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From: conferencereport
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  • Me too

    

  • do you put your understandings in to use other than teaching others?

  • @LucidPhilosophy I'm open to suggestions

  • @conferencereport You can read a book on how to write a book, write the book, sell the book and we could all could find it hard to masturbate to it or you could make the book with lots of photos and we all could find it easy to masturbate to.

  • So, in the future we will become the aeogist Borg?

    And what is free-will free from?

  • @zarkoff45 I imagine it more as having a skeptical attitude toward out own sense of self identity. We'll recognise ourselves as mirages or moire patterns; definately there but something to be treated with a light touch, not to be taken too seriously.

  • @zarkoff45 The 'what is free-will free from' question is great. I'll have to think about that one.

  • @zarkoff45

    Free from effort.

    If conscious thoughts could directly control the dopamine reward system in the brain, then we would have what i would call "free will".

    So, you just need to think "i want to do x", which instantly adjusts the reward circuits in your brain, so that whenever you do x dopamine gets released and you feel incredibly good and rewarded by doing x and it doesn't take you any effort anymore to do what you will.

  • @xknowledgeisfreex Yes, but you *can't* do that, of course. Try it.

    "I want to fall madly in love with this parking meter."

    "I want to enjoy having my fingernails pulled out by this churlish fellow with the plyers."

    "I want to believe Phil Collins is a greater, more profound composer than Beethoven."

  • @polymath7

    I know, but that's just what i would understand by "free will".

    We have free thought, but we don't have free will. A nicotine addicted person can freely think about the disadvantages vs advantes of smoking and can come to the conclusion that it is just a complete waste of money and health, because all it does is to short circuit the reward system of his brain, but he cannot just give it up, only by making the decision.He has to invest effort to resist the cravings etc.

  • @xknowledgeisfreex Do we have free thought?

    Look directly at this sentence but don't read it.

    What did you mean by "free thought"?

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  • I think Gary ultimately does agree with this view of the ego. His knee-jerk contrarianism often overshadows a well thought out response.

  • Excellent video - You've given me a lot to think about. I thank you for that!

  • from a theist point of view it could also be said - that it is an amazing centralist ego to think that the "I" is all there is, which from the theist point of view is what the atheist does, hyper focuses on the "I". it seems to me the atheist is are of the position of the agent. also when you say "god" by what definition, personal, impersonal, transcendent, ect... - Spinoza's god, Joe Campbell's god, or Bishop Sheen's god....

  • @AfterFauve001 and now to flip that opinion on its head, - the Ancient Greeks removed the observer from science, where as Einstein and quantum mechanics reintroduced the observer, or the I. - point of view is relative - enforces the position of the "I".

  • @AfterFauve001 Maybe. I'd be inclined to say that Einstein introduces the idea of an impersonal 'I', a 'first person plural' that generates higher order understanding by aggregating relativistic information. It's the 'I' that could be anywhere, not the personal 'I' that is always at the single centre of its own world. Does that make sense?

  • @conferencereport absolutely - but (and this is crudely put) like every snowflake being different every point of view being different - or how everyone looking at a rain bow in the sky is not actually seeing the same rain bow, is not the personal "I" inevitable? no 2 "I's" are going to have the same experience. also there are still needs of the individual that will not be the same as for others, otherwise medicine would not be hit or miss. as i said - crudely put.

  • @AfterFauve001 "Spinoza's god, Joe Campbell's god, or Bishop Sheen's god...."

    VenomFangX's God.

  • @zarkoff45

    that's my point. the typical debate about god is only from the evangelical fundamentalist Christian world view, which all though very boisterous does not represent the majority of believers.

  • @AfterFauve001 "...does not represent the majority of believers."

    How do you know what represents the majority of believers? Have you checked the polls?

  • @zarkoff45 I talk to them. in the real world, out side of you tube.

  • @AfterFauve001 I agree that there are many different god (and self) concepts which seem to fill different shaped needs. I would also agree that the shift from a god-shaped hole to a self-shaped hole might not necessarily be a move toward better understanding.

