Mason Riggle

@Human Mint nope, the boy is the doctors biological son, and the man who died in the accident is the boy's biological father.

A boy and his father are in a car accident. The father is killed. They rush the boy to the hospital in critical condition, requiring immediate surgery. In the operating room, the doctor walks in, takes one look at the boy and says, 'I can not operate on this boy, he's my son.' How is this possible?

@Inception Why is this a problem? Simply recognize that there's no difference between 'seeming' and 'being'. "You guys seem way too real." and "You guys are way too real." mean the exact same thing. Everything 'real' only ever 'seems real'. How can you tell the difference?

I'm my wife too. But it's relative. The wave is not the whole ocean, but it's a function of the whole ocean, so in a way, it is 'what the whole ocean is doing'... the arbitrary thing we call a 'wave' (where does a wave begin and end?, can you show me an ocean wave without showing me the ocean?), could not exist how it does without the entire ocean existing how it does. The two are 'not two'.. they are one.

?

@Inception weird, you're imagining that from my point of view, you've lost the plot. Cheers.

@Inception are you imagining my point of view or am I?

@Inception if you are convinced you are imagining me, what's your reason for continuing to have a conversation with a figment of your imagination? Do you see why it would be difficult for your imaginary friend, Mason, to trust that you believe yourself when you say these things? It seems more like a hunch that you think is probably true, but you're not sure. OR Similarly, what would be the point in agreeing with you.. in telling you that I agree. By doing so, it would be admitting to myself that I'm talking to a figment of my own imagination, and I really think it's important to me that this figment of my imagination hears what I have to say about it. It would only make sense to disagree with you.. to think you're not my own imagination. Is this conversation really the 'best' thing I can imagine right now?

I am everything which normally is considered to be 'not me'. "I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware." - Alan Watts

People overcomplicate this, but it's very simple. Organisms grow hair, breath, digest food, hear sounds, think thoughts, etc... These are things organisms do automatically. The mistake people often make, is that they they think there is a separate 'self' which resides somewhere inside their organism, a 'doer' of what their organism is doing. But this 'self' or 'doer' or 'thinker' doesn't exist. How hard are you trying to think right now? Not at all. It is absolutely effortless, because there is no 'you'.. no 'separate self'.

@julienw It's still a problem, because we still can't identify as 'neural pathways' or 'neurons in the brain'... which ones are we? Some of them. All of them? We can't be all of them, because if we remove some of them (in severe cases, doctors have performed hemispherectomies, removing 1/2 of a patients brain) the 'self' remains.

@michaelcycle00 "God's Plan is suspiciously similar to that of someone with no plan." ?

"You are Imagining Yourself" is a relatively deceptive string of language. For one, "you" implies a separate "me". Who is it that you are addressing this statement to? The me who you are imagining? Or is it me who is confused.. was the statement written by a you who I'm imagining? "Reality is Imagining Itself" is perhaps a clearer pointer. A 'better map', if you will. For two, (maybe I get that I'm actually me talking to myself when I read "You are Imagining Yourself".. I didn't fall for my own deception this time.. yet, there's still the problem with the word 'imagining') the word 'imagining' has a couple of deceptive implications as well. "Imagining" sounds like something I am actively doing, intentionally or unintentionally. But can I stop doing it? How? More imagining? Also, if I'm Imaginary, if everything is Imaginary, then Imaginary means the same thing as Real. "Being" seems to be a word that doesn't carry these two implications as heavily. You are Being Yourself. Reality is Being Itself. I am [being myself]. "I am. Ohhhh... I AM!!" - Leo Gura

My thoughts on the topic are this: It doesn't matter whether or not your 'physical body' is 'actually physical' or 'imaginarily physical', because at the end of the day, there is no difference between the two. If you consider.. is your entire reality 'real'.. or does it just 'seem so real that you can't tell it's just imaginary'?? Either way it doesn't matter.

