zurew

I still dont undertand how you reject "true by definition" statements. This is why I said that you redefining the term enlightenment isn't an honest engagement with what the nondualists are saying. The label is irrelevant the shared meaning is whats relevant (this is why Unborntao suggested that if you really want you can label that shared meaning as 'Godrealization' if you prefer that label over enlightenment). If you use the same definition for enlightenment as they do, then you cant say that enlightement is an illusion because by their definition it cant be an illusion, the correct way to object to that is to say that none of them are enlightened, given how they defined enlightenment.

If you replace the Absolute with Existence (which I think is less ambigous and more clear what it is pointing to) then it becomes clear why non-dualists object to things like "You can go beyond Existence" or "You can go beyond Reality". It does comes down to semantics, and the reason why is because if you apply the exact same meaning how nondualists use the words you are using, then your statements become incoherent, so if we want to be charitable towards you - the most charitable move is to say that what you are saying is probably coherent under your own semantics, and its just that you are using different meaning behind those same terms (and its completely fine to say that you cant convey the meaning behind your terms, what isnt fine is not granting that it comes down to semantics, because saying that it isn't about semantics, that implies that non-dualist use your terms with the exact same meaning as you (there is no equivocation), which would be silly, because that would mean that non-dualists think that their own statements are incoherent. If enlightenment is taken to mean something like "becoming conscious of the nature of reality", then the sentence "Going beyond being conscious of the nature of reality" doesnt make much sense or just like how making the statement that " enlightenment is an illusion" under this semantic wouldnt be coherent because it would be cashed out as "Being conscious of the nature of reality is an illusion" One other way to make sense of what you are saying - is suggesting that there is no such thing as enlightement, where one can become comprehensively conscious of the nature of reality in one go, because its an ongoing process where you can have ever deeper awakenings into what the nature of reality is. One other way to make sense of what you are saying is that enlightenment 'isnt becoming comprehensively conscious of the nature of reality' - but in this case again this is a semantic issue, because nondualists define enlightenment as 'comprehensively conscious of the nature of reality' and by saying that enlightenement is an illusion is just equivocation where you redefine the word 'enlightement' in order to make your objection. The way to correctly object to their statement would be like saying "Under how you guys use your semantics and under what you guys mean by enlightenment , none of you are enlightened". Applying normativity to awakenings and by that move creating a hierarchy of awakenings only make sense if the norm can be coherently applied to all of those awakenings. Its also the case, that you can arbitrarily create multiple different kind of hierarchies depending on what norm you want to apply/you are interested in. So for instance you can create a hierarchy of awakenings just on 'sense of self' and the less sense of self you have the "higher" your awakening is.

I dont know what it means to 'reduce Consciousness to my notion of Absolute Truth'. Again this goes back to what I said about the difference between uttering statements while being in a particular state of consciousness vs a particular state of consciousness is determining/making true a particular statement. So all im saying is that for instance "Consciousness is Absolute" that statement isn't true because it is made from God's level 9999 level of consciousness , that statement is true regardless what level of consciousness it is made from, because the truth value of that sentence isnt made true by any particular state of consciousness. Or in other words - 'not beind depended on a particular level of consciousness' just means that It is a truth which is true across all levels/states of consciousness. All of what Im saying is compatible with your leveled ontology. Levels can change certain truth, but necessarily not all truth, because the truth of the existence of the levels itself is depended on what im saying.

We could also use the statement "There are levels of consciousness" or "Everything is consciousness" and you wouldnt want to subject those statements to a particular level/state of consciousness

This is where hopefully your clarification comes, because I think that is how a good chunk of the "nondual" people used the term here and hence why the objections. If by absolute truth you mean a truth that is depended on a particular state of consciousness, then that sounds like a very unique way to use the term. This is why its useful to give your semantics sometimes.

Absolute truth , would be a truth that is true regardless of the level of consciousness, because its not made true by a particular level/state of consciousness.

