LastThursday

What emerges is recognition of a pattern (structured interpretation). The parts of a system in isolation don't explain the system because the emergent behaviour of the system is to do with dynamic relationships between the parts. The parts of a clock don't tell the time, but the dynamic ongoing relationships between the parts do. It seems more obvious if you re-arrange the parts of a system and the emergent behaviour disappears. The dynamics are a thing unto themselves. I think this happens in both directions. For example, atoms are an emergent phenomenon because people (scientists) take many observations, which when pooled together makes a pattern emerge, that of atoms (or at least a story about atoms). Something like language is emergent, because it is the dynamic interplay of many parts both physical and mental. The interesting thing is that there isn't necessarily an innate language ability, it's just the the parts come together just right as a system to make language emerge. Sometimes the emergent patterns are statistical only, so when you zoom in the emergent behaviour dissolves. For example idea of temperature is purely statistical, if you zoom into hot matter it's just random movement, but on average the faster movement produces higher temperatures.

I watched this a while back. I nearly posted it on a recent forum post here, but wasn't sure it would hit home. Anyway, I think it's relevant to many on here who are looking for "no self". Tim Freke comes down a little heavy on it, by calling it dangerous, but the positive message is that there is another way. Watch both parts all the way through if you're patient enough. If anything at least it's an interesting discussion.

I hope you mean that in a smart and geeky way.

Hell is the mind.

@Aaly social anxiey and anxiety in general is no joke. If you can learn to talk in person like you write, then you'll have no problems at all. Anxiety can be overcome, both by practice bit by bit and by confronting what caused it and working through it. This will build your confidence as a person. All the things that @Applegarden8 says are right, you need to meet a wider range of people. Even just being on this forum might help a bit.

Welcome.

Understand is a perfectly good word and pretty normal. There's also "get it" and "grok". There's also the moment of suddenly understanding something: "penny dropped", "hit me", "realisation", "make sense", "become clear". Use all of them, why not?!

I'm nominally an unconfirmed Catholic. I wasn't brought up religious and for the most part I've been atheist most of my life, so I find using the word "god" a bit icky. The word also has heavy religious baggage, so I find it's best avoided in polite conversation. I've used it on here though because there's less confusion about its usage. But its usage on the forum has a different definition than the normal everyday definition. From a metaphysical level, I also have problems with what the word implies, that there is a single entity in control of things. I find that non-obvious. I don't think it's even really possible to capture much at all with the word, because a word always has a "semantic range", but supposedly "god" is everything without exception. i.e. the word is effectively meaningless. That makes believing in "god" difficult for me. But there's no doubt that my everyday experience is inexplicable in a number of ways, and that's what I attach the label "god" to.

There is a difference between the idea of a number and the representation of a number. The representation uses a finite set of discrete symbols in different combinations to map on to different numbers. That means you can have different number bases: decimal, binary, hexadecimal etc. But you could use Roman numerals, Mayan counting, algebraic notation and just about a million other ways. Mathematics also has negative numbers, fractional numbers, irrational numbers, complex numbers and a whole slew of more weird numbers. But you could call all those constructed or composite numbers in some way. If you're talking about positive integers (most people's idea of a number), then people can instantly recognise up to three things without counting, beyond that requires either counting or estimation. Mathematicians define numbers using set theory and a kind of recursive procedure of embedding an empty set into another empty set. This guy explains it well: Although I find it unsatisfactory, because it doesn't really explain anything, other than mapping numbers onto a tree structure. Nerd over and out.

Just some low hanging fruit to consider: Write your resume/CV well. Good spelling, grammar, easy layout. Be truthful about your skills and experience on there. For an in-person interview be reasonably well groomed, and be punctual. Hirers will be interested in your soft skills: do you have basic communication skills, do you show interest in the company or their products, do you partake in hobbies and other activities? For IT work hirers will want to know if you can actually solve problems. You should know the basics in the type of work you're applying for. If it's software, then you should have some coding ability and even better showcase existing work you've done. Even if you've worked in a different industry previously, then you can talk about the specific problems you helped solved there. Showing a logical and systematic approach will help you. Some hirers will show you around their offices during the interview, so you'll immediately get a vibe from that. Ask about any social activities or team building events the company gets up to. Ask about any personal development they might embark you on, or about the chances for promotion and about the general structure of the company. Ask about travel opportunities if you think it's appropriate to the job position. Ask about how much annual leave you get. Private health insurance, private pension etc. If you're new to the industry then realistically you'll have less leverage regarding compensation and benefits, but, generally this sort of negotiation will happen after the interview has taken place and if they say "yes". You will have more leverage and choice if you have multiple offers. If they're paying too little, then be firm about what you think you're worth, and if they don't budge then decline. Don't overvalue yourself however, expect the market rate in general for the level of your experience. A lot of what makes or breaks an interview, is who you're up against, and a lot of the non-verbal stuff, and whether the interviewer clicks with you.

Do you find that the last remaining speck of self is a constant thing, or does it come and go? I hope you don't mind all the questions.

@Sugarcoat it looks like it's been a positive process for you so far. If your sense of self has nearly dissolved, what do you think that self was for? Are you able to carry on normally in life, or does it cause you difficulties? Why do you think dissolving the self affects your sense of time, continuity, space and distance? What's the relationship there?

