Do clever people outsmart themselves?

[Foster Zygote]

Wait...are you suggesting Zeus doesn't exist, or that he does exist but lacks a butthole? I expect a lot of people would say a god shouldn't have a buttholes because defecation is against their divine dignity (like the elves in Tolkien), but I think those people are forgetting that Greek gods really did a whole bunch of sex constantly and being experts and connoisseurs of sex they would most definitely involve buttholes.

I challenge the validity of your bizarre buttholeless pantheon, and am prepared to cite a lot of Greek myths and some specialized Tumblr pages in evidence.

The DPRK once reported that Kim Jong-il did not defecate, but no clarification was offered as to whether he possessed a butt-hole and simply didn't use it in the typical way, or if he was a culinary cul-de-sac.

 

[acbytesla]

So do tell us about reality. Can you define it? Because in my philosophy everything we perceive is an illusion. Everything can be reduced to energy.
I know nothing about quantum physics, but I know it makes nonsense of a mundane view of the world.

So you're a solipsist? How the hell do you cope? You do understand your talking babble?

We can never know that we don't actually live in the matrix. Sure, everything could be an illusion. I don't deny that.

We all live in our own reality. But there is something call outside confirmation and shared reality. Odds are they are going to put you away if your own reality diverges from the reality that the rest of us shares.

 

[JoeMorgue]

You interact with a lot of people here besides me. You don't seem particularly happy in any of those interactions.

Again I come here for the specific purpose of engaging Woo Slingers. It's cathartic.

It's like going up to someone pumping iron and claiming they don't look like a relaxed person.

Given the fact that roughly 1/4th of the people I engage with here are open trolls, I'm comfortable with my levels of anger.

 

[Scorpion]

Of sod off with that self-defeating nonsense.

If everything is an illusion stop talking to people who you think are just figments of your imagination.

Say what ! I am talking about everything being made of atomic particles, including our bodies. We experience an existence we term reality. But whatever reality is, it is nothing like what our senses convey. We experience things as solid when they are not.

 

[JoeMorgue]

But whatever reality is, it is nothing like what our senses convey

Gotcha. In my reality you're not here spouting of random nonsense.

Ahhh... much better.

Jesus Christ is there like a script for this routine? We get it, you smoked pot and watched the Matrix good for you.

 

[acbytesla]

Say what ! I am talking about everything being made of atomic particles, including our bodies. We experience an existence we term reality. But whatever reality is, it is nothing like what our senses convey. We experience things a solid when they are not.

We experience reality on a different plane than subatomic particles but that doesn't make it any less real.

 

[acbytesla]

Gotcha. In my reality you're not here spouting of random nonsense.

Ahhh... much better.

Jesus Christ is there like a script for this routine? We get it, you smoked pot and watched the Matrix good for you.

Must have been some good stuff.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Gotcha. In my reality you're not here spouting of random nonsense.

Ahhh... much better.

Jesus Christ is there like a script for this routine? We get it, you smoked pot and watched the Matrix good for you.

It's actually a childish misunderstanding and conflation of two separate legitimate (note that "legitimate" doesn't mean "necessarily true") philosophical positions: a Buddhistic (among many others) belief that the material world is illusion ("the world of red dust") and that spiritual enlightenment can bring one to the true, real world (possibly after death); and the nonreligious oldtimey Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, et al. proper philosophers' "problem of perception" which is that we are basically brains in jars and assume our senses are reporting the outside universe to us correctly, because we have no way if knowing if they aren't.

Neither position entails belief in any particular deity, and only the former carries any hint of a suggestion of how one should live one's life.

 

[JoeMorgue]

It's actually a childish misunderstanding and conflation of two separate legitimate (note that "legitimate" doesn't mean "necessarily true") philosophical positions: a Buddhistic (among many others) belief that the material world is illusion ("the world of red dust") and that spiritual enlightenment can bring one to the true, real world (possibly after death); and the nonreligious oldtimey Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, et al. proper philosophers' "problem of perception" which is that we are basