TheAvatarState

So we sniff it and walk off because it didn't satisfy the hunger? Funny, that's kind of my experience with Bernie

Ooohhh sorry, I guess I misunderstood your question. Yes, he literally means reality is imaginary.

It collapses here. Again, contemplate the sameness and difference of "literal" and "imaginary." You're missing something important that will help answer your question.

I don't understand what you're trying to say.

Hell yeah it is! The self gets obliterated

Yes. But also realize that awakening couldn't be possible if self-destruction wasn't also possible.

1. Not that I know of. And of course that wouldn't make sense. You have to have an ego capable of complex devilry. It exists because we are able to identify with ideas, and because of this we can ignore the decay of body and mind to suit this other identification. We have a complex set of motivations and desires that other animals do not possess. 2. The same mechanism that allows destructive behavior also enables all the good in society. What if you identified with the higher Self instead of with money, your job, or as a smoker? What if you had a global identity and cared about another nation's wellbeing? A double edged sword, if you will.

@OBEler You got ideologized because you didn't contemplate it for yourself or become conscious of what was being pointed to. No statement can be absolutely true, because all words are dualistic and relative. Even the statement "nonduality is the absolute truth" is a relative, illusionary statement. What it's pointing to happens to not be. Do you understand what I'm saying here? What is the difference and sameness between "literal" and "imaginary?"

Question this belief. I agree that a robot can learn to walk, let's say, by interacting with complex environments. I believe this has already been demonstrated. This is not intelligence. "Learn to walk" was its program. An amazingly complex system had to be intelligently set up so that the neural network could learn how to walk. The AI will not decide to learn anything else. Where will it walk to and why? Another system, another program. Let's consider your example of the baby. A baby is born with certain programs like how to eat. A ton happens automatically like functioning organs, breathing, beating the heart, etc. These are programs, not intelligence, and the control centers do correspond to parts or the brain in the physical body. But does a baby Learn intelligence? A baby can recognize pictures and video. A baby can recognize itself in the mirror and make that connection. A baby can hear a fart and find it funny. A baby not only learns how to walk but forms a reason for walking. A baby can hear speech patterns and mimic, etc etc. That's the tip of the iceberg, and all organically. It's fucking mystical. Intelligence isn't learned. I'd highly recommend looking up "fungal intelligence" for more insight into the mystical nature of intelligence. Researchers in Japan studied the way mold grows. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-like-tokyo-rail-system/amp How did this happen? Point to the neural network. Point to the intelligence.

That's because scientists don't know what intelligence is. And they won't know until they evolve out of the materialist paradigm. Intelligence does not come from the brain. Intelligence does not come from the computer, not can it. It's not a second order phenomena rising from computations. Intelligence is that which envisions, plans, thinks in the abstract, divides and synthesizes information, takes different perspectives into account, etc. The more you contemplate what intelligence actually is, you realize a computer can never do it. Think of a neural network that learns to play chess. To actually be intelligent, there would have to be another system that set up the neural network, set up the rules for the computer we have today to solve. But you might say that even today, AI can write basic code. That's true. But this problem goes much deeper. It would have to write code to solve a problem within itself to solve another problem. But in order to do that, there would have to be another system in place to diagnose THAT problem and write that code. Algorithms can never do this. They always need an intelligent outside system to set up parameters. Intelligence is scary when you start to grasp what it actually means. No 3-D object within this universe can achieve actual intelligence, that's my claim. Now I'm no expert on it, and I'm open to other perspectives, but we're talking about more than a quantum leap here. Computation alone cannot achieve it.

We are the artificial intelligence. Algorithms can never be intelligent. We created the algorithm.

So it's not a graph. I'm all for 3-d depictions of high level concepts. Another one I find interesting is, in the case of this savant with a brain injury (forget his name), he visualized numbers as shapes. He was able to do incredible mathematics with accuracy that no human being has ever had. In a way, it's kind of a reverse of your concept. I think it could be valuable. I just want to let you know from the start, that it will be relative and partial. Trans-rational phenomena can never be symbolized. Your emotions exist because they are in your direct experience. You say they exist. But they can never by accurately symbolized or proven. This is a fundamental concept to contemplate.

