Carl-Richard

Mmm technically, when you feel fear, there is a physiological response, so in that sense, there is fear in the meat. Whether this causes you to feel fear when you eat the meat depends how you want to draw the lines. Could the fear decrease the health of the meat, decrease your own health by eating it and thus make it more likely to find yourself in a situation where you experience fear (as decreased health leads to dysfunction and dysfunction leads to less fortunate situations)? Probably. Could the fear be stored in some psychic bank that is released in your psychic system when you eat the meat? Maybe.

Unless you get roped into learning about some political issue by circumstance, it's normal to not have a lot of interest in it. There are a million different political issues out there that almost nobody cares about. Of course, some political issues are probably more useful to care about than others. If you didn't have the privilege of getting roped into some issue through other means but you want a systematic approach to learn about for example the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: 1. learn a bit about the larger context of the conflict (e.g. WW2, the Arab-Israeli conflict), 2. learn a little about the worldviews to the different people in the conflict (e.g. Judaism, Zionism, Islam, Arab nationalism), 3. learn a little about the basic history (big dates, straightforward facts that are less prone to ideological framings), 4. learn a lot about how the pro-Israelis (e.g. Netanyahu) frame the history in their favor and how the pro-Palestinians frame the history in their favor. War is not just kinetic, men on the ground, but also words and ideas. And 5. don't go looking for simple answers, don't expect simple conclusions. Wars, history and international relations are messy and sometimes involve impossible situations where everything possible action has a less than favorable outcome. Be skeptical of taking sides, but at the same time don't disallow yourself to take sides if appropriate.

This is the realization of dukkha, the truth of suffering. You always try to do something, squeeze something out of life, but at the end of every experience, you're left just as empty. This realization came crystal clear to me during my first LSD experience. I had planned so many things I wanted to do and experience in this new altered state (weird sensory experiences, fun things to watch, songs to listen to, etc.), but when the time came where I entered the state and did the things I had planned, I felt an immense sense of emptiness, uneasiness and existential dread, not just after doing the things, but before and during. I felt a sense of helplessness due to the all-encompassing nature of this realization. It touched everything I thought I knew. I felt that nothing I could ever do could rid me of this feeling. I didn't know it at the time, but this realization laid the foundation for the intense search for truth that was about to come.

My point is that you'll most likely believe it's in the garage despite it being stolen before you find out that it was indeed stolen. This would evidenced by the state of surprise you would experience if you opened the garage and it wasn't there: "I put it there yesterday and now it's gone!". This is because you've formed a belief based on for example a previous action (putting it in the garage), and maybe your past experience with putting it in the garage and finding it the next day, and maybe the expectation of the security of your garage, etc. But this day, you in fact didn't find the car, and you were really surprised. Then with this new knowledge, you would adjust your beliefs: "maybe it was stolen", "maybe my brother borrowed it". Again, a belief is not a naughty thing, and it's not incompatible with experience. It's informed by experience. I'm saying that we always use beliefs in our daily lives, because that is just how life works. You make conclusions based on limited information all the time, and you're always able to be proven wrong (and when you are, you'll most likely be surprised).

What if it got stolen when you were away?

Do you believe your car is in the garage or not?

I swear I read it had MAOI activity somewhere.

