Carl-Richard

You distinguished between interpretations of experience vs the experience itself in a long-winded poetic "stream of consciousness" (see what I did there?).

There are like 12 definitions of consciousness I can list and trying to argue that one is better than the others is just ridiculous. Same with definitions of enlightenment. You define things for convenience. What you do with the definitions later is what is interesting.

No seriously, my face is on here. A tree, on earth.

I'm able to make "everything is real" and "everything is unreal" commensurate. When I see two people disagreeing about those things, I see it as manufactured disagreement. I'm happy if people don't manufacture disagreement. Same with somebody defining consciousness one way and then somebody else comes and says "well actually, consciousness is not that, but consciousness is this, because x y z a b c". You can define words in many different ways. You choosing a different definition is absolutely completely arbitrary. It doesn't need logical argument. You're presenting your choice of definition as a substantial disagreement when it's not. It's manufactured disagreement. My face is on here (and it looks like this 👺).

Life is like a dream.

Being aware, as in being awareness. Being aware as in a subject perceiving an object, no. What you're doing is assuming a definition and then post-hoc trying to explain it using logic, but the logic actually doesn't do anything because you just assumed the definition without any logic. You're ironically being entirely illogical in what you're doing. This is what you're doing in most threads. You're free to do whatever but don't expect anyone to take it seriously.

Sometimes the fruit is obscured.

You guys are literally stage blue, I don't know what to say. It's not that hard to realize there are different ways to frame a thing. I could've said "life is like a dream" and you will unironically answer "no, because if that was the case, you wouldn't be awake right now". This is the crux of 90% of you guy's conversations @James123 @Breakingthewall, arbitrarily asserting frames. A substantial disagreement requires at least two statements from each party. You'll just assert your frame whenever, doesn't matter if it makes zero difference. And by the way, here's a frame: nothing is real or unreal. That's a frame you're asserting.

This is a retarded (put technically) way to act and think, I used to think that when I was 18 and it absolutely screws with you. Virtually all you can ever do is act from ego. Purely egoless action simply happens without your say. Your desire to act within your values is fundamentally ego. It might be a higher form of ego (your "superego") but still ego nonetheless. Any reservation or doubt you have for acting a certain way is ego. Free yourself from reservation and doubt and you'll become less egoic. But that might not always be what you want, and be honest with that. You have to thread the needle of your ego rather than trying to deny its desires and wants.

It could be that you're the exception. And I wouldn't claim you're lying for being that. Just to point it out: if what you mean by that is mostly some tangible material change, earlier in the other thread we were also talking about changes in brain function.

Think about another ill of society: people working most of their life at dead-end jobs that they have no passion for and then they die young with chronic health illnesses, putting stress on not just themselves and their friends and families but the healthcare system and the economy and health of the society. You contributing to this machine, vs promoting an alternative (like Leo with his LP course); how does it rate compared to not contributing to the machine of meatocracy? You can live a perfectly healthy and sustainable life (if not 5x better) by aligning your choices with this more obscure and lonely but indeed more noble alternative. And you'll be morally on top. But you might not even have considered it. Because it's so easy to justify your current route. You're limited and you only have so much agency. And society pulls you in to its established norms, because it's simpler and warmer. The ritualized death ritual that is a barbeque is indeed a mediator of one of the deepest human needs, of connection, of familiarity, of belonging. And it's not a need one can easily eschew. Consider that vegans are 3-4x more likely to be single than non-vegans; you could make the case that veganism is a symptom of a loneliness epidemic and of being in a situation where personal morality can be practiced without big drawbacks.

1. You do not need veganism to live a reasonably healthy, sustainable life. 2. Will you eat Porifera (sea sponge)?

My teens were amidst a few moments of escape a chronic mental health crisis so yes.

Have you read one paper on personality genomics?

If you stopped developing your rationality in high school, I feel sorry for you.

That's not true. You think two identical twins raised up on different sides of the world would have the same personality?

Even if cognitive functions are quite fundamental, there are fundamental things that can change over a lifetime. But some things tend towards stasis, when it works.

Does eating a porifera sea sponge count as killing? There are many animals with no neurons or true nervous systems, or nervous systems that don't have clear brains. But even in these animals (and plants), there are waves of electrical potentials and intercellular communication. The difference between a neuron and other cells is a bit like the difference between a Ferrari supercar and Volkswagen type 1. The difference is primarily in speed and precision, but the fundamental mechanics are mostly the same (propagation of signals through electrochemical gradients). Even though you feel quite overtly if somebody triggers a sensory neuron in your hand, you also have a more vague and general sense of your internal bodily states (what you tap into for example when you feel sick or you've eaten something slightly off). This feeling I believe is a holistic assessment of all your bodily states, not just the state of your neurons. You also have various everyday semi-ESP phenomena which are hard to explain with neurons.

Sounds like ChatGPT. Just explain your ideas with concrete examples and unpack jargon with clarifying sentences and you're halfway there. Know your audience.

You have a thing for being rigid with frames when it absolutely doesn't matter.

Read Steven Pinker's tweets on how to write so people can understand you.

Being dead while alive is rare.

Even ChatGPT cut off the last part of the sentence. That tells you something.