I think SH vs SV is a reflection of how society feels about the political discourse. In the news we see billionaires battle it out over money, fame, greed, power etc... Then to take a brake from that we go to the movies to see billionaires battle it out over, money, fame, gree, power...the difference is that at the movies we can maybe see how one billionaire gets punched in the face by another... In the real life they don't do that yet.

Again if basis of your argument require a God I don't see how we can go around that. But randomness is something to be sceptical about yes, but you have not demonstrated that either randomness or God are a necessary condition. Could you elaborate on point?

I don't belive your claim that God exist. Do you have any evidence to back your claim?

I don't belive your claim that God exists. Since your argument requires that part to be true to function, I don't see a way for me to engage with it any other way but sceptically... Willing to listen to a line of argument that is predicated on a false statement is nice mental excercise. However, no matter how intricate or interesting that may be will always lead to false conclusions, therefore I am sorry to say but I don't belive that God had anything to do with the cup of my morning joe.

Perhaps the answer lies in the sequence of things... In Christian tradition God seams to care about what happens on earth first rest of the cosmos being devoid of life takes secondary role. But I am with you on the Creator vs Ritualist God... How can creator care about my dress and all that....

I assume that you mean that Christian God exists? I am sceptical of that claim, as I am of all sorts, for lack of the better word, "supernatural" claims that I'm being told impact my will or actions.

Perhaps the best way of thinking about free will is to put it on a spectrum, in survival terms. Let's use the Rule of Three.

Without air you can survive for 3 minutes.
Without shelter (hot or cold weather) you can survive for 3 hours.
Without water you can survive for 3 days.
Without food you can survive for 3 weeks.

In practical terms you can do whatever you want within those time frames at the end it does not matter whether god or chaos or both or neither are true... You die.

Thus free will exists within certain boundaries. It can wax and wane but ultimately all possibilities come to an end at the moment of death.

I like where both of you Joshs and Fooloso4 have gone... Both of you seem to point towards the abyss as a place and time of Interregnum... Thinks of Gramsci and his death of the old and birth of the new... The abyss here understood as the time of monsters. Old values have run their course and reimagining of these values is about to take place. Man as a mediator ( in a Hegelian sense) is spanning across the spectrum of choices, yet knows that there is no turning back toward "state of nature" thus forging ahead is the only free choice. Nihilism here serving as a driver of action rather than simple rejection of former structures.

But does that not give to much to the "old"? Absence of values is one thing, where as rejection or revaluation is another. Are we saying that what Nitschean man encounters is a problem or rejection of former narratives or is he encountering a problem of obsolescence of the former? Or maybe more naivley he is simply still transitioning, himself being a monster, before golden age ahead?

I think you may be giving too much to the Buddhist, Meditation and alike.... Remember that Cogito ergo sum = I am thinking therefore I am... The act as you mention itself is that expirience of self. Where my problem with meditation and Buddhism and other such paths lies is that it is rather subjective... Earlier you mentioned Elon Musk and his belief in simulation hypothesis, yet here you mention Buddhists and their meditation as a proof of futility of cogito... What if they just lie to me and say that meditation is this or that... Perhaps they are all evil demons tring to turn me away from my true without the need for simulation what if they lie?

with regards to the side question I basically agree with OOO and Graham Harman here... Work of art is "something" just like this galaxy, Ford Motor Company, Emperor Penguin, or lyrics of Lady GaGa song.

With regards to the goal of art we must look at particular and at universal here. So a single work of art can have a very specific goal in mind, it can be made for profit, or for display, or whatever the goal that the artist states it is.

Now in universal terms it is much broader, but singularly not alien to our phenomenological receipt of it. For instance one may argue that a goal of medicine is to heal broken bodies in particular, but in universal terms that may mean to change human nature by extending life beyond its natural boundaries. Therefore, in particular art is to be looked at, but in universal terms art is to be seen in a manner that escapes particular approach. Thus looking at Statue of David particularly, is a vista of human creativity in universal terms... That creativity we expirience as extraordinary and we ( not all of us as I am not a fan of modern art ) expirience as art.

Needless to say, various iterations of blue or red squares in my mind never move ones mind beyond the particular. Thus making it am common place expirience of blue colour.

Would it be safe to characterize the abyss as a sort of given then? You mention western philosophy as anchoring in truth that is unchanging... Therefore, do you mean that the abyss is another reiteration of "thruth" whatever that may be as a "given" that needs to be looked beyond in a manner of "facts can be true, yet statement still be false"?

okay I like that... One knows that one is a Ship of Thesus but one does not know if one is original or not. But would you agree that this places the "I" so where other than in our reality... If that is the case, and the presence that I expirience in our reality cannot reach the "I" at the keyboard of the simulation. Does that lead infinite regress where each I could be at a keyboard of the simulation?

It is a new movement, one that does not demand actual change but settles for "zero sum gains" at best. I agree with Zizek here... Yellow Vests have demands that cannot be met.

Let's call then No name No Aim .... Sin nombre sin objectivo.

I think that the "simulation hypothesis" takes the 'credible witness' out of the equation. The point that interests me here is your line of fake reality vis-a-vis identity... I think that I fail to see the connection to the simulation. Could you elaborate?

If reality can be faked, does that mean my act of thinking my cogito is faked too? If the answer is yes, then we somehow live in a world where everything is possible as sort of Harry Potter world where in an Aristotelian sense everything is ordered by its relation to other things, we have unmovable movers and all that... In this world inanimate objects if broken or destroyed are able to walk back the entropy and reassemble with just some help from a magical wand.
If the answer is no, and I think that it is no, then we live in a world where we basically agree with Graham Harman and his OOO...Here my cogito remains as Descartes would have imagine it but everything else orbits the ( objects, or essences, or forms) nothing can walk back the entropy and we keep on living our life forward. Think of our world right now as if it was exact opposite of the world where John Murdoch awakens in Dark City a 1998 film.
Therefore, I think we cannot know if I made that choice to change my identity. At best I can like John Murdoch and question my reality.

In 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic... Johnny the protagonist is faced with that paradox. He removed part of his brain to accommodate a huge electronic device that stores digital data. Part of Johny's brain that was removed consisted of his entire childhood memories as well as the part that consented to the procedure. However it may have been the part that did not consent... We never find out. That leaves us with Johnny Mnemonic a walking paradox.
However Johnny Mnemonic is different from Douglas Quaid in Total Recall, Johnny actually has undergone a procedure that was in more literal terms more traumatic to his brain, as his brain was altered by surgery.
Douglass Quaid has undergone something more akin to a shell schock, or combat fatigue. His VR ride makes him question the validity of his decision in the first place, whereas Johnny can never even be sure if he made the decision at all. Is Johnny perhaps closer to a true face of what pbxman describes?