Reality isn't real

  On 8/17/2010 at 4:42 PM, chimera slot mom said:

  On 8/17/2010 at 9:18 AM, azatoth said:

Seeing synchronicities is more due to our brain software being programmed to look for patterns, even when there aren't any. Similarities are more from the underlying simple rules that have under the billions of years reiterated countless times and formed what seems to be infinite complexity.

 

I disagree.

With what do you disagree? That pattern recognition is inherent in the human brain or that nature is ruled by rather simple rules?

I wonder if in an alternate universe Neo is John Connor?

  On 8/17/2010 at 7:49 PM, azatoth said:

With what do you disagree? That pattern recognition is inherent in the human brain or that nature is ruled by rather simple rules?

One of my favorite words.

Acknowledging that, I still enjoy (and get a lot) out of a good bit of synchronicity now and then.

  On 8/17/2010 at 8:05 PM, glasse said:

I wonder if in an alternate universe Neo is John Connor?

...and watmm is idmforums

  On 8/17/2010 at 3:15 AM, chimera slot mom said:

There's no possibility life and reality isn't a construct. There are too many synchronities, it makes too much sense, yet is strange at the same time, and it's infinitely beautiful, too much correlation between the masses of organisms, zeitgeists and collective consciousness..

I have always found this argument to be pretty clearly flawed. "It's too complicated and too perfect; it can't have just happened."

just because you can't conceive of it "just happening" doesn't make that concept an impossibility. I get a lot more wonder and awe from the sense that matter and energy and physics all interacted over the course of countless eons to produce, by pure chance, the reality we perceive today (and will continue to interact and perhaps produce entirely new realities) than I do from the idea that GOD or ALIENS or CELESTIAL COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS created and manipulate reality.

  On 8/17/2010 at 7:49 PM, azatoth said:

  On 8/17/2010 at 4:42 PM, chimera slot mom said:

  On 8/17/2010 at 9:18 AM, azatoth said:

Seeing synchronicities is more due to our brain software being programmed to look for patterns, even when there aren't any. Similarities are more from the underlying simple rules that have under the billions of years reiterated countless times and formed what seems to be infinite complexity.

 

I disagree.

 

With what do you disagree? That pattern recognition is inherent in the human brain or that nature is ruled by rather simple rules?

That we are programmed to see something that isn't there, that there is a disrepancy between what we interpret out of a given situation and what it is; I see no point in quantifying external data basically. Existance is a highly subjective phenomenon and it's all about what value certain input has to the observer, regardless how farfetched it might be.

  Quote

I have always found this argument to be pretty clearly flawed. "It's too complicated and too perfect; it can't have just happened."

Sure. It's not an argument, it's my reaction to my own experience of life and my relationship with my identity.

The funny thing is, most of you think you're talking about different things and/or the same thing from different angles, and you're totally missing that the fabric of your mental constructs is the same fabric as everything else, animate, inanimate, whatever, everything. How silly to think that you're the one running brain processes. It's the "universal intelligence" which brought your body-mind into existence, which makes your thoughts possible, which makes your thoughts happen, and which will convert the energy you use back into inanimate matter, which is still actually as animate as anything, insofar as compost is fuel for life, the way an egg is fuel for a chicken (not like that, actually. lol). Human life is not a matter of coincidence or meaning. It just is. This is what happened as the cosmos was evolving, and for the human mind, at least, there are certainly countless other extraordinary fucking things the universe is manifesting as. I think consciousness is one of the most impressive organizations of universal intelligence. It means Life was implicit in all the dead and empty space we're all floating in. The intelligence and patterns for any of the things that are manifesting today were already present before any of this human life stuff even started. Plants presumably lived off of H20 before we did, and the same pattern (yes, it's a pattern, azatoth - there's a level of predictability to the way Life forms function) manifests in nearly every other form of life. All the parts of an ecosystem evolve with one another. When you take LSD and close your eyes and see fractals you're seeing a pattern that is already present in so much of nature. Isn't that interesting? Most people aren't aware that fractals even exist, but once you develop an eye for them you can see them in just about every plant.

Anyway, if the universe is going to manifest as people arguing over the universe, that's just what's happening. No problem. Or, problem. Same Intelligence doing it. Same author. Not you. You're a sub-author.

just reacting to "There's no possibility life and reality isn't a construct."

that's a mighty big statement

  On 8/17/2010 at 10:10 PM, doorjamb said:

just reacting to "There's no possibility life and reality isn't a construct."

