"Quantum state" is a higher level abstraction than just an experiential cup is. "Quantum state" may be more spooky, and interesting, because it lends itself to more mystery than cups do, but I don't think that it's more real than a cup is, because it's further removed from experience than a generalized cup is.

Unenlightened said earlier something like nothing looks like anything absent sight. That's pretty much a tautology, and not only do cups I imagine look a lot different to ants, but I doubt that they even see them at all, rather than an undifferentiated part of the environment, significant only to the extent that it's an motor-cortical obstacle, or sticky with sugar or some such, but still wouldn't differentiate it in the same way, let alone look at it like we do. We don't just see some physical object, we see a whole array of things in the cup, some of which isn't even present in the visual field, but is filled in with expectation.

I doubt that anyone is all too big of an naive realist, whereas they think that objects exist precisely as experienced by them, independent of experience, at least if they've ever given it any thought or research at all. The thing is not about appearances (that's the point that things don't "look" like anything at all absent sight, that's just a tautology), but object permanence is all that is at issue. That the cup is in the cupboard when no one is looking, or around, or knows about it even, because the world exists independently of subjects, not that perception exists independently of perceivers.

Sounds like you have everything, and are nice and compassionate... I hate you now, lol.

I just needed to talk about myself, you know how it is. Feeling down mainly because of my circumstances, and never really having any support. My sister would like me to spend more time with her, and I always do feel better after hanging around with them, but I tend to isolate way too much.

I feel a lot better though, just getting to say that stuff, and having nice feedback like that. Thanks a lot.

I don't tend to talk to neighbors, and sometimes go to yoga, but I hardly ever talk to people there either. At stores and stuff the weather is my favorite topic. I tend to keep everyone at an arms length, and tend to hurt people for keeping them at an arms length, I barely even respond to texts and things with family. I don't relate well, and am not an entertainment device, so I don't want to entertain people, and like to keep things down to business. I would like to have closer relationships, but am terrible at that. I always ruin it, or simply am too afraid to actually associate with people I like, I guess because their judgments can hurt me.

Thanks a lot. I should attempt to actually do some stuff, and not just deteriorate here, but I don't even attempt most things, gut a harsh judge, of myself as well as others. It would be nice to get over that...

It would be good to have someone to talk to, I don't really expect them to solve my problems, but just someone to tell them to would probably help me out a lot. I need to start doing stuff.

Thinking of maybe making some ghetto youtube videos talking about subjects that I like, and gotta stop putting it off. Need to clean myself up and stop just rotting here, and getting back to it, not going to improve anything but just thinking about what a crazy shit I am. I just would have liked to have held unto that insane level of pyschotic confidence that I had, but my aggression levels were also super high, and I was beginning to think that I was like the best ever... lol... when I'm alone, I think that my social persona is like super crazy.

Well, no one is an island, and it takes a conspiracy of everyone for such a thing to work at all, for sure. It isn't even as if people are against it, really. We're deeply social, and mimicking creatures -- just looking for the best tune to dance to, to dance the best dance.

We didn't, a tiny minute fraction of us did, and then we all dance to their tunes. Where even they were dancing to someone else's tunes, you aren't entirely innovative, and mold breaking in everything that you do, just like one thing if you're one in a billion.

The old hiarchy is not only big, but there are many many of them

So that's what I'm stuck in!

I actually think that more than that, art has taught us all how to see, hear, feel smell and taste. Our minds works by bundling things together as analogues, and literally superimposing on sensory experience that which has come before. I think that it is as universal as the forms of creative expression that dominant a culture, and are also reduced to a certain particularity.

One time someone was addressing me by name while saying the things I do to someone else, and I told them that it's rude to talk about people in the third person while they're in the room. So they looked around, and began counting the people in the room... which I of course laughed at them for.

There is a third person, which is precisely the person that isn't there, or the event you aren't there for. We talk as if there are general principles that supervene on the particular objects of sense, and we must, or talking wouldn't be possible in the first place, and they're predictive... when they are... but definitely not always. It's more like semi-hypothetical.

