What's the worst truth you had to acknowledge?

[Minuend]

What is the worst thing you had to admit or change according to? How did your life or habits change? Why did you do it?

 

[ZenRaiden]

What is the worst thing you had to admit or change according to?

Truth just is. So it is what it is.
So I guess you have to admit some beliefs are always liable to change.
With that solutions to problems don't necessarily exist.
But that is hardly surprising or new to me.

I guess the hardest? But kind of universal truth and a running theme is you could have done better in the past?

To be honest I don't know.

 

[PiedPiper]

That it doesn't matter how much you regret something, you cant change it.
That the world is what it is, suffering is constant and must be accepted in some way.
That the God so many were raised to believe in is a fraud and a liar. Caring not for the plight of humanity.
That you are all you truly have in this world.

 

[Daddy]

That I can't do everything myself; I have to rely on other people for lots of things; and those other people are generally not going to care about what's in my best interest. They are often motivated to screw me in some way and denigrate my well-being, if it suits them. Life sometimes feels like a war of trying not to be brought down by everyone around me, while still having the energy left to actually enjoy victory.

 

[birdsnestfern]

If you you are a free spirit, and you have a choice, try not to marry, skip having kids, just stay a free spirit. I think INTP is a homebody, but also needs to stay as free as possible so give yourself abundant choices and keep them open.

What you have in your life, keep pruning back, keep tilling the soil, turn things over, clip things out, over and over, keep turning the soil until what is left is rich beautiful fertile soil and healthy green leaves. This is your garden of life, so plant what you intend to love and keep gardening to make yourself a good place on earth. You may have to learn to be a master gardener and you may have to be the Sunshine, the Rain, the Soil, and the Plant, the fruit and then the cook. Oh no, the sky is falling!

Love, Henny Penny.

Henny Penny - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[dr froyd]

@birdsnestfern I've never been married, but I think you are right

 

[Hadoblado]

It's hard to pick one. It feels like my entire life is a series of shifts where I unenthusiastically cede to some uncomfortable belief. I don't like calling these "truths", too many people assume their beliefs exceptional in some way. I think of it more as ground surrendered from optimism.

There are two that are doing me a doozy as they compound:
The first is that people are morally bankrupt and corrupt as a rule. If someone is pure it's most likely because they haven't been given the motive or opportunity.
The second is that most large-scale goals are only going to be achieved by operating through this corruption (or violently supplanting them only to become corrupt yourself).

Every time I feel I'm sufficiently disillusioned, I am proven wrong time and time again.

 

[Puffy]

There have definitely been ‘harsh truths’ and disappointments I’ve had to acknowledge. Usually related to a form of loss or death - of lovers, friends, belief systems, attachments, aspects of myself.

However each time has been a form of cleansing or purification ultimately, each time after the shake-up has settled my life has gotten better and easier. Most things I’ve been attached to came with a certain form of heaviness and through the purging of them I’ve become cleaner and as a result happier.

The truth is a cleansing force. If ‘the truth’ makes someone feel heavier then their mind is probably filled with heavy thoughts and needs a bit of cleaning. That’s just my perspective though.

 

[onesteptwostep]

That's a difficult question to answer because I don't affirmatively acknowledge truths, but absorb and evolve with it, subplanting previous notions or "truths" to arrive at a higher or elevated structure. The one reality or truth, is that I seem oblivious to such divings into the abyss, because I seem to be in the moment of it. I guess that's just the reaches of the human spirit.

It's always something in motion, and never static.

I guess that's the freedom but also the very mortality of humans.

If I had to reflect, I would say that I'd probably change perspectives if I were given new responsibilities. If I had things to lose, and things to protect, I could come at this from a different disposition.

---

Honestly speaking though, I am pretty darn resilient, but teamwork and working in sync with a group would be difficult for me. Perhaps it's selfishness, but in do or die situations I feel the sheer cool of loneliness. That in itself is poetic and listless, but often times others come in at miraculous times to fill in the holes which I cannot. That, I think is a marvelous truth, if that be one. I think that 'faith in grace' is a great heritage I've been instilled.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

The worst truths are things that I wish were different.

If I could I would give myself infinite time to live and perfect health and make other people less greedy than they are.

 

[Minuend]

It's hard to pick one. It feels like my entire life is a series of shifts where I unenthusiastically cede to some uncomfortable belief. I don't like calling these "truths", too many people assume their beliefs exceptional in some way. I think of it more as ground surrendered from optimism.

There are two that are doing me a doozy as they compound:
The first is that people are morally bankrupt and corrupt as a rule. If someone is pure it's most likely because they haven't been given the motive or opportunity.
The second is that most large-scale goals are only going to be achieved by operating through this corruption (or violently supplanting them only to become corrupt yourself).

Every time I feel I'm sufficiently disillusioned, I am proven wrong time and time again.

That's interesting. I guess I tend to think people doesn't have the interest, time, sources, inspiration etc to evaluate their morals and as result they have morals bases on the limited sources they are exposed to. It's not that people are morally bankrupt per se, it's that they have limited ability to live according to the morals they think right, or have limited exposure to why they might be wrong or other reasons that interfere with logical and moral consistency. Like, I'm pretty sure my mother would be vegan if she didn't have to make food for all her relatives, family and friends, and didn't feel strong discomfort for having to live against what most people think is ok and right. She has empathy with animals and care about them, but her life doesn't give room to live according to what she think is right. She is already chronically ill, she wouldn't be able to handle all the criticism coming her way for choosing different from the majority. I see people as fragile, I guess. Except from the narcissists, psychopaths etc who exploit, ofc.

I agree with the way I understand your second point, though. Like, if you want to influence society you need to go all in abusing and exploiting where you become rich enough to have power to influence the narrative.

 

[Hadoblado]

I'll respond to this later Minu, I'm in a crunch atm. I agree with your point, but am moving the goalposts

 

[Puffy]

If you want to influence society for the good just be a warm-hearted, good person and do something you care about. People too often think in terms of the macro, that you need to make some Muskian heroic effort to change the narrative on the macro level. Small is beautiful. Just be good and touch peoples hearts on the micro-level.

