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Trying to play the spiritual teacher game all the time, when one is being questioned about a position. Labeling arguments and other views relative, just to win a debate or an argument. Not being able to have a conversation without bringing up the Absolute. Not being receptive to any criticism.

The real question is, who is not shit? One of the most overlooked one.

@Razard86 I made a clear distinction between sex and gender above, and thats a framework you can use to try to make sense of what i wrote above. Now, you don't need to agree with that framework, but that distinction is practical and it can be important. You are using language in a reductive way and almost no one use it the way you use it, because nuance and meaning is being lost there . The way you use it, is like this: Everything is a social construct: biology , gender , language, physics etcetc. If we use the word 'social construct' your way ,then it will lose its meaning and basically won't mean anything, because it can be used to describe any word. Try to make sense what i wrote above, with the definitions and meanings that i gave to the word gender and sex. No its not, I made a clear distinction between the two ,and i provided examples to make it more clear. If you don't want to engage with that framework thats fine, but don't tell me i don't understand what a social construction is, just because you don't want to engage with my framework. From an ultimate standpoint, yes it is a social construction, but again i think to use language that way its too reductive. If we want to have a good faith debate or a conversation we have to use the same set of definitions, because if we don't, then our convo or debate won't even make any sense, because we will be arguing over points that are not even being made by the other person, but by ourselves. Gender is an inner image of yourself. - An Indian man will have a totally different inner image what a man is (, than a German man. Thats just one example. Sex is about biological traits - differences in :reproductive organs, genitals, chromosomes,bone density etc.

I don't really think we can make any strong argument in favour of why an AI is sentient (for now), the only thing we can do, is to try to make your arguments look relativistic (by bringing up the absolute and solipsism arguments) and thats basically it. Tearing down arguments is not the same as making arguments in favour of something,so i think, for now, i will agree with your position that there is no reason so far to believe, that an AI is sentient or can become sentient (unless we start to talk about states that are not sober states). Correct me if i misunderstand your position, but this is how i interpreted it: You are not making any strong claims, but the position that there seems to be a correlation between a human brain and sentience, and you gave some reasons why you think thats the case. I think your position is strong for now. I am curious if anyone has any great arguments against it (and not just tearing it down, but arguments in favour of the position that an AI is sentient or can be sentient). @Carl-RichardWould be curious though, what would need to be discovered or changed in order to change your position on this matter ?

Yeah i agree with this. I just think that the public image issue could be solved with a relatively low cost (her marketing wouldn't be that powerful ,so she would lose potential patients and of course money).

Everything ultimately "comes from" the Absolute, so i don't see how talking about the Absolute is making any difference here. This is not a good comparison, because in some sense everything "comes from" and "depended" on the Absolute. In your example above you are talking about a needed relative domain structure in order to answer and make sense of the question and you are not mentioning the Absolute. So to answer the question that you just made, we don't need to use the Absolute.

When it comes to this context (Teal swan as the best healer in the world) it has its own weight on this problem. Now, i would be down to criticise the mainstream system and psychologist and psychiatrists (i am not holding they upper compared to Teal) , but this thread is about the potential problems with Teal, thats why i brought it up. Exactly, the truth and helping people. Thats why she should show a more realistic image about her approach and about her ability to heal people.

Yes, but the difference is the public image and also the expectations.

Yeah. There are clear reasons why a psychologist or a psychiatrist is regulated and need to work in a controlled way, in order to defend the patients as much as possible. From an ethical standpoint, it doesn't look good to experiment on severly mentally ill people to see what technique will work to who and with what conditions. Even though, it seems that some of these techniques can work for a number of people with different conditions, but from an ethical standpoint it looks bad. Now, the problem comes when you create such a public image, where you look like an omniscient goddess (or at the very least, you say that you are the very best at healing people and that is one of the core pillars of your business model) and then there are still people who you can't give any help or you make their condition worse. Why is that bad? Because in their head they will think something like this: "if the best person in the healing field can't help me to heal, then who the fuck will be able to help me and how the fuck will i be able to solve any of these problems?". The solution would be to be more humble, and more receptive to criticism and to give a more realistic image about your service to your patients. I understand that from a marketing outlook it doesn't look better if you are more honest, but if we really care about people's mental health, then it should be a basic thing to do.