 

that's a mighty big statement

"Life" and "reality" are indeed constructs, if we grant that a construct is something "made up." All ideas seem to be "made up." But life and reality, I dunno if we can actually say anything about them. I mean... it's Reality, Life itself, speaking about itself as an idea, a limited conceptual thing. But Reality contains All limits. Everything is reality. Ideas, dreams, all things material, everything is a manifestation of reality happening. As long as you're seeing Reality as something "other," talk of it is usually pretty uninspiring and trivial. Life doesn't need a concept called "life" to say anything about itself. Everything it has to say about itself is always being said everywhere.

the goat and the hammer sat in the yard. one of them yodeled, the other sparked a plug. which one was right?

how lucky we are to have vamos and happycase to explain it all to us

  On 8/17/2010 at 10:09 PM, happycase said:

The funny thing is, most of you think you're talking about different things and/or the same thing from different angles, and you're totally missing that the fabric of your mental constructs is the same fabric as everything else, animate, inanimate, whatever, everything. How silly to think that you're the one running brain processes. It's the "universal intelligence" which brought your body-mind into existence, which makes your thoughts possible, which makes your thoughts happen, and which will convert the energy you use back into inanimate matter, which is still actually as animate as anything, insofar as compost is fuel for life, the way an egg is fuel for a chicken (not like that, actually. lol). Human life is not a matter of coincidence or meaning. It just is. This is what happened as the cosmos was evolving, and for the human mind, at least, there are certainly countless other extraordinary fucking things the universe is manifesting as. I think consciousness is one of the most impressive organizations of universal intelligence. It means Life was implicit in all the dead and empty space we're all floating in. The intelligence and patterns for any of the things that are manifesting today were already present before any of this human life stuff even started. Plants presumably lived off of H20 before we did, and the same pattern (yes, it's a pattern, azatoth - there's a level of predictability to the way Life forms function) manifests in nearly every other form of life. All the parts of an ecosystem evolve with one another. When you take LSD and close your eyes and see fractals you're seeing a pattern that is already present in so much of nature. Isn't that interesting? Most people aren't aware that fractals even exist, but once you develop an eye for them you can see them in just about every plant.

 

Anyway, if the universe is going to manifest as people arguing over the universe, that's just what's happening. No problem. Or, problem. Same Intelligence doing it. Same author. Not you. You're a sub-author.

you know how you dropped out of school?

  On 8/17/2010 at 11:11 PM, vamos scorcho said:

the goat and the hammer sat in the yard. one of them yodeled, the other sparked a plug. which one was right?

the hammer, as a matter of fact, was wrong. the other goat toasted the prince of peace and was known as the fat cat on the alley.

you are taking "construct" to mean "something" (as opposed to "nothing").

I used the word in the sense of its dictionary definition. MW says a construct is:

1 : something constructed by the mind: as a : a theoretical entity b : a working hypothesis or concept

2 : a product of ideology, history, or social circumstances

I maintain that there is a good chance life and reality are not constructed by the mind. Not that that's impossible, and I'm definitely open to it as a concept, but it's nowhere near an absolute certainty.

The way one perceives one's reality is undeniably influenced by the constructs of one's environment (social, ideological, etc.), but to say that the nature of existence itself as we know it is a construct is a big leap.

What you are speaking about, these things you call "life" and "reality" are first and foremost concepts that emerged out of something that the mind did not construct - I'll call this Reality with a capital. Something that preceded the mind. So when you say that "life and reality are not constructed by the mind" you are not actually talking about "life" or "reality," and there is in fact no "mind" either. There are no static entities, that's just what the human brain is designed to make of the world right now. We generally haven't evolved beyond conceptual thinking. You are talking about concepts that don't have referents that you can actually point to. Reality is not something to be pointed to or talked about. Reality is itself the one talking, pointing, and it's the thing that's pointed at. Reality says "life and reality are not constructed by the mind" and each and every word Reality spoke was just itself manifesting as more Reality. Tat tvam asi.

okay I'll try to use your terminology to explain:

I'm saying "reality" and "Reality" may well be the same thing. You are assuming they are not. And what happens when we assume...?

i think you should just let it go

"every word Reality spoke was just itself manifesting as more Reality"

  On 8/17/2010 at 11:36 PM, doorjamb said:

okay I'll try to use your terminology to explain:

 

I'm saying "reality" and "Reality" may well be the same thing. You are assuming they are not. And what happens when we assume...?

Ah! nice one.