The weird thing about universals is how vague they are about particularity. No single attribute of the cup, or the cupboard is necessary to identify it, and not even its function, as drawings and photographs will do as well, even when they can't be used at all for it, but I still think that there is a semi-hypothetical nature to them that suggests that they could be used as cups or cupboards, even when they can't be.

I can tell you "this rock here is a cup, for our purposes", and you can nod, and then we can talk about my rock which is in no way a cup, no problem.

I like to think though, that these are all abstractions that are taken directly from experience, and do reduce entirely to the particularity, and the universality cannot be tied down because it is both hypothetical, working in contexts, and like a rough analogy. I'm deeply suspicious of the existence of universals beyond working analogies of form and function, as well as family resemblance, or historical origins in the precise same particular.

I have always spent most of my time alone, and when I was a kid, I used to repeat the same words or phrases over and over again in my head, and speaking seemed so slow. I then realized that I always knew how everything I was saying in my head was going to end, and it was as if I was just practicing saying it to someone, and the inner monologue of full articulation was unnecessary. I then began practicing just cutting it off the moment I already knew. So my inner monologue tends to happen rapidly, and is rarely fully represented. Like when you suppress the inner monologue when you're reading, and you can read much much faster. I'm also two people, so I'm the thought stream, which is like the one that feels natural to identify with, and then there is like an ocean of feeling underneath of it that the thoughts ripple through. I've come to think of it more like that's the real me, or the soul, that is being affected by all of the thoughts running through my head that aren't actually really "mine".

Descartes thought that the overwhelming vast majority of fallacies were informal, or confusions of meaning, and not logical.

What's interesting to me is that this is both the birth place of the fantastic in the creative sense, and the confusion sense. It is the room within grammar for misunderstanding, or for misinterpretation that grants this play, which can be both great, and disastrous.

It is comical to misunderstand things in creative ways, as well as can a whole myth be forged from this creative misinterpretation, but it requires moving beyond the understanding, which is the ground, and sense-making foundation of the myth. The trick is, that we're delivered the myth, or fantastic, and need to backwards engineer things back to the mundane. This is how we get the joke, how we appreciate the myth.

A distinction between reality and fiction isn't really a good one, unless parsed out in a very subtle way. Telling a story about what happened to you yesterday makes no more or less use of abstraction and representation than fiction does. You ate one orange for breakfast in no way delivers an actual existing entity to me, nor is it clear that an abstract entity like "one" is ever a material thing, yet science is far more based in math than material entities. In representations of general principles than particular physical things, nor is it even remotely clear that we come close to ever being able to represent a real entity to ourselves in all its fullness, particularity and complexity in thought.

When you tell people things, the actual physical exactitude of representation is entirely irrelevant, but the significance and effect of your experiences, and the events that transpired is what is remembered, and sought. None of which is any less real or true when represented with words, stones, stick figures, or bunny rabbits.

All that you do when you make that distinction is tell me that you're confusing some representations for the true true, and holding them as fundamentally different than others. You're a fanboy of a particular kind of story, is all.

I saw Campbell say that myths are mirrors for the ego, that tell us where we are in life. I like that a lot, probably because of whom I've identified with throughout life. I live a quiet contemplative life, and tend to pursue mental and physical perfection. Have I got something to prove? Probably. Am I just narcissistic? That one seems quit plausible, until I look at how I actually live, and treat others. In my experience, the real narcissists use other people, lie a lot, and just have thing inner sense that they're more valuable, and are entitled to more. That people should pay them to be around, and wait on them hand and foot. I am more like a co-dependent. I get a job, and then corner production, and let some narcissist take all of the credit. They tend to be the thieves and liars. and users of others. I've done that like four or five times now...

They do all of the dealing with people, and taking all of the credit, and I just get to be left alone, and do all of the work. I always grow to resent them though, and expect them to treat me like an equal when they are never the kind of person that can ever do that. They're always manipulative, and think that this makes them smarter than others. I'm used to this kind of person because of the family I come from, so I don't find them particularly objectionable until they've crossed my ego enough times.