It's all a strange loop. The players are: consciousness, the stuff of consciousness or experience or appearances, materialism. There are all different views on the same thing. I'm calling it Ugg. First off you can collapse the duality between consciousness and appearances. They are in fact one. You cannot have consciousness without something to be conscious of. There's nothing more than appearance, no meta or beyond. Yes, you can tell yourself stories about what's beyond, but those stories themselves are appearances. Absolute Truth is also an appearance. Absolute certainty is an appearance. The nature of consciousness is that it is conscious of something, but the act of being conscious is the same as the thing it's conscious of (observer and observed are the same). Materialism is a more slippery beast, because it's a concoction of appearances, and stories about those appearances. There are no atoms making up matter, those are pure stories made up to explain appearances - all map, no territory. All you have are appearances that behave as if there were atoms orchestrating them, in other words there are regularities you can tease out of appearances which you can build a story from. Materialism isn't wrong as such, like a map of the world isn't wrong, it just isn't the world itself. You can crack someone's head open and see a brain yes, that's territory. You can measure it's electrical activity and prod and poke it. You can ask its owner what they're experiencing. You can see someone's personality change after a brain injury, and attribute it to the brain changes. But all that is map. Appearances behave as if there is an objective reality, the story of objective reality. Consciousness manifests brains, and then changes itself through them. Consciousness manifests eyes and then sees objective reality. Or more correctly it's all Ugg.

Science just keeps the stories that work, and throws away the rest. Even if a story is long established it can throw it away. Science also does deep elaboration, if you go to the top of a mountain the water will boil at 98 degrees. And science is not just a shopping list of facts, it is a web of concepts: the boiling temperature drops with pressure.

And that is exactly why being lonely is so painful, our biology tells us that being alone could mean death, it just does so indirectly.

Yes! One of those concepts is "the self" that is experiencing all that stuff. No self, no solipsism. If the self is a construct then so is solipsism. The other problem with solipsism is that reality isn't countable. Awareness (aka reality) is like water, there isn't one water, two waters etc, there is just water. From that point of view solipsism doesn't make sense either. To say "my experience is the only one", then there has to be an absolute self, and the potentiality for multiple experiences happening simultaneously - of which yours is the only one currently active. Solipsism is then tripping up in the semantics of language, not an actuality.

The confusion isn't mine, my response was to @theleelajoker's usage of the language. But the distinction is semantic, solitude and loneliness are the same, albeit one is maybe positive the other negative. Loneliness is not absolute in any case, but rather a sliding scale. We each have a set point of what constitutes getting enough human interaction, if it goes below that, then we feel the negative effects of it.

@theleelajoker a lot of lonely people don't choose to be alone and they'd rather not be. But if you are pulled towards it, or actively choose it, then it's not so much of a problem. Freedom is choice. I would be cautious though if you're having doubts, don't go cutting out people because of some idealistic ideas. Individualism is a paradigm, because it is based on its own set of ideas and beliefs. The basic idea is that we're all responsible for ourselves, and that we shouldn't be dependent on other people to fulfil us. Collectivism is also a paradigm, basically that we're better off doing everything together. If you look around you then, you're probably living in a city, which is in a nation. The very idea of a city or nation is a collectivist one. You probably work with other people to make a living, again more collectivism. In that sense collectivism has won out over individualism. Humans are not like a leopard that likes to go hunt and do everything for itself. If humans are supposed to be individualistic, then we would all be roaming around by ourselves literally hunting for our next meal like a leopard. No. As an animal humans have a collectivist bias, we like to do things together. Individualism goes against that innate bias we have, so it is wrong from that viewpoint.

Loneliness is the result of the triumph of individualism over collectivism. Loneliness pushes you into existentialism because you're forced to directly face the pain of it and to get answers. Socializing can't be dismissed as mere fluff, it's as important as water and air. Individualism downplays the role of other people in our lives, because... it has to. In that sense the paradigm is wrong.

The colours are regions no?

There's loads of different types of humour. Some things that spring to mind are: physical slapstick, pulling faces, silly voices, observational, word play, irony and sarcasm, dressing up (clowns), mimes, re-enactment (plays and anecdotes), telling jokes, absurdity and weirdness. It's endless. You have a wide choice of finding something that suits you.

It's probably not a popular opinion but it's masks all the way down. Any form of communication or social interaction requires a great deal of context to be understood. So already you have to pander to that context (i.e. wear a mask) to get anything done. In that way there is no real you that doesn't have the baggage of culture and language and need to fit yourself around who you're interacting with. You'll have a mental model of who you think is the real you. But there is also the actuality of who you are when wearing your social masks. The dissonance between the two can cause suffering. You think what is being rejected is the real you, but this isn't the case, what is being rejected are the masks you are currently wearing. Since wearing a mask is unavoidable (because of needing to fit in with context), you should seek to have better ones. For example, what's the difference between a good teacher and a bad one? The good teacher doesn't dumb themself down, they just find a better way to communicate, by understanding who they're communicating to better. That way they can more easily project themselves into the minds of their pupils. They adapt to their audience, instead of expecting their audience to adapt to them.

I do think the mental health figure is strongly linked to the economy here in the UK. This is interesting for a deeper dive:

It's very sad to see my home country nearly at the bottom of the list. I can only think that Covid and Brexit has driven huge inflation here and people are miserable as a consequence, survival is hard here for a Western country. The Dominican Republic looks enticing.