  • @conferencereport In a universe of ever increasing complexity upon new discoveries regardless of what position or mind set a life adapts to / evolves to - its going to encounter all sorts of problems - is a better understanding possible? in my (although new-agey but still) monotheistic youth, debating the old school Bertrand Russell atheists, I was often hit with the catch phrase "if there is a god its me" and my smarty reply was "exactly", so is there really a difference?

  • Free will is illusory ,I've decided. actually changed my mind by watching you-tube vids on the subject .when I saw a video of scientists actually predicting a guys actions by monitoring his mind before he'd actually decided to act ,was proof positive for me ,case closed .

  • In what way would you structure language to avoid this free will implication? How would you replace words like "I" and "choice"?

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  • @plutoend99 Some you could just not use, in the way that 'I' is hardly ever used in scientific writing. Others would be harder.

  • what about Freud and the discovery of the unconscious? This radically overturn the notion of rationalism and the (free) will of the ego.

  • @BTinHD Agreed

  • @BTinHD uhm, why?

  • @Sivels enlightenment philosophy went too far with the rationalism bit. Perhaps look at Behavioural economics and decision making for today or read about psychoanalysis in the context of the early 20th Century (I am not saying the two are related). They just emphasis the trouble we have with rationality and making sense of the world.

  • this video seems to excite the "vortex"

  • @egoistorms Nice e-prime. I grok where you're coming from.

  • I find this hard to grok to, which is a compliment... I think.

  • @TheLaughingOut I'm going to choose to take it as one (as if I had a choice)

  • @conferencereport You're quite funny. Not that it has anything to do with you. You couldn't be anything else.

    ;)

  • Does this mean "Snap" with have an accompanying video "Fap"?

  • @VoxNeruda Not on youtube it won't

  • In public I'm an atheist. In private I masturbate to the god of the gaps. The good thing is my bodily fluids never need a clean up as they evaporate upon contact with the brilliantly hot surface of the Lord's face. Jesus provides the lube, because he thinks Jehovah needs to come down a few pegs and chill the fuck out.

  • @Monolith1618 How can anyone resist the lap dance of the gods

  • I tried to post a video response but I dont know if YouTube is working right .... so here's the link.

    I have a solution for you on my channel, the video called "My Philosophy"

  • I'm just picturing people starting to masturbate (or in internet-english "masterbate" or "fap") whenever they understand, get or grok something....what a wonderful world that would be :D (albeit, a bit messy)

  • @wonderpope Always take a box of tissues to the library

  • kundalini got there first....the processes of I-ing merge with divine-ing....eurocognition has catching up to do...LOL.....kinda makes Wilber accurate after all...Eros is Cosmos.

  • @9macrina9 That particular trouser snake is beyond my ken, sorry.

  • it doesn't need to be bound with a personal subject

    it's an entire system

    choice happens, there is no I to choose

    decisions are made, there is no subject who decides

  • @galikazoid I know what you mean, but from the position of the decider, however 'illusory' that might be, the sense of a decision is still there, and that needs explanation. It's seems to me rather like saying that because a thermostat is mechanical and deterministic that there is no thermostat.

  • I really don't think that ancient man was that naive. I am sure there were plenty of people in the past who did not believe in God and I am also sure that there were plenty of people who did believe in God not because it explained every unexplained phenomena but rather they believed in God because people around them gathered in churches and this was a central part of many cities and towns. Look they didn't have television, cars, shopping malls etc. I think you have over simplified ancient man

  • @copperpaint I'm sure you're right

  • we can only think & talk in concepts & all concepts are relative - no matter how apparently abstract or concrete they are considered to be.

    so we just need to 'loosen-up' about our sense of what 'i' signifies...

    to abandon it completely is only another kind of absolutism... just in a different way.

    you exist & you do not exist. they're just perspectives.

  • it would be hard to base a language on a structure bereft of 'I'. God, and any other accepted reference point, are at least 'other'. there's a difference in the set of applications applied to each.

    i find this video easy to grok

  • @SkidRowRadio I think you could do it but it would leave out lots of the things we feel are most important in human conversation; personal responsibility for one's actions, the differences in value that people give to the same experience, imagining for the future based on unique experiences from individual pasts.

