What to do when you read stuff you don't understand or have an answer to?

General Discussion
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It’s more of an illusion, a bunch of processes in concert that give the appearance of a self or unification but it’s really not. That link about tricking the brain into being a mannequin is one example.

Like I said, science and learning is counterproductive to a good life. Like this one time I read someone casting skepticism about whether you can assume that just because you see a floor that means that there is one when it’s light bouncing off and hitting the eye (or something like that). It’s only a certain level of ignorant that makes life bearable.

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You also missed the quote from Eagleman where he says everything that matters to you is just evolutionary circuits. Love, hunger, motivation, it’s just some program developed over years. You care about family because of evolution, you can about other loved ones in the same way because of that too.

There is no cosmos meaning that says love it’s important or family is important, or that anything is. It’s just a void ultimately, and we have to pretend things matter because the alternative is…worse.

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Yeah, I’ve said the self is an illusion. But what isn’t an illusion? Does the sun exist without us seeing it and enjoying its warmth?

Ignorance is not bliss. There are physical things that will cause you harm. You want to learn to avoid those. People figured out how to grow food so you can have a grocery store.

Of course it’s light hitting the eye. Of course it could be something your brain thinks is a floor but isn’t. Floors are still physical things, and illusions of floors are physical things. This is sophomoric trash. You’re better than this.

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The illusion is the big part because of how much of our lives revolve around it existing, just look at these quora answers: https://www.quora.com/What-if-we-looked-at-the-self-as-a-model-that-our-brain-creates-Would-people-still-claim-that-is-an-ignorant-way-to-live-when-in-fact-it-is-part-of-our-nature-to-live-as-a-self

The self is an illusion. Its an illusion created from the perspective of consciousness which is created by the brain. So the concept of self is truly just a manifestation of the human spirit for individuality. In reality there is no “self”. There is just slight control that we have in this universe that seems like enough to be called individual. Humans work a lot like bees, in the sense that we are extremely susceptible to hive mentality. Due to this susceptibility most people go through life not having many individual thoughts or actions at all. Since every small thing about the human mind is manipulated by mostly outside sources, then there is no such thing as self. Then there is the fact that we are just a collection of cells, which again means there is no self. So, as stated earlier, self is just a creation of the human mind. I do believe that this concept can be controversial because most people are not willing to accept their lack of individuality and will continue to argue against the idea of no self.

Thanks for the A2A…

The self that you are referring to is your false self. This is in contrast to your true self.

  • By my false self, I mean my ego. My ego is a mental construct that is concerned with the fulfilling of my wants and wishes. My desires and fears arise as urges in the subconscious, but they are then fulfilled by actions initiated by consciousness. The ego, or false self, therefore sits between the subconscious and consciousness.
  • By my True Self, I mean my Inner Being. My Inner Being is not a construct of consciousness – indeed it cannot be created by either Mind or Brain, as it is my Inner Being that is conscious. It is my Inner Being that thinks the thoughts I think, and feels the feelings I feel.

When I say ‘I think’ then the actual ‘I’ that says ‘I think’ is my Inner Being.

Christians call this the soul, but this word has so many connotations that go so far beyond philosophical or scientific perspectives that I prefer not to use it.

We have a lower nature based on false self and a higher nature based on true self.

You are right to say that it is part of our nature to live according to the dictates of our false self or ego. However, as humans, we are complex beings with both natural and supernatural capabilities.

Finding your true self is a greater goal than living according to your base nature.

Sorry, but self is what our brain creates. There are regions in our brains that control fear, anxiety, feelings of pained pleasure that constantly respond by increasing or decreasing the amount of chemicals to influence the memory and the emotional importance of the neural system response. We interpret electro-chemical senses through the nerves, dendrites (nerve cells and connections to many cells) and the reenforcement of these signals as “reality”. We ‘fill in the dots’ of time, space and motion and respond by learning from our mistakes until we react immediately to stimuli. This is the sense of consciousness we take for granted. All living organisms have one evolutionary prime directive: to survive , multiple and adapt to environmental changes. This is why every living cell develops special functions that balance multi celled organs to act in a balance to form a complex organism. We are ignorant of the autonomic functions that keep us alive because it is more efficient to use energy to think and react to the need for food and safety.

