Surviving a Total Perspective Vortex

July 9, 2006 8:39 AM

I'm on the hunt for sites and/or blogs about big ideas... Who wants to join me?

I am interested in the nature of the human, the self, consciousness, space-time and infinity, the future, cultural evolution, the emergence and destruction of civilisation, physics, biology, technology, science fiction, this self perceiving universe, the narrative, the protagonist, belief, faith and the Gods, mathematics, language, truth, semiotics, theory of mind, theory of relativity, philosophy, transhumanism, the base of humour, of love, of art, of literature, chemistry, the stars and how they shine, justice, anger, naivety, pop-culture, culture shock, poetry, evolution, devolution, darwinism vs subjectivity, how to and how not to, how it is, how it could have been, perspectives of 'the idea', how the perspective shifts, surviving a total perspective vortex....

I want to find people who find these things interesting too, I want them to come over and chat liberally with me, with my like-minded associates, with other web-portal psychonauts.

Apart from Metafilter where do you get your intellectual, mind exploding fix? Where should I begin my search for new minds to meld with?

posted by 0bvious to religion & philosophy (17 answers total)

http://longnow.org/
posted by leafwoman at 8:58 AM on July 9, 2006

Edge sounds quite like the sort of discourse you seem to be looking for.

The drawback is that it's not really set up as a place for the end-browser to discuss with like minded others, rather - it's more a place where people who've written books have these discussions, and you get to read them. Still pretty interesting though.
posted by BishopsLoveScifi at 9:03 AM on July 9, 2006

Edge.
posted by Gyan at 9:04 AM on July 9, 2006

Edge sounds interesting indeed. But they don't have an rss feed, do they?
posted by Herr Fahrstuhl at 9:43 AM on July 9, 2006

Edge is great, but not very grass roots.

I want to find ideas and interact with the minds who give birth to them.
posted by 0bvious at 10:04 AM on July 9, 2006

Maybe you should try joining one of these high IQ societies, there are plenty of people there that have such interests and have private forums to talk about it.
Try Mega foundation, Glia society, Triple Nine society, Prometheus, etc... Also Thothica have their own chat client and private forum to chat with people about such interests.
posted by convex at 10:13 AM on July 9, 2006

I'm confused 0bvious. Is that your site that you just linked to (I ask because it's in your profile) or one that you like and want to find one similar to? Are you trying to find sites to go to in order to find people to come to your site? If so, that's sort of a different question than other sites to go to and read.

I've always liked the sustainability big ideas over at WorldChanging, as one example.
posted by jessamyn at 10:16 AM on July 9, 2006

I think the Straight Dope forums have a lot of good discussion, but posting privileges are by-subscription-only (though you can browse for free and they have a 30-day free trial period).
posted by shivohum at 10:33 AM on July 9, 2006

That's quite the laundry list of interests you have there. We share quite a few :) It's a shame you're not in the Bay Area - the Future Salon would be right up your alley. It's part of the Accelerating Change Foundation and always has interesting talks.

Maybe the Integral Thought folks might be up your ally (link is to Wikipedia page). Not an endorsement, but just a suggestion - I can't quite tell if they're new age cranks or not :). There are no shortage of excellent web sites devoted to individual topics in your list, but no Big Web site to link them all. I'm working on a list of similiar futurist type web sites, which I might post one day if it gets done - I'd like to transform it into a wiki so others can contribute.
posted by rmm at 10:53 AM on July 9, 2006

The Becker-Posner Blog tries to be a public issues debate, and still takes public comments.
posted by paulsc at 11:06 AM on July 9, 2006

Not sure if this meets all your criteria, but the Mind Hacks blog links a lot of stuff about neuropsychology, "the self, consciousness..." I started to really like it once I realized it occasionally alludes to Philip K. Dick.
posted by salvia at 11:57 AM on July 9, 2006

I hear Barbelith is good for some of this stuff, but I haven't been around there much.
posted by danb at 12:03 PM on July 9, 2006

Check out Arts & Letters Daily and SciTech Daily for a MeFi-style set of links to 3-5 new online pieces every day (some of them from print publications like the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books). I also like Butterflies & Wheels, which has a skeptical edge, though sometimes it's rather blunt (when it comes to philosophy and literary criticism, for instance, the authors sometimes throw out the baby with the bathwater).
posted by brianogilvie at 3:59 PM on July 9, 2006

Design science-Geometry of meaning
posted by hortense at 4:39 PM on July 9, 2006

I am looking for input for myself, but yes, I would also like to recruit like minded folk for my new web-forum.

Drop in sometime
posted by 0bvious at 8:28 PM on July 9, 2006

the loom is good.
posted by delmoi at 2:45 AM on July 10, 2006

How To Save The World. Dave Pollard is either a genius or a madman. Either way he fortells the end of civilization.
posted by IndigoSkye at 9:54 AM on July 10, 2006