FrankTheTank

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/why-does-the-universe-exist-some-perspectives-from-our-physics-project/

Hi there, I just watched Leos new video in his blog about the state of his health and I wanted to take the opportunity to talk (again) about and question Leos metaphysical understanding of reality. There is currently one thread about it in the meditation, consciousness forum subsection “Leo are you contradicting yourself” but I think there should be a more conversation about it. As a side note I have multiple sclerosis myself so I know what chronic illness and suffering is about. So, when I watched Leos video I found it to portray a very down to earth human struggle and I thought: what about all the talk of “I am god” and everything is subjective and you construct all of reality. Imo. this would be a good opportunity to elaborate on Leos metaphysical position. Are the health issues objectively real, meaning they are caused independent of Leos state of mind, or are they “just hallucinated” by Leo? If Leo is God and creates all of (his) reality the “cure” for the health condition should be possible by somehow adjusting his “imaginary”/creative output. Why go to a classical doctor who tries to fiddle with ones body, why the talk about genetic causes of disease, arent all these at bottom rather illusory/secondary concepts? What are the primary ontological and causal factors in the universe? To be honest I find it soothing when I listen to people (like Leo) who claim that they became deeply convinced by some experience or insight that the, rather harsh, classical materialistic position is seriously flawed and that some more uplifting true reality is indeed the case. And when I saw Leos health video I felt disappointed/let down – not by Leo personally but by seeing that, when the shit hits the fan all the fancy, lofty talking about deep, allegedly undisputable, radical insights into the nature of reality, about being God and love and everything is just imaginary and subjective and radical Absolute Truth and what not, suddenly falls flat. It leaves me with the impression that Leos spiritual metaphysical position was not a deep unshakeable conviction after all. Rather it was a superficial, shaky house of cards all along, a lofty pipe dream formed and fueled by spiritual ideology/role models and perpetuated by uncritically accepted, psychedelics infused emotional and mental states. But when you pull on one pillar (suffering in that case) it all immediately crumbles to ashes, and I find to witness that rather disillusioning – even though I appreciate Leos willingness to openly share his struggles. Don’t get me wrong my point is not a “gotcha”/told you. I am still (I had a post about this a year ago - https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/36350-can-leo-do-anything-demonstrable-superhuman-and-going-foreward-for-actualizeorg/?page=1) interested to try to get to the truth about metaphysics and reality and I respect everyone with the same aspiration and I acknowledge that this is a difficult and nuanced journey. Be well --Frank

My question would then be in what sense is the word "imaginary" the right term, as "to imagine" indicates to me that the world is not objective but hallucinated and controled in the mind of an entitiy. If we (in our ego state) have no way (even through altered states of consciousness) to change the apperance of things. And if God cannot change things "about himself" (does that mean God can/does not change the objects/apperances (my broken leg) in the world?). Who/what can make a change to the things/apperances in the world? On whos "mind?" is the world supervenient? If materialism is horseshit - who/what and by what mechanism does make the creation of the universe and the change in it happen? How comes "all" people do agree (more or less) on the objects and their characteristic, that are out there - like the tree and its color in front of my window? What entities/how many are there in the universe in your opinion? Does our Mind/Psyche run/supervenes on our Brain function? Why is my ego only aware of my conscious states? Do you take the view of rupert spira that all of the world including all the people/protagonists and their lives are just a dream in on Gods mind? Mario can not go through the wall by himself but God/the programmer/the hacker could give Mario the abilty to go through walls or teleport Mario on the other side of the wall and if we all are God then why is there no way that we can access the ability to do it? While you might be unhappy with one way or the other I put my argument in words I think you understand what I try to get at. I think to make progress on our metaphysical views and to communicate them its important to have a kind of position paper on our basic metaphysical assumptions and state clearly and briefly what we think about the basic metaphysical entities/questions.

Donal Hoffman is presenting a strong scientific (evolutionary, psychological and physical) case against our mainstream scientific notion of space-time and quantum mechanics / general relativity as fundamental. --Frank

