If toxic masculinity as currently defined boils down to improper behavior that is ultimately the result of social pressure, couldn't the same be said for improper female behavior that's also coaxed by society? — Valued contributer

Toxic: harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way.

It’s not really about ‘improper’ behaviour, but about harmful or potentially harmful behaviour. The guy who ignores a girl because he once felt less capable than her is not just behaving ‘improperly’ towards her. He’s also behaving improperly towards himself, and to anyone who may be guided by his actions. His behaviour is harmful in falsely implying that she did something ‘wrong’.

But what makes this toxic masculinity is its pervasiveness as proper ‘masculine’ behaviour - as reinforced not by some idea of ‘society’, but mostly by male behaviour and response - that the guy’s masculinity is in question. While the idea that the girl was ‘wrong’ per se appears to be challenged by Hughie’s response - it’s done in a way that only reinforces this questioning of the guy’s masculinity (small pee-pee) as the proper response to her behaviour.

What makes it difficult to describe femininity as ‘toxic’ is that what is considered ‘proper’ feminine behaviour is determined and reinforced not so much by female behaviour, but largely by male behaviour and response.

I find myself observing, and also not doing it, which makes me think: Is my condition actually an illness, or is it an adaptation, really? — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

I tend to see depression and anxiety as signs of a highly adaptable mind, at least. It’s both a blessing and curse. How that adaptability translates to behaviour is something we haven’t quite figured out yet. There are too many people telling those with depression to ‘just cheer up’, as if it were a simple process - probably because it is for them. For others, I think, there’s a more complex survey and construction process required, as if the instructions need to be more detailed. It’s like saying ‘just build a bridge and get over it!’ - as if everyone automatically should know where to start with that, regardless of the terrain or materials available...

There are dark paths in my mind I have stumbled across at times that seemed so easy to venture down that it was frightening on self-reflection: small, seemingly insignificant opportunities that flash by, such as taking a drink because it’s there or stepping out in front of a bus, and others that stay with me for months, and I find myself constructing reasons not to take it. I often think I was fortunate to never have been in a position at the time to consider any of them a reasonable option. Doesn’t make them disappear, though. My attention is often scattered, while my efforts are guided by a desire for balance. Nevertheless, the difference between could I? and would I? often seems so irrelevant to fear or desire. I can imagine a chemical or hormonal imbalance would be all it would take to construct a sufficient reason.

My daughter also has a highly adaptable mind, and has been prone to bouts of depression and anxiety all her life - not to the point of medical diagnosis, but enough that she’s been aware of being ‘not exactly normal’. At 18, she is gradually accepting it as a high level of adaptability, and has been learning to construct personally efficient and effective mental processes and to self-monitor and manage the impact of chemical and hormonal fluctuations.

Isn't information just some material stuff we can use to inform each other? Something with no inherent material existence in nature? The surface of a black hole contains information of the stuff inside, the maximum quantity even, but what does that mean? — Hillary

Information is arrangement. We assume that it’s arrangement of material stuff. Information describes the qualitative relational structure, or internally ordered (formal) variability, of any system.

When scientists quantified a unit of Shannon’s information (bit) as a measure of variable capacity in a physical system, they took the first step towards constructing a ‘virtual’ reality - a fully contained system of potential change. But this ‘change’ refers to a particular system’s variability: namely the structure of electrons in solid metal. What doesn’t change in this system - and deliberately so - is quality.

So, we have a modern understanding of ‘information’ as the variability in arrangement across a system of consolidated (logical) qualitative structure. Shannon’s contribution, in trying to maximise the quality of telephone communication, was to deliberately exclude the qualitative variability of any system from how we understand ‘information’.

Information systems will always rely on the qualitative variability of humans for the accuracy of its relation to actual reality. The problem is, humans have a fearful tendency in preferring certainty to accuracy...

In relation to judgments, it may be that the attention in judgments should be focused on the unique and particulars rather than simply general patterns of predictability. — Jack Cummins

Great point.

And thanks for the reference! I’m always amused by the black swan metaphor - where I live, all swans are black! :smile:

We've had this discussion before. I'm more confident than you are that we can hear what Lao Tzu is trying to say even 2,500 years later from a very different culture. We are all human. There is only one world. Of course different cultures have different kinds of minds, so there is plenty of opportunity for misunderstanding. At bottom, though, it is the experience of the Tao that matters, not the concepts. — T Clark

I think the reason we can make sense of the Way is more to do with the logical and qualitative structure of the text in relation to the world than anything to do with differences in time or culture.

For what it's worth, I don't compare one or two English translations. I look at at least five, often more if they seem inconsistent. — T Clark

I’m well aware of this - it was a general comment for those who have joined the discussion, not aimed at anyone in particular. I think this multi-textual process is why you have such confidence that you can ‘hear what Lao Tzu is trying to say’. For myself, I’m reluctant to attribute such intentionality or desire to the original author. I think it detracts from our understanding of what the text presents in terms of wu-wei.

FWIW, I think there is some sense in the parallels to be drawn between the TTC and quantum physics. But I also think we need to be careful not to jump to conclusions about ‘knowledge’ Lao Tzu may have had (verses 18-20).
— Possibility

I strongly reject this. There may be metaphorical similarities, but people are always ready to mix up metaphysical and physical understanding. — T Clark

I get that your approach is to make some definitive distinction between metaphysical and physical understanding, but I don’t subscribe to this duality myself. For me, reality consists of a dimensional structure of relations which renders the physical as a relative aspect of the metaphysical. There’s no mix-up in my book, although I understand the problem of metaphorical language in drawing such similarities. To drastically oversimplify, quantum physics assumes that quantities are fundamentally affected by energy in a qualitative system, whereas the TTC assumes that energy affects fundamental quality in a logical system. So, yes, there are certainly differences in approach, but not necessarily in the underlying metaphysics. Having said that, I don’t feel like we have to go there in this discussion at all.

The reflection on mistakes is probably essential in learning from them but may not always mean that better choices are made in the future. I have come across the idea that the importance of studying history is in order to learn from mistakes made. But, it is not always clear that mistakes will be less likely because the variables being judged may change so much. — Jack Cummins

Agreed. The choice may be simply to avoid the whole ‘bad’ situation in future, but personally I think we learn more when we don’t judge at the level of action. The importance of studying history is to break down our so-called mistakes and understand why as humans we made that particular sequence of choices, when we might have had alternative avenues available, and where those might have led us instead. If we had simply buried the shameful history of Hitler’s regime, we might never have recognised the errors in electing Trump before it was too late...

With risk assessment, that is so much of a current policy approach within organisations for making judgements and assessments. Sometimes it helps in looking at potential predictions. However, it often is less effective in practice due to the limitations of knowledge. One example which I give, and that is because it was what I used to be involved in judging risk in mental health care, is risk of harm to oneself and others. There were important aspects of guidelines as to how people had acted in the past, but the problem was that it was not possible to know people's plans and motivation. — Jack Cummins

Agreed again. Past behaviour is not the best indicator of future behaviour, when all’s said and done. There’s far more to potentiality and risk than past actions, but often that seems to be all we can quantify, and we have to start somewhere. Risk of self-harm is especially difficult - often it’s what they’re NOT doing that’s indicative of increasing risk, which you can’t really quantify. I don’t think it’s all that useful to consolidate judgement or assessment here - it appears more certain, but is ultimately limiting because it leaves out unquantifiable relations. It think it’s more about an ongoing process of qualitative prediction and adjustment in increasing awareness, connection and collaboration to minimise risk. I find it is our capacity to relate without judgement to the thinking, feeling person, not the assessment, that is most effective in practice.

