Do you fear death?

^ Glad you added the quotation marks to "belief", cause I don' t think you actually get to choose your beliefs. Either you found something that was evidence enough for you to be truly convinced or you didn' t. The kind of "belief" you' re talking about looks more like the Coué method.

Actually that' s irrelevant : call it reality, a dream, the matrix, whatever, he' s merely studying the rules of that "dream". He doesn' t assume he' s the same type of entity as those he' s studying, that' s the conclusion the evidence he found led him to believe.

 

Reading up on him, that does sound accurate. Thank you for referencing him.

Yet the evidence he found would not allow him to determine whether or not he was dreaming or hallucinating even if he were, so the evidence could never lead him to the conclusion that they were the same type of entity. Either they existed independent of his mind or they did not. He would have no way to determine that, call it reality, a dream, the matrix, whatever.

 

If he cannot determine it then it doesn' t matter whether they' re a product of his mind or not, the definition for the word "human" that he uses is a bunch of shared observed characteristics, nothing more. His investigations are led by practical purposes, not fruitless philosophical mental masturbation.

 

[video=youtube;y1Kdn4FEr-0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Kdn4FEr-0[/video]

Sorry.

Anyway, I don't really fear death at all it's just HOW I die that I worry about.

 

It is quite well-defined from a biological standpoint, which hopefully still takes priority over any philosophical ponderings. If "being the philosophical type" means turning your head away from the cold hard facts in favour of abstract and dreamy ideas with no or questionable evidence, then I am indeed not the philosophical type.

I look at the scientific basis and go from there, which I admit gets exceedingly difficult the more my scientific knowledge expands. Nevertheless, understand and applying mechanisms is essential and without it, philosophy is indeed pointless. You can't explain how a watch works without understanding the composition of the gears inside.
If someone claims not to be human I expect that person to know (read: be convinced and having reason to be) what sets them apart from the human species. Escaping the dance of death once does not suffice.

Which, again, is a good way to impede any kind of progress in any conceivable area. For someone valuing usefulness, you seem fond of holding ideas that are anything but. Of course, you could always make the argument that you'd rather think about yourself rather than an anonymous crowd of humans, but I can't help but wonder where you'll get your satisfacton from if you exclude everyone but yourself.
No matter how you look at it, satisfaction is the key factor to living a fulfilled life, and there is no scenario to lead such a life without others coming into play in some way.

Not quite, even if he repeats the phrase every day. I have a hard time believing that you can't see the difference between "I will never die" and a repeated "I won't die today". He who says the latter doesn't extrapolate his life span indefinitely, only to the end of the day.
That being said, both can be dead wrong and end up dying that very day. Whether believing they won't will actually help them I'll leave in the middle, but I do know that senescence is a powerful force of nature.

Read: I delude myself.
I agree with what Patman said before me, but see below for an elaboration on why I think your ideas are shite even if you could choose to believe in usefulness rather than truth.

Except efficiency is observed with the same methods as truth, so if truth cannot be discerned, then efficiency becomes equally unknowable.
Long term usefulness may not be apparent even if though it may overshadow short term usefulness eventually. Contrariwise, even if something seems immediately useful to you, you have no way of "discerning" whether it may not be more useful to believe something else in the long run. Given this, the tool you wield does not matter since both are equally useful/useless.

Which brings me back to my central point: your philosophy contradicts assumptions, truths and hypotheses thought out by people that have struck me as more intelligent than you have been (which, at this very moment, isn't the hardest thing to do but I digress) and its usefulness is questionable. Believing you can't die might make you last longer in a world filled with knowledge and behavior that you deem pointless. Where is the efficiency in being singled out? Quod erad demonstrandum: you lose on all fronts.

Funniest thing I read this month.

Hooooooooooooold it! I'm going to be hopping on a train of thought here... It's a debating technique I'm not used to, but here goes...

Part 1:
You believe avoiding death requires energy.
Thus, you believe that actions require energy (since it absurd to assume that only avoiding death requires energy).
You believe you can waste energy.
Thus, you believe the amount of usable energy available to you is limited (since you can't waste something that isn't).
You believe you will live indefinitely.
Thus, you believe that you will live to see the day that all the energy available to you is used up.
Thus, you believe your actions to be limited (since actions require energy).
Conclusion: Even if you assume that staying alive doesn't cost a single Joule in itself, you will be left there staying alive taking no actions. Eternally.

Mathematics have taught us that:
Infinity - finite number = Infinity
So the finite time that you have energy availble falls into nothing compared to the infinity you'll spend without any.

On to part two... I think I've already got you pretty much cornered by using conventional logic, but since conventional logic isn't your cup of tea I'm going out of my way to cut off the "enlightenment doesn't cost me anything" option as well.

