Natasha Tori Maru

Authenticity. I find it ill-defined. The word is tossed about flippantly. EVERYWHERE. It is spoken about on these forums frequently. What is Authenticity (in the romantic sense, and interpersonally)? Do you think it is overrated/underrated? Only appropriate at certain times or phases of connection? I find it paradoxical. Authenticity requires enough self-awareness to distinguish your genuine values from the forces acting on you (incentive structures). I think it is about congruence. Congruence between what is actually going on inside you, how you live, make choices and relate to the world. So for me it's being able to accurately know what I experience, owning it completely and acting in accordance with it as the situation deeps appropriate. I feel like it needs these clauses because it gets muddled up with just "expressing" without censure. Authenticity IS NOT just expressing the contents of your mind. "I say what I feel", "I refuse to change for anyone", "I do what feels natural", "I am brutally honest" or "I don't care what anyone thinks, this is who I am" - all of these are not it in my definition. Philosophy wise I don't think to be authentic we require a true fixed self. Values change. We change. What is authentic will change. Existentially I see it creeping toward "am I taking ownership of the fact I am choosing?" My closest definition: Authenticity is the constant, background practice of shrinking the space between what I experience and what I understand myself to currently value. What I claim to be, and how I actually behave... while remaining willing to amend my understanding of me. Would love everyone's thoughts around this loaded topic as it applies to dating, courtship, romance, relationships, attraction etc.

@Joshe And for this enquiry - I wasn't able to tame the Ni drive for closure. I wanted an ANSWER god dammit. I feel I'm not done with castigating Authenticity thoroughly, though. But it is a good exercise in driving into the feeling of "wonder" (which is a not-knowing). I find anything that can trigger genuine wonder in me is fuel for good Ni times. Which is why I have a hard on for "not-knowing" but not as a form of knowledge erasure or preliminary space, but genuine wonder. Curiosity and awe. That real "what the fuck?" feeling of encountering something that is clearly bigger than my current knowledge, where I can't immediately compress it into an explanation. That combination of curiosity + awe + epistemic insufficiency is delicious. I think I like wonder as a doorway because it doesn't require an absence of an answer - just a recognition that what I currently have on file is inadequate. Not knowing can be confused with just "empty".

I guess the point of the discussion for me is the dislike of how imprecise and underdetermined the term is, and how it acts to convolute points. People talk of AuThENtiCiTy BrO - and I always want to ask - what the actual fuck do you mean? I feel like without explicitly stating the relation & what we are acting in authenticity TO, it means nothing. If it means nothing and everyone throws it around - it's just a buzzword. Word salad. I kind of want to kill the word now

Did you have some trusted preliminary evidence of efficacy and safety of the drug prior to announcing the retreat? I ask because testing prior to announcement seems the ideal sequence. But if you were operating from a good, trusted source, only to test it yourself and find different results - that would explain the cancellation following testing. You may have had a unique set of variables that revealed the failure of the drug to perform.

This is such a total false dichotomy! I am both! If story isn't your thing, then these legacy games (OOT, Majora) will hit like a wet noodle compared to say, BOTW.

Yes the time mechanic really threw me for a loop. I disliked it at first, but I ended up falling into the flow - like the seasons. Overall I appreciate the game much more as an adult than as a child. Same for me - in fact some of the music inspired me as well. OOT borrowed from other cultures and really broadened my perspective as a little tacker

Gotta agree with this. Apples to oranges. (Cheers for the share above) ---- Regarding Majora's Mask - I agree with others here it is dark as fuck. The story is quite involved and adult. While the shadow temple in OOT scared the shit out of me (those fucking hands and the guy that slowly ambles toward you to chomp Link, and the redeads), Majora's Mask was pure doom. The vibe I have is "deranged" for that game

Commit the ultimate act of Zen Devilry and upload your small self to virtual storage God, I mean - I think some users have already created Leo Gura LLM's - I saw a link somewhere here. People literally stealing a person to entrain an LLM. 🤮🤢

@Joshe I think this concept is much, much more complex than we typically give it credit for. And I appreciate you going into the phenomenology of it for you - direct. I raised this topic as I see this term thrown about online as some "virtue" in dating, psychology, family relationship etc. And it constantly left me concerned that no one was using the term in the same way... or even bothering to define it. And then in another thread on these forums there were many different takes on it. "Be authentic" sounds so profound when users throw it about - but it is severely under specified. It seems like you act on authenticity based on a defined and known sense of self, correct? What if that self changes? What if your value changes? Authenticity must change for you as well... unless we go down the route of arguing that "I didn't know myself then, so I didn't know I wasn't acting out of authenticity" and this makes the term almost begin to lose all meaning. Does authenticity rely on us not being self deceived? This doesn't make sense either. Which you may have been attempting to elucidate (or maybe a tangential point). It is not a function like authentic (x) - it is more like, authentic (x, relative-to-y, under-context-c)... or I could be overthinking. But something about this all feels very unresolved as I continue to unpack it. Which is why I thought maybe a contemplation type thread might work I almost want to find a reference point for authenticity - what makes one reference point the legitimate reference point for authenticity? As soon as I feel I am closer, more questions come up.

