LastThursday

Yes but that is a different sort of existence. You can't eat the theory relativity. Logic will not bring an apple into existence. Logic has to be converted into direct perception by doing. In fact, logic is grounded in sensory perception, that's where it comes from, that's where the intelligence is.

There are different types of existence. There is the existence of the inside of your room, the stuff you can directly perceive. Call it direct existence. You know that if you look outside your room, something will exist there. There is never non-existence. But until you look you can't know exactly what will be there. Call this unknown existence. You can build a model in your head about what might be there and trust that model, but whatever, it is not direct existence. If you hear a noise from outside your room, then that is direct existence, but it's not the full experience of the outside of the room. There is a sliding scale between unknown existence and direct experience.

I'm going to be annoying. When doesn't water boil at 100C? I think all objectivity is a slippery thing, there's always exceptions. I wonder if there is any objective thing that doesn't have exceptions? All objectivity is based on a finite number of prior examples, but something truly objective would require 100% certainty. Most objective stuff is constructed in the mind from repeated patterns we directly perceive in subjective awareness.

@Someone here direct experience is not arbitrary. If it was it would be complete unknowable chaos. It has a coherence, a structure, rules, ways of being, intelligence, unity. This is aside from any constructed entitities we hold in our mind's eye. And all our constructions fundamentally originate from direct experience, even if they're shared by others.

This is entirely correct. Our direct experience is the final arbiter of truth. But, our interpretation of that direct experience can still mislead us. And our interpretation depends on what we already know.

This aligns with 17. There is only ever rendering and nothing else. You can infer a real solid apple from the rendering, but that inference is a construct. Ultimately because there is a difference between the two, a difference in quality. If both renderings were extremely similar, you would confuse imagination for reality. Imagination are those renderings which are different in quality from reality. The system is self-sorting. Any renderings which don't conform to the usual rules are labelled as "imagination". This is just a rendering confirming another rendering. Take the analogy of a movie. All the characters agree on what's going on and behave as such. However you really know that a director set things up to make things look this way and so that everything aligned smoothly. The agreement on reality was contrived. Now I wouldn't say there's a director behind the scenes of reality. It could just be sheer dumb luck. Imagine rolling sixes a million times in a row. It doesn't seem possible, but it is not impossible. Renderings are correlated to each other through sheer dumb luck. I look at a green apple (rendering) and my friend (rendering) reports (rendering) a green apple. Three renderings align perfectly, like rolling sixes. What are the chances that your whole life all these renderings have magically correlated with each other? Non zero. The other way to look at the uncanny correlations between renderings is to imagine a pie. If you cut the pie with a knife, you're not suddenly surprised that the pieces fit together perfectly, it is obvious. And it's the same with renderings, you're just not aware of how the knife cut the pie, or where the cuts are exactly.