Part 2:
You believe you can waste energy.
Thus, you believe that you can spend it usefully as well (because if you don't want to waste it, it means you'd rather use it for something else).
Thus, at least some things you consider useful require energy.
You value things that are useful to you (see this entire debate).
Thus, you value at least some things that require energy.
You insist in living by the most useful option.
Thus, all the things you value require energy (because if they wouldn't, it would only be useful to value that which requires no energy and nothing else).
You will spend an infinite time with no energy (see part one).
Conclusion: You will spend an infinite amount of time without the things you value.

How is believing this useful again?

Also see above. I do not believe avoiding death is a waste, so that argument is void. The latter will be resolved on your death bed, when you may or may not come to regret overestimating the time you had to do the things you've always wanted to do. Tryng to fool yourself into thinking your time won't come will get so much harder when you live long enough for your health to deteriorate (because stayin healthy DOES cost energy, so time not wasted avoiding death is instead spent/wasted living healthy longer). Of course, you could always believe in eternal youth, but then you should ask yourself the question why you'd suddenly stop aging if you already have aged in the past.

You're only making things harder for yourself. I, on the other hand, am synchronized to a set of rules that both make sense to me and fulfill me. I am being far more efficient than you are.

 

And yet the idea of death observed in others is not something he can apply to himself so easily. From a practical standpoint, there will be no way to test whether he can die or not like the others except by actually dying.

I see myself as different from every other person I have met simply by nature of the feeling that this world is a dream. That I can understand every facet of it if I give it study, or perhaps that the facets create themselves if I look for them, and then I can understand them. I have been given no evidence that others think, only that they are machines, led to an unavoidable conclusion in every word they speak and every action they take.

As far as I am concerned, I can only prove that I think, and others merely... Act. I hear words, but I have no evidence that thoughts went on behind them; they are words, which I could have hallucinated to myself.

Because there can be no evidence against this model, intuition is the only deciding factor. My intuition tells me that I am not tied down to the rules of this particular dream. I have no way to verify this other than by trying to die, so any belief on it at all is worthless, but the feeling is rather strong and I am not hurt by it in any way (at the present time), so it is a worthwhile amusement at the least.

A solipsist can easily be called delusional, but so can someone who believes strongly that what they experience is a physical reality. While the solipsist is called delusional, he has no reason to believe that the one calling delusional is not a part of the delusion as well.

Pray tell, what are his studies to be useful for? In order to determine usefulness, we must have a goal to complete. Else we have no need of tools at all.

I see the difference, but in practice they are the same. I am rather like the man who says, "I will not die today," and simply has no imagination for the next week, or year, or ten years, and assumes that he will say the same thing every day, forever. If I live each individual day as if I will not die, it does not matter if I do so because I decide to feel that way each day, or if I have decided that I will never die, indefinitely: the result is that I do not believe I can die on the day that I actually do, if at all.

That is one way to put it. I do not view all delusions as harmful. To be more specific, I value gamble as more valuable than certainty in many cases. Thinking "I will win" against improbable odds is something I greatly admire, and it is a trait I hope to possess. Admit defeat only when there are no options left.

That is incorrect. Truth is absolute, while efficiency is temporary. When I search for efficiency, I am searching for what is true at that moment, you could say, but not what is true objectively, for all people, and in all time frames. If I have a goal to have a good conversation, and I have what I know to be a hallucination to speak to (by diagnosis or the like), I may indeed have the conversation with it because it is efficient to my goals, despite it not being a "true" conversation. Likewise, I might have the same conversation in a dream in order to satisfy my desire.

Efficiency can be tested, but truth cannot. Using the dream again, I could easily have a dream, find a tool and test it for efficiency within that dream. At the time, it does not matter that the tool is not a "true" tool, or that it does not "truly" exist. There would be no way to tell if it truly did anyway. But at the time, it would prove itself to be efficient and useful.

When I say truth and claim that it is unknowable, I mean "true existence" or "objective fact". There is no such thing as objective evidence, so truth is unknowable, but it is possible to determine efficiency on subjective terms. As such it is a superior value.

One of my desires, and probably one of my strongest, is to understand myself as an individual. Your question about being singled out puzzles me, as do your allusions to intelligence. My entire stance on death is based on intuition and my predisposition to solipsist episodes. I make no claim to it being based in intelligence.

On top of my intuition, I will come to no harm from following it and may come to some happiness, so it is rather a measure of hedonism and gambling than intelligence.

Well, they are. For instance, when I saw the wall of text below, I considered that I may have to amend my view straight off because you seemed to have thought it out thoroughly. It takes a lot to change my mind and I often change my own rather than someone else doing it, but my beliefs are easily changed as soon as they stop being good worthwhile gambles.

Read: I fold only when I run out of chips or see no way to regain them, but I do fold if I must.

Ah, that is clever. It is true in a sense. If I live forever, there will come a time when I lose all zest for experience and see nothing else to do, forever. That is why I would seek something akin to death at some point, as the final experience. It may be lost to me, though. Merely come into another dream or the like.