Seems a problem of underdetermination.

Hmmm, but do you think this might be conflating "only a certain kind of person is interested in authenticity" with authenticity only being important inside that microcosm? I perhaps may be misunderstanding your passage here - prompting to be corrected Consider mathematics: only a certain type of person might spend their evenings thinking about prime numbers - but that doesn't mean prime numbers are only applicable/relevant within the mathematical microcosm. ------ Are you pointing to authenticity being heavily context driven? If I ask someone "what is authenticity?" there is an inherited context smuggled in to the answer that changes the answer almost every time - and while context is always relevant, it seems even more so with authenticity. "Authentic to what?" then becomes the refining question - and I can't escape asking this. The above is why I also semi concluded authenticity does not have one universal definition (it can if we consider nonduality) .... because it is a relational term - it exists in the space between me and whatever I am acting in authenticity to. And that space changes as a result of any one of the two elements changing - it is relationally constituted.

I like to have my brain pulverized even when it feels bad Growing pains

Feels. Fuck. Hate looking at my old posts. I was apparently unknowingly committing to documenting every stage of my development by contributing here

@Lucasxp64 Reality is usually more complex and nuanced than it seems. A simple explanation feels so lovely and neat. Very appealing. But usually to access that simplicity we need to compress and fill the gaps with "belief".

Grateful I think storytelling lets us form images and metaphor - which can help us recognise a pattern where a similar mechanism is present. We see the links - which can make it clearer than simply analysing

This?

@StaraX If effort isn't a guarantee, what is its actual causal contribution?

How good are they? When the forest temple mix drops HNNNNGGGGG Then when the stone tower temple transitions, HAS MEEEEE *dances*

Hahaha - it's the Zen hot pan shit. Stop holding the hot pan, it's burning you! Stop pretending it isn't. Allow and fully feel the pain without any conceptual overlay between your hand and pure pain "Why is this happening to me? I want this to stop." Feel the raw signal - drop pan. We fear the feeling or emotion, causing it to prolong, linger and entail suffering. Pain is the raw nerve signal. Suffering occurs when the mind writhes, fights, interprets and contracts around the signal. It is our relationship to the thoughts, emotions and feelings we need to just... stop

There's a big difference between people claiming theft of legitimate original work, and from people overestimating the originality or genius of their work.

Ocarina of Time is my top favourite - we cannot forget the Z-targeting mechanic was introduced with that game. Sticky targeting didn't exist prior to Ocarina (if I am not mistaken). I loved Majora's Mask also. Ocarina and Majora are quite dark - but many good fairytales are. Majora's Mask was difficult to get into, but as an adult replaying it I loved it even more! Very dark, melancholy and disturbing. The music from both of these games was hands down some of the best from legacy eras. I often listen to mixes on youtube

Re: the first few pages regarding LLM's not having a world model - wouldn't robotics begin to work on this problem? AI in robots learning via the robotic body navigating the real world is essentially giving it the training data it needs to fill this gap? Dunno, just brainstorming - I might not understand some things correctly.

Do I need to add @CARDOZZO to the naughty bin also, now? He gets some throat punches for being extra 😈

@Juan Honestly I would be all over this shit if it were on the switch. I cannot justify buying the switch II for just this game, as tempting as it may be. Nintendo are one of the only gaming companies I still semi-trust! I am excited to see this though! Will you get it?

I appreciate the share! Do you know Tim Fletcher? His Youtube videos on shame are fantastic (he also goes into trauma, attachment, co-dependency). very clear and easy to understand. He is a Christian man, so at the end of the talks he links through to the faith - he gives you clear warnings when he starts the Christian segment for those who dislike religion. I don't mind it at all (I am not Christian myself, or religious, for that matter). I love your input - thank you @Salvijus - SO good to see you pop in to this discussion I am also beginning to brainstorm the role of choice in authenticity. This touches on free will and determinism... Never forget!!!!