LastThursday

I thought I'd put part of our conversation between me and @Breakingthewall through ChatGPT to get a third party's eye view of both our positions. This is verbatim from ChatGPT: My prompt: This is part of a conversation between two people having a discussion about the nature of materialism versus idealism. Can you distill down each persons viewpoint?: LastThursday said: That's what I like to call The Hard Problem of Idealism. Part of it is because you're thinking from the materialist paradigm; that perception is a passive process and generated by something else that isn't perception (material matter). But you can see it from a different viewpoint. If consciousness is perception, then something must be being perceived (bear with me). What is that something? It actually doesn't matter, because if it is perceived then it is within consciousness - I would add that what consciousness can perceive is unlimited. The bottom line is that perception is the fundamental nature of consciousness, it cannot not perceive, something must always exist to be perceived. Otherwise, consciousness itself would not exist. That viewpoint is sort of ok, in that it explains why there is perception at all, it is not generated as such but is in the nature of consciousness itself. Just like matter is in the nature of materialism. BreakingTheWallAll: spirituality starts from a false premise: reality is consciousness. Without consciousness, there is no reality, since something exists to the extent that I am conscious of it. Everyone hears this and exclaims: "Ah, of course, that's obvious!" How can something exist without a conscious creator to create it? It's absolutely impossible. There is no consequence without a cause, therefore the cause is God. Problem solved! Well, it doesn't have to be this way. The expression of the absolute does not need to be conscious to exist, nor does it need a conscious creator to exist. Reality has an absolute nature, and this nature is absolute nothingness, which is unlimited potential. This potential develops inevitably, not because an entity designs it. There may exist infinite absolutely unconscious universes whose existence is just as existent as a conscious universe. Consciousness is a quality that exists in reality, and it is not fundamental, but an inevitable consequence of the total potential. It is not special. Well, yes, it is special for us who are conscious beings, but we are not consciousness. Consciousness is not absolute, it is relative. Let's see, you, as an existence, are absolute, but your consciousness is limited, and very limited, just the tip of the iceberg. Is that obvious? There's an unconscious infinity within you. Your true nature is absolute potential; you can become aware of it, or only be aware of the information from your senses or that you want drugs or anything. If there are levels of consciousness, as Leo always says, consciousness is relative. Trying to square a circle is confusing and useless. death, real death, the nothingness, the absolute lack of consciousness, is equally alive than life and absolute conciousness . Absolute is absolute, with the lights on or off. ChatGPT: Here’s a distilled version of each person’s viewpoint: LastThursday (Idealist Perspective): Perception is not passive or generated by material matter; instead, it is fundamental to consciousness itself. Consciousness cannot exist without perception—there must always be something to perceive. Reality is ultimately within consciousness, and what can be perceived is unlimited. Just as materialism takes matter as fundamental, idealism takes perception as fundamental. BreakingTheWall (Materialist/Non-Dualist Perspective): Consciousness is not fundamental but an emergent quality of reality. Reality does not require consciousness to exist; unconscious universes could exist just as validly as conscious ones. Absolute reality is pure potential, not dependent on a conscious creator. Consciousness is relative, not absolute—our experience of it is just a limited part of a greater unconscious whole. Death (complete lack of consciousness) is as much a part of the absolute as life and awareness. Essentially, LastThursday argues for consciousness as the foundation of reality, while BreakingTheWall asserts that consciousness is a secondary, emergent aspect of an absolute, unconscious potential. My prompt: What are the flaws in BreakingTheWall's view? BreakingTheWall’s view presents a compelling materialist or non-dualist argument, but it has several potential flaws or weaknesses: 1. Unproven Assumption: "Reality Exists Without Consciousness" BreakingTheWall claims that reality does not need consciousness