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Paul Berg
@prberg
I'm not a fan of fiction books. Fiction relies on made-up characters, plots, and metaphors to explore aspects of reality and human nature. I find it much more fun to learn the core ideas presented directly.
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Britt Kim pfp
Britt Kim
@brittkim.eth
Cool. You’ll be limited by your experiences.
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Paul Berg pfp
Paul Berg
@prberg
Creativity and lateral thinking can be cultivated with psychedelics, Lion's Mane mushroom, and a wide range of non-fiction works.
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Britt Kim
@brittkim.eth
None of that will give you the humor of P. G. Wodehouse nor the joy of reading him. Would you say that you lack a sense of humor? Or other emotions perhaps?
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Paul Berg pfp
Paul Berg
@prberg
I will follow up here if I end up reading P.G. Wodehouse I don't have a typical sense of humor. Most jokes are predictable to me, so they rarely make me laugh. As for other emotions, no issues. Psychedelics have been a big help with that.
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Britt Kim pfp
Britt Kim
@brittkim.eth
Human experience is too variable for me to prescribe anything here. When I was on anti-depressants, I found myself numb to emotional experiences that I once found rich. From this, I’m able to squint my eyes a bit and imagine a being for whom art, fiction, and even relationships are wasted. That’s an extreme case, but all that is inbetween is valid. There is a bright world that fiction gates. Perhaps others can chart out the connection between words and the feelings they evoke. For me, I just read, then feel. It’s very much a blackbox phenomenon. I might hypothesize something about the prose and word combinations, but it’s honestly too subconscious for me to inspect. I watched a pig slaughtered as a kid. When I think of the event now, it’s too vague to matter. But in a book called The Jungle, I can rediscover that exact memory hole. The key is in those pages waiting for me, anytime. I don’t know why. I suspect the mirror neurons are there for most to play with.
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