Let me start by saying that I have been watching Leos videos for year and I think he is an honest seeker and a great communicator. Also I am arguing from good faith - I dont intend to offend anyone. Anyway... in the latest video Leo said that in the highly altered states of consciousness under DPT he thought that he might be able to act in ways - normally considerd - "supernatural", like healing the body or maybe even altering it. At one point he imagined changin his hand to a tentakle (if I remember correctly) he dismissed that idea because it was not the natural form of his human body to form a tentakle instead of a hand. Ok fair enough, but shouldnt it be possible to do something (anything considered "unnormal") - like shaving the hair on his arm and let them regrow instantly. Or cutting his fingernails and (somewhat more extrem) doing a small but bleeding cut on the finger and let the would heal instantly, or something in that ballpark - you get my point. Alternatively do any of the insights transfer to some sort of practical/technologically useful and testable knowledge that a human could not have under normal circumstances. Anything that could give any objective credence that all the insights arent just delusions. I think (and certainly I am not the only one) that he should apply more scepticism to his own insights. Leo talked about how vivid these experiences are and also having his insights confimed by other enlightend masters, thats all well and good, but is that really good evidence? Surely many people here can talk in sufficently convincing ways about spiritual experiences even if they did not have had them and thats possible because there are many high quality lectures and teachings and spiritual maps out there so that evereyone interested knows what a teacher "needs" to hear to be convinced of ones spiritual process. Also regarding the insights that can be achieved (either by meditation or psycheldelics): for me it does not come as a surprise that the mind brings up insights about things that one has heard/read in spiritual teachings, like oneness or nothingness or potential<-->form etc. It would be plausible that leo and other seekers form their mental representation of a spiritual landscape (by reading and listening to masters) in their minds and then when we take psychedelics the "wild experiences" get interpreted in accord to the already formed spiritual map - a sort of confirmation bias that we all are susceptible to. Imho for actualized.org going forward it would be important to a) for Leo and the community to try to come up with something, anything, that could verify/give credence to the claimed insights b) I also thought it would be intersting and productive and also healthy for leo to not only give talks but instead to also from time to time bring guests online to have a constructive debate/critique with them regarding his metaphysics or insights or how one could verify claims. Otherwise I see the real danger that Leo and we as a spiritual community increasingly build a higher and higher castle in the sky without any grounding in reality whatsoever. All the best. --Frank

@Leo Gura Well, it was you who (rightfully) proposed scpticism and open mindedness as a virtue. If you dont always, in your quest for truth, take the possibility serious that the world might not be the way you currently conceive of it - thats imho problematic. Trying to underpin your views by finding some corroborative evidence or some testable theory is not delusional nor a mind game. Please try to at least sympatheticly consider to bring well intentioned construcive input from smart "outsiders" to actualized.org. debate is one of the best intellectual tool humanity has at hands. another commendable example of someone who tries to substantiate this spiritual intuaition of the world is rupert sheldrake who proposed his theory of morphic resonance. again, I dont think he has succeeded yet in demonstrating good evidence, but it is the way to move a field of inquiry forward.

@Leo Gura I understand your point and maybe i am and maybe i have. But as I did not have had any of these dramatic experiences myself - despite quite serious spiritual efforts - i cant say. but i really think it is the right direction for the acutalize community and also for you to take far more seriously the possibility that thats not so. to get into long format (like joe rogan) well intentioned discussion (maybe one dicussion video every month?) with a wide spectrum of smart people about what is really the case and what is not and how to go about finding an intersting demonstration. this will certainly be a difficult undertaiking and will require creativity and serious work but imo thats the only way to bring these far off teachings/practices out to the wider public. In some video you talked about that your true life purpose is to teach people, to get the knowledge out in the word. If you are really serious about it this should be the way to go. I think a good example is the PSI community as represented by people like dean radin. Imo they did not yet succeed to give good evidence for a PSI phenomenon. But they are serious and really try hard and they are scientifically quite rigoruous.

@bejapuskas Thanks for looking up the links. but: 1. Non of these articles you linked show "conscious healing of the body", or have I missed it? 2. the only somewhat substantive study is (https://www.pnas.org/content/111/20/7379) the randomized stuy where they got infected with Escherichia coli endotoxin. But while the results might be somewhat intersting, the obvious (and there are far more not so obvious ones) mehtodological shortcomings are 1. the improvement in symptoms was selfreported so there was way for blinding. Also the improvement in symptoms was subjective and not an objective measure of how the dissease/symptoms evolve. 2. The Wim Hoff method also includes an "exposure to cold" training which is well kown to enhance ones resilience. Also reduction of stress which is fosterd by meditation (which is also part of wim hoffs method) is known to have an anti-inflamatory effect. The whole study protocol is an all too well know way to veil uneffective procedures: 1) You choosen a dissease (like pain) where the manifestation of the dissease is a matter subjective reporting instead of an objective outcome measure 2) you mix your (potentially)uneffective intervention with other things that are well known to be somewhat effective. Still, maybe the breathing technique does bring some (probably small) effect but its really nothing like mind over matter in the advertised sense. ...and I guess this was my point from the beinning of the post: if a spiritual teaching/community wants to make claims about effects other than "I leaned a lot about my inner world through introspection" or "I am more psychological healthy and that it benefited my sleeppattern and social relationships" they have to put serious, >>open ended<< intent/effort to finding evidence for and also against it. And wasnt that the purpose of the "true seeker" project in the first place: to try to find out how the world really is. And not to just blindly trot along a path of old text sayings and wishful thinking, about how we are all god and death is an illusion and in the end everything will be good regardless of what we do and we are all one and mind over matter. Who wouldnt want this to be true? but our preference in that metaphysical outlook itself should make us much more suspicious.