to exist, but this assumes an objective, independent reality outside of perception. The idealist counterargument would be: how can we confirm the existence of an unconscious universe if all knowledge comes through consciousness? This leads to a version of the epistemic gap—if consciousness is the only thing we can directly access, how do we justify belief in a reality that exists entirely without it? 2. The Paradox of Absolute Nothingness as Potential He states that "absolute nothingness" is "unlimited potential," but this is contradictory. Nothingness should imply the complete absence of anything—including potential. If reality emerges from absolute nothingness, then nothingness must already contain the potential for something, meaning it is not truly nothing. 3. The Problem of Consciousness as “Not Special” He claims that consciousness is just a byproduct of total potential and "not special." However, consciousness is the one thing we have direct, undeniable access to. Even doubting its significance happens within consciousness. If consciousness is just an incidental property, it doesn’t explain why it appears at all or why it has the structure and self-awareness it does. 4. The Self-Refuting Nature of the Argument He argues that "death, the absolute lack of consciousness, is equally alive as life." But if absolute lack of consciousness is identical to existence, why is there something rather than nothing? If there is no fundamental difference between something and nothing, the argument collapses into meaninglessness. 5. The Relativity of Consciousness Implies a Scale, Not Non-Existence He says consciousness is "relative" rather than absolute, but relativity implies degrees—not non-existence. If there are "levels" of consciousness, then something must be ascending or descending within a framework, which still suggests consciousness plays a fundamental role. Conclusion BreakingTheWall makes a strong case for a non-conscious fundamental reality, but his argument relies on paradoxes (nothingness as potential), assumes an independent reality without proving it, and downplays the significance of consciousness without fully addressing its nature. An idealist could argue that his position is just an unexamined assumption from a materialist framework. My prompt: What are the flaws in LastThursday's argument? LastThursday presents a strong idealist perspective, but their argument has some key weaknesses: 1. Circular Reasoning: "Perception Must Always Exist" They claim that "perception is the fundamental nature of consciousness" and that something must always be perceived, or else consciousness itself would not exist. However, this assumes what it is trying to prove: that consciousness cannot exist without perception. A critic might ask: Why can't consciousness exist in a state of pure awareness without perceiving anything specific? 2. Assumption That Consciousness is Unlimited LastThursday states that "what consciousness can perceive is unlimited," but provides no justification for this claim. Our own experience suggests limits to perception—humans, for example, cannot perceive ultraviolet light or hear ultrasonic frequencies. If consciousness were truly unlimited, why do we experience perceptual limitations? 3. No Explanation for the Origin of Perception The argument states that perception is fundamental, but does not explain why perception exists at all. Why should consciousness necessarily be tied to perception rather than existing as pure, unmanifest awareness? Without explaining why perception is intrinsic to consciousness, this claim remains an assumption rather than a proof. 4. The Problem of Solipsism If everything that is perceived exists within consciousness, does that mean the external world only exists because it is being perceived? This runs into solipsism: if perception stops, does the world cease to exist? The materialist counterargument would be: The world appears to persist whether or not an individual consciousness is perceiving it. 5. Equating Perception with Consciousness Ignores Unconscious Processes LastThursday argues that consciousness is perception, but neuroscience and psychology suggest much of our cognition happens unconsciously. If consciousness is purely perception, how do we account for subconscious thought, dreams, or instinctual reactions that occur outside of direct perception? Conclusion LastThursday's argument assumes perception is fundamental without proving it and runs into issues with solipsism and the limits of consciousness. A materialist could argue that their view is simply flipping the assumption of materialism rather than truly solving the nature of reality.

