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@UnbornTao I dont see how that engages with what I said. Whats the response to the issue about truths that are untestable and unfalsifiable in principle? Whats the reponse to the issue about enlightenment,absolute truth being compatible with multiple different kind of metaphysical frameworks?

Can you elaborate more on what you mean by meta-metaphysical?

If your definition of usefulness is "something that increases consciousness" - then yeah they are useless, but I dont share that kind of definition (I use the term 'useful' in a much broader way). I also think thats a very reductive view of things and you miss a whole lot of nuance. Applying your approach to philosophy of science would be like saying that using the scientific process is as effective in finding out relative facts about the world as dancing around the fire 5 times , since they are all just "guesses". The problem is this: If you grant that there are truths that are in principle untestable and unfalsifiable, then you need to use an epistemic process which is not about testing or falsification. So the answer to your question of "what are they useful for beyond those things?" - they are useful for finding out truths that cant be discerned in principle through falsification or testing. The relevant question that needs to be answered is this: Why should anyone think that having enlightenment/awakening experiences is only possible under one specific metaphysics? The reason why the answer to that question would be super relevant, is because as long as they are possible under multiple different kind of metaphysics , there will be an underdetermination issue and appealing to enlightenment to settle questions about metaphysics wont be sufficient. For example - can you have the same enlightenment experience if solipsism is true just like the same way if Bernardo Kastrup's idealism is true? Because if the answer is yes, then obviously to settle which one is true cant be settled by merely appealing to enlightenment.

All Zen takes place under a set of presupposed metaphysical assumptions. You never escape these philosophical debates - hence they are very far from being worthless. The ability to become directly conscious of X already presupposes a frame that makes ' becoming directly conscious ' possible. And as long as there are multiple frames that are compatible with providing that possibility, you will have an underdetermination problem that you won't "solve" without doing philosophy and these seemingly worthless conceptual battles.

What does that even mean that you confirmed that? Even if you had an awakening about solipsism, the inference you made there still doesnt make any sense. Why rank solipsism higher rather than lower? Also once you affirm these two propositions in conjuction (like Leo): 1) There are levels of awakening 2) and also affirm that higher levels can completely recontextualize (by using the word recontextualize I am being extremely generous, because given how Leo talked about the levels, a more suitable word would be 'undermine') everything that you knew about awakenings (including the idea which awakening is the highest) , yourself, the world etc. Then the only reasonable position that you (and Leo) should be left with is agnosticism, given that all your knowledge can be completely undermined, and given the assumption that you are right about those two propositions.

I never contested that solipsism is possible, but thats not interesting, because a lot of other views are logically possible as well

So it is logically possible that solipsism is false, right?

They dont want to make an abductive argument (inference to the best explanation - where you compare views based on virtues), they try to make the claim that only solipsism is logically possible which is categorically a different approach - but when pressed on it they can never substantiate that claim.

God can make it so that gravity is 6 feet tall , infrared, and smells like roses, because he is not bound by anything. He can also make the square root of red more tasty and a little bit more salty.

Once the move of equivocation is recognized in Leo's work , you start to see it everywhere and you realize how much it lacks substance and how uninteresting and unimpressive it is. "Ohh, you made a 1000 blog posts trying to critique X, where you use X in a completely differently sense how people you want to critique use it? Cool, buts its completely unresponsive to their position." There is a difference between talking about possibilities vs making meaningful statements. Its not about God not having the ability to do X, its about X being meaningful. If I were to object to you saying "God is not bound by anything, therefore God can tell you the square root of red", the objection wouldn't be about pointing out that God lacks some ability, but about you being conceptually confused and your statement being incoherent and not communicating anything meaningful. So its not about your statement being false (because only meaningful statements can have the property of being false) - its about your statement not even being capable to be true or false.

Good stuff, great job again! Yeah facts dont speak for themselves and we only recognize a small subset of implications that comes from facts. There is our relevance "bubble" and there is a much larger set that contains all implications that comes from facts. Its not just that we only care about certain facts, but its also about how we relate to those facts . And this is why rhetoric is important, because everything is about the packaging of facts and about spelling out how it relates to you and to the things you care about. And when it comes to underdetermination and when it comes to choosing one hypothesis over another or when it comes to giving weight (significance) to certain interpretations (just as you said) those are all related to things that are not just about facts. Reasonableness and rationality are also qualities that are related to packaging and storytelling and interpretation. Its also very obvious to me that when people usually say "thats logical", they dont invoke validity in a strict prop logic sense (where validity means the conclusion necessarily follows), but they relate it to a particular interpretation (where they choose and focus on a specific implication from all possible implications, one that is aligned with their background beliefs and lived experience the most). Just as a side note, this is one reason why AI is interesting and problematic right now, because it can show us and make certain interpretations much more salient, ones that are very unintuitive to us, and one reason why they are unintuitive, is because (I take it that) our intuitiveness is also directly related to the things you wrote extensively about. This is also one of the main reason why alignment is an issue (not because the AI's interpretation is logically inconsistent with achiveing our goals - the goal of getting a coffee is consistent with running over a 1000 people and getting it that way), but its hard to narrow down the set that contains all possible interpretations that are all compatible with the execution of our goals and appealing to facts and logic (in a strict sense) wont be enough for that.