Change is about collective accountability. That starts with us being accountable for our very small part of the overall situation. If everyone did the same everything would change overnight.

 

[Hadoblado]

Strong disagree Puffy.

Microscale improvements will have microscale consequences. That doesn't make them meaningless, but it doesn't make macroscale consequences.

"IF" is doing an enormous amount of work there. IF everyone all made a change this would work. IF we didn't have individuality and a diversity of perspectives and material conditions THEN there wouldn't be a problem.

Something being technically possible doesn't matter. It's not going to happen just because one person changed their own habits unless that person is doing so via a medium that reaches the macroscale.

You can concentrate on your own life, and that will make your life better, but it won't influence society basically at all. A good example is carbon emissions. You can reduce your personal footprint, and you might even influence others to reduce theirs, but that doesn't change the fact that carbon-footprints are a PR term invented by fossil fuel companies intended to shift the blame onto others so that they can keep their industry going. It won't prevent climate change.

Edit:
So I agree people should be warm, kind-hearted etc., but I think that the people this gives the most benefit to are the people that do it. I'm pushing myself toward this transformation out of self-interest.

 

[Hadoblado]

Re: Minu
Okay, so I think we probably agree. When I talk about people being morally bankrupt and corrupt as a rule, this is talking about people, not persons. What I mean by this is that to the extent people have the power to benefit from moral bankruptcy and corruption, they on average will. So when talking about the state of the world, where the institutions that move the world are made up of the mean of many people (large sample size with a distinct effect), these institutions are basically always garbage.

So there's kind of two distinct claims:
1) Most people who aren't garbage just haven't had the opportunity to be garbage.
2) Persons can be non-garbage but the mean output of a group of people trends toward garbage as n increases.

I'm focusing on (2), as (1) has been my assumption for most of my life and doesn't really matter to me. People have reaction ranges and for the most part values, perspective, and moral outlook is a product of circumstance.

 

[Puffy]

Strong disagree Puffy.

Microscale improvements will have microscale consequences. That doesn't make them meaningless, but it doesn't make macroscale consequences.

"IF" is doing an enormous amount of work there. IF everyone all made a change this would work. IF we didn't have individuality and a diversity of perspectives and material conditions THEN there wouldn't be a problem.

Something being technically possible doesn't matter. It's not going to happen just because one person changed their own habits unless that person is doing so via a medium that reaches the macroscale.

You can concentrate on your own life, and that will make your life better, but it won't influence society basically at all. A good example is carbon emissions. You can reduce your personal footprint, and you might even influence others to reduce theirs, but that doesn't change the fact that carbon-footprints are a PR term invented by fossil fuel companies intended to shift the blame onto others so that they can keep their industry going. It won't prevent climate change.

Edit:
So I agree people should be warm, kind-hearted etc., but I think that the people this gives the most benefit to are the people that do it. I'm pushing myself toward this transformation out of self-interest.

As well as the people in their orbit, they benefit as well.

I think my point is that we’re all microscale individuals so we’re accountable for our micro-scale orbit. I might spend a weekend planting trees in my local district instead of trying to build some global business that tackles larger issues. Maybe I persuade a few friends to come do it with me. But that’s fine, I can’t be expected to be responsible for change on the macro level and neither should you. That’s an unreasonable expectation to put on oneself.

My issue with Muskian thinking is that it puts too much emphasis on individual heroes to do things. That has the effect of lowering the accountability and autonomy of others, who become dependent on some saviour who will do things for them. “I don’t need to do anything about climate change as Musk is making electronic cars” etc. When really these are things that impact on all of our ways of living and are things we all need to make changes to address. I would rather mirror collective accountability to other people than Muskian thinking.

So to me from that mindset, work on healing myself and being a mature accountable adult, work on projects I care about that make positive contributions to the local land and community, assist others with what capacity I have, raise the next generation to be more conscious than the last. This is more than enough for any small human to do.

 

[Hadoblado]

Just FYI equating Musk with any form of altruism or betterment of mankind is not an understanding we share. It complicates the discourse because I see him as antithetical to those things.

As for what you're saying, I don't think you're wrong all the way. You're saying stick to the microscale. My point in this thread that if you want to change things on a macro scale, this requires infinite bullshit. These views aren't mutually exclusive afaik. I will most likely commit to the microscale after all. It's good for me. I'm not saying there's an obligation to address these issues, just that by doing small things you are not addressing these issues. As someone who wants humanity to leave Earth in a meaningful way, I would like some agency over the result and that comes with compromises I'm not willing to make (and frankly don't have the opportunity to).

 

[Puffy]

Just FYI equating Musk with any form of altruism or betterment of mankind is not an understanding we share. It complicates the discourse because I see him as antithetical to those things.

As for what you're saying, I don't think you're wrong all the way. You're saying stick to the microscale. My point in this thread that if you want to change things on a macro scale, this requires infinite bullshit. These views aren't mutually exclusive afaik. I will most likely commit to the microscale after all. It's good for me. I'm not saying there's an obligation to address these issues, just that by doing small things you are not addressing these issues. As someone who wants humanity to leave Earth in a meaningful way, I would like some agency over the result and that comes with compromises I'm not willing to make (and frankly don't have the opportunity to).

I don't personally see someone like Musk as an altruist btw. He comes across like another narcissistic psychopath to me.

But fair enough, I think you're right it's not right to conclude that everyone who goes about trying to create macro organisations for macro problems are like him, or would necessarily drive it in a heroic way as opposed to a more collaborative way. Big organisations are made up of lots of people making their own contributions as well.

I think a part of why I use him as an example is that due to deeply-ingrained individualism we can be inclined towards grandiosity, of thinking what we need to do as individuals to be super-heroes and solve these big problems. Where these aren't problems for individuals to solve, it's a problem for <8 billion people to solve. From that perspective it's more humble to me to be realistic about our limitations and to do that. Some of us are natural born leaders and can lead these bigger orgs, some of us are geniuses and can contribute engineering innovations, etc; some of us are more humble in what we're capable of so all we can do is cut wood and carry water.

