Terrence Howard on Reality

[zurew]

47 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Impossible, really.

This is another thing that would be useful to clear up (what is meant by impossibility).  Do you use it as "would be really hard to do" or do you mean something stronger?

Btw,you could gain so much useful language that would give you the ability for a lot of semantic nuance from reading some philosophy articles from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy or from  the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Your ability to articulate your thoughts would become much more effective and clear in the context of philosophical discussions ( thats not to say you do a bad job at it, because you can convey certain things well,  im just saying it would make understanding you, and your articulation skills a whole lot better, cause you gain some language that gives you the ability for so much nuance).

It can also give you nuance when it comes to your thinking process because you gain the ability to dissect and differentiate things better.

Also I don't see how could you talk about the importance of good epistemology and not consider learning or talking about  different forms of inferences and why certain forms are much stronger compared to others or learning about different forms of justification.

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, zurew said:

This is another thing that would be useful to clear up (what is meant by impossibility).  Do you use it as "would be really hard to do" or do you mean something stronger?

Intuition and insight is not a logical process, at all. It's mystical.

So I am saying impossible.

9 minutes ago, zurew said:

Btw,you could gain so much useful language that would give you the ability for a lot of semantic nuance from reading some philosophy articles from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy or from  the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Your ability to articulate your thoughts would become much more effective and clear in the context of philosophical discussions ( thats not to say you do a bad job at it, because you can convey certain things well,  im just saying it would make understanding you, and your articulation skills a whole lot better, cause you gain some language that gives you the ability for so much nuance).

It can also give you nuance when it comes to your thinking process because you gain the ability to dissect and differentiate things better.

Also I don't see how could you talk about the importance of good epistemology and not consider learning or talking about  different forms of inferences and why certain forms are much stronger compared to others or learning about different forms of justification.

1) I have read various philosophy articles.

2) I try to stay away from that kind of stuff because it corrupts the mind. I do no want to think in the categories of Western philosophy. If I thought using their ways of thinking I would limit my cleverness.

[zurew]

20 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

2) I try to stay away from that kind of stuff because it corrupts the mind. I do no want to think in the categories of Western philosophy. If I thought using their ways of thinking I would limit my cleverness.

I think you are cautious and conscious enough not to fall into that trap.

You can recognize that all of those are constructed categories and are only used for pragmatic reasons and you can recognize on a case by case basis whether it is appropriate or not to put the given things into those boxes or not.

I view this compeltely differently. I view it as gaining tools for thinking and gaining tools for semantic nuance that can be utilized for communication and for contemplation.

It makes you more flexible cause you have a richer set of tools to use. Using a tree metaphor - its like without it, you are only using the first thick primary tier 1 branches of the tree and you can't access or use the more thin tier 2 or tier 3 or 4 branches that are all connected to the tier 1 branch.

Edited May 28 by zurew

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, zurew said:

You can recognize that all of those are constructed categories and are only used for pragmatic reasons and you can recognize on a case by case basis whether it is appropriate or not to put the given things into those boxes or not.

I view this compeltely differently. I view it as gaining tools for thinking and gaining tools for semantic nuance that can be utilized for communication and for contemplation.

Yes, that's doable, but frankly my work at this point is at a level where most human ideas are a waste of my time.

My focus is deep into my own direct experience and insight into things.

I have spent decades reading stuff and that way just pales in comparison to what I do now.

Edited May 28 by Leo Gura

[zurew]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I have spent decades reading stuff and that way just pales in comparison to what I do now.

I have seen you saying you are not doing psychedelics anymore.

Are you comfortable sharing what methods you use now or you don't want to get into it right now?

[Nilsi]

16 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, that's doable, but frankly my work at this point is at a level where most human ideas are a waste of my time.

My focus is deep into my own direct experience and insight into things.

I have spent decades reading stuff and that way just pales in comparison to what I do now.

i see where you’re coming from, but that seems a little sketchy. discarding the 2,500-year-old lineage of wisdom that is western philosophy as a "waste of time" is quite bold.

how many times have you had insights you thought were original, only to find someone had already had that insight and written extensively on it?

i get that western philosophy, especially contemporary european philosophy, can be quite arcane and hard to penetrate. it assumes a lot of prior knowledge and puts the burden on the student to follow the thread to the actual insight. but still, if it were easy to crack, it couldn’t be that subtle of an insight.

even your point about focusing on direct insight and experience sounds to me, as a bystander, a lot like what husserl was attempting with his phenomenological method. i’d bet there is a lot in there (and in studying the work of his student heidegger, who was extraordinarily intelligent and must have had good reasons to sway from this methodology) that primes you to be more nuanced and nudges you toward actual novel insights. not that i’m placing any special importance on these particular individuals, but to me that would be low-hanging fruit to reach for if i were to undertake a similar project to yours.

you can spare yourself a lot of time and avoid many dead ends by studying the history of philosophy rigorously. wouldn’t it be the biggest loss to find out that you’re chasing a dragon that has already been slain?

i’m not saying that’s you, but if i were to ditch the entire philosophical tradition of our species, i better be sure that i’m not missing something somewhere.