I'd just verify it from first principles. Here would be my example thinking on it (this is not necessarily my view don't argue with me over it): 1. If Solipsism is true, then it should hold all the time and all circumstances. 2. It shouldn't matter if I'm high on drugs or sober, it should still hold. 3. I'm aware that there is existence. 4. Is there anything I'm aware of that doesn't exist (in the broadest sense)? No. 5. Then everything I'm aware of exists. Does the converse hold? 6. Yes, because I can only truly know something exists if I'm aware of it. Anything else is conjecture and construction. 7. What do I mean by aware? That I'm having a direct sensation of it in the moment, right now. 8. Does a thing exist when I stop having a direct awareness of it? Yes, but only as a construction in the mind. 9. Do other people have awareness of existence? 10. Do other people exist? Yes. 11. Am I directly aware of their awareness? No I don't think so. I only seem to have awareness from "my" viewpoint. It's possible my idea of other people having awareness is a pure construction in my mind. 12. Aren't other people the same as me? I have arms and legs and need to eat and sleep just like them. If I'm aware, surely they're aware too. Can I prove it? No. Because I only have their body language and what they tell me to go on, and that is second hand knowledge, and possibly unreliable or untrue. Secondly second hand knowledge is in no way the same thing as direct awareness, the map is not the territory. 13. What is fundamentally stopping my awareness being "transferred" to someone else? Is it a fundamental limitation? 14. Many options for solving 13 are apparent. Perhaps, "my" awareness is completly incompatible with "their" awareness, so I can't "see" theirs. Maybe there is only one awareness and it is split into many disconnected compartments. Maybe there is only one awareness full stop. Maybe my awareness is a patchwork of very many different awarenesses, that fight for attention, and we all share them. But we each have a different makeup of awarenesses. 15. Is awareness here more fundamental than the stuff in awareness? Yes, because for existence to be true only awareness can confirm it, it doesn't matter what is being made aware of. 16. Ah, so awareness is more fundamental than materiality (content of awareness)? Yes. So materiality comes from awareness, not the other way round. 17. If everything must come through awareness, then everything is awareness and there is nothing outside of it. Then everything that exists is in awareness: yes. If it isn't in awareness it doesn't exist: yes. 18. When I say awareness do I also mean consciousness? Absolutely, I'd use the two words interchangeably in this context. 19. But surely in 17, stuff doesn't just pop out of existence and back again that's ridiculous. Yes, but what is my direct experience telling me? Exactly that. But then, where does stuff go when it is not in awareness? Nowhere, it is out of awareness, it doesn't exist. How does it come back then? There is a difference between awareness itself and the content of awareness. There's absolutely nothing stopping the content doing what it likes. 20. Surely materiality must be true, because the same stuff comes in and out of awareness all the time? Yes, it's true in that sense, because it explains the content of awareness well, but materiality doesn't explain awareness itself. 21. Isn't the content of awareness the same as awareness itself? Yes you could argue that. I have no answer to that way of seeing things. But if it's true then every single thing in existence has the quality of awareness attached to it. The question is, are each of those awarenesses the same? No because if the content is awareness, then each bit of content is different. But isn't there an overarching awareness? Yes and no, you could argue both ways. 22. Surely Solipsism requires an "I" to be aware off stuff. Yes, yes it does. 23. Do "I" exist? Yes I am aware of myself. Am I a construct or do I exist absolutely? That is the crux of Solipsism. If I am a construct then Solipsism is hogwash. If not, and I can disprove the existence of other awarenesses, then Solipsism is absolute and True (but see 12).

Make it simple. Make a promise to yourself not to stay in your hostel room, except for sleeping, that's it.

I thought I would talk about emotional pain. I feel lucky to have only experienced long and lasting emotional pain a handful of times in my life. That may seem like schadenfreude, but I've got eyes and ears enough to know that people have experienced immense and intense pains in their lives, and that mine are insignificant in comparison. I'm talking about the sort of pain that never really leaves you, despite the constant erosion of it by time and by reason and by experience. All my pains are about separation from people I loved and who I felt safe with and supported by, and who at the time didn't think they would let me be separated from them. The strongest pains linger from childhood. But I've written about all of them in one form or another in this journal, so I'll keep it brief-ish. Really I'm writing this so I stop hiding from the pain and stop pretending it doesn't hurt me. And, to remind myself to keep myself honest. My father leaving my mother all those decades ago has created a strong sense of being untethered deep in my soul. I see families and wished that that was me, and yet I'm unable to form my own new family and bring myself closure. Whatever was damaged then, is still haunting me now. When I had various therapies, it was worked out that I felt unlovable. I think all that bad stuff that other people heaped on me over time convinced me of this, but not consciously. And, even though I now know it consciously, and I know I'm loved through reason, my heart is still unloved. I was betrayed by my parents, both of them selfish in their own particular ways. I've written about my first girlfriend on here, and how painful that split was. We were 17 and 16, so young. I was effectively adopted by her family of two sisters and a brother. And, for a while I had a family I would spend more time with than my own. Even after the split her dad took me out for my first drink in a pub at 18. John made a better father than my own did. He gave me a job and I earned good money. They fed me and let me sleep there, when they could have easily said: go home. But, I never did see E much from then on. I went to university and saw her one more time, but not since. I've met her brother, nearly once every ten years since, but he isn't in contact with her. Even now I dream of her and her family still. Their kindness and down-to-earth approach to life is still deep in my psyche. When university ended I felt cast adrift again. I had all the trappings of adulthood, a girlfriend, a decent job, and a degree. But university was the first place where I really felt I belonged. I was and am still an intellectual type and I was surrounded by people that were as smart if not smarter, and definitely harder working than me. At first it was hard to face not being the smartest guy around, but I soon learned to love being with people who were also smart. I really felt I belonged for the first time in my life, and didn't feel out of place or disconnected. And it was just so much goddam fun and freeing. I felt loved. But, I knew it would come to an end, and it would come soon enough. At first I just felt relieved at not having to study bloody engineering any more, but as time passed I felt that wrench. I knew that something truly special had finished and would never return. I still feel that pain of having had something I loved and having to let it pass out of my hands. My most recent pain I've written a post: What was the hardest choice in your life? At least this choice was in my hands. But I knew even before I had even uttered the words "I don't love you", that this was a major shift about to happen. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that it would be hard. I tried to hold on to my friends and my life as I had it. In fact that girlfriend was the one I had throughout university. Over the course of more than ten years, we'd built everything up together, and I knew deep down that holding it together after us breaking up wasn't going to be possible. I had another girlfriend and another three years, but the writing was on the wall, and when I split from her, I realised my friends hadn't been there for me all that time and they weren't there for me then either. They were fairweather friends. But I still feel the pain of separation from that life I built up and from them.