 

[BurnedOut]

Surprisingly, people are not evil in most cases but simply selfish. It was an amazing realization that seemed to click to me which explained a lot of mysterious behaviour and the absurd gap between intention and action. The ability to be evil is a consciously cultivated one and hence most acts of psychological cruelty at the least are a result of misguided intention but being evil requires tonnes of excogitation and conscious plotting. If you don't distinguish between the two, you will certainly turn into a blathering nihilist for life.

Secondly, if there is a God, it is a fucking jerk. I won't assign any gender to it because it is a concept worth spitting on and then shitting on. I will personally kill God if I find it anymore in the world. It is the world's first large scale scam (self-help no less, the first scam that humans invented) promoting victimization tendencies and actively motivating people to chip away at their rationality and making them forego the only power they have by virtue of their existence and metacognition. But it does not exist. So fuck you Jesus, you motherfucking coward who got all your followers killed in the process and spawned the Apostles who wrote the world's first joke book named the Old Testament, so full of shit that if they replace toilet paper with its pages, I would happily wipe my arse with it. The same goes for Allah and any other bearded motherfucker who walked the earth and got enshrined as God.

Thirdly, love requires more than just intuition or some garbage notion of heart fluttering and all that. You have to maintain it and it is more often than not a ritual than something palpable or tangible. Love at first sight is true but loving someone forever is a function of familiarity and convenience and the sooner you accept it, the better lover you shall be as you will be better equipped to appreciate your partner who brings overall stability to your life.

Fourthly, an unexamined life is not worth living. If you don't have the courage to examine your own thoughts, better go and commit suicide and stop living somehow because your presence is futile, your death does not matter and you are tinier than a virus from the macroscope of the universe and hence if you cannot even spare time for metacognition, then you are a worthless piece of shit who deserves all the contempt and abuse because the only thing that makes you human is something you won't consciously allow yourself to do to validate your own humanity. And hence justice is best served cold to every ignoramus in the form of truth. Therefore if you feel contempt and rage at someone who repeatedly consciously refuses to look at reality, it is completely valid and rational and you are not at all wrong for spewing the truth and causing an unintentional or intentional self-obliteration to that person. Denying the truth and then refusing to think about your thinking makes you nothing more than an automaton of flesh and blood and a living and breathing burden on everybody around you. If you cannot bother to look at the truth, understand and seek knowledge or think of somebody else's experience and reflect on your own, you are nothing but a bug waiting to be squashed and have your airspace and physical space usurped and it will be completely valid. Therefore if you think being closed minded is cool or decrying someone's experience as invalid or calling your knowledge superior in the face of reality, then all the persecution in the world is awaiting you and it will be absolutely moral for you to get abused and crushed or tossed out like a tiny pebble bouncing off the tire of a car. There is nothing that makes humanity more miserable than the simple act of wilful ignorance.

 

[BurnedOut]

I don't personally see someone like Musk as an altruist btw. He comes across like another narcissistic psychopath to me.

Talking about Musky boy, you should see how often he goes and runs his scam of crypto on YouTube and other platforms

 

[Puffy]

I don't personally see someone like Musk as an altruist btw. He comes across like another narcissistic psychopath to me.

Talking about Musky boy, you should see how often he goes and runs his scam of crypto on YouTube and other platforms

In general, I think it's fair to say that someone doesn't become a billionaire through being a nice person.

 

[Minuend]

Re: Minu
Okay, so I think we probably agree. When I talk about people being morally bankrupt and corrupt as a rule, this is talking about people, not persons. What I mean by this is that to the extent people have the power to benefit from moral bankruptcy and corruption, they on average will. So when talking about the state of the world, where the institutions that move the world are made up of the mean of many people (large sample size with a distinct effect), these institutions are basically always garbage.

So there's kind of two distinct claims:
1) Most people who aren't garbage just haven't had the opportunity to be garbage.
2) Persons can be non-garbage but the mean output of a group of people trends toward garbage as n increases.

I'm focusing on (2), as (1) has been my assumption for most of my life and doesn't really matter to me. People have reaction ranges and for the most part values, perspective, and moral outlook is a product of circumstance.

It's more like what caters to humans most basic needs and can be exploited. I'm not convinced people are doomed to be "garbage" because it's human nature. I think human nature is very predisposed to various social functions, and being non-garbage in a society that fosters otherwise will be difficult.

We just need to replace the psychopaths in charge with actually intelligent people who value the progress of humanity. Then pack mentality will value that too

 

[Old Things]

The worst and best truth I have ever come to realize is that I am not perfect and cannot be perfect. That's the job of Jesus, whom some would once again crucify it seems.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

People will work incredibly hard to avoid something that would have been 10x easier to directly address.

 

[Drvladivostok]

To be completely honest, I feel the same way as @Hadoblado, to learn is to suffer and to learn the truth is a real pain in the ass, but its everyone's responsibility, I can point out a dozen painful bitter truths that I had to swallow just to access the Red Pill Container, maybe its the fact that I'm not half as smart as I'd like to be, that I have to go much suffering, and shed tears and sweat to learn, just like everyone else.

Or the fact that if some religions are true some people who I might not understand why might go to the divine incinerator.

Or that People are not even aware of the lies that they tell themselves, how people engage in intellectual apathy over physical and situational convenience, and that for a true idea to be dominant it might have to break some bones.

 

[Drvladivostok]

There are two that are doing me a doozy as they compound:
The first is that people are morally bankrupt and corrupt as a rule. If someone is pure it's most likely because they haven't been given the motive or opportunity.
The second is that most large-scale goals are only going to be achieved by operating through this corruption (or violently supplanting them only to become corrupt yourself)

People are inherently inherently, they are motivated by situational incentives and short term logic, for example it might seem immoral or extremely illogical to us that an ISIS would behead some civilians or throw homos of a Cliff, but if an all powerful God is indeed telling them to do so (regardless of how whether or not such believe are logical, just assuming its the case because most people think that way), then doing their actions would seem logical to them.

I mean when people donate to charity or help disabled kids they don't think about the underlying logical justification which justify their action as inherently moral, they do it to feel good thus justifying it as right, just when ISIS throw the Pride Activist of a tower.