Last year, I had become the most senior person even there, and although I don't like telling people want to do, and I let people get away with a lot, while I'm happy to just do everything, but people tend to respect me. Art of work shit. They won't respect people that do less and get more benefits, you have to justify those extra benefits to them by doing more, so usually the other workers work hard with me, I'm really nice and full of praise when they do good, and express my feelings when they fuck up just as clearly. Because I treat everyone as an equal, and am just in my assessments, when the real bosses show up, they're useless, in the way, talk at you making you get nothing done forever, and treat everyone like scum, and idiots. This is the reason why I left. The passive aggression, and just complete destruction of the atmosphere when they showed up, and buddy paying me less, sending me a list of his bills, wishing to compare them with mine, justifying it by trying to afford to buy a third house, right close to me to want to climb right inside my ass... I was like fuck you, but not become telling him that I knew every lie he told me, and everything he was up to, and every scheme he pulls, and he never got anything by me.

Last year I was getting weed from one of the employees, and I always like to pay back grossly more than I get, so I was letting him scheme his way to the top, and do less, and make more, but he was out to destroy me, and was telling lies about me, saying he was doing everything behind my back and I was only working like that with them around, so I was like prove it then! Anyone can say anything, they can't do anything, I'm three of you at your best. You can't just push yourself for a day an match me, having been pushing myself everyday for years, I'm three of you! So I went home, and it took them three days to do a house that would have taken us six hours with me there. So they he stayed home and I did a similar house in seven hours. I underestimated myself, and was more than three of him.

I left out of spite to fuck them, because I wasn't going to be treated that way any longer, they won't be making nearly as much, because they won't be able to come close to matching that production without me, or five guys to replace me.

I do hate dealing with people though, and still need to find a job, I just have to make sure that I don't get wrapped up in the same bullshit for like the sixth time... yeah... what was this thread about again?

Existence isn't a predicate, because to exist is to stand out, be distinct, but saying that something exists doesn't introduce a new distinction to the equation. Saying that something exists doesn't tell you anything new about it.

Saying that something doesn't exist is more like saying that it cannot be found, it doesn't strip it of any particular quality, and I don't consider this a proper use of language anyway. If something truly didn't exist, then there would be nothing to talk about not existing.

In thinking that existence is a predicate, we immediately wish to predicate anything said to exist or not exist, and this leads to confusion in my view. It exists, therefore it has the qualities of being material, or occupying space and time. Or it doesn't exist, this must mean that it is lacks those and such qualities -- but then can it really be said that we're in possession of a such a powerful predicate, so that we know that universal quality for existence, and know that it must be present in every single thing that exists in all realms and modes, and possible worlds? All scales and possibilities?

Predicating something with "existence" simply imports our metaphysical presuppositions in my view, rather than actually zones in the very quality that grants something existence. My view is both cool because something that truly doesn't exist isn't there at all in the first place to not exist, and resting on distinction it's far more phenomenological, which I take to be both more grounded in experience, and humble in its reach.

Okay moral responsibility as distinct from causal responsibility is a lot more difficult to establish, and reach consensus on, rather than argue about it, I'll just take and appreciate your view of it. I think that it is significant enough to highlight the wide reaching consequences, than like to moralize the guy over it. I in no way think that he was wicked or meant harm, but I do think it important to point out just what kind of responsibility that level of influence entails.

I wasn't aware of a well established principle that supports me. You're good at bringing those to my attention.

I don't understand your objection. Do you disagree that the actions of influential people have wide-reaching consequences for those that look up to them? That one shouldn't, or simply can't think of that when they've entered into suicidal ideations?

It also isn't obvious to me that everyone that wants to kill themselves or someone else has gone "insane", or what "mental illness" even is besides a disassociation technique to feel insusceptible to the same impulses.

