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Read back the thing that you quoted and responded to. Do you think this is talking about the structure , or do you think this is talking about the content? Like, I couldnt have spelled out more explicitly for you and you still managed to miss it. (this isnt the first time, this is like the third post where you quote something about it that contradicts what you claim about it). Most of your claims about solipsism : for instance that it has good explanatory power, that it has 0 assumptions, and you interpreting criticisms against solipsism as "being stuck in a materialist paradigm" are all evidence that you mostly just reguritate Leo and that you havent seriously thought about or researched the objections against solipsism. For instance, its an assumption that only your mind exist; Its an assumption that you can know yourself; its an assumption that direct knowledge is possible; its an assumption that awakening is real ; its an assumption that further awakenigns wont undermine previous awakenings; when you make any given claim using your memory (even related to awakenings) those are all dependent on you assuming that your memory is accurate about those events and experiences; its an assumption that you have access to all of your mind and that everything that you experience is all there is; its an assumption that only that things that you are aware of at any given moment is all there is etc etc. Wittgenstein's private language argument is also a big problem for solipsism and I dont think Leo has any good response to that. Its also very funny that you think that its an issue for other idealist views that they need to explain and account for other minds and that is a problem in your eyes, but it isn't any problem in your eyes that solipsism doesnt account for the list of things that I previouly listed (not in this post, but in my post yesterday) and it isn't a problem at all, that solipsism doesnt account for literally anything that has to do with the content of the dream. Also notice that it almost always comes to back to epistemic cetainty and neither you nor Leo can offer literally any single objection or argument against any other non-solipsitic view that would render those alternative views impossible (so if your standard is epistemic certainty, and you only care about arguments against solipsism that shows that solipsism is impossible , then the fact of the matter is that neither you nor Leo managed to rule out non-solipsistic views).

Unconsciously internalized worldview, coupled with internalized persona (similar mannerism, similar choice of words and rhetoric, constantly in teacher preacher mode, disagreement automatically means that you are wrong and that you need to be quickly told the correct set of beliefs ). Some of these people never seriously engaged with any philosophy or spirituality outside of actualized.org. You grow up consuming years of Leo's content and that then frames your whole life. Even the ones who did some drugs and spiritual practices - how interesting, that after you internalize years of actualized.org beliefs and framing that you interpret most of your awakenings and trips inside that frame and that all of those foundational beliefs that you internalized months or years before you did any serious practice , that they are suddenly "confirmed" the moment you do the practices. Also notice how credence works with these people. After they "confirm" a given thing their credence in Leo's other claims go up infinitely and they dont treat Leo's unconfirmed claims in an agnostic way and hence the cycle continues "internalize beliefs---> internalized framing clouds your interpretation of awakenings and trips -----> your credence in other unconfirmed claims go up and you internalize them"

There is no confusion like that - what I said there was applicable both to the structure and to the content of the dream as well (because solipsism fails to provide an explanation for both; in contrast with other idealist views, that can provide explanation for the content). For some reason you seem to be very confused, because you seem to think that solipsism is the only possible view that says that consciousness is fundamental. You do understand that most mystics werent solipsists ,right? If the answer is yes, then why pretend that physicalism and solipsism is a true dichotomy and that there isn't any alternative option? And you are dead wrong about the explanatory power of other views - solipsism is the worst, but there are a bunch of other idealist views that has much more explanatory power and yes even physicalism has more explanatory power than solipsism. With respect to your comments about not caring about epistemic virtues and epistemic norms just only about truth - again whats interesting about that is that you only seem to invoke that when solipsism is attacked and you never invoke that when any other views are attacked (im pretty sure I could find you attacking other views based on certain epistemic norms). But regardless, you cant really escape this, because the moment you say anything about what method or set of methods can lead you to truth, thats the moment where you invoke your own epistemic norms. (and yes meditation, doing drugs , doing yoga etc are all included here).

