Joshe

Good observations. Just one idea I think is missing: The mind and endless options aren’t overwhelming most people. This only happens for neurotic thinkers like ourselves, lol. It’s self-inflicted. You claim to be inoculated by a meta perspective, but it’s the meta perspectives that are the most burdensome. Try sharing a meta perspective with the average person to witness how taxing it is. It’s not that the average person couldn’t see it - it’s that the cognition required to see it is too burdensome. It could easily take you 2 hours to successfully transfer a perspective. That’s painful and most people aren’t willing to endure that, which is why they don’t do it naturally. The difference is mostly in cognitive architectures.

The prefrontal cortex allowed us to think greater, but the more thinking opted for over just going with the flow and feeling, the more burdensome. Some minds are glad to pay the tax because the cost is worth it, for whatever reason.

@Natasha Tori Maru I don't see your questions and overall engagement with me as good faith. 2-3 weeks back you asked me some questions about how I got to where I did and I spent 30 minutes or so answering them in sharp detail, explaining to you how my position was built, and your response to me was to not waste my time. So I don't think you're actually curious about my positions so much as you wanting something else. Possibly for me to not sound so sure of myself. Which is a matter of style that just rubs you the wrong way. (current best hypothesis) I assure you, it's the ideas or the consequences or implications of them I'm putting down, not the people. I don't want anyone to feel put down. I should perhaps be more sensitive and less prickly. Ok, let's see if we can get along.

😂

It is not a fact that pink is the best color. But if I say it is, I'm going to have you on my ass talking about "that's not actually true". I'm not going to mark each of my sentences whether or not they're factual. You assumed I held it as a fact because I stated my position without disclaimer or acknowledgment that it wasn't. It was just me saying "this is how I see things and how I operate - my current best understanding". The things I think are true, I will state as if they are without disclaimers, even though they might not actually be true or may be lacking. We've been over this before. I don't have some weird thing about being wrong and not being able to change my mind. I act and speak with the best understanding I have at the time. You might think this is irresponsible or whatever, but I hold an open mind at all times and everything can be revised. This is second nature to me. Show me a better way, and I adopt as soon as I see it. The implication here is that I don't have to go around parading uncertainty to demonstrate my epistemic hygiene. I wasn't saying that. My whole point about direction and use was a tangent that spun off being told not knowing would do me some good. It had nothing to do with user's engagement on this topic. There you go again telling me what's factual and what's not, lol. I can't explain it to you, but your model of me is just wrong on so many levels, and you have no idea what I can know. Also, when I state my reads, they're just that, reads. They could be wrong. I'm basically just stating my reads and you seem to take it personally. Rather than always arguing about me being the way that I am, just argue how I'm wrong. I arrive at a conclusion and then argue on its behalf, to see if it wins out, not to put anyone down. I'm not a sadist. I actually care about transfering my understanding, not about others not having it or holding it above them. I've re-read some of my post and thought they did sound quite arrogant. And I was like, "shit, am I like Leo?", lol. FYI, my modus operandi is more to improve my models of reality, which involves testing them. I don't get much luck here though. The only thing that usually gets tested is my character. I think you and I are not going to get on well. I don't think you have good intentions, and you obviously can't stand my style. So let's just keep a little distance. You can continue to make snide remarks about me, but let keep engagement to a minimum if it doesn't involve good-faith battle of ideas.

No worries bro. I don't mind a little combativeness in argumentation, if you couldn't tell, lol. When I attack or mock ideas, I'm not mocking the people making them, so if I ever seem combative or rude or whatever, that's just a little fun rough-play. We should all want our bad ideas to be playfully mocked to the high heavens, lol.

Obviously when I make that statement, I'm not stating a fact. When I say "the point of arriving at a conclusion is to provide you with direction in thought or action", I'm doing two things: 1) Saying this is what the point of it is to me and what I think it should be. 2) Implying that if the point is something other than this, that's an inferior way, in the sense that those other ways are less wise. The 3 not being equal isn't a belief I hold as fact. It's a position I've worked out. You seem to see these options as all equally valid approaches. You can rank the 3 under "What's the best way to live or be?" and see which is more wise, more mature. Of course it will be a matter of opinion and personal preference, but some ways of being and opinions are wiser than others. Which you obviously agree with because you're telling me that it's best to be open and "not know" and to look very deep to find the things you've found regarding "not knowing", and then you suggested a book to help me reach those understandings. You imply there is a "proper way". Same thing I did. Neither, lol. There are deeper motivations. "Truth for its own sake" needs to be unpacked and reconciled with how psychology actually works. Someone having a deep curiosity about aliens does not equal "I care about truth for its own sake". lol. At best, "I care about truth for its own sake" is a lazy description of one's true motivations and reward system. At worst, it's a tool of the ego and fosters self-deception. Here, it's most often a blessed-from-on-high virtue signal. A fine specimen for the "conformity" thread.