It makes sense to say that a rat is more aware than an ant, but it wouldnt make sense to say that a rat is more or less aware than awareness itself. In that particular case, the reason why it was labeled as a relative truth, is because its context sensitively true and the truth conditions could be changed. Once comparison is used, under this usage of the term , we are talking about relative truth. "When you make any argument to me, that is coming from your existing state of consciousness. Your arguments have zero validity in higher states." That doesnt make much sense , since not all statements are indexed to a particular level/state of consciousness. And I will clarify what is meant by that since most of this is just language game and relies on you being ambigous with your language. So there is a difference between uttering a statement while being in a particular state of consciousness vs the truth value (whether the statement is true or false) of the statement is made true by a particular state/level of consciousness. Btw you have to agree with this , otherwise you refuted yourself. So ,when you uttered the statement // Your arguments have zero validity in higher states // - is that very statement depended on/made true by a particular state of consciousness? You are in a clear bind here, because its either the case that you have to affirm that it isn't depended on it, and by that move you give up the "all sentences are made true by a particular state of consciousness" principle or it is the case that you say "yes its depened on it" in which case you shouldnt be taken seriously, since there are states of consciousness from which your statement is possibly false.

The problem isnt that people reject your notion of God, the problem is that you are making a category error (under the notions how people who objected to you use the terms relative and absolute). Its like saying that it makes sense to say "something is taller or less tall than tallness itself". Tallness isnt a category that can have the property of being less or more tall. And it isn't a question of open-mindedness or lack of knowledge , its a question of making meaningful sentences. Do you think it makes sense to say something like - "You are not open minded to the fact that tallness is an illusion and you can be taller or smaller than tallness?". Or to say "there are levels of tallness to tallness" And yes, it is a norm that you are using, but what is it? Is it something like 'Sense of realness'? Because that norm can be meaningful and it can make sense when it comes to comparative judgements, and hence why the metaphor "awakening" can be used - you judge something illusory to something more real. This is the issue that multiple people have already pointed out to you (including me) that you are equivocating on the term "absolute" and "relative" and you are using those terms with a different meaning comapared to how others(who objected to you) use it. Again, its not a question of being lost in non-dual dogma, its a question of making meaningful sentences. Like making sentences like "You can go beyond nonduality", what the fuck does the adjective "beyond" can possibly mean there? Because, again, under how people understand the semantics of such statements, its just a meaningless statement that involves a category mistake (and by clarifying what notions you are using behind those statements, you can make it meaningful, but for that you need to bother with clarification). I can give you a couple more statements to give you an intuition pump (demonstrate what our issue is) that all involve category errors and its not a matter of lack of open mindedness or knowledge: 1) Something before time - 'before' is a temporal property and it pressuposses time, its like saying time before time - meaningless, unless you can give such meaning to the term 'before' that is non-temporal. 2) Another one is saying that space is larger than the sun. If by the term 'space' we mean the container within which things are located and extended, then the predicate "small" or "large" cant be applied to it and it becomes a meaningless statement. However, there is a way to make it possibly a meaningful statement, if we engage in equivocation, where by the term 'space' we mean the observable Universe. In that case, the sentence could be cashed out something like "in the container within which things are located and extended, the observable Universe is larger than the sun". 3) There is a location to the container within which all things are located and extended.

What is the norm that is used to create the hierarchy (when it comes to awakenings)? Like what possible norm can be used so that it make sense to compare something absolute with something relative? Because whatever norm that is used there would need to transcend both relative and absolute categories in order for the judgement/comparison to make sense.

Also you should drop this "give infinite charity to him" when he doesnt do that towards anyone. He doesnt give the most basic charity to anyone. If he doesnt understand a given claim then from 100 cases 99 times he wont ask questions to try to make sense of your claim or to check what you mean by certain words, he will just assume that you dont know what you are talking about or he will interpret in a way where it will make your claim obviously false. Like do you think the dude is tracking what @UnbornTao's objection is? Or he is running the "you dont understand God" script for the millionth time as a "response"?

Yes "there is need for it". Too much toleration for stupid claims and bad inferences and none of this makes sense even under his own epistemology. He explicitly stated what his inference was and its a blatantly trash one and you know this. You wouldnt tolerate such inferences if you would replace Leo with any other person, and the quality of inference doesnt improve by changing the subject in the inference. For example - even if we take the following claim for granted "All people who tried to talk about awakening and elightenment and God are completely wrong about those things" - still, what about people that Leo doesnt know about? - like why would anyone think that awakening would entail talking/writing about awakening? This is just one extremely obvious objection to the inference, and this is the guy that you admire for his intelligence? Probably not every enlightened master has the narcissistic urge to tell you periodically how much of a rat you are and how much more conscious he/she is compared to you. Like why would you tolerate this?