The basis of evaluation is on knowing what is going on in someone's mind on the basis of what they say and do, which only gives a partial picture of intent. In all judgments involving human affairs the undisclosed truths of people, as well as general unpredictability make human judgments extremely difficult. Some people speak of intuition but that can even be subconscious bias, so there are likely to be restrictions in accurate judgments of events which have happened in the past, character and potential behaviour. — Jack Cummins

Well, we never really know what is going in someone’s mind, do we? Evaluation is not so much about what we know, but what potential information we can rely on in order to act. Human judgement of human behaviour and intent will always be uncertain to some extent, and always be subject to bias, whether sub-conscious or socially ‘justifiable’. We’re just not going to get around this. But I think we can improve accuracy in how we respond and relate to each other on an ongoing basis by taking judgement out of the equation - by acknowledging that we don’t know in a way that can be consolidated from one experience or moment to another, and then account for inevitable margins of error in the process of continually assessing and communicating risk.

Except that we usually prefer to be certain rather than accurate.

Chi, c'hi, qi, energy; is like yin and yang - People say that it is central to understanding the Tao, but it rarely or never is mentioned in the Tao Te Ching. I have some sense of what it means based on my experience with tai chi. I think it points to the fact that Taoist practice includes meditation. That's something I don't generally take into account. — T Clark

The lack of reference to ch’i in the TTC I think is deliberate - it is human interaction that contributes ch’i to language, bringing life-energy, affect, value and desire to the text. What makes the original text universal is that it has no ch’i - the author has presented a logical arrangement of qualitative ideas.

English doesn’t lend itself very well to this non-conceptual structure. Most English translations of the TTC have something of the translator’s own life experience and value structures in them, as well as their conceptualisation of Chinese history and culture - none of which can be found in the original text. It makes it difficult to get a clear sense of the text by comparing only one or two English translations.

From what I understand, Tai Chi deals with the actual flow of ch’i, and I think that meditation in Taoist practice is like scientific experimentation: create a controlled environment in which to observe the flow of ch’i through a logically arranged qualitative structure. But the TTC looks more at the potential of ch’i, particularly the notion of wu-wei, challenging the assumption that ch’i be attributed as a potential property to people in terms of power, control, agency, desire, etc. From Verse 17, the most effective ruler appears to achieve nothing at all themselves.

FWIW, I think there is some sense in the parallels to be drawn between the TTC and quantum physics. But I also think we need to be careful not to jump to conclusions about ‘knowledge’ Lao Tzu may have had (verses 18-20).

information, regardless of this particular qualification, is really NOISE.
— Possibility

I’m sure that’s not right. I think - someone tell me if I’m wrong - that noise is one of the factors Shannon has to deal with in his attempt to define what amounts to successful transmission of information. Noise interferes with information transmission and if the information is totally degraded, then it just reverts to noise.

Information is first and foremost structured. A pile of rocks is just a pile of rocks, but the same pile laid out to spell ‘this is a pile of rocks’ in structured by the act of laying it out, and is no longer just a pile of rocks. It conveys information (and in this case, irony.)

The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program has been capturing noise from interstellar space for decades, and so far all it has is noise. If if had captured any information whatever, anything that seemed to be a structured signal, then that would be enormous news. And it would be news BECAUSE it wasn’t just noise.

But it hasn’t happened. — Wayfarer

Shannon was trying to measure (quantify) the capacity of a telephone line to carry intentionally ordered messages. He defined this capacity - information - as a measure of the number of possible alternatives for something. Each possible alternative referred to a particular order or arrangement of information. More information meant more alternative arrangements. Minimising the quantity of information to be transmitted at once ensured less possible alternatives in arranging the same information, which maximised the accuracy retained in the transmission amidst the noise.

Scientists use a quantity they refer to as ‘Shannon information’ - the logarithm in the base of N - to define actual information, based on Shannon’s understanding of this capacity, or potential information. The unit of measurement, or ‘bit’, is the minimum number of alternatives: the choice between two possibilities.

So a pile of rocks laid out to spell ‘this is a pile of rocks’ contains much more information than simply these words. There are many, many possible alternatives for these same words to be arranged with the same pile of rocks. And what you might consider to be a pile of rocks may in fact have already been arranged by someone according to colour, shape, size and/or mineral content.

Noise is information whose particular arrangement is undetermined.

Poets should be arrested and put away for a million years...for rule-breaking at such scales and severity. Wouldn't you agree? — Agent Smith

Nope.

So based on what you have typed above, I didn't miss your point at all, I fully understand it.
The masturbation point is an example of many such behaviours that most people prefer to happen in private than in public. Its not a question of 'correct behavior' or 'incorrect behaviour' is a question of 'acceptable or unacceptable behavior within the scenario offered.'
From you having a loud chat on your mobile phone while others are trying to watch a show to someone peeing into an empty bottle at the dinner table.The behaviour Diogenes is suggesting is that of a self-indulgent pig. A human dog who will shit right in front of you in the street is just that, a human dog.
The dogs behaviour is not wrong just like masturbation is not wrong but human society is idiosyncratic and nuanced and employs rules of engagement and rules of decorum. — universeness

Self indulgent? Yes, I agree. But does that make him a ‘pig’ or a ‘dog’? Well, that’s your opinion. He’s still human - ‘human dog’ is a contradiction in terms. Which is it?

And you’re still not addressing the difference between public and private except in terms of personal, affected preference. So, society’s rules of engagement and decorum are based on the majority’s affected relation to ‘behaviour within the scenario offered’. This is why homosexuality has been excluded as inhuman and ‘cancelled’ or forced into hiding for so long... but that’s perfectly acceptable, right? Homosexuality is not wrong, but human society has ‘rules of decorum’...

No, I’m NOT suggesting that you’re advocating the cancelling of public demonstrations of homosexuality - I’m just drawing attention to the societal process of determining what is ‘acceptable or unacceptable behaviour’, which Diogenes was questioning. It’s difficult enough to discuss these topics even now, but there were no opportunities for Diogenes to ask these questions in such a way as they could be understood - abstract discussions on reasoning such as Plato devised were insufficient - because it’s about acknowledging affect, feelings, and relation to quality or values as crucial aspects of reasoning.

The point is that we judge the behaviour of others based on certain ‘rules of decorum’ that lack objective rationality - so how can we claim righteousness? How do we critique the accuracy of moral or aesthetic judgement?

War crimes are based on bad behaviour, aren't they!
In war you kill your enemy, would Diogenes agree that rules like the Geneva conventions are valid or would he advocate for 'all extreme behaviour is fair in war?' — universeness

In Diogenes’ time, there was no such notion as ‘war crimes’ or ‘fairness in war’. I think he might question why certain behaviour such as killing your enemy is considered ‘fair’ in war but not in the marketplace.

logic is a language! Well, we could treat the laws of (natural) deduction as syntax and as far as semantics goes there's a cent per cent overlap between logic & natural languages. That's as far as I could go. However, a question that comes to mind is this: is there logical poetry? Grammar, I believe, is shot to pieces in verse (poetic license). So irrationality could be, in a sense, logical poetry (rules? what rules?) — Agent Smith

There are many different languages, and some have more logic to them than quality. Logic, in the sense that Banno uses it, is a written language that reduces qualitative or semantic content, as well as any directional energy, to symbols. When we ‘use’ logic as a language, we’re examining the logical structure only of a particular relation, which we portray as a set of linear propositions.

