LastThursday

Solipsism depends on the unity of experience, yet that unity can’t be established without an external vantage point. From within experience alone, plurality and unity are indistinguishable. And solipsism denies the certainty of an external vantage point. It seems like solipsism only has the certainty of one experience and experiencer, and everything else it uncertain. But solispism itself can't verify its own claim. But yes, it's still a useful idea as a basis for good ethical conduct. We should give uncertain things the benefit of the doubt.

My first self-aware memory was of me being picked up by my mum and tucked into my pram, with her looking down directly at me. It's interesting because supposedly you don't form solid memories until you're about two years old. But I guess there's wild variation between people. My next memories are of me walking about, so there's definitely a gap of at least half a year or more.

What can be learnt from the idea of solipsism?

Master of understatement.

Connection between people is a beautiful thing. First and foremost let yourself enjoy the connection. Is it better to capture a butterfly and study it, or to watch it fly?

Sure. Sounds fun.

Life isn't anything in particular. You exist, and you must do lots of things to carry on existing. That's it. But we're all free to see it as we want to see it, if it makes existing more pleasant.

Ah yes. Life could also be a game and you could be the main character in it. What a blast. But of course life isn't really a game either.

It's the human condition to believe in stories and characters. If believing you're the main character motivates goodness in life, then why not? But once you've exhausted it, believing you're a character in a story is limiting and also on some level untrue.

I definitely agree there. But people are not conscious enough to find the right words (sorry I laugh at my own jokes). I don't know. There are plenty of synonyms: existence, awareness, self-awareness, knowledge, qualia, experience, God (on this forum), thought, inner dialogue, feelings and so on. But on a forum you're not going to get accurate language in general. I'd also say in general it's not even possible to agree if my experience has any overlap with your experience at all. Because all agreement is done through language, so it's already once removed. It's quite possible we're not even talking about the same thing when we say "consciousness".

I find it amazing that a word like consciousness exists. It's like a fish describing water. We pretend we all think we know what "consciousness" refers to. But it's a completely relative notion, not absolute. I'd say that there's several different definitions floating around: the sensations of experiencing, the awareness of existence, the awareness that you as a person exists, and a more general "knowledge" of the world and how it works. All of which causes no end of confusion.

I've been feeling a lot of stress lately and I'm concerned about its effects on my health and sleep. Anyone here now how to clear stress hormones quickly from the body, and how to reverse the bad effects of stress hormones?

This sort of thing happens all the time when people live together whether in a relationship or not. People will annoy you eventually. I have a friend who can't stand me flossing, and she doesn't even live with me. The thing is, what to do about it? It's all about give and take with a dose of decent communication. Firstly, you can only control what you do. You can encourage each other to be open and communicate what's annoying you both. The danger here is that it can get a bit emotional, but it doesn't have to be, just be direct and to the point. Then ask yourself "am I willing to change for him?", if not then simply tell him so and why. Most relationships have a honeymoon period where you tolerate each others' bad habits and let them slide. But that's hard to maintain longer term, living together can be intense and you sometimes have to come to an agreement about "how to live together", to actually verbalise it. The second, is that if either of you are questioning the relationship, then that has to be taken seriously. A one-sided relationship never works out in the long run, someone ends up being unhappy, probably both of you. The thing is a relationship can change day to day, so it can be hard to tell. You kind of have to step back and look at the bigger picture over time. One red flag is when you have an unequal power dynamic, where one person tries to dictate the relationship. You will have different roles in the relationship, but there should be equality and compromise at some level. If one person is unyielding, then that is normally a bad sign. Unpleasant communication can be a sign of power games, or just plain immaturity. So. Step back, take some time to think, maybe a month or so to see how things go. Ask yourself then "do I want to be in this relationship?", "can I live by myself for a while?", "will I have a better relationship with someone else in future?". You're still young you have time.

With my lowly 1000 rated brain, white does have a pawn fork on the next move, probably worth moving either the Knight or Bishop to avoid. So move the black Knight backwards (f6). White does whatever. Then black Bishop e4 and it's well protected. Then exchange frenzy. My only other plan would be to weaken white's pawns covering their King, by saccing first the Knight (to avoid fork) and then the Bishop. I don't know where to go from there though.

I used to use Dvorak layout for programming. I got quite proficient at it, but never as fast as qwerty. As a bonus nobody could ever get into my work laptop, even if I told them the password. Dvorak, good security, but it's over hyped for typing speed. For a long while I also had the number keys inverted on a standard layout for programming. That meant I could use punctuation without having to constantly use the shift key. Numbers in most progamming languages are less common than punctuation, so I had those shifted. For Windows I use Keyboard Layout Creator.

Whenever I spend any time thinking about it, it blows my mind how little we know about other people. Nearly my whole life revolves around just a few dozen people at most, all my pain and happiness is about those people. And yet literally metres away through my living room walls, is a different bunch of people living their lives in their own particular bubble with their own few dozen people and their own drama. We are living on islands in a huge ocean of humanity.

No you're adding more than Descartes said. He was talking about the absolute truth of knowing you exist only when you are thinking (or experiencing). It's absolute because doubting the statement is itself a form of thinking, which means the doubt is wrong.

I think about this sort of thing constantly. I've just turned 53, so, you know. Except, people are consistently surprised when I tell them my age. I was talking to a woman I play badminton with who works in a theatre, and she said "we need more young people like you in our theatre, everyone there's over 50". I didn't have the heart to tell her. I'm surprised myself when people think I'm younger. My point is, is that "being old" is largely a state of mind, and your state of mind reflects in how you feel about yourself, and how others perceive you. We are living in the 21st century, and people can and do keep their health well into their seventies. I have a friend who's 57 and regularly runs half marathons and longer. It's undeniable that you have less energy with age, and your looks can go down hill, and you'll start having aches and pains. But it's not a given. Life isn't just about "being youthful", there's lots of other more exciting things to compensate. You know yourself better, you're wiser, more intelligent, understand people better, make better decisions, take control, stand up for yourself, financially more stable. In other words lots and lots of things just keep improving and never stop. Do I wish was twenty again? Of course, but only if I can take my current knowledge and experience. Getting old is just a change of emphasis, not an excuse to give up.

HNY. A quick summary of the holes in the argument so far: 1. Are we talking about thinking (reasoning) or experiencing (prior to reasoning) here? 2. Is it possible to bring things into existence by pure reasoning? 3. How does reasoning bring itself into existence? Or is reasoning and existence the same thing? 4. If a truth is self evident and unquestionable, then how does an "absolute" truth differ? 5. An "absolute" truth presupposes other types of truth, what is "absolute" in opposition to?

Why not? We could do with more smartassery and less parroting and unquestioning dogma. Isn't truth itself just: self evident, unquestionable? What about the "absolute" bit, what is that exactly?

Fair enough. Isn't 'I think therefore I Am' also linguistics? It's written in words with a grammatical structure. Does linguistics make it any less absolutely true?

So the fact of "the sky is blue" is not an absolute truth, because it can be other colours, cloudy, thundery etc.? But for example the fact I'm a male is an absolute truth, because I have never been anything else? Or does "absolute" apply to all potential future states as well as past ones?

Good. I was just making sure there wasn't a confusion here between thinking and experiencing. But I do wonder what the "absolute" means in "absolute truth"?

I do wonder if white Queen c3 works and ignore everything black does after. That gives you enough tempo to queen the white pawn on d6 and back rank mate black.

Cogito ergo sum ChatGPT says: That connects existence directly to the act of experiencing.