I like to think I started to play the intellectual games afterwards 😊 It's not "evidence" in the sense that you're literally experiencing their thoughts and feelings right now, but it's a reasonable logical conclusion. However, by the same token, things only appear like you're the only conscious person in existence (and I'm not being facetious when I say this). This is actually what is happening: you're taking appearances (people, eyes, chairs) and making a conclusion about the relationship between these appearances. I'm saying you're making a semi-stingy conclusion for seemingly no good reason. If you want to be really stingy, stick with direct experience: don't even grant the legitimacy of appearances. I've said this before: I actually believe it's reasonable to conclude that people in your personal dreams are conscious, because you do essentially the same logical steps to conclude that other people in real life are conscious. I think the reluctancy to conclude this has to do with materialistic assumptions in the culture (dreams only occur "inside your head") and also with the moral implications ("did I actually make somebody suffer in that dream?"). There are also empirical clues pointing to this: people with dissociative identity disorder report having different alters being present as dream characters in the same dream and experiencing the dream from different perspectives (each alter reports this when the person is awake). It's not undeniable evidence, but it's really curious. You did not definitely prove that you're the only conscious person either. You've only adopted a pseudo-position of conceptual parsimony and falsely claimed that this is the the bottom layer of conceptual parsimony (which it isn't), which is the only reason you would do such a thing (because you somehow claim the philosophical highground by being the most parsimonious position, which is itself is also an assumption, but oh well). I think you would not be so convinced of your own position if you had admitted that it's not the most parsimonious position. You would then instead probably open yourself to other criteria for evaluating your ontology (e.g. explanatory power), granted that you care about rationality, and poof — no more denying other people's experiences (probably). It is if you do it right and don't unconsciously smuggle conceptual assumptions. If you do that, then you end up with direct experience, or the inconveniently named "Absolute solipsism". I've tried to qualify along the way that solipsists "tend" to do the unconscious smuggling, because some people call themselves solipsists and don't do the unconscious smuggling (something which for example Leo seems to fall under). My frustration with him calling it solipsism is exactly because of this distinction: many people do the unconscious smuggling when the concept of solipsism is brought up (mostly due to culturally inherited assumptions, like with dreams) and are bound to misunderstand what is being communicated. You bought a Lamborghini, but you're unconscious of this and think you bought a pedal-driven tricycle, and then you awkwardly limit your top speed to 20 mph (downhill if you're lucky). I'm trying to show how unreasonable it looks to unconsciously smuggle conceptual assumptions while also claiming bedrock parsimony. In reality, you're inhabiting a pseudo-position of parsimony; half-assed parsimony. I'm saying that if you acknowledge that this is the position you're in, you should re-evaluate your priorities, or more specifically your meta-theoretical criteria for constructing your ontology, e.g. optimizing your explanatory power. Because if you've given up the throne of supreme parsimony, then you have a lot less to lose by bumping up things like explanatory power. Your kind of solipsist assumes (among other things) that the way your eyes are oriented in space have a bearing on your ontology, that the way you relate to other human beings have a bearing on your ontology, that the way you experience your bodily sensations and mental activity have a bearing on your ontology, etc. Again, you're assuming space, time and objects, and you're making logical conclusions based on those. This is not self-evident (in the sense of it being baseline reality independent of assumptions), because you can inhabit a reality beyond space, time and objects (and you can get thoroughly acquainted with it even while immersed in so-called spatio-temporal reality — it's called enlightenment).

Once we get the fact of direct experience out of the way (that there is only one Consciousness), then we can consciously go on to grant things such as space, time and objects (and logical deductions based on those), because that is how we come to understand much of the world, particularly the world of things, people and inner experiences (which again, is not direct experience). Now, when you grant these things, most rational people will conclude (using logical inferences and based on how objects in their inner experience seem to behave and interract) that their inner experience is not the only inner experience that exists. On the other hand, what solipsists tend to do (usually unconsciously) is to grant space, time and objects but then severely limit the scope of their logical deductions. They will say (implictly not explictly): "I'm only able to see a particular configuration of space, time and objects here, therefore that is all that exists". Most rational people will further the investigation and say "but looking at these objects and how they behave and interract, other people seem very alike me, both in behavior and appearance, and when I perform a particular behavior, that causes a change in my inner experience, thus other people must likely experience the same thing". In this sense, solipsism is a conceptual understanding of the world that feigns conceptual minimalism by unconsciously smuggling conceptual assumptions, and as a consequence, it becomes unable to take advantage of these assumptions in a way that makes sense, because they (solipsists) are unconscious of what they're actually doing. They think these assumptions are just what is self-evident, that there are no assumptions involved, but in reality, it's just a stereotypical and unconscious way of trying to find the most reductionistic and parsimonious worldview there is (which is attractive because it gives a feeling of safety). In reality, it's not reductionistic, not parsimonious, but instead a constipated and lobotomized view of the world. And why is it that? Again, because you grant all these things (space, time, objects and logic), but then you severely limit the use of these things (you constipate or lobotomize yourself). Like, why grant the existence of objects but don't investigate a bit deeper how they behave and interract (other than how they merely relate to the position of your eyes)? It's like you're playing a game of monopoly where you give yourself a huge stack of cash but you only use pocket change to play the game. And it's worse than simply being stingy, because you actually believe that you only have the pocket change. You unconsciously granted yourself a huge stack of cash, but in your unconsciousness, you don't think it exists. So in summary, if you want to concede to making conceptual claims and answer the question of how many people in the world have an inner experience: 1. don't claim you're not making a conceptual claim when actually you are (don't smuggle conceptual assumptions), and 2. do it right (investigate a bit deeper how objects behave). Then you should have your answer.