As for logical poetry, I’ve always considered poetry to be about affect, in the sense that it is a carefully crafted logical and qualitative structure in itself, through which our energy is directed. Have you read poetry written by AI? Even when there appears to be no logic (ie. no formal grammatical structure), how the quality in each concept-word is positioned relative to the others determines how we relate to it. We assume there is some logical structure in language. Most (human) poetry is meant to be spoken, so the sounds (alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc) can add another dimension of quality.

True, the blank in my mind which you alluded to may not be nothing. That gives me something to think about. I feel like I've been given a loaded gun and told to shoot, but at nothing! How do I shoot? Analysis paralysis. The mind is to be shut down as it were and (simulating what we believe is death - cessation of all thinking). Contrary to what I thought, we can experience death (virtual death). — Agent Smith

The point is that you feel...

Information was quantified by Shannon, in a very particular qualitative reduction, as change vs no-change.

But information, regardless of this particular qualification, is really NOISE. It’s not just entropy, but also energy, depending on your focus. When we talk about ‘information’, we are always referring to a certain qualitative reduction that ignores, isolates and excludes some noise, and quantifies or consolidates it as distinct from the rest, if only for the purpose of talking about it.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Law of Noncontradiction "states that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time." ~(p & ~p)

We can say (language) things we cannot mean (logic). For instance: The apple is all red AND The apple is not all red! There, I said/wrote a frank contradiction but when I attempt to think it, I draw a complete blank (Zen koans, mushin no shin).

My hunch is that the language center (LC) of our brain is not entirely under the control of our, to borrow a computer term, Arithmetic and Logic Unit (ALU) of our brains. There seems to be some kind of communication or other gap between the LC and the ALU and I claim that this gap and probably other as of yet unknown aspects of our brains is the reason for much of our confusion (bewitchment by language).

P. S. We think in words! :chin: — Agent Smith

Language has both a logical and a qualitative aspect to its structure. When we use or relate to it (in time), we contribute directional energy (ch’i).

The Law of Non-contradiction says that we cannot state ‘the apple is all red’ AND ‘the apple is not all red’ at the same time. But it’s possible to nevertheless think this contradiction a-temporally, by reserving judgement. The ‘blank’ you draw in entertaining this contradiction in thought points to the instability of dualism as a structure of reality. But it’s not really a blank, because you still exist in relation to the contradictory thought - the question is, in what sense? What remains in the nature of this relation, when the logical quality of language appears to cancel itself out?

For Wittgenstein in relation to language, meaning is use. In that sense, the battle in philosophy seems to be against interference in reasoning by our contribution of directional energy (ch’i). But Wittgenstein found this to be a losing battle to some extent. Because the irrationality of our fears and desires must be factored back in, if we are to bring wisdom or accuracy in judgement to anything we do or say.

Your point about avoiding drastic mistakes and consequences is important in relation to judgments. In this way, it is probably related to risk management, and the severity of what is at stake. It may be about the elimination of dangers with a certain amount of caution in preventing grave errors. Judgment is likely to be fallible, but the need for the utmost rigour is more important, especially in relation to life and death issues, including medical ones and legal ones. Some judgments are more important than others, so probably require far greater carefulness in weighing up all the intricate details. — Jack Cummins

Error and mistakes are how we learn, so if we focus too much on avoiding the risk of mistakes, then we reduce the information we can gain from enacting a narrower range of fallible judgements. The trick in risk management, I think, is to understand our capacity for error-making within our particular relational structure. Recognising, for instance, that we’re capable of going weeks without food but only days without water enables us to push the body closer to its limits in pursuit of information, despite a rising fear of death.

Kant’s critique of the faculty of judgement explores its limitations within the human condition. When we refrain from enacting judgement and examine the relation between all three faculties at conceptual and imaginative levels, we can see that feeling, attention and quality necessarily affect how we can and do enact judgements.

Addiss and Lombardo

Spare words; nature's way.
Violent winds do not blow all morning.
Sudden rain cannot pour all day.
What causes these things?
Heaven and Earth.
If Heaven and Earth do not blow and pour for long,
How much less should humans?

Therefore in following Tao:
Those on the way become the way,
Those who gain become the gain,
Those who lose become the loss.
All within the Tao:
The wayfarer, welcome upon the way,
Those who gain, welcome within gain,
Those who lose, welcome within loss.

Without trust in this, There is no trust at all. — T Clark

I think this chapter refers to recognising and trusting our temporary nature within Tao. The previous chapter described how the sage manifests effect without intending or desiring to BE the effective agent.

A violent wind or a sudden downpour are temporary events within an ongoing directional flow of energy, or ch’i - Feng Shui meaning ‘wind and water’. If we consider our life event in a similar way, then we have three basic options: we can focus on attracting energy, on losing it, or we can position our being according to the Way, which neither gains nor loses but rather effects an unobstructed flow of energy.

Well, we probably agree in the main then. I don't wish to ban the maverick artist or to prevent individuals who wish to point out the hypocrisy of what some people act like and claim they believe in and practice in public and what they actually act like, do believe in, and do practice in private, but Its how you go about such protestations that matter within a particular village, city or nation.

A politician who watches porn in the house of commons should not keep his job as an MP by claiming that he was merely making a statement of art or that he was making a point about those people who watch porn privately but don't admit to doing so publically.
If Diogenes masturbated in public in front of strangers then it's correct that he be arrested and charged with some public affray infringement, regardless of any claims he might make about art statements or stands against societal hypocrisies. If he is found to be mentally compromised then he should not be charged with anything but should receive the mental health assistance he needs.
Such situations must be measured against the realpolitik of the time and place they happen. — universeness

I think you’re still missing the point. There’s obviously a part of us that is keen to isolate someone who behaves in this way as something ‘other’ than this ‘self’ we present to the world, something that should be hidden away, denied, excluded, or repaired. How we respond to behaviour such as this says a lot about our self-awareness and integrity. It’s telling that you’ve used a politician as your example - a public figure who represents us - we react strongly against our public representative behaving in a way we’d prefer to keep private.

But this doesn’t settle the questions that Diogenes is presenting. What, precisely, is wrong with masturbating in public that is not wrong in private? I get that ‘society’ as a structure of civil order makes this distinction and is expected to reprimand him, but what is it that ‘disturbs our peace’? Why am I so keen to distinguish him from my ‘self’? It’s interesting how keenly we tend to align our ‘selves’ with ‘societal order’ on the behaviour of others.

That way, we can continue pretending that our particular brand of ‘civilised humanity’ is the only way to be, and that the world and people are ordered and predictable.
— Possibility

But our particular brand of what is considered 'civilised behaviour,' changes from village to village all the way to nation to nation. We don't have the same guidelines of civility as the ancient Sumerians or the more recent Victorians. I am not ready to advocate for men and women to masturbate, if they choose to, in public, on the buses and trains, on their way to the office, are you? — universeness

I agree with what you’re saying, but I think you’re missing the point. Diogenes wasn’t advocating the behaviour itself, I think he was aiming to increase awareness, to challenge the ignorant and exclusive nature of a ‘civil’ life. This was performance art in an era of low literacy - a living, breathing critique of social behaviour which made it into written folklore. It was an opportunity for philosophical self-reflection, not to advocate a change in the law to enable people to masturbate in public, but to confront the public ‘self’ with the private ‘self’.