This is why you need Empiricism to feed Rationality.

People act what you might consider immorally when they're given the incentives, but would act the opposite given the same proportional incentives.

 

[Minuend]

There are two that are doing me a doozy as they compound:
The first is that people are morally bankrupt and corrupt as a rule. If someone is pure it's most likely because they haven't been given the motive or opportunity.
The second is that most large-scale goals are only going to be achieved by operating through this corruption (or violently supplanting them only to become corrupt yourself)

People are inherently inherently, they are motivated by situational incentives and short term logic, for example it might seem immoral or extremely illogical to us that an ISIS would behead some civilians or throw homos of a Cliff, but if an all powerful God is indeed telling them to do so (regardless of how whether or not such believe are logical, just assuming its the case because most people think that way), then doing their actions would seem logical to them.

I mean when people donate to charity or help disabled kids they don't think about the underlying logical justification which justify their action as inherently moral, they do it to feel good thus justifying it as right, just when ISIS throw the Pride Activist of a tower.

This is why you need Empiricism to feed Rationality.

People act what you might consider immorally when they're given the incentives, but would act the opposite given the same proportional incentives.

Good point

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

People are inherently inherently, they are motivated by situational incentives and short term logic, for example it might seem immoral or extremely illogical to us that an ISIS would behead some civilians or throw homos of a Cliff, but if an all powerful God is indeed telling them to do so (regardless of how whether or not such believe are logical, just assuming its the case because most people think that way), then doing their actions would seem logical to them.

Completely disagree with this one.

ISIS beheaded people or did other extreme things because it brought attention of the islamic world and showed that they are pious and faithful. It is instrumental to their powerbase to become associated with being faithful servants of god as this brings them legitimacy, more friends, followers, money and power.

It is an inherently immoral and dishonest pretense that they put on. If Jihad didn't exist as a concept in their culture then they would have to find a different pretense or justification for their actions.

Now when it comes to ISIS members lower in the leadership hierarchy, they might actually truly believe that this is a faithful thing to do, but their leaders are just machiavellan enough to play it for their own benefit. Religion is also a great justification for rape and other crimes they commit for their own selfish motives.

People are not pious or faithful most of the time, they just signal piety to fit in, win positive reactions or enter beneficial circles or relationships. It doesn't mean that they're psychopaths. It's simply how they were brought up to know how to best appeal to the occasion.

Crusades weren't attempts to restore faith. They were ways to organize a cheap war campaign, raid, pillage and conquer land. Using the "god wills it" religious excuse just legitimizes the hostile act and rallies people under one banner. Now an average lord can hope to steal a lot of goods when they raid, an average soldier can hope for a few gold coins. They each wanted to profit realistically and according to their rank.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

That's an obvious uncomfortable truth.
The ruthless take stuff from others by legal and illegal means and use some form of ideology to legitimize their actions in the eyes of the fools. The fools accept what the ruthless tell them and rally behind their banners. Sensible people try to stay as far away from getting embroiled in ideological shit.

The law is a corruptible tool to show that an action was broadly acceptable, it's just another ideology to whitewash and hide an obvious advantage of certain parties over others. Most people believe that the legal system is fair, so it's great for legitimizing unethical actions to the majority.

Clean energy might be great to save us from global warming, but unless we get a group of ruthless investors large enough and with a clear incentive to profit from it, we aren't going to make much progress on that front.


Capitalism is both an ideology and a system of ethics. It professes the idea that a consensual exchange between individuals is inherently ethical or that monetary compensation is fair if it is accepted by the recipient regardless of the degree to which their appraisal of goods being exchanged is accurate. Most people believe that consensual exchange of goods and services is fair and ethical so it is the best tool to legitimize profiteering, opportunism and shady practices. It's the most effective whitewashing ideology to date.

Generally speaking the person setting the price for something makes a profit and the person accepting said price loses. If you are not in a position to set your own prices, compensation or salary then you will lose most of the time.

We're simply living in fortunate enough times in the west that even if you lose profit on every deal there is enough of it left to allow you for a decent life. That is essentially a balancing mechanism which allows the ruthless profiteers to enjoy their capital without fear of upheaval from the overly exploited masses.

 

[Drvladivostok]

It is an inherently immoral and dishonest pretense that they put on. If Jihad didn't exist as a concept in their culture then they would have to find a different pretense or justification for their actions.

There's a quote from a Nordic scholar that I really like: Religion doesn't make people become better, but it prevents bad people doing worse. Obviously we can't get rid of human propensity of violence, but if people were given the ideological incentives (Religion/culture) to not do unethical things less of them would.

When Semitic Polytheism was the trend in South America people were sacrificed by the thousand annually on The Pyramids some Jaguar God, Carthagians were having child sacrifices in Pots, and those were promoted by the government authority then. While some Mexicans Cartels are skinning their competitors and dispatching people with chainsaw while the Deep State in the US is abusing children, the per-capita occurrence surely have decreased.

Every Ideology create a society of its image, You can Look at Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan and compare the difference to Singapore or Japan, and tell me its entirely socio-economic factors.

Why aren't children of Kamikaze Pilots and Imperial Army Soldiers rounding up the Chinese there and bayonetting babies? what's with the lack of ideological pretense if they're predisposed to violent? Because most people operate by input and incentives.

Now when it comes to ISIS members lower in the leadership hierarchy, they might actually truly believe that this is a faithful thing to do, but their leaders are just machiavellan enough to play it for their own benefit. Religion is also a great justification for rape and other crimes they commit for their own selfish motives.

People are not pious or faithful most of the time, they just signal piety to fit in, win positive reactions or enter beneficial circles or relationships. It doesn't mean that they're psychopaths. It's simply how they were brought up to know how to best appeal to the occasion.

Crusades weren't attempts to restore faith. They were ways to organize a cheap war campaign, raid, pillage and conquer land. Using the "god wills it" religious excuse just legitimizes the hostile act and rallies people under one banner. Now an average lord can hope to steal a lot of goods when they raid, an average soldier can hope for a few gold coins. They each wanted to profit realistically and according to their rank.

I have much experience with political radicalism, especially Islamic extremism, and I can assure you the people higher up have convinced themselves of their own words.