But my belief in wasting energy is semantics. I feel that any expenditure of energy for any given day is wasteful because it is taxing and I would prefer to do everything with as little effort as possible even if I were to keep the same level of energy forever. When I say something is a waste of energy, I mean that it takes up more energy compared to alternatives and so is inefficient... Compared to alternatives.

Less energy is better because strain is unpleasant, not because I will run out.

Good call. Your logic was sound, but one of your premises was based on the semantics of the word "wasteful".

Ah, I am disappointed. You fell prey to the same premise.

I have no reason to believe that I will run out of energy. Even from an evidenced standpoint—and I say even because I have heretofore ignored evidence—energy and matter are infinitely conserved, never running out and never lost. I acknowledge the possibility that this hypothetical or symbolic body may wear down, but I as a consciousness will not have any reason to run out of energy. Physical power, perhaps, but not energy.

The absence of energy is equivalent to death because without energy I would have no thought and so would not exist. Unless I am like a hard drive of sorts and would sit there until a new battery or body came along. That is possible.

It is more useful than believing that I will die because I cannot think of a scenario in which believing that I will die would bring about a preferable outcome. If you can think of one, then please present it and I will attempt to reason out which belief would be preferable in that scenario.

Equally arrogant, you might notice, is your wording. "I, on the other hand, am ..." It sounds all well and good, but I cannot think of a scenario in which such synchronization would lower your stress levels rather than increase them.

I can think of no scenario in which I would be better off believing I could die, as in cease to exist (other than perhaps wishing to cease to exist; suicide). That bit should have been clear from my second post or so. I am not so confident in this body, per se, but I feel that my consciousness is not tied down to this body. Even if this body were to decay and "die", I would not profit from believing that I as a mind would die as well.

Should the time come when my body dies, I will still not believe that my existence will end. There is no way for me to profit from believing that it will end. I can easily make efficient use of this body, seeing the body as finite, without believing that I myself will die.

You say that I will make it harder on myself, yet your belief will bring more stress on you. Even in your proposed scenario where I would go on infinitely without the things I value, the alternative you suggest is still to lose everything I value, but to lose myself as well. The point for me is that at any point in that infinite time, I could spontaneously get some energy. I would not be able to predict it if it had not happened before, but it could still happen. Or I could invent a way to create energy.

Your suggestion is to resign myself to losing energy and just admitting defeat, or more accurately, eternal, never-ending defeat. Exactly how is that less hard on me than gambling eternally?

 

This is just a matter of semantics all the same. Whether you call it a dream or the physical reality, it remains the only thing you’ve ever felt, and claiming that that isn’t so will put you on the same level as people who claim to have been possessed by the devil in my eyes.
I see my sense of reality backed by a majority of people who feel the same way. I realize that this is meaningless to you, but see below.

That conclusion is by no means unavoidable. It wouldn’t even be reached if you didn’t give more weight to the few differences you observe between yourself and other humans, rather than the plethora of similarities. Feeling that the world is a dream, surviving death against incredible odds... This isn’t even a unique claim among people, so how on earth could it have more validity than the observations that you eat, walk, screw and urinate the same way as the humans around you? Your intuition is definitely not based on logic, which makes it all the stranger that you try to apply logic in this debate and in several others all the same.
That being said, you don’t deny that you foll you are delusional but that said delusions are in fact more useful than believing in logic. I’ll address this below.

Also, you have not been given evidence that others think but later on in that same reply you said

This once again seems to demonstrate that you don't actually acknowledge what you preach, and I'm still not convinced of the efficiency of thinking A and saying B.

Why are you asking this whilst quoting the answer?

If you have no imagination for anything but the immediate future, then you are a horrible hedonist. I’m well aware that mixing several spirits together is a good way to make you the happiest man on the planet for a short while, but I know that I’ll be anything but the next morning and even the next few hours. Planning ahead usually maximizes pleasure more so than looking only at the next few minutes does.

Gambling, by definition does not guarantee a favorable outcome. It is absurd to try and avoid stress due to time constraints whilst creating stress due to hoping for a favorable outcome all the same. Thinking “I will win” won’t cut it if you openly admit that you’re gambling. Words alone aren't enough to condition the mind if they are do not correspond with the thoughts behind them. You can delude yourself, but you’re not immune to self-contradiction and the awareness of those contradictions.

I find it preposterous that you erect a concrete wall between truth and efficiency even though the latter is based on the former. A metal hammer will break a rock better than a rubber hammer will due to the physical laws governing the materials. Antibiotics will do a better job at combating bacteria than a skittle will due to biological truths. These truths are often perceived by imperfect means and therefore not objective, but they are what makes us invent more efficient tools.

