Beyond Energy, Matter, Time And Space

[Spokey]

There are many reasons. In Zen sometimes they create a environment that's so spartan and harsh for the student that there is a desire to escape. But there's no where to go, the only place to escape to is reality.

Zen is quite straightforward, you just need freedom from intellect to find 'enlightenment', but that is a difficult thing to achieve for the average human. It's especially tricky to convey this idea fully, because it's something that has to be experienced and doesn't yield to verbal description. But this chap does a pretty good job https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APjXpUnHw20

In Daoism most of the hard practises are about transformation of some kind.I'm not so familiar with those beyond things like iron shirt a practice supposed to make one resistant to external damage by thickening facia or other ne gungs. There is a lot of mysticism tied into some of these practices, sometimes it's hard to see where the philosophy ends and the religion starts. I was exposed to philosophical Daoism, which always seemed to me a very pragmatic way of looking at things (and they don't talk about demons quite as much).

Of course, some schools lose the teachers that really know why a practice exists. But the school might keep it up, so you end up with a situation where no one has understanding of what they're doing.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Doesn't Buddhism try to incorporate both suffering and joy of other organisms? I'm not sure Hermann Hesse is the best source on the topic but it's a start

But what that man is saying with such a grin (for him it's 1+1) is also said by Christopher Langan:

<<[...] Reality theory is about the stage of attribution in which two predicates analogous to true and
false, namely real and unreal, are ascribed to various statements about the real universe. In this
sense, it is closely related to sentential logic. In particular, sentential logic has four main
properties to be emulated by reality theory. The first is absolute truth; as the formal definition of
truth, it is true by definition. The other properties are closure, comprehensiveness and
consistency. I.e., logic is wholly based on, and defined strictly within the bounds of, cognition and
perception; it applies to everything that can be coherently perceived or conceived; and it is by its
very nature consistent, being designed in a way that precludes inconsistency. [...]

The general nature of this model can be glimpsed merely by considering the tautological reflexivity of the term “self-evident”. Anything that is self evident proves (or evidences) itself, and any construct that is implicated in its ownproof is tautological. Indeed, insofar as observers are real, perception amounts to reality tautologically perceiving itself. The logical ramifications of this statement are developed in the supertautological CTMU, according to which the model in question coincides logically and geometrically, syntactically and informationally, with the process of generating the model, i.e. with generalized cognition and perception. Information thus coincides with information transduction, and reality is a tautological self-interpretative process evolving through SCSPL grammar.>>

 

[Spokey]

Indeed, suffering is a pretty big word in Buddhism, in fact ending suffering for all beings is pretty much it's mission statement.

Joy's a bit more complicated, as distinct from enlightenment. Some buddhists might say under certain circumstances joy is just a covert form of suffering for the average person because with any positive situation comes the knowledge it will end and the fear of its loss. For them suffering is not a result of pain or bad things happening, but how we see things. That's why they go on about equanimity quite a bit.

Daoism is more laissez-faire about suffering, they say suffering is a thing that happens, sometimes it's your turn.
Both ideas talk about one-ness as opposed to how we typically view the world as ourselves separate from others. But it has a less clear and much more confusing history than Buddhism as far as I can tell.

I've not read any Hesse, alas. To be honest I watch a lot of cartoons and should probably be reading more :)

The Christopher Langan thing.. oh dear my eyes.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Whenever a Westerner is fascinated by something from another culture I think the message gets a little distorted, but maybe someone like Schopenhauer made fairly clearly the points about distinguishing feelings from progress.

 

[Spokey]

I sort of agree but think generally where westerners have problems understanding buddhism or daoism, it's when they're trying to reason about it using the machinery of western analytic thought. And those that do that, are many. What did Schopenhauer say?

PS. That Langan guy is terrifying, I just found him on youtube.

 

[Such_Saturation]

Terrifying? He draws theories on paper napkins! Schopenhauer had way worse metabolism, all about being depressed and "life is a pendulum that goes from suffering to boredom". But he got inspired and said the only way to escape this evil mother Nature is asceticism instead of the Western ecstasy.

 

[Spokey]

I say terrifying because he's a eugenicist and says everyone should get tagged with a chip, it doesn't help that he's enormous and used to be a bouncer. Schopenhauer's view does seem quite similar to some interpretations of Buddhism (though not so fatalistic, since in buddhism the suffering is a product of our own minds, not an outside agency like nature).