@Breakingthewall that's kind of what I meant by my comment above: That's what I like to call The Hard Problem of Idealism. Part of it is because you're thinking from the materialist paradigm; that perception is a passive process and generated by something else that isn't perception (material matter). But you can see it from a different viewpoint. If consciousness is perception, then something must be being perceived (bear with me). What is that something? It actually doesn't matter, because if it is perceived then it is within consciousness - I would add that what consciousness can perceive is unlimited. The bottom line is that perception is the fundamental nature of consciousness, it cannot not perceive, something must always exist to be perceived. Otherwise, consciousness itself would not exist. That viewpoint is sort of ok, in that it explains why there is perception at all, it is not generated as such but is in the nature of consciousness itself. Just like matter is in the nature of materialism.

The Glitch In The Matrix subreddit. There's wild stories on there and one time someone mentioned Leo's early videos. The hilarity is that there are two very similar subreddits called Glitch In The Matrix, and you never quite know which one you're in.

You are right that consciousness does dream a material universe. Equally, it could potentially dream of a non-material universe where nothing persists, and that wouldn't explain why it chooses materiality over any other sort of dream. I guess psychoactive drugs allows consciousness to express itself differently - but even then it seems to return back to materiality. My thought is that consciousness gets stuck in a habit of materiality. Philosophy: it's mostly semantics and impossible inquiries.

Equally, you could flip it around and you could say that consciousness (the absolute if you like) manifests a brain and all its structures and chemicals and correlates it with what consciousness itself experiences, i.e. the brain is an epiphenomenon of consciousness. This is the reverse of saying consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain.

It depends. My logic is: If any kind of something is said to exist, then whatever exists must be something, that would then exclude nothing itself, and so nothing is non-existence. But you could equally say that nothing doesn't have any relationship to existence/non-existence. Although, I would say that doesn't really help with defining what nothing is.

The thrust of what I was saying is that you can't explain consciousness from materialism and you can't explain materialism from consciousness. You could use one as an argument against the other. And yet here we are experiencing both simultaneously, so the two must be intimately connected. Persistency is just one aspect of the world, there are others like structure and time. There is also spatial persistence and temporal persistence. As @Someone here says there is the problem of memory in explaining (temporal) persistence. This boils down to a comparison, that of comparing a memory of a thing with the direct experience of the same thing and there being some similarity between the two. It could be that the memory is "just there" or has been "implanted" to fool us into a sense of ongoing persistence, maybe it was indeed done last Thursday. The question would then be why? If memory is indeed behind persistence then I would say it is mostly automatic and not done consciously mostly. One answer with the memory problem is that there is not only a persistence of tangible stuff, but also a persistence in the flow of change (i.e. time) of that stuff which is a far more abstract phenomenon. We are able to see "in real time" how stuff changes at a persistent rate, it would seem that memory isn't needed to explain that. And if stuff changes at a predictable rate, then there must be some persistency nearly by definition. Spatial persistence is interesting also. If you close one eye, or the other you can agree that somehow there is plenty of similarity in what you experience between the two - and each eye has a slightly different view of space. Even if you look with one eye, there is somehow a consistency in the quality of what you experience within your whole field of view, or if you want a (spatial) persistence across your field of view.

I'd say the top of your list is the top argument against materialism, the rest are more meh. But if materialism isn't true, what is? Idealism has the complementary problem: how does the material world arise within consciousness, why does everyone agree on it and why is it so persistent? Why does consciousness behave "as if" there is a material world?

Nothing doesn't exist. Nothing is not everything. Nothing is the hole in a Polo Mint. Nothing is what you have when you remove absolutely everything. Nothing is non-existence. Nothing is a figment of the imagination. Nothing is a word without definition. Nothing is everything that something isn't. You can't get nothing from something.

