Subjectivity

[RichnNL]

I could really use some help on this topic any resources or input is welcome. 

We are basically imprinted with a models that we use to view and navigate the world. And there resources like actualized.org other models you can adopt like Sprial dynamics etc. I think in a sense what we are doing here is updating our models to better fit reality or at least that is what Iam doing as i go through life, knowing that you will never have a perfect model but its important to course correct your model and as you learn and grow etc you are updating your model hopefully not getting attached to it because they are just models. 

For some extra contexr before i get on to my main question I was speaking with a psychiatrist friend about his career and if he takes a persons maturity into account when helping his clients (when i mean maturity i mean iam refering to sprial dynamics or 9 stage of ego model not that people are inheritly better than ). So long story short he doesn't nor does he even like to acknowledge that maturity and suggested that it was my subjective experience. 

Just as a reminder this is just an example the thing I am actually talking about is subjectivity. To me it is very obvious that people including myself are all on different levels of development and there is some direction we go as we get older or experience more and grow. But on the other hand how do I know its not just my subjective view and that it may be bullshit. And then how do you know when someone says well just your subjective opinion when it is there own defensive mechanisms or they dont really know what your talking about. 

And I mean in within the context of the human experience. I am aware that in reality outside of the human experience everything is subjective.

Beauty is another good example there is subjectivity beauty mostly culturally defined but then again there is such thing as a beautiful person. If something is subjective does it mean that its not true? Again within the himan experience. 

[Leo Gura]

Of course your defintion of maturity is subjective and relative.

The problem that academics and scientists have is that they do not admit the subjectivity and relativity of their own work. So they use that label "subjective" in a demeaning sense and apply it to everyone but themselves. Which is the chief delusion.

Do not expect scientists or academics to understand or acknowledge such things because they have thoroughly brainwashed themselves as a prerequisite of success in their profression.

You can't get a man to understamd a thing when his job depends on him not understanding it.

Relative is the concept you're looking for here, not subjective. Human standards of beautiful people are still totally relative to culture and human biology. A dog does not find a super model beautiful.

If we changed your genetics and culture what you find beautiful would radically change.

And then there is the absolute perspective which is that everything in the Universe is infinitely beautiful. Which is Absolute Truth. But most people are too self-biased to see it.

You see, the human or animal mind is simply selecting a narrow, self-biased slice of Infinite Beauty that serves its survival. Ta-da!

[Forestluv]

3 hours ago, RichnNL said:

Just as a reminder this is just an example the thing I am actually talking about is subjectivity. To me it is very obvious that people including myself are all on different levels of development and there is some direction we go as we get older or experience more and grow. But on the other hand how do I know its not just my subjective view and that it may be bullshit. And then how do you know when someone says well just your subjective opinion when it is there own defensive mechanisms or they dont really know what your talking about. . 

It depends on your definitions of what counts as truth and bullshit. Is the an objective, universal way to categorize things as either true or bullshit? Ultimately, Nothing / Everything is Truth. Yet that isn’t very useful in navigating life. It comes in handy to create relative truths to navigate life as well as degrees of relative truth. For example, understanding the relative truths of microbes and poisons come in handy, so I make sure not to drink spoiled milk or hydrochloric acid. And it’s helpful to reject ideas like satanic-worshipping birds are stalking me.

There are various ways to inspect relative truths. This gets into epistemology. We could test predictions via logic and science. For example, testing vaccines against covid. We could also use our direct experience to inspect truth and guide us. For example, developing intuition can be a powerful tool to help us navigate life. 

[RichnNL]

Thanks guys!

@Leo Gura I definitely see, lets call it a mechanism going on in the academics mind "does it fit into X model that I was taught in school? No then it's bullshit" And the scary thing is it's reinforced or confirmed by the community which taught the model.

@Forestluv this distinction between a truth being relative is handy, I guess there is the concern that well to me obviously everyone is to degree relatively diluted and then you have to think how diluted is my way of viewing the world/models from reality.

[Leo Gura]

15 minutes ago, RichnNL said:

I definitely see, lets call it a mechanism going on in the academics mind "does it fit into X model that I was taught in school? No then it's bullshit" And the scary thing is it's reinforced or confirmed by the community which taught the model.

Yes, it's a self-reinforcing reality bubble that the mind constructs and maintains. Structurally no different than religion or a conspiracy theory. They're all constructed reality bubbles.

[Forestluv]

2 hours ago, RichnNL said:

 

@Forestluv this distinction between a truth being relative is handy, I guess there is the concern that well to me obviously everyone is to degree relatively diluted and then you have to think how diluted is my way of viewing the world/models from reality.

There may be a window here with the ideas of "from reality".

From an absolute perspective, reality is all there is. There is nothing separate from reality.  An easy test of this is to actually try and separate yourself from reality. Do something that isn't happening in reality. Do something that is not reality. 

If I hide in a closet. . . (happening). If I scream.  . . (happening). . . If I think about nothing happening. . . (happening). . . . There is no way to escape it. Any thing I think, say or do is happening. 

In this context, Everything is Reality. We can't separate things into two boxes of 1. Happenings that are happening and 2. Happenings that are not happening. Whatever is happening is happening. Appearances are appearances. 

This might seem simple and boring, yet it goes very deep and broad. Very few minds have a good understanding of it. The mind wants to create constructs of reality. This is relativism, which can have a lot of value. It helps to make sense of the world and navigate the world. The mind also likes to assume an objective reality . . . "This is how it is", "This is true, that is false". This can provide grounding, yet most minds cannot see the constructs they create from a meta view. Humans minds are deeply conditioned to make assumptions. There is both internal and external social conditioning. This has value for human survival, yet most minds get trapped into a contracted mindset. 

