fluidmonolith

I agree. There are many misconceptions about science, but a lot of it stems from the incorrect expectations people have of it. Science is a great tool, but it is not the appropriate tool for existential questions. I think we need to be careful to understand what science can do and can't do. Some mistakes people make include: 1) Asking science 'why' rather than 'how'. Science can tell us how the sky is blue. But it cannot tell us why conditions exist to make the sky blue rather than pink. But some people (including some scientists!) expect science to be able to tell us 'why'. 2) Confusing science with scientists. Scientists are humans, and sometimes they make claims, even within their field of expertise, that are not directly verified by their data. What raw scientific data actually tells us is very limited. We have to make inferences to turn that data into something useful, and those inferences can just be whims or presumptions influenced by our thoughts or culture, or even other scientific data for which a correlation has not yet been tested and confirmed. 3) Expecting science to prove things. Science cannot prove something true or false with 100% confidence. Science cannot say "gravity exists". Science can only say "to the best of our knowledge, gravity exists and has these properties."

@Shakazulu But can you be certain that a mind fuck will lead you any closer to truth? Couldn't it possibly just as well lead you further away from truth? Leo gives an example in this video of a starry sky, in which we are told (by science) that the dim, numerous lights are other stars much like our own sun. But having not seen them in detail ourselves, we are simply choosing to accept that context, or explanation, for the dim lights in the sky. But suppose we did look through the Hubble telescope personally (if that were possible) to see distant stars at higher magnification. We may be mind fucked upon perceiving those dim little lights in much more detail. But is it not just context as well that we believe what we see with our eyes to be true? Or what we hear with our ears? Or even what we think with our brains? If I believe that mind fucks bring me closer to truth, then isn't that also context rather than content? I don't mean to be disagreeable, but I'm just not certain yet how we can say that belief in authorities is just context while simultaneously saying that believing in our own perceptions (e.g seeing stars through a telescope for ourselves) is content.

I tend to be fairly individualistic, so I have more tendencies in orange and yellow than in blue or green. I would estimate around 40% orange, 40% yellow, 20% green. I am attached to some orange characteristics (such as science and accomplishment), but not others (accomplishment at any cost, exploitation of others, or 'moving up the ladder' to dominate others). I am relatively minimalist when it comes to materials, but I am still living in modern western culture, so there are still a lot of improvements I can make here. I have a few qualities of green, but not very strongly. I can empathize with some green ideas, such as veganism and universal basic income (as examples) but haven't fully committed to them myself. I do consider myself 'almost' pacifist, with the recognition that there may be some scenarios where violence is the best answer (though likely rarely), and this is probably a green characteristic. I have some yellow characteristics as well. I tend not to judge others - or more accurately, I do judge them but I am usually aware of it and can treat everyone reasonably fairly regardless of how I judge them. I can see similarities in the core motivations of different stages (e.g. blue, orange, and green), which allows me to see that some problems are complex and don't have simple or obvious solutions. While I can recognize these complexities, I still don't have a great grasp on how to solve these problems - I am only at the stage of realizing that the problems are complex. I can see, for example, that a solution proposed at stage orange or green likely won't work, but I don't often have good insights as to what a better solution may be. I still have work to do in integrating yellow and distancing myself from orange. My introduction to the concepts of turquoise (e.g. mysticism) is fairly recent, and I do not really have any turquoise qualities yet.

Alexandar Edwards, I think you are correct - yellow does care about social issues. Yellow probably does care about reducing needless suffering. The question you may ask is "what is the best way to do this?" You may be able to educate some people to show them that industrial agriculture causes suffering, and that we can exist just fine without it. You may convince some people. Others already know this and you won't change their mind. Reducing the suffering of animals may just not be at the top of their priority list. Remember that yellow is the first stage to be able to take on the perspective of stages that came before it. A green solution to the suffering caused by industrial agriculture may be to educate people about the evil they are causing. A yellow solution may be to give them incentive to get their food somewhere else. Perhaps developing soy or other vegetarian alternatives with improved meat-like taste and comparably costed compared to animal meat. Perhaps 'in vitro' meat, animal tissue cells grown in biochemical reactors that don't need a living animal outside of the initial source of the animal tissue which is propagated. These are very scientific solutions, and there are certainly other options as well based in other areas like policy, crop agriculture, logistics, etc. An orange person might not give up meat for some vegetable product that tastes worse or costs more, or deflates their masculinity, for example. But I imagine most people would eat vegetarian if the taste or nutritional quality of their food didn't degrade (in their perspective), if it didn't cost more, and if the social stigma in some circles that is associated with vegan / vegetarianism went away. Many people probably prefer that animals didn't suffer, but simply aren't willing to sacrifice too much to make it a reality. I think when Leo says that green should care less, he is saying that one may need to reduce their emotional connection to a problem in order to think about it in a clear-headed manner and formulate the most practical solution. The best solution may be a long-term solution that could take years or decades to implement. In the meantime, many agricultural animals will suffer. Green may need to be sufficiently detached to accept that reality in order to pursue the best long-term solution.

@RendHeaven @Victor Mgazi Thank you, RendHeaven for your detailed reply. I think you more succinctly expressed a deeper layer of my question about direct experience: “how do I know I’m not being delusional?” But also, as you suggest, the same question could be asked of one who denies direct experience in support of rational thought and data. It is also possible that with sufficient direct experience (e.g. enlightenment experience(s)), one will no longer doubt the truth of such experience. But even then, that doesn’t mean it is true, right? Or perhaps at that point, making a true vs. false distinction becomes subjective, as Victor Mgazi seems to suggest (please correct me if I am misinterpreting your thoughts). @Faceless@tsuki It seems reasonable, as Faceless suggests, that even direct experience is subjective, since it comes from one’s thoughts regarding their own perceptions. In that case, just reflecting on one’s own perceptions (or memories at that point) would be subjective. That makes communication difficult, since we must have thoughts on our perceptions to translate them into words and put them in this forum, for example, as tsuki mentions. Thanks everyone for your input.