I see what you're saying. , the Utopia you described above can only be achieved through the raising of human consciousness. Technological progress is just technology. Has it REALLY improved our lives? Yeah you can buy a Twinkie at a convenience store and go to a modern hospital (because of the Twinkie), but think about it... Isn't technology just used as an extension of our own consciousness? Depression, suicide, cancer, obesity, etc are at all time highs. Technology can amplify good and evil. And the only way we use it in a good way is by using it consciously. Mankind is still in the fucking dark ages. We are literally Monkeys with cool gadgets. For every penecillin there's an oxycontin. So it's both a technology AND human problem. I think we are pretty close to having the technology and resources to cover everyone's basic survival needs to the end of time, with ever increasing standard of living. But the human problem will take much longer. We aren't developed enough to overcome the greed, theft, and tribalism in order to distribute the bounty evenly. Not to mention sustainably... About your singularity point. General artificial intelligence, as it's called, will never happen. AI will soon be better than us at everything... Except deciding what to do. Real intelligence is a-mechanical. A neural network can learn how to play chess by playing itself, but it had to be taught the rules of the game. Therefore, technology will always be an extension of the current human condition. This is a fascinating topic. Thank you for sharing!

@Thewritersunion You are approaching this problem from an unworkable angle. A graph is a *symbol* that plots other data points. So you'd have to prove those other data points. And how would you prove that proof? How do you prove emotions exist, let alone them being more fundamental than matter or time? Do you know why scientists still haven't figured out the mind-body problem in 2000 years? Perhaps you're playing the wrong game... Well, thank goodness you haven't wasted your entire life yet on this Quixotic quest. I like your vision. And I think you should give it a lot more thought, it has potential. But proofs are way below what you're trying to do. You must understand the limits of any stab you take at translating the post-rational to the rational domain. It will be messy, incomplete, and a pointer at best.

@Paulus Amadeus While I won't be able to answer your question directly, I have an insight I got from Leo oh how cohesion is in fact a self deception. It cannot be used as an accurate judgment of a worldview. My notes from his self-deception video: Self deception #8--"Judging the correctness of your worldview based on how cohesive it feels." Just because it's a self-contained system that's in agreement with itself does not make it true. In fact, Godel proved in the 1930's that ANY system of belief cannot prove itself to be true. Mathematics is perfectly cohesive, perfectly consistent. Yet you can form a statement within mathematics that you can prove can't be proven. It proved itself to be a belief system. "If a 'religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one." - John Barrow (for more info on this, Leo's has a video called Metaphysical Implications of Godels incompleteness Theorem) A dream feels cohesive while you're in it, doesn't it? In fact, you can't distinguish it from reality until you wake up. It becomes very obvious that cohesion is not a metric you can use to find truth. Rationality, physicality, and memory are just additional layers of the dream world.

Yes! That's the vision, and it's definitely doable. I'd even venture to say it's inevitable. But there's an easy way and a hard way. It could be accomplished in 200 years, or it could take 2000... The way things are headed right now, machines and AI will be used by governments and corporations to enslave us without recourse. It's already happening in dark ways, such as in China with facial recognition marketing and AI focus headbands for schoolchildren. Without drastic countermeasures, it will continue to accelerate in that direction. We are on a pretty dark path unless we collectively wake the fuck up on an unprecedented scale.

This does put a smile on my face. A simple way to figure out who's projecting who is to analyze the flow of conversation. I brought it up by saying Bernie wasn't aware of automation and had no plans for it. You responded by saying it was overblown (without reasons or data points). I refuted by saying it was a big deal and you should look into it, while providing real world examples. And finally, you told me I was projecting. The trickery of projection is that it makes you perceive the other as projecting, precisely because other people are mirrors. Be mindful that this could be a possibility. You are not above it, nor am I. So how do I know that I'm not the one projecting in this case? You might be inclined to say it's a tricky epistemological question. But it's actually possible to know. 1st, it's important to analyze the comment which elicited the response of claiming projection. That's the mirror. All my points were grounded in real world examples you couldn't refute. I gathered that you hadn't done a serious inquiry into the matter, and INVITED you to do it. People who project don't invite growth or learning experiences, that's a key insight. 2nd, it's what you said along with the claim of projection that tells the story, so let's observe that comment. You said UBI won't solve our automation problems. This is a straw man (a form of projection), because at no point did I say UBI was an automation fix. So you either didn't read my comment or you chose not to listen, both of which are signs of ideology. Textbook example of muddying the waters. I owe you for that one Leo, thank you! This allows you to hand wave me away, justifiably to your ego. Rust-belt is an obviously negative term used here to divide yourself from it. This. Is. Ego. I'm sorry Leo. You are connected to the rust belt. Of the 4 million manufacturing workers who lost their jobs mostly due to automation, half filed for disability, and drug overdoses and suicides spiked. And you hand wave that away? Where's your compassion? It is often the case, not always, that the first person to say projection is in fact projecting. Reality is a mirror. I've learned that calling out people's projections at face value is not very constructive (because it invites further reflection bounces/mirroring) and is often a mask of something deeper within yourself. I hope you look there. Please take care, we will always love and support you. I've learned an ungodly (or is it Godly? ) amount from you. Expect yourself to deny everything I said here or wave it away. I believe there's an opportunity for growth here cause I've already had mine.

