Can you STOP?

[Paradroid]

Have you ever tried to stop when you are walking around town,going somewhere?
Just stop.
Stop without a purpose.
Try it.
You can't do it.

You can only stop if you have a purpose to do so.
Purposes such as stopping at traffic lights,looking at shop windows,sitting down to a bench,stopping to smoke a cigarette...
But you can't stop WITHOUT A PURPOSE.
Just try to stop in the middle of the street.
It's nearly impossible.
The rules of the Matrix are so strong.
It's like an invisible wall,an invisible force,which keeps you walking.
Walking,walking,walking...
You are all thinking that you are free,but in reality you are not.
We are all perfect slaves.
Imprisoned in our artificial illusion of freedom.
This "stopping thing" proves that.

 

[Alice?]

Have you ever tried to stop when you are walking around town,going somewhere?
Just stop.
Stop without a purpose.
Try it.
You can't do it.

You can only stop if you have a purpose to do so.

Well, you can't ever really just stop without it having a purpose, or without being acted upon by external forces. You suggesting to try it doesn't really make sense- even if we do try it, it will be with a purpose because you told us to do so and therefore our stopping will have a purpose.

 

[Paradroid]

Yes,exactly Alice.
That's what I meant.
There must always be a reason,a purpose,to do something.
We are enslaved by purpose.
All of our "free will" decisions have a purpose behind them.
Purpose,purpose,purpose.

 

[Alice?]

Yes,exactly Alice.
That's what I meant.
There must always be a reason,a purpose,to do something.
We are enslaved by purpose.
All of our "free will" decisions have a purpose behind them.
Purpose,purpose,purpose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

 

[Paradroid]

Hm.
So,what do you say folks?
Are we just machines then,unable to act outside of the Rule of Purpose?

 

[Alice?]

Hm.
So,what do you say folks?
Are we just machines then,unable to act outside of the Rule of Purpose?

But who says it's purpose? Perhaps we are simply slaves to cause and effect.

 

[Cognisant]

I was in Japan a few years back visiting family (hard to explain, don't ask) and I bought some sushi, went and found some steps to sit on, then got all sorts of weird looks as I ate, eventually I noticed that I was the only one eating on the spot like that, what is a very common behaviour in Australia turned out to be almost taboo in Japan.

They're a very ritualised people... which I like, usually, but dammit I was hungry.

In Brisbane you can do more-or-less whatever you want provided you're not bothering anyone, heck if you stopped in the middle of the street and stared at something it would only be a matter of time until there's a crowd there, trying to see what your staring at so intently, some would even join in for the sheer absurdity of it.
Only two nights ago when I was out walking a clearly drunk woman asked me to give her a piggy-back to her hotel (typical club bimbo, she was wearing heels) and granted she was probably in her early twenties and pretty attractive, I seriously considered it, for about a tenth of a second, then politely declined. As I walked off she called me a pussy, the elaborated by explaining that it means I have a vagina... the hypocrisy of using that as an insult.

 

[Words]

Hm.
So,what do you say folks?
Are we just machines then,unable to act outside of the Rule of Purpose?

I'll stand on "no". I can't prove it but can you prove "yes"?

Yesterday, I ate a sandwich without a purpose. I also inhaled/exhaled without a purpose. I'm writing this without a purpose. I'm also thinking without a purpose.

@Oresama

Any problems with hypocrisy?

 

[Alice?]

I'll stand on "no". I can't prove it but can you prove "yes"?

Yesterday, I ate a sandwich without a purpose. I also inhaled/exhaled without a purpose. I'm writing this without a purpose. I'm also thinking without a purpose.

@Oresama

Any problems with hypocrisy?

I disagree. You ate because your body requires sustinence and without it would continue to slow and eventually begin to die. You inhaled and exhaled because your cells require oxygen. You think because our brains have evolved to do so.

 

[cheese]

Actually Paradroid, the reason I stop so often in the street, unable to take another step forward, is because I am overwhelmed by my sheer lack of purpose and direction. Ostensibly I have goals, destinations, deadlines but they simply cease to matter in the moment.

You could say my 'purpose' is to be free, or some other variant that fits in your framework by struggling against it at a slightly different angle, but I believe your fundamental point - the complaint of the urban-dweller longing for the unrestrained freedom of the natural, primitive world - that we're all needlessly busy and driven by purpose, only applies to those who are such, and while they may number in the billions, they do not comprise the whole of the human race.