I actually read a book about the Crusades by Thomas Abridge and it was definitely motivated by religious fervor, most people who engaged in crusading got home poor if they came home at all.

The ruthless take stuff from others by legal and illegal means and use some form of ideology to legitimize their actions in the eyes of the fools. The fools accept what the ruthless tell them and rally behind their banners. Sensible people try to stay as far away from getting embroiled in ideological shit.

The law is a corruptible tool to show that an action was broadly acceptable, it's just another ideology to whitewash and hide an obvious advantage of certain parties over others. Most people believe that the legal system is fair, so it's great for legitimizing unethical actions to the majority.

Where are the Ruthless of Japan? Why aren't they expropriating the Poor Chinese Population and giving them the nanking treatment? Where are the Anti-Semites of Germany, they seem to be a lot of them 70 years ago, why aren't they making up a new ideology to kill the jews or Immigrants there? If they are the numbers have certainly decreased and the ideology comes first then the action, not vice versa.

If your theory is correct then we simply cannot change the crime to population ratio because no amount political incentives can change that; something empirically disproven.

Read up Stephen Pinker, before Law, Civilizations, and Agriculture was invented the human homicide rate was the highest in the known history. If law legitimize unethical actions (Even though in the Modern Legal Positivism Ethics would Equate legality) then the lack of law would promote even more so.

Clean energy might be great to save us from global warming, but unless we get a group of ruthless investors large enough and with a clear incentive to profit from it, we aren't going to make much progress on that front.

We already have profitable clean energy, its called Nuclear, but the energy alarmist in the Lefts had such a successful propaganda against it that it went bust, they'd prefer we adopt an unrealistic pipedream solution than to concede their false dogma.

Global Warming is overblown anyway.

 

[cheese]

That I would one day return to this fucking forum. *shakes fist @Hadoblado *

Spoiler

I don't know if I can handle it

 

[Hadoblado]

Gottem

 

[Cegorach]

That I would one day return to this fucking forum. *shakes fist @Hadoblado *

Spoiler

I don't know if I can handle it

Go away! Scat! Shoo!
Shoo-be-doo-wop~

It's my turn to be the returning senior citizen and I'm not going to share the dentures with anybody else this time!

*hits Cheese with a rolled up newspaper before slowly looking around at the rest of the thread*

...

Oh! A trap.

Ahem... I would answer the... er, thread's topic, but... uh, I... um, I am uncertain how to reconcile frivolity with horror.
Hm! Yes!

*gingerly backs away from discussion*

 

[cheese]

That I would one day return to this fucking forum. *shakes fist @Hadoblado *

Spoiler

I don't know if I can handle it

Go away! Scat! Shoo!
Shoo-be-doo-wop~

It's my turn to be the returning senior citizen and I'm not going to share the dentures with anybody else this time!

*hits Cheese with a rolled up newspaper before slowly looking around at the rest of the thread*

...

Oh! A trap.

Ahem... I would answer the... er, thread's topic, but... uh, I... um, I am uncertain how to reconcile frivolity with horror.
Hm! Yes!

*gingerly backs away from discussion*

Hah! Sucked in, m8!

*sneaks in, fists Ceg in the mouth and rips out the blood diamonds they've been pretending to eat with*

And, uhh.... stay in school, kiddies.

*exits amidst an endless loop of overlapping dial-up noises*

 

[Cegorach]

Fine, keep the diamonds! Consider them payment for the sucking in and fisting.
Blood diamonds, huh? Then where are the forum's communal dentures... (?)

And, uhh.... stay in school, kiddies.

That's right.

Otherwise you'll end up like cheese here, a dried up casu martzu trading perverse favours for inordinate wealth.

 

[Cegorach]

As penance for my derailing I suppose I may acquiesce and answer the question.
After all, it is Minuend posing the query.

The worst truth I've had to acknowledge?

What's interesting in the course of life is how its so filled with these paradigm shocks, and yet, given the passage of time, many of them we incorporate into ourselves and learn to accept. We minimize the horror they once represented and the most difficult truths may not be something that concerns us very much at all now. Despite that I don't intend to underestimate the trauma with optimistic assumptions of future events or to generalize well-being and worthwhile belief by suggesting that denying others their entitlements and false comforts will always lead to superior outcomes.

They live, they suffer, they struggle and they struggle and they struggle and they struggle, there's bitterness and frustration and lashing out. The howling winds tear at their reason, the cold deluge washes out their will. Nobody gave them a vessel to float above it all, so they grab hold onto any phantasm they believe will keep them from going under; misplaced faith becomes their buoy... then suddenly it happens, they're gone... washed away, and you're helplessly left on the sidelines of that, to a spectacle of desperation come to naught... and it hurts. The tempest of provenance pitilessly rages on; the eye now shifting its gaze. All you can do is hide.
If somebody is screaming inside and nobody can be bothered to listen, does it even make a sound?

There's something in all of this, that 'worst truth', and it all leads to the realization of the need to shed infatuation with ideals and to find a way to pursue my own will without the imposed dogmas of 'justification and righteousness*' and within the context of what I am able to control. To find harmony with the storm and to exploit within it purposeful opportunity. To survive. To do what I can, not what I ought.
*Mere quixotic buoys. Vessels of antagonism. Concrete shoes. Something to help you sink.

Well then. That's my concoction of nonsense.
Ambiguous, I know. But ya gets what ya gets.

 

[birdsnestfern]

That people are entwined no matter at what distance, sometimes you just can't disconnect from certain people easily, alive or not. Quantum theory, its like a huge ball of interconnectedness and you have to keep giving yourself the rights to be and think freely, and keep staying open minded and not get stuck in someone elses ideas of limiting thoughts or religions. Fear is a form of power that more knowlege will help you break free from. Religious hooks are something to be concerned about.