This all feels like a tangent though. My question was whether one thing could be said to cause the other. The murkiness of praise and blame seems too easy to get lost in.

I think that it's far more useful to own the responsibility. Denying it in them to appease feelings, or self-perception, blame, or for a sense of individualism spreads to us and everyone else.

Nations with capital punishment have the highest murder rates, and nations with euthanasia have the highest suicide rates. It isn't meanness, or something that makes me both remind people of the wide reaching effects and influence of their actions, or the gruesomeness, and unreliability of the means -- it's concern for their welfare.

We don't have full control over our actions, no (whatever that would even mean), but our perceptions, widespread perceptions, and the perceptions of our peers and those we look up to do matter a great deal.

Even though the formalization of language is fairly new, and if you read anyone from more than like a hundred and fifty, to two hundred years ago, you'd see that they can often spell the same word multiple different ways with no apparent significance, and contract words in all kinds of funny ways, and are just basically creative in their writing -- I'm still willing to yield to professional opinion. I think that being understood is more important, but I won't make a deal, or opt a big defense about it, saying that I'm not wrong.

I definitely don't like to be nit-picked, or told I'm wrong about anything ever, I also like to improve. I'll try to remember to say it right in the future.

Yeah, he's pretty great. There are often little segments posted on the channels essential truth, and bite-sized philosophy by someone, maybe not him, that seems to correlate to the things I've just been talking about, like repeatedly, for some time now -- so we might be telepathically linked.

One for instance about IQ right after I posted that one on intelligence, where he actually does show that he both makes a distinction between crystalized IQ, based on knowledge and aptitudes, and some other one, that basically is responsible for that (I forget), which would be the creative one, and does identify intelligence with speed after all...

Manhood used to be a character you matured into, noted by certain masculine characteristics, and often had to go through rites in order to acquire. It wasn't something just gifted to you biologically, or something that happened to you necessarily when you hit a certain age.

So that, I could interpret the first as saying that one is not a man until one becomes a fool. Men do need a sense of humor, I mean, we can't expect women to be funny...

I'll have you know that my fursona is a unikitty. The technology is just around the corner!

The concept of freedom coincides the concept of slavery, freedom is to not have a lord, to be sovereign. This is what we negotiate in the real world, with others, the state, our bank accounts, most of the time functioning vehicles, colon, etc. The more one attempts to pin point the abstract form of it, the looser their grip will become.

Kind of individualism vs collectivism. Which wins? I'm sympathetic to the individualist view which I live, but in the past couple of years I've felt a lot of pressure from the other side.

Not to mention that hanging is an awful way to go... they used to drop you from a few feet, and even tie sand bags to you if you were a skinny guy like him to break the neck. Not to be morbid but without that it could have taken quite a while to go...

I don't know that we always have a survival drive, both Buddha and Freud talked about a death drive. We're social animals, and I think that social rejection can enact a will to die.

Ostracism/ abuse may themselves be murderous.

I think that my explanation is the best one. Go figure, eh?

Yeah, weed was definitely to self-medicate my crushing loneliness... oh why God did you make me too beautiful for this world? I should take up the guitar and write songs about it. I hear that it's pretty easy to learn to play pop songs.

Too salty and chickeny.

I drink tons of coffee too.

I do love me some myths, and fables. They're my favorite thing. I'm like totes on the verge of yogi mastery anywho, and just need the hot wife to get me involved in the body politic.

Sam Harris doesn't strike me as all that intelligent, and his best move has always been mocking through some analogy.

I do find it extraordinary how similar many of my experiences, and views are to his, also that we're born on the same day, and might be related, which makes me worry that a lot of what I think and feel might be more genetic than I'd like to admit. I don't know who Campbell is.

I differ to him on some key points though. I think that Christianity, for all intents and purposes is true. The focus on the importance and significance of the truth, and the real dangerous and destructive nature of lies. It would be a mistake to think that you could infer his views from mine, or mine from his, all because we agree about a few key issues, and I find him quite interesting, and highly intelligent.

