Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[UnbornTao]

It's the same with believing in God, really. I always found this critique of atheism unbalanced.

The same underlying dynamic is at play when someone, for example, uses that term in a way that sounds consistent with "enlightenment" talk. It's pure hearsay. Not always, but it seems to me this is often the case.

Edited 7 hours ago by UnbornTao

[Socrates]

Academia Is A Sausage Factory

The funniest part is the comment section, which functions the same when someone gives up their religion. When you notice this, the mechanisms of dogma are the same amongst those two; it is really funny.

[Basman]

Higher education is mostly just a credential mill at this point. Most people who enter it do it for the paper. And as those credentials lose value because more people are getting them you need  more. Soon you'll need a PHD just to get a decent job and the rigor of getting PHD will worsen because there's no gain in failing students. It's like a drug that society itself is hooked on. 

Did you know that Chris Chan has an associates degree. There's no way he studied for it.

Edited 9 hours ago by Basman

[Mayonnaise]

@Nick_98 Thats a trap friend. You don't "fall into delusion" from actualized teachings. It's actually in reverse. You already live in delusion by hallucinating being a human. Once you become conscious that YOU created actualized.org yourself. That you literally created everything yourself, including yourself. The dream is you. You are all of it. Pretending you are not. Reflections/figments of consciousness for eternity. direct experience. should shed some light. Remember, survival will do everything it can to subtly trap you to keep you "sane". The insanity you might feel from losing your grip, is literally what happens when you unravel how you are doing all of it yourself. But thats backwards because you are already insane by playing human and all the things a human needs to adopt in order to survive. Just in your own unique way. You are just unraveling it. Survival is sneaky and locks you in. this type of work is like a key that unlocks the truth in you hidden beneath the layers of survival, language, rationalizations, etc.

But of course to continue being a human being, you need some ground to keep yourself a stable functioning human in this social machine to survive, so be careful/mindful and keep yourself in check. But just understand what the mind has been doing. 

[Rafael Thundercat]

Funny Quote

Actualized Quotes #609 https://share.google/VeEKui7RDU8WpugcW

In this Parameters so Leo Gura is made of My Mother and My mother is made of Leo Gura and I am made of My Mother of Leo Gura, I am made of the this words of this Phone I am holding and my hand itselfs is made of this phone and also made of every bit of sand in the Ocean and the ocean is made of my eyes and my Hair is made of Amazon Forest and...

[TheBG]

In regard to Leo's most recent post, I just wanted to point this out. Each time Leo makes a post, someone copies him word for word in the comment section of whatever he shares. Maybe not on ALL posts, but most of them.

I am not even sure if I find it annoying. I think it's kind of silly. It surely doesn't matter that much, but each time I see it, I don't understand why these people left the comment at all. Internet points?

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

5 hours ago, Basman said:

Higher education is mostly just a credential mill at this point. Most people who enter it do it for the paper. And as those credentials lose value because more people are getting them you need  more. Soon you'll need a PHD just to get a decent job and the rigor of getting PHD will worsen because there's no gain in failing students. It's like a drug that society itself is hooked on. 

Did you know that Chris Chan has an associates degree. There's no way he studied for it.

I think that the importance of higher education was officially burried in the year 2000 the moment internet became available for the general public to use. We've all just been living in a collective delusion that it's still something important and neccesary, including the companies themselves. Universities simply continued existing and everyone believed and continues to believe in their importance via inertia. But it's becomming increasingly untenable

[AtmanIsBrahman]

11 hours ago, zurew said:

You can have an infinite number of different positions affirming that Consciousness is absolute and then disagree on other details.

I think there’s a common core realization. Even if Leo and Ralston disagree on love, they still agree on the absolute. You’re treating the absolute as if it’s just some fancy notion without explanatory power. That’s a typical rationalist mistake—to dismiss a higher view because it doesn’t mesh with the rationalist paradigm. Yes, it’s true that the absolute doesn’t meet the scientific/logical/philosophical standards for a strong view, but maybe the standards are wrong.

[AtmanIsBrahman]

11 hours ago, zurew said:

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".

The thing about solipsism is that it actually requires zero assumptions. That’s only hard to realize if you’re entrenched in the materialist paradigm. Also, brute facts is a notion that needs to be deconstructed. The absolute is a “brute fact” in the sense that it’s foundational and has no explanation besides itself, but this notion of brute fact is a very rich one—might I say, an infinitely rich one. When academics talk about brute fact, they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. A true brute fact is one of a kind, and it is the existence of EVERYTHING.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

27 minutes ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

The thing about solipsism is that it actually requires zero assumptions.

It requires a lot of concept & assumptions, actually. 

[zurew]

10 minutes ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

You’re treating the absolute as if it’s just some fancy notion without explanatory power

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.

[AtmanIsBrahman]

21 minutes ago, zurew said:

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

You seem to be confusing the contents of the dream for the broader context. The broader context in solipsism is that it’s all your mind; for physicalism, it’s that it’s all physical stuff. Neither one really explains the things you mentioned.

Physicalism seems to do so based on simplistic causal explanations, but it still leaves unanswered “why am I here?”

If you’re asking “Why did I spawn into this specific dream?”, that’s a deep question and I don’t know the answer… not sure if Leo does either. It could be something to investigate, if you’re open to it.

[Rafael Thundercat]

So my hand is made of Unicorns. 

The Unicorns.

[zurew]

49 minutes ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

You seem to be confusing the contents of the dream for the broader context.

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.