I really shouldn’t bother, but this is another example of how it is impossible to do anything but argue with you. Saying that you want people’s approval is kind of a joke. Yes, people can mask their feelings, they can imitate feelings, we couldn’t have acting if that weren’t true. But acting on a stage, when you know the person is acting, is not the same as acting like you care, or laughing at someone’s joke because you want to make them feel better not because you think it’s funny.
What you originally asked was:
And I said that’s a weird way to say feelings aren’t genuine. And now you’ve done it again. A lot of your problems could be solved if you read a dictionary.
There’s nothing in there about free will or programming your mind or having the power to choose how you feel in any and all circumstances. Pretending to have a feeling is not the same as having a feeling. Teaching a child how to react to fear or mild pain is not programming. Learning how to handle emotional situations is not the same as having complete control of every reaction to anything. These are common sense, but you argue about them and attach meaning to them.
There are clues to when someone is not being genuine, but some people are really good at being disingenuous. It’s the person expressing themselves that knows if they are being genuine, and it’s even hard for us to know ourselves. Have you ever heard someone say, “I’m not sure how I really feel about that”?
Like most people. Thoughts don’t go away once you’ve come up with some logic that results in you not taking action based on the thought. What do you think addiction is? People wake up hungover and say they will never drink because obviously, that was a bad choice with consequences. Then they drink again.
In this article, Sean Carroll argues against Hoffman. Just because someone has managed to get on the same stage with a cosmologist who understands physics better than just about anyone, doesn’t mean the person has something serious to say. The question is not “does Hoffman appear on stages, the internet, and sell books”, the question is, “are his arguments valid?”
Actually for me, the question is how much time and treasure has been invested/earned and how many young minds polluted with distractions such garbage leads to, etc.
It’s the public acceptance of delusional thinking, and lack of push back.
When I was looking at the definition of “delusional”, I saw a note that psychiatrists don’t count culturally accepted delusions. If they did, and who knows maybe someday they will, then they would have to declare all the religious people mentally ill. I didn’t look into that any further, but it frames the concept in a way that challenges your viewpoint. I put Donald Hoffman in the same category as Depak Chopra. Chopra’s ideas were popular not that long ago, but I guess he retired. He had no real impact on science, and if you didn’t believe his garbage, he had no influence on your thinking. The opposite is true of actual cosmology. Our place in the universe and in time has drastically altered culture, whether you believe it or not. You don’t need to know anything about what “spacetime” is to be affected by what has been discovered about it.
This “public acceptance” that bothers you is not something new. If there was no history of people saying that consciousness comes from something “before the physical” or whatever else, then I could see why you would focus on Hoffman, but he’s just the latest in a long line of make believe that can be traced to the Shamans. There has also been a long line of pushback. Shamans discovered actual helpful herbs and remedies, and others made up magical powers behind them. They probably called themselves Shamans too, just like Hoffman calls himself a scientist. I’m not going to focus on one person and believe that destroying his reasoning will somehow destroy millions of years of bad reasoning. I am going to focus on how we reason, how flawed all of us are, and how we can find peace and justice despite that. I’m not a voice in the wilderness on this. I have plenty of partners.
It doesn’t, because I’ve had that before and we couldn’t get past it. No matter how much I tried to explain it to him or others they couldn’t really help me with this. We knew that I could reason but none of them could figure out why I wouldn’t believe it.
Even medication never helped me out moving past this.
I’m trying to work this out.
So pretty much we can’t really control our emotions just how to handle them when they rise up? In other words just ignore Gary?
But it’s more like no matter what I say I still can’t get over that maybe they might be right despite all the reasoning I use. In my mind it feels like I’m denying reality.
Lots of people start therapy and don’t complete it or don’t like it. Lots of others do. You are not providing proof of anything.
Yes
What’s reality? What’s morality? If you doubt your feelings and your conclusions. That means you’re brain is functioning. Anyone who says they have it all figured out is a big fat liar. Life is a constant series of trolley problems https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/
It’s more like we don’t really get anywhere with it.
Got it. Though I still have the problem every time I hear someone say “make me feel” I keep thinking “that’s wrong” and then the moment is interrupted. It’s the same with me when I think it, any emotion gets interrupted because “that’s the lie I’m supposed to catch”.
I guess that’s true. I just don’t know how to handle folks who are so sure of their vision of things.