Yeah, but you make a distinction between those two, even though ontologically,there is no difference between a human and an AI (If you wouldn't make a distinction, you wouldn't use two different words to describe the same stuff). You can have 2 things made of the same stuff, but behaving differently, and having different qualities. Under the materialist paradigm everything is made of atoms or quarks and electrons, but still, not everything appears the same and behaves the same way. The same under an idealist paradigm, everything can be made of consciousness, but still, there are differences , if we start to divide reality into smaller parts. Now of course, we can say that dividing reality is an illusion etcetc, but in that case, we can't engage with any topic or with any question, because if we concentrate on any finite part or question, that will automatically assume some level of separation. We can have discussions about relative stuff, without the need to invoke qualia or ontology. When you say stuff like " Now in my view, both the AI and the human are imaginary " , it doesn't really matter, whether they are imaginary or not, you can recognize the similarity between the two on an ontological level and you can also recognize the difference between the two when it comes to qualities, behaviour, functionality etc. When it comes to a computer game like Super Mario, you can recognize that all the characters are made up of pixels (ontology), and also , that Mario and Luigi is different and capable of different things (appearance, functionality, qualities etc).

If someone has the time, here is a 6 part series podcast on spotify, called the Gateway. https://open.spotify.com/show/6Ez7WIIdyxhPbq5W6dJpiW Also, there is an older documentary about her called: OPEN SHADOW: The Story of Teal Swan Trailer: Yeah, i agree with you, but the biggest problem with this, figuring out who has what hidden agenda. If we watch Teal's videos we can obviously know,that we will get a biased positive view about her, so we can know what to look for, but with these other sources, we can't know from the start, who has what agenda and intentions, so we have to spend a lot of hours filtering the noise out, to get some of the facts.

Yeah i agree. Its very hard to find a video or information source about Teal Swan that is not full of projection and bias. We only have the documentary, and Teal's response videos to make sense of this situation. Or we can use these videos that are full of noise.

Focus should be on both. You can study the absolute and the relative (and i think you should). If you want to survive you have to study how survival works and you have to study the functionality of things. When you talk about the Absolute, i assume you talk about studying the nature of being/beingness. Thats cool, and thats important, but from a survival pov, it doesn't really matter if you understand things on an existence level or not. For instance, if you want to learn how to drive a car, your knowledge that a car is God won't help you to learn driving. But, if you actually study how a car works, and what you need to do in order to drive it, then after a while, through experience and also some conceptual knowledge, you will be able to drive and handle that car. So, you can understand the functionality of things, without the need to understand the Absolute. Ontological understanding is just one way of understanding (an important one, but not the only one).

Its hard, beacuse the focus of her work (as far as i know) is around healing , so her whole business model is around helping depressed, traumatized people. Now i can imagine, how fucking hard it would be to manage such people.

Say that to the kids in Africa, who are starving to death. "Broo, from the absolute pov, it doesn't really matter, if you starve or not". We need to be able to engage with relative level stuff, because it gets very boring after a while, to have 'from the absolute pov' convos all the time.

Everything is pointless from the absolute pov, thats why i don't think it is even worth talking about it, when it comes to relative stuff and relative "problems". My problem is that literally anything can be dismissed using 'from the absolute pov' arguments, and all nuance will be lost and nothing will mean anything. What you say is true, but i don't agree with how you use the absolute to dissolve everything and any argument. Imagine, if you had a conflict with your loved one, and you would always use this line "yeah babe, i can see what you are talking about, but your opinion is biased, looking at it from the absolute pov, it doesn't really matter what you think or what you do". We need relative domain solutions, to solve relative domain problems. Any argument could be dismissed using your way of reasoning and using the trump card the 'absolute pov'. Every crticism is untenable from the absolute pov, but from the relative pov, some perspective and feedback can provide some utility, and that was my main point.

@Danioover9000 Do you disagree with this statement: "there is a time and place, to make a criticism" ? All the other things are irrelevant.

Obviously i agree with you on this. All my arguments were directed at people that suggested that all criticism are untenable and that they have no place and no time (or at least, that was the impression that i got from them). Now see, we can resolve our disagreements, if we elaborate on what we actually think. We don't even disagree but we argued because i was making an assumption about your position, and you were making an assumption about my positon. Maybe even Razard is agreeing with me, we will see, but this is how the nature of convos go. We have to make some assumptions and then we can hash it out later.