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

you can spare yourself a lot of time and avoid many dead ends by studying the history of philosophy rigorously.

Yes this is a very good point. Its like trying to reinvent the wheel from scratch but in this case in the context of thinking and in the context of making sense of yourself and reality.

This lone wolf argument would never fly and would immadiately be shamed  in the context of science and understandably so. I personally only had some very basic stuff in mind that would make Leo a more powerful thinker and communicator. Like learning prop logic (what a proposition is, what a contradiction is formally , learning how to make a valid inference, what a sound argument is) , learning the basic semantics of modal terms (the ways the word can or impossible be interpreted on a physical, metaphysical, and logical modality), learning what a category error is (I see many users comitting this mistake including Leo)

• and then after that there is obviously much more that can still be useful. For example it would be interesting him engaging with the metaethics literature and with the arguments in favour of moral realism.
• It would also be interesting him engaging with the literature on logic and about paradox and taking a look at dialetheism and taking a look at what entailments come from questioning the laws of logic
• theories of meaning
• Taking a deep dive into mereology
• Infinity; smaller, bigger infinite

There is just so much interesting stuff out there that could be integrated into his language and into his work let alone the stuff you are talking about, where you actually engage deeply with books and not with just philosophy articles.

 

Edited May 28 by zurew

[Brahman]

I may have been fooled. After further investigation, while his theories are very pretty on the surface they may lack deeper substance

I am attracted to his outside of the box thinking when it comes to science. I feel as though we have become too narrow minded and make deep assumptions/trust of authority when we have not confirmed most of it ourselves

That being said. It seems Terrence theories lack rigorous exploration. Its fueled by the initial excitement of something potentially breakthrough/profound but its not extensively thought through

I took time to look into his reconstruction of Saturn and a few other theories. the saturn reconstruction seems to be a blender particle simulation and isnt very difficult to recreate. It is definetely interesting, but not sure it can be described as evidence.

His Lynchpin design was created in a contest with other engineers and while it could do some very cool things, it seems to not be anything of particular use just yet

His pattern recognition between things and parallels to ancient wisdom are very intruiging but also again dont seem to have too much else backing it up just yet

Time will tell if he has discovered something if he is able to develop any technologies. I like his intention of approaching technology from modeling after patterns found in nature/finding more harmonious solutions. I believe science would benefit from this outlook

I believe where this is dangerous is the level of confidence and charisma he has explaining his findings without much rigor or precision. It seems a little bit careless

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Nilsi said:

i see where you’re coming from, but that seems a little sketchy. discarding the 2,500-year-old lineage of wisdom that is western philosophy as a "waste of time" is quite bold.

Boldly go where no man has gone before.

I am not interested in re-treading where a stampede of men has been.

Edited May 28 by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, zurew said:

Yes this is a very good point. Its like trying to reinvent the wheel from scratch

That's exactly what I aim to do.

But I actually invent a new wheel in the end.

Quote

Like learning prop logic (what a proposition is, what a contradiction is formally , learning how to make a valid inference, what a sound argument is) , learning the basic semantics of modal terms (the ways the word can or impossible be interpreted on a physical, metaphysical, and logical modality), learning what a category error is (I see many users comitting this mistake including Leo)

I studied all that in university.

I took a formal logic class where I did a lot of annoying proofs.

It doesn't help with our work, almost at all. It's a great way to get lost in concepts and maps.

You can study academic philosophy forever and get nowhere in your understanding of what's important.

Edited May 28 by Leo Gura

[Yali]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You can study academic philosophy forever and get nowhere in your understanding of what's important.

That’s a bold statement to make. Tell that to the chair of Harvard’s philosophy department and see how they react. @Leo Gura

what’s the goal of academic philosophy then? Is it just an entertaining mind game masked as serious academic work?

Edited May 28 by Yali

[Leo Gura]

12 minutes ago, Yali said:

That’s a bold statement to make. Tell that to the chair of Harvard’s philosophy department and see how they react.

You will not find Truth in academia.

I have said this many times.

Academics are not pursuing serious consciousness nor comprehension of existential issues. They are doing human stuff.

Quote

 

what’s the goal of academic philosophy then? Is it just an entertaining mind game masked as serious academic work?

It has some legit goals.

1) Scholarship, historical accuracy

2) Many narrow technical issues which are useful and important for advancing certain fields.

3) Exploration of political and ethical issues.

But mostly it's about building careers. Academia becomes its own aim.

Academic philosophy can be useful in helping people think more carefully and deeply. But that's not good enough for the kind of work I am interested in.

Edited May 28 by Leo Gura

[Yali]

@Leo Gura if you knew academic philosophy wouldn’t lead you to the truth before you decided to switch majors, would you have switched?

Edited May 28 by Yali

[Leo Gura]

51 minutes ago, Yali said:

@Leo Gura if you knew academic philosophy wouldn’t lead you to the truth before you decided to switch majors, would you have switched?

I did know.