I think it'll be good to get out things that arise and put them down in written form. I have so many lost thoughts and ideas, and some of them were very good.

The hardest decision I made was to be honest about a long term relationship I was in. My whole life was set up around being with this person and for the longest time I resisted facing up to the fact I no longer loved her. And then one day it happened, she asked me, and I said the words. She found a new partner, I found a new partner, but my boat had sailed, and I had to go and reinvent myself, find new friends and a new life, whilst she stayed ashore.

If something is suddenly seen as constructed in conscious awareness, does it stop existing? Or does its existence just change to a different type? When a child learns that Santa isn't real, what is actually happening there? (other than disappointment) It's not as if Santa suddenly goes *poof* and permenantly get erased from reality. Talking to myself is the first sign of insanity.

The gift of Santa is that it tells you that some types of existence are pure constructions. Nearly everything you think exists is a construction. Santa is no different from a chair or an electron. All objects are constructions, all actions are constructions. Your sense of self is a construction. Your dead great-grandmother is a construction. That isn't to say that these things are conscious deliberate constructions, a lot of it is automatic and unconscious. What isn't a construction? Raw, direct perception. That's a different type of existence. Then, by extension non-existence is also a construction - which exists.

I thought I'd talk about Chess. When I was a kid my grandparents had many board games and we would often play them when me and my sister stayed with them. One of the was Chess, and that was my grandad's game. I was facinated by the little characters of the pieces, but I was six years old, and my grandparents must have thought it was too complicated for me. A few years later my dad showed me how to set up the pieces and the moves. I was hungry to play games, but by dad unfortunately was disinterested. There were probably after school clubs for Chess, but I was never very proactive as a teenager. And so I never played chess again for decades, and after only then very rarely. But a few years ago I realised that I could actually play online for free. I also introduced a friend of mine and we've become addicts. We rarely play each other however, since my friend had a lot more practice as a kid and so has a good headstart on me. What makes Chess so good? I think it's a near perfect balance of piece movement, mechanics, and initial piece placement. Here's a little explainer. Movements are essentially either along the straights or the diagonals. Some pieces have long range movements and some short range. That creates a kind of tension whereby you have two different strategies at play. Long range movements are powerful because they cover and "see" large parts of the board, short range movements require creativity to make the most of them. So you both have to maximise and keep track of powerful moves, but also creatively use incremental advances. Chess mostly works by threat. If a piece can potentially move to a square, it effectively guards it, if your opponent's piece is on that square then it is fair game and can be "taken" or removed from the board. That is except for pawns that only go forwards one square, but can only take diagonally. This is genius because pawns can "reinforce" and protect each other by occupying diagonal squares to each other: a pawn chain. What should a pawn do once it has advanced all the way to the other end of the board? Chess allows it to be promoted to any other piece the player wants, usually the most powerful piece: the Queen. So there is a strong incentive as the game continues to get pawns to the other side and that means protecting them as much as possible. Pawns also make effective "shields" against powerful pieces. Indeed, at the start of the game, pawns shield all of the more powerful pieces. This is also genius, as they effectively force the player to be creative in unleashing their powerful pieces, as they have to get out from behind their own pawn wall. There are many strategies for doing this and these are called openings. There a hundreds of standard openings that give you advantage in different ways. Chess also works by protection. You can threaten to take your opponent's piece, but your opponent can also reinforce that piece with another: if you take a piece, they can take your attacking piece in retaliation with another piece. That tension of threat and protection creates a kind of matrix of protection throughout the game. Each player aims to exploit holes in the other player's protection matrix. Protection can be many levels