The world as will and representation

What Hacker News says

1. wkylegOct 2024
   "The Passenger" and "Stella Maris" by Cormac McCarthy are fantastic. In general, I enjoy McCarthy's work because I believe he manages to present interesting ideas drawn from philosophy and religion, and if you read between the lines of his work, there is a fairly elaborate cosmology behind them. With these final works, he manages to combine this tendency with his decades of residence at the Santa Fe Institute and work with researchers in complexity science, mathematics, physics, etc. Moreover, he does so without the more trite ways non-scientists often draw upon science (for instance, just crudely using quantum mechanics as a stand-in for the supernatural). I think you could probably write a thesis on the way he integrated advances in complexity science and mathematics/physics with philosophy/religion/mythology with a close reading of his work. I mention this first and with particular emphasis because I believe it is chronically under-discussed and deserves a systematic study by someone who understands philosophy and modern physics and complexity science much better than I do. There is a hauntingly dark and beautiful cosmology behind this work, in a way even darker than his earlier works like "Blood Meridian."

   I can also see the works of Arthur Schopenhauer being of great interest to many HN readers. His reconciliation of Western philosophy (especially Kant and British Empiricists) with Buddhism and Hinduism is unique and for me the most interesting overall system. His work is entirely worth reading for the quality of writing alone. For me, his works evoke the experience of mathematical beauty. I would recommend gaining a basic understanding of Kant, Buddhism, Hinduism, and then reading his work "Essays and Aphorisms," followed by "The World as Will and Idea."

   "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" by Jacques Ellul is the book I have read that best explains the human experience in the modern media environment. Like "The World as Will and Representation," it also forms a sort of complete system, which can be read as an organic whole as well as with self-referential parts. I believe most of the "alienation" we experience from technology, which is often blamed on the internet, is really a much older and broader phenomenon, which Ellul attributes to the development of the radio, "technique," and broader phenomenological experience within 20th-century totalitarian societies.

   "Simulacra and Simulation" is another that I have enjoyed. It is the work I have read that, in my opinion, best provides a model for living in a post-modern, post-industrial society, and my intuition is that it will also prove authentic in the age of artificial intelligence.

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2. DiscourseFanMay 2023
   I find this a very interesting overview, and I think the author addresses well the issues of "pure cognition" vs. the dynamic cognition of actual lived experience. However, while the reference to Heidegger was apt, I would also suggest people interested in this seemingly unbridgeable difference between the world and its representation read Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation, and if that doesn't fully satisfy you, also Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy. The trouble that philosophy has always come across is the issue of how we are able, in a world which is at the bottom totally unrepresentable, to apply structural order and communicate with one another and affect things in the world and ourselves with such structural order--this is the basis for the philosophy of Plato. I think that so-called "analytic" philosophy, and the crude description of type-2 cognition (artistic, literary?) falls very short of this problem, as both fail to see how the so-called type 1 and 2 are intimately connected in our experience of the world. There is no "pure" rationality disconnected from reality, and yet there is also no pure reality which has not already fallen into a particular structural order.

   (Anyway, I think the person who most rigorously attempts to grapple with this problem is Lacan; though given the difficulty of even discussing it--since its a question of symbolic structures itself--his writing can be very confusing at times and probably isn't an ideal place to start.)

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3. lioetersSep 2022
   The Planiverse: Computer contact with a two-dimensional world - by A.K. Dewdney

   > A mind-bending, paradigm shifting visit with Yedred, a denizen of the 2 dimensional Universe. It is written so that the physics comes through very easily for those without science training. A university student discovers that this being Yendred is communicating with him through his computer. There begins a lively dialog as both the 2D Yendred and the 3D author struggle to explain and understand each others worlds.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse

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   The Glass Bead Game - by Hermann Hesse

   > The Glass Bead Game takes place at an unspecified date centuries in the future. Hesse suggested that he imagined the book's narrator writing around the start of the 25th century.

   > The setting is a fictional province of central Europe called Castalia, which was reserved by political decision for the life of the mind.. Castalia is home to an austere order of intellectuals with a twofold mission: to run boarding schools, and to cultivate and play the Glass Bead Game, whose exact nature remains elusive and whose devotees occupy a special school in Castalia known as Waldzell.