But I studied philosophy anyway because I needed that foundation for my own work. I also just enjoyed the doing of philosophy, which is ultimately why I did that major.

Edited May 28 by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Boldly go where no man has gone before.

I am not interested in re-treading where a stampede of men has been.

huh? did i express myself so poorly?

my claim is that studying the works of great men who have dedicated their lives to understanding allows you to differentiate yourself and find your own path. for all you know, you are re-treading where someone has already been.

i'm not saying become a scholar and stop thinking for yourself. i'm saying you don’t even know what thoughts have already been thought if you dismiss all human knowledge on principle. you're not as special and great as you pretend to be, and "insight from deep direct experience" is not that original of an idea either and pursuit either.

your flippant dismissal of my comment, which, judging from your reply, you couldn’t have read with any degree of attention and earnestness, shows me how deeply you are willing to engage with perspectives other than your own.

[Nilsi]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You will not find Truth in academia.

I have said this many times.

Academics are not pursuing serious consciousness nor comprehension of existential issues. They are doing human stuff.

It has some legit goals.

1) Scholarship, historical accuracy

2) Many narrow technical issues which are useful and important for advancing certain fields.

3) Exploration of political and ethical issues.

But mostly it's about building careers. Academia becomes its own aim.

Academic philosophy can be useful in helping people think more carefully and deeply. But that's not good enough for the kind of work I am interested in.

also, where did you get the idea that all philosophy is academic? most of the greats in western philosophy weren’t academics, and those who were used academia merely as a way to provide for themselves, not as some kind of sacred institution where courting and climbing the social ladder became the sole purpose of their work.

i feel stupid bringing up this example over and over, but just look at nietzsche. he literally lived alone in the mountains for years just to think, write, and dedicate himself utterly to the pursuit of truth. to dismiss this as “academic nonsense” is beyond ignorant. there are many similar cases, even if someone has spent some time in academia as a means to provide for themselves, as nietzsche did early in his life (youngest professor of philology in history; lived off his pension after retiring in his 30s).

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, Nilsi said:

your flippant dismissal of my comment,

I wasn't flippant.

I was saying that following the work of all those great men will limit your mind's ability to think original thoughts.

I am dead serious about that.

If you take humans ideas too seriously eventually you will end up believing them. You won't be able to help yourself. And you won't even know what you missed.

But hey, do it your way. Maybe it will work for you.

Edited May 29 by Leo Gura

[Soul_Guy]

On 5/27/2024 at 1:33 AM, Leo Gura said:

It's enough to hear him talking about how the technical glitches in his operation of his phone or Jamie's playing of a video are a conspiracy by the government to shut him up.

When evaluating people like this, what you look at is their grasp of epistemology and self-deception mechanics, not the content of their beliefs.

Yeah that part was stupid, but everybody has blind spots. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Did you watch the whole video? To be honest I didn't really understand a lot of the technical stuff he was talking about, maybe some of it is right and some of it is wrong - but what I DID notice was the underlying philosophy behind everything he was saying. The whole model he was describing seems to be rooted in a philosophy that is much more in tune with the way that reality works according to spiritual teachings - balance, oneness, etc. For instance, the periodic wave of elements he describes basically says that all of the elements are actually the same one substance but it is being perceived in different ways.

Here's my understanding of the whole 1x1=2 thing. Obviously, yes 1x1=1 in our current mathematical system. But he is arguing that this entire system is based in bad fundamentals that don't align with the natural balance of the universe. So what he's saying is that we should create a new system with different fundamentals - and this will allow us to do things that were not possible under the old paradigm.

[zurew]

Some of your attitudes towards Terrence Howard is not just being charitable, its a desperate attempt to trying to make his ideas true, cause it aligns with some of your deepest biases.

43 minutes ago, Soul_Guy said:

Yeah that part was stupid, but everybody has blind spots.

To frame that just as a "blind spot" is fucking wild.

[zurew]

37 minutes ago, emil1234 said:

i couldnt agree more. when i started studying philosophy, i was expecting my co-students to be able to engage in genuine independent thought and debate, however all they do is quote other philosophers who they read about, original thoughts are fucking rare apperantly. speaking to people at my university is like a contest of whos able to quote more philosophers.

I think this is a weak argument and if you take it to its logical end , you would need to conclude that you shouldn't study anyone ever (including actualized.org and Leo's work) cause it will corrupt your mind.

The fact that the students you talk about were always quoting philosophers rather than engaging with arguments or in orginal thought, thats not evidence that the reason for that was becuase they read books from philosophers. You can learn ideas  and internalize those ideas and then move on and abstract from those ideas and use them to create your own understanding.

But often time what happens is what @Nilsi said - You think you have some original thought but the reality is that you have some half baked thought about a thing that other philosophers have already thought about in a much more precise and more polished way about 100s of years ago and if you would have read about them you would have managed to gain that particular insight much quicker than trying to do it all on your own.

and btw the "corruption of the mind" argument goes both ways. If you don't engage with any other thought or insight outside of your own, you can easily get locked in your own bullshit as well.

Edited May 29 by zurew