@Matt8800 I have read a book by dean radin. i agree that he is smart and serious but the obvious problem with all his research - that is now going on for decades - is the following: he/the whole PSI community can not present a single experiment with a strong effect size that can be (at least somewhat ) RELYABLY reproduced (even by them) . independent international teams have tried to reproduce and regularly failed. another conspicuous point is that there seems to be little progress in the field. afer all the decades they can not come up with some criterion to carefully select a group of very suitable people (like close relative or long time meditators) and thereby increase the relyabily/reproduceability considerably. @Dimi I want to explore this because there are two interesting domains to explore for us: the outer world (fundamentally physics) and the inner world (psychology, introspection) and their relationship/dependence (spirituality/metaphysics). Its not that I want to believe. I am interested to gain knowledge and skill. While I am conviced of the utility of the skill of meditation for understanding my mind and to improve my wellbeing I have found nothing so far that convinced me that one gains any special metaphysical or otherwise special knowledge through meditation/spirituality. So if anyone on earth has it and can show something it would help me/be the only way for me to free the required time in my schedule - which - as I said - is a zero-sum resource. I have tried, but found nothing extrodinary there. Additionally and maybe more relevant if I look at the world and at history I find the state of affairs difficult to square with any "law of attraction" or karmic- or otherwise "special"/esoteric priciple.

regarding scientific proof: scientific evidence is not a binary Yes or No. But you have to start somewhere if you want to have the hope that you could come to some more definite conclusion than "oh you just have to find out for yourself". science tries to gather evidence in some form to foster a hypothesis. the more smart people think about good experiments or any other way to nail down what is truth and what is dillusion the better. so SOME demonstration of ANY INSTERSTING phemomenon in the form of a video would be a good start - i really find it hard to understand why anyone would not be interested and even demand to find some such demonstrable phenomenon, instead of just loftier and loftier claims of insights month after month. as I already said a video can of course be manipulated but that would require effort and malicious intent (which i dont think leo has). While just building castles in the sky of your mind requires nothing more that confirmation bias and taking your experience during a trip as ultimate insight. ultimately, if you cannot do anything with an insight AND you can also not show any evidence that it is really true why should one persue it. its of no practical use at all and its not even that you can be confident that you gatherd true knowledge. so is it then nothing more a consolation project for people who find lifes circumstances difficult to endure? @bejapuskas could you please link to that evidence? i know about his breathing technique but i am not aware of his ability to heal the body. But already I am quite confident that (if he demonstrates anything relevant to healing the body at all) what he demostrates will be a rather small effect under low quality study conditions. otherwise I am pretty sure i would have heard about it. ... but you are very welcome to prove me wrong... --Frank

@Dimi Objective in this sense would be anything that is not just claimed by (for or discussion here) Leo but somehow demostrated to an external observer i.e. me and you. Is ist possible to fake a "video proof"? sure but it requires malicious intent instead of just confirmation bias and also much effort and experise. So for that matters that would be at least a serious start in the right direction. I havend had the necessary experiences myself to make me very convinced one way or the other so SHOWING some good evidence would move my convictions a good deal in the "right" direction. And: do you really think only the things that you BELIEVE in do manifest in ones life? really? I am convinced the world is full of happenings that people did not believe in at all. Is it really your metaphysical believe that the causality in the universe is governed by (even if very serious) wishful thinking? I find it hard to believe that people inner model of the world really works that way... @StarStruck Questions like "isnt it super natural you are here?" how is this a serious, well intended reply to what I wrote, I mean seriously? @nowimhere I dont want somebody to worship. I dont worship Einstein for his theory of relativity but he was the on who gave convincing and scientifically testable evidence to the world that spacetime behaves in a ways that "noone" expected. Time and resources are limited in everyones life. In my life I have devoted some serious hours to meditation, silent retreats and related practices and while I had interesting and experiences and insights about the working of my mind its nothing close to the insights Leo talks about. Maybe I would need to put much more serious effort into it but as my sparetime and lifetime (as everyone elses) is a zerosum game I would have to make sacrifices to other activities that are also important to me. Therefore it would be more than helpful and motivating - and certainly not only for me - to be very confident that we are not just chasing a mirage.