No, because doing and studying physics with a materialist metaphyiscs in mind, vs doing and studying physics with a non-materialist metaphysics in mind changes a lot when it comes to what kind of inferences and implications one draws from studying the patterns.

And you can be wrong about the laws of the dream and the limitations of the current dream. What do you appeal to when you reject the new age claims? Because most of you don't use any sophisticated kind of reasoning to argue about the relative, most of you try to appeal to the absolute and use that to reject new age stuff that are about the relative (which is a move that doesn't make any sense). Whats very peculiar and whats being questioned by Carl (as I understand it ), is that some of you have curiously adopted a materialist frame for the relative. Interestingly for some kind of particular reason, the laws of this particular dream supposed to be 100% aligned with what a materialist would claim. What kind of tools and thinking and reasoning do you use to check what kind of dream you are in right now and what kind of properties this particular dream has? - because as much as you guys like to talk about the limitations of science - when you try to trash physicalists on a philosophical level - all those criticisms are applied to you when you make a claim about the relative, because you use and rely on that scientific frame.

Thats a claim that you can be wrong about (reality can be a dream and your claim about how it unfolds or how it suppsoe to unfold can be wrong), but even if you are right about that particular thing thats compatible with all kinds of new age shit that you currently reject. Im also sure that none of you have any good response to the problem of induction - so even if you are right about the inherent limitations of the laws of physics from that wouldn't follow that 1 second from now , the laws wont change.

But you can be wrong about those rules and laws. You brush off certain claims about the content and the possibilities of the dream based on what kind of reasoning? Based on reasoning that is subject to be wrong.

"focus on becoming directly conscious of the answer and stop wasting time using other methods(like thinking) where the generated answer to a given question isn't guaranteed to be correct/right" I still think that this become directly conscious of x talk is incoherent when it comes to relative matters. I also think that you downplay other ways to investigate reality and you categorize those as just "speculation".

The point isnt that he would necessarily choose those extreme and violent things, the point is to challenge the idea that it would be just as meaningful/meaningless to him. If the idea is that one can have complete power over what meaning one attaches to things, then it shouldnt be an issue to be a rapist or a serial killer ,because you can choose how things strikes you and or you can have a mindstate completely detached from what you do and what happens to you. So if you have two people: one is enlightened and in presence mode and the other isn't enlightened and both are forced to rape people every day and to eat shit every day - there is a high chance that one would be miserable and highly suicidal, but what about the monk? Could the monk maintain a blank mindstate and would the monk (since he is completely present) find the whole thing just as blank and devoid of meaning as if he would solve world hunger? Or would the monk have the ability to find solving world hunger to be horrible and atrocious and being a rapist to be highly meaningful and positive? And im not talking about a situation where your mind completely detaches from the situation as a defense mechanism so that you don't need to live through the horrible things that you go through or you don't need to remember the horrible things you did - im talking about being completely present and living through all moments.

For example could that Zen monk find being a rapist or a serial killer just as meaningful as being a monk or a teacher?

This is where I am skeptical, because it doesnt necessarily follow. Going back to my point - just because there isn't anything that is objectively beautiful , from that doesnt follow that you can freely choose or change what you find beautiful. Or just because gastronomical realism isnt true (there arent facts about what is delicious, its based on the subject's judgement), from that doesn't follow that you can freely choose and change what you find tasteful and what you find disgusting. same with morality, just because there arent any moral facts, from that doesnt follow that you can change your moral intuitions (what you find morally reprehensible and what you don't) The same goes for meaningfulness - just because we go with the antirealist position from that doesnt follow that you can have power over what you find meaningful and how meaningful it is for you. Some people are okay with that kind of life, others arent - and im not sure whether everyone can be okay with it or not (again going back to my issue with the changing of preferences and intuitions) But maybe in a truly egoless state what you are saying is true, because there arent any preferences and moral intuitions about anything (maybe) - but im agnostic on that for now . And the reason why im agnostic is because in egoless or kind of egoless states I tend to be calm (and other practicioners who are much better at meditation than me tend to say the same) and its not a blank state (its calmness and spaciousness) - so 1) im not sure whether some of the things we are talking about are depended on our egos and its just purely survival related or its something much more deeper that goes beyond that 2) Even If it goes beyond surivival there can be still facts about consciousness (just like the calmness and spaciousness that comes from the egoless states - and there you cant just choose that you want to be angry in those egoless states - there seem to be certain qualities that comes with states. So basically regardless if its survival or not survival related - the question about what you can change related to these things seem to be open (for me)

