sum of an infinitely diminishing set of differentials.
In fact, Heraclitus was right, there is no motion, there is only the film like effect of comparing various differential modalities. This idea is being destroyed by the analysis of space time, as it were an a priori apprehension, by simulating time (on the basis of quantum awareness of the relationships of static objects).
can time really be slowed down and halted,many the fear of the progression of diminishing differentials?
if we are to at least stop the angst and worry, we have to fix the idea of the ,One, as a requirement, into it’s own conscious self awareness. it does have two sides, and all the efforts of modern philosophy to synthesize them failed, because the phenomenology is only a manifestation of it’s own being.
therefore, trust, in it’s own sense of being, is a pre requisite. it is a mute question to ask whether it actually exists,me cause existence it’s self is a mode of phenomenological inquiery.
that God exists, is a given, without which the dissolution of everything as the co-foundation of it’s construction, couldn’t even begin to be doubted. Therefore trust in the eternal process, is the glue, which holds everything together, and doubt, is what breaks them down. Doubt and Faith are co present as proof of the insolubility of eternity with the present moment.
The above is a partial set of solutions to the quiery You posed Arc, as to the capacity to be able to know God. If part may be disjointed may not shed light on the mantra I have been reciting in an internal dialogue for years, as a matter of fact, as as long as I can remember, that is,the problem of the experience of the instant, the stoppage of time, and the idea of eternal phenomenologically reduced experience. it is possible to do this, as a form of apprehension, in a positive way. In this manner, Eve Descartes’ doubt may be re examined, (which has been) in a new logic.
What is the meaning of the meaningless meaning?
Did you take that from someone’s post, Erik? Maybe the answer might depend on what came before and after in their post - the context.
Would it even be fair of us to give an answer to that, based on another’s perception? If beauty IS in the eyes of the beholder 0h and I greatly affirm that it is - meaning or what holds value and truth and qualia to us cannot be seen as meaningless - unless of course it is so far off the wall as to hold no validy and meaning in reality. Our minds put on a different show for each of us.
No, I actually got it from an old friend from Youtube, username: " Meta-Sage". He’s a mystic-psychonaut.
Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder? What if there is a universal principle to beauty? Perhaps it’s not as subjective, as you may think? Physical beauty is a manifestation of symmetry and genetic superiority. Sure, we may prefer X beauty over Y beauty ( subjective preferences ), but could one deny either their aesthetic value? I.e., their objective beauty?
Erik,
It would appear to be based on how I have come to know how this person “sees” beauty and that person “sees” something else as beautiful. lol
I will grant you that there has to be some things which are universally seen as beautiful…like a swan or a awesome and memorable sunset - but then again, those two things might not touch someone’s inner core.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Are you speaking of perfection here? Are you capable of seeing real beauty in a woman who is not so physically perfect? That little flaw or defect which might actually add to the beauty?
Again, I may be wrong here but I do think that it depends on the eye (or the mind) of the beholder. Some might think some are beautiful and some might not. Sometimes there is just something about a person.
Also, let’s not forget real beauty is inner beauty. I’ve seen some real hot handsome men but then they will open their mouths and/or do something mean or which goes against my grain and suddenly that physical beauty fades to nothingness. But I know that you’re not talking about this.
Defects that add to beauty? You mean like little flaws that make the person seem more approachable and real?
Beauty is not always and not completely in the eye of the beholder. For example: symmetry and rhythm, almost all geometrical figures, especially those with specific numerical sequences, have an objective beauty.
The reasons why more and more people think beauty would exclusively be in the ey of the beholder can be found in the nowadays art, politics, religion, and almost all other forms of culture which express nothing (nihilistic forms), have nothing to say, and expect that the “beholders” have also nothing to say. The only exception of it is when it comes to pay for it, thus to pay for nothing - then it is hypocritically said: “beautiful”, “good”, “true”.
I agree with this. It seems to be a product of nihilistic-relativism. This is esp. seen in modern art; according to modern-artists, a can of feces has an equal amount of beauty, as say, the sculpture of the David. Post-modernist impulses to level out hill and mountain…
Objectivity can’t be justifiably denied. I can’t justifiably deny that 2+2=4. I can be proven wrong.
I can however disagree with your claim that symmetrical things are beautiful and you can’t prove me wrong.
Symmetrical is boring for the most part anyways. Who the fuck considers cubes and spheres art?
Apparently admitting subjectivity where subjectivity is due is supposed to be relativistic nihilism. K then.
A can of feces can, depending on the person perceiving it, have an equal amount of beauty, less, or more, than any other art.
- Laughs maniacally *
No, no - don’t jump the gun quite yet, Atheris. Be honest - much of modern art conveys just how fucked up the times we are living in are! Who, in the hell, goes to an art gathering to see a can of feces signed by the artist? If that doesn’t scream of degeneracy, then I don’'t know what does…
…
Hey, I agree with that. I agree that there is art which is generally preferred by more intelligent, educated people and so can be considered more profound and as contributing to evolution of humans while some other art can be seen as generally appealing to the masses, the dumb herd and contributes to the degeneration, devolution of humans back to its primitive, animal-like state.
That has nothing to do with subjectivity/objectivity of art though.