Uh, the loss of 4 million manufacturing jobs in the swing States, mostly due to automation, is the reason why Donald Trump is our president. You can call it overblown all you want, but that's ideology. You didn't actually do any research to investigate that claim. We are already in the middle of it! It's not some Boogeyman out in the distant future. "If automation ever becomes a big deal." You know what this position means? It's denying that technology is improving. It's denying it exists. And it's denying it's inevitable. You know this is inevitable. And I want to give you more credit, I want to believe you can see Amazon closing 30% of stores and malls, as well as self-serve kiosks and self-driving trucks already being tested. You're making it hard for me not to gather you're ideological about this issue. And you still don't understand UBI. If you think its main purpose is a bandaid for automation, you couldn't be more wrong...

@Leo Gura Thank you for going a little more in depth. I don't really disagree with anything you just said, except for Yang's chances severely being long. I do understand where you're coming from. But you should know better than I do that ideology uses rationality as a smoke screen. Bernie does have the vision... but is it the right one? Is Bernie aware of the 30% of jobs being lost due to automation in the next decade? Is he equipped to handle the problems of the 21st century? Is it possible his policies could be disastrous in the coming changing economic landscape? These are the questions you should be asking yourself. As someone who claims to be looking 20-50-100 years into the future, I'm quite shocked you haven't figured this out yet...

I believe I'm starting to understand your perspective better. Please correct me if I'm wrong. And I truly don't mean to judge your perspective or even change your mind. I'm using what I've learned from you, so please bear with me. Sometimes we all need an outside perspective on our own views. When you say "I don't find Yang's policies to be progressive enough," what you really mean is that he doesn't display the progressive ethos or ideal you have in your mind. And this is the root of your ideology. It's not the policies themselves that draws you in like you claim, it's actually this fighting spirit or "populist revolution" attitude you believe Sanders to provide. You believe Sanders will provide the kick we need to get the gears turning. No matter how they turn, we just need them turning. Your first clue that this is indeed an ideology is that this is the exact same core belief that Trump supporters had in 2015. Exactly the same. "Gridlock for 40 years" argument (straw man)+ "Trump (Sanders) will shake things up" + revolution to keep the wheels turning + calling out the bullshit of the left (right). It's a myopic and combative mentality. You are still stuck in left vs. right. This is the game they want you to be playing. Your 2nd clue that this is indeed an ideology is that you haven't been open to discussion with us. You've dismissed all our points as "seen it before" or not important, and all your points have been "Sanders is just what we need." If you were after Truth and transparency, you would engage with us and provide non-ideological points on why you believe Sanders to be the best candidate. Even if I didn't agree with your points, I would appreciate the honesty. However, it always comes back to your core belief of "he's the kick in the ass we need." Have you seriously questioned this belief? Notice that any excuses popping up like "I'm above that" or "I don't have time" come from ego. You could be handling this much better even if those were true. Your 3rd clue that this is indeed an ideology is that you consider "authenticity" to be your favorite thing about Yang. I've learned from you, and verified for myself, that authenticity is the single most important character traits to have. I've admired your rise in authenticity, and it has been inspiring to watch over the last couple of years. The fact you admit authenticity to be the defining trait of a candidate you're NOT voting for is kind of telling of something askew. Your 4th clue that this is indeed an ideology is that your values align with Yang more than Bernie. According to your own Conscious Politics pt. 4, which I enjoyed and agree with, you should pick the highest consciousness person most aligned to higher values. You don't have to believe me. I invite you to observe their characters for yourself. My claim is that if you observe the level of cognitive development, open-mindedness, love, etc. For both Bernie and Yang, you may be in for a shock. I really liked Marianne Williamson, but she was probably 50 years ahead of her time. She's fully stage Green. Yang appears orange because of his business experience and his ability to connect with stage Blue and Orange. However, he has evolved past orange and is green/yellow, while still being an effective bridge for orange. That's actually the proof that he's more developed into the spiral. You owe it to yourself to read his book "The War on Normal People" if you don't believe me.

