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The following ones are more about his attitude than about his teachings: Lack of epistemic humility Not being charitable - sometimes presenting the weakest arguments in favour of other views Criticizing other views for having certain limits, while pretending that there is none in his own view Making a bunch of claims about other people - regarding how conscious they are or how intelligent they are and then not being able to substantiate those claims with anything tangible Specifically regarding his teachings: Making strong empirical claims without being able to substantiate them or without being able to justify them with empirical evidence - this is what he would call "making a conscious or intelligent inference" (Few specific ones that comes to mind "You can't reach this level of consciousness without psychedelics"; "No one has ever reached this level of consciousness"; "You need to have a specific genetics to reach this level of consciousness") Lack of emphasis on how to find/create meaning and how to live a meaningful life Lack of understanding and a lack of integration of logic - This will be a controversial one, but this goes to almost all the other spiritual teachers as well, because (from what Ive seen) almost none of them have even a graduate level understanding of classical logic let alone an understanding of all the other types of logics and an understanding of the different laws of logic. - its almost as cringe seeing gurus talk about logic as seeing professors making a bunch of dumb claims about spirituality

Why would you call me out on me making certain inferences about you, based on little data ? I thought thats what we are doing here. But on a more serious note - look, I understand that sometimes we make inferences based on little data - I just think this partcular one was weird (I would almost put it equivalent to saying that people with curly hair will be horrible life partners). But I don't think we will solve this disagreement (and we don't need to), because you would need to show me data that you are right (so at this point this is just my intuition vs your intuition regarding how correct your inference was).

@integral You were making huge inferences based on a fraction of data. If you want to talk about making somewhat reliable inferences, then the first step should be to collect as much data as possible (no one forced you to make an extensive assessment , based on 5 seconds of data - you made that decision yourself). Your very idea about what kind of patterns you should be looking for and what should be considered as a red flag, isn't necessarily grounded in general statistics (where you would have a huge pool of people and would see that pattern showing up every time given that particular datapoint[red flag]) , its grounded in your extremely small dataset. Obviously everyone is using red flags (as a proxy) to make inferences about other people. But the amount of data you collect,will have a huge weight on the validity of that assessment. In most of the cases, even when you have a huge dataset - that set will have thousands(if not millions) of logically possible explanations, but you will base your probability judgement on those that you are aware of ( so you are grounding your judgement in what you are aware of and not in what is logically possible - which can be like this: being aware of 5 explanations vs having 5000 logically possible explanations). Its fine to make certain judgements based on what you are aware of and not based on what is logically possible, but you should always acknowledge the limitations of that assessment and you should never conflate it with an assessment that is grounded in what is logically possible. Three relevant things to consider are: What should be considered as a red flag (a datapoint that you can use to make reliable inferences about a person) How much data you should collect, before you make your assessment What negative consequences can come from making a wrong assumption People here disagree with how reliable your assessment was and with what you consider as a red flag.

@Nemra Im not sure what you are trying to object to there. What are the things that you specifically disagree with?

Oh yeah, one can set up tests with arbitrary standards. I can do the same for confirming the exact opposite as well.

Thats the argument you guys were running with so far, thats why. You guys grounded everything in epistemic limits and built a metaphysics on the top of it (and implying that you can't be wrong about that metaphysics). I haven't made any argument like "I cant doubt x therefore x is absolutely true" or "I cant become conscious of x , therefore x is not true"

Who, me? I am just an imaginary character in your world. How could an imaginary character who is non-existent and who doesn't have a conscious experience could ever become conscious of solipsism?

Direct experience is another one that is used loosely and most of the time used like this "something that you can't be wrong about". Its a term that can be weaponized so easily (and is weaponized here imo), because whatever I want to be true I should just put 'direct experience' behind it and I should be free from any criticism. Imagine giving the exact same semantics to any other label. Logic is "something that you can't be wrong about" - everyone would object to that immediately and for a good reason, but somehow we are making an exception with direct experience. And what does that have to do with anything, other than with my own epistemic limitations? Whats the answer to this question?

'To be conscious of' is a loose term, I don't know what it would even mean to become conscious of others' experiences. But notice all of the reasoning is grounded in a skill issue "I can't become conscious of this, therefore it is not true" "I cant doubt this x thing, therefore it is absolutely true". Why would I project my own epistemic limitations and confuse them with metaphysics? - Cause so far all I have seen is exactly that.

How do you know that for sure?

