zurew

Imagine being blessed with a predetermined meditation session with your cat. Thats some good life right there.

First of all, I agree that we dont know shit, im just laying down possible options. Second of all , you pointing to epistemic issues doesnt engage with metaphysics. You not knowing what is true is compatible with weird things being true that you find incredibly implausible. You not knowing X and or you not being justified in thinking that X is true is compatible with X being true. But for clarity - im not arguing in favour of any particular position there, im just introducing more options, thats it.

Since people are making things more difficult and confusing, I will add to the confusion, cause why not. Yes, but that doesn't exhaust the possibility space. For example, having preferences that arent caused is a possibility and there your choices arent random at all, they are based on those uncaused preferences. - for instance, having an eternal soul outside of time and space and that soul having preferences. Or we can consider platonic objects determining things (which you can categorize under determinism, but there you need to invoke a different notion of causation that works outside of time and space). And we can complicate things more by introducing the concept of "bruteness" and "brute facts", where a brute fact is a fact that in principle doesn't have an explanation. The relevance of bringing this up is that this can potentially break the dichotomy you created (this can break the idea that if your thoughts arent caused, then they are necessarily random). And then we can cash out how and why brute facts are different from randomness (depending on what is meant by randomness). So for example, If by randomness you mean having a set of n possible options, where each option has an equal probability of being chosen, then thats going to be different from brute facts, because brute facts are compatible with you choosing one particular option no matter how many times we run back the exact same scenario. Generally, the approaches that attempt to “save” some form of free will involve - introducing nuance when it comes to different notions of causation and invoking notions that arent easily or directly mappable onto the dichotomy between randomness and regular causation.

I dont think this is true. We are talking about certain "emergent" properties and the issue about them won't go away, just because give an explanation why and how they emerged. Whether the explanation is a different configuration of the same thing or its about an ontologically different thing doesnt matter in this case, what matters is your contribution to it. You can define it this way (I personally wouldnt, but we can sidestep that and I will try to engage with how you defined things), but again this just pushes the issue down one more layer. You are making the problem about transformation now and as long as you contribute to that transformation, the issue about ethics (under anti-natalism) will still remain. Using your analogy it would be like creating ice from water (and creating the "emergent" property of the water being frozen) and then pretending that just because its fundamentally still the same thing, that "emergent" property is now not an issue somehow.

Im glad, but I could have approached the topic in a less complex way and I should have only added nuance when it is actually necessary. I think Carl managed to cut through whats irrelevant and immediately get to whats relevant to most people (where relevance is roughly defined by how a given view will affect your actions and how it will affect you phenomenologically and not necessarily about whats true independent from those)

Then I fucked up. I probably introduced unnecessary nuance, that I shouldnt have. The one takeway should be just that you dont actually know 100% whats the answer, and you should act as though there is free will.

Im just trying to break down the different versions of determinism and trying to show some of the entailments that comes from those views and also try to point out that depending on what is true, what actions you can take (without trying to push a particular view on you). The other main point is that the creation of this whole thread only make sense if you assume some level of control, because otherwise people giving you answers wont change anything, since under determinism even your reaction to those answers are completely predetermined (including what actions you will take, and what feelings and thoughts those answers will create within you). The other main point is that you shouldnt use Leo as an authority figure on the topic,and all of this is just speculation. Its pragmatically beneficial to act as though free will is true, because it might actually be true.

Im offended by that. UnbornTao fell for a double layered irony.

Yeah this is quite important to mention. The question and the problem is often times loaded with a specific sense of 'you' that is taken for granted.