Facts that don’t have an immediate practical use can still be (and are being) investigated, although their certainty cannot be verified. Observing the behavior of pest species, for example, will not exterminate the pest, nor is it a perfect study because it is based on a sample. Nevertheless, it is a far better strategy to assess what they are fleeing from then to just intuitively throw a few extra predators in there and hope that it will sort itself out.

In a sense you are right: efficiency is the parameter that decides solutions. To claim that one value is superior to the other is absurd though. It is far better to establish educated axioms and base efficient tools on them than letting your gut feeling pick an option and hoping it will work out.

You seek to understand yourself, but you have
(a) Made this impossible because your opinions change to whatever’s convenient at that precise moment making your personality effectively amorphous
(b) Made this redundant by admitting you are a one-track minded hedonist, which is as boring and as easily untangled as the average Joe’s psyche
(c) Made this both impossible and redundant by denying the existence and the relevance of truths, which must include truths (and thus understanding) of oneself.

(Yeah, I’ve been aware that I’ve did my share in making this another Makaze-centered thread but at least it has given me the chance to say that you have nothing to gain from thinking “I am Makaze and I’m speshul”.)

One of your strongest desires is therefore irrelevant. I can only guess what the others might be, which I won’t, but I can imagine that some if not most of them involve other people. This is why singling yourself out isn’t a sensible choice. By believing in the nonsense you’ve been spewing these past few replies you made your interactions with others questionable and your comparisons to them moot. You have greatly limited the desires you can have, let alone the ones you can actually achieve.

Getting back to:

The grand question would be: why would you WANT to live in a universe where the only reference is you, eternally no less?

You’d be a lousy gambler if you put your chips on that though. If you have come to a point where you have lost all interest, your “new dream” would have to comprise of entirely new experiences, unthinkable even to your current self. Gamblers may bet on the unlikely, but never on the inconceivable. When it comes down to that, it’s a good time to fold.

This alone doesn’t refute my point. I may have misunderstood you but read on…

The reason I’m already replying instead of playing Lost Odyssey (a game with immortality as a major theme no less) is because I thought of that flaw and wanted to edit my post before you’d point it out, because I knew you were going to. You may have noticed that in my previous post I may have said “energy available to you”. I’m well aware of the laws of conservation of energy, and I knew that you’d argue that you wouldn’t run out.

However, even bringing up something along the lines of “I’ll just believe that I can use/convert any type of energy trololololol” doesn’t excuse you. Wasting energy again becomes a key point here (yes, it still haunts you even though you thought could brush it off). Next stop on the train of thought… If you have no reason you believe you can run out of usable energy, you in fact believe that you have a limitless supply of it (because any finite number that can be subtracted can be subtracted to zero). Why then do you feel strained when you use up more than you should?

Even if I have misunderstood you, my observation of you believing in “wasting” energy is correct. It cannot be unpleasant to lose something that you have an infinite supply of. You want to do things with as little effort as possible, but with an infinite amount of time and usable energy at your disposal, this should not even affect you. Furthermore, it puts your entire idea of efficiency being a high and mighty parameter on thin ice since efficiency is not applicable to you.

I admit that I didn’t see this coming. I had expected you to take your chances and spew some bogus about being a spiritual consciousness not requiring energy. It is good that you at least admit that every process requires it. It makes telling you you’re not immortal that much easier.

So that’s that then. The resolution to this discussion lies here somewhere. The way I see it, it comes down to one of three scenarios:
(a) You admit that you are not immortal, since you can run out of energy and you said that this equals death. I guess that would make me succeed in what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.
(b) You admit that being immortal is not preferable because you will run out of energy leaving you with nothing to do, but this means going against what you said in the above quote.
(c) You insist that you will not run out of energy, but as I pointed out, this goes against another thing you stated and puts your entire “I <3 efficiency” philosophy in mortal danger.

All usable energy would be depleted though, and according to the same law of conservation of energy that you have tried to use against me, energy doesn’t appear out of thin air. Whatever would convert it into a usable form is beyond your grasp as well as mine and like I said: gamblers never bet on the inconceivable.

Being on the same wavelength with other people gives me an understanding of them, and them of me. It’s not too hard to see how this decreases stress, but anyway....

You said yourself that your greatest desire is to understand yourself as an individual. You’re on your own for that. I have like-minded people that can help me with this because I put myself on the same footing as them and accept that they can understand me. Their judgment is limited, sure, but so is yours (it’s funny that you can’t deny that it isn’t due to what you said before). You have to entangle yourself entirely on your own, which is both more stressing and less efficient. Your goal is clear enough but you picked the worst approach for the job. Sucks to be you.

Funny how I don’t feel stressed at all then. You did notice that I answered “no” in the poll, right?

You could argue that given infinite time, any likelihood becomes infinitely large. Just to rob you of that argument beforehand, let me remind you of cause and effect, and if something doesn't happen right away, it won't happen if the circumstances stay exactly the same. Perhaps anything could be possible given infinite time, but not with zero tries.

