Do you have advice for how to make it clearer? — Tate

Well I put up links to help folks with terminology and timelines, and numbers of years ago are really useful for sorting things.

This graph shows the dramatic change that one little lifeform called cyanobacteria caused, almost resulting in the final mass extinction due to the loss of atmospheric CO2.
The whole globe was covered in ice. — Tate

The Snowball Earth hypothesis proposes that, during one or more of Earth's icehouse climates, the planet's surface became entirely or nearly entirely frozen. It is believed that this occurred sometime before 650 M.Y.A. (million years ago) during the Cryogenian period. Proponents of the hypothesis argue that it best explains sedimentary deposits that are generally believed to be of glacial origin at tropical palaeolatitudes and other enigmatic features in the geological record. Opponents of the hypothesis contest the implications of the geological evidence for global glaciation and the geophysical feasibility of an ice- or slush-covered ocean,[3][4] and they emphasize the difficulty of escaping an all-frozen condition. A number of unanswered questions remain, including whether Earth was a full snowball or a "slushball" with a thin equatorial band of open (or seasonally open) water.

The snowball-Earth episodes are proposed to have occurred before the sudden radiation of multicellular bioforms known as the Cambrian explosion.

But the Cambrian explosion started about 539 million years ago, so the first glaciation period in your graph is not a snowball earth event but the Late Ordovician glaciation and the whole globe was not covered in ice.

This graph shows the dramatic change that one little lifeform called cyanobacteria caused, almost resulting in the final mass extinction due to the loss of atmospheric CO2. — Tate

Here you are unequivocally muddled; the cyanobacteria began photosynthesis about 3.5 Billion years ago and the oxygenation of the atmosphere about 2 billion years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

Streetlight is always proud. "I am the right hand and therefore I am in charge." :roll:

At the bottom of the graph you see four purple blocks representing events that some geologists call ice ages. it doesn't really matter what we call these larger scale cold spells. The point is: we're in one. — Tate

The word "quaternary" refers to the idea that there were four ice ages in the past. We now call those glacial periods. — Tate

It bloody well does matter what we call them. You really need to stop waving "ice ages" about quite so carelessly. Do you not see how confusing you are making it for anyone reading the thread? I assume you are clear that the 4 ice ages you were talking about on page one don't even add up to the last of the 4 ice ages you are now talking about, because the quaternary period only covers the last 3 million years approx and just the last "cold spell" in your graph above covers 50 million years. But you certainly do not make it clear to the reader.

What the heck would that look like tho? — Changeling

You know how when you want to open a jar, one hand holds the jar and the other the lid and they twist against each other to get the job done? You and I would work together like that. And when the jar was open, we wouldn't be fighting over the contents.

Ethics? The alleged inadequacies of utilitarianism & Kantianism? — Agent Smith

No, parents and politicians.

1. is a colloquialism, not meant to be taken seriously.
— jgill

Are you sure? — Agent Smith

Yes, quite sure. "Rule" is an ill-defined entity that can be an axiom, a law, a tautology or simply a statistical likelihood. It's a well known saying much used by parents and politicians to excuse their hypocrisy.

1. For every rule there is an exception (premise).
Ergo,
2. The rule for every rule there is an exception itself must have an exception (subconclusion).
Ergo,
3. There are some rules that have no exception (main conclusion). — Agent Smith

4. 1. is false. (RAA)

Trade unions began during the industrial revolution. Lots of workers in one place allowed them to identify together and organise together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_trade_unions_in_the_United_Kingdom
Prior to that there were the guilds but these were more of a middle class thing.

The trade union as a working class institution has lost much of its power because of globalisation and automation; decentralised occupations such as domestic servants restaurant and bar staff, never had much of an organisation or the ability to cause significant disruption by striking.

I suggest that the current upsurge of interest in trade unions is a manifestation of the loss of power of working people to influence the conditions of their employment. "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone."

The consumer has been king because mass production was the way to make money, so the masses needed to be paid so they could spend. Robotics and digital printing make mass production unnecessary for sophisticated luxury. The proletariat is no longer of any value, and therefore has no power.

Can I suggest that we take this slowly, and provide sufficient detail to avoid misunderstandings as much as possible. I'm going to start with this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time_scale

These graphics and tables will give an idea of geological timescales, and allow some orientation if we need to talk about 'snowball earth' previous extinction events or whatever.

