Océane
Océane  ·  2 years ago

"Imaginary time is indistinguishable from directions in space. If one can go north, one can turn around and head south; equally, if one can go forward in imaginary time, one ought to be able to turn around and go backward. This means that there can be no important difference between the forward and backward directions of imaginary time. On the other hand, when one looks at “real” time, there’s a very big difference between the forward and backward directions, as we all know. Where does this difference between the past and the future come from? Why do we remember the past but not the future?"

Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Océane
Océane  ·  last year

People's opinions on social media aren't formed by understanding critically the media they consume but by a message being repeated by different people. It reminds me of Huxley's hypnopedic messages are delivered to children as a form of State propaganda, they can't be used to teach them knowledge, but impulses of hedonism and sexual desire, on one hand, and of disgust towards lower classes, on the other; such messages are delivered to French people on television in the purest form while watching the television with their families, and it also reminds me of optimization for engagement, which feels like having a dinner with your family, for some part because it works by forgetting that its experience is a sequence of short, but repeated rewards.

My feelings that this sort of propaganda seems to work better if it's associated with food or your family, or with design principles that are meant to take people's time without their consent, or if you consume it before going to sleep; that our archaic brains seem most sensitive to it; and that it's converted into habits and values while we're sleeping, might not be a coincidence.