I think Diogenes was wise, although considered ‘mad’ in his behaviour by society’s standards. He was fool, prophet and sage, and made of his life a critique of social convention. The idea that ‘you can’t do that’ is countered in almost every act attributed to Diogenes. Clearly we can do it, which leads us to ask why our conventions exclude or isolate certain behaviours in certain situations, and demand certain behaviours in others. What is it that offends or disturbs us about certain acts that we must render them unacceptable in public? What are we trying to hide, ignore or deny about ourselves? Diogenes’ behaviour was designed to confront us with a little brutal honesty about our humanity.

But, as usual, we avoid this level of self-reflection by calling him ‘mad’ or ‘dog’. Not really human. It’s a coping mechanism. That way, we can continue pretending that our particular brand of ‘civilised humanity’ is the only way to be, and that the world and people are ordered and predictable.

It seems we’re a little slow on the uptake...

A collection of photons that interact with nothing can form a black hole, if the density of them, or their energy is high enough. — Hillary

Are they not interacting with each other in this instance?

Yeah, a gap in the causal chain! — Agent Smith

Or a misunderstanding of causal relations...

So therefore, getting something done sooner doesn't mean you're less patient, on the contrary it can mean you're more patient.

In short, sooner does not mean impatient and taking longer does not mean more patient. — HardWorker

The point was that the evaluation of an act is not just about time, but about the distribution of effort and attention in relation to time. Patience is simply about recognising the requirement of all three in accomplishing any task. Impatience is when at least one of these is not taken into account in the prediction.

Someone trying to thread a needle is going to get impatient if they’re not paying enough attention to the task to get it done. Someone who intends to gain a black belt in tae kwon do in a set amount of time just by showing up to lessons, without putting in the effort or listening to their instructor, is going to get impatient when he can’t demonstrate progress.

I'd say patience, its definition, has a clear (enough) temporal specification viz. waiting which is synonymous with prolongation of duration. — Agent Smith

Someone who is not carrying out the task themselves, but relying on someone else, is unable to control how this person distributes their effort and attention over time. When more of our own attention and effort is allocated to a task, we expect it to happen sooner. Patience in this instance is recognising that allocating more of our own effort or attention to someone else’s task has no bearing on the time it takes them. It’s about their attention and their effort - which we detract from the task at hand when we ask: ‘Are we there yet?’ ‘What’s taking so long?’

Indeed, there are more questions than we can answer, but, speaking for myself, questions are, at the end of the day, are the cardinal sign of avidya (variously translated as ignorance or absence of wisdom).

As Socrates said "I don't know, I don't think I know", ignorance leads to a sometimes burning desire, an unquenchable thirst, for knowledge, but, from what I can gather from here and there, the path is, for better or worse, simply a loop and we return to where we began, back to square one.

The natural, obvious, question is is the game worth the candle? What was the point of a journey if the end is the beginning? Sisyphus was being tortured! — Agent Smith

For me, wisdom is less about pursuing knowledge - a consolidated ‘answer’ - than understanding, which is more fluid, lacks certainty, yet is ultimately more accurate. Think QM. Understanding is about relating to wisdom as a ‘process’ from our limited capacity - it’s not something individually attainable, but somehow possible, beyond the limits of our particular fears or desires. Wisdom is about collaborating to realise the accuracy of this process, regardless of self, rather than striving to have or even be an answer.

Perhaps we should stop thinking of this as a game, with a beginning, an end, set rules that apply to everyone, and apparent winners and losers. A game assumes that we all start with a level playing field and travel the same journey with the same opportunities, relying on luck, skill or knowledge to gain advantages over others towards a set destination. That’s an oversimplification, rendering our predictions inaccurate.

Sisyphus’s torture was in being alone. That the process is eternal, that we cannot consolidate an answer in our ‘individual’ knowledge or being, does not necessarily render the journey as circular.

A photon has a potentially measurable beginning and end, but no set path in between. Once we determine or initiate its existence, we can calculate roughly where we might look for it at any particular time along the journey, or probabilistically if and when we might find it at a certain point in space - barring other interactions, of course. Any set of rules for that journey is determined and redetermined in relation to observation/measurement/interaction.

What is a photon that interacts with nothing?

Both the oracle and Socrates make a plea for self-reflection, basically resorting to a mirror metaphor for our minds.

That's swell, but there's a certain well-known phenomenon that happens with mirrors viz. lateral inversion - left and right are swapped in the image - that gums up the works so to speak.

Sticking with the mirror metaphor/analogy, this would mean a person examining him/herself is likely to evaluate him/herself as the exact opposite of his/her true self. You maybe good, but you think you're bad and vice versa; you maybe an extrovert, but (mis)label yourself as an introvert; you get the idea.

One example from a relatively recent study in pyschology is the notorious Dunning-Kruger effect which is, bottom line, the fact that smart people see themselves as dumb and morons think they're brainy. Lateral Inversion! Oui?

One philosophy, an Oriental one, Taoism, puts a great deal of emphasis on this (lateral) inversion: People who behave humbly are actually arrogant and vice versa; fools are sages and sages are fools; so on and so forth! — Agent Smith

I think that when we seek to know the world as separate from our selves, we’re not going to know if this is correct unless we also know our selves. That is, we may well be what we know, but what we don’t know - well, we don’t know, do we? It seems to me that there’s more to this gap, that mere knowledge cannot address.

When we evaluate our selves, there’s a confusion between what’s in the mirror and what’s ‘real’. Taoism says that, when it comes to evaluation, a pair of binary values are interchangeable, symmetrically structured. One cannot exist without the other - there is no dark without light, no good without bad. They’re just names we give to the potential limits of our experience, and when we perceive only in terms of this binary evaluation, then it makes little difference which is which - except that our self embodies one and the world the other. So which one is conducting the evaluation?

Taoism also looks at the difference between what we appear to be by our observable acts, and what we understand about ourselves by how we think and feel internally, regardless of action. Can a humble man really demonstrate the strength of humility, or only its apparent weakness? Must a sage be seen to act as proof of wisdom? Is wise action more important than wise inaction, or just more attributable to a ‘self’ by the world?

We play a card game called ‘Rage’, where each player predicts the number of tricks they expect to win per round, and is penalised for winning more or less tricks than the prediction. Played over ten hands, this game can be won with a consistent prediction of zero tricks.

.

I think first you must get a handle on what I mean by “comply” before you fit your scheme within its structure. — schopenhauer1

Your ‘structure’ is false, and I’m not the one trying to make it fit.
Forget it - I’m done with this merry-go-round.

So a "Yay" for comply. Got it. — schopenhauer1

Not ‘yay’. Why does everything have to have either a positive or negative value?

Funny you mention "context" and provide none of it, thus making the statement hollow and meaningless unless contextualized. — schopenhauer1

It’s a statement of relational structure, not actuality. Populate it how you like, the relational structure is the same.

There is no stripping away, lest death. Give me one example of someone "stripping away" and not being dead. — schopenhauer1

Someone who walks onto a battlefield without a weapon and carries wounded soldiers to safety is neither striving for survival nor seeking to avoid discomfort.

Yet you say stuff like this:
The more information we already have about this type of situation, and the more attention, effort and time we’re able to devote to it, the less prediction error. The more mistakes we make, the more accurate our brain gets at predicting.
— Possibility

Mine as well come from an HR seminar of how to be a better worker. And this truly would be doubling down on the game. Not only accepting it, but trying to get better at it over time so as to learn and grow. And now we are back at very common notions of self-actualization like Maslow or any of the others. I got some minutia to monger. — schopenhauer1

You’re reading a whole lot more into it than is there. None of what I’ve written is describing what anyone should be doing, or how to be a ‘better’ anything. It’s simply describing a relational structure. How you feel about it or what you do with it is entirely up to you.