Also, rule of three: there is nothing logical nor preferable to betting on a scenario that you cannot imagine except a favorable outcome in the end. It's no longer gambling without at least mechanism with which your astronomically low odd may occur.

Losing yourself along with everything you value makes it a better scenario in itself. You will experience negativity whenever you lose something you value, else you wouldn’t value it. However, with your consciousness destroyed, you obviously have nothing left to feel negativity with.
You treat death as defeat, but that's incorrect. Death (or permanent loss of consciousness if you will) is equivalent to a zero sum. Being conscious without anything you value to interact with is a negative result.

 

I am going to assume that you are growing tired of this as it is getting long, so I will only address what is necessary.

That is precisely my point. Even if I were to somehow experience another dimension, it would still be included in my reality, and both dimensions could be dreams.

My point is that the truth of the matter is not important because it cannot be known. That is what enables me to reject true/false binaries.

Oh, I do not necessarily view that as a difference, it is a logical conclusion. A person chooses neither their nature nor their nurture, so they have no free will. There is no individual to consciously avoid them. Solipsism is the only definition of the universe that allows me to escape this trap of determination. I have more reason to believe that I am the god of this world than anyone else because I have proof that I think, but not anyone else.

I acknowledge it, but I do not practice it. I used the word "seemed", do not ignore it.

I suppose by evidence I meant a provably valid piece of it, not merely the appearance of it. There are no facts in support of it.

Conceded; that was foolish of me.

The problem with your ultimatum is that I might enjoy thinking of them simply because they are interesting and not because I believe they are of the same type as me. I do not need to believe that we are the same to enjoy studying them.

The term 'statistician' threw me off because it seems so boring compared to individual psychology.

I am a very goal-oriented person, but I rarely hold more than one task at a time. I am obsessive and thorough.

I do avoid things that might harm my capacity for enjoyment. Anything addictive or unclean.

I focus on completing one task and then on the next. I currently do not have any long-term tasks, nor long-term opportunities. I am an opportunist at my core. I prefer to amend my plans as things come along. It would be foolish of me to set careful plans in an environment run on chance.

I usually win my gambles. It will take a lot to break the habit, something of a complete and utter loss of cards.

There are certain fields that cannot be evaluated by either logic or evidence. Whether or not I am dreaming is one of them. What have I but intuition in such cases? I will go back into this later.

Ouch, that hurts. Well, it would if I were not amused. I like arguing with you for a reason.

Conceded on all accounts. I wonder how solidifying my personality would be helpful, though. Limiting myself in order to understand myself is counter-productive; I would make myself into what I wanted to be at the time, and only understand myself at that time.

I go back and forth on that, but ultimately I do not care. My main concern is that I exist in whatever world there is. The rest is subjective perception.

In this case, I do not even have to place chips. If I will die, then it does not matter where I place them if at all, because I will not be there to experience the loss. As such I simply cannot lose this bet. One of the options is winning, and the other is not loss because I will not be there to experience loss.

I expect only to continue existing, nothing else is concrete to me.

I accept my loss, my chips are forfeit.

I could argue that sleep is a regenerative process, but that is troll logic at best. I feel strain because expending energy wears on the body, in the same way that running power through a battery strains the battery. But at the end of the day I have no defense against an argument that my body is my medium for the consumption of energy.

I am not completely delusional, despite appearances.

I would concede all three of your points, but I cannot be certain that I will run out of energy. You have simply convinced me that it is a harder gamble than I was espousing. It is still a gamble that can be made, just a more foolish one.

If all usable energy were depleted then I would be dead.

Do I have a reason to believe that energy is not recyclable?

I view everyone else as a mirror. I also learn about myself from interacting with them, but for a different reason.

If they exist, I must consider that how I see them is my projection of them and not a true representation. I can analyze that projection to learn more about myself. Every definition defines the one who states it and not the one being defined.

If they do not exist, then they are purely a projection of myself and I can get even more data by studying them.

Fair enough. Is it that you do not care if or when you die, or that you believe you can control when? Either one is not so different from me.

Causality currently creates an infinite regress and I will not adhere to it with faith until an acceptable explanation arises.

Here is the problem with your (entire) argument:

You would never be led to assume that your sensory experience was a projection of your own mind even if it were. No matter what reality you found yourself in, no matter the mechanisms it employed, a subjective entity would never be able to observe itself objectively. Your argument is based on the fact that no mechanism for proving it is a dream exists, but there would never be such a mechanism under any circumstance, even for someone who was living in a dream.

Because of that, no matter how concrete a perception seemed, or how much sense it made, it would always seem real to you. You would always be able to rationalize that there was no evidence for it being a dream, while even hypothetically there could be no evidence.

As such, adhering to sensory experience as "true" is always the practical choice.

Ignoring a possibility which would never have had any evidence even if it were true based on the fact that there is no evidence for it is fallacious.

