Then you should be able to teach us. But you’ve never done anything except make assertions.I have been but it’s something that you have to comprehend. There is literally nothing more to say than that, life is meaningless and our attempts to project meaning are meaningless in itself
I have beenI guess you don't understand teaching. You have shown us articles and asked our opinion, and our opinion differs from yours. We include other facts to support our opinion, and we show you how your opinion is not supported by your facts. You rarely point to a specific quote or a line of scripture that keeps that conversation going. Until just recently you seemed like you were thinking about it, but suddenly you are saying we just don't get it. The discussion of meaning has been going on for centuries and you have focused on only a small part of it, even when things have been presented to you. Your bottom line here is that it means something that life is meaningless. And what it means is something about not caring about how others feel. I don't need to read one word of philosophy to know that's wrong.
@Lausten I guess you don’t understand teaching. You have shown us articles and asked our opinion, and our opinion differs from yours. We include other facts to support our opinion, and we show you how your opinion is not supported by your facts. You rarely point to a specific quote or a line of scripture that keeps that conversation going.Yup, great opportunity to segue over to Good-Faith (or a lack of it) in a discussion. Seems to me the point of a discuss is to teach or learn some thing. You make a statement, the other absorbs what you have said, compares it with their own knowledge and experiences, digests it a little.
Then the response acknowledges what you’ve heard. If one actually learned something, that will be incorporated into one’s thinking and comments. If there was nothing to learn, you’ve at least learned something about other’s misunderstanding, so can better argue your own position, which of course leads you to better understanding your own position. Win win all the way around.
But when people listen with an ear to contradicting and dismissing, they seek flaws and make connections without ever learning about the underlaying argument. That is the realm of dogmatism which creates the Deaf Parrots, repeating endlessly without ever absorbing or learning a damned thing.
You guys haven’t proven anything about meaning. I keep saying that making meaning is empty of any sort of value. It’s the equivalent of lying to yourself that something is other than what it truly is. Additionally creating meanings is empty without others to recognize it, like trying to become a better athlete or being stronger without anyone else to recognize it (the endeavor becomes moot and pointless). So creating meaning is lying to ourselves in order to stay sane among the void of existence. While you guys can still pretend I can’t.
It’s like calling something good or bad, it’s a false claim. Nothing is good or bad it just is. Just like nothing has meaning. Living without value would be a short life but it would be the only way to be correct and true, anything else would be living a lie.
Or to put it another way, reality doesn’t change just because you “say so”. We don’t accept “because I said so” as a reason for something so why does it make any difference with this?
It’s like looking for an “ideal man”, it’s a false claim.
You’re not being consistent Xain. You may want to re-examine your statements about “cuteness” while you’re at it.
Exactly, meaning is a false claim.
Well Xain, the entire rest of the human population is searching for meaning, or just a little happiness at least. You’re going to have to live with that.
Because there doesn’t seem to be a way to get you guys to see the reality that is nihilism.How do you know that?
I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one here who’s gone through a bit of nihilism during one period of their life or another. Like they say, been there, done that, got the T-shirt, then we get on with it.
So it’s not like we haven’t a clue of what your emptiness feels like. But we chose to live rather than grovel in the emptiness. Perhaps that why so many of us keep trying to reach you.
But you would have to get outside of yourself for a moment or two to appreciate that.
@Xain: "You guys haven’t proven anything about meaning."Silly rabbit, don't you know proofs are for mathematics, and that's about it.
So it’s not like we haven’t a clue of what your emptiness feels like. But we chose to live rather than grovel in the emptiness. Perhaps that why so many of us keep trying to reach you.But you would have to get outside of yourself for a moment or two to appreciate that.
Its the other way around, you have t really woken up to the reality that is nihilism
okay let’s try that again,
Guess you weren’t paying attention
How do you know that?I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one here who’s gone through a bit of nihilism during one period of their life or another. Like they say, been there, done that, got the T-shirt, then we get on with it.
Xain: "Its the other way around, you have t really woken up to the reality that is nihilism"You need to understand that personal feeling are not what determines how reality is arranged. Reality exists and minds exists, and what happens in any of our minds is not necessarily an exact copy of reality. We can have an incorrect copy because of our emotions or personality or personal experiences or education.
Your insistence that we all blindly agree that our lives are meaningless in spite of the fact we experience meaningful lives is obviously silly. You ignore us because you claim that you don’t have the ability to experience anything we do, so please grant us the same right to ignore your conclusions based on that inability.