We talked about margin of error!

So, suffering is, at the end of the day, an error!

Is that why we dislike suffering so much? Nobody likes making mistakes, especially silly mistakes?

There's more but I can't quite put my finger on it at the moment! Maybe you can. Give it a go, will ya? — Agent Smith

Prediction error feeds back to us as pain, humiliation/humility and loss/lack in our relation to the world. It’s just an indication that something needed to be different in how we conceptualised the situation and/or in how we structured our being in relation - ie. attention and effort over time.

But this is how we learn. Babies and children experience prediction error almost all the time. Each error we make comes with information, which enables us to make adjustments in very the next moment, or the next time we’re in a similar situation. As we pay attention to a ball hurtling towards us, we can make hundreds of judgements on speed and direction, as well as small adjustments to our body, including heart rate, visual focus, hands and feet position in order to eventually catch it. If we’re not paying attention, or we haven’t tried to catch a ball before, it could hit us on the head before we determine the correct position. The more information we already have about this type of situation, and the more attention, effort and time we’re able to devote to it, the less prediction error. The more mistakes we make, the more accurate our brain gets at predicting.

But the older we get, the less prediction error we experience, and the less we appreciate those experiences when they do occur. We buy into the idea that as adults we shouldn’t make mistakes, and so we avoid putting ourselves at that risk. And eventually, the body and the brain stop learning.

So instead of just admitting "the better way" in the positive form, you simply state that not living in the Tao is the distorted way. It's the same thing but stated in its negative form! — schopenhauer1

This is not about better or worse, positive or negative - these are value structures. A distortion is about accuracy of information. We will always consider our self-knowledge of the will to be better, relative to the self as we perceive it. There’s no point in arguing against this. But we also know that this self-knowledge of the will is an illusion, like the distorted appearance of a stick in a glass of water. So it’s a choice of what appears better for our perceived ‘self’ at this juncture, or what is more accurate overall.

Sure, but if you are let's say suffocating, your affect is immediately about your physical suffocation.. Enlightened or not! Then all the mental techniques to keep mind off.. maybe. — schopenhauer1

Maybe, it depends on your situation. Enlightenment aside, I know people who have ‘accidentally’ asphyxiated themselves in pursuit of pleasure/escapism, so I would dispute this. The mind is much more variable than I think Schopenhauer gave us credit for. This is more apparent in the last few decades at least.

It is comply or die all around.. You can't go against it.. You can only say word salads about structures and collaborating. This a) Isn't seeing anything of the socioeconomic superstructure, historical contingency of our situation, b) It isn't doing anything about it.. It's all better ways to comply.. changing your "attitude" or as you like to complicate it "affect".. and it's all ways to better cope with complying. — schopenhauer1

...and we’re back to doubling down on the illusion. Never mind.

Besides not buying the notion of this "escape hatch" of asceticism (or even aesthetic contemplation for that matter), I think there is the very real of having to survive at all. I am not doubling down on the illusion, but rather acknowldging the realities of how the human condition works.. That is to say, we are willful beings for sure, but that we are also situated in a socioeconomic context, and inextricably tied to our individual selves with this society. HOWEVER, this does not signify anything more than precisely that.. We are individual SELVES that INTERACT in a historically-contingent, socioeconomic-political SETTING. That is it... There is no higher way-of-being of "connection, collaboration, and awareness" one must do for a better of way of life.. Rather, one must be involved in the things described by Schopenhauer (the goals and hardships related to survival, discomfort, and dissatisfaction in general), to or turn against it and die. He added an extra category of "turn against it and be an ascetic", and that is the part I deny is a thing.

So, what to do? There is nothing to do except, as you state, "vocal pessimism". To me, that can mean communally recognizing the situation we are all in, and easing the suffering as a group in the context of this recognition. Like a soldier going on a suicide mission, who knows their fate, we the living, should understand what is going on here, and cope with it through cynical/existential humor, lowering of aggression and expectations, resignation in our fate, and the rest. It is understanding that we simply have to play this game out until we are dead. — schopenhauer1

I’m not claiming any ‘higher way of being’, nor a ‘better way of life’. I’m simply describing an alternative to vocal pessimism. We can acknowledge how the human condition works without referring to any particular way of living as forced or inescapable. Survival is not a realistic goal. Discomfort and dissatisfaction are variable conditions in which we come to understand human capacity - they’re not necessarily hardships to be avoided.

We can communally recognise the situation and ease suffering collectively in a number of ways (including, but by no means limited to, antinatalism), without cynicism or resignation. A soldier in a suicide mission, who knows their fate but refuses to acknowledge their part in it (‘just following orders’), will carry on as you describe. A soldier who accepts their suicide mission makes what they can of their limited effort and attention over time - without wasting it on vocal pessimism - recognising that what they have left in them is no longer for themselves but to give freely to others as they see fit within the context. They can attack their enemies or make peace with them, they can save, improve or destroy the lives of those around them. These apparent ‘goals and hardships related to survival, discomfort and dissatisfaction’ stripped away at this point, their lives are no longer forced into a particular way of being.

This is the problem with mixing scientific concepts.. So let's say there is a concept of relativism in physics or chance in quantum mechanics... This does not entail anything about a broader philosophical principle by necessity. One has to bolster this idea with several steps tying that concept with a metaphysical point, which is trickier than making up neologisms. Rather, Kant's "Copernican Revolution", however you think it, can be applied to modern physics as well. That is to say, whatever it is "out there", it can be considered simply the cognitive apparatus of the mind making it seem that way. The thing-in-itself being as it were, a speculative claim of the "out there", which as in Schopenhauer, can be gradations of this "something" all the way down (Will in Schopenhauer's case). — schopenhauer1

Not by necessity, of course not. I don’t dispute any of this - hence structural realism.

This seems very Tao, as I believe baker has also picked up on. There is some "way" (the Will), and we are to align to it through attitude towards how we get on in the world. This approach is simply another attempt at Natural Reason (pace the Stoics). There is a "best way" about things that we tap into and align with using our Reason. This, of course, I believe to wrong thinking. There is nothing to align to in the universe. Even if there were, we simply have a transcendental form of something that we must comply or die to. Instead of socio-economic realities, its something else. And as @baker brought up, by ignoring the realities of having to survive, in some socioeconomic way, it is ignoring what is really the case, and so falls short of much at all, except for a ruling class who can afford to tune in, turn on, and drop out..(of course "leading people" in whatever way as well in this alternative way of being somehow). — schopenhauer1

Tao does not refer to a ‘best way’ of being at all - that, I believe, is wrong thinking. The Tao refers to a logical and qualitative relational structure to reality, which we distort according to this affected ‘self-knowledge of the will’ that we believe is better... for ourselves, at least, regardless of its accuracy. It’s not about aligning through attitude, but through reasoning, prior to even determining any variation of being, and recognising affect as indicative of limited effort and attention over time. According to neuroscience, the organism doesn’t act on concepts, but on affect, as a predictive distribution of attention and effort over time. Concepts help us to share our distorted self-knowledge of the will through language, and our faculties of reason help us to develop a logical and qualitative relational structure of reality without these affected distortions, which improves the accuracy with which we distribute what attention and effort we have available in our limited being (affect), thereby reducing prediction error, ie. suffering. There is no ruling or leading to be done from the TTC, unlike religious texts or doctrine - the structure is all there in the text; attention, effort and time are your own.