deep, and indeed a piece can be protected with multiple other pieces. But you can also have multiple threats on the same piece. One aim of Chess is to calculate what happens if you play tit-for-tat and whether it is to your advantage. The aim of Chess is to checkmate your opponent's King. That means to directly threaten the King in such a way that the King can't move away from the threat. The King is a short range piece, so that means you must protect it at all times as more powerful pieces can easily get to the King. Protecting the King is done by blocking using other pieces, usually pawns. As the game progresses and pieces are taken off the board, the players' Kings have less and less options for protection and so checkmate is more likely. So again there is a tension between trying to remove as many of your opponent's pieces as possible, but also looking for opportunities to checkmate as quickly as possible. It may be possible to checkmate early in a game because too much protection restricts the King's movements. Again there is a perfect balance here. Knights are very interesting in that they are short range pieces, but can jump over blocking pieces. They also have an unusual L shaped movement of two squares across and one along. This means they are able to jump into positions that other pieces can't and that gives them power. They are generally considered to be worth nearly the same as a Bishop which is a long range piece. Rooks are stuck in the corners to start but are very mobile once out as they're another long range piece. They go along the straights and can get to any square on the board. But they tend to come out late in a game, because of castling. This is a relationship they have with the King whereby they swap positions so that the King can be better protected. Castling requires space between the Rook and King, and also that neither the Rook or the King have been moved so far. There are two Rooks in each corner for each player, so castling can happen in either direction. This also allows Rooks the space to get out from the corners, but to leave the corner pawns where they are so that they can protect the King after castling - genius. Bishops are always restricted to diagonals, and the checkquerboard pattern of black and white squares means that each Bishop is confined to a particular colour of square. A player has two Bishops and each on a different colour to start. Because pawns form chains on diagonals, and these will all fall on the same colour square (say a chain of pawns on a black diagonal), then a Bishop may be unable to attack these pawns if it is on a different colour. This can matter greatly in the latter part of a game, and one tactic is to maneouvre pawns so that they can be attacked by an opponent Bishop. Lastly Queens are the most powerful piece on the board, and have complete freedom to go either on straights or diagonal and are long range. However there is only one Queen per player. Most checkmate positions happen with a Queen and some other piece. However, Queens are often removed mid-game and normally by the opposing Queen. Once this happens you are past the mid-game stage and into an end game. In end games, the pieces are a lot more open and less protected (because most pieces have been removed), but there is a lot more freedom of movement. Most end games will have some Rooks and Pawns still on the board. The power of Pawns is crucial in and end game to allow you to "win back" powerful pieces by getting them to the other side and promoting them. Indeed, you can end up with multiple Queens, and these can be unstopable. In all Chess is a seriously good game, and has enough rules and quirks to sustain a lot of "tension" or "balance" between the players. It also forces players to use lots of tactics and strategy to gain advantage. And its freeform style of movement means that there's no limit to how skillful you can be in it. It is a truly great game.

It's difficult for sure. For me authentic could mean one of two things. Either, the person you are in private when you're away from everyone else. Or, some ideal version of yourself that you would like to be all the time. In that case being inauthentic would be to not match up to that authentic version of yourself. The suffering comes from making the comparison, and strongly negatively identifying with it. Instead, recognise that you're naturally a different person on different days and in different situations. There's a fluidity to what you are and you should lean into that part of yourself a lot more. And, enjoy it. Saying that, if the people you're with are not allowing you the freedom to be what you want to be, then go find people that will. But in my experience I've found that it's a bit both, you can also change and be accepted for it, it just takes time and a bit of courage.