 

[Such_Saturation]

Preventing incurable suffering and inferiority (less ableness) through responsible breeding. Elevating average intelligence with appropriate diet. Irresponsible breeding is a voluntary negation of your child's freedom. That seems agreeable. Do you think someone has the innate right to use a currency (which they can't even assign a real value to) to buy slaves and drugs and that transaction should be unknown to all people around him? People need facts to make decisions, and they have the right to know since every person is a little part of another person.

The methods he suggests obviously reflect a history of bad experiences, perhaps he needs a little Peat in his life, yes? But 2+2 is 4 for everybody in the end.

Ray Peat also seems to have lost a little bit of faith in regular people. Diet is the only way left. And Christopher Langan has plenty of issues with his own HighIQ Society, namely secessionists, statute violations and electoral fraud. And these are all people with one in one million intelligence.

 

[Spokey]

Aside from the ethical issues I have with 'right to breed' arguments, Langan appears to suppose genetic determinism. So his idea is very heavy handed on biological grounds. It looks to me like extreme rationality applied to bad information and one of the things I found scary was that possibility doesn't seem to occur to him.

 

[Such_Saturation]

It is the love of others which must eventually overtake the love of freedom. Then the accurate definition of freedom, for the first time, will be acquired. His continuous mention of neo-Darwinist concepts simply testifies to the stupidity of people who attack him on the grounds of being pro "Intelligent Design". But just as well, he never uses the word random in the neo-Darwinian sense.

 

[Spokey]

I'm not clear on your meaning. Are you saying his attackers are pro intelligent design?

 

[Such_Saturation]

No, his attackers are against "Intelligent Design" and have repeatedly called him a Christian. But when talking about biological evolution he often mentions natural selection and the likes.

 

[Spokey]

Really? That does seem a bit rude. Arguments from "Intelligent Design" are the last thing I'd accuse him of, at least on the back of the interview I saw anyway.

He reminded me a little of a quote from C.S. Lewis, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

 

[Such_Saturation]

Yes, I do get you. I think when intelligence reaches a certain level (or intelligence allows open-mindedness to reach a certain level) (you do not need to be a genius to understand the CTMU) this new ethics system will go viral. This is the most rational approach, although it still requires a certain power over dietary and toxicological policies. Otherwise our progress will be sloooooow and in many ways not something we will be able to take pride in.

 

[jaa]

post 52677 I think this is a very healthy thing to be published, but eventually biologists and physicists will have to take this mindset for the big change to really occur. The term "Intelligent Design" and the stigma it bears has been doing lots of damage in this aspect, although perhaps the real cause is the marriage of militant atheism and reductionism. I invite anyone to read the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe for an (in)formal proof of the inescapability of this new mindset.

I must admit, I have difficulty understanding much of what Langan is trying to say. I'm not sure if that's because of my limited knowledge in that area, or if he chooses unusual words just to muddy the waters a bit. If anyone who understands his work is able to give a brief summary in english about the main points that would be appreciated!

My ability to understand his writings aside, I have learned that he uses ad hominen attacks against his critics (and even people who simply don't understand what he writes). And according to rational wiki, he aggressively edits his own wiki pages to the point he got banned from the topics. Those things don't mean his theory is bunk, but it makes it more likely his theories are bunk as it speaks to his lack of character and trustworthiness.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Christopher_Langan

 

[Such_Saturation]

post 118578
My ability to understand his writings aside, I have learned that he uses ad hominen attacks against his critics (and even people who simply don't understand what he writes). And according to rational wiki, he aggressively edits his own wiki pages to the point he got banned from the topics. Those things don't mean his theory is bunk, but it makes it more likely his theories are bunk as it speaks to his lack of character and trustworthiness.

Plenty of people edit or hire people to edit their own wikipedia pages. He probably does it because he believes, having created it, that he understands the theory better than other editors.

 

[jaa]

Plenty of people edit or hire people to edit their own wikipedia pages. He probably does it because he believes, having created it, that he understands the theory better than other editors.

That's true, but it sounds like he's going about it in a toxic way, and taken with the ad hominens, it speaks negatively to his character.

 

[Such_Saturation]

post 118598

Plenty of people edit or hire people to edit their own wikipedia pages. He probably does it because he believes, having created it, that he understands the theory better than other editors.

That's true, but it sounds like he's going about it in a toxic way, and taken with the ad hominens, it speaks negatively to his character.

Go ahead and check his behavior on the real wikipedia. Username Asmodeus

 

[jaa]

Go ahead and check his behavior on the real wikipedia. Username Asmodeus

I'm having trouble finding any information on edits by that user. Maybe he was deleted?

 

[Such_Saturation]

I don't know but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asmodeus is it. There are a couple more blog comment sections where he appears with his real name.