No im not and you failed to track most of the things I said. You are mostly uncritically regurgitating stuff that you heard from Leo. The lack of explantory power problem isnt a problem for views that accept the Absolute as a brute fact, its a special problem for solipsism. No explanation for any state of affair or phenomena that you experience; no explanation why you are dreaming the particular thing you are dreaming right now instead of literally anything else; no explanation for why you can see,hear,taste,touch,smell in the firstplace (like why you have any particular qualia other than just adverbial qualia) ; no explanation for why you dont have random sense data in the previously listed senses (like seeing random pictures, hearing random sounds etc); no explanation for why your stream of consciousness appear to be governed by stable laws; no explanation for why you have the particular memory you have and why it doesnt randomly change, and why you have a memory in the firstplace; no explanation for why other people behave with apparent independence and complexity; no explanation for why the world can surprise you; no explanation for why you cant change the dream right now; no explanation why there is a duration to this particular experience and why it has this much duration ;no explanation for why there is a difference between your imagination and your perception ; no explanation for why you have voluntary and why you also have involuntary experiences; no explanation for why consuming certain things and why engaging in certain activies can change your state of consciousness and why other things cant change your state of consciousness etcetc - and any explanation that solipsism can provide - almost all of those will be auxiliary hypotheses and ad hoc explanations non of which can be deduced only from solipsism.

I dont know why you would infer that from the clip. If your version would have been specified and spelled out in question form , then im pretty sure his anwer would have been different. And again, the question wasn't generic, it was framing it towards the christian god specifically, given that the interviewer started his question with "you are in front of the pearly gates".

interviewer: "Hey Stephen, what do you think about food, and more specifically about eating dead racoons?" and then him answering with "I think eating dead racoons is disgusting and unhealthy" and then you clipping that and creating a forum post with the title "Lol, the pathetic and ignorant Stephen doesnt know what food actually is and how healthy it can be".

Do you often do this obnoxious notion swapping move in other contexts as well just to win arguments against other people ? I imagine the moment someone tells Leo that they didn’t like the taste of the food they ate yesterday (lets say they are referring to onion soup) , then Leo immediately goes ahead and swap his own notion of food in and corrects them that it must have been delicious because by food he means his own food (referring to something other than onion soup) and that he has a monopoly on how the term "food" has to be used in his univocal way.

Thats the ultimate move that can make you win any argument instantly here

No Im not, what im saying is that there is a variety thats never appreciated and acknowledge here - from God being absolute you cant deduce that God is love and that God is non-agential and other stuff. None of those things trivially follows from God being absolute so there is clearly an underdetermination and variety problem there. You can have an infinite number of different positions affirming that Consciousness is absolute and then disagree on other details. Yeah but all of that is applicable to any other paradigm as well (they can claim that they are true and it doesnt matter what issues you cook up against them, because whats true is true regardless your issues and criticisms against them). Also notice that all of you are making arguments against other paradigms using proxies other than just an appeal to truth (sometimes you guys appeal to internal contradictions and appeal to your own seemings and to your experiences etc). If you make that kind of "it doesnt matter how many unexplained brute facts are in your paradigm" move then a physicalist can just say that "It doesnt matter that I cant explain Consciousness, because its just a fact of the matter that Consciousness is just emergent from physical processes, but dont ask me how and why, because it doesnt matter how, what matters is just whats true bro". And even further anyone can say against solipsism ,that "it doesnt matter how many assumptions I make, because there isn't any rule in reality that making more assumptions makes my view less probable, because what matters is just whats true bro". There isn't also any apriori rule in reality that only the things that can be validated by direct experience is whats true, unless you assume that to be the case. You cant escape this, but for some reason most of you dont question this and for some reason most of you guys think that you managed to escape and solve these problems. What you guys call "direct experience" is what christians call "revelation" and but most of you will reject that with a knee jerk reaction, because that goes against your "direct" experience. But we can use any other religion or paradigm that has its own unique ways to justify why its allowed to beg the question against other views. Appealing to direct experience wont solve this, because again other mystical traditions can have direct experience as the main epistemic foundation from which everything is built, but they will disagree with each other on which things or experience should be categorized as direct experience.