How much control over our lives do any of us have? And the flipside, why should we want control? I'll talk about myself, because it's the only frame of reference I have, and not (just) because I'm self absorbed. I'll be going over somethings I've already mentioned before, but it helps me to try and get a handle on things. I feel very much like I've gone down a cul-de-sac in my life. My inner compass has lead me down the path of least resistance and responsibility. This is for several reasons, one of which is temperament. Since a very young age I've always been happy in myself to do my own thing in my own way. Maybe it's because in some senses my parents were "hands off" or worse inattentive to some of my needs. I do know that I had insatiable curiosity as a kid and was somewhat intense in those interests I had. I always remember very much wanting to be "left alone" to play in my own world, and so it is to this day. Other things were being a kind of mentor and protector to my younger sister. I did this almost by default and largely I was happy to. However, there were times where I felt the burden of this and when I needed protection and mentoring myself, which I felt were largely absent. Lastly, my mother very much abrogated a lot of her responsibilities both wilfully and through ignorance and lack of maturity. After my dad left I largely had to take up the slack. More than anything as a teenager I wanted to get away from the responsibility of being mother's carer, yes, she was disabled being profoundly deaf. Ironically, that enforced helplessness and denial of responsibility has been imprinted on me from a young age. Despite finding helplessness and not taking responsibility repugnant, I have taken on that mantel myself, even if it is for different reasons than my mother did. At the earliest opportunity I could I tried to cut off being my mother's carer and that was at 19 when I left home and went to university. But it never really stopped until my mother passed away four years ago. That's nearly my entire life bar about 15 years and I'm glad it's over, even if I'm not glad my mother passed away. That inner compass then has been formed largely through a need for space and a need for avoidance and some amount of imprinting from my parents. I believe it's largely served me well, in that I am stable financially, mentally (mostly), and well adjusted in my temperament, more so than my sister, father or mother ever were. It's allowed me to service my curiosity and not to take on too much risk and negativity in my life. However, when your compass keeps constantly leading you away from things, you eventually reach a point of equilibrium, where you're just far enough away from the bad stuff to cope. In my case it's lead to a bizarre kind of Mexican stand off with reality. Due to my upbringing and experiences I'm constantly hiding from and deflecting what people and society want to throw at me. I detest working for an employer for that reason, it fundamentally is incompatible with my inner compass: it takes up all my time, and gives me responsibilities I don't give a fuck about. To some degree having a relationship is also incompatible with my compass. It too takes up a lot of time, and makes me take on things from my partner that I don't find important or don't want responsibility for, even if it's for the communal good. I don't know what my ideal partner would be that would fit my mould, but I suspect there aren't many that would tolerate it - not that I'm unliveable with quite the opposite. But, I know I have previously ended up being inauthentic to my own needs when with a partner. That is despite my very great need for connection and intimacy. Maybe I have a greater need for the physicality of a relationship and less the mechanics of one? Don't know. So my compass has led me to trap myself in a web of "okayness", no partner, no family, begrudgingly earning a decent living and a smattering of friends. Is it enough? No. No it isn't. Was my internal compass self-imposed? Not really, it grew organically from the sum of my experiences. How much control do I really have over my reality? Logically I know I have some, and I could easily shake up my life if I wanted to. But emotionally not so much, the need for avoidance and space is so great and ingrained that I'm not sure I can truly break out of it, I will have to work within it, but to no avail so far. What I need to desperately install is some upgrade to my inner compass. I need to go towards things instead of away. I know from experience that I'm very specific in what excites me (and yes that includes women), but I also don't have any sort of grand vision or project to head towards. I can be intensely motivated by problem solving and learning new things and so that will need to be incorporated into my new compass. But at my age I feel as though I have seen and done a lot, and I really do need something out of left-field to get me going. It also needs to seem achievable. In my case I want control just so that I can escape this cul-de-sac I'm in, and not for any grand sense of wanting to mould the world in my shape. I want more control over my own psychology, god help me.

@hundreth you're right in some sense. But, if you take a big book you don't read the whole lot in one sitting, you take breaks, maybe read a bit every day, stopping at points that feel natural to you. There's nothing to stop you doing that with Leo's long videos, and that would give you time to digest what he's on about. Me personally, it can take me weeks to watch an entire video. Although I agree, even a novel has chapters even if it's a rambling one. So even basic chapter markers or upfront summary of everything that's going to be covered or some list of "contents" would orient the watcher better and give them natural break points. I'm pretty sure Leo has some autocued notes that he relies on, so that implies that he does have some structure himself in his videos.