He is way more of a cultural supremacist than I am though I think, and he talks with too much disdain towards the left, and socialist communist ideologies, as if they're responsible for all of the 20th century's mass murders. Sam Harris would say that religion is responsible for them all. I do think that JP is closer though, in that accepting more responsibility, and incorporating the shadow is a significant step in being a moral human being. Externalizing all of the evil and blame is a very dangerous thing.

At least one of those is a guarantee...

Presumably why that's why life is both suffering and impermanence.

Well, I don't drink, and have quit the drugs, although I confess to relapsing twice in the last couple of months, still smoking cigarettes, although on and off (more on than off).

I think that you need to get shit together, as I express in the OP. You can't just decide to have no worries, to not be tired, grumpy, hungry, or craving or to feel physically grounded. Those are things you need to work towards facilitating, good habits, type thing.

I know that booze both make you less physically stiff (you'll hurt yourself less from falls because of what they call the "ragdoll affect"), and it interferes with the function of the neocortex, which is all about inhibition, which without makes you act on training, and be more explorative.

Don't know about the exploration part. Seems to me that my only source of anxiety is novelty. Gotta get a new job here, and talk to strangers, and forge new relationships... I'm trained too well to be afraid of that I think, even though I've been well liked and find this pretty easy for the past five or six years, but nott so much the whole time before that. Getting over how people used to look at and treat me is not so easy. Even though I know intellectually that things won't be like they used to be, my body still is afraid of people I don't already know like me...

Yeah, it's notes from the underground.

Well, I wasn't referencing an ancient thought genetically, I was just talking about suffering, negatively felt things, as opposed to positively felt things.

I see things as about becoming, but with serious limitations, and ideally becoming pretty much thoughtless, or what they call "flow state" these days. No worries. Being yourself, and feeling at home in yourself.

When I get a good balance going on, and physically fully wake up, after an hour or two, have no cravings, no aches or pains, and I'm just playing video games, listening to Dostoyevsky, action and apprehension are like instantaneous. Like when I'm working, and all that's going through my head is melodies, and lyrics. Everything is like so clear when I begin to think again, and when the truth, or something that is relatable comes up, I'm just like instantly in agreement with it, even though if I were like in contemplation, then nothing seems so clear.

I doubt that this is that it's actually like metaphysically true or something, but rather that it's just something that matches my character, my training, what I've become. There's only so much still malleable, and I can worry myself silly about it, or just realize that I'm already lots of ways.

He was talking about how he didn't want to be too wealthy famous or too comfortable, and all of the downsides (and even not to trust anyone over 40 pretty much, lol), but then punctuates it by saying that that might be all just bullshit... that made me laugh in agreement. I talk about people that talk for a living, and how they don't do useful things, but I've also considered that I might just be jealous, and those avenues just aren't really available to me anyway, might just be resentment...

I'm liking him a lot -- but that got me thinking too how I was acting like super dominantly for a good couple of months, and was like super sure of myself, and had the confidence to change my life, which I've wanted to do for some time, but adjusting to the new one is difficult, and for various reasons I've been losing faith, because there is so much more uncertainty, and lack of stability in what I'm doing, but then when I stop thinking, experience no discomfort or cravings for awhile, and am content again, then I'm right back to feeling that way again makes me think that the sufferings is caused by the lack of stability, and everything that remains stable and unchanged is still working smoothly. I like to think that I'm like super dynamic, and could do anything, but I think that I'm actually more stuck in my ways than ever, and still living out that character, or self-perception in every moment that I'm not paying attention (to myself).

The very act of being conscious of something alters it. We only become conscious of something because it needs to be altered, and the less creative, or more trained the alternation needs to be, the less consciousness is required. The eye of god is cast on you, because you're a shit. Slipping by unnoticed means you're winning!

so, we're the most conscious, because we're the most miserable. Yay us.

I've been playing Bloodborne while listening to Bart D Ehrman's book on the gnostic gospel of judas. Just finished the book today.

I loves everyone's art. Some super talented peeps.