I don't think we actually agree. I think what you mean by "this right here is ALL That exists" is actually your "inner experience" (defined in terms of space, time and objects; not direct experience), which in reality is just as non-existent as other people's inner experience. When you say "this is all that exists" and if I ask you what "this" is, I think you'll list me a number of objects extended in time and space.

Because if we grant a coherent understanding of the topic at hand (which I don't think you have), this goes without saying when you deconstruct space, time and objects, because then you also deconstruct your own "inner experience" (which, again, is different from "direct experience"). So of course, other people's inner experience is also deconstructed, just as your own experience is. It's like you want me to spell out that the tea that I poured from my teapot into my teacup is now no longer in the teapot. It's self-evident. Your fervent insistence on emphasising the non-existence of the tea in the teapot is in fact only indicative of a misunderstanding of the topic at hand, namely that you think the tea that was poured into the cup actually exists, but it doesn't, just like it doesn't exist in the pot, because it's an illusion altogether.

Concepts don't really exist (from the perspective of direct experience). I don't get what your deal is with "subjective experience".

You have direct experience right now, but it's not reducible to objects, and your fervent immersion in objective experience temporarily obscures the conscious recognition of direct experience, making you appear as being unawake and lost in illusion. When the constructions "fall away" or are seen for what they are, so-called objects are still there (e.g. your body, your eyes, chairs, tables), but there is an unshakeable awareness of the primacy and ultimaticity of the dimension that exists prior to objects and which makes objective experience possible.

Constructions, just like "others".

In order to doubt the experiences of "others" the way you do, you first have to construct concepts such as space, time and objects. This is because you treat others as objects within space: different people are different objects with different locations in space, presumably running their little experienceless lives across time. The objects are limited and not equal to the entirity of that space (which you erroneously call your "direct experience"), which is an extended arena where objects are placed. The problem is that what you call your direct experience is actually not "direct" at all. It contains constructions of space, time and objects. You're carving out some limited slice of reality (an "other"; an object) and isolating it from the greater whole (your "direct experience"; space). What is truly direct experience is what exists prior to this carving up of reality, prior to space, time and objects. Hence, direct experience has nothing to do with doubting the experiences of others in this way. Your doubting is itself a construction. Another way to see this clearly is that you're constructing the concepts of "my eyes" and "their eyes" as objects in space. "My eyes" and "their eyes" are carved out as separate limited entities that are located in space and changing across time. There is nothing "direct" about these concepts. They're something you've (unconsciously) constructed and mistakenly taken as reality, hence the metaphor of being asleep in a dream. When you're asleep in a dream, the contents of the dream seems like reality. But when you wake up, you clearly see the dream for what it is; a dream, not ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is beyond space, time and objects.

No. People talk to themselves all the time, both internally and externally. Schizophrenia is a debilitating mental illness with severe cognitive deficits, hallucinations and delusions, including but not limited to poor working memory, flat affect (few emotional expressions), anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure), persecutory hallucinations (e.g. voices that harass you or monsters that want to harm you), delusions of self-reference (e.g. thinking that a song on the radio is about you), thought disorder (e.g. making peculiar conclusions about things, seeing conceptual connections that are tenuous or illogical).

Definition of what?