But again, you would argue efficiency. Which is why I choose to entertain this conversation rather than attempt to wake up.

The problem is that I am something I value in myself, so even if I were to lose all of my senses, I would still be able to invent a world and dream on my own.

Self-perpetuating belief, solipsism.

If I were devoid of that ability, though, yes, I would prefer to lose myself. That is, if you can get past the contradiction of losing everything you value yet still valuing death. I think that if I lost my ability to dream, I would also lose my desire for anything, including death.

 

I’m leaving for a music festival tomorrow and won’t be back for a week or so so this will probably be my last reply here.

I will not deny this, but even if I’m being dragged along for the ride, the prospect of not knowing where I’ll end up or what role I’ll play is good enough for me. Besides, whether your conscious self is influenced by other people or by “dream alter egos” doesn’t matter; in the end you are experiencing the same. Why bother thinking something else than everyone else then?
I could ask similar questions several times throughout this reply: why call yourself a god if being a god isn’t better than being a human?

I can’t escape the suspicion, or rather the suspicion has grown on me, that this little gimmick of yours is just a way to set you apart from everybody else for the sake of it. I’m already quite sure that you’re terrified of being normal, so you mosey along with whatever outrageous idea throws you a rope and pulls you away from that normality. The obvious truth though, is that you are no more interesting than anybody else regardless of whether you call yourself a god or a human.

The “puny god” line from Avengers comes to mind. The only way I can think of that you can call yourself a god is by claiming that you are a creative force. Still, you have no more conscious power over us than we claim to have over others. Even if you are the only one who thinks, the decisions you make don’t always play out the way you’ll want them to, even though we are supposed to be created by you. Even if you kicked everything in motion, you have no reason to believe that you have any judgmental or intervening power on your fabrications any more than said fabrications have on themselves. What good then is thinking altogether? How does it make you a god and how is it better than what we claim to be doing? Answer this before claiming that there is any logic in you.

So did I. Not practicing what you preach is part of what I meant by

That too is a part of self-contradiction.

But if your intuition really does make logical conclusions, then similarities between your own achievements and limitations and those of others should ring a bell. There is no concrete proof, nor is it necessary.

I think the gist of it all is your unwillingness to set yourself on the same level as your peers. You somehow prefer to think that you are different from everyone else, and I still can’t fathom why this is desirable at all.

We find the world more interesting because our time is limited. We’ll receive the emergence of democracy in a nation as being good news, but if you’ve seen that nation going back and forth between a democracy and a dictatorship for 10 times or so, it won’t even pique your interest. Being immortal waters down the beauty and interest of things that mortals experience. Therefore it harms your capacity to enjoy them.

But if you keep on betting on lower odds in light of those successive wins, those past experiences are not to be used as a reference. You’ve implied that even a complete and utter loss of cards won’t keep you from betting. How else would you explain your reasoning of “Maybe I’ll invent a way to create energy”? Sounds like you have a gambling problem, which is odd considering you abstain from addiction because it hurts your capacity to enjoy.

Yet you try to justify your intuition with logic. See above.

I can only wonder what that reason might be. Hurting you was never my intention, though I wouldn’t have cared if it were a byproduct of it.

That would be so if your environment was also constant. You seem to be under the misconception that knowing your personality is the same as knowing how your entire life will play out (on top of that, no one can say with a straight face that they know themselves completely).
That being said, solidifying your personality does not necessarily mean that you will never make adjustments to it again (and indeed in most cases it doesn’t). But you will do so without ignoring what you thought, felt and knew previously. You could argue that changing your opinion or personality on the fly is in practice much more efficient, but I have no intention of believing that continuous self-deception won’t wear on you eventually. Switching back to believing you can die when the time comes is all well and good, but don’t tell me you won’t wonder whether you haven’t made some very foolish decisions in the meantime.

Having lost all zest and interest in the universe around you does not make you free from desires (in fact, waiting to win reveals that you’re not completely apathetic). It’s true that you have nothing to lose in waiting for a miraculous way by which they can be fulfilled, but waiting in the meantime can be a frustrating affair that can make betting all the more unappealing.

No more than you have reason to believe that you can’t run out of it. I assume not believing that is preferable to you, but that will bring us back to what we have said before.

Learning about yourself is only valuable when you can compare it to something similar. The traits you possess are part of a range of different traits, or at least have an antonym. By distancing yourself from the people you interact with, you have made such comparisons impossible. Therefore, the desire to learn more about yourself cannot be fulfilled.

Studying ants will not give me valuable information about myself. I could observe that ants are eusocial creatures and that I’m not, but I will only come to that conclusion because a human once taught me what eusociality means. I need other humans to compare and to assess whether I am strong or weak, happy or sad, authoritarian or anarchistic, greedy or generous. You can find it interesting to study something that isn’t you, but to be able to draw actual conclusions on your own nature, you need parallels and comparisons with equivalent beings.