Then why did you disagree with my post, that was all my point that there is a place and time to criticise thats it, nothing more to it. Thats why i said, that no one is above criticism, but i didn't mean either, that you can just run around and throw all kind of cricitism because you are happy to do it. If there is seriousness and ground to it, then it is time to criticise , but i agree with the 'take the good and leave the bad' approach' most of the time, but not all the time. I was talking about that there is a time to criticise and razard was trying to negate that point (Or at least that was the impression that i got from him). Thats why i had to argue, because i simply don't agree with that.

We use exaggeration to make a point and to test the grounds. My whole point is that there is a time and space for crticism , you guys are saying there is no place for it, and thats why i need to make extreme examples to test if you really want to take that position. Even the raping stuff that i brought up is applicapble and realistic in everyday life, especially if we are talking about cults and priest raping children and stuff. So it is actually applicable in every day life. Stuff like this won't come out on its own, unless someone exposes it with evidence, and thats my point.

Lets say, there is a teacher who rapes his students, if we take your approach we would say "ohh, thats bad, but i don't care about that, because i only focus on the positive, and because everything is relative anyway, i have no ground to criticise that person on". In this case your approach generates more harm than good. You give this teacher more space to rape other students that are clueless about this issue. So there are clear cases, when criticism is actually valid an appliable, especially, when that particular criticism is falsifiable. This is how a priest would get away, with child abuse and rape and with other nasty stuff.

How do you make a bridge between the absolute and the relative, so that you can make sense of relative concepts like sentience?

Whether my crticism is valid or not will be not up to me to decide, but it will be up to the person who recieves it. Also, i think you are conflating the absolute with the relative here. As long as we are planning on operating this ego, we will need to face the harsh nature of reality, from this relative pov. I assume, you think that feedback = bad all the time, but i won't agree with you there, and i layed out in my previous paragraphs why i don't agree with that approach. We give feedback all the time, especially, when we disagree with someone. Now, again, your feedback and disagreement can be formulated in different ways and not all hold the same value and utility. The irony of this whole thing, is that you actually judge me and giving me feedback, because i say that criticism can sometimes be valid and usable. I think we shouldn't conflate the absolute with the relative. I agree, that every human is a hypocrite if we would to judge it from the absolute pov, but obviously we shouldn't do that, because no one can live up to those standards in a finite form. So we go with standards using the relative pov, and here we are. But notice, even that statement is a judgement statement "every human is a hypocrite" and it is true. Is that bad that you said that? I don't think so, and i think it is true. If we always use these absolute pov arguments, we will lose all nuance all the time, and talking about anything will be meaningless.

As ive said its a spectrum, and there are clear cut cases that are not up for interpretation, but i agree that in the vast majority of the cases, it is up for interpretation. I don't agree with your approach, beacuse you are cutting out all critiques and labeling them "ohh all critiques are biased anyway, so why should i take any of them serious" but some of them can hold precious value. An ego has its own blind spots and it is important to have someone who can shine some light on our shadows and blindspots. If you cut all your criticism all the time, you will slow down your growth process, and this is true for almost any field. A mentor or a coach is good, if it can give a very well defined , well targeted, constructive feedback. If everyone would dismiss that feedback as 'ohh it is just a biased opinion, who cares', then they would rob themselves from the opportunity to grow. I don't agree with this thinking process either. If someone for instance claims,that they can do this this and that, and they can't do that, then why can't you critcise them for being dishonest? Just because i can't do what they claim they are being able to do (when in reality they can't) , does that mean that i cannot critique that? Reviews and feedback can be super important in our lifes , before we make a certain decision. Cutting all those thing out, i think is more damaging than being open to some level of criticism. A lot of people choose a service or a product based on reviews and feedback. So i don't agree with feedback and criticism not being usable and that criticism not holding any value at all. Criticism like this is very vague, but i wouldn't call this a good critique, because it is vague and not tangible and it is not constructive. What i am talking about, is giving good faith, tangible, well targeted criticism that is being backed by evidence, if it is necessary. Not all perspective hold the same level of relevancy and value, so I wouldn't dismiss them all.