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tsuki

What am I?

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4 hours ago, now is forever said:

but i thought maybe that’s what gurdjieff was also talking about that’s why i mentioned it. i‘m not sure, though. just thought a fool knows - but that would mean i‘m outing me to think of myself as not an idiot.... preposterous.

That's the difference between idiot and a fool/jester.

  • A perfect idiot in @Zigzag Idiot's sense cannot know that he is an idiot, as the notion of idiocy itself is a manifestation of the common delusion he's secluding himself from.
  • A fool on the other hand is self-aware and uses his detachment from society in a constructive manner.
    A fool is not an idiot as he takes a vital (albeit counter-intuitive) role in the circus of the human affairs.

A fool cannot give away too much of the show, however, as that would be destructive. The best fools look nothing like fools.
They become Zen masters.

Hmm, it is safe to discuss fool's matters with other fools?

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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It is safe if both parties are striving Fools. Those who are working on themselves.

A perfect Idiot is a Realized Idiot. Realized Idiot has awakened Conscience and is not concerned with appearances of being self contradictory.

A striving fool or a Perfect Idiot will walk into the street and point at a sign and say, "That sign is crooked."


"To have a free mind is to be a universal heretic." - A.H. Almaas

"We have to bless the living crap out of everyone." - Matt Kahn

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Yesterday I started to read Spinoza's Ethics.
I've been interested in it for quite a while now, but Corporeal Fantasy podcast finally pushed me to read it.
The biggest difficulty for now is the outdated language of my translation, but is is its greatest strength at the same time.

I have a looming objection that Spinoza defines god into existence.
He creates definitions of what god is and then, out of these definitions - he concludes that it is a necessity.
In the postmodern world where truth is relative to the perceiver, it is very easy to dismiss this approach as childish when the child speaks of the absolute.

If I were to treat this work in a post-rational way, I would perceive his propositions as the account of experience and interpret them in such a way that they would make sense. I would have to recontextualize reality to fit the book and let Spinoza in to mess with my being.
Hmm, should I let him do it? He looks like a wise man...

In post-rational world, this book would be a program to be uploaded onto the mainframe.
I went through that with Heidegger before. It was the turning point in my life.

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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I'm still thinking about how Spinoza approaches God.
My internal objection is that he creates a bunch of definitions and axioms that support each other and lead to the conclusion that god must necessarily exist (in the way he describes it). The objection comes from recognition that it is possible to reverse-engineer this conclusion to produce this set of propositions. This whole structure would then simply be a castle made of sand that is supposed to support an ungrounded belief.

That objection is just disrespectful towards the author given what he's been through for writing this book in 17th century.


Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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Apparently, Spinoza's work is the expression of principle of sufficient reason.
This is a form of absolute causality, where things either:

  1. are caused by other things
  2. cause themselves

While the first point is easy for me to understand, the second one is more counter-intuitive.
Spinoza seems to be saying that something causes itself if it cannot be conceived as non-existent. This conceiving-of is nothing other than internal logical consistency of a definition, like for example - a triangle. Triangle exists because it is not self-contradictory, but square circle does not exist because it contradicts itself.

PSR does not exclude infinite chains of cause and effect as long as we treat these chains as caused by something else.
So, if every cause has an effect, then definitions are the terminating conditions for all existence. 

If this is a correct explanation of his reasoning, then it falls flat on its face for me, as it does not account for ambiguity of language.
Of course, that is only if I choose language to be primary to definitions and it may very well be that it is not the case.

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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12 hours ago, tsuki said:

Spinoza seems to be saying that something causes itself if it cannot be conceived as non-existent. This conceiving-of is nothing other than internal logical consistency of a definition, like for example - a triangle. Triangle exists because it is not self-contradictory, but square circle does not exist because it contradicts itself.

The example of the triangle is not correct.
Apparently, there has to be a cause for both:

  • the existence of something
  • the non-existence of something

A square circle cannot exist, as its nature is self-contradictory. The essence of a triangle however, does not imply that a triangle exists.
That is because Spinoza not only believes in the principle of sufficient reason, but also in Occam's razor:

Quote
  1. The true definition of each thing neither involves nor expresses anything except the nature of the thing defined. From which it follows that:
  2. No definition involves or expresses any certain number of individuals, since a definition expresses only the nature of the thing defined. For example, the definition of triangle expresses only the simple nature of the triangle, not any particular number of triangles. It should also be noted that
  3. There must be, for each existing thing, a certain cause for its existing. Finally, it should be noted that
  4. The cause on account of which a thing exists must either •be contained in the very nature and definition of the existing thing (which means that it pertains to the nature of the thing to exist) or •be outside it.

So, it does not follow that particular triangles exist from the definition of a triangle. All particular triangles are contingent beings that have a cause outside of it. In the case of square circle, however, there can be no particular square circles, as the essence of a square circle is self-contradictory.