  • @conferencereport You've got to start out right off the bat with something strikingly novel and attention grabbing to get me to stick around long enough to see if you've got anything worth saying about free will. Sorry, I didn't make it past two minutes.

    We have will, obviously. What is it supposed to be "free" of?

    Physics?

    Not a fucking chance.

    Really, is there *anything* else to be said?

  • @polymath7 If you can't pay attention for more than two minutes then anything you might say is probably not worth the effort, like this comment for example.

  • @conferencereport I can stick around for at least couple hours if, say, Marvin Minsky is talking. Sorry, I'm irascibly impatient with the subject.

    Free will is not a complex or difficult or unresolved problem, at all. It's just not worthy of discussion.

  • @polymath7 My suggestion; either stop watching videos about it or share your solution with the rest of us.

  • @conferencereport Happily. Formulate what you think the problem is, and I'll tell you why it isn't a problem.

    (Can I make good on this? Of course.)

  • @polymath7 "Free will is not a complex or difficult or unresolved problem, at all. It's just not worthy of discussion."

    While I'm inclined to agree with you, take a looky here at this video: "Can Libertarian Free Will Be Made Consistent With Modern Science?" Sorry, Youtube no like the linky thing.

  • @synchronium24 Rather than my watching the video, could you paraphrase any ideas you think I might not already have heard and considered many, many times?

    To my mind asking, "Can libertarian free will be made consistent with modern science?" is like asking, "What happens if you melt the number seven?". It's just a meaningless question. "Libertarian free will" is not only semantically redundant, it also, much like ontic indeterminism, is literally not a concept at all.

  • @polymath7 Well, if you think ontic indeterminism is 'not a concept at all,' then there's little hope of you agreeing with anything in the video, but i'll try to elucidate the main points as best I can. On a side note, I was surprised to find that I found the arguments for libertarianism in the video more compelling than I ever have for compatiblism, for which i still don't have a satisfying definition, let alone account. Robert Kane argues that freedom of action AND will can be accounted (1)

  • @polymath7 for using quantum indeterminacy (yes, quantum indeterminacy--hold your horses!, he's not going woo-woo on your ass). The basic idea is that we don't need to have free will for all events, but only for formative events. During these formative events, we not only perform an action, but settle the tensions of competing desires to determine our longterm priorities of the desires. He attributes the tensions we feel to parallel processing in the brain, which he surmises could involve (2)

  • @polymath7 quantum indeterminacy, and admits explicitly is an empirical question open to refutation. However, even though these choices are 'random,' he does not believe them to be arbitrary. They both form the will and are expressions of it, leading to 'Ultimate Responsibility (UR)' for our actions. I think that last point needs further explanation, but it's a start. There's an 82 minute video on that same channel in which he goes into much more detail to try to clear up (3)

  • @polymath7 confusions/contentions, but i figured 20 minutes was pushing it. Also, I realize hearing stupid arguments regurgitated can make you want to dispense with the whole lot of thick-skulled dissidents. However, it might behoove you to show a little more interest to opposing views for those who have a less patience than i do. "I'll listen to a small portion of your arguments, and even then only if you meet preconditions x, y, z" doesn't exactly promote cooperation from the other end. (4)

  • Beating the bishop is one of my favorite past times things to do. It touches the cockle's of my heart. LOL

  • I used to find your videos easy to masturbate to, but then I took an arrow to the groin.

  • the i delusion?

    e-prime may offer some semblance of a departure point out of egoistic indoctrination, and trans/posthumanism much more besides. In the meantime, strewth!

  • @shangrigreige e-prime is really interesting, and definately related.

  • that storm/vortex/I=eye=I-shaped-ho­le-in-our-imagery-thing is such a powerful metaphor btw. thanks for coming up with that.

    Do jets get a function in this, I wonder? whirling stuff creates jets, doesn't it? highly focused, directed streams coming from the heart of the nothingness, projected outwards, perpendicular to all dynamics surrounding it...could that effectiveness be part of the I-delusion? Or am I rambling? yeah I am >.<

  • @ratioetscientia Ooh yes, nice extension of the metaphor. 