Yes, victims in the sense that you cant change anything, but thats compatible with good changes happening in your life. The casual confusion is the idea that "if determinism is true, then im not gonna do anything with my life, because im a victim" - no that doesnt follow, because if determinism is true, then you gonna do whatever you gonna do, regardless of what realization you have or dont have about free will. You might be determined to not act like a victim and to become successful. The line of "then im not gonna do shit from now on" assumes that there is free will, so its kind of a performative contradiction. So if determinism is true, then yes its hard for you to do the work, but also hard for you to not do the work. ------ But regardless, you will experience life as though you have free will. And depending on what you mean by determinism, there are versions where you dont have any control over your actions and thoughts, but you still have control over how you react to those situations in your mind. So under that you can watch the movie of your life go down either a peaceful or a non-peaceful way, while you acting out an act that you have no control over. And also, I wouldnt be confident in determinism just because Leo said so. You dont know which one is true, so if I were you I would act as though I have free will, and if there is in fact free will, then you can make a difference, and if there isn't any at all and you cant even have control over how you react to things in your mind, then none of this discussion and none of your drawn conclusions matter.

There are inherent limitations to language , but - you can talk about and convey the messiness of reality in a clean way or in a messy way. Just as how you can have a clear theory about vagueness or a vague/unclear theory about vagueness.

Said the zen master, to wake you up.

Most of that goes way above Leo's head. Your idea about where people are at when it comes to logic and academic philosophy is way off (imo). Most people here understand and use the term "logic" as "reasonableness" and as "rational" and they dont use it in a technical way like you do. My assumption is that the video will be something about exploring the difference between logically possible (where 'logic' is used in a technical way) and what seems reasonable to people (which is obviously a much narrower set that contains much less things and doesnt even remotely exhaust the possibility space). And it will be probably also about how one's sense of 'reasonable' and 'reasonableness' is informed and limited by culture and other people and other things like technology , survival and foundational beliefs. Like you shouldnt invoke paraconsistent logic and the problem of the liar's paradox, because most people dont think that contradictions can be meaningful and they dont need to deal with problems like that. But sure, if your goal is to make people realize that affirming certain contradicitons can be reasonable, then invoking paraconsistent logic could make sense.

I think now I kind of track what you meant by it being false. You didnt try to make a case for moral realism, you simply said that if idealism is true, then certain moral claims become false (on descriptive grounds) just given the nature of the world. So if a claim relies on X and there is no X, then the claim is false. But I dont think thats the case, and here is why: there is an equivocation on consciousness there. Everything is consciousness, but not every single thing is conscious/sentient (unless you are a panpsychist). And as a side note: You can be a physicalist and believe that the Universe is eternal (it doesnt have a beginning)

The default appeal is to Parvati and to the Ganas (in both cases its an appeal to the Puranas again), but to be fair to him, he is being epistemically somewhat humble and careful here. Dude is obsessed with bothering aliens. 👽

Im not tracking how being an idealist would be relevant or how it would solve any of this. Idealism doesnt presuppose moral realism and you can have any set of moral intutions as an idealist. Do you think moral-antirealism is incompatible with idealism? Also not sure what is meant by the view not being true. I understand that when it comes to metaphysics, but when it comes to moral realism I have no clue what kind of norm is invoked. Or I could ask it this way: What do you think the error is in a person's position who is an idealist and an anti-natalist at the same time?

Its also funny that post-modernism is invoked as a bad thing, as if you wouldnt be a "post-modernist" in many many domains in life. Are you a gastronomical realist? The other confusion is that anti-natalism has to be either an anti-realist or realist position. No, it can be compatible with both, its just that depending on which one is affirmed, the defense will be different for it. Its just obvious to me ,that none of you can actually establish any coherent and meaningful moral realist stance against anti-realism and even if you could it still wouldnt be motivating in any way at all for anti realist to abide by that system.

This is so confused I dont even know where and how to even begin to reply to this. "validity" and "true-ness" is indexed to the moral intuitions these people have, I dont know what you invoke when you use those terms. You already presuppose some kind of moral realism probably, but thats just simply not engaging with what these people are saying. The cricism that you bring up is simply silly, because there you presuppose that its either the case that moral realism is true or its just all fantasy, which doesnt follow and doesnt even make sense as a reply, its just a complete misunderstanding of moral anti-realism. 1) It almost as if I already predicted this here: It seems that you havent even read the thing that you quoted. 2) You just embodied people who dont understand how anti realism works. Validity is defined by their system not by something outside of their system, so when you say "they are all equal", you are making the mistake of appealing to some kind of norm outside of all those systems, which is the very thing they reject. So no, the consclusion "therefore all perspectives are equal" doesnt follow.