In this framework, it becomes important to be aware of meaning when saying things like "how accurate is my view of reality?". This assumes there is an objective thing called "reality". That is a different orientation than being aware we create relativity that was call "reality". For example, we could create a construct that reality has things called "past", "present" and "future". We could say that for something to have happened in the past, there should be "evidence" that it occurred - otherwise it is not "real". 

Consider Qanon. In an absolute sense, that phenomenon is a happening, just like me singing right now is a happening. In a relative sense, Qanon believers have created a relative reality that is 100% true for them. Yet most people have created a relative reality in which claims like "Jewish space lasers, funded by George Soros, started the California wildfires". To most people, this is batshit crazy because we've created a relative reality in which "evidence" of occurrence within "reason" is necessary to consider something "real". Qanon lacks this evidence and reason and are perceived as batshit crazy by people not in Qanon.

In the bigger picture, this is great news because we have a lot of influence over the reality we create. It's like being in a dream and realizing you are dreaming. Once in a "lucid dream", we have a lot of control over how the dream goes, yet we don't have full control. I entered a lucid dream last week. I wanted to fly in the dream, yet was unable. However, I was able to summon a friend into the dream. . . .Similarly, when we realize reality is a dream, we gain much more control over how the dream proceeds - yet not full control.  

Entering these areas can become very ungrounded and fluid. Some people like it, others do not. One can experience it as curiosity, fascination and creativity. Others can perceive it as illogical, stupid or threatening. They prefer to have a sense of grounding by assuming an objective, external, normative reality. And that's fine too. Yet when relative realities don't have much overlap, conflict can erupt. 

[Preety_India]

You need to know how you came across your subjective opinion, what led you to have that opinion, the source of such opinion would give weightage to your opinion, this kind of verification helps you to understand the veracity of your claims or opinions or at least the level of subjectivity of your opinion gets tested, obviously a highly subjective opinion like beauty standards is going to be much more subjective than something like the subject of bullying because there's real life cases and observations, they're not necessarily hard facts or evidence but enough circumstancial information to make proper correlations between behavior of bully and reaction of victim.. Thus the degree of subjectivity hugely varies depending on the subject/topic at hand. Also if you say that climate change is subjective, you need to be able to not simply make an opinion but also explain how you got to that conclusion or opinion, which will test the credibility of your subjective opinion some bit, these sources could be your observations or logical facts or some piece of information that made you to come to such a conclusion, however if another person has a completely different opinion than you and they have enough sources to not completely prove their point, but at least give some credibility to their opinions then their opinions are far less subjective than yours. 

 

[RichnNL]

On 2/9/2021 at 2:00 AM, Forestluv said:

There may be a window here with the ideas of "from reality".

From an absolute perspective, reality is all there is. There is nothing separate from reality.  An easy test of this is to actually try and separate yourself from reality. Do something that isn't happening in reality. Do something that is not reality. 

If I hide in a closet. . . (happening). If I scream.  . . (happening). . . If I think about nothing happening. . . (happening). . . . There is no way to escape it. Any thing I think, say or do is happening. 

In this context, Everything is Reality. We can't separate things into two boxes of 1. Happenings that are happening and 2. Happenings that are not happening. Whatever is happening is happening. Appearances are appearances. 

This might seem simple and boring, yet it goes very deep and broad. Very few minds have a good understanding of it. The mind wants to create constructs of reality. This is relativism, which can have a lot of value. It helps to make sense of the world and navigate the world. The mind also likes to assume an objective reality . . . "This is how it is", "This is true, that is false". This can provide grounding, yet most minds cannot see the constructs they create from a meta view. Humans minds are deeply conditioned to make assumptions. There is both internal and external social conditioning. This has value for human survival, yet most minds get trapped into a contracted mindset. 

In this framework, it becomes important to be aware of meaning when saying things like "how accurate is my view of reality?". This assumes there is an objective thing called "reality". That is a different orientation than being aware we create relativity that was call "reality". For example, we could create a construct that reality has things called "past", "present" and "future". We could say that for something to have happened in the past, there should be "evidence" that it occurred - otherwise it is not "real". 

Consider Qanon. In an absolute sense, that phenomenon is a happening, just like me singing right now is a happening. In a relative sense, Qanon believers have created a relative reality that is 100% true for them. Yet most people have created a relative reality in which claims like "Jewish space lasers, funded by George Soros, started the California wildfires". To most people, this is batshit crazy because we've created a relative reality in which "evidence" of occurrence within "reason" is necessary to consider something "real". Qanon lacks this evidence and reason and are perceived as batshit crazy by people not in Qanon.

In the bigger picture, this is great news because we have a lot of influence over the reality we create. It's like being in a dream and realizing you are dreaming. Once in a "lucid dream", we have a lot of control over how the dream goes, yet we don't have full control. I entered a lucid dream last week. I wanted to fly in the dream, yet was unable. However, I was able to summon a friend into the dream. . . .Similarly, when we realize reality is a dream, we gain much more control over how the dream proceeds - yet not full control.  

Entering these areas can become very ungrounded and fluid. Some people like it, others do not. One can experience it as curiosity, fascination and creativity. Others can perceive it as illogical, stupid or threatening. They prefer to have a sense of grounding by assuming an objective, external, normative reality. And that's fine too. Yet when relative realities don't have much overlap, conflict can erupt. 

Great material there thanks, I am going to have to ponder that a bit.