r0ckyreed

Here is Chat GPT’s answer on “Can I use Chat GPT for contemplation?” “As an AI language model, I can provide information and answer questions, but I am not capable of contemplation in the same way that humans are. I can help you explore different ideas and perspectives, and provide you with information that may be useful in your contemplation process. However, ultimately, the process of contemplation is a personal one that requires introspection, reflection, and deep thinking. So while I can be a helpful tool in your contemplation process, I cannot replace the importance of your own personal reflection and introspection.“ There you go! I’m glad the AI is at least honest that it can only give facts but cannot substitute personal contemplation.

There is nothing outside yourself. Desire is a feeling of wanting something that comes from within. I can see rich people but have no desire to have their life. Desire is the foundation for everything. It isn’t a vehicle, it is the road!! When your vehicle breaks down, desire is what gets you to fix your car or keep walking. If you’re treating desire/curiosity as long as a means, then what happens when you get to your end or your means falls apart? Do you stop being curious? Being curious for curiosity sake is identical for valuing truth for its own sake. There is no bottom of the barrel and that is what is so amazing and that’s what keeps curiosity alive! If you can’t see that or just aren’t interested in that, then philosophy is not right for you. Serious philosophers and geniuses are deeply curious people. Curiosity/ambition and intelligence are linked. Research studies support that correlation. I rest my case. Good luck.

I personally use Chat GPT and Google and an iPhone and a Mac Air for my own personal growth and as a distinct part of my contemplation process. What I mentioned in my post here was a criticism of AI from above and not below. Reliance on anything whether that is your teacher, preacher, guru, or AI, will not awaken you. Original insights including enlightenment requires thinking for yourself. That doesn’t mean stop using Google and YouTube and Chat GPT. It just means that after you kill the Buddha, kill Chat GPT. Don’t give it the ultimate authority. That is what it is sounding like here. That’s all I will say on this. Chat GPT is not contemplation! If you don’t understand what I pointed to here, good luck.

Of course. You have to make that distinction first and separate yourself from all the BS. When you contemplate and think for yourself deeply enough, then you may discover that you are everything. But until then, the idea that you are the preacher isn’t going to help you break through the BS. Actual realization of oneness is needed not ideas of oneness. We can’t drive the trailer in front of the car.

This has already been discussed on the forum.

Keep it simple. We need to connect more to nature more than ever. This AI stuff is a distraction from The Force.

The whole point of contemplation is to think independent original thoughts. Using AI defeats the purpose. You might as well read books and Google your answers and give your mind to chat gpt. But this isn’t contemplation. In the past we gave our minds over to priests, now to scientists, and in the future it will be AI. The question is what will you give your mind up to? Or will you be those few who thinks for themselves? Sit alone in nature and just think.

How is determinism true if past/future and cause/effect and big bangs are illusions? You have a story that you came from a Big Bang that was picked up from culture, but how do you know this to be true? If what you are saying is true, then love and logic is nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain. If logic is nothing more than a chain of cause and effect of chemicals in your brain, then how can you trust your own logic/rationality? See the problem with this deterministic reasoning? There is no rational justification for it because even if it is true, that means all rationality is irrational since it is just a series of chemicals firing in the brain with no ability to choose otherwise.

I need to think about this some more because one of the insights I had just now is that one cannot deconstruct the ego until one first deconstructs free will in the most libertarian sense. It just seems paradoxical that free will exists and doesn’t exist. The ego does not have free will. The Force has free will. But since The Force is within me, I have free will. But The Self is not the ego identity in the human body. I think compatibilism is correct because free will is compatible with determinism. On the one hand, our direct experience illustrates that we have some voluntary control over our bodies, but on the other hand we don’t. The same process that works the galaxy, works our bodies and notions of free will. But all of that is the Free Will of The Force. There is nothing outside The Force that limits it, so it is free. The willing part comes when The Force and ego meet. Why couldn’t The Force have free will? What could limit it?