Apparently, the only thing from which it follows that it exists is substance.
That is because it is defined as something that is conceived through itself, and because substances are disjoint (there are no two substances of the same essence). From these two statements follow that one substance cannot cause another (they cannot interact), so substances cannot be created.
Since they cannot be created, and yet are conceived, then it means (for Spinoza) that it lies within their nature to exist.
Conception for Spinoza seems to be a sufficient condition for existence.

This whole argument just reeks of circularity, which is hilarious because substance is defined as such.

It seems like Spinoza lies down the internal logic of his argument up front and proves that it is internally consistent and expects me to just follow his line of reasoning until he fleshes out the definitions with descriptions. I'm kind of hesitant to do that because at the point of fleshing out, I may very well be too invested into what he presents to care whether I can relate to it or not. Again, I seem to be afraid of dying and letting Spinoza in.

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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My objections towards Spinoza's approach are slowly fading.
My main apprehension was that it was a kind of psychologism, but now I understand that from his point of view it would not be like that at all.

I was seeing it as a kind of psychologism because his method seems to imply that there are things that can be true simply because I can conceive them. It was a very sneaky thought as it implies that this personal I conceives anything and that I have the free will to do anything at all. In Spinoza's world, everything is determined in accordance to PSR and my free will is just an illusion.

This way, the conceiving is something prior to "me", as the personal "I" is simply the necessary conclusion of the causally related world. In this sense, I do not conceive anything - it is God that conceives itself through me. I believe that this is what Spinoza would reply to the objection that his philosophy is simply a study of the way the human mind works.

Of course, this argument requires me to first believe in PSR and all of Spinoza's definitions and propositions so it feels like this:

scorpion_teleport_by_cinzero_fall2112-dcc9hjc.gif


Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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http://spinozaetnous.org/wiki/

Here's a wiki dedicated to Spinoza's work.
Too bad it's in French, but google translate does a wonderful job.

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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20 hours ago, tsuki said:

Conception for Spinoza seems to be a sufficient condition for existence.

I've never looked into Spinoza but from what you said, I'm reminded of Ken Wilburs mention of the Causal realm. Modern day Christian mystic Cynthia Bourgeault has used the term Imaginal realm. 

The Imaginal/ Causal realm,,,

Hanna Moog and Carol Anthony with their revised ICHING-The Oracle Of The Cosmic Way writes about the realm of the atom as the realm of Consciousness and manifestation,,,,,


"To have a free mind is to be a universal heretic." - A.H. Almaas

"We have to bless the living crap out of everyone." - Matt Kahn

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26 minutes ago, Zigzag Idiot said:

The Imaginal/ Causal realm,,,

I did a quick search on the Imaginal from Cynthia Bourgeault and came across this article.
Even though it is very rudimentary, a term noetics picked my interest and I found this article (polish).
Unfortunately, the English version is not very developed, but it seems to imply that Spinoza did in fact think in terms of this "paranormal" ability to perceive reality. It seems to agree with my conclusion that I posted here:

Thank you for the pointer @Zigzag Idiot .


Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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Here was a link, but it was obnoxious. I'll post a pretty picture instead:

800px-Spinoza_-_Structure_Logique_en_Éthique.png

It's the logical structure of Spinoza's first 6 propositions.

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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Here's a little hierarchy that expresses what I understand about the basic building blocks of Spinoza's ontology.
 

Quote

E1A1: Whatever exists is either in itself or in something else. 
E1A2: What can’t be conceived through something else must be conceived through itself.
E1A3: From a given determinate cause the effect follows necessarily; and, converse

With respect to causality, there are two kinds of objects:

  1. Those that are dependent on other objects
  2. Those that are dependent on themselves

The first object is mode, the other is substance:

Quote

E1D3: By ‘substance’ I understand: what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e. that whose concept doesn’t have to be formed out of the concept of something else.

Quote

E1D5: By ‘mode’ I understand: a state of a substance, i.e. something that exists in and is conceived through something else.

In this reading, 'conceiving through', and 'exists in' express causality.
Substances are conceived through themselves because they are their own cause. 
Modes depend on other modes, or/and (eventually) on substance:

Quote

In passing I should like to note here that the more recent Peripatetics have, as I think, misunderstood the demonstration by which the Ancients tried to prove God’s existence. For as I find it in a certain Jew, called Rab Chasdai, it runs as follows: if there is an infinite regress of causes, then all things that are will also have been caused; but it does not pertain to anything which has been caused, to exist necessarily by the force of its own nature; therefore, there is nothing in Nature to whose essence it pertains to exist necessarily; but the latter is absurd; therefore, the former is also. Hence the force of this argument does not lie in the impossibility of there being an actual infinite or an infinite regress of causes, but only in the supposition that things which do not exist necessarily by their own nature are not determined to exist by a thing which does necessarily exist by its own nature. [Ep. 12| IV/61/15–62/10; italics added]

In this passage, Spinoza follows the late medieval Jewish philosopher Hasdai Crescas in rejecting the Aristotelian ban on actual infinity (see Melamed 2014). For Spinoza (and Crescas) the existence of an infinite regress of causes is perfectly legitimate. Yet, if all the items in this infinite chain are contingent beings (i.e., “things which do not exist necessarily by their own nature”[7]), the chain itself remains a contingent being, and there must be a reason which explains its instantiation in reality.