I was just about to ask a similar question (why is direct experience king?) after watching Leo's video "The Mechanics of Belief" (https://www.actualized.org/articles/the-mechanics-of-belief). I know it's an older video, but I just now watched it. I was going to make a separate thread, but I think I will just add my thoughts and questions here, since Shakazulu's question is so similar to mine. First, I want to thank you Leo for all of your work on actualized.org and your videos. They have certainly helped by providing me with new information, practices, and ideas to contemplate as I pursue self mastery. Now onto my thoughts about the video: Am I misunderstanding something in this video? Leo argues that we hold beliefs, and that we mistakenly treat our beliefs as truths. This is fair. But he also seems to put forth the idea that direct experience, rather than belief, is the method we should use to derive truth. But is that really true? Or is that also just a belief? At this moment after watching this video, I can’t yet believe Leo’s idea (if I am interpreting his idea correctly) that truth derived from direct experience (e.g. empiricism) is more likely to be factual than truth derived from other means. Let me make my argument against direct experience necessarily being the source of truth. I will cite an example from wikipedia’s page on epistemology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology): “For example, if a person believes that a bridge is safe enough to support her, and attempts to cross it, but the bridge then collapses under her weight, it could be said that she believed that the bridge was safe but that her belief was mistaken. It would not be accurate to say that she knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported her weight, then the person might say that she had believed the bridge was safe, whereas now, after proving it to herself (by crossing it), she knows it was safe.” Seemingly, the argument made in Leo’s video is that the bridge crosser’s direct experience (that the bridge is known to be safe after crossing it) is the real source of truth, rather than their belief (before crossing the bridge), that it safe. But there are some very major pitfalls, I think, to placing direct experience as the source of truth: 1) People often vastly exaggerate the implications of direct experience: In this bridge crossing example, one might conclude, after crossing this bridge, that it is safe. However, this example did not teach that all, and the example is carefully worded as to not imply this - notice at the end it reads "she knows [the bridge] was safe" rather than "she knows it is safe". The only thing that can be truthfully concluded from this example, is that that person safely crossed the bridge under those specific conditions, at that time. It cannot be concluded that it would have been safe for that person to cross the bridge under different conditions, that is safe for the person to cross the bridge again, or that it is safe for a different person (even of identical mass) to cross the bridge. Yet, in practice, we will often use direct experience of past events of to mistakenly claim knowledge of future events. Micro-damage to the bridge during the first crossing may have made it unsafe for a second crossing. A different gait when crossing a second time may cause the bridge to collapse even if it didn’t the first time. It may just be raining the second time, and the person may slip and fall off the bridge. The direct experience clearly conferred the knowledge that the bridge was crossed safely once, under very specific conditions (e.g. date, time, weather, bridge degradation, etc), but it is false to conclude that the bridge is knowingly safe to cross under any other situation whatsoever. This is not a lacking in the value of direct experience, but rather a result of false conclusions people often derive from them. 2) Direct experience is, necessarily, subjective and limited by one’s own perspective. In the bridge example, the bridge crosser traversed the bridge safely and has the direct experience that the bridge is safe. But someone else could cross the bridge without physical injury, yet suffer psychological trauma, perhaps because the bridge swayed a lot, or they’re just afraid of heights. This person would conclude that the bridge is unsafe. Which direct experience is correct? In reality, two people can experience the same external stimuli yet have completely different internal responses. To my knowledge, we do not have objective, infinite awareness. Even if we did (and I am open to the idea such a thing is possible, for example through enlightenment), would we be sure that our awareness was truly infinite? If I walk outside of my town, I can see a cross-section of my town on the horizon and say “I am infinitely aware of my whole town.” But then I may go up onto a mountain and then see the whole town from above, gaining a perspective I couldn’t have from ground level. Only then would I realize that I wasn’t actually infinitely aware of my town when viewed from ground level. But then what if I view the mountain and the town from space? My perspective will again be widened. The problem is that, from each perspective, one may not even be aware of wider perspectives until they are experienced. If I conclude that any direct experience I have represents the broadest, most objective, complete, and consequently, most truthful perspective, is that also not just a belief? The implications of this last question are of extreme importance, especially for those of us on actualized.org who pursue enlightenment, because it calls into question the truth of the enlightenment experience, since it is a direct experience. So am I missing something here? Or is it really just belief that the profoundness of enlightenment experiences (as an example) implies their truth? Finally, let me point out a few things that I am not claiming when I deny direct experience as the absolute source of truth: 1) direct experiences, such as enlightenment experiences, are not worth pursuing. I am not making this claim. All of our concepts about reality are derived from something, whether that is direct experience, data, logic, or beliefs. If we can’t trust that enlightenment experiences are true, then should we still pursue them? I think so. Firstly, we can look at many (not all) people who have had enlightenment experiences and see the significant positive effects they’ve had on their lives, even years or decades after the event. Whether or not these experiences represent truth, it seems quite likely that they are beneficial. 2) direct experience is not the source of truth. I am not making this claim. Direct experience could very well be the most accurate source of truth. I am only saying that nothing said in this video convinces me that direct experience is the most accurate source of truth. 3) some other source (e.g. rational thought) is the real source of truth, not direct experience. I am not making this claim. Again, I am not making any claims as to what is the accurate source of truth, only that direct experience is not necessarily a more valid or profound source than any others. Lastly, please do not take my arguments as disrespect towards Leo or actualized.org. On the contrary, I respect Leo and his work to help people raise their consciousness.