Then attack the interviewer and not the guy who is being asked the question. (Unless you think its a better move in the context Stephen was in, to just dodge the interviewer's question) Its your responsibility to recognize the obvious fact that Stephen Fry wasnt talking about your notion of God. Its not like you have a monopoly on what meaning should be behind the word "God" (and if you are not autistic, then you are sensitive to the fact how different words are used in different ways by different people).

Leo's solipsism doesnt explain anything btw, it leaves you with an infinite number of unexplained brute facts. Its the most vacuous thing you can ever go with. Even a low tier physicalist view leaves you with more explained facts than Leo's view.

People here on actualized.org for some reason dont realize, but going with a mystic epistemology doesnt automatically answer the question of which specific version of God is actually correct (other than the fact that God is Consciousness) There is a reason why for instance Ralston disagrees with Leo on love. There are also many many mystics who will cash out God in slightly different ways.

Yes you can absolutely blame him, because he frequently gives a justification for why God allows certain things (often times he doesnt give the justification what you gave, but a version where the implication is that God is agential and that different state of affairs could have been realized) Constantly switching between existential language (where Love is metaphysical and doesnt have anything to do with action) vs action/agential language (where love is cashed out by what an agent does and not by its nature) is a big mistake. But this isnt just with love, this is with selfishness and with other notions as well.

Leaving no room for error and also leaving no room for substance and only leaving room for being vacuous - when it comes to Leo talking about a non-agential God being "loving". Btw - it does leave room for being wrong about the specific properties of God. You cant deduce anything specific from something being Absolute, and you will find a bunch of gurus and idealists agreeing with you on God being Absolute and disagreeing about the specific properties of God.

Yeah, but Stephen Fry made his criticism against a God, where the problem of evil is applicable (Against a type of Christian God , who is agential, can choose what world to create and will put you in hell forever if you dont abide by his commandments and if you dont worship him). Of course the argument wont work, if you equivocate on the term "God" and you swap it with your own notion of God. This is a mistake that Leo frequently makes and it doesnt matter how many times this is pointed out to him. He swaps the notions that are used in an argument with his own notions and then he pretends that he is making some profound counterpoint against the person who made the criticism (when in reality, he just fails to engage with criticism, because he only replies to a strawman, because Stephen Fry never made an argument against the type of God the way Leo uses the term "God").

Oh then I dont think that you will see anything new here. The real move that will actually work is to use your stepfather's phone or laptop and then html edit the national institute's website and write a paragraph saying "I recommend you to do your own research". I dont debate stuff like this with family members, because I know based on past experience that it wont work. Interesting , but also expected to see the "trust the experts" heruistic in action by a very pragmatic person. But given what you said there , now this sounds a lot less like about you wanting to win an argument and sounds much more like you trying to justify for yourself and trying persuade yourself using the collective intelligence of actualized.org, why it was worth spending the time (the time that you spent researching health and diet related stuff) instead of just doing the pragmatic move and using the "trust the experts" heruistic. (im doing a lot of reading into things here; im doing the retarded mr girl empath "I see behind the curtain" move here ) Btw jokes aside this is a very interesting and very complex problem (given your avalaible resources and goals, which option is better - using a quick heruistic or studying the topic deeply yourself and figuring everything out on your own - kind of a false dichotomy, but you get the main point)

Dude wants to win an argument against his stepfather so bad that he is fishing for arguments . One easy argument is just to point to history and to the fact that the standards and the recommendations have changed a lot over the years(just in the 21st century) . Also list him examples, where some of these health institutions were really wrong and also list him all the non-knowledge related things that can have a significant effect on what is being recommended by these institutions. The other thing is what @Basman mentioned - try to point out why sometimes its reasonable to do an @integral move, where you do your own experiments and where you figure out your own thing. For instance, if after taking a vitamin pill you immediately feel dizzy (and after you repeat this process multiple times, the exact same bad event/effect happens over and over again), then it doesnt matter how much the experts tell you how you ought to feel by and after taking the pill (if your experience tells you a completely different story). Or maybe try to find a close family example, where someone got fucked over by a doctor or by some health expert (maybe that would be more emotionally moving) But be careful dude, dont turn your stepfather or (whoever else who you are arguing against) into a conspiracy theorist.

