In my reading about this incident, Blake strikes me as a very "Life of Pi" or Don Quixote type person. Someone who is a bit adrift in the real world and subconsciously relishes losing the boundary between reality and fantasy.
A larger group is unable to bring themselves to lose the boundary, but enjoy, or perhaps are addicted to, standing on the edge. For example, the folks who constantly worry about a malicious artificial general intelligence taking over the world, or Roko's Basilisk.
Whenever something new happens in the world, there will always be a sliver of people who really, really want it to be a complete escape, a portal to another dimension where everything is different. An immense reservoir of novelty to enrich a life that has become too much of the same.
Alas, it will never be. Provided we avoid nuclear war and catastrophic climate change, life a century from now won't be that different. Hopefully it'll be a little better.
Personally, that is the closest to fantasy that I get.
A larger group is unable to bring themselves to lose the boundary, but enjoy, or perhaps are addicted to, standing on the edge. For example, the folks who constantly worry about a malicious artificial general intelligence taking over the world, or Roko's Basilisk.
Whenever something new happens in the world, there will always be a sliver of people who really, really want it to be a complete escape, a portal to another dimension where everything is different. An immense reservoir of novelty to enrich a life that has become too much of the same.
Alas, it will never be. Provided we avoid nuclear war and catastrophic climate change, life a century from now won't be that different. Hopefully it'll be a little better.
Personally, that is the closest to fantasy that I get.