There's a tradeoff between time and level of achievement. The more time you can devote to something the further you can go. There's nothing in principle stopping you from pursuing multiple dreams, but you will find that your time is limited. In the end it will come down to time-management and priorities. What you choose to prioritise and spend time on will change over time, and you probably already know what excites you most out of the dreams you mentioned. You'll have to think long term - you have enough time to devote 10, 20, 30 or more years to what you want to achieve. Even if you gave ten years to each different activity in turn, you could still achieve a lot in each. It may seem like a contradiction to say you have limited time and then say 30 years, but trust me, that time will go quickly in hindsight. It boils down to solid commitment and consistency over that timespan for each dream, that's it.

Everyone is different and needs different levels of stimulation in a relationship. But as you said yourself: That, is what you should focus on. Because here you are acknowledging that the person adds something positive to your life. You should be reminding yourself every day with gratitude that they choose to be with you and you get to spend your time with them. It is enough. Everything else is a bonus.

If you are indeed at a higher stage of development, then you should be more understanding and more empathetic to those lower stages you've already been through. So, less "I'm superior, you're annoying" and more "I used to be you and you don't know what you don't know".

That really depends on your definitions and which paradigm you're working from.

Let's have a follow up discussion in 4 years' time. I'll set my timer. March... 2029... 21st...9:20am...

Not in the next ten years. My reasons are as I've written above. The uptake by business will be too gradual for complete replacement in that time, even if AI races ahead.

Six is just a definition, rather than a consequence of the argument, so seems redundant, but that's fine. Six would imply that God is exactly equal to Existence rather than being an aspect of Existence, since both Existence and God are both fundamental in exactly the same way. So this seems clearer: 7. Therefore God is Existence, Existence is God. Is it possible however that there is a non-Existence defined as an absence in Existence? So that non-Existence doesn't in itself exist - other than as a concept? For example the hole in a doughnut doesn't exist outright (other than being a concept), but it exists only with reference to that which does exist (the body of the doughnut)? Is it possible for a thing that exists in one moment to absent itself from existence the next?

You're right, but don't forget you are also part of the forum, so you can do your bit. I would say that on balance the admins are a bit wiser and more mature, so they can set the tone. But equally they can't force anyone to be a certain way, especially the several hundreds of people who use the forum regularly and who come and go, it's just not a realistic ask. As I said, collectively we set the tone of this forum, we each play our part, don't expect to be spoonfed by others.

@Sandhu expectation is not reality. If what you expect does not align with reality, then you will have to bring about that change yourself, not expect others to do it for you. Step up and give us the things you expect and others will follow.

Why the seriousness? This place is and always has been just a market place for ideas and chit chat nothing more. It amazes me how some people don't realise this. You won't get enlightened here, you won't get high philosophy, you won't get intellectual rigour. But it does have its wisdom and nuggets of gold floating around, you just have to appreciate when you see it and enjoy the rest for what it is.

I like to think about it like an infinite jigsaw puzzle. Where the puzzle picture is the void or infinity. The individual pieces are created by cutting up or dividing that infinity, there are no missing pieces so there are no gaps. The pieces are the structure and order, and they all fit together perfectly which makes them consistent with each other. In reality the divisions shift about over time, but everything always perfectly fits together. Reality is then Infinity (or Void) + Division. Division is the first cause that makes reality happen because without it there would be no puzzle pieces, just void/infinity. Division is just awareness or consciousness. So consciousness and structure are just appearances or bits of infinity. Consciousness arises from the contrasts between pieces, because each piece has a unique shape.