So then you didn’t have free will to respond here. This determinism BS is just an excuse to not take action. You chose to come on here and reply that. If free will is an illusion, then why argue that it is? The fact that you have options in your brain between stimulus and response seems like indicators of free will to some degrees. You may not control all the thoughts the go through your head. but you can choose which ones you act on and can live consciously.

@Razard86 If Infinity means everything is possible, then doesn’t that mean destiny isn’t possible because destiny says that there is only one possible future and free will says there is an infinite amount of possibilities? Free will seems like the most obvious and non-limiting. I do think free will and destiny are compatible. I don’t deny that our bodies age. But I do deny the claim that everything in life is already written. The Force can create whatever it wants. Thanks.

Nobody is fooling you or conspiring anything but you. All deception is self-deception.

You can only move the steering wheel because your mind can move your hand. Notice how you cannot move the steering wheel without your mind’s control of your body. If you were the wheel, then it could turn when you will it to. But it doesn’t work like that. You have to will your hand to effect the external world. You only have will over your body and nothing else. But even within that, you have only 5% control over anything in your body. You can will your hand to move, but you cannot will yourself to not have cancer. We have limited free will. The only reason why you don’t identify with a coffee table right now is because everything you experience and can control takes place in a specific human body, which you call yours. If you didn’t identify with the body, then why do you have a fear of death? Also, sorry I keep editing here. But I keep getting more insights. Why do you think consciousness is experiencing a body if the body is not a crucial part of experience? Everything thing you call as having a subject you experience as an object. If your body now gets destroyed, you lose your experience as the human being you identify as.

Suffering. A state of consciousness. Nothing more.

I don’t think that’s how it works. The future and past don’t exist; therefore, it is destiny and determinism that are the illusions and not free will.

It is logical to identify with human body because that is the only thing we have control over. I can’t control the wind, but I can move my hand at will.

Well said. I like this. These are my thoughts exactly.

Depression consists of a minimum of a loss of interest and hopelessness. A person who is hopeless typically has low desire, low motivation, low meaning, low interest/boredom. A happy person has the opposite and has ambitions/desires. I get what you mean, but part of what makes someone depressed and diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, severe is not having anything to look forward to. I mean suicide to its extent is the loss of desire to live. The fact that you desire to work through your traumas and overcome depression are aspects of positivity/happiness. Happiness isn’t just feeling joy, but it is a mindset I carry through every emotion. I can be sad and still be happy because the mindset of a happy person in a sad state is self-reassurance and self-empowerment. That’s how I like to think of happiness. Not as some dopamine high of bliss, but a state of mind of acceptance, nurturance, cultivation, discipline, curiosity, and desire/ambition. Optimism through the hard times, being able to continue to focus on my strengths and growth is how I am always able to happy or in a happy-growth mindset.

Of course curiosity is the desire for understanding. Buddhism is dumb on this part. The cause of suffering isn’t desire but the lack of it. A person who is depressed has less desires than a happy person. They have it backwards. It is rather about the quality of desires. I have made a post on desire already. Moderation means mediocrity. Don’t be silly. You want to be as curious as you can. The real Buddhas are the most curious people ever. All the geniuses you can think of are deeply curious folks.

Ambition is important. Focus on what victories are worth pursuing. Being content with mediocrity isn’t something you want to win at.

Rick Astley is good but doesn’t quite compare. What leads you to think Rick is better?

I never get why Leo calls anything imaginary if everything is. Science is imaginary Reality is imaginary. If reality is imaginary, then says science is imaginary becomes redundant because of reality is imaginary, then everything is and then there is nothing else to talk about. Even more or less imaginary is still imaginary. Who is to say what is more imaginary or not? Science and religion are both ideas. I would say that in my opinion science is less imaginary than religion because it doesn’t dismiss evidence as much as religious folks do. There is more BS in religion.

Leo’s birth and birthdate is imaginary just like everything else in this marvelous Universe.

Emotions and the truth are not the same. Most people want to be happy and don’t want the truth. That is what Jed is getting at. Altering your state does not mean that you have realized truth, although realizing truth does typically happen in an altered state otherwise you’d be aware of it now.

That’s what Narcissistic Personality Disorder is.