Then, we can look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles There are 3 cycles that interact with different periods: precession, obliquity and eccentricity. (This is still a simplification as the link makes clear.)

it said that there had been four ice ages. That's what they could see from looking at rocks. — Tate

Do you mean looking at ice cores? Looking at rocks would involve much longer timescales.

The Last Glacial Period (LGP), also known colloquially as the last ice age or simply ice age,[1] occurred from the end of the Eemian to the end of the Younger Dryas, encompassing the period c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago. The LGP is part of a larger sequence of glacial and interglacial periods known as the Quaternary glaciation which started around 2,588,000 years ago and is ongoing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period


Assuming you are talking about the cycles of the Quaternary glaciation, we need to consider This:

The 100,000-year-problem refers to the lack of an obvious explanation for the periodicity of ice ages at roughly 100,000 years for the past million years, but not before, when the dominant periodicity corresponded to 41,000 years. The unexplained transition between the two periodicity regimes is known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, dated to some 800,000 years ago.

Perhaps you can shed some light on that?

My takeaway thus far though is to notice that the change in climate we are now undergoing has been man-made in a couple of centuries, and for us to have noticed the effect so very quickly suggests that it dwarfs the effect of the Milankovitch cycles. Looking at the larger history of earth climate, one sees such huge variations that it seems clear that earth climate is a complex system with many semi-stable attractors. This is the worry that climate scientists have, that our CO2 emissions can move the earth from its current glacial/interglacial cycling to a permanently different semi stable cycling.

I'm in two minds about this question.

On the one hand, when one does separate the halves of the brain, one can see evidence of a division of mind.

Sperry moved on to human volunteers who had a severed corpus callosum. He showed a word to one of the eyes and found that split-brain people could only remember the word they saw with their right eye. Next, Sperry showed the participants two different objects, one to their left eye only and one to their right eye only and then asked them to draw what they saw. All participants drew what they saw with their left eye and described what they saw with their right eye. Sperry concluded that the left hemisphere of the brain could recognize and analyze speech, while the right hemisphere could not.

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain-experiments-1959-1968

But on the other, since it seems to be merely a matter of connection and communication, the separation of my mind from your mind is a trivial matter, and mind is more like water than like anything discrete and separate, and if only we could communicate better we would all be of one mind.

Do you not think their success is far more likely to be down to their (Cambridge Analytica) campaign strategy, rather than people seeing a few measly votes and thinking 'sod it, let's leave Europe, I'm sold"? — Isaac

No. I think their success was down to frightening the Tories into adopting their policy, which they did by "splitting the vote." Without those losing votes, there would have been no referendum.

Being content is also a goal. — Xtrix

You can make anything a goal, if you make it your goal it is a goal.

It is a capitalist psychology par excellence
— unenlightened

This is simply wrong. You can read even a fraction of my 3000+ posts to see why. Has nothing to do with capitalism— nothing. In fact the entire post is an attempt to frame personal change in the direction away from capitalism. — Xtrix

I am not accusing you of being a capitalist. Nevertheless, your psychology as described is highly individualist as distinct from social in emphasis, materiallist and pragmatic and entirely directed to an endless succession of wants and needs, which is exactly the focus that capitalism demands of a consumer. If your goal is to get away from capitalism, this is not a good basis for doing so. That is my criticism, nothing personal.

Here is a nice little piece on Gregory Bateson, that might hint at other ways of looking at things.

Tories are not necessarily persuaded to be less bigoted by an increasing Labour vote. They may even be persuaded to be more bigoted to pick up the EDL vote to compensate. — Isaac

Indeed. Life is complicated. One can influence different people in different ways with the same small act. Nevertheless, Brexit got done despite the Brexit party never winning significantly, because the movement became a bandwagon and the bigots climbed aboard. So losing votes matter.

If vote (in a situation where I know I'm in a minority) I haven't done some small amount of good. I've done no good at all. The opposition party have won and get to enact their policies in exactly the same way they would have if I hadn't voted. Exactly the same. Not a small but insignificant difference (such as with reducing one's carbon footprint), absolutely no difference at all. — Isaac

This is not true. Political movements inevitably start small and have to grow. One way they are seen to grow is by increasing their support in an election. Thus If I vote Green and the Green candidate does not win, still I have demonstrated some support for Green policies.

