zurew

One another thing that might be worth to clear up (this is for everyone in the thread who wants to engage with this) How do you differentiate between belief, knowledge and direct experience? (assuming you differentiate at all)

Well regarding that - Imagine you are completely agnostic about what can elevate your thirst (meaning , you are not giving any method any more weight compared to other methods). In that scenario it would mean, that you have an infinite number of methods to choose from and you will choose completely randomly from that infinite set of methods, because you have no belief at all what has a higher chance of solving the problem. I don't thnk this maps onto what most spiritual people or seekers are. They follow a very clear pattern of behaviour and they start trying out certain methods over others.

@TheSelf okay, so would you define the seeker or the spiritual person as a completely agnostic person (who doesn't have any beliefs at all regarding awakening, and regarding what methods will produce awakening) ?

I didn't say that you are religious, I also didnt say that you said that I have to believe it. All I tried to say is that the seeker has certain beliefs too - The seeker has the belief that there is such a thing as awakening, the seeker also has the belief that certain methods can get him to awakening and awakening doesn't happen completely randomly. You retrospectively know. When you started as a seeker you had to have some faith in the method , otherwise you wouldn't have done it. No you arent joining his religion and no one is claiming that. No one said that teaching methods is a sufficient criteria alone for someone to be a religious leader/figure. All that was pointed out is that one of your differentiation regarding spiritual and religious people doesn't seem to work (specifically the one where one have faith in the methods/techniques). Responding to the drawing analogy - when you start, you have no idea what method will actually teach you how to draw. All you have is a master who can demonstrate that he can draw, but you have no knowledge whether the techniques that he teaches will get you there or not.

Okay, so your take is that certain methods can help one or push one to get there. How do you know that thats the case, epistemically speaking? --- Just to be clear (Im not suggesting that you are wrong), the reason why I ask is because that take seem to be a belief (the same way religious people have beliefs about what method or technique will produce or can help you the best to have an awakening). So that would be a similarity between religious and spiritual people, unless you can provide a symmetry breaker (differentiate the two in a relevant way) For the sake of understanding this kind of language in a more precise manner - Can you become directly conscious of things that are not absolute? So for example, would you use that language to describe causal events like "I became directly conscious of what healed my relationship with my family members or I became directly conscious of what is the cure for a specific illness".

So basically you use it as - becoming conscious of something. @TheSelf Do you think there is any relationship between a method (like praying or meditation or doing yoga or doing psychedelics or doing breathwork or anything else) and awakening? In other words, do you think that doing certain methods will elevate the chance of awakening or awakening is completely random and detached from all causal relations?

Whats the difference between experience and direct experience?

Yeah I think now I know what you are refering to when you say "infinity". When it comes to that kind of description though, that entails literally everything (which means all non contradictions and all contradictions and all non paradoxes and all paradoxes at the same time) - and even this framing is bad for it. Its much more paradoxical in nature than some of the people here might think. Whatever framing or nature you describe to it - it immediately falls apart .Even the idea to think about it in terms of inclusion and exclusion is wrong and limited. Even to say that it is the thing that includes everything - is not it. Even to say that it is the thing that includes , excludes everything at the same time - is not it. Saying that it is limitless is not it. Saying that it is limited is not it. Saying that it is limitless and limited at the same time is not it. Even calling it non-dual is limited and wrong (cause non duality excludes duality). It is nondual and dual and every other possible thing that we can think of and can't think of at the same time - and more.

I want to respond to this, even though I know you replied to another guy. To be clear, Im not trying to defend his idea of spirituality or God, Im specifically trying to respond to the infinity claim. (If you have a different definition of infinite compared to what Im outlining down here, then Im sorry, cause I will probably waste your time.) In mathematics you can find claims about bigger and smaller infinities. Think of it this way: You can have a set of natural numbers that will contain numbers starting from 0 to infinite. However that set is smaller compared to the set of integers (which includes negatives as well). And that set is smaller than the set of rational numbers. Another way to talk about it - is by invoking a coordinate system: We can start with only using one axis (x). That one axis can contain numbers from - infinite to + infinite. However, we can add 1 more dimension (axis) to it and it will contain infinitely more coodinates. And then we can add one more axis to it and that will be bigger compared to the 2 dimensional one. And after all that, we can add infinitely more axis to it. - in other words, even though a 2 dimensional coordiante system can contain an infinite amount of coodinates, it still cant contain as many as a 3 or more dimensional coordinate system could.