Recognize things you have learned in society, in books, in school, in interactions are power struggles trying to get your focus, your focus is how they win you over and have power over you. Try to stay free of those entanglements and grow yourself to your own souls expansion free of that. Every beautiful lover or desire, does it make your soul grow and stay open or does it shut it down? Chose the open mind over anything else. Why? Because it is the most true, because we do not KNOW until we experience something. And every moment has a newly made experience to open up to. And we co create that moment with free beautiful thoughts. Stay free and open in this moment and the next. Trust in your experiences and that life is amazing. That is the source that has powerful stirs deep within you that you can awaken.

There Ain't no bears in there. Pioneer! Its just you!

The Who - Cache Cache Lyrics | Lyrics.com

Cache Cache Lyrics by The Who from the Face Dances [LP] album- including song video, artist biography, translations and more: Did you ever sleep in a bear pit Did you ever sleep in a bear pit With apple cores and mice along With apple cores a…

www.lyrics.com

 

[Black Rose]

The dopamine loop is all that matters.
Without things to do anxiety builds.
Serotonin is depression when low.

purpose is just doing things.
anxiety suppresses doing things.
dopamine is the addiction neurotransmiter but keeps you calm.

the balance of keeping calm.

activity is important, builds energy strength metabolism.

feeling energized is what life is about.

insomnia - I sleep all day
I have no energy and am chronically fatigued.

I feel too tired of being awake but can't sleep.

will to power is a self-monitoring self-regulation.

 

[DinGODzilla]

Age 5 - My parents are just normal people. They are flawed, they don't know many things. They can't do miracles.
(disappointment and sadness that they are just ordinary normal mortals, I'm probably as well)

Age 7 - There is an all-seeing and judging God
(permeating sense of shame and fear as a result)

Age 17 - There is no God. Religion is a sophisticated myth we bullshit ourselves with
(inner emptiness and unfilled void of meaning as a result)

Age 18 - There is no "money/options/shares", "week", "month", "weekend", "state", "borders", "companies", etc... everything is made up by collective human "hallucination" and will disappear as soon as people disappear or stop believing in it
(distrust in authorities and institutions in general as a result, post-modern emptiness deepens)

Age 19 - There is no "colour", there is no "sound", no "smell", no "touch". It's just an illusion, there are only frequencies of light and sound and textures of matter. Every organism sees different colours, hears different sounds, have different smells and touches. Bacteria or bats or dogs and octopuses have very different colour perceptions. It's not an objective reality in any real sense.
(as a result, I was a bit more disappointed that reality is just full of quantities, but no qualities. Those are just species-specific illusions. We believe color is true because if we ask any other person they will see the same and confirms it as a true fact.)

Age 20 - University time - I took math, physics and IT. It taught me that the Universe is a dead, inherently meaningless, deterministic place. Life is just a "cosmic accident". Meaning is an inherently flawed concept since humans (and all life) are just biological machines that are unconsciously bullshitting themselves with their nobility of meaning and free will, but they are just deterministic machines. Consciousness is an epiphenomenon of brain activity, a mere illusion that "remembers" what was chosen by the unconscious mind and then weaves a story out of it a few seconds later.
(as a result of thinking that we're just self-aware robots whose awareness is very much illusory, and nothing truly matters, like if humanity would set off all nuclear weapons and killed the whole planet it'd not matter any more than two random planets colliding... there comes a deeper lingering depression about life in general out of modernity's paradigm "universe == dead meaningless machine")

 

[DinGODzilla]

Age 3x - Consciousness might be more primary than I always thought. It might be vice-versa, the possibility of "the Consciousness is hardware, the Matter is software" comes online. First psychedelic experiences several Ayahuasca sessions, Mescaline, DMT and LSD trips are eating away the "certainty" of the "modern" paradigm. I realised that I know very little about anything and consider the limits of my current knowledge to be the state of actual reality.
(This sense of new mystery "we really know nothing at all about what life and reality is"... results as new existential hope)

Age 33 - I've met my current wife. I met a person for the first time that I can imagine living together in partnership and marriage for the first time in my life. I believe was thought my whole life up to this point that I'd need to "suffer the other" in order to be with someone. My belief changed to "I am very lucky and grateful".
(New romantic hope for the future and for the family. Newly found meaning for the other, for the "we".)

 

[DinGODzilla]

The late 30s - I experienced The State of Unity. I was by a chance rather than deliberate practice, but anyway I realised one thing. Consciousness is vast and unexplored. AND: everything (absolute 100%) I know and do experience is my own experience in my own consciousness. It's not "real" in any sense. I've come across Donald Hoffman's work and FBT theorem where Ch. Prakash proves that there is no homomorphism between structures of reality and structures in perception (this is a BIG DEAL!). Means, we don't "reconstruct" reality in "low-res". We completely construct reality - not just smell, colour, texture, sounds and feelings (that I knew already), but everything - objects, distance, space-time, 3D space. Everything. Like a reality headset. Hoffman has an excellent interface theory of perception metaphor (it's just a metaphor!) I'll write it down there.
(as a result, there is a completely renewed sense of mystery and the possibility of Consciousness is probably an inherent part of reality. Newly found curiosity about what Life is about, how AI and AR will change the "modernity" paradigm and new generations will be like "of course, this is just ANOTHER headset, I can't just take the glasses, since I'm running the software myself)

Metaphor
The black browser window I'm typing this post is in the middle of my screen (graphical interface like MacOS or Windows 10)... it, however, does not point to any insights about the true state of the computer (reality in the metaphor).
There is no "black browser" in the middle of my computer. There is a VAST field of electrical voltages, resistors, transistors, chips, memories, etc... that does computation and stores results as a voltage level that is then interpreted as 0/1 if below/above a certain threshold. On top of this "True Hardware" level, there are multiple levels of ARM/x68 instructions, assemblers, firmware, VMs, state machines, etc... On top of that, the operating system is written that presents visually this "black browser" to me. But "black browser in the middle of the screen" is a reality of the interface, it is not the reality of the computer.
The interface (or "display", "headset") is a significantly simplified (dumbed down if you will) 2D representation of "intention for action" that enables me to write this post.
It HIDES reality from me. If it showed me trillions of voltages, timer spikes and all that, you'd never hear from me. Truth gets in the way. Evolution hid the truth from us. Truth (of what reality truly is) is irrelevant to survival. Truth even goes against survival (as FBT theorem proves + millions of computer simulations with agent/arena shows) since we have limited cognitive capabilities - we evolved to do quick hack decisions based on simple rules that work in real life.
Given this metaphor, the "2D Desktop of icons macOS" we can act about is our "3D desktop of objects" we can act about. When I see the glass I "see" actions. I can grab it, drink from it, etc... Our interface is Object Oriented, action-driven if you will. :-) So Interface = "smells, visions, colors, feelings, distance, objects, time, everything you perceive". The "computer in the metaphor" or The Reality of what truly is absolutely unknown to us. But it is there. It's not in space and time.