"Nothing personal, its just that im the most conscious being, and all of you are little unconscious rats compared to me" "Ohh man, its so annoying that people try to idolize me and put me on a pedestal, they will do that whatever I say or do, so I make sure that I maximize the living fuck out of it" No, its sounds like a narcissist having a psychosis and a claim that you dont know either, because you inferred it based on what others have said about God, which is very stupid for many different reasons, 1 main reason being is that it doesnt establish your conclusion.

I might have missed your point and I might have not talked about the same thing you wanted to talk about, but to me the answer lies in this: When there is a problem, like you need to not lose against the best AI in chess, then Mike is the kind of dude who would try to train for thousands of hours and try to invite all the best chest players to help him win against the AI and there is Gandalf the wise one who would just destroy the fucking chess table and satisfy the 'AI not being able to win' condition. Whatever set of heruistics and approaches explains gandalf's solution is the general approach that probably should be applied to other problems as well.

Very hard question that no one has a good comprehensive answer for , because it relates to the deepest issues with categorization especially given that its underspecified what kind of problem we would want to find the right frame for and its also unclear whether there is only one or multiple right frames or whether there is a possible solution at all. The short uninformative answer to your question is that its based on how many psychotechnolgies you know and what ecology of practices you engage in and what kind of meta heruisitics you use and basically and obviously how much domain specific knowledge and skills you have (where the domain is specified by the kind of problem you need to find a solution for). So for instance, if you are a math guy, you generally have a better eye to recognize what kind of problems are math problems and what kind of problems can be solved with math, because your math specific knowledge and skills are developed and you have seen a bunch of math problems already (thats not to say that you cant be mistaken and biased, where you frame certain problems as math problems, just becuase you are good at it). Btw your question can be rephrased this way - How do I know what kind of problem I am dealing with or "how do I form well formed problems from ill-defined ones"? If we have an answer to this, we have an answer to the frame problem. Hint: I dont have an answer Now, buckle up for the ramble. This gets more deep into relevance realization [RR] (because that is what has to do with even the most basic categorization - even the fact what constitutes a frame, how many frames you can choose from and how many of them you are aware of any given moment happens long after RR) which unfortunately I still dont understand well in depth. Like even the categorization of a problem is depended on RR and without categorizing the problem in the right buckets, you cant construct any frame for it and therefore you won't know where you should search for the solution. Here comes the classic Vervaeke talk - one meta problem that you need to solve each time you try to solve any given problem is that you are faced with combinatorially explosive info (this is one reason why it cant be algorithmized, because basically infinite info is avalaible at any given moment and there are even more possible combinations between them and you cant check all of them). RR "solves" this problem by slicing up reality and only checking for the info and for the solution in certain places (these would be the unconsciously used meta heruistics, that are connected to survival and to your deepest beliefs and goals) meanwhile ignoring all other places and info. From this follows the connection to bias and self deception ( which under RR just means that the heruistic or set of heruistics that you tried to use to solve the given issue made you stuck in one frame and you dont realize that there are alternative explanations and frames, because you are literally unaware of them). This is why Vervaeke likes to emphasize that "the things that makes you more adapative , they are the same things that make you prone to self deception". Ignoring info and constructing and destroying frames is what makes you an adaptive problem solver (which unsurprisingly relates very tightly to spiritual practices and psychedelics btw) and yes, this just pushes the question down one more step and we can ask "but what determines what meta heruistics one has?" - and we could also ask what kind of normativity could we tie to RR and what it means to be good in RR? One Vervaekeian answer to this is to learn more psychotechnologies and to engage/participate in an ecology of practices (which are responsible for the frame breaking and frame construction).