  On 8/17/2010 at 11:36 PM, doorjamb said:

And what happens when we assume...?

We put Japanese plums in our ass, of course!

  On 8/17/2010 at 11:51 PM, wahrk said:

  On 8/17/2010 at 11:36 PM, doorjamb said:

And what happens when we assume...?

 

We put Japanese plums in our ass, of course!

lol nice one :)

  On 8/17/2010 at 10:09 PM, happycase said:

The funny thing is, most of you think you're talking about different things and/or the same thing from different angles, and you're totally missing that the fabric of your mental constructs is the same fabric as everything else, animate, inanimate, whatever, everything. How silly to think that you're the one running brain processes. It's the "universal intelligence" which brought your body-mind into existence, which makes your thoughts possible, which makes your thoughts happen, and which will convert the energy you use back into inanimate matter, which is still actually as animate as anything, insofar as compost is fuel for life, the way an egg is fuel for a chicken (not like that, actually. lol). Human life is not a matter of coincidence or meaning. It just is. This is what happened as the cosmos was evolving, and for the human mind, at least, there are certainly countless other extraordinary fucking things the universe is manifesting as. I think consciousness is one of the most impressive organizations of universal intelligence. It means Life was implicit in all the dead and empty space we're all floating in. The intelligence and patterns for any of the things that are manifesting today were already present before any of this human life stuff even started. Plants presumably lived off of H20 before we did, and the same pattern (yes, it's a pattern, azatoth - there's a level of predictability to the way Life forms function) manifests in nearly every other form of life. All the parts of an ecosystem evolve with one another. When you take LSD and close your eyes and see fractals you're seeing a pattern that is already present in so much of nature. Isn't that interesting? Most people aren't aware that fractals even exist, but once you develop an eye for them you can see them in just about every plant.

 

Anyway, if the universe is going to manifest as people arguing over the universe, that's just what's happening. No problem. Or, problem. Same Intelligence doing it. Same author. Not you. You're a sub-author.

First, I would like to say that the certainty with which you are describing reality, and/or Reality, is unsettling. It seems to me that any certainty regarding an unfathomable mystery is never a wise course to follow. Uncertainty is the only certainty that seems appropriate. Phrases like "How silly to think that you're the one running your brain processes" are just as baseless in Reality as any alternate point of view. You may be in control, you may not. Who are you to call the shots for someone else's perception? A sub-author, telling another sub-author who the real Author is? How silly to think that.

Second, when you take LSD and see fractals (can't say I've ever seen a truly identifiable fractal on LSD, though I have seen many captivating abstract patterns), you are primarily experiencing a change in the way your neurons interact and read your visual surroundings. The patterns we see can be easily changed, and influenced, by seemingly benign chemicals and states of mind. This undermines the idea that the patterns humans see have anything to do with "Reality," and much more to do with the design of our own brains. I am not arguing that we are separate from Nature, from Reality, from the Universe, from God, the Author, the Computer, the Void, Brahman, whatever you want to call it. However, human beings are designed from their surroundings, namely, a infinitesimally small pocket of that Universe. How we think, what we know, what we build, etc - products of the Universe, yes, but just as much, products of our local environment, Earth.

cogito ergo sum motherfuckers

or maybe

meus matris reputo ego sum, ergo sum

  On 8/18/2010 at 12:48 AM, disparaissant said:

cogito ergo sum motherfuckers

or maybe

meus matris reputo ego sum, ergo sum

But the I that thinks is not the I it thinks it is.

  Quote

First, I would like to say that the certainty with which you are describing reality, and/or Reality, is unsettling. It seems to me that any certainty regarding an unfathomable mystery is never a wise course to follow. Uncertainty is the only certainty that seems appropriate. Phrases like "How silly to think that you're the one running your brain processes" are just as baseless in Reality as any alternate point of view. You may be in control, you may not. Who are you to call the shots for someone else's perception? A sub-author, telling another sub-author who the real Author is? How silly to think that.

I think the greatest gift of consciousness is a degree of freedom in interpreting things the way we wish and finding our own meaning in what we percieve. Pursuing the estimates of other people, no matter how logical their methods or well-founded their arguments, is much less interesting to me.

As consciousness, you are figurately in your own cloud, inseperable from, but also independent of, all else. I think truth matters little in such a condition.

Agreed. Truth, however, is very appealing to me, and I like to pretend I have a grasp on it. One of the greatest truths I've come to believe is that Truth is relative. Dunno if that's really true though.