I think its fair to reply with "but there are non-agential chaotic stuff as well, and why dont you have issues with those?", but I think there are important and relevant assymetries . Of course when it comes to chaotic systems, there isn't anything inherent that would prevent a non-agential God's mind from being just as complex and chaotic as an agential God's mind, but again, based on what we know about minds and about the world, agents tend to be more complex and intervention-capable than non-agential systems. And greater complexity and intervention capacity plausibly increases unpredictability or "chaoticness." So the idea is that an agential God has a higher chance of introducing a threat to global order/stability than a non-agential ultimate principle . And the idea isn't just that there is some complex system like weather, and that we have a hard time predicting that system and that we have a hard time getting an understanding of that system -rather, the idea is that we have an unpredictable complex system that can change the status of any other system and can consciously create and destroy things and state of affairs. The other concern that Bernardo has is about POE (problem of evil stuff) which is also fair in my opinion given that some assumptions are true about agential God. I can give reasons why Bernardo's naturalism is the default (assuming it can actually explain the data) and why it isn't just an arbitrary preference. Im sure you understand why abductively his model wins over other models, but if you want I can lay down on what epistemic virtues it will win over other views . And aside from the abductive argument I can also give a bayesian argument for why apriori his model is more probable than Tom's model. Btw I watched the video you linked and Tom doesnt strike me as someone who is very sophisticated when it comes to abductive reasoning or philosophy in general ( he made a level 1 conflation of determinism and materialism, and based on the video, he doesnt really know the alternative views of free will , he also wasnt seemingly familiar with the different ways idealism can be cashed out). Based on what Ive seen about him, I dont think he has a sophisticated enough epistemic approach to properly handle paranormal stuff and God being agential. If we would want to make the step towards psi and other weird stuff that is included and affirmed in Tom's view, then we would need to develop a model that can handle the underdetermination that comes from the complexity that I mentioned in my previous post: This is what I would expect from some of these people who already affirm paranormal stuff: Given their updated priors on these things, I would want to see how they reason and how they handle paranormal and supernatural claims and miracle claims that goes against their views. For instance, I would like to see how and why Tom rejects Jesus's ressurrection and if he doesnt reject that , then how he cashes out such and event or how he makes sense of magical claims that are in the Bible or in any other scripture or religious texts in general (like Quran, Torah, or Vedas or Book of the dead etc). And I would like to see them providing a hypothesis that is more than a just so story (thats merely constructed for the purpose to explain the facts on the table or in other words just to accommodate for the already existing data). For instance, a paranormal hypothesis that actually provides predictive novelty (I would easily make the epistemic virtue tradeoff- where I inflate my ontology with paranormal stuff, If that paranormal stuff provides me with predictive novelty like this and not with something like this). - You need to wait like 3 seconds for the links to properly load (they are links that gets you to the relevant text and the relevant text should be highlighted) My assumption is that Bernardo would do the same ( the issue is that often times the provided hypothesis dont provide any kind of prediction, let alone a novel prediction).