That's deliberate at the debates because he always gets the least speaking time. And it has worked amazingly well for him, because remember he went from a nobody to top 6. In reality, he is far from a one-note candidate. Please watch a long-form interview on YT. Government experience doesn't make you more qualified. It doesn't make you a leader. If you reflect for a minute, being in Washington for a while almost certainly, by definition, makes you a follower. Yang has the most progressive and visionary policies. Not fake progressive, not idealism progressive... Actual progressive. Policies that will actually, on the ground, do the most to improve people's lives. We're talking about nearly eradicating poverty overnight. Poverty line is $12,700 per year, Freedom Dividend is $12k per person. Do the math. How about a Constitutional Amendment to hold the government accountable for the environment? "As President, I will... I support the calls for a constitutional amendment requiring states and the federal government to protect, preserve, and improve the environment." -from his website. He views climate change as an existential threat, in fact the most important thing we need to do, and in my view has the most progressive and realistic plan to combat it. The reason why he's so focused on UBI is because it's all connected. The economic boot on people's throats (2/3 can't afford an unexpected $400 bill) is preventing us from planning ahead on things like climate change. Economic scarcity makes us hostile, objectively less intelligent (lowered IQ 1 standard deviation), and locked into scarcity. UBI has bipartisan support, believe it or not. One state has had a dividend for nearly 40 years, Alaska, which is a deep red state. UBI would be a huge win for rural areas. And the reason conservatives and libertarians like it as well, is because it's universal! There's no stigma. There's no bureaucratic red tape. The government isn't telling you what to buy. A similar policy actually passed the House of Representatives TWICE in the 70's. I think it's the policy most likely to pass Congress if he were to become president. As for hurting the welfare state... Does trading out $200 in food stamps for $1000 in cash "hurt the welfare state?" The person gets to choose based on his/her needs, but if you ask people on welfare whether they'd like conditional welfare or cash, take a wild guess what they'd prefer... One of the downsides of the current welfare state- and this is a bigger issue than you may realize- is that it keeps people down both physically and psychologically. Physically, they can't get a job or even VOLUNTEER for fear of losing benefits. Mentally, they see themselves as disabled, and they are stuck with this negative label due to monetary reasons. This promotes a scarcity mindset. Conditional love. Be careful not to conflate "the welfare state" and "the common good." These aren't the same things. And no one would be forced out of their current benefits. The goal is to shrink enrollment and bureaucracy over time, saving hundreds of billions of dollars a year. AND if you follow people's quality of life, it improves too. This is a clear example of "size of welfare state" not equating to common good. You can obviously vote for whoever you want, and I have nothing against Bernie. But Yang honestly has fresher and more progressive policies. Yang will be the next FDR- he has kind of said it himself. I just don't want you to be misinformed, that's all. I don't think you've really understood Yang's campaign yet. Dig deeper. Please watch a long-form interview on YT.