For another example, the Brexit party never made much of an impression in winning elections, but they managed to 'get Brexit done', by influencing other parties who became frightened of having 'their' voters poached. Showing support influences others.

maybe because you've already designated that place as "whereof one cannot speak', you see no point in trying. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not wedded to it. I suggest a new thread. Try and describe the thinking self in system theoretic terms, and let's see if we can make sense it. What are the boundaries, inputs, outputs, and internal functions? Have you read Bateson's "Steps to an Ecology of Mind"? It's old, but might make a good starting point. But, word to the wise, it does tend to get associated with some odd stuff if you're googling ( beware Neuro-Linguistic Programming). But I can see the self as a complex system within the ecosystem of mind, and the mind as an element of the eco-system that is civilisation - it needs laying out.

Politicians always tell you to vote and they always want you to vote. If the turnout is very low it looks bad on them. sometimes I want it to look bad on them.

One suggestion has been to count the spoilt ballots, and if the spoilt ballots 'win' all the candidates are barred and a new election with new candidates is held. Politicians invariably reject this idea, and that makes me think it a good idea. It has the merit at least of distinguishing protest from apathy.

Anarchist slogans I have known and loved:

Don't vote, it only encourages them.

It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.

But in practice, I usually find someone to vote for, or at least someone to vote against.

I want more spontaneity in my life. What's the plan?

I'm sorry, that's a feeble joke, but my heart sinks to read such stuff. Always more, always strife, always heading for a goal somewhere else, never content, forever becoming what one is not. It is a capitalist psychology par excellence and it is nothing new, but the same outdated paradigm that has brought us to the age of destruction.

I won't interrupt again, I just wanted to register my personal dissent.

Consider the "thinking self" as a type of system. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, I'm stuck on this first bit. I can see the body as a system, or the brain as a system or subsystem, but the thinking self as I understand it is more like a habit - something a system usually does. But I don't even much favour that way of talking, because to me systems talk is material talk and mind talk is not. It's like playing Monopoly on a Risk board.

I'm not too familiar with systems theory, but I imagine that any boundary between the system and the environment is conceptual and imposed as a matter of analytic convenience. Boundaries have to be permeable and breach-able. I imagine a pendulum clock on the moon keeping a different time; it is convenient to separate clock from Earth in this way, although the gravity of the planet is what sustains and enables the mechanism to function.

as to internal boundaries, I'm not at all clear what you mean. I think there are internal boundaries, but I tend to have a fairly negative view of them, as divisions and conflicts of thought, and the idea of 'self' as the first source of such divisions. But we are going off topic; perhaps another thread sometime.

You might say that it just came to me, "bang!", as insight, but I would say that it is really the product of all those no's, and going around in circles. The solution never would have come to me if I hadn't gone through that process of elimination first. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can accept that - the secret of success is effort and failure, followed by coincidence, or something like that, but the point I would make is that the explanation doesn't produce a method one can employ; it doesn't actually explain anything better than 'magic' or 'a eureka moment' or 'insight', because it is unrepeatable and unverifiable. It's a explanation of last resort, that you would not have thought much of coming from me. "But how does one have a coincidence?" I seem to hear you say.

But that is why monks practice a discipline and work and meditate; to prepare the mind for that unknown thing that might just happen, at least seemingly, of its own accord and without effort. something that they call 'grace' in the christian tradition, or 'liberation'.

Looking at the state of the modern human world, seemingly headed for complete self-destruction guided by secular science, it is apparent to me that the total contempt for religion that is so fashionable may be leading to the neglect of something important. I call it 'insight', and emphasise that it is something one cannot control or produce at will, but something that comes to one perhaps, or does not. It is something personal, but not of the self. This is not a contradiction of science, but it is beyond the scope of the scientific method, which without it becomes inhuman and mechanical and leads to destruction. In the small, it is a sudden understanding of something; in the large, it is a 'road to Damascus' transformation of one's life. It would be a serious mistake, if one has such a moment, to imagine that one has deserved or achieved it; that would be to add to the self when one should subtract.

how is it developed, if not through magic? — Metaphysician Undercover

It becomes more and more difficult to convey. it does not develop. There is no 'how'. Nothing 'happens'.
Have you ever had a puzzle or a problem that you have tried to work out for a long time without success, and then suddenly, without effort, you have the answer, clear and simple? Is that magic?

Do you not see that this exchange is exactly what I have described, that there is an understanding that cannot be conveyed - I say some words, but I cannot make room in you for a new idea. You need to have an insight!