It's a strange loop.. Imagination Imagining Itself imagining itself imagining itself imagining itself.....

@DoTheWork First, recognize that it's ego that wants to rid itself of itself. Getting rid of the ego is the biggest ego trip going. But, IF the ego really wants to 'cease' to identify as thoughts, it should recognize that that's all the ego is... thoughts. As you stated, you still think of yourself as 'the thinker of your thoughts', when the reality is, 'you' are just thoughts. This partially has to do with the way organisms use and process language. The organism @DoTheWork has created an imaginary 'self' in addition to 'thinking'. For example, consider when we say things like, 'I am thinking about something', we tend to regard 'thinking' as something the ego is 'doing'. 'I am doing that.' 'I am authoring these thoughts.'. But notice that we don't tend to think this same way when we say things like, 'I am growing hair.' It's easy to see that 'growing hair' is something organisms do automatically, without some separate 'grower', in addition to 'growing', that exists somewhere inside the organism. When an organism considers this, it might recognize that what it continually mistakes to be 'the thinker of thoughts', is just more thoughts.. and what the 'thinker of thoughts' ACTUALLY is, is the entire Universe.. the same way a wave is created by the entire ocean. There is no 'waver of waves' in the ocean somewhere, waving waves. If your organism keeps reminding itself of this, eventually it may begin to see itself as the entire Universe, marveling at it's own mystery through your eyes. '

People who understand what 'I am God' means don't say it, because it's like saying, 'Everything is Everything'. It's pointless. If you are trying to convince someone else that you are God, or that they are God, then you are confused about what God is... It would be like convincing the characters in a dream you are having that they are just dream characters.. if you find yourself doing this, you yourself are lost in the dream thinking they are 'separate from your dream', and you've forgotten that the dream characters are you.

Anything which seems to 'exist' arises in the same way, as imagined 'relative' duality, which is why it doesn't seem 'random'. For every up there's a down, otherwise 'up' doesn't 'exist'. 'Existence' is a process of 'imagined duality' always in flux, never static, coming together and falling apart, unifying and dividing. Einstein seemed to grasp this in his theory of Relativity, which is also considered to be 'a theory of gravity'. Gravity is relative.. but it appears constant to you. One example of relativity is to imagine two people on a train playing ping-pong. The train is traveling at around 30 m/s north. When the ball is hit back and forth between the two players, the ball appears to the players to move north at a speed of around 2 m/s and then south at the speed of 2 m/s. Now imagine someone standing beside the railroad tracks watching the ping-pong game. When the ball is traveling north it will appear to travel at 32 m/s (30 m/s plus 2 m/s). When the ball is hit in the other direction, it still appears to travel north, but at a speed of 28 m/s (30 m/s minus the 2 m/s). To the observer by the side of the train, the ball always appears to be traveling north.

@Gesundheit2 ?

Ha! We agree on this for sure.

Fair enough.

@Harlen Kelly nope, not me. Shouldn't are the exact same as shoulds. They are entirely subjective. Shoulds and shouldn'ts are really 'should if's and 'shouldn't if's where the if condition is some subjective goal. There is no objective way the Universe should or shouldn't be. The Universe doesn't care if humans survive.

@PepperBlossoms well said. Science has it's limits, but when it comes to my ability to make relatively accurate predictions about reality, it seems unmatched. If there's a better method, I'd love to hear it.

@Harlen Kelly also, my main argument is not 'we should allow Covid because there's just too many people.'.. my main argument is twofold: that 1, we do not know the ultimate consequences of our actions, and 2, we are not in a position to say what 'should' happen in the world. Who's to say Humans should survive? You? Only because you are one. How selfish. Human population is growing, meanwhile 16,306 separate species of animals are considered 'endangered'. Grow your circle of concern.

And you know this how? Since 1800, the human population has grown from about 1 Billion to roughly 7.9 Billion... some estimate the Earth can sustain a maximum of about 9 to 10 Billion.. which we are on trajectory to reach by about 2050....