Said by Genghis Khan after someone objected to him raping thousands of women and to him indiscriminately murdering men and boys regardless if they were soldiers, civilians, or simply in the way.

You would automatically give all credit to the aliens when you lack the ability to come up with a hypothesis. Alien of the gaps.

It is arrogant and it is based on a very loose inference.

I dont think we usually have a well thought out epistemic process when it comes to approaching and evaluating these things. But I can tell you one specific instance where I would definitely favour the alien hypothesis over the other one. So when it comes to the Jesus resurrection hypothesis, and him healing people and walking on water and other stuff like that (lets just take those to be facts for the sake of the argument), the alien hypothesis is actually better than Jesus being God. The alien hypothesis is better because you dont need to inflate your ontology with things that are outside of time and space. So if you have a set of things that needs to be explained and one explanation can explain the data without needing to propose new layers of ontology, then you should go with that one over the other (if all else is equal). ---------------- I think we usually lack the epistemic tools so much that we really arent equipped to categorize things in a precise way. I think John Vervaeke is right that some of the imported frameworks we are working with are making it harder or sometimes impossible - so for instance, the subjective-objective divide really breakes down when it comes to categorizing certain entities and issues, and you need to construct new categories to deal with those problems (and sometimes you need a new metaphysical frame for that). And it doesnt help that scientist usually just unconsiously import modern philosophy . Some ways of thinking are so ingrained in us from culture, that you need to spend years to just gain the ability to reflect on those things, because they are completely invisible and they seem axiomatic and necessary - @Carl-Richard's crypto materialism thread just confirms this. Just because you are team Idealism, that doesnt mean that you managed to overcome those ways of thinking. If you cant explicate what epistemic process you go through when it comes to categorizing these things, that should be a good hint that you are doing it in an unconscious manner - and this applies both to scientist and to woo people.

Or you can just infinitely do the move of "ohh its incompatible with it now, therefore its either the case that future sciences will agree with it or this part of the book should be interpreted in a non-literal way".

I get the feeling that he is engaging in the "I verified some things from the Puranas, therefore most if not all of it is true". He is like a sneaky apologist who constantly jumps between "oh its just a myth and it should be interpreted as a myth" and between "No those things are literally true and should be interpreted as such"depending on what the audience is and whats convenient for him. Like be clear, which one do you want to go with, or do you want to go with both, where it both literally happened and it also has mythical import in some kind of very weird Richard Dawkins + Jordan Peterson synthesis style or what? Even when it comes to science stuff, his narrative is "Of course scientits now saying that x,y is true, the yogic sciences predicted this thousands of years ago" and I think a good chunk of that is bias and dishonest, because again other apologists play these games, where the Bible should be interpreted as a science book and when its inconvenient its suddenly not a science book anymore. Its very clear that some of the things that are mentioned in the book are phrased in a very vague way, to the point where it almost becomes impossible for it not to be compatible with what scientist will say in the future. Like the scientist could be saying wildly different things than what they are saying now and the Puranas would still probably be compatible with it. I think as much as I say this , this still isn't pointed out frequently enough when it comes to "authority figures" or pioneers. A good chunk of the work is necessarily based on making a web of inferences and not on directly verifying things, and when it comes to gurus making inferences, they are usually very bad at it, because most of the time they are uneducated and some amount of education is necessary to make more precise inferences with less jumps in logic. And of course being educated isnt enough, but creating very tight arguments is very very hard, where you can point out all the foundational assumptions you go with and where you can walk people through how and why you get to the conclusion.