The book of the SubGenius

What Hacker News says

1. retrocryptidApr 2023
   Book of the Subgenius.
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2. carapaceMay 2021
   To young "fierce nerds": The single best piece of advice I got for dealing with normals was, "Act like a dumbass and they'll treat you like an equal." (from the Book of the Subgenius.)

   - - - -

   There's a lot to unpack in this essay, some good some bad IMO.

   One thing I feel is worth mentioning: I don't think the cure for bitterness is success, I believe it's helping others.

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3. carapaceOct 2019
   Brave of you to admit it, even here.

   I have a similar problem: I'm so goddamned intelligent that this world seems like the movie "Idiocracy" to me. ( I can't watch it: it's too painful. )

   When I was younger, this advice from the Book of the Subgenius helped me a lot to get by, "Act like a dumbass and they'll treat you like an equal."

   Eventually, I calculated the existence of God, called out "Ollie Ollie Oxen Free", and He showed up and Shook my hand.

   Since then my intelligence has been idling: there's nothing further to compute. That, combined with diligent administration of THC, has brought my general intelligence level down to that of an average smart person.

   Here's the thing: now that I experience it for myself, normal intelligence is terrifying. It's no wonder everyone is always so stressed out and worried. Their brains are not adequate to the complex artificial world we have built for ourselves. (Are you familiar with the "Peter Principle"? That's what we've done: not promoting people to level their level of incompetence, rather the world has grown complex to the point where most people are now incompetent, through no fault of their own.)

   Robert Anton Wilson points out, "Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being."

   What I'm saying is, pity them, they know not what they do.

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4. robobroMar 2015

       - Book of the Subgenius 
       - Meditations, Aurelius 
       - Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut 
       - Blue and Brown Books, Wittgenstein 
       - Stranger, Camus 
       - Dhammapada, Buddha
       - Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche 
       - Blue Cliff Record, Kequin
       - Trial, Kafka 
       - Labyrinths, Borges

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5. PeterCorlessJul 2023
   Lowered attention spans may be widely regarded as a net negative, yet I propose to reframe the conversation:

   • Call it "whiffreading" after the term in the Book of the Subgenius [1983]. A way to intuitively, instinctively and logically determine if you can get the sense of something quickly. If you sense it is worthy, you will invest the time in it. If not, and you feel you are wasting time, you skip it.

   Quicker abandonments, glossing, and skipping ahead are all natural human adaptions to the increasing and constant bombardment of data and stimuli we are presented with. This is why we want the "tl;dr." This is why you want a 1-minute explainer video instead of a 30-minute or 1-hour lecture.

   Now, if you catch someone's attention, they'll follow you down the rabbit hole and will keep reading or watching. Maybe for hours. Look at TikTok lives and Twitch streamers. People doomscroll, next, next, next... but as soon as they encounter the right content — whabam! They will stick there until the livestream ends.

   Similarly, look at Hacker News itself. If a 1-sentence topic grabs your interest — whabam! You'll read the article (which could be thousands of words long) and you may engage in the threads of conversations, which could eat up your day.

   Oppositely if a content creator bores people or if the audience start to sense what you are talking about is sus, or totally outside their interests, they'll just drop it. A post on Hacker News will sink like a rock in the middle of a very deep ocean.

   Again, I propose this is an adaption to the environment. Time is speeding up. The onslaught of content trying to grab your attention is relentless. So this is the natural result.

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6. cratermoonJan 2023
   I still have my hardcopy that I bought at a punk music/book store in the 80s. It's on a shelf next to titles like J. G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition, RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook, and Book of the SubGenius.
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