Ah. But how do you know you saw the same mouse as Leo?

This is inevitable. Like knowledge, communication is imperfect. We use words differently, we talk differently, we think differently. Still, there is a way around the differences. In the words of Stephen Hawking: "All we need to do is make sure we keep talking".

Then all humans are bad, which is fine to believe I understand that enlightenment is a recognition of something that exists beyond all beliefs. But still, enlightened people have beliefs. They just see them for what they are; beliefs. The main danger lies in making beliefs into something they are not; to conflate belief with reality. Beliefs, assumptions, whatever you want to call them, are necessary for maintaining your existence as a human being. Sometimes you need to form a belief about something or assume something based on little information, because your physical existence is limited and you don't have access to all the information in the universe, so you need to make shortcuts in order to survive. Unless you've left your physical body, beliefs are required for existing.

I'm not saying belief is a bad thing. It's just an honest description of what it is. As a beginner on the path, you come to believe that there is such a thing as enlightenment (which at this point is only an idea in your mind, spurred on by an intuition or some conceptual knowledge suggesting that it might be a thing), and you may believe that there are methods that can take you there (some people don't), and you keep trying the methods despite not experiencing enlightenment as a fact (you put your faith in them; you believe in the possibility of enlightenment despite not having a direct experience of it). So of course there is a lot of belief involved, but also intuition and conceptual knowledge, which serve as hints, but your intuition and conceptual knowledge are not direct experience. Beliefs are not incompatible with spirituality. Your beliefs about enlightenment are guided by things like your intuition and facts like the history of yoga.

My short-lived career as a Pivot animator 😂: Pivot is a really simple program for making animations, and I remember I loved to make funny animations with it when I was 12-13. I just re-watched the videos and was a little bit surprised of how good they are (for being that young). I certainly didn't lack creativity 😆 At the same time, I remember I wanted to make videos more professionally (RuneScape videos), and I asked my dad if he could buy me his video editing software that he used for work, and he said yes, but I never got it. I think if I had gotten that, there is a decent chance I could be a video editor today (maybe even a full-time YouTuber). I also asked him for a double bass pedal for my drum set which I also never got, and similarly, I think I maybe could've become a drummer instead of a guitar player. Same with me never bothering to buy a decent music editing software (like Cubase, which is what one of my friends from music class used) or basic recording equipment (the aforementioned friend had his own studio); maybe I could've been a musician today. It's weird to think about how your life could've turned out different, and it kinda hurts when I look back at these missed oppurtunities, because I feel like I'm more of an artistic right-brained person than anything else, and that it feels like I was supposed to pursue these oppurtunities when they arose. I have also always had some deep-seated desire to be world famous somehow (page Dr. Freud for that), and I think that also feeds into the missing-out feeling (as becoming a musician and a YouTuber are probably the top 2 go-to ideas for becoming famous, at least for my generation). On the other hand, I'm partially grateful for not having made some of these more creative pursuits into a job and thus turning them into something you have to do for some extrinsic outcome (turning intrinsic motivation and spontanous expression into extrinsic motivation and contingent expression). I can see some of this development in my academic pursuits, and it seems unavoidable to some extent, despite your passion for it (especially due to the practicalities specific to the academic machinery). It's not something I'm too bothered by, because life is all of life is like that yo some extent (it's about becoming an adult and seeing how not everything will suit your utmost sense of comfort or immediate impulses). Regardless, it's good to have something that you can go to as a "safe space" where nothing needs to happen and where you can be fully free to do whatever you want. But also, there is of course a downside with not being constantly immersed in something and being pushed to develop your skills, as your skill level also feeds into your level of enjoyment. So there are pros and cons to everything, and at some point, you have to be grateful for what you have. And who knows; maybe I wouldn't have found spirituality in any of those timelines? I can't imagine what kind of person I would be or how much suffering I would've gone through up to this point, or if I would even be alive. It's weird to think about.

@Yimpa 😆

9 minutes 45 seconds of your time. You're in a dream, conflating dream for reality. The only way you can see this is to wake up (become lucid in the dream).

Can you explain what that is?