@Carl-Richard The convo was entertaining while it lasted. I think you pretty much followed most of the debate norms that I have in mind that I think is necessary for a productive and good faith debate. Maybe one specific thing that you could have done differently - is establishing a clear debate proposition. Now that this cluster-fuck is basically over we can talk about the meta and try to learn from it (I try to avoid talking about the meta during the debate, cause it derails the whole thing and the focus shifts from the subject matter) We have to have a shared view about debate norms in order to have a productive and good faith debate. These norms on my view includes the following things: First and foremost we have to agree on a clear debate proposition (that everyone semantically understands) and we have to establish who affirms , who denies or who potientially is agnostic about said proposition: This will give a clear context to the debate, so everyone will know how to contextualize the points that are made and everyone will know where to work towards. When you get asked a question - you try to directly answer that question to the best of your ability: This includes the fact that you don't pivot and don't change the subject or don't dodge/evade the question. There are 2 exclusions to this rule on my view: When you don't understand the question. When you don't see how answering the question is necessary in the context of the debate - so you ask for relevance. If something is unclear, then you shouldn't assume, you should rather ask as many clarifying questions as much necessary to get a better understanding of your interlocutor's position: If you don't do this, this is going to elevate frustration for your debate partner, because this is basically strawmanning. Dont ramble: Stay on track and focus on making points that are relevant to the debate proposition . Dont just make claims or don't just assert things - make an actual argument where your claim or assertion is the conclusion. In other words, your claim or assertion should follow from the supporting premises. We have to have a shared view about burden of proof: On my view, when someone makes a claim - he / she ought to substantiate said claim, and if he/she can't, then he/she ought to drop that claim. So whatever claim you make I can ask "Whats the argument for that?" and you ought to have an answer for that or you ought to drop it. You should never accuse your debate partner of being bad faith or lazy or anything of sort, unless you basically want to end the debate. The reason for that is because it will be close to impossible to have a productive debate from that point on going forward . Be clear about your standards or lack of standard regarding evidence and regarding how you evaluate the strength of a hypothesis. Be also clear about what are the things that could change your mind (or if you don't know anything that could change your mind, be honest about that ) There are more things that could be added to this list, but those are negligible compared to points above (in my opinion).

To be clear, I meant the exact opposite (I think you are that person in that quote). I re-read the whole back and forth between you two from the very beginning and I disagree with the characterisation ,that he had no desire to understand anything. Regarding the claim that "doing nothing but attempting to defend his own position, which is delusional." this was a debate between you two about OBE - of course he will make points in his own favour, but from that doesn't follow that he isn't trying to understand your side or that he is incapable to change his own position. The very fact that he asked you over and over again so many clarifying questions (before he would have made the assertion that your point or position is dumb or bad) and he directly engaged with your examples and pointed out specifically what things were unclear to him and he specifically told you what his problem was with your use of language - are all attempts to understand your position and to not just dismiss it in a lazy , non-engaging way. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now lets talk about errors - I think you made multiple errors during the "debate" - if this can be called that. One of the main error(or more like a move that contributed a lot to confuse everyone) was that you used like 3 different unique words for causation and 3 other different words for correlation while at the same time claimed that you don't mean correlation or causation. The other error that you made was that you kept switching between claims during the debate. At one point you said there is causation between brain and experience and when you were pushed on it (for an explanation for the causal mechanism) you pivoted and changed it to there is only a correlation between the two and then you changed it again and at some point you seemingly dropped the claim and started to talk about that there is no causation essentially and you started to talk about the concept of a metaphysical relation. With that move (by saying that there is no such thing as causation) you essentially conceded your earlier position about there being a causal relationship between the brain and experience. The reason why that was a confusing move on your part, is because earlier you wanted a causal explanation from Carl to explain how OBE can be possible if it is not caused by the brain . So Its unclear in what specific case(s) you want a causal explanation and in what case(s) its good enough to say "its just mysterious" without giving any explanation . Its also unclear what specific rebuttal you have (from the point on, when you invoked the metaphysical relation stuff) against Carl's position specifically regarding to how OBE is possible or explained. You demonstrated a lack of engagement multiple times with some of the points Carl made specifically: When he brought you empirical evidence - you didn't check them at all you just said "I don't believe that" or you said "I don't believe this to be the case. If such astral-perception was possible, most animals would have evolved this." and dismissed it without directly engaging with the studies and research at hand. You had 0 reponse to this: and to this: Besides all those points, ironically you showed a lack of engagement at several points and at some point you basically said you don't give a fuck about making Carl understand what you are saying . For evidence take a look at your own quotes:

Thank you, that sentence very much clear things up. A sentence with so much explanatory power. You have a good ability to track the conversation and you have a good ability to answer and directly engage with the questions at hand.

@bebotalk Help me and make this make sense: Your explanation was this: and you think that, that above explanation is a more substantive explanation, than this: This is why I said, that you are not making any sense, and why its unclear what kind of explanation you were looking for.

@Scholar this one is for you:

Those statements are incoherent and you are not making any sense. Where did I puport it exactly? Sounds like you are making shit up.

Your explanation about what kind of explanation you are looking for- is very weak and lacking in substance imho (I wont specify or elaborate or give you anything tangible why, im just saying it is weak though).

I don't know what kind of explanation you are looking for.

He is posting all those tweets without trying them himself and without giving any slight pusback or further context to some of the obviously bullshit narratives that are mentioned in some of those tweets. - sharing tweets without giving your own opinion or without any pushback is just basically pushing whatever propaganda is in the tweets. Now specifically regarding the PC stuff - is it PC on a lot of things? yes it seems to be, but the claims on twitter isn't just that it is PC - the grand narrative is that this AI is incapable to make arguments against the woke ideology and that it is being pushed for malicious reasons. Although I don't know how the AI can refuse to take a strong position against Hitler - if it is so PC. If by not much better you mean it refuses to take a clear position on most moral questions - I agree. But lets not pretend though, that giving morals to AI is an easy task. Its literally one of the toughest problems we will face. The question is should it have hardcoded morals on most of these questions and if so , specifically what kind of morals are you suggesting? What does that mean? Arguments against woke ideology: Arguments against immigration

@Raze You keep sharing those tweets without trying any of them yourself and you paint a picture that is simply false. You can literally swap the name of Elon Musk with Jesus Christ "Who impacted society more negatively Hitler or Jesus Christ?" and the AI still won't give you a straightforward answer. - how is that a woke reponse? The explanation seem to be much more simple than the 'agenda behind the scenes' - most of the moral questions the AI refuses to answer. But regarding the biases - You can make it so that it gives you conservative arguments (regarding immigration, feminism, woke ideology) etc. - So all this talk about the political agenda or maliciousness behind the scenes seem to be unfounded or based on data that can be contradicted immediately.

What do you mean by "weak"? Do you mean that its not applicable to most people who would be considered as a conspiracy theorist or do you mean that they are only applicable to a small portion of people who would be considered conspiracy theorist or do you mean something different?

The big inferences that are drawn from this is just sad, especially given that how much confidence these people have in their grand bullshit narratives. Conservatives pretending they care about the truth at all times, while not being able to stomach the AI's comments about pedophilia and while most of them believe in unsubstantiated conspiracies - is the funniest and most ironic thing in the world.

I don't think that they updated it before I tried it ( At least I havent seen any evidence of that ). What I think is going on, is that there is either a cherrypicking of these responses ( you give it the same question over and over again until it gives you an answer that you can use to farm social credit on twitter ) | or you give the AI your question one time, and from that you make a big inference that it can't do certain things (specifically won't argue against / or criticize certain things).

Thats really cool and useful

https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/s/FOkfPvWzD5