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  • Also there is "self-awareness"  - and this comes from a POINT of awareness ....yes? I do see Ego issues here, but there is still a GAZE and indeed a FOCUS. What word would YOU USE?

  • @VitaM1977 I think visual metaphors like Gaze and Focus help to construct the fiction of an 'I' at the point of that metaphorical perspective-taking. Maybe metaphors drawn from the other senses would be better; I particularly favour touch imagery.

  • There is a danger element to this video. To wipe out the "I" is to entertain the idea that there are no subjects in control of their lives, and this will allow other "I's" to take control ...

    There is a choice, we have a nice sense of this, and this is the reason FOR "I" ...

  • isn't it about being outwards directed? We can "choose" where we place the "I" ,,,yes? And this changes our behaviour...and that is free will.

  • could you tell us more about your experience of using language without using the word 'I'? how did that idea come about and what were the psychological effects? many thanks!

  • @WeirdUniverse I did a video about it a while ago, would it be rude of me to point to it?

  • @conferencereport please. ta.

  • @conferencereport point away! much appreciated.

  • @conferencereport not at all...i'd like to watch it too...

    but WHY did ya shave? i think your beard gives you a more intellectual look haha.

    :)

  • yes, 'grokking' reads like potentially dangerous 'woo-woo'.

  • Free will or free willy?

  • @socrates856 One in every box of cornflakes

  • what's that got to do with masterbation? *deep philosophical talk* ok, so what's that got to do with masturbation? *deep philosophical talk* LOL but I made it to 13:45

  • @Illyria23alyssa Well done. It's always better if you hold off longer

  • How could we believe in the ego? Why, we didn't have a choice!

  • You're a philosophy professor?

  • @canucks117 Nah, theatre.

  • Grok - Grasp?

  • @eydos I think of it as a bit more 'internal' than grasping. When you grasp something it might be in your hand and under your control but it's not inside you or part of you. That's what I understand by grokking.

  • I really think this the way primitive minds were before we had personal names.

  • @Barklord You may be right. I'd probably put it a bit further back than that personally, but who knows.

  • what you talk about concerning the error of this cartesian subject-object dichotomy has already been discussed. i think you'd benefit tremendously from a thorough reading of heidegger's early work. his study (and revelation) of aristotle and the influence of aristotelian thinking all throughout antiquity (through aquinas, descartes, hegel, kant) is nothing short of awe-inspiring. the birth of logic, the idea of the subject together with copula, the whole meaning of being is dealt with.

    cheers.

  • coming. this feeling of....ah(a)!

  • Ah yes, 'them', those people who aren't 'us' who have egos and behave as if 'others' 'deserve' to be attacked for not being, seeing or knowing exactly the same as the 'us' that exists only when it suits. I'm not a great fan of mental masturbation. The 'feeling' of knowing is not the same as knowing. We never entirely understand anything, even ourselves. Loneliness is often self inflicted. Anyway, apparently there is no 'I'.

  • @Loreleila chop wood, carry water, shout, feel stuff, think, watch tv. The wind blows the branches of the tree but thinks that it is the tree, waving its branches and creating the wind.

  • How about

    "I think..." "thinki.."  I go shoping "goi shoping..."

  • Sorry about "my" compulsive errata...Meant: "it'd be great if we all knew what the subtexts were."

    Btw "I" couldn't masturbate to this...or "I" couldn't have if "I"'d tried, which I didn't of course...

    :¬)

  • @2bsirius Would it help if I put music to it?

  • I discovered groking when "I" was fifteen and read Stranger in a Strange Land..."I" think it'd be great if we all knwo what the subtexts were.

    "I" think the "I" is a process, so it doesn't need to be a thing, which brings "me" back to groking in the sense that the extended mind could possibly making groking possible. Self-reflexive thought is both paradoxical and it may also be the only way to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle....

  • oooh, 0 views? First! :)

    You, Sir, have an amazingly free mind! Congratulations and happy grokking ... if it ever happens!

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