Also, the intricate and complex workings of this mysterious universe conspired to determine my response in a vein unsuited to your original intention. Hah, in your face sucker, eat a dickburger asswipe, urmom is so fat etc. Now you will respond in derision-masked anger - OR WILL YOU?! (DUN DUN DUN)

 

[Words]

I disagree. You ate because your body requires sustinence and without it would continue to slow and eventually begin to die. You inhaled and exhaled because your cells require oxygen. You think because our brains have evolved to do so.

But can you prove that?

 

[Deleted member 1424]

only for hammertime!

In all seriousness I do this all the time, especially on campus. Though in general I prefer to wander aimlessly, than sit.... aimlessly (?), though they're both equally purposeless. I think you're just remarking upon the awkwardness of doing so. After all if you stop in the middle of a sidewalk you tend to get in people's way and thus get the fish eye or your toes stepped on. Same reason why you don't stop a car in moving traffic.

 

[Alice?]

only for hammertime! :P

In all seriousness I do this all the time, especially on campus. Though in general I prefer to wander aimlessly, than sit.... aimlessly (?), though they're both equally purposeless. I think you're just remarking upon the awkwardness of doing so. After all if you stop in the middle of a sidewalk you tend to get in people's way and thus get the fish eye or your toes stepped on. Same reason why you don't stop a car in moving traffic.

But you had the purpose of stopping/sitting. You had cause- the thought of stopping and sitting, which ended in the effect of stopping and sitting. The real question is what caused the cause (the thought of stopping)? And from that point on is a long chain of cause and effect relationships extending from negative infinity into positive infinity. I don't think anything is without purpose.

 

[Crazythinker1]

Lets say I'am walking down the street and I stop in the middle of the road without any intention what so ever. I was not acted upon by any known internal or external force. I just stoped....................... Why? My only conclusion would be that an outside force, not known to me had interfered with my free will therby forcing me to stop without my consent.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

@alice
You're making the term 'purpose' far to broad. INTPs love doing that, and it can be useful, but take it to far and suddenly all your specific terms mean the same thing and will thus lose their usefulness. Generally everything has a 'cause,' as things don't tend to get random until the quantum level. However a purpose, is an explicit driving force, not mere whim or chance.

 

[shoeless]

so... why is "purpose" such a bad thing? why is it so enslaving?

we still have free will. if i decide to run out onstage in the middle of the play and strip off all my clothes yelling "jesus save my naked soul!", you could say i have the "purpose" of, i dunno, exhibitionism or demonstrating recklessness or whatever, but what the fuck does the fact that i have an underlying purpose matter? why are you ignoring the element of free will?

frankly, i dont' see the point of this entire discussion.

 

[ashitaria]

You can however, do things without a purpose. Like day-dreaming. There's no purpose of doing it. You just do it. Your mind runs away by itself.

Of course, day-dreaming is the only example I can think off.

 

[addictedkoala]

@alice
You're making the term 'purpose' far to broad. INTPs love doing that, and it can be useful, but take it to far and suddenly all your specific terms mean the same thing and will thus lose their usefulness. Generally everything has a 'cause,' as things don't tend to get random until the quantum level. However a purpose, is an explicit driving force, not mere whim or chance.

I disagree, a cause indicates a driving factor behind something, and purpose is the future (or present) goal of doing something. Inevitably everything has both a cause and a purpose.

I eat a sandwich because I'm hungry. Hunger caused me to eat, with the purpose of not being hungry anymore. Alternatively, I thought of a purpose for eating (not being hungry) and wanting to achieve the purpose caused me to eat. Depending on the order that you think of, the purpose can be the cause or the cause is the purpose, but by having one you must have the other even if it's simply a fulfillment. Obviously this only applies to free choices. If someone pushes you against your will there is clearly no purpose.

edit:

You can however, do things without a purpose. Like day-dreaming. There's no purpose of doing it. You just do it. Your mind runs away by itself.

Of course, day-dreaming is the only example I can think off.

Crap, I think you got me. At least in some circumstances.

 

[ckm]

Determinism makes sense to me. I like it. I don't know if I believe it completely though.