Then it makes no difference whether it is true or false because it lacks noticeable consequences. Any theory that has consequences that cannot be addressed to anything else can be supported if not proven. There is no fallacy in ignoring something that doesn’t matter. Even if it is a practical choice, the alternative of taking it into account isn't better.

Except you admitted that death or non-existence is not a loss. You value yourself but can’t feel bad about losing it.

 

Fair enough. I feel we are coming to a conclusion anyway.

To your first question, I call myself a god, or feel that I am one, based on intuition. It is mainly a thought experiment. Such a belief may at one point allow me a higher measure of control over my supposed dream if or when I become fully aware of it.

That does not bother me anymore. It would have a year ago, but I think my fear of being normal correlates with me disliking the traits that happen to be normal right now. I both want people like me and fear everyone being like me because in a world where everyone was in agreement I would be bored out of my mind for conversation, but in a world where I am alone in my musings I am an outcast or lonely. I seek balance.

But I also abhor the conservative nature of humans. It disgusts me to see anyone who rejects a discussion as if they know the truth of the matter while several options are possible.

My solipsism is based on occasional bouts of strong derealization, bringing up memories with people that I am sure happened and have shaped me, and yet they do not remember them, and so on. Throughout my life I have had very strong feelings that I was dreaming; that the world was unreal. In some cases I was able to wake myself up, seemingly to the real world. I could not tell if this was real, or the one I woke up from was, or what. Had I merely wished reality to change, and created a hallucinated world? Perhaps I had blacked out in reality. The feel of real life and the feel of dreaming get mixed.

I eventually stopped differentiating and now I just go about my business because it really does not matter. Right now, I am discussing this simply for want of something to do and because it interests me. I no longer care what others think of it.

It isn't inherently better, it just makes me completely free of any fear at all. Lack of inhibitions. I set my limits at the peak of my aspirations, et cetera.

Ah, I see what you meant now. What I mean is that I gamble with confidence that I will win, and if I do not, then I gambled and it was a part of the thrill to risk the loss. I would not even want a scenario where I was certain of my victory. That would be boring. I love the gamble itself. Gambling is a bit of a self-contradiction by nature, isn't it? No one goes into a gamble thinking they will lose. Or, I should hope not.

Unless I misunderstood you. Please clarify? Or, if you will bother whenever.

I see intuition not as logical—because logic is conscious—but insightful. With enough knowledge, one can explain an intuitive concept, but intuition often comes even when you cannot reason out the conclusion straight-off. For instance, my bouts of derealization as a child.

The thing is that I do not see a similarity. I view myself as limitless beside the potential of my body for labour. There is no concept that can exist that I could not understand with enough application of mind. There may be those who are quicker to understand, and they have a great deal of my respect and may even be placed above me, but they are so few that I have only met perhaps one or two in my lifetime.

I have yet to come across a concept I was unable to understand, and I doubt I will. Because I feel this way about myself, I try to project this limitless ability for understanding onto others. They almost unanimously claim they are unable to understand certain concepts, usually concepts that contradict their teaching. If this is true, then we are not equal. If it is false, then they are choosing to limit themselves, and that is a fault which sets them below me.

I do indeed, but preferably by choice rather than capacity, for if they do exist, then we are certainly different in our choices at the very least. I wish to think myself different from them because I am disgusted by them and their habits. It is preferable to think that I do not share these disgusting traits.

It is funny you mention that, because I am disheartened by news of a rising democracy already. That is another discussion perhaps, but I consider a democracy no better than a dictatorship because it is still a monopoly on force within a given area. Absolutely no progress has been when the economic incentives to enact tyranny remain, regardless of structure.

Aside from that, I agree that it will deteriorate. While I agree in a sense, that is true no matter how long you live. Everything grows repetitive in time. I endeavor to enjoy something as much as I can, and to experience as much as I can. Enjoying something the first time and not being interested the rest of the times is a worthwhile sacrifice in order to experience so many more things for the first time. I would be able to have a hand in every trade, every hobby and every form of art in every culture. I would be able to read every book. Growing bored of the annals of human history would be worth that. At least, it would to me.

I may give up on a particular gamble because of a loss of cards, but as concerns my existence, I am extremely obstinate in continuing it. If I were in a position of having only my king left in a game of chess, I would still endeavor to get the other player to make a stupid move until we were in a stalemate, me being the king and the universe being my opponent.

The alternative is death. If I am still alive, that is a card in itself, so I will always have at least one card to play as long as I exist.

I attempt to justify it logically in a discussion, but in the end my true reason, my personal reason, is intuition and feeling that it is so.

You implied that I try to make myself the center intentionally or that I demand others to see me as special. It would have hurt me if I valued honour or pride above reason. You have a reason to feel that way, and I like being insulted when deserved. Even if you did not mean it, I felt that it probably hurt some part of me, but I got over it quickly. It takes me down a peg, and I like that, rare as it is.