@Breakingthewall thanks for the response, but you missed my meta point: that there are always different ways of looking at a thing and you should be happy to play with all of them, even if they don't feel right. But I understand why you answered how you did, thanks.

I'm out. I'm tagging back in @PolyPeter

The best strategy is slowly build up over many runs. I used to add 100 metres to each run, and I only ran once a week. I think once you get to 5k comfortably without too much effort, then you can increase much more each run. If you can run 10k comfortably then 21k is completely doable if not tiring. I would also advocate short stops at defined distances to recover, just one or two minutes, say at 5k then 10k. You'll be surprised at how much further you can run if you do this. Once your fitness increases, you will need to stop less. I wouldn't advocate going ironman and running as far as possible. You'll be more likely to damage something or get an injury (because fatigue messes up your running gait). Pacing is also super important, start quite slow to warm up, then slowly ramp up pace until about 5k, then maintain, you'll naturally slow after 10k, let that happen. You will have a natural running pace, due to your anatomy, running at that pace is optimal. I find that my natural running pace requires me to be quite fit to maintain however. I love running, I must get back into it!

Hugging's one of those Marmite love it or hate it kind of things. I'm a hugger, but I don't see it as any different from a handshake or saying "hi how are you doing?". I'm quite happy to hug even close male friends, but generally they're not. I don't force hugs on anyone - except my dad. I always hug my dad even though he's totally uncomfortable with it (don't analyse me). My sister's not a hugger either! What can I say? They're missing out. My advice. Ignore that inner voice and just hug everyone, you'll soon find out who's comfortable with it and who's not. Go from there.

@Olaf it's possible to drop identification with being a character at all, that's what being authentic means. Once that happens you can choose to play a character because it's fun or useful to you. You separate out performance from identification. Inauthentencity is just lack of choice.

I don't know. But you can attack the question either top-down or bottom-up. The anthropic principle is top-down: it asks what would it take for the universe as it is to be true, and works backwards. Inflation is bottom up, it says such and such happened, produced the substrate of of the universe and we are a consequence of all that. Metaphysically, you could say for example God wants to experience itself, and so it has set everything up so that can happen (top-down). Or you could say, God created the seed of reality by breaking a few symmetries, and the rest just unfolded itself (bottom-up). I'm not religious, so I don't give a damn about the word God BTW.

No no. There is no "someone", a stone exists that's it, and it has the property of "awareness" because it it exists. Being human with awareness is part of the same continuum of the inate awareness of existence itself. The awareness doesn't come from us, it comes from existence itself. We are composed wholly of the appearances of existence, that's why "we" are aware.

The nature of consciousness is that it exists. For something to exist there must always be an awareness of it, the two go hand in hand. You could go two ways here. You could say that something has to be aware of something else, which is your argument. Or the more counterintuitive way is that awareness is existential, awareness is exactly the same as existence. Consciousness = Existence = Awareness. Awareness is a bad word, because it's easy to get tripped up in language. To be aware is a transitive verb, so has "twoness" built into the word. Stuff exists, no matter how you want to describe it. What stuff exists is exactly what is being made aware of. Having a screen is over complicating the description though. Where is the evidence for a transcendental unchanging reality? All is change, all the time.

It's not an exact counterpart however, the Pauli Exclusion applies specifically to Hilbert Space, which is a mathematic abstraction in Quantum Mechanics. Bosons can occupy the same Quantum state, so by extension can occupy the same position in real space (think photons). But I can see that space is definitely something to do with exclusion, one bit of space is not the same as another bit of space. Space is also locally connected, typically there aren't wormholes that directly connect far off bits of space together, or space doesn't loop back onto itself (if it did then anything falling into the loop would be trapped in the loop) or other weird geometries. Black holes might be the exception for weirdness.

Yeah I wouldn't take the analogy too literally. Maybe more like a balloon, space expands its own extent. It doesn't expand into anything, it just defines an ever-growing boundary (like the rubber of a balloon). There is actually nothing on the other side of the boundary. So yes, inside only, no outside. It's not so bad, because the starting state of space is a singularity, which is a nothingness. So if you wanted something the other side of the of the boundary, it would be the originating singularity. It's a mind bender for sure, since the singularity has no extent or structure.