You can however, do things without a purpose. Like day-dreaming. There's no purpose of doing it. You just do it. Your mind runs away by itself.

Of course, day-dreaming is the only example I can think off.

I don't think you can say with certainty that daydreaming has no purpose. I daydream to alleviate boredom. I imagine it has largely unconscious functions too, but I don't have anything to back that up with.

 

[ashitaria]

Determinism makes sense to me. I like it. I don't know if I believe it completely though.



I don't think you can say with certainty that daydreaming has no purpose. I daydream to alleviate boredom. I imagine it has largely unconscious functions too, but I don't have anything to back that up with.

What if, however, it is not out of boredom? What if it happens let's say out of the blue? Taking a walk in the park...and you think about all kinds of things...and you only become conscious of it when you crash into a tree or snap out of it.

Is it still with purpose?

 

[Alice?]

What if, however, it is not out of boredom? What if it happens let's say out of the blue? Taking a walk in the park...and you think about all kinds of things...and you only become conscious of it when you crash into a tree or snap out of it.

Is it still with purpose?

Actually, daydreaming has been said to be a function of a collection of brain regions called the DMN or the Default Mode Network. I believe it's mentioned in this article here: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/the-brain-2/22-anatomy-of-a-brain-fart.
From what I can collect, it would seem that daydreaming does have a purpose.

 

[cheese]

I think "purpose" should be distinguished from "cause". Cause becomes purpose when it is conscious, otherwise it should be treated as another mechanistic process correlated with particular effects.

Of course, people often attempt to edit their pasts and retroactively ascribe "purpose" to their previously confusing behaviour. These people are cheats however, and should be excluded from discussion.

I think - but am not sure - that a lot of experience is simply causal on the unconscious level, involving a multitude of processes occurring behind the scenes of our conscious stage.

I don't know about you, but I don't often eat with the 'purpose' of not getting hungry. I do many things without particular purposes, though the chain of events on the atomic level led to particular actions.

I thought this was another free will and determinism debate, which is why I didn't want to get involved. However it's useful to clarify terms. You cannot ascribe purpose all the way down to the tiniest particle of existence. Purpose is a product of consciousness, which is in all likelihood a product of entirely purposeless (in the sense we understand it) processes that are nonetheless (possibly) governed by what we understand as cause.

The way it's phrased in the OP seems to be leaning towards purpose. This I think is fairly easily debunked, from personal experience and the experience of others here.

On the reductionistic, deterministic level - yes, everything is caused. Our conception of free will though exists on a plane many levels of abstraction above this, and attempting to understand and refute it through mechanistic processes is futile and ignores the incommensurability of the two originating frameworks.

A more interesting question is raised by things such as XIII's personality-change experiment:

Does personal definition - in the sense of having morals, boundaries, tastes, preferences, and so on - restrict our freedom? Is the only way to be free in any meaningful sense to be all-encompassing and through that lose our individuality? Does definition damage freedom?


These questions all boil down to: what is the nature of the self, and how does it transect agency? Can an agent with no preferences be an agent at all?

Which I believe eventually goes back to free will/determinism, and the nature of the self.

(I keep trying to decide whether or not to post this because I'm not sure if it makes sense.)

 

[ashitaria]

Actually, daydreaming has been said to be a function of a collection of brain regions called the DMN or the Default Mode Network. I believe it's mentioned in this article here: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/the-brain-2/22-anatomy-of-a-brain-fart.
From what I can collect, it would seem that daydreaming does have a purpose.

But it's purpose is not something that we consciously know about. It is in fact, subconscious, and we can still live without it, meaning that it is purposeless. Or maybe I'm wrong?

 

[Alice?]

Spoiler

I think "purpose" should be distinguished from "cause". Cause becomes purpose when it is conscious, otherwise it should be treated as another mechanistic process correlated with particular effects.

Of course, people often attempt to edit their pasts and retroactively ascribe "purpose" to their previously confusing behaviour. These people are cheats however, and should be excluded from discussion.

I think - but am not sure - that a lot of experience is simply causal on the unconscious level, involving a multitude of processes occurring behind the scenes of our conscious stage.

I don't know about you, but I don't often eat with the 'purpose' of not getting hungry. I do many things without particular purposes, though the chain of events on the atomic level led to particular actions.