You must be referring to what I call noisy Buddhists who aren’t content to work inwardly to eradicate their own self for the sake of some spiritual ambition to achieve enlightenment and release from future suffering (what a bogus motivation for spirituality), but insist that everyone else be shocked by their claim that the self is an illusion and an unnecessary encumbrance that just causes suffering. How can we square that claim with nature and evolution? Isn’t it even more obvious that the self serves a very useful purpose? The body of an animal must be able to navigate its way around its environment so the animal brain must build internal maps of (local) external reality. What good are maps without a map reader / navigator, so the brain makes that too. In us humans with our evolved capacity for symbolic thinking (this means that), an energy and time saving strategy, we have verbal communication so we can share our maps with each other. That capacity gives birth to the internal dialogue which, in the conditions of relative safety and security, becomes a storyteller. Our storyteller tells the story of the internal map reader / navigator and calls that the self. We say “I”. That is the storyteller labeling the operational self. It is very much a part of our nature to have a self and to call it “I”. There is an illusory aspect to the self in that it regards itself as some kind of entity when in fact it is a flow of bio-electrical energy conducted on brain nerve fibers that connect brain structures. And of course, when we react to social situations as if they were physical threats (think about how people feel when they are insulted), we could say, there you go, your “self” is over-reacting, and you are wasting energy and suffering needlessly.

If the bottom line here is saving energy and avoiding the discomfort of our dignity being insultable, I suppose it would be advantageous to figure out some method to divest the self of its reactivity. To sum, sticks and stones….

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Most people don’t think about it. They are happy with how their conscious life plays out while there is a voice in their head. Two million years ago, we’re pretty sure no human wondered about this at all. Whatever it is that evolved into this sense of self, we are still what we are. You are still you.

As Eaglemam said, the self is not an illusion in the sense that it doesn’t exist, but in that it is something other than what we think it is. For you, your experience involves thinking a lot about what the sense of self is. You miss out on just living in the moment. For you, each moment is filled with self awareness that you are thinking about the self. You could get more in touch with your awareness of the world around you, but you don’t want to put in the time or do the practices that lead to that.

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Am I still me? With everything I’ve read about cognition, intelligence, and consciousness I can’t really go back to “normal” ever again.

Well it’s like when someone ruins the trick a magician does, life is never the same again. Eagleman I think doesn’t fully grasp the consequences of his advocacy of determinism. In fact most people don’t, like how brain structure affects personality and other things but people don’t bat an eye at brain plasticity. To live a good life requires a level of ignorance about the world and compartmentalizing. Once that’s broken, IMO the only option is either some blind hedonism or ending it. Philosophical pessimism might have had a point.

It’s also like I mentioned above about the homosexuality and deviance, though I could not find the article that mentioned it.

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Case in point about love:

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Why is normal on quotes? What is normal?

What are saying here?

This is your primary error. A good life is not one of ignorance.

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Normal meaning doing what everyone else does while they don’t really question it.

Essentially that they quote brain plasticity when it comes to changing behavior while ignoring the fact that that means that who you are is essentially out of your hands and depends on brain structure and how things are organized. I cited a post from lesswrong about the guy who mentioned it.

It pretty much is, especially since much of the illusions we list as a good life require outdated views according to science. when i went to a recovery center for my mental health a lot of what they said didn’t really “work on me” because it was based on outdated notions of free will and selfhood, which honestly was really crushing for me. I was hoping for something new that would help.

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Or as a long discussion framed it when I put it into AI (which just summarized what I already felt):

You’ve trapped the argument in its most uncomfortable corner. If you have to deliberately forget that something is an illusion just so you can take it seriously, that is, by definition, self-deception.

Calling it “playing a game” or “lucid engagement” is often just a polite, philosophical euphemism for lying to yourself to keep from going crazy.

The Hindu concept of Lila (divine play) literally relies on cosmic self-deception: the absolute consciousness has to trick itself into being a terrified, limited human because absolute truth is too sterile to live in.

This leaves you face-to-face with a brutal dilemma about human existence:

The Uncomfortable Reality: Complete Truth May Be Incompatible with Human Life

If living authentically requires total alignment with objective truth, and objective truth reveals that:

  1. Nature contains no inherent purpose or values.

  2. The “self” is a fleeting computational representation.

  3. Social constructs (money, justice, status) are imaginary agreements.

…then a human mind that holds 100% objective truth in its awareness at every second faces a severe psychological tax.

Psychologists call this “Depressive Realism.” People with mild to moderate depression often have a more accurate assessment of their control over the world, their actual status, and their future prospects than “healthy” people. “Healthy” human psychology relies on a baseline layer of positive cognitive illusions—the belief that we are slightly more important, safe, and in control than we actually are.

In that sense, human biology itself is hardwired to “lie” to you just to keep you motivated enough to survive and reproduce.