The person who does not have the same insight as another might still have the capacity to have that insight, if the way is shown. — Metaphysician Undercover

'Show me the way, O, great one' says the earnest follower of every religion. But insight is present or it is absent, and there is no method, or training, or process or 'way' towards it. That is mere knowledge that is accumulated over time. Indeed there is an inversion, that the more greedily and earnestly one seeks insight, the less likely one is to attain it - as if one were chasing after stillness, or a dog chasing its tail.

All this is fairly orthodox and widespread - one goes to the church for comfort, but to the monastery for insight, and at the monastery one finds discipline, hard work, and silence, which is no more a path to enlightenment than a hot day is a path to a thunderstorm.

But I still think there must be a way to talk about things — Metaphysician Undercover

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. — Matthew 11: 15

If we have the same insight, we can talk about it;

There’s a poem which says when two Zen masters meet each other on the road they need no introduction. Thieves recognise one another instantaneously.

https://alanwatts.org/2-2-5-buddhism-as-dialogue-part-1/

But if you have an insight that I do not, then I will always mistake that which is in you for that which is in me when they are not at all the same. I will be like a blind man using the word 'see' and understanding it as a metaphor "I see what you mean", but can only understand "I see a car coming down the road"as some kind of superior directional hearing type thing, or remote touch, or...

In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. In 1938, Guy Callendar connected carbon dioxide increases in Earth's atmosphere to global warming.

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Scientists first began to worry about climate change toward the end of the 1950s, Spencer Weart, a historian and retired director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics in College Park, Maryland, told Live Science in an email. "It was just a possibility for the 21st century which seemed very far away, but seen as a danger that should be prepared for."

The scientific community began to unite for action on climate change in the 1980s, and the warnings have only escalated since.

https://www.livescience.com/humans-first-warned-about-climate-change.


So everyone is right. Put it on your tombstones for no one to read.

Have you seen climate records, as read from Antarctic ice cores? They tell a story of not one but many CO2 crises that resolved themselves without any intervention at all. — Agent Smith

The fact, or rather the likelihood, that the climate will settle down to an approximate stability fairly conducive to life in a few tens or hundreds of thousands of years, is not the issue. Life goes on and will go on without humans, and you may think that a good thing.

But some of us are so myopic as to want our children and grandchildren to survive, and do not want the coming century to see a mass-extinction event of 60 -80% of species.Some of us are so limited of vision that we worry about half the major cities of the world being under water.

I don't think it is practical to build sixty meter high dams around our cities, and so it is quite important that all the land ice does not melt.


But never mind. The end of humanity is unimportant compared to the prospect of all the inconvenience of preventing it!

Ok, go on, you are not alone, but neither am I - "The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao."

Gnostics considered the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the supreme divinity in the form of mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

I would distinguish insight from knowledge thus; knowledge is the past projected into the future, whereas insight is immediate and present. One cannot share insight, but only relate it as experience from the past, so what one shares is knowledge. But knowledge can only be added to the illusion of those who lack insight - and that is the story of every religion, that the founder has spiritual insight and the followers convert it into knowledge that then becomes dogma.

I am agnostic myself. That is to say that I regard anything experienced and anything known to be aspects of the physical and thus not spiritual. This is not to deny the reality of the spiritual, because such would be a gnostic claim to know the unreality of the spiritual. Rather I would place the spiritual in that place 'whereof one cannot speak'.

Thus a particular theism, and equally, a positive atheism are gnostic positions because they make claims about the spiritual, that we agnostics deny can be known.

I don't believe the US has ever been in a position to solve the problem. It's a global, long-term problem. — Tate

That's what it means for a problem to be global; that no one group can solve it. As in a global pandemic, that could have been quickly halted by global cooperation to isolate and compensate, but only by every country working cooperatively to the same end. It didn't happen with that either. But to the extent that the US is the leading power, and the leading per capita producer of CO2, and a leading technological innovator, it does have the power to influence by example and encourage compliance with a strategy by economic means, and hugely contribute to the solution instead of hugely contributing to the failure to tackle the problem at all.

To do wrong is to cause harm. To cause harm can be measured objectively. — simplybeourselves

Objectivity is obtained by demonstration. 'Show, don't tell' - as the novelist has it.

If one believes in fair punishment, or in just war, or defends rugby or mountain-climbing, or fireworks, or surgery, then one believes in the virtue of measurable harm.