I thought this was another free will and determinism debate, which is why I didn't want to get involved. However it's useful to clarify terms. You cannot ascribe purpose all the way down to the tiniest particle of existence. Purpose is a product of consciousness, which is in all likelihood a product of entirely purposeless (in the sense we understand it) processes that are nonetheless (possibly) governed by what we understand as cause.

The way it's phrased in the OP seems to be leaning towards purpose. This I think is fairly easily debunked, from personal experience and the experience of others here.

On the reductionistic, deterministic level - yes, everything is caused. Our conception of free will though exists on a plane many levels of abstraction above this, and attempting to understand and refute it through mechanistic processes is futile and ignores the incommensurability of the two originating frameworks.

A more interesting question is raised by things such as XIII's personality-change experiment:

Does personal definition - in the sense of having morals, boundaries, tastes, preferences, and so on - restrict our freedom? Is the only way to be free in any meaningful sense to be all-encompassing and through that lose our individuality? Does definition damage freedom?


These questions all boil down to: what is the nature of the self, and how does it transect agency? Can an agent with no preferences be an agent at all?

Which I believe eventually goes back to free will/determinism, and the nature of the self.

(I keep trying to decide whether or not to post this because I'm not sure if it makes sense.)

Thanks for that Cheese, I think it makes sense. I want to answer the question too, but it's something I'll have to think about for a while until I can convert my ideas to text format.

 

[RubberDucky451]

I stopped last week, I was looking at the reflection of a tree in a water puddle.

 

[Chimera]

I stopped last week, I was looking at the reflection of a tree in a water puddle.

Reminds me of when I stopped to look at the reflection of the sky in a puddle of rainwater in the road. Other people around the street stopped to watch me looking at it. I promptly felt ridiculous for stopping to stare into a puddle, and snapped into that "jeez, what must they be thinking? I have to look like a loony..." mindset and then, just as soon as it came, it was gone. Left behind was my devil-may-care attitude. So what if they think I'm bizarre? The sky in a puddle of rainwater is fascinating, and I'll look at it if I damn well please, thank you very much.
Hmpf. People and their opinions. ​

Mildly more on topic...
I aim to be purposeless. As soon as I achieve that, I'll cease to exist. ​

mmmm I need to sleep more than half an hour a night...​

 

[RubberDucky451]

Reminds me of when I stopped to look at the reflection of the sky in a puddle of rainwater in the road. Other people around the street stopped to watch me looking at it. I promptly felt ridiculous for stopping to stare into a puddle, and snapped into that "jeez, what must they be thinking? I have to look like a loony..." mindset and then, just as soon as it came, it was gone. Left behind was my devil-may-care attitude. So what if they think I'm bizarre? The sky in a puddle of rainwater is fascinating, and I'll look at it if I damn well please, thank you very much.
Hmpf. People and their opinions. ​

Mildly more on topic...
I aim to be purposeless. As soon as I achieve that, I'll cease to exist. ​

mmmm I need to sleep more than half an hour a night...​

I've always believed you can find anything interesting if you ask "why" enough times. Kinda' like Richard Feynman

YouTube- Feynman 'Fun to Imagine' 4: Magnets (and 'Why?' questions...)

 

[Paradroid]

Yes,there is always a "why",the reason behind your behaviour.
The purpose.
Most of our purposes are unconscious,but they still are there.
Like eating a sandwich for example,you don't consciously think about any purposes when doing so,but the purpose or the cause is always there,hidden behind those many "why?" questions.
Daydreaming seems totally spontaneuos,but is it really that?
Dreams just come to you,you didn't consciously create them,but all dreams still have some logic and hidden meanings behind them,in other words they have purpose of some kind.
Just think about the words of Mr.Smith in Matrix Reloaded,before that Neo vs 100 Smiths fight.
"We are not here because we are free.We are here because we are not free."
They were both slaves,Neo and Mr.Smith,driven by purpose.
And in the end of the Matrix trilogy they destroy each other,fulfilling their purpose,and then the new Matrix is created,filled with new purposes,a new program code...
The "Prophecy of the One" was a lie.
And also the choice between the 2 doors in the Source (in Matrix Reloaded) was a lie,it was an illusion of free will,illusion of choice,given to Neo(the most "free" person in existence).
Obey or disobey,the choice didn't really matter.
Two doors,two hands of the same entity:the Matrix.