   > The rules of the game are only alluded to — they are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. The game is essentially an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game

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   The World as Will and Representation - by Arthur Schopenhauer

   > The phrase "Tat Tvam Asi" ('thou art that'), one of the Mahāvākyas of the Upanishads, displayed on an Indian temple. Schopenhauer uses this Sanskrit phrase to express a foundational tenet of his ethics: 'the will is the in-itself of every appearance, and as such is itself free from the form of appearance, and thus from all multiplicity'.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_Will_and_Represen...

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   The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies - by Thomas McEvilley

   > Spanning thirty years of intensive research, this book proves what many scholars could not explain: that today’s Western world must be considered the product of both Greek and Indian thought — Western and Eastern philosophies.

   > Thomas McEvilley explores how trade, imperialism, and migration currents allowed cultural philosophies to intermingle freely throughout India, Egypt, Greece, and the ancient Near East. This groundbreaking reference will stir relentless debate among philosophers, art historians, and students.

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   Temporary Autonomous Zone - by Hakim Bey

       1. Pirate Utopias
       2. Waiting for the Revolution
       3. The Psychotopology of Everyday Life
       4. The Net and the Web
       5. Gone to Croatan
       6. Music as an Organizational Principle
       7. The Will To Power as Disappearance
       8. Ratholes in the Babylon of Information
   

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone

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   Nature of Code - by Daniel Shiffman

   https://natureofcode.com/

   > How can we capture the unpredictable evolutionary and emergent properties of nature in software? How can understanding the mathematical principles behind our physical world help us to create digital worlds?

   > This book focuses on a range of programming strategies and techniques behind computer simulations of natural systems, from elementary concepts in mathematics and physics to more advanced algorithms that enable sophisticated visual results.

   > Readers will progress from building a basic physics engine to creating intelligent moving objects and complex systems, setting the foundation for further experiments in generative design. Subjects covered include forces, trigonometry, fractals, cellular automata, self-organization, and genetic algorithms.

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4. dotsamSep 2022
   * Philosophy

   Arthur Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation.

   Surprisingly readable and insightful, even if you don't buy his metaphysics. Einstein had Schopenhauer's portrait on his wall and considered him a genius.

   * Poetry

   John Milton - Paradise Lost

   Powerful and beautiful writing.

   * Fiction

   Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel. Funny and a real feast of words (the translation is a work of art in itself)

   Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain. Haunting and moving

   Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - Dangerous Liaisons. Scandalous, gripping.

   Ivan Turgenev - First Love. A masterclass in writing. Short, sensitive and exquisitely told.

   Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time. Exceptionally rich and a beautiful study of love. Reading it is like living another life.

   PG Wodehouse - the Jeeves series. Hilarious, perfectly frivolous, light and sunny

   * Non-fiction

   Stuart Russell - Human Compatible: AI and the Problem of Control. Potential bad outcomes from AI and what we might be able to do about them

   Noam Chomsky - Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. How public discourse is shaped and controlled

   Karl Popper - The Open Society and its Enemies. How to work against totalitarianism

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5. dotsamSep 2022
   > got the impression that he shares a lot with early Christianity (and also Buddhism)

   Schopenhauer revered the Upanishads (foundational Hindu texts), and was one of the first thinkers in the West to share key aspects of Indian philosophy.

   He was very critical of Christianity, and was a staunch atheist.

   Bryan Magee's 'The Philosophy of Schopenhauer' is an excellent companion to The World as Will and Representation and well worth reading.

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6. blockwriterDec 2021
   Reading The World as Will and Representation presented me with several insights on the under considered nature of this era's technological revolution. The philosophical issues presented by this era have likely been considered in full generally, but hardly enough specifically. “The animal feels and perceives; man, in addition, thinks and knows; both will. The animal communicates his feelings and moods by gesture and sound; man communicates thought to another, or conceals it from him, by language.” Coding strikes me as a language that is not readily interpretable. A language that is not readily interpretable is wholly inexpressive, or else it is expressive only by dint of extreme contrivance. This special case, and the outsized power it produces in those that are fluent in it, leads to no few deleterious ends. If one wants to discover another facet of code's esoteric purpose, Schopenhauer is a good read.
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