Conceded, my loss here.

Even then I would have no idea what solidification to seek out. I have come to hate myself every time regardless, so it is very hard to stick to anything even if I want to. I am the same way with art. I feel the most solid when I am not trying to be either solid or detached, usually when I am obsessed with something, so maybe that is the answer.

Fair. I do not deign to predict myself. I may grow so tired that I wish to die. But that still leaves me unsure of whether I can or not. Believing that I can will not make it so. Your argument seems to be that dying is better, but if I will in fact not die, then believing that I will and embracing that may actually make the strain of eternity harder on me.

That and losing energy would be the same as death, so my basic argument still applies: that it will be moot if I do run out.

And yet they are me. More than similar, I am able to observe my subconscious in a somewhat objective fashion. Is a dream truly distanced from the dreamer, that it will not help him learn of himself?

It seems to me that believing others separate creates more distance than my own model.

By ignoring I meant denying, sorry. There is a fallacy in denying the validity of something that cannot be proven false.

That is correct. But from my current set of values, living is better than not living, and living without fear is better than all of the above.

In summary:

• I will believe myself capable of any physical feat I must attempt until proven otherwise in practice.
• I will assume that my body will live through the day every day into infinity.
• I will assume that if my body should die, I as a consciousness still would not die.

I still feel that I do not profit at all from relinquishing these beliefs. I will consider the gambles more carefully, but I feel it is better to overestimate than to underestimate my capacity. Trial and error only works if you have the trial phase.

 

I am terrified, yea I know wimp right? But if I think about for too long I become depressed, and I end up sitting there just "waiting". Maybe it is because I had a near death experience twice in my life,one time I nearly drowned when I was like 5, and when I was 10 I was nearly run over by a car(I was like an inch away), maybe it's just because I have been so close but, the thought of not doing anything, have no awareness, not even be aware of my life, just nothing, what happens when you die? I am actually really depressed now, but I just want to live forever, life is too precious, I am surprised that the outcome said no. I would trade my soul to the devil to live forever, anything I could possibly do.

 

I honestly don't know what to say.

I regard death with curiosity, I want to know what it's like without actually experiencing it (as do most people I'm sure.) That said I want to prolong my life as long as possible, and avoid death for as long as I can.

It doesn't seem logical to fear death when death is nothing but the absence of life, yet it's that absence of life that cause stirs up great anxiety. On the other hand it's natural to fear what we don't understand, so I guess I will answer this question with a resounding "I'm not sure."

 

I don't see death as just not being able to move or talk or anything. Your brain is dead so you are in a void of unawareness , you would know nothing, feel nothing, think nothing, you wouldn't even be aware that you died, you would just not exist, you wouldn't be alive in your imagination because you need a brain to do that and your brain is dead. I can't find the right words to explain but if you think the same way that I do you know what I mean.

 

To fear death is to fear the way you live. If you just keep on thinking that oh, am I going to die the next day? You won't live a pretty good life if you keep worrying about Death at your doorstep...

 

I do not fear death, because I have a further knowledge of what will become of me in the after-life. I believe that if you put your faith into Jesus Christ, that you will have eternal life, and ever since I started believing that, I have honestly had a lot more peace of mind when the thought of death comes to me.

 

I do not fear death. I have faith in God and the everlasting afterlife. What more can I really say?

 

I'm curious... Do you believe that your faith is making you comfortable with dying? If you didn't have faith, would you still be ok with dying?

I'm an atheist, and I'm not afraid of dying. I don't want to die, but if I were to die, that would be ok too, even knowing there isn't something past this life. I may not live a great life or even a good life, but it was my life to live. Mistakes and all. So do you think your fears are causing you to take comfort in a certain belief system because it lets you rest easy rather than accept what's reality?

 

Reality is not subjective. A person's view on what reality is, is subjective. Regardless, when I said reality, I meant that there isn't a heaven. I didn't want it to be over-convoluted since it was a pretty simple question and I was trying not to offend anyone.
[/quote]I guess I could say I'm afraid of dying, but that's definitely not a bad thing. Things like fear and pain are what keep you alive. As long as you don't let that fear become the only thing controlling you, it's perfectly fine and even beneficial. If it ever comes down to a fight for survival, that fear might just be the thing that gives you the extra push to save your life. Fight or flight is a perfect example of this. I'm surprised that so many people are saying that they don't fear death. Guess this just means I'd survive longer in a zombie apocalypse. XDBut seriously, instinct will kick in regardless of what you believe if you ever have to fight to stay alive. With that instinct comes fear and it is definitely a good thing.[/quote]
Not fearing death doesn't mean I don't desire life. I want to live for as long and as fully as I can. I will fight to survive, but not at the expense of my morals or that sort of thing. But it just means that when the time comes and I can't do anything to prevent it, I'll be ok with it because it's just death. It had to come sooner or later.