I look forward to hearing how irrelevant I am. It means so much coming from you- the king of irrelevance.
CC, that stage had more guitar playing IQ than many countries. Love that song. I learned the words in grade 10 and have played it thousands of times.
It’s nice that we don’t have to rewind cassettes anymore because I used to do that all the time. Eventually, to avoid that hassle, I made a tape with only this song, repeated again and again and again. After a month or so I got sick of it and gave the tape to a friend. Gradually I regained my love for the song, but I don’t play it dozens of times in a row anymore.
You ignore us because you claim that you don’t have the ability to experience anything we do, so please grant us the same right to ignore your conclusions based on that inability.I started making a list of dumb things people say. There are blatantly self contradicting dictums going around right now that result in bad policies, like, "my government should give the right to stock pile weapons to use against my government". With Sree and Xain, and listening to politicians and some others I come in contact with, I've noticed a few patterns. I generalized what you said above to:
“You haven’t experienced what I have so I don’t have to listen to your experience”
This is essentially the evil form of identity politics. It’s also old time religion. Don’t know why Xain thinks it’s some kind of truth revealed through meditation.
The tricky part is to let people know you aren’t going to believe them simply because they said they experienced something, without making it sound like you’re also saying they didn’t have the experience.
I never want people to think I’m dismissing the fact they had an experience. It’s the value of that experience to me and how much weight I should give it when making a choice that I am always talking about.
Xain has (or in his case, doesn’t have) experiences, and I need to get across to him how little weight his arguments based on that have for me. Not only is my emotional experience of life completely the opposite to his, so is the emotional experience of everyone I have ever met.
How can Xain honestly think everyone should do the impossible and ignore their emotions? If he had no arms would he expect everyone to pretend they don’t have arms (that would actually be easier than pretending to not have emotions)?
The tiny part of Buddhism that can be interpreted the way he (and only he) does, is the only external support he thinks he has, so he can’t stop beating that dead horse or he’ll have to admit he might be wrong. And admitting you’re wrong is possibly the hardest thing some people can do, especially when they’ve been fighting so hard for so long (this is me talking from deep personal experience). I don’t know how or even if Xain can climb the wall he’s built around himself, but it would be awesome if he did.
I hate using an argument based on emotions or feelings because it’s too close to the theist’s claim that their god is real because they ‘feel’ him. There is a significant difference between mine here and theirs, but it’s not obvious and I’d rather avoid giving the impression that I ever base my position on nothing more than my feelings. Luckily this isn’t a particularly theistic conversation, so that point hasn’t come up yet and I don’t have to spell out the difference.
3point14rat said; You need to understand that personal feeling are not what determines how reality is arranged. Reality exists and minds exists, and what happens in any of our minds is not necessarily an exact copy of reality. We can have an incorrect copy because of our emotions or personality or personal experiences or education.Anil Seth proposes that you brain is a prediction engine and can only make a best guess of what it is experiencing. from second hand information. (do see the excellent Ted talk)
The brain does not see or hear or feel, it gets its information from electro-chemical quanta of information. This is what prompted Descartes to posit a “brain in a vat” that can be made to believe it is taking a walk in the park if fed this information via a computer.
So when the brain receives information it makes a “best guess” based on that information and it is only when our best guesses agree , we can confidently call that “reality”. However, this is itself open to the possibility of “mass hallucinations”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyu7v7nWzfo&t=8s
Xain has (or in his case, doesn’t have) experiences, and I need to get across to him how little weight his arguments based on that have for me. Not only is my emotional experience of life completely the opposite to his, so is the emotional experience of everyone I have ever met.How can Xain honestly think everyone should do the impossible and ignore their emotions? If he had no arms would he expect everyone to pretend they don’t have arms (that would actually be easier than pretending to not have emotions)?
Because feelings aren’t a good argument for the state of reality. Good and bad don’t really exist just because you feel that way and nothing is meaningful just because you feel otherwise. In the end it’s just human judgement about things, not how things really are and that is the hardest thing to accept. It’s also why the Heart Sutra in Buddhism is so jarring. Also Buddhism is mostly about downplaying the importance of feelings because they aren’t who you are, they are just temporary weather.
Or to put it another way:https://www.jac-okeeffe.com/about
And the main page quotes talk about retreating from the senses and such. But the principle is the same as what Buddhism is saying about beauty and the world of the senses