I have an antirealist position on aesthetics,morality ,meaning and I think the same line of thought applies to all of them. Even though there arent any objectively true/correct answers to what is beautiful, what is moral, whats the meaning of life - our relationship to these questions isn't arbitrary - there are patterns and facts about our meaning-making, about what we find ugly and beautiful and about why we have the moral intuitions that we have.

I think thats a good move to 1) object to the realist position about meaning and 2) point out the confusion that the sentence has to be interpreted in a negative way or that its objectively true that negative implications come from that sentence. You point out well that there isn't any "true" conclusion that can be inferred from the sentence "Life is empty and meaningless" . The inference that one draws from that won't be based on any oughts (there isn't any fact of the matter what that sentence has to mean to you and there isn't any ought about how the sentence ought to be interpeted and what facts ought to be inferred from it) But the meat of issue with respect to negative meaning or the lack of meaning still remains: 1) Just because we go with the anti-realist position from that doesn't follow that one can freely change what one's relationship is to the "life is meaningless and empty" sentence (when it comes aesthetics and beauty , just because there isn't any fact of the matter about what is beautiful from that doesn't follow that you can change what you find beautiful) - it can be the case (as others have already pointed out) that its largely based on and explained by our biology and our biological structures (the idea is that biology largely defines what kind of meaning you will draw from certain truths and how it will make you feel). 2) Even if it is the case that one can change their relationship to that sentence (for example changing it from negative to positive), its unclear how hard it is to do it So even though making your point ( clearing up the intellectual confusion about what kind of implications come from the anti-realist position) can be helpful with destroying some of the negativity and depression surrounding it , it only settles one slice of the issue. The next part of the problem is basically diving deep into the patterns and facts about meaning-making - and it seems from your other reply that you are well aware that just because the anti-realist position is true from that doesnt follow that meaning making is arbitrary or that there arent any facts about how we create meaning ( or in other words - just because there isn't any correct/right way to give meaning to things, there can still be facts and patterns about how we assign meaning to things). As a sidepoint: even if there would be objective meaning to life (the realist position would be true), that wouldn't help with solving the issues that I pointed out - because it would still be about our meaning making and our relationship to truths and not about what the correct meaning is - its irrelevant what the correct meaning is , if your meaning-making machinery attaches negative meaning to things.

- Someone uses lanugage in a technical way and says that using language this way isn't a bad thing reply: "it can be bad in certain context" (very deep and wise objection that couldn't possibly be brought up in any other context) "its problematic because it isn't truth and it wont lead you to truth" - where was it implied that being intellectual or using language this way will alone lead you there? "My objection is that if your goal is truth then being intellectual is problematic because it wont lead you there and even though this objection applies to its negation as well (being anti intellectual and non-intellectual wont lead you to truth either), I still think this objection has to be brought up"

If lack of authencity would be an issue, then 95% of the forum would have been banned a long time ago - not because of AI use, but because of uncritically parroting actualized catchphrases and thought patterns. I have seen more novel thought from Nilsi than from most forum members. I think the implication that Nilsi won't recognize when AI rephrases his sentence in a way where it completely changes the intended meaning he was originally trying to convey, seems very absurd and doesnt make much sense. Like imagine you are trying to communicate X and then AI produces Z and then you say "Fuck it, even though I was trying to communicate something completely different, lets run with it anyway"

Whats the issue with AI rephrasing things, if the same (intended) meaning is conveyed ? I can see being annoyed with people who use AI to make arguments for them or to think for them, but when they produce their own thoughts and then check their thoughts for grammar (and sometimes let AI to rephrase a given line to convey the intended meaning in a more precise and coherent way) - I think thats all fine. I would rather people use AI to rephrase their thoughts in a way that I can understand and follow , than them to gibberate and make incoherent statements And I say this as a guy, who has the exact same issue as some of these people, because English isn't my first language either and doing philosophy and talking about very abstract spiritual concepts is already hard (in your native language), let alone in a non-native one.