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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   17068 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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Besides what's making smart people appear and disappear in your model, exactly?

I think they stopped breeding and got overtaken by the lower classes (many historians remark on this). Then before industrialization the opposite occurred. It looks like a demographic cycle as in population ecology.

Science only happened once in the history of humanity (maybe twice if you count the greeks, but really at scale only once) so it's impossible to establish a causal link.

What seems impossible for you is not impossible for all. I believe with sufficient modern modeling and data that it is possible to know on this topic. It is unwise to rush to declare ignorance is all we are capable of here.

But it makes sense to me that if you psyop every intelligent person into only worrying about the spiritual, because the physical world is evil, they're probably not going to get anything done.

Orthodox christianity did this. Gnosticism is compatible enough with the idea that man is smart enough to take over creation:

From Apocrypha of John:

The chief ruler, Yaldabaoth, knew that because the light-filled Epinoia within Adam made his mental abilities greater than his own, Adam had been disobedient. In order to recover the Power that he had put into Adam Yaldabaoth made Adam completely forgetful.

Adam had intercourse with the image of his foreknowledge (prognosis). He begot a son like the Son of Man, and he called that son Seth, modeling him on the heavenly race in the higher realms.

In the same way the mother sent down her spirit the image of herself, a model of the full higher realm, In order to prepare a place for the descent of the realms.

The Chief Ruler, though, forced the humans to drink from waters of forgetfulness so that they might not know their true place of origin.

The children (of Seth) remained in this condition for a while in order that when the Spirit descends from the holy realms the Spirit can raise up the children and heal them from all defects, and thus restore complete holiness to the fullness of God.

Because souls transmigrate, it is possible to come back around if you assign some kind of value to this creation, which many do. In orthodox christianity, scientists just burn in hell for investigating yahweh.

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