You keep trying to shoehorn what I say into the agenda of ‘having to survive’ - a product of this misguided self-knowledge of the will. You can’t seem to even bring yourself to think beyond this, even as a possibility. It’s not about ignoring what appears to be the case (from a human perspective), but about trying to understand it in a broader context of reason, of which the human condition is a limited and affected structure. I get that what I’m proposing is not a set of goals or things to do that will somehow make life easier to survive. I never claimed this was the case, and I’m surprised you still hold to the irrational belief that there should be something to this effect, simply because that’s what you’d prefer.

Ah, baker, welcome back to the discussion. I can always count on you to take my statements completely out of context.

Not sure what a ‘no-self’ approach to reduction in suffering has to do with bolstering one’s ego.

It allows you to feel good about what you're doing -- whatever it is that you're doing -- and to condemn others for being so stupid not to see things your way. — baker

Allow who to feel good?

Your approach is one that gives priority to the attitude with which one approaches things in life.
In short, it's not about what in particular one does (as in whether one watches tv or helps in a soup kitchen), it's about how one thinks about what one is doing, how one frames it cognitively. — baker

No, not at all. Forget Schop1’s misleading interpretations. My approach is about how one determines and initiates action - including determined inaction - from perceived potential.

The Tao Te Ching was written by the upper class, for the upper class. Hence its aloof attitude toward hardship. It's easy to be aloof when someone else does the hard and dirty work. — baker

No, the Tao Te Ching was translated into English by the upper class, for the upper class.

In that case, you've determined yourself to be a materialist. — baker

No, I’ve already said that my position is more along the lines of structural realism.

“I agree that a permanent state of peaceful ‘nothingness’ doesn’t seem achievable. This, in my view, is equivalent to death. I think that these notions of nirvana, heaven, even enlightenment and sainthood are romanticised attempts to reify or concretise a preferred fantasy, much like ‘individual will’.”

In their native contexts, those terms have definitions, and they are not what you claim them to be.
For some reason, you use those terms, but insist in your idiosyncratic definitions of them. Why? — baker

I’m not using them in their native contexts, and I’m not insisting on any particular definition - you are, by resisting a broader understanding of what they’re referring to.

This is extraordinary. Do you have any actual historical support for this interpretation? Such a diary entries, contemporary essays, ...? — baker

This Wikipedia article only addresses the claim that most scholars had determined a flat earth cosmology. Given scholars and educated people were a fraction of a fraction, it doesn’t refute what I’m saying here. Try this one.

Not that I would wish hardship upon you, but I'd love to see how you hold up under pressure. Like when having a nasty toothache and no access to a dentist for quite some time. Or chronic back pain. Poverty. Being of the wrong skin color.

Because as things stand, you've consistently sounded like someone who is relatively well off or at least like someone who is trying to sound like someone who is relatively well off. You exude that "Let them eat cake!" attitude. — baker

You’re making assumptions here based on what you’d prefer me to be, to support your argument and dismiss my contributions, just as you dismiss the TTC under the guise of classism. But there is no evidence in my writing that suggests this, only your affected interpretation. I’m aware of how I hold up under pressure, what my weaknesses and strengths are - I don’t need to prove that to you with tales of woe. Your assumption that I must not understand what it’s like to really suffer is completely unfounded, particularly given the general consensus here that everyone who exists suffers. You’re grasping at straws...

What I think I disagree with most in your approach is that you are championing Schopenhauer while not really championing what he actually believed. Yes, the world of appearance is an illusion, and for some very small minority of people (saints), will may become annihilated. However, just us sitting here "realizing this is an illusion" does nothing more than intellectualize this understanding. Just "knowing" we are all Will and this this is an illusion doesn't have any or much force in Schopenhauer's conception. Actually being an ascetic of some saintly variety does. You cannot skip to the end by fiat of some understanding of the oneness of things. That is not how Schopenhauer's idea on ascetic denial of will works. — schopenhauer1

Well, I never claimed to be championing Schopenhauer, or what he actually believed - although, to be fair, I haven’t laid out very clearly where I disagree with him. Schopenhauer, as you say, is an idealist, where I’m more of a structural realist. But I find his philosophy to be a useful discussion space - when we start there, you and I both deviate from it in very different ways.

I’m not saying that simply realising our ‘individual will’ to be an illusion achieves much more on its own than intellectualising this understanding. It is where we go from here that makes the difference, and the ascetic has much to teach us about what we can do, how far we can subvert the agenda. Schopenhauer deliberately falls short of deferring to their wisdom (not ‘proper knowledge’ due to a lack of form), as Kant does with creative genius. The impression is that they are to be respected and feared in equal measure, and isolated from the rest of humanity. I disagree with this. Quantum mechanics demonstrates that abolishing the apparently fundamental form of subject and object does not abolish the world, as Schopenhauer assumes. When we bring the ideas of Kant and Schopenhauer into the 21st century, we’re not obliged to bring their relative ignorance with us. I find it worthwhile to rework these ideas in the context of neuroscience and quantum physics, with due respect to the original. I’m sure there’s a more formal or academic way to go about this, but I will start where I am, and take advice on process as I go.

That beings said, I explicitly showed all my cards as it were in the OP by saying that whilst admiring Schopenhauer's system, I do not particularly agree with his assessment that we can even get out of this suffering situation by even ascetic contemplation. In other words, I don't think a state of peaceful "nothingness" is a thing. "Serenity now" permanently doesn't seem like a thing to me. Rather, it is a nice romanticized idea of what people would like. A permanent state of rest, but not quite dead. Platonic peace, without the becoming of the changing flux of this world. It's a nice notion, I just don't buy it. — schopenhauer1

I agree that a permanent state of peaceful ‘nothingness’ doesn’t seem achievable. This, in my view, is equivalent to death. I think that these notions of nirvana, heaven, even enlightenment and sainthood are romanticised attempts to reify or concretise a preferred fantasy, much like ‘individual will’. I don’t believe there comes a point in ascetic practise when no further effort or attention is required, except in death. In my view, ascetic practise is a process that forces one to align our world as representation with the world as will, abandoning the assumption that this ‘self-knowledge of the will’ is accurate. I believe this can also be achieved by combining ascetic practises such as meditation and self-discipline with honest self-reflection and reasoning. I don’t think it helps to deny EITHER the illusion (which Schop nevertheless prefers) or the will in itself (which Schop fears is essentially an unknowable nothingness), but to recognise that these relations to the world each reflect an inaccuracy that needs addressing. And I think quantum physics is addressing it, in its own way - we just need to find a way to discuss it without confusion or complex mathematics.

There’s a lot more here I find worth discussing, but my available time has been limited. Hopefully that’s enough to start, and not too disjointed. Thanks for sourcing this quote, by the way...

Well, with that attitude how do you get anything done in your life? I'm not saying we can't do better, but for some obvious reasons - most of them to do with practicality - we can't do things to perfection. At some point you're gonna have to make a decision and act whether you have all the information to do that or not. I guess what I'm getting at is that a certain margin of error is expected and we'd better to learn to live with it, oui?
— Agent Smith

Agreed! And that ‘margin of error’ plays out in the human condition as suffering. — Possibility

True, hence antinatalism. Right? — Agent Smith

I do think the ultimate imperfection of any being is sufficient reason NOT to create another one, and any expectation or hope that we could ever create a perfect being who doesn’t suffer is misguided at best. But antinatalism is presented here with the attitude of ‘we can’t do things to perfection, so there’s no value in doing anything’. I don’t agree with this, because I don’t believe the ultimate goal of any being should be to ‘do things to perfection’.