"let me help out these non-existent dream characters" I cannot not point out the absurdity again. "After you realize solipsism is an absolute truth, you will hit up the non-existent dream characters to help you out"

This response doesn't make much sense to me. First of all, choosing falsification as a foundation for absolute truth seem to be completely arbitrary. Second of all , If you want to go with 'if something can't be falsified then that thing is absolutely true', then you will have problems with existential propositions and especially with ones that are mutually exclusive. (for example, you can't falsify that others exist) I don't need to think for a decade to realize the obvious dead end that comes from this kind of approach (thats why I wouldn't start with a foundation of falsification or if I would, then I would acknowledge the limitations of it).

That question is even more absurd when people want to validate solipsism. Its incredibly weird seeing forum members here searching for certain "dream characters" to confirm their idea about solipsism being true. "Look, this dream character of mine says that solipsism is truee, yaaaaaaaaay" - Imagine doing this to confirm the exact opposite (about solipsism being false) - one would get immediate pushback for trusting others.

this.

its you not me, who suggested 'if something cant be falsified it might be absolutely true.'

Or you are just mapping out the limitations of your own mind (and only giving you a validation about what you cant falsify without the added flavour of absolute truth). - I categorize these things as a skill issue. Just because you cant doubt or falsify from that doesnt necessarily follow that it is true. This is also about conflating your epistemic limits with metaphysics Go falsify that other people exist. I dare you. See how far you get. or go falsify this 'there are unknown things that exist, that you cant ever know about'

The point of my question was to test his epistemic humility. Just because you cant falsify something doesnt necessarily mean you cant be wrong about it.

@UnbornTao You are misunderstanding what Im trying to say. Im not trying to claim that enlightenment or awakening is impossible (the word impossible is itself a relational term and its only meaningful if it relates to a specific standard and if you change the standard, impossible can become possible). I already said in my previous reply, that I have almost no issue with granting that those things are possible. What I do have issue with, is when we are not honest about our epistemic limitations and we start to rule out things that we can't really rule out by definition. This was about the set of truths that you don't have epistemic access to and never will. - If that set do exist , then you won't ever know about that set, if it doesn't exist then the same applies, you won't ever know about that set. So either way, you cannot ever claim, that that set doesn't exist. So again, lets tie all this back to the claim that "consciousness is all there is". That claim can be interpreted in multiple ways - one can be epistemic (you make a claim about what you know) or it can be metaphysical (what exist). If its the first one, then thats nothing more than you just reporting on your own epistemology. If its the second one, then we are starting to have an issue with you conflating your epistemology with metaphysics, where you are trying to touch on the set (I was mentioning) which you by definition cannot know about and you are conflating with what you know, with what actually exist. Thats exactly what Im trying to build up here. When enlightened Andy number 140 on this forum says "I know everything that exist and I cannot ever be wrong about this statement" - thats sounds exactly like falling into the trap you are mentioning there. They are ruling out the possibility of them being wrong.

Can you be wrong about solipsism?

Carl is gaslighting again . Jokes aside, I think you are better off not interacting with her , because its gonna trigger her and you are going to be perceived as an abuser and your message wont come across anyway (of course this sentence itself could be perceived as a form of gaslighting or abuse)

Thats perfect and incredibly refreshing to hear.

Here is what im willing to give: There is a set of things, that we can have epistemic access to (given some foundational assumptions), and there is probably a way to max out on that set (maybe). Lets grant that there is a way to max out on it. - That sounds like a really fucking cool thing. Now, lets start with an opposite assumption, namely, that there is a set of truths about yourself and about the world that you have 0 epistemic access to and you will never have any epistemic acces to . Now ,the issue comes when we start to make knowledge claims about that set - and thats what I have problem with here (mostly). When someone says "consciousness is all there is" - thats a claim that seem to be touching on that set, and it shouldn't be touching on it. If the sentence would be "Consciousness is all there is, given what I have epistemic access to" - then I would be much more accepting of that statement. So by definition, everyone has to admit, that there is 0 way for you to rule out the possibility or the existence of that set, and because of that, we should only ever make claims about things, that we have epistemic access to and leave alone all the rest. Btw, just to be clear, no hard feelings here, this is just my writing style , sorry

Sure, people can think or assume that they grasp it "directly". How do you know that you grasped it directly? Well, you trust fully your memory about it and also completely trust your ability to self-reflect correctly Btw we don't need to do this, if we would start with "yeah theis set of assumptions are taken for granted out of necessity and we build up from here", I would have 0 issue with it.

It does involve assumptions, just you guys don't want to admit it, because thats much more comfortable than holding everything probabilistically and constantly having an existential crisis

"bro you are just dreaming the unknown" (not begging the question at all, thanks God)