(https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/#Spin)

So, basically - it is entirely possible for Spinoza to have an infinite chain of modes, as long as it is necessarily caused.
If that is the case, then everything has to finally point to a substance as its original cause.

Then, there are attributes and essence that are related to these two objects:

Quote

E1D4: By ‘attribute’ I understand: what the intellect perceives of a substance as constituting its essence.
E2D2: I say that to the ‘essence’ of a thing x belongs anything without which x can neither exist nor be conceived, and which can neither exist nor be conceived without x.

So, essence is the collection of things that are necessary for x to be conceived (caused).
Removal of anything that is essential would prevent x from arising.

Attribute seems to be that, which the essence of x is made of.
It is one of the things that are necessary for x to be conceived (caused) and is included in the essence.
The key thing here I think is the inclusion of the intellect into the definition. I have not seen Spinoza to talk about it yet.
It seems like substances have attributes that make up their essence and these attributes are perceived by the intellect.

It follows from his argument (E1P7) that the essence of substance is existence, and - by the above definitions, the intellect perceives this essence as attribute (attributes?). 

EDIT: Now that's an epiphany
Is it possible that by essence, Spinoza means the activity that ties properties together that cause something?
Is it possible then that attributes are just beings that take part in essence?

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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Wow! I could barely follow you on some of that,,, but regarding some of what you summarized below, I've left my interpretation of what to me seems a close match. 

I also could be off in left field from what you're saying,,,, I do that a lot of times in my interpretations.

Anyway, 

4 hours ago, tsuki said:

Attribute seems to be that, which the essence of x is made of.
It is one of the things that are necessary for x to be conceived (caused) and is included in the essence.
The key thing here I think is the inclusion of the intellect into the definition. I have not seen Spinoza to talk about it yet.
It seems like substances have attributes that make up their essence and these attributes are perceived by the intellect.

It follows from his argument (E1P7) that the essence of substance is existence, and - by the above definitions, the intellect perceives this essence as attribute (attributes?). 

EDIT: Now that's an epiphany
Is it possible that by essence, Spinoza means the activity that ties properties together that cause something?
Is it possible then that attributes are just beings that take part in essence?

In following the Ridhwan School Diamond Approach on my own, my experience has matched some of what Hammed has written in his books. More so with the Psychological explanations than with the ontological experiences.

Being is Presence. Presence is made of Being. Being is composed of Essence. Essence has qualitative aspects, flavors of essence /essential aspects- Strength, Compassion, Merging, Peace, Intelligence, Will, etc,,,

 

I was going to do it in my oun words but have decided to use one of his Glossary quotes to finish my point so I can then ask, does this relate to your interpretation of Spinoza?

 

Absorption of all Essential Aspects into the Personal Essence

So the capacity to be without this ego sense of self eliminates selectivity in one’s personal experience of essential qualities, opening the consciousness to an unlimited range of qualities. The absence of inner selectivity due to cessation of the feeling of self, coupled with the openness to expansion due to disidentincation from ego inadequacy, allows a new possibility of realization. It makes it possible to complete the process of personalization of Essence, which is the absorption of all essential aspects into the Personal Essence, or the synthesis of all aspects into a personal presence. The essential aspects now constitute the very substance of the Personal Essence. One not only feels one is a full personal presence, but that this very same presence includes the presence of Love, Joy, Strength, Compassion, Merging, Peace, Intelligence, Will, Consciousness, etc. Aspects are simultaneously personalized, with their capacities and functions integrated. This is a condition of  completeness, of an amazing degree of integration. One is full and firm, strong and soft, sweet and warm, and so on. One is a complete person. This does not mean that one’s personal presence from now on is always this complete state. It indicates that one is able to be present in this expanded state of Being. The Personal Essence is an organic and fluid presence; there is no rigidity in it at all. All its states, through the whole process of its realization and development, are available to it now, manifesting according to the situation. Practically, this realization allows the capacity to be personal in any of the essential aspects, or any combination of them, depending on the demands of the situation. The complete state of the Personal Essence brings a perception of one’s presence as preciousness, beauty and regality. It is no wonder that the Personal Essence is called in some stories, the Princess Precious Pearl. 

Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 391

Edited by Zigzag Idiot

"To have a free mind is to be a universal heretic." - A.H. Almaas

"We have to bless the living crap out of everyone." - Matt Kahn

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5 hours ago, tsuki said:

So, basically - it is entirely possible for Spinoza to have an infinite chain of modes, as long as it is necessarily caused.
If that is the case, then everything has to finally point to a substance as its original cause.

Then, there are attributes and essence that are related to these two objects:

This sounds very similar to the Cosmological side of Gurdjieffs knowledge.

He taught the 'Ray of Creation' descending from the Absolute on an octave of seven. Which is a basis for the law of seven that is also called the law of Octaves, displayed by the enneagram.

I thought of this the other day when someone mentioned always having difficulty with a 'super effort' aim of no fap at a certain stage. This is telltale aspect of the law of seven. On the enneagram there is a space which relates to resistance against ones aim in time. Any aim. Knowing about this allows one to complete aims more often instead of going in a circle.

Im going to stop here and ponder on all this.


"To have a free mind is to be a universal heretic." - A.H. Almaas

"We have to bless the living crap out of everyone." - Matt Kahn

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2 hours ago, Zigzag Idiot said:

I was going to do it in my oun words but have decided to use one of his Glossary quotes to finish my point so I can then ask, does this relate to your interpretation of Spinoza?

It does not relate to my interpretation of Spinoza, because I'm just 20 pages into the book.
However, my high level view of his work suggests that he may conclude that in the last part of the book.
I can relate to what you've quoted from experience though.

2 hours ago, Zigzag Idiot said:

Wow! I could barely follow you on some of that,,, but regarding some of what you summarized below, I've left my interpretation of what to me seems a close match. 

I can barely follow myself ;). The key to understanding any of that is understanding what a substance is. You can understand that either by stumbling into this problem by yourself, or - by reading Descartes (which Spinoza argues with). The key here I think is that substance is basically a self-defining concept. Descartes concluded that there are two substances - mind and body. These substances do not interact with each other and because of that, he was left with the famous mind-body problem that Spinoza solves.
His idea is that Descartes is wrong in concluding that there are two distinct substances and proves that on the grounds of logic.
Ethics is built as a set of propositions that mimic Euclid's Geometry for that reason.

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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22 minutes ago, tsuki said:

The key here I think is that substance is basically a self-defining concept.

I have a thick skull or a one track mind. To me this still points to 'aspects of essence'.

Side note: Arnold Keyserling said Euclid was one of the greatest assholes in history because he invented arithmetic.

I found the Humor in this because I can't do math at all beyond basic math.

 


"To have a free mind is to be a universal heretic." - A.H. Almaas

"We have to bless the living crap out of everyone." - Matt Kahn

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51 minutes ago, Zigzag Idiot said:

I have a thick skull or a one track mind. To me this still points to 'aspects of essence'.

I don't think that you do. It may very well point to it, but I haven't followed that pointer yet.
I have an intuitive sense that you are right, but the whole point of reading Ethics is to see it in terms of something else than intuition.
(or at least in baby steps of intuition)

I am an INTJ and intuition is my strongest forte. It feels like magic.


Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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Just to leave a breadcrumb for myself - I vanished into:

  1. Re-capping statistics
  2. Then I got into Bayesian statistics
  3. Then it lead me to quantitative finance
  4. Which took me back to machine learning

Now, I'm playing with time series analysis with Bayesian statistics.


Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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Half a month later - I'm still entangled with bayesian machine learning with PYMC.
So far, I was able to create a autoregressive model for stock price forecasting in PYMC3.
For now, moving average models have the upper hand on me - I can't find any solid introduction on them.
Anything I'm able to find is either:

  1. Good old arxiv article written in plain mathematical Voodoo
  2. Failing to describe the actual process of parameter estimation of the model

So far, I was able to implement an example of MA model from STAN's documentation, but we have a disagreement with python interpreter about its correctness. That cheeky bastard actually swallows the program no with problems, but then, when I try to sample from the model - it crashes. The actual python interpreter crashes. It makes me think that It's a bug in PYMC, or Theano, but it just seems like I'm excusing myself for my lack of skill.

What makes me think that I'm correct? Well, as funny as it sounds - this implementation is the only one that makes sense to me and if I introduce a bug, it samples, but the output is rubbish. I implemented it twice in two different ways and it crashed both times. Wrrrrr >:(

So - it seems like I'm back to buying into the life's stories of necessary success. It's a refreshing change, actually believing in something.
I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

Edited by tsuki

Bearing with the conditioned in gentleness, fording the river with resolution, not neglecting what is distant, not regarding one's companions; thus one may manage to walk in the middle. H11L2

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