I will point out that living with an expected margin of error is not necessarily the same as equating the human condition with suffering. When we equate this suffering instead with prediction error, it creates opportunities to learn from it, and improve accuracy in understanding this universal faculty by which all action/change is determined and initiated.

Well, with that attitude how do you get anything done in your life? I'm not saying we can't do better, but for some obvious reasons - most of them to do with practicality - we can't do things to perfection. At some point you're gonna have to make a decision and act whether you have all the information to do that or not. I guess what I'm getting at is that a certain margin of error is expected and we'd better to learn to live with it, oui? — Agent Smith

Agreed! And that ‘margin of error’ plays out in the human condition as suffering.

Going back to my point. The human condition is dissatisfaction. We are constantly overcoming dissatisfaction. It is misguided/immoral to create for people a lifetime's worth of dissatisfaction-overcoming. It is immoral to give a game to someone that cannot be paused, that is de facto a play in real time or game over. We cannot retreat to the Platonic realm of a Mt. Olympus when we get tired or frustrated with the dissatisfaction. It is constant. This inescapability makes it disqualifying as moral to force onto others. None of what you said refutes that. There is nothing "there" in what you are saying. And it sounds like rhetorical tricks to hijack language and purposely be too vague so that you can't be wrong. — schopenhauer1

The baseline of the human condition can be described as ‘dissatisfaction’ by those for whom ‘individual will’ is considered the ultimate goal of being. The resulting conclusion that deliberately creating any such being is ‘immoral’ makes sense only in the context of ‘individual will’ as ABSOLUTE. Except that this ‘individual will’ is an illusion. There is no ‘will’ that we can call our own, no satisfaction or perfection to be attained as a self-sustaining identity in relation to the world.

So, your reaction to this is to double down on the illusion, and take the moral high ground against existence. There is nothing rational about this stance. You simply feel you’re being cheated out of a fantasy by an ‘individually’ conceived appearance of the world.

Sure, that’s ONE way of looking at it. I disagree that this is the ONLY way of looking at it, or even the RIGHT way of looking at it. In fact, I would go so far as to say it’s a particularly USELESS way of looking at it, giving us nothing by way of ‘how to live’. That’s my position, vague as it may be.

In the vernacular "trend" is near synonymous with "widely-held opinion". Loose usage I'd say, but nothing to be concerned about. — Agent Smith

But this is my point - it is the assumption that they’re the same thing that results in prediction error. Just because people think or say that something should occur, doesn’t follow that they will do it. It is a widely-held opinion that wealth should be more evenly distributed across the population; but all trends indicate that this would never been the case. This incongruity is what the Pareto principle demonstrates.

Sorry, I don't follow. My point was one doesn't need to aim for universality, a majority will/should suffice. We need someone to conduct a poll, pronto! You know, to settle the matter once and for all! — Agent Smith

People don’t determine or initiate action just on what appears to be - which is continually changing and relative to their situation - but on their understanding of what can change in relation to a current availability of effort and attention. The moment a poll is taken, it’s insufficient to predict change. A poll doesn’t take into account the distribution of effort or attention - which, according to the Pareto principle, is mostly where it is least effective.

We need to find a different way to portray what is happening here more accurately. In my opinion, it’s worth looking into quantum mechanical system structures, because of the way they account for a distribution of effort and attention. But our conceptual language structure is notoriously insufficient in describing QM.

Because you are making that genetic (or something akin) fallacy again. Even if the world was really a big illusion as an appearance (the devils playground) the appearance persist. It doesn’t go away because one knows the situation. The “feels like” ingrained aspect remains despite its “illusory” origins. And yes, that is assuming I even buy into that metaphysics, which I don’t. But even if I did he would never say that “knowing” this (or connection, collaboration, or awareness for that mater) brings an end to the illusion. — schopenhauer1

I’m well aware that the illusion doesn’t go away. The horizon doesn’t go away, either, but it ceases to be a limitation once we understand the situation. We can set out towards it without fearing we might fall off the edge of the world, even though it still appears that way. I’ve not said anything here about ‘bringing an end’ to the illusion, so enough with this strawman.

If anything the dichotomy would between illusion of the will and denying of the will. Complete "annihilation" of the will is near impossible except for the saintly ascetic (representing a fraction of a fraction of people can actually attain this in his view and he believed only certain characters can really achieve this). — schopenhauer1

Again, you’re assuming that the world as will must be denied, but Schopenhauer is talking about individual will as the illusion - the world as will is reality as it exists in itself, the world as representation exists relative to the notion of an individual.

As for my own view, we don’t need to deny individual will, anymore than we need to deny the horizon. I imagine it would have been only a fraction of a fraction of people who didn’t think Columbus or Magellan were insane when they set sail, including their own crew. They didn’t need to deny this optical limitation - they simply recognised that appearances were deceiving.

Also understand that appearance and will in his conception are one and the same appearance does not give way to bare will or is in some sort of opposition of it. Rather, the appearance is the double-aspect of will. It is its flip side. If one extirpates the appearance, one extirpates will and vice versa. — schopenhauer1

No, appearance and individual will are the same in this sense. The world as representation and the world as will both refer to the world, but not the ‘flip side’ of each other. The world as will has an additional aspect which the ‘individual’ only perceives in its linear relation to the world as representation. There is no need to extirpate the ‘individual’ will, but even if this did (or could) occur, the world as will would persist, although the particular appearance would not.

No, studying the mechanisms of sleep apnea does not make the the actual suffering to the sufferer go away. Let's go further, scientists writing papers on the systems involved in sleep apnea, will not stop a person with an extreme case from possibly getting a heart attack due to the breathing problems. That's just obviously wrong and not even worth me writing to say this. — schopenhauer1

That’s not what I said. I said awareness helps us to determine an effective reduction in suffering, not that it makes the experience of suffering go away all on its own.

But you did just say this.. and you are contradicting yourself.. — schopenhauer1

No, you’re interpreting a conceptual restructuring of potential as action. But I get the confusion - language structure doesn’t really accomodate a discussion that crosses back and forth between descriptions of actual and potential reality. If you’re going to keep denying conceptual structure, and ignoring the science that supports potentiality as more than a linear value relation to actuality, then there’s not much more I can do here to help you understand.

It is true, I cannot take a position or even evaluate vague language that contains neologisms or words used in novel ways. If you are going to say things like "complex structure" and "find ways to collaborate" and then deny that you are talking about "working together to solve problems" which I interpreted it as, and took a position against (as a solution to the problem of suffering itself)... then you have to be very precise on how you are using language like "complex structure" and "find ways to collaborate" cause that's how it sounds prima facie. — schopenhauer1

I’m not asking you to evaluate value structures - that’s your problem, not mine. I don’t see the point, tbh. Potential, value, significance - it isn’t possible to be precise here without reducing the complexity. Finding ways to collaborate is a conceptual process, not an actual one. I already explained how I’ve found ways to collaborate with your perspective, regardless of whether you intended us to ‘work together’, or were even aware of the conceptual process.

But it seems to me, after all I’ve written here, that your insistence at this point on ‘prima facie’ interpretation is being deliberately obtuse.