@BojackHorseman as soon as you said past 40, I was like uh-huh. It doesn't get talked about so much anywhere but this is Mid-life Crisis territory. Although I think that name is overly-dramatic and has certain negative connotations attached it: fast cars and being impulsive. A better way to see it is as a maturation process. There are stages you go through as you age, like walking, puberty, brain maturation at 25 and so on. For some people they begin a process of seeing life more clearly around the age of 40, an awakening if you like. And it can really shake the foundations of your life. Essentially it's a process of re-organisation in your identity. For me personally it come on very unexpectedly and was a living hell for a good number of years, I was about 38. I become intensely emotional, everything became meaningless and I disliked who I was intensely: it was nearly like a second puberty, but very different. I also wanted to run away from everything in my life and start again, and I wanted everything to fit into what I wanted fuck everyone else (that's how I felt at the time). Contrasted to how I'd been before 38, it was like day and night, I has always been optimistic, upbeat and well-adjusted. But I would say everyone's experience of a mid-life crisis (if you do experience it), is different and personal. In my experience it is just a phase, it has a beginning and an end. You may end up being a very different person through the other end, and in my case it was worth the pain (mostly). It may last some years. If you think you're depressed, then get help, there's no shame in that. Otherwise, just take one day at a time, and listen very carefully to your deepest needs small or large and try and cater for those. Do all the right things to keep your mood up: exercise, sunlight, socialise, decent diet, sleep well - even if you don't want to. But also take action on whatever arises, even if it feels difficult or alien to you.

Other than the things I've mentioned? Coding is extremely varied. On the technical side there are a large number of platforms, programming languages, operating systems, database platforms, cloud platforms, API's and so on, often multiple of those in one set up. Every company I've ever worked for has had a completely different setup. So how does an AI get to know your setup without eyes, ears and a mouth? The only way is to show the AI the setup in detail: this is the file system, this is the database, this is the code base, these are our documents and so on. It would have to be able to understand that interaction in a frictionless way (like an experienced coder does). I think AI could excel here, in the technical domain. In some sense I would be happy to hand off the drudge work to an AI, most of it is repetitive and time consuming and boring (e.g. setting up a database). Most coding is quite repetitive: set me up a form that customer can fill out and save it to a database, and auto-email the customer with an acknowledgement, I must have done that same task many times in my career on many different platforms. Separately, the AI would have to be proactive and interact with people. Conceivably it could do this via email or some sort of chat channel. It would have to know that John knows about the front end, Sarah knows about the back end, Jane is the boss and what she says goes, Fred is the stroppy impatient customer etc. A large part of coding is dealing with people, understanding what they want, and knowing who to talk to. Current AI is simply not up to the human aspect of communication, it's good, but it's not there yet. As it stands AI is kind of passive, and unnuanced. It doesn't ask questions when there are gaps in its knowledge, it doesn't have a long memory, it's bad at explaining itself, it's a "yes man" and doesn't push back, it doesn't innovate, it doesn't see the bigger picture, it lies. It would have to improve a lot in those areas before it can take my job.

@Wilhelm44 It may eventually, but not in the next ten years. Three things I can think of: Domain Knowledge There's always two states that a coding project is in: starting from scratch or working with an existing code base. In either case the AI needs some input to chew on. If there's no codebase, then that input has to come either from requirements specifications paperwork or from humans telling it exactly what they want. In general both those sources are patchy and ambiguous, and so there will be a constant iteration loop with the AI to get the right outcome, there will always have to be a human in that loop - people who have domain knowledge in their heads. If there's an existing codebase it's better because there's a large amount of domain knowledge encoded in the structure of the code base. But a human is still needed to tell the AI exactly what's required when something new needs to go in. In short the nature of programming will change from entering lines of code to entering lines of English (or whatever natural language), but a human will always have to check and course correct the AI, this is just coding by a different paradigm. Also capitalism always strives for the most bang for your buck, so if having a human + AI is more productive than just AI alone, then it human + AI is always chosen. It's the same reason UBI will never be a thing. Inertia and Economics For most companies to take on AI there will be a cost in re-organising their staff and their working practices. There is also the cost of AI per unit of time, and its effectiveness as a coder. Only when the cost drops below that of employing a human AND it is at least as effective as a human coder, then will companies prefer to use AI over people. A techie will need to be employed to set up the AI in the first place and maintain it. It will take a long time for most companies to reach that point and ten years seems about right, maybe longer - even if the AI tech is in place and is nearly good enough, which will probably happen in the next three to four years.