Maybe, but be careful, because previously there was a case where people initially thought AI did the same with other Erdos problems, and it turned out that it just managed to find the solutions on the internet. https://x.com/BorisMPower/status/1979328512923439455

I obviously grant that you can abuse language and that you can purposefully obfuscate, but for you to be able to make that judgement (to judge what is and what is not obfuscation), you need to know the target audience and the content of the message that needs to be conveyed and the goal of the communication (because otherwise, your judgement just gonna be a judgement from below). Once the target audience is clear and once it is clear what is the info that needs to be conveyed and communicated, and once it is clear what is the goal behind communicating the message, from then on, you will be able to use that as a norm to roughly judge how the message can be expressed better given those constrains (given the constrains of the target audience and info and goal ) . Btw by 'better' here I just mean how digestible the given message is for the target audience and how short you can convey the same amount of info and how much you can achieve your goal with the message. Lets say for the sake of a hypothetical that channeling aliens is real and that it can be done. I would be really curious to know what standards some of you would use to judge whether the alien is obfuscating or not. (this is related to my issue about judging from below).

Btw, now that I thought more about it, I dont think that you expressed "E = 1/2 mv^2 " in natural language, because just because you transform certain domain specific symbols into words, that doesnt make it automatically natural language (unless we just use the term 'natural language' as something where things are expressed with commonly used letters and symbols - but in that case, this whole thread is moot, because the content of scientific papers are expressed with commonly used letters and symbols). If the criticism is that regular people cant track and or understand what is being conveyed , then that will be applicable to the physics equation and to other math examples as well (and I dont see the outrage in those cases). You would want to transform that equation into something that will be digestible and comprehensive to someone who isnt trained in physics and math at all (or at the very least, we can go with a conception of a human, who has an average understanding of physics and math). And using the phrase "integral" instead of "∫" wont get you there.

There is a type of argument for reincarnation that is compatible with physicalism. if the given person believes that physicalism is true and that his identity is defined by some configuration of matter or that it is emergent from said matter, or that it is defined by the right set of physical conditions and causal laws - then this argument could still work on them. Its from a philosopher michael huemer and it goes something like this: Time is infinite (Time stretches infinitely into both the past and the future) Any conscious being can theoretically be brought into existence, given the right configuration of physical conditions and causal laws. In an infinite timeline, any physically possible configuration of matter and consciousness that happens once is mathematically guaranteed to repeat, to varying degrees of approximation, an infinite number of times. Because you exist right now, your specific consciousness is demonstrably possible. Therefore, it will inevitably exist again in future epochs, which constitutes reincarnation.

Yeah, then my bad. (although I reject the suggestion that I created a false dichotomy, because I didnt pretend that those were the only two choices/options, what I wanted to see is how you handle problems like this - again I wanted to see how you reason abductively and how you apply theoretical virtues - but to be clear, I did fuck up by subscribing you to something that you didnt explicitly endorse; so, sorry for that strawman) With respect to this criticism of yours though - I still think that Bernardo is right on getting blackpilled on epistemology . The reason why is because I think there is a good inductive case to be made why an agential God is much harder (if not impossible) to predict compared to a non-agential God. We cant even predict what a fly would do in a given environment , but we can capture non-agential laws with math precision (like gravity). If it is the case, that God is agential and if it is the case that he can agentially cause things, then good luck finding out which event was agentially caused by God and which wasnt (unless there is some kind of clear sign that shows that the given thing was agentially caused by him [and unless God's mind is so simple that it can be easily mechanistically captured ] which I hardly doubt, again just based on what we know about agents and how hard it is to predict them). And there are other reasons - I personally think that if the NDE stuff is true, then that doesnt just show that we can see without eyes, but it also shows (or at the very least elevates the probability) under Bernardo's model, that dissociation from God doesnt stop after physical death. If we introduce disembodied things in our ontology, and if it is the case that disembodied things can causally interact with the world, then that will makepredicting things and choosing from hypotheses infinitely harder. At that point, each and every time when an event happens - you need to think about whether it was caused by non-agential laws,or whether it was caused agentially by God or whether it was agentially caused by embodied beings or whether it was agentially caused by disembodied beings.