Leo, you get to call me a devil and an unconscious dumbass for 2 hours every week (all true), so I feel it is now my duty to call out your obvious self-bias and ideology here. This is actually an ideology you hold. This is because you used this line as a defense against someone else pointing out Yang having over 100 detailed policies. Notice how you dismissed the UBI vs. Federal Jobs guarantee as "number 7 on the list" and inferred Yang as a single issue candidate. This is a common misconception so I understand where you're coming from, but it's obvious you haven't done much research on Yang. And why would you? You've already found your candidate! This is textbook defense of an ideology. Your position was true in 2016, but the year is 2019, and a man named Andrew Yang is running. Andrew was a Bernie supporter in 2016 (their ideals align very much), and he has spent the last 7 years running a non-profit he founded called Venture for America. He saw a giant problem with our education system: we were sending our brightest grads to the coasts to become lawyers and bankers, leaving the middle of the country a relative wasteland of opportunity and talent. His solution was to start VFA and give recent grads the resources to become entrepreneurs in places like Detroit and St. Louis. VFA created thousands of jobs in the middle of the country, but Andrew saw it wasn't enough. The election of Donald Trump compelled him to run for 2020 to selflessly fix the problems he was seeing. I do respect Bernie immensely, but you have to admit that this is also a great example of visionary leadership. Yang has the most progressive campaign finance reform platform. I agree with you that this may be the most important area in order to fix our democracy (and yes I'm donating to Wolf-Pac soon). He's for $100 Democracy Dollars for every adult citizen, to give to their candidate(s) of choice. "This would wash out corporate money by a factor of 8:1," as he likes to say. Bernie has entertained this idea in the past, but it's inexplicably not part of his platform. Yang is also for ranked choice voting. Obviously overturn Citizens United, but that's more of a long term goal because it requires a constitutional amendment. And much more. Automation. If you watched the debate last night, you'll know there was a significant portion centered on automation and job loss. This was SOLELY due to Yang's influence on the national discussion. He is the only candidate educated and aware of the 4th industrial revolution we are in the midst of, and the only one with 21st century solutions. Please look further into Andrew Yang. Don't sleep on him, you're doing yourself a disservice. Human centered capitalism. Andrew is the only candidate with a plan to go to the Bureau of statistics and update our success measurements past GDP and Employment, to Health and life expectancy (which has declined for 3 years in a row but is great for GDP), freedom from substance abuse, clean environment, childhood success rates and education, etc. If you don't have the right measurements (which we currently have but don't value correctly), we can't move in the right direction. I.E. the quality of your values and measurements determine your direction and success. This should be immediately apparent how crucial this is, and Andrew is the only one talking about it. It's a bold, visionary direction. Part of he trick is aligning business incentives to these measurements, which is entirely doable, and Yang has the unferstanding to do this effectively. Fully legalize marijuana and pardon all non-violent drug offenders. AND decriminalize all opiates, refer addicts to treatment, increase funding for these services + safe injection sites. He often cites Portugal as a success, and looks at the data from other countries to inform his own policies based on human centered values. No other candidate has as progressive of a drug policy as Andrew Yang. Bernie is opposed to decriminalization. UBI, which he has branded the Freedom Dividend because it tests better, is the single most progressive policy ever put forth in this race. Make no mistake about it. UBI + VAT tax is genius, and will raise the purchasing power of the bottom 94% of Americans. It gives the Google's and Amazon's of the world a tax they can't evade (they paid zero income tax last year), a tried and true tax that every other developed country in the world has already implemented. Bernie has no such plan. His heart is in the right place, but "going after the one percent" and "billionaires shouldn't exist" are platitudes that won't get us very far in actuality. A wealth tax has been tried in Europe to abysmal results, and later repealed. It's way too tricky to implement in reality, even though he's for the spirit of it. This is barely the tip of the iceberg. If you dig into this man's world, you will be pleasantly surprised. I mean, I can't even believe we have such an amazing candidate, I thought Bernie was amazing! But Yang is the Bernie of the 21st century. He's the most intelligent, most progressive, most forward-thinking (he's actually a systems thinker), he's the only candidate taking mental health seriously (one of his sons is on the autism spectrum). But most importantly, it is Yang's selfless character that has inspired me the most. He never puts others down. He's not even nasty towards Trump, he just sees him as a symptom of a greater underlying issue. This is in stark contrast to every other candidate. This is the man we need as president.

Yes. Taking radical self-responsibility is key. @CreamCat You have full control of your life, as a sliver of God's (your) Will, but you're a limited form with an ego. That means previous patterns can still run you unless you do the work to overcome them. But from the moment you take full responsibility, the decision trees of what's possible Branch out so quickly that you can do nearly anything that you want in this lifetime. And whether you choose to piss your life away or become your greatest version, it's all Good. If reality somehow prevented you from being a liar, a cheat, or a scumbag, then that wouldn't be true love.

5:30am every day. Get to bed by 9:30 everyday. *Almost always

@ardacigin You can permanently change your psyche without embodiment or certain practices. That's what you're not getting, you're conflating the two. Learning = behavior change, and psychedelics WILL change your behavior. It is possible to experience a permanent rise in consciousness from a trip, but I agree with you that taking 100s of trips will not lead to permanent, embodied enlightenment. That's a dangerous trap. I generally agreed with everything you said, but you seem to be applying this rule of "no change without embodiment" dogmatically. Generally that's true, but it's actually not that simple.