Though I guess the advice would be the same. I still get triggered by stuff I read and then that sorta chains to what Gary said about thoughts and beliefs and it’s got me thinking he’s right (same witht he Buddhist guy I talked to when he said stuff “triggers” and emotion because the thing itself has no emotional properties and I don’t know how to react to that or what to make of it).
Right. You keep saying “triggered” as if that’s a thing. You’re very sure of that, and a few other things. I don’t think there’s a secret to how to deal with stubborn people. You’re certain you can get triggered by things but you’re uncertain that things can make you feel. Make that make sense.
I mean, how else would you put it? I hear something that seems to prove true an idea that gave me grief and I spiral from there.
Well the notion is that it’s not the thing but the ideas and beliefs about the thing, which is what gives me trouble. I get that it doesn’t make sense to other people but…I don’t really have a response to that. It’s just how my brain works daily.
I know you say to ignore him but mentally I can’t let go and need to figure how he’s wrong.
So a Buddhist or Gary can say a thing and that gives you trouble, but things aren’t supposed to give you trouble, so that’s troubling? Do I have it right?
That life isn’t simple. That no one has it all figured all out. That we know a lot about how things work but not why. That no one has all the answers but lots of people say they do.
Here’s something interesting about the hardware, not my opinion, this man is an expert.
What’s the best way to think about the brain? While most of us think of it as a dense gray matter that’s separate from the physical body, that actually couldn’t be further from the truth. Our brain is made up of 3 layers, and each layer not only directly impacts the other, but has control over the physical body and how you feel.
The 3 functional layers of the brain are the reptilian brain, the limbic system, and the cerebral cortex. The reptilian brain controls the regulatory systems in your body like hormones, body temperature, blood pressure, and even hunger. The limbic system is the emotional function of your brain, making you feel fear, anger, joy, or gratitude. Finally, the cerebral cortex is the most evolved part of the brain that oversees impulse control, decision making, and long-term planning.
With a better understanding of how each part of the brain functions, we can have more mindful thoughts that will influence more favorable decision-making and outcomes in life. For example, when you think of your favorite memory or something that makes you happy, your reptilian brain will quickly cool down your body and even lower your blood pressure. This can then lead to feeling less stressed, and finding more joy throughout the day.
Robert M. Sapolsky holds degrees from Harvard and Rockefeller Universities and is currently a Professor of Biology and Neurology at Stanford University and a Research Associate with the Institute of Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya.
This is ironic coming from the guy who argues we have no free will. I know about him.
But he’s wrong about favorite memory or something that makes you happy (I explained that part about it in the other thread), it’s not that simple.
I know what you mean by that, but…I guess that’s it. It’s the same when I hear people say “makes you happy” when referring to a thing or person and mentally I just go “WRONG” because of what he said.
I’ve tried to tell myself that but in my mind if I say I don’t know how something makes us feel but I hear other people give reasons (like the people I mention) that I feel like I’m just playing the fool to avoid uncomfortable truths.
Good point, although not that simple. that’s the conundrum of “free will”. It’s not possible to override millions of years of evolution and simply “figure out” what the right thing is to think. But there is still something called “choice”. You could say it’s an illusion, but it’s still something. I think it has something to do with time, that time isn’t what Western society says it is. In a very real, scientifically evidential sense, the past and the future don’t exist, there is only now. But knowing the math doesn’t help us live in the moment.
What you do mean why? Because when they say that it’s supposedly not true and wrong and that it’s bad to be wrong because you’re living a lie and giving your power away.
Even when I say it to maybe my brain just goes “no that’s wrong, it’s not the thing making you feel you’re just imagining all of that because the thing itself has no emotional properties, even if you think you’re just being in the moment your imagination is making up how you feel”.
I mean…how else is it supposed to mean? No free will means no choice or decisions. I saw a conversation between him and Alex O’ Conner where he pretty much said that notions like “deserving” and “earned” aren’t correct.
Well that would depend on what you mean by real, the past definitely would exist in memory since we are built upon everything that came before us. So even in scientific way the past persists. Then there is the notion that our conscious experience is always a little bit behind the present, so you could argue the PRESENT isn’t real.
As in I say to myself, almost instantly, that the idea is wrong and after that I stop feeling what I was about to feel.
AH yes, why didn’t I think of that before? Oh wait, I DID.