Nevertheless, I think there is a property of harm, that I suggest it cannot be valued in itself, other things being equal. One can value gambling, and the excitement of gambling lies in the possibility of losing, but one cannot value losing itself because losing means losing what is valued; and likewise, the surgeon cuts flesh, harming it in order to heal it, and cannot value causing harm for its own sake, because to harm is to destroy/reduce value. Even the vandal destroys, not because destruction can be seen as good, but because it gives him some satisfaction to have agency and power in the world. And even the curious case of the masochist, who seeks out pain and damage to his own flesh, is seeking not the harm that is done but the peace of mind and release that the harm brings to him.

So one can say in general that values are subjective in the sense that they arise in subjects, but that they are nevertheless potentially universal in the sense that subjects themselves have a common nature, that necessarily values health over harm, truth over falsehood, comfort over discomfort, etc. And yet, as we see, this fundamental necessity leaves plenty of room for disagreement and internal conflict, making the particularities seem almost arbitrary in the way they vary from one person to another and one culture to another. The world is unpredictable and the human world is radically unpredictable, and folks can make a case for lying, for torture, for war, and all manner of things that in themselves have objective negative value, but might possibly have positive consequences.

Here's a nice story of how the elephant in the cave was mistaken for a one-eyed Giant - a cyclops.

https://www.earthdate.org/episodes/birth-of-a-monster

No. Great film, but why would one bother to confine humanity in these vast self-sufficient prisons, when you can just send them to war to kill each other off?

Here is my local hydro storage facility. a grid scale mechanical battery completed in 1984 and operating ever since. If you have a couple of lakes at different levels pumping water up to the higher one stores the energy. The grid can be maintained with a variety of energy storage systems along with a good diversity of generation systems. Tidal is intermittent but reliable for instance. It's all perfectly doable with some adjustment of lifestyle, particularly in single use, planned obsolescence, and private travel facilities.

It doesn't happen because the all too visible hand of the wealthy rules, and automation has reached the point that the economic value of a peasant is now negative. Therefore it is the human population that is in line for recycling first, and then the green revolution will be much easier and will largely take care of itself.

if you murder, you ought to murder gently — Pfhorrest

May I suggest:

1. Murder is an act of violence.
2. Gentlness is the negation/absence of violence.
3. Gentle murder is a contradiction in terms.
4. ex contradictione sequitur quodlibet

I started this response weeks ago but never finished. — Ennui Elucidator

I appreciate the slowness, and the response.

but there feels to be an essential difference - that the content of my stage is not the content of your stage (identity). — Ennui Elucidator

Yes indeed. My illusion is this: when I am hit I feel that it hurts, but when you are hit it is merely distasteful to me. I call it an illusion, as if I can see past it, but in reality I cannot. The difference feels essential to me as it does to you, and it is indeed the essence of our separate identities. Without that difference we would actually be the same person, and that is why I call it anillusion of identity; it is our essence, and yet it is merely a matter of perspective and the limitations of our senses.

Rather, it seems the existentialist wants us to be who we are rather than conform to an image of who I am, in accord with a role with such-and-such responsibilities and privileges. — Moliere

Yeah, I specified self-image rather than social image, but point taken.

Or, being who they aren't? funny thing here -- if who we are is what we do, then whatever we do we are who we are, but there is the theme of authenticity -- we can be ourselves authentically or inauthentically. For Heidegger he seemed to contrast authenticity with everydayness or being busy. — Moliere

I think it is a contradiction, how could one be what one already was: viz, the authentic coward and greedy arsehole, or whatever. Let alone attain to it as the philosopher's stricture on moral probity. But it is not to be wondered at that what one ought to be and do is in contradiction to what one is and does.

if we include Levinas, then I'd say he actually manages to escape the charge of selfishness or individuality, given that we only come to know ourselves as ethical beings within the face-to-face relationship of the Other. — Moliere

This makes more sense to me too. I would talk of dependency on the M(other) as in "Be good for Mummy", and from this the ethical being arises as the internalised conflict, because what is good for Mummy is not necessarily good for me, but must become good for me, if I know what's good for me.

So the question is, whether there is an authentic-self in the resolution of the ethical conflict, and I think Paul and Jesus and Krishnamurti are saying "mu". Found this piece of paranoia in my inbox today:

You should never be here too much; be so far away that they can’t find you, they can’t get at you to shape, to mold. Be so far away, like the mountains, like the unpolluted air; be so far away that you have no parents, no relations, no family, no country; be so far away that you don’t know even where you are. Don’t let them find you; don’t come into contact with them too closely. Keep far away where even you can’t find yourself; keep a distance which can never be crossed over; keep a passage open always through which no one can come. Don’t shut the door for there is no door, only an open, endless passage; if you shut any door, they will be very close to you, then you are lost. Keep far away where their breath can’t reach you and their breath travels very far and very deeply; don’t get contaminated by them, by their word, by their gesture, by their great knowledge; they have great knowledge but be far away from them where even you cannot find yourself.