I would use Vervaeke's framework - where you can seperate finding the right frame (formulating the problem and knowing where to search for the solution) and the ability to search through all possible solutions within a frame (this would be what you said Mike is good at). If your framing of a problem is wrong and you dont search for the solution within the right frame,then it doesnt matter whether you can iterate through and think through all possible solutions within that wrong frame 100x faster than the person who has the right frame. It would be like the 9 dot problem and Mike doing math calculations and or brute forcing the problem without even considering going outside the 9 dot border (because his brain would frame the problem and would assume that you cant do such a thing ,even though the problem doesnt prevent you from doing so and in fact thats what allows you to "solve" the issue)

If it turns out to be the way you wanted it to be , thats cool, but thats not the question. The question is how qualified you are when it comes to judging how good/bad it will turn out to be and what health effects it will have? If it actually turns out to be good, you will pretend that it wasnt luck and you will frame it as some kind of conscious calculation. If Rfk jr would create a new drug that would turn out to be effective that would be cool, but lets not pretend that the dude has good intuitions and knowledge about how different chemicals can affect your body. You dont retrospecitvely judge these decisions, you want certain protocols to be in place before shit goes down. Yes, you are not like him ,but you are nowhere near a doctor or an expert - again you are good at tripping, but you have no expert level domain knowledge on the physical effects.

Yes, but again there is a clear difference, which is this: There is a clear difference between a random person picking a random thing and then running an experiment on you and making a bunch of bad predictions about the effects of that random thing based on no domain knowledge or even wrong domain knowledge vs an expert picking/creating intentionally a specific thing based on domain knowledge about how thats gonna likely affect people. The level of blindless about whats gonna happen (when it comes to the difference between the random person and the expert) is clearly not the same.

No this is not how responsible pioneering works. No amount of you taking psychedelics affords you the necessary knowledge to give you the health check list that needs to be checked before an individual takes the substance. You are very obviously conflating being a master at tripping with being an expert in knowing how different chemicals can affect the health of individuals. Like imagine if your approach was applied to anything medicine related on a global scale " I have no domain knowledge when it comes to medicine , but bro I tried this new pill on myself and it had no negative effect therefore from that I can safely infer that the rest of the population can take it as well, but to be 100% sure, let me do an interview before I give you the pill" Yes you need data to check whats up, but you need domain knowledge to have good inferences about what will probably happen once the given drug is used and you will make bad and unreliable inferences and predictions if you dont have domain knowledge. You contributed a lot to this dynamic, by making yourself to be special and an individual who is more conscious than everyone else.

Leo does this unfortunately a lot - where he equivocates. As far as I understand, he uses two different notions of consciousness. Under one notion, its a property agents can have (which makes it possible to apply the norm "more and less" to it - generally goes for what and how much you are aware of ), and under the second notion: you cant have it, because 1) its not a property, 2) because you are it, its basically the thing you are describing. These are clearly two very different things and should be named differently.

I was half-joking. I dont think he cares much about money, but I personally dont think its responsible to test a new chemical with your audience, where you dont even know your audience. Like you wont filter all mentally unstable and schizo people with an interview. I expect some wild shit to happen there, I dont think most actualizers are properly grounded.

Now it makes sense why the dude calls others 'rats'. Its the perfect opportunity to use actualizers as lab-rats to check in action the effects of the completely new research chemical and frame it as an opportunity. Earn money + collect data - double win.

You have an assymetric approach to this and it doesnt make sense. You hold to the position that the chance of enlightenment cant be elevated but at the same time you are against doing certain things like conceptualization. How can you hold to the position that the chance can be lowered but cant be elevated - Why be against anything if none of it matters and it is completely random anyway? When the Zen master hits the student with a stick that as unhelpful under your view to get the student enlightened as infinite conceptualization about random shit. If the idea is that "because conceptualization about enlightenment isnt enlightenement" - then my reply is - why is that bad? You hold to the position that nothing can have any causal effect on it ,so again, why care about who is deceived? You hold to the position that a guy who meditated and did yoga 60 years constantly in a cave has exactly as much chance to get enlightened as any given random infant who was born 1 second ago.