I'm not saying to never rest at "I don't know". I'm saying people are avoiding moving away from "I don't know" because they prefer not to. Not because they're thinking clearly and staying humble. They're prefer exotic explanations over mundane ones. Also, I botched my idea with action/non-action. The point I was trying to drive home was that the whole purpose of epistemology is to arrive at a conclusion, and the point of arriving at a conclusion is to provide you with direction in thought or action. Moving in the right direction is what it's for. I'm advocating for the application of sound reasoning, critical thinking, and honest updating. To critically test every claim and to objectively weigh the evidence. That's all. For each incident, exhaust the mundane before reaching for the miraculous. If you do an honest accounting and still find the mundane explanations lacking, fine. But you have to do the honest accounting first. Otherwise you're just doing what Q'Anon and flat-earthers do except you're wearing an "I don't know" humility costume, thinking it buys you cover.

Sounds like it's doing you harm. Not-knowing is meant to be provisional, not something you mire in indefinitely. Many here don't seem to understand the point of good epistemology. The point is to arrive at the most accurate conclusions given the data. And what's the point of arriving at conclusions? ACTION, or maybe better "Non-action" Good epistemology is a filter. What is the job of a filter? To collect clean outputs by discarding pollutants. It's meant to be a tool, not an identity. Not a badge of honor. Not something you parrot, but something you actually fucking employ. You say it's possible you're just spinning webs of bullshit. How about you elaborate on that in the same loving detail you apply to your alien project? You don't build a detailed classification of things you think you're inventing. You're making this shit up and believing in their possibilities to a large degree. Then, at the end, you build an escape hatch. The flat-earther has done at least one thing epistemology requires. They've stuck their necks out. Perpetual one-line hedges that you could be full of shit, then not making any gains in one direction or the other isn't what good epistemology looks like. You work toward a conclusion of what is most likely, then you state your position. You falsify and weigh evidence until something gives. At least Q'Anon and flat-earthers have the balls to make falsifiable statements. "I could be wrong" disclaimers and while not updating is a tell that you're not trying to be right or wrong at all. And that's the point of these alien projects. They're pure entertainment for you and most everyone who indulges. To prove them bullshit would bring your fun time to an end. To never arrive is the point. Which is why you spend the majority of your time consuming content aimed at their truthfulness rather than content calling out the bullshit. Do you realize this is the same exact thing flat-earthers say. The same exact thing Q'Anon, astrology, ghost believers, and Scientologists say? When your best defense against a serious critic maps 1:1 to the best defense of Q'Anon and the like, that's a strong signal worth paying attention to. Aliens almost certainly exist in our universe, but your 70-80% or whatever conviction that they're visiting us on earth is an unfounded, fantastical leap. Every piece of evidence anyone has presented, when put under a critical rigorous analysis, has mundane explanations none of you can refute. Yet you all are making gigantic leaps, dismissing those analyses, and saying "I still think it's true, we just can't know", and it's all licensed by Leo, your epistemic authority, because hey, he's the most epistemically responsible human alive, right? Leo would get torn to shreds in an actual debate on this. His "high volume reporting - not everyone is full of shit", his 1930's Italy, his Navy video, all of these have very good explanations that you're all dismissing in favor of something more exciting. Typically, that's fine, but it's maximally hypocritical for this specific community.

lol. That’s some cool art.

Yeah, I’ve seen those grainy grayscale videos. When you look into the tech and the artifacts they produce and the conditions under which the videos are taken, it doesn’t look good for your case. A black and white video with nebulous shapes taken by a camera strapped to a jet traveling god knows how fast, tracking objects thousands of feet away in the dark. Lol. Fuckin aliens bro. I’ve thoroughly debunked this before but can’t recall the most damning bit. Have you looked deep into the technical aspects? Try to find all non-magical explanations first and see how plausible they are compared to the alternative. I think you’ll find that they’re not only plausible, but likely. A microscopic bug might have been on his camera lens doing weird shit for all you know. A jet pilot is also a human who can misperceive things. And let’s not discount the fact that the government has used UFOs in the past to serve some hidden agenda.

Do you think ghosts are literally real, yes or no? By ghost, I simply mean a translucent or even fully opaque non-human but human-shaped thing observable from this reality. If you do as Leo suggests and put stock in the alien sightings due to sheer volume, you also have to put stock in ghost sightings, because there are far more ghost sightings than alien sightings. So we should now bet that ghosts are real? Absurd af. If you thoroughly understand the ghost sighting delusions, that understanding transfers perfectly over to the alien sighting delusions. The mechanisms responsible for the ghost sightings are the same mechanisms responsible for the alien sightings. What is responsible for ghost sighting delusions?

Do you have any idea the number of people who swear on their life that they’ve seen a ghost? Understand thoroughly how that delusion works, then replace ghosts with aliens. That’s how you explain the 10k reports.

Brilliant