For they are waiting for you, at every corner, in every house to shape you, to mold you, to tear you to pieces and then put you together in their own image. Their gods, the little ones and the big ones, are the images of themselves, carved by their own mind or by their own hands. They are waiting for you, the churchman and the Communist, the believer and the non-believer, for they are both the same; they think they are different but they are not for they both brainwash you, till you are of them, till you repeat their words, till you worship their saints, the ancient and the recent; they have armies for their gods and for their countries and they are experts in killing. Keep far away but they are waiting for you, the educator and the businessman; one trains you for the others to conform to the demands of their society, which is a deadly thing;* they will make you into a scientist, into an engineer, into an expert of almost anything from cooking to architecture to philosophy. — Krishnamurti's Notebook

Yet also "You only exist in relationship".

I am in a relationship of conflict or negation or otherness with what I ought to be, and that creates the limit of self that identifies it. Therefore, when I am what I ought to be - authentically - there is no more division and I am the world in relation to itself.

You will always have to live with yourself. — Moliere

Find out what it means to die - not physically, that's inevitable - but to die to everything that is known, to die to your family, to your attachments, to all the things that you have accumulated, the known, the known pleasures, the known fears. Die to that every minute and you will see what it means to die so that the mind is made fresh, young, and therefore innocent, so that there is incarnation not in a next life, but the next day. — Krishnamurti

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. — John 12: 24

I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! — 1 Corinthians 15: 31

The existentialist is resigned to the prison of self, and seeks to make himself as comfortable as possible within the image he has of himself - that is the ethical life. Whereas the religious is determined to escape to that state of being wherein one can: ...

Love and do what you want. If you stop talking, you will stop talking with love; if you shout, you will shout with love; if you correct, you will correct with love. — Augustine

I wish you harm, I wish you to suffer and die. It is the necessary position of the pro-natalist, of the Creator or the procreator. It is the price of life that we all must pay, and obviously, no one ever gets a choice because it is not a marketplace, and no choice is possible prior to existence.I did not choose to bring into existence an ungrateful miserablist, but I don't get a choice about who I procreate either.
So my wishes are nothing personal; I want suffering and dying to continue in general and indefinitely, because the joy and beauty of life is not separate from suffering and death. The antinatalists will get their wish in time and my wishes will be frustrated, which is only fair. Such is life eh?

It seems to me phenomenalism is unarguably true. — Art48

Alas it seems unarguably false to me, but I have spent my working life not looking at trees so much as cutting them down, chopping them up into logs, and laboriously grubbing up the stumps and roots.

I think you need to add some physicality and action to the senses, and probably to your life; one comes to know a tree by climbing it, pulling off some leaves, falling out of it. The tree responds to my putting my weight on a branch by bending, perhaps breaking - with a snap if the branch is rotten, or else with a greenstick fracture. Watch out for splinters!

Eyes are not just for seeing, but for wiping and rubbing, and if you doubt the materiality of vision, just press a little harder, and the pain will convince you. Try to live on illustrations of food and drink, and you will discover the vital difference between the phenomenal representation in the mind and the visceral manifestation in the gut.

The longest film project Warhol worked on was the series of Screen Tests he made of various artists, celebrities, collaborators, or whoever happened to walk in the door of his studio. In front of the camera, the subject was told to sit still, not blink; often they disobeyed. Together, the series serves as a kind of mission statement—a celebration of the destruction of high-low hierarchies, placing Susan Sontag next to Edie Sedgwick, Duchamp next to Taylor Mead.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/andy-warhol-films-1387729

Or for a DIY version, take a long look in the mirror, and see if you can work out how you are feeling from the expression on your face.

There's no point in asking
You'll get no reply
Oh just remember I don't decide
I got no reason it's all too much
You'll always find us
Out to lunch
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty
We're vacant
Oh we're so pretty
Oh so pretty
Vacant.
and we don't care. — Pretty Vacant - Sex Pistols

There's always an extravagance to zombies, don't you think? They always over-act.