That is gaslighting BS. Telling someone who is suffering, that you are looking at it wrong, you are part of a big system, doesn't negate the suffering for the individual. You think consoling language that you are part of a bigger universe magically makes things go away? Nope. You are trivializing people's experience by trying to hijack it with this "we are part of a bigger picture" crap. It is all part of contingent suffering that is part of existing at all. — schopenhauer1

Here we go again. This is not what I said at all. And, once again, I’m not talking about using language to ‘solve the problem’ or to ‘make things go away’ but to simply change how we perceive the situation - not action as such but conceptual process. The perception that we do exist as part of a broader system (not ‘bigger picture’) is not meant to be consoling. It’s meant to open our minds to this potential that has people like you so afraid you’d prefer to not exist or begrudgingly comply than acknowledge it.

You are trying to take the pessimism out of Schopenhauer. You are trying to make Schopenhauer fit into your sanitized version. Schop thought that Will, and its appearance were negative- causing/entailed suffering. There was no working with it for any good. Existence was fundamentally not a good thing to exist at all. So "value in participating.." is misrepresenting anything he is saying. Denying will would be more like it. And again, because you choose to be vague, you aren't saying much at all when you say "participate" either. — schopenhauer1

No, I’m trying to explain that Schopenhauer’s pessimism was just a starting point. Philosophy is not about describing a ToE (what appears to be), but about actualising wisdom (how to live). Schop argued that our preference for and actualising of this apparent ‘individual will’ entails suffering, and that because of this we tend to evaluate a living existence as negative overall. But the world as will is neither negative nor positive, and denying this ‘individual will’, even temporarily, enables one to conceptually process the world as will more accurately, even if we’re unable to describe it precisely using language.

And once again, I’m not saying ‘value in participating’ at all, but rather value (if any) in our capacity to be aware of and participate in an otherwise non-conscious process. Stop twisting my words around, it’s getting really old.

Statistics? Tyranny of the majority? :chin:

There's got to be an overall trend, a widely-held opinion on all matters, including antinatalism/natalism, oui? — Agent Smith

Sure, but a trend is very different from a widely-held opinion, wouldn’t you say?

The idea is not to formulate a recommendation for ALL but for MOST! Surely, you're in the know about the Champagne glass effect! — Agent Smith

Pareto’s principle is about the distribution of quantitative value, which is only part of the picture. I find it interesting that so many people experience quite an affected relation to the graph. The basic feeling is that it should at least be more of a normal distribution - a bell curve - and that it should be someone else making the change.

Sleep apnea is a microcosm of the gaslighting situation. You see here is a problem that one’s esophageal tissue is in the business of actively suffocating yourself at night. But eh, now we have a “solution”, the CPAP machine to shove up your face to allow proper breathing. So to get this, you go to the sleep doctor and have electrodes put on you while you sleep in a monitored hospital bed for 8 hours. They see all the lack of sleep and pauses in breathing, and you are prescribed an expensive machine to wear over your mouth and nose every night to help you breathe.

You might say, “Look at that! We can find solutions to so many problems!”.

But the problem is having the problem to overcome in the first place. It is this moral disqualification of being presented with problems to overcome in the first place, that I will never let go. You can play pretend all you want that self is an illusion. Pretend at being some Eastern sage. But the reality is it is the individual dealing with these things. You can try to twist the logic in wordplay but that’s it. Whether you say it is an illusion matters not because there is still the first person protagonist getting suffocated. The obvious fact that we have to work together to solve problems doesn’t make the individual self disappear either, nor does it negate the fact that the problem existed the first place to be overcome. This misguided notion is that overcoming itself means is good when in fact it’s just the opposite. It’s people being forced to face overcoming dissatisfaction. — schopenhauer1

No, the appearance is the ‘individual dealing with these things’. For you, it seems, the world as representation is the reality, being oppressed by the world as will, in the form of an ‘agenda’. This seems to directly contradict Schopenhauer...?

Describing the situation as ‘the first-person protagonist is getting suffocated’ provides no information that would enable one to relieve suffering. The issue I have is not with the language, but the depth of awareness. Either way, you’re describing the situation from an exclusive, isolated and ignorant perspective. To reduce the suffering, it helps to be aware of what’s going on inside the body, how these systems connect to the suffocation, as well as how that affects both the quantitative and qualitative potential of the world as will. In other words, recognise that the individual is just one minor aspect of a far more complex situation, and find ways we can collaborate with the many aspects that contribute to the situation.

And wearing an expensive machine while you sleep addresses individual ‘survival’ at the expense of more qualitative aspects of life, so that’s about as far from my position as you can get. A ‘problem’, narrowly described, can ‘appear’ to be solved from one perspective, only to create new ‘problems’ in the process.

But I’m not proposing ‘a solution’, and if you were paying any attention to what I’ve been writing here (apart from how it appears to contradict your position), you might see that. I’m not saying ‘we have to work together to solve problems’, either - that’s only a narrow perspective of collaboration. Situations appear as ‘problems’ relative to a perspective. The human mind is capable of understanding the reality of a situation from a number of different perspectives and at various different levels of awareness, and prioritising one of these over another is merely a preference on our part, not a necessity.

I get that morality seems vitally important to you, and it bothers you that I won’t assume a moral stance in this discussion, let alone construct a definable (concrete) position so you can orientate yourself in opposition. But morality refers to observation, not determination. Someone must act before morality can be evaluated, so it will always be based on observable past action - ignoring variable intentionality, and excluding unobservable action as well as inaction. Morality is focused on identifying an action/event in isolation from its temporal context as an observation, and reducing what is a complex value structure into something to DO or NOT to do.

Ethics is about how shared systems of intentionality, based on complex value structures, determine and initiate relational structures of change, regardless of observation. But the majority of our ethical systems and structures rely on observation and identification of ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ events. What continues to be presented in this discussion is that both suffering and procreation are not immoral events in themselves, even though there are unethical aspects to some of our systems of intentionality that determine and initiate them.

This being the case, the aim is not to exclude these events from individual systems of intentionality, but to understand how our complex value structures form, and to rearrange them so that they generate more ethical systems of intentionality, which would reduce immorally determined or initiated suffering and procreation, regardless of observation. Given that our complex value structures are neither inherent nor forced, but rather form relative to our unique situation and in necessary relation with others, there seems to be no one-sized-fits-all system of intentionality that can be described in terms of either ideology or morality.

There is, however, a logical and qualitative process that underlies all systems of reality. Any relational structure of change in existence naturally follows this fundamentally non-conscious process, regardless of observation or intentionality. But there has been no simple way to describe this process that enables consciousness to consider itself a participant. It appears that we either observe (in death) or we intend (in compliance).

Schopenhauer’s description of reality in itself as the world of ‘will’ helps to bring this underlying logical and qualitative process of any system face-to-face with our quest for an ethical system of intentionality. This is also what the Tao Te Ching aimed to do. Perhaps we can describe this underlying process AS a logical, qualitative system of intentionality, and then develop our complex value structures so that they align with this in relation to our unique situation.

I get that this would seem contrived or backwards to you - the relation of these value structures with being appear to form our self-identity. But this is what Schopenhauer argues - that this consolidation of ‘individual will’ is what got us in this mess in the first place. We tend to think that the value of humanity derives from this capacity to act individually and collectively against the ‘natural’ process of existence, but if there is value in humanity at all, then it is in our capacity to be aware of and participate in it, rather than try to survive it, dominate it, or ‘overcome’ it through procreation, as if it’s a ‘problem’.