• Why are we here?
    The main issues that I think praxis might have with your theory (and I don’t want to assume here, only attempt to translate into something less personal) may have to do with the gap in your explanation at this level, which I’m afraid isn’t convincingly ‘filled’ for me, even by Blog 74. — Possibility

    I haven’t read anything about his theory, being the filthy philistine that I am. It’s curious that he claims to have resolved the rift between idealism and materialism and yet says himself “I favor Idealism.”
  • Collaborative Criticism #2
    ↪Nils Loc


    I don’t know why I’ve always liked the Kafkaesque kind of writing but you make it look effortless.
  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    You said,
    I don’t think we can begin to imagine what is beyond our little fishbowl of experience.
    — praxis
    Obviously, we have begun to imagine.     — Harry Hindu

    I wasn't claiming that we can't begin to imagine.
  • Collaborative Criticism #2
    I would personally like to see where this could be taken in terms of a philosophical piece — I like sushi

    Yeah I was just kinda fooling around but that would be a good exercise. I'd very much like to improve my writing. I just read through the first thread.
  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played. — Alan Watts
  • Collaborative Criticism #2
    May 9, 2020

    I noticed when folding laundry this morning that there wasn’t a stack of pants, and realized that I haven’t worn them in weeks, maybe even since this journey started. Part of the reason is because of the fair weather, which I’m grateful for, but the other reasons is simply that there’s no place to go where it might be inappropriate to not wear them. Dances, concerts, galleries, and so many other things need society, and society is the one thing that we don’t have on this lonely voyage.

    Discipline has been waning and there have been rumors of mutiny. The rhumb lines are not straight, is the continuous refrain. Is this the only song that they know how to sing? If the world is flat then we’re all doomed to fall at the end, others say, so it doesn’t matter. I say pretend it’s a sphere and perhaps live a few more days. Stretch it out and live without living, or finally live.

    Everywhere is marked “ecco i draghi,” and not just the unknown regions anymore. How long can we take this of faith? I’ve never seen a dragon, much less an invisible one. Can we fight it? Unknown. Will it kill us? Unknown. Will it always be there? Unknown.

    Our course takes us to the edge of the world. When we get there I fear it will be too late to turn back and we will fall, or perhaps we're already falling. Maybe we've always been falling.
  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    I think you just posted examples of how we imagine what is beyond our little fishbowl of experience. — Harry Hindu

    Did I? The things that I mentioned are pretty unremarkable and I think show the how limited our imagination is, and not how otherworldly expansive it could be in an altered state. Like our dreams, visions in altered states may offer insights about ourselves or the mind in general, but the elements are comprised of our worldly experiences. Even if there were a premonition that proved to be true, it is still limited to the world we know and human concerns.
  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    ↪Harry Hindu


    Buddhists see past lives, Christians are one with God, some people see ghost girl... and yeah, cults and religions are built around these experiences. People like Timmothy believe they’ve found the way to free the mind and save humanity or whatever. At the risk of philistinism, it’s all bullshit. An asshole is going to be an asshole after ‘enlightenment’. They might even be an asshole with a more inflated ego, because they’ve experienced selflessness, oddly enough.

    I don’t think we can begin to imagine what is beyond our little fishbowl of experience.
  • Why are we here?
    ↪Possibility


    Don’t go think’n that with all your fancy words and learn’n that ya ain’t one of them filostines.
  • How open should you be about sex?
    tenor.gif
  • A Theory of Information
    Philistine : a person who is hostile or indifferent [ to alien ideas ], or who has no understanding of them. — Gnomon

    Quintessential Gnomon, dishonestly bending the truth to fit his incoherent narrative and oblivious to how utterly transparent it is.

    If you're here to fool people, please try harder.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Trump brutally attacked by his own party.

  • Coronavirus
    Banks, governments, corporations, investors, individuals - part of the problem is that everyone owes each other and uses debt to pay for debt and because money has been so cheap (credit is - or was - so massively available) it's gotten easier and easier to think this bonanza can just keep going. — StreetlightX

    I understand that it's not really a bonanza, at least for the vast majority, but a Ponzi scheme. A scheme too big to collapse but doomed to a gradual decline. Despite Trump's best efforts, he wasn't able to deliver the promised 4-5% GDP growth, for instance.

    Getting a better picture of all this lately, it's remarkable how governments can continue on this course with so little safeguards in such a fragile system. Corona has shown how abruptly it can collapse and at just about any time.
  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    This being my presumption of why mystics and mystical traditions have often been deemed dangerous heretics or heresies by those who are religious fundamentalists. — javra

    Depatterning may threaten to disrupt whatever order presides. Nixon claimed that Timothy Leary was "the most dangerous man in America."
  • How open should you be about sex?
    ↪NOS4A2


    It’s a shame that such repression is common.
  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    If mystical experiences are by definition ineffable, and you just explained your "mystical" experience as such, then doesn't that make the experience natural, rather than mystical?