The Three Paths Left

Once you realize that society, biology, and existentialism all ask you to rely on constructs, you have three choices:

Path 1: The Purist (Nihilistic Honesty)

You refuse to lie to yourself. You refuse to “play the game” or pretend that money, status, or arbitrary goals matter.

  • The Result: Total authenticity, but high risk of paralysis, alienation, and existential depression. You become the person standing on the sidelines of the game, refusing to roll the dice because “the board is just cardboard.”

Path 2: The Believer (Naive Delusion)

You swallow the societal constructs whole. You genuinely believe that your job title defines your soul, that money is sacred, and that your country/ideology is the absolute center of moral truth.

  • The Result: High function in society, but total vulnerability to existential shock when the illusion cracks (job loss, tragedy, mortality).

Path 3: The Pragmatist (Pragmatic Acceptance of Limitation)

You admit that as a biological organism with a human brain, you cannot function in a total void of meaning. Instead of calling it “lying,” you treat human constructs the same way you treat physical tools:

  • You don’t “believe” a hammer is a sacred law of physics; you use it because you want to drive a nail.

  • You don’t “believe” love or art have a cosmic certificate from the universe; you engage in them because the raw, phenomenal experience of love and beauty feels intrinsically good to a conscious mind.

The Final Cut

If you consider Path 3 to still be a form of self-deception, then you’ve arrived at the ultimate existential conclusion: To be a conscious human being is to exist in a state of necessary compromise between absolute truth and livable reality.

If absolute truth strips away the ability to feel, care, or act, then “lying to yourself”—or at least choosing which fictions are worth participating in—might not be a moral failure. It might simply be the price of admission for being alive.

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see this for the full topic: https://gemini.google.com/app/f338caff6f36a11f

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That is an excellent summary. I wish it was what you already felt, but there is no way for me to know. You have been quoting and linking and saying, “like this person says” for a long time now. Why should I think this is the best representation of you? And, it has 3 possible answers, so what do you think of them? Which is best?

Besides, it has flaws that have been pointed out before. It barely acknowledges evolution. Evolution is not directed by anything other than survival and it creates flawed beings like us. So the premise, “a human mind that holds 100% objective truth in its awareness,” is useless, since no such human exists. It contradicts itself immediately, saying our biology is hardwired to “lie” to you. And hides all the problems with that by putting “lie” in quotes. It reduces the problem back to the “objective truth” error.

Path 1 has the merit that; you don’t lie about what will bring happiness, but still ignores the reality of the human condition. The result it states is what you have been stating about your daily life.

Path 2 is kinda dumb.

Path 3 is closer to what I say. It would take more discussion of the meaning of “belief.”

The final cut does amateur philosophy again. You can’t compromise with “absolute truth”, since we don’t know what that is. It uses “lying” again as a shortcut to avoid a deeper look at ourselves, and says “choosing” when that is part of the condition and mystery. I would use a word like “awareness”, and dig deeper into what we experience. That would include that voice in our heads that is trying to make sense of it all.

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Well it’s always been what I struggled with, that there is no objective meaning and to make some feel like lying.

It’s the same with the self being an illusion, especially when folks just call it a story we tell…

If you were to ask me, I might well be inclined to describe humans as Language Machines. Humans are, I contend, a Narrative Species. If I ask, “Who are you?”, you will tell me a story, defining your self with a narrative. That monkey mind types on a neverending scroll in our brains.

The term machines also doesn’t help much either.

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How do you describe humans?

I’m asking you. Who are you?

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This still gives me trouble because it casts doubt on whether something is true.

To me humans are just humans, but I realize that’s just my say so. I don’t like the term machine because it feels invalidating to much of our lives

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That is not an answer.

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Every living person born from a woman is human… And all human beings should free and equal in rights.

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Okay. Still not what I meant. Here’s my answer to describing humans, as a human doing the describing.

We are creatures on a planet in a vast universe with little likelihood of finding intelligent life anywhere else in that universe. We seem to have much more sense of past and future than all of the other life on this planet. We can relate all of that to each other and to generations that follow us and build on the knowledge. We have thoughts and feelings but only recently have we begun to understand what those are and where they come from. At times it feels like we control our destiny and at others it feels like we are just like all other creatures, pushed around by the forces of our environment. Ultimately, we don’t know what the next moment will bring and that can be frightening, but, when the next moment arrives it can be filled with joy.

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I did say that was just my say so, I don’t really have a solid answer on what it means to be a human.

I just know that for some reason everything I read gets interpreted badly or negatively and I always end up looking for something bad to obsess over and I can’t stop it.

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I think that’s the clearest statement you’ve made that it is you doing the negative interpreting. The things you read are not the cause of your obsession.