Here is the exact same issue in more detail in the context of fine-tuning and resurrection (and I think the exact same issue comes up in the context of deciding between H1 and H2)

I would reject the underlying premise that the members of other cult like communities have arbitrary belief systems. They are not arbitrary, you can often times abstract and explicitly spell out their epistemology (the way they acquire their "knowledge" ). But one main difference is the underlying claim that you can independently validate the claims that are made by the leader . The issue in practice though again, is that thats just a facade, because as long as you disagree with Leo, the implication will be that there were issues with your validation process and that you need to do it over and over again (do more drugs, more spiritual work, more contemplation etc) up until the point you agree with the leader. So epistemically there is seemingly an out, where you can independently check things, but socially and cult dynamics like you have the same exact same type of punish-reward system as other cults: If you agree with the leader you are profound and intelligent and cool, if you disagree, then you are self-deceived and dumb. You are sovereign and you are the ultimate authority as long as you agree, but if you disagree then you should take Leo's opinion over yours and if you wont, then you are dumb and closed minded. There is also a internal social force inside the community, where they will press you with a bunch of different tools to undermine your confidence in that you are more correct that the leader, and that you need to do more work (for instance, "you are not open minded to the fact that Leo is more right than you" etc). Some other similarities with other cults are - leader has 0 epistemic humility , 100% confidence in main beliefs, 0 ability for the leader and for the group to self correct epistemically, because the norm for what it means for anyone to be right and or to do the practices right collapses back down to what the leader's interpetation is and what the leader accepts to be true. Another interesting subtle dynamic here is that as long as you demonize other communities and point out why they are wrong and why they are dumb , then your sovereignty will be invoked and praised and you will be rewarded for "thinking for yourself"; but if you use your critical thinking and sovereignty to criticize actualized.org, then the claim will be that you are engaging in unconscious group dynamics and that you are biased towards other communities and that you are just unconciously parroting other people. (and basically its impossible that you managed to arrive at a different conclusion than Leo and that your conclusion can match a different leader's answer or a different community's answer). And hence, you will be labeled self-deceived and being a conformist towards other ideas and towards other group of people and your sovereignty (which was given so much importance and which was praised so much up until the point you agreed with the core main ideas of actualized.org) will be immediately trashed and undermined. And there is more stuff that I left out in my long previous ramble. You can notice that Leo is a big manipulative weasel, not just because he only acknowledges limitation when he is hard pressed and when not pressed he immediately goes back to his natural habitat and acts as an authority on spiritual subjects with 100% confidence, but also because he constantly jumps back and forth in a similar way about his superiority as well . In one breath, he will say, that he is not human and that he is above all the limited ,garbage epistemology that humans practice (and so he doesnt care about what any human spiritual leader or philosopher has to say or what objections they have), but when you press him on that claim , then he will immediately change the meaning of that very claim and will pretend that what he really meant was "the reason why he is not a human is because he is God and everyone is God" - and so he will act like he didnt just remove himself from the limitations that he thinks humans have, and he will pretend that he didnt just treat everyone else as just humans and that he only treated himself as God. And the "Im assuming you guys are intelligent enough to interpret my words and posts correctly" in Leo language just means "whatever context we are in right now, and whatever interpretation will make me look the best in this particular situation right now, go with that interpretation and ignore all the previous context that my messages were embedded in; particularly, if that would make me look bad or if that would make me contradict some of the things I already said". So in practice and at the end of the day, its not just that the answer to the question of "what is Truth" and what it means to attain the highest levels spiritually will be directly dependent on Leo; and its not just that the norm that decides whether you do the pracitces right or whether you did enough work will be directly dependent on Leo ; and its not even just that its on Leo to tell you what epistemic tools to even use ; but even the very norm that reveals whether you actually act sovereign and whether you actually practice your sovereignty and think for yourself or not - even that will be directly depended on and judged and answered by Leo (you are not sovereign if you disagree with the main ideas, because the very fact that you disagree with the Leo's ideas shows that you are self-deceived and that you run by unconscious factors).