What I've been doing up to this point was like in the metaphor saying:
- Of course! Of course I know that this icon is not the reality. This is just made of pixels and if you zoom close enough you will see Red, Blue and Green LED diodes that emit light in certain frequency and it makes it appear like the icon... Like of course this is not a table as such, it's made of trillions of atoms and almost all empty space and if you zoom deep enough you will see protons and leptons and quarks and THAT is the true reality. ;-) You know, there is no brain or neurons when you're not looking. The "matter" or our perception of it is trully software running the interface computation in our brains. The hardware is completely hidden from us. It might be consciousness, but it doesn't have to be.

 

[onesteptwostep]

That I would one day return to this fucking forum. *shakes fist @Hadoblado *

Spoiler

I don't know if I can handle it

Oh hi cheese, nice to see you again.

 

[rikaisuru]

There is just one thing which I loathe. Our experiences are unique. And such uniqueness... is unbearable in a philosophical standpoint.

Bare with me. Supporting my thesis will take a while.

What I mean is, that perception is merely our own "interpretation" of reality, and that interpretation differs from one person to another.

For example, "Color", as a concept, is only a natural consequence of having receptors that respond to "Color". To see the color Red means that a certain part of your brain notices that your eye is receiving a certain kind of stimulus, which for the concept of "Red", just so happens to be a certain frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum. If you don't have those receptors, then the concept of "Color" just don't mean anything to you. Yes, quantitatively, Colors exist as they are light waves, but the qualia of the concept of "Colors" is lost if you can't "experience" it. Which, if you will reread that last sense, is frankly tautological.

Take, for example, a blind man. You can try your best to explain light to them in a quantitative way, but they will simply never understand what it feels see color.

Now, what about those who have color blindness? People whose "calibration" of their color receptors are "configured differently"? Indeed, they also understand what Color is generally, but there are certain colors which they will simply never "understand" / "experience". And, if someone with Colorblindness and another with normal sight, look at the same picture or scenery, these two people may see two very different things. Yet you normally wouldn't know there is a difference between what you see and what others see. You tend to presume that others also experience the universe the way you do, and that how you think and how your mind works also apply to others.

Those examples above are merely benign, just to illustrate my point. But about its tremendous consequences?

What does it mean to know, that depending on the structure of one's brain, their vicariousness, their open-mindedness, they may simply just never understand what you know, feel, experience, and believe in?

As a child, I thought the world was a little bit simple. That people are logical, rational, beings. That people are literal minded. That, if you wish to be treated fairly, you must treat others fairly. That, if someone does you a favor, you ought to reciprocate them, out of gratitude and the kindness of your heart. That if there is a problem that affects humanity as a collective, we ought to work together to solve it. That pride, avarice, lust, sadism, arrogance, and other forms of abuse, manipulation, and exploitation of others are out of the question, because that just simply did not make logical sense. Why would you like to hurt others, if you do not want to be hurt yourself? Why would you like to gain so much money at the expense of the lives of others, at the expense of this planet? Why isn't everybody asking about fundamental questions about life, existence, nature, and philosophy? How can the vast majority of people continue on their normal paths of life, acting as if their existence is only in isolation, even if everything is interconnected? I don't understand selfishness. I don't understand self-centeredness. I don't understand obstinance and pride about learning new things. I don't understand petty pride and ego. I don't understand domination. I don't understand living under the constraints of society even if you know you are being exploited by those in power. I don't know how exploitation can be so normalized, we structure our daily lives as if that is merely logical (in Capitalism, 9-5 slave wages. in Authoritarian countries, no privacy and freedom). I don't know how can somebody live a life without being plagued by metaphysical questions such as, "Am I real?", "Who created us?", "What's the nature of reality?", among others.

Our experiences shape us. And, depending on one's influences and experiences, someone may or may not learn to self-reflect. Or even ask basic questions. And this is presuming that personality and thought process isn't genetic (aka, RNG). The very fact not everyone comes up with the same conclusions as I am, is already, well, quite depressing. While indeed it leads to individuality, but it also leads to people being absolute pricks, entitled, out-of-touch, sadistic, power-hungry, or whatever negative trait under the sun. People justify who they are based on their experiences, exacerbated by their biases in thought process.

So, why the tangent about perceiving colors?

I have aphantasia. I do not have a "mind's eye". I can't see anything inside my head; I only see darkness when I close my eyes. I don't have "imaginations" whatsoever. Also, I cannot conjure sounds and music inside my head. I can't "imagine" taste and smell. I can't imagine pain, discomfort, or nausea. But some people do. If this is the first time you have heard of this, and you also have aphantasia, well, ask people you personally know whether they can imagine things or not. If you don't have aphantasia, you might think I am crazy for having such a daily life drsastically different from you. But then again, it's like saying blind people are crazy because they can't see colors.

So, why again the tangent about aphantasia?

If something as benign as our perception and daily biological functions can be so drastically different, then what of the actual fundamental extrinsic differences between humans? How drastic would be our perceptions and interpretations of reality? How different is your version of "real" compared to "mine"? How does that affect our mutual understanding, if all of us has inherent biases that require years of introspection to dismantle? How does that affect objective reality? How are you supposed to change the world if there are people who are so oblivious about the world? What about differences in:

Culture.

Society.

Family.

Norms.

Country.

Beliefs.

Religion.

Knowledge.

Class / Wealth.

Environment.

Experiences. Heartbreak or a Happy Romance. Abuse or Care. Pain or Comfort. War or Peace. Poverty or Wealth. Uniqueness or Mediocrity. And more. So much more.