    Is that explanation unappealing?     — Harry Hindu

    I agree and don’t find it unappealing, though I imagine that many do. It’s only unnatural in the sense that it’s uncommon, in my opinion, and ‘mystical’ in the sense of it being an altered state that is completely internal (others can’t experience the same thing like they can with external places and things). Also, some describe it as trans-rational in being a non-dualistic kind of consciousness.
  • Why are we here?
    I saw a steam engine made out of an old door knob the other day, on the antiques roadshow. The maker had spent hundreds of hours engineering all the miniature parts required. It ran on a spoonful of water and a thimble full of meths. It was treated with reverence and was quite valuable. — Punshhh

    Though whimsically dramatic, at least my Frankenstein analogy offers the dignity of power and not the indignity of being reduced to a cherished toy.
  • How open should you be about sex?
    More often than not sex is unattractive and shameful for anyone but the participants. — NOS4A2

    I get the unattractive part, but shameful?
  • How open should you be about sex?
    I am indeed in need of sharing such a connection with someone that I can tell anything to. — ttjordy

    I find that physical intimacy is best with few if any words, and that there are far better subjects to connect emotionally in non-physical intimacy. No one is defined by their sexuality.
  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    Say praxis obtained some insight into himself (obtained knowledge about himself) using mysticism as a means (whatever that really means we'll ignore for the moment). Could you, Tzeentch, or I use the same means to obtain the same insight into praxis? What method would we use to gain the same insight into praxis? It seems to me that, logically, we'd have to use the same method to obtain the same knowledge, but will we? Why, or why not? — Harry Hindu

    I believe that mystical experiences correlate to a deactivation of the neural default mode network. A couple of the basic characteristics of that brain state are a loss of a sense of self and a depatterning effect on the mind. I don’t think it’s hard to imagine the sort of insight that could be gained from this kind of experience. In any case, one benefit is existential anxiety relief.

    Any method to deactivate the network could work, like meditation, psychedelics, electrical fields, whatever.

    The video is hilarious, btw, and looks like real reactions.
  • Why are we here?
    ↪Pfhorrest


    Sure, but to me it doesn’t look like there’s much, if any, concern for... I’ll just say discovery. He uses persuasive tactics to sell “his” ideas. Tactics which are dishonest. That’s what salesman do, not discoverers.
  • A Theory of Information
    I have read Michael Shermer's book, Why Smart People Believe Weird Things. So, I know a little about how to distinguish between weird ideas and innovative ideas. — Gnomon

    And you’ve aptly put yourself in the weird rather than innovative category. Honestly though, the only thing that’s weird is the effort you put into selling “your” ideas. You’re like a used car salesmen that’s trying to sell a car that’s been cobbled together from used parts.

    Frankenstein was the monster, and in his irresponsibility essentially destroyed himself, if you’re familiar with that story. Don’t be a monster, Gnomon, be a human being.
  • Happiness in Philosophy
    Epictetus in eudaimonia.
  • Coronavirus
    I live in the capital of British Columbia, Canada. The rules here are not as hard elsewhere in the country. — NOS4A2

    I would hope so, look what they do to stormtroopers in Alberta...

  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    ↪Harry Hindu


    I think it may be more accurate to say that it's a means of obtaining insight, or at least that's the way many think of it.

    Personally, I make a distinction between 'spirituality' and religion. I'm not sure if that's common.
  • Bannings
    ↪Baden


    Hmm
  • Bannings
    I constructed as an intellectual exercise a long while ago when thinking about what makes swear words offensive, intentionally including a variety of different types of offense (sexual, religious, maternal, self-esteem, etc), and ending with a racist-homophobic term precisely because that’s the most offensive thing to my ear. — Pfhorrest

    An insult cocktail, what do you call it? Nevermind, it failed with Sushi because hot buttons need to be designed for the particular sensibilities of the target.
  • Bannings
    ↪Michael


    Bribery? The plot thickens. :chin:
  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    If any part of the brain is involved it isn't the neocortex and I believe the neocortex is exactly what mysticism wants to engage although via different methods. — TheMadFool

    Hard to interpret what you mean here. I don’t think there’s any doubt that mystical experiences correlate to a particular brain state. What that brain state appears to be is a deactivation of the DMN (default mode network).
  • Bannings
    So there is such a thing as divine grace.
  • Coronavirus
    There does seem to be a correlation between political ideology and concern, with the right caring far less than the left. I don't believe that comes from leadership, but I think it comes from worldview. — Hanover

    According to moral foundation theory, out of the spectrum of moral intuitions liberals primarily value care/harm and fairness, whereas conservatives are balanced.
  • A Theory of Information
    I favor Idealism... I favor Realism... I favor Holism... Just keep looking at the shiny stars — Gnomon

    Indeed.
  • Coronavirus
    ↪Hanover


    Same temp here in southern Cal. When they open a lap pool I’ll be the first one in the water. Haven’t gone this long in years without a swim workout.

    Our governor was talking about taking customers temperature before entering restaurants when they start opening. Hopefully it will be an oral test.
  • Coronavirus
    ↪Hanover


    Was the restaurant like normal or were they spacing out tables, wearing masks, or whatever?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪NOS4A2


    What form of theater was destroyed in Obama's wake? You may be confusing habituation and reactionism.
  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    ↪Tzeentch


    Well said.

    Many throw out the baby with the bathwater. Intuition leads to things that one cannot measure with a measuring stick, so many conclude it must be useless. — Tzeentch

    Or go the other way and devalue reason. :grimace:
  • A Theory of Information
    If the latter doesn't work, why doesn't it work?
    — praxis
    Because "X" is the same in both equations.     — Gnomon

    That's not an explanation. If A can be X, then why can't B be X?

    Your logic is based on scientific Reductionism, while mine is based on philosophical Holism.

    Rather, you seem to favor idealism for some inexplicable (what you would call weird) reason. I guess because you think that it's somehow more holistic.
  • Thanks. Moving on.
    My god, there is a pandemic with people dying and you assholes can't rise above junior high school insulting — jacksonsprat22

    Imagine how juvenile it would get in a holocaust.
  • Coronavirus
    ↪Zophie


    I'm sure he wasn't. I was just using his joke as a launching point for my little rant on human irrationality.
  • Mysticism: Why do/don’t you care?
    ↪Pneumenon


    We can meaningfully talk about a place we've never been or an experience that we've never had.
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