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You have resorted to, "You don't want to end up being wrong, do you?" To paraphrase Asimov, this kind of fallacious appeal is the last resort of the in-over-the-heads

That doesn't add up. Plenty of Philip K Dick novels and stories have spaceships, while also being existential nightmares of the collapse of human identity. Ursula Le Guin, the quintessential new wave sci-fi author, mostly wrote about space travel (though usually as a mechanism for doing cultural anthropology).

Watch out, you're getting suspiciously close to the Chinese Room argument. And people on here really don't like that argument.

I have the inverse perspective. I am uninterested in the mechanics because to me, all science fiction stories are actually stories about the present. The more mechanical a story is, the more I feel it is obscuring that truth. The author can never erase the fact that they are living in the present and that their work is ultimately about the present. They can only obscure it under layers of verisimilitude that, definitionally, is only an appearance.

Then you also understand nothing about Galileo.

I wonder what the cognitive difference is between the link to link addictive clicking on wikipedia and doomscrolling? I assume doomscrolling is even more pernicious because it's the lowest possible level of friction. I'm sure somebody has done studies.

Yeah not to be a scold, but the degree of antisocial/passive-aggressive behavior stuns me.

Before your last sentence I thought, "wow this person is some kind of space alien." But as soon as you said "this is in Sweden," I understood you completely. I don't know what that says about me or Sweden. But it all clicked into place.

This is ahistorical, whiggish nonsense. The actual world is not a game of Civilization II.

It's a rhetorical device.

Really? But Marquee Moon isn't even 50 years old yet. What were they doing for the first 50?

Not to be rude, but if that's your image of Spider-Man or Superman then you have never read a comic featuring either Spider-Man or Superman.

Well that's what I get for commenting before reading the article. A nasty habit.

Well now that I've read that part of the article, I can say that it's a pretty lame retort.

This is one of those rare cases where I believe young men would benefit from reading more Nietzsche.

"Do you want to live 'according to nature'? O you noble Stoics, what a verbal swindle! Imagine a being like nature - extravagant without limit, indifferent without limit, without purposes and consideration, without pity and justice, simultaneously fruitful, desolate, and unknown - imagine this indifference itself as a power - how could you live in accordance with this indifference? Living - isn't that precisely a will to be something different from what this nature is? Isn't living appraising, preferring, being unjust, being limited, wanting to be different?"

Luckily there is a category for people like him, and one that is underused. "He was wrong about everything, but he sure was a great writer." Just because somebody paints a pretty picture does not mean that anything they say should be taken seriously.

Just peruse the list of great works that Ancient Aliens proponents claim could not have been built by the people who built them. Do they make that claim about the Parthenon? No. Other than Stonehenge, it's all stuff built outside of Western Civilization.

It could be a series of coincidences, or it could be old strains of racist anthropology, briefly suppressed by Boasian Cultural Anthropology, finding a new conspiratorial outlet.

It's not Philip Pullman, it's living in a Christian society. The Enlightenment growing out of the Reformation meant that all the foundational atheist thinkers had deeply sentimental views of Christianity, which is how you get the Jefferson Bible (yes, a deist), and that Pullman quote and many more like it. "Well if you strip away all the things I don't like, this philosophy is very compelling" is only a conclusion you could come to when you already are predisposed to like the philosophy.

Arguments like this make me suspect that the proponents have simply a malformed theory of mind. If I'm being really catty, I'll say it's because they have below average levels of self-awareness.

What Big Five test rated you on your interest in science? It only rates 5 factors by definition.

So you've read a lot of bad books.

Productivity hacks and pop psychology are not what we're talking about here. We're talking about interesting works of non-fiction. And if it's fiction, and you think that there is "one idea" and you can skip the rest, I don't know what to tell you.

You avoided the actual substantive critique in the post. Namely, that Campbell's system doesn't even work for the most canonical works in Western literature.

I don't know what Jung has to do with anything. But if helps, I also think he was a crank, and the collective unconscious is a neat metaphor and nothing more.

It's a shame that Joseph Campbell was wrong about everything, because he is an entertaining writer in the pseudo-profound register.

First of all, respect for using "sex without a condom" as a metaphor for solitude.

Second, it's weird that what you've written comes off as entirely insincere. It's like you've been assigned a high school essay to "write what a sad person sounds like."

You aren't even really talking to me at all. It's a story you're telling yourself that is actually deeply self-absorbed, maudlin, and also clearly false. I don't think you find your life pleasant, but I believe there is something you are not telling me, or yourself, about why that is. Good luck figuring that out. I don't know you at all, but I think you're capable of it.

Let's apply Occam's Razor. Which is more likely? Every person you've ever met and will meet thinks you are terrible, or, you think you are terrible?

I'm not erasing the existence of the many people you've encountered who don't like you. But what if negative experiences in your past have eroded your distress tolerance and you now cannot distinguish normal human conflict from an affront to you, personally? Or, what if you have given up on human contact because, subconsciously, you made a calculation that simulacra of human contact might be unsatisfying but, like methadone, they give you just enough to avoid the real stuff?

I don't think any of the psychological pictures I have painted are necessarily correct. But I do know that what you're telling me is BS.

The fact that the LessWrong crowd will reference a memeified version of Leo Strauss is very telling. To be anti-philosophy but really into Leo Strauss. Curious. I wonder where they encountered his ideas?

Edit: Not sure why I was being coy. I'm talking about the Claremont Institute.

I know many "hot" dorks and many "uggo" dorks. The difference in how much fun they have doing Warhammer is negligible.

Sweeping self-loathing statements like that are actually a defense mechanism. Fear of rejection is so great that one would rather believe that one is worthless than have another person think one is slightly annoying. Better to self-sooth with self-abnegation than face the uncertainty of other's judgment.

This is the most jaundiced, obviously false, and self-pitying statement I have maybe ever encountered. Have you seen a group of people paint Warhammer figurines together? Or do Gunpla? Or play a roleplaying game? Are they cool and attractive? No! Are they having fun and bonding? Yes! The only incentive one would ever have to deny this is self-loathing covering up a fear of rejection. Go out there and do something dorky with people.

Popular Mechanics is like Popular Science right? Extremely bullish on new technologies to the degree of taking one study and turning it into a breathless article about how we're 1 year away from flying cars?

Sorry for the cynicism, but I grew up subscribing to Popular Science and I gained a very jaundiced view of this kind of science/technology popularizing