And it is just too much. Just too much. Even if I want to unlock the mysteries of the universe, it only takes just one powerful idiot to nuke the planet and we'll be back to the damn stone age once again. Or, even if we make a nation of materialists, it just takes another authoritarian idiot to commit mass genocide, and suppress intellectual progress for yet another millennium. This is a personal gripe towards the Romans and their descendants - man, if you guys just didn't kill Archimedes, we'd probably be living in Mars right now. And the "renaissance" is literally just bringing back the Arab's improvements over Greek knowledge back to Rome.

Anyway, I won't die on that hill.

Even if there exists objective reality, the very fact one's existence is naught but a mere figment of your imagination unless somebody truly cares about you, isn't exactly motivating.

And even if somebody does even truly care about you, it doesn't necessarily mean they wholly understand you. Because people are unique. You simply won't be able to fully understand another, well, unless they have a very literal mind as I do, which I bet will be very simple to translate to a sentient AI, well, relatively compared to Karens / Trumps / insert illogical person here.

And I haven't even mentioned neurodivergence and neurological disorders in this rant. Which is yet another rabbit hole.

 

[birdsnestfern]

Thank you for considering that kittens may not be as sweet as they seem. That is all.

 

[birdsnestfern]

Whoa, the original exorcist was a boy who grew up to work for NASA and he wasn't possessed, he was just a bad boy.

Former NASA Engineer Revealed to Have Been Boy at Center of 'Exorcist' Case | Coast to Coast AM

Long shrouded in mystery, the identity of the boy who served as the inspiration for the legendary story 'The Exorcist' has been revealed to be a former NASA engineer who passed away last year.

www.coasttocoastam.com

Also, shipping ports all over expected to have delays so if you are shopping online, do it SUPER EARLY for Christmas or it may not even arrive for the holiday. Money and Envelopes might be the better thing to give this year. Maybe warm jackets and flannel shirts and pjs and slippers and Chukar Cherries and Make some Jerkey.

 

[cheese]

That I would one day return to this fucking forum. *shakes fist @Hadoblado *

Spoiler

I don't know if I can handle it

Oh hi cheese, nice to see you again.

Hey! Sorry, I literally forgot about this place pretty much right after. But I'm back again! Nice to see you too.

Otherwise you'll end up like cheese here, a dried up casu martzu trading perverse favours for inordinate wealth.

I'll be having some of that inordinate wealth now, please.

What's interesting in the course of life is how its so filled with these paradigm shocks, and yet, given the passage of time, many of them we incorporate into ourselves and learn to accept. We minimize the horror they once represented and the most difficult truths may not be something that concerns us very much at all now.

Yeah.

I don't really know what the absolute "worst truth" I've had to acknowledge is, but I'm assuming Minuend wants to get at "awful shit that hit you in the gut and changed you profoundly", so I'll just mention a few of those.

1) Sometimes life backs you into a corner and forces you to make a choice. Whatever you choose, you're marked for life, indelibly changed. Realising for real that there is genuinely no way out, that you cannot avoid authoring your ongoing and inescapable Becoming, is for some reason occasionally terrifying.

2) Those moments when you re-remember the dream fuelling your life was a lie you told yourself to survive as it crashes around you, and you have to invent a new reason for living - they can pack a punch.

It's sort of hard to consider the above bad, because generally I consider getting closer to reality a good thing. There's usually some function in the sting.

Harder are ones like these:

3) You realise you can't even believe in your own values. Backdrop: You know values are subjective, personal and ultimately enforcing them externally is the imposition of one will over another; this is codified into law which then claims a monopoly on violence. You're fine with this knowledge; that's old hat. You're fine with your values being "subjective". You like your values because they're yours, because you're you, and to be anything else would be by definition utterly absurd. You know the game is ultimately pitting will against will, which is perfectly acceptable to you: in essence, your "values" are whatever you, personally, want and prefer.

But then even your wants and values are unmade, and then you have no will. If everything is the wrong choice, if nothing is more desirable or more preferable, not just intellectually, not just occasionally, but because something deep inside has become undone, then - whoops.

4) You seem to be becoming increasingly unable to relate to anyone. Being at the intersection of too many groups is being nowhere. The more you learn about anything, the worse everything gets, the more alienating, the more the words die on your lips, in your throat, in your gut. You are unmoored from yourself, from consensus reality, from a place to call home, from connection with other human beings. Everything and everywhere hurts, as you gradually become illegible, and then invisible, to the rest of your species. [Don't do this.]

5) Humans might suck. (Art might suck. Beauty might suck. Good feelings might suck.)
There's a way to say and mean this which is fundamentally positive, in that it holds some room for hope, some possibility of connection somewhere, some acceptance of our fundamentally flawed but simultaneously loving nature, or at the very least holds some aesthetic/literary appeal in having captured "truth about the human condition". I mean it the other way.

6) It's hard to get over the fact that you can know yourself so deeply and so well, be totally comfortable navigating the internal geography of your moods and triggers and desires - and then one day the entire landscape can abruptly shift to something completely alien. It's like entering the Upside Down. How do you handle your navigational controls suddenly having completely opposite or even different labels? How do you handle the fact that some of them are no longer connected to anything that actually does anything?

7) The world, in every sense, is fucking enormous. It gets more enormous the more you learn about it. This should be exciting, and it is, till you gorge yourself and make yourself sick, and then realise the expanse is never-ending, both inside and out. It's a never-ending ride to nowhere. You are nauseated by the infinity present just on this tiny fucking rock, in your tiny fucking brain. Monkeys were not made for this. Monkeys were not made for refactoring the infinite in infinite ways, infinite times.

Spoiler

None of the above is necessarily true. It's just experienced. Lovecraftian horror is just another experience, and one you can soldier on through. Ultimately I think joy has to be chosen. It helps a lot when your biochemistry does the choosing for you, of course, but when a part of you is gibbering away in terror at the simultaneous explosion and implosion of everything in your tiny little world, just remember it's all bullshit. Even your painful realisations and hard truths are bullshit. If you're gonna be alive, may as well try as hard as fuck to find a way to enjoy it.