I agree with most of the things you are saying, and I share most of your intuitions about identity and persuasion, but I dont have a strong conviction in it, because I havent done any deep research on persuasion when it comes to human psychology (I only rely on an inductive case that is based on my very limited sample set and it relies on the explanation that explains that limited sample set - but the explanation can be wrong and it can also easily be the case that sample of people I encountered with arent representative of the population we would try to persuade) and also given that this is very clearly an emprical question, I wouldnt be quick with being blackpilled on persuasion, I think its an open and valuable area to research. I disagree that it wouldnt be persuasive or that it wouldnt be as persuasive. I personally dont limit hypotheticals to physically possible things and a good chunk of logically possible hypotheticals can be very persuasive (if the interlocutor is an honest actor). There are scenarios where people dodge the logically possible hypothetical on the grounds of "but that cant happen in reality, because it would violate the laws of phyiscs" or some shit like that, but there are responses to those kind of objections and you can walk people through on the utility of such hypotheticals. For example, I dont think that if we would be in a world where mentally disabled individuals wouldnt be possible or wouldnt exist, that in that world most people would have such moral intuitions that they would be just causally okay with answering "yes, I would be okay with slaughtering my mentally disabled relatives". I think your point make sense when it comes to things people cant relate to and cant conceptualize at all, but I think there are many things that can be conceptualized and reflected upon that arent actual in reality, but still hold compelling ethical force.

I dont want to defend the drugs (because I dont care about that, I care about being accurate about enlightenement and whether it is random or not), but the inference you gave so far doesnt establish the idea that enlightenement is random or that nothing can increase the chance of it. The entailment of what you are saying is that there is no such thing as enlightenment work and even Ralston probably wouldnt want to say such a thing. Even your dream analogy doesnt hold up - its like saying "getting hit with a hammer in a dream cant cause you /induce the experience of pain, because you are absolute". Your absolute nature wont prevent from the dream having certain patterns to it and it doesnt necessarily have to be causal patterns. It was the case, but enlightenment is the recognition of that truth and recognitions are time related - this is why you can talk about stuff like "you are not enlightened at t(0) but you are enlightened at t(5)". If you grant that enlightenement is recognition related , then lets talk about things that can help with (not necessarily cause) recognitions. Anything that can drive or spread one's awareness or attention can be relevant to enlightenment work. The pattern (your absolute nature) that needs to be recognized is always "in front of you", its just that your awareness and attention never "catches it". Just think about what the entailment is when you say stuff like "you can recognize it right now" - what does that mean? It means that it is always available to you regardless of time and place, but it also means that you need to fuck with your awareness and attention (otherwise the recognition would have already happened). Its like there has always been a screen in front of you and you havent recognized that fact yet , because you were distrated by focusing on the forms on the screen and the experiences the screen created within you (your awareness and attention was distracted from the relevant fact that it is a screen and this is why the recognition couldnt happen and the pattern [the screen] couldnt be recognized) I know the analogy with the screen isnt perfect because screens are spatiotemporal and we are talking about non-spatiotemporal stuff (there is no specific space or time to focus you attention to or on), but you still need to fuck with your awareness and attention or "spread" it for the deep existential recognition to happen.

Im not sure if you want to establish objective morals there or you rather you just want to make a claim about intersubjective values (namely, that most people fundamentally value and respect the self in others). I personally dont think objective morals makes sense and I dont think that it would persuade anyone even if it was true. I think some arguments can perusade people - because argumentation is one tool to create enough friction within a person's psyche so that they are forced to change (but yes, this only goes for honest actors). For example, if you would be able to make an argument that would show the consequences of one's action with as much clarity as the example, where pushing one button will kill 100 people and not pushing the button will save those people, then there is no way that a normal person would push the button (and this is true almost regardless what normative ethics he is subscribed to) It seems that you were trying to make the case that moral arguments are a waste of time, because in most cases it isn't about fundamental value disagreements, but rather about descriptive disagreements (where in this case your claim is roughly that because of their cognitive dissonance people cant percieve / recognize certain facts to be the case - like recognizing the self in animals). I think this is generally true, because from what Ive seen, most debates about metaethics is about talking past each other and not having enough ability to communicate one's moral semantics or its about motivated reasoning (like one guy is religious and thats what he is appealing to - which btw in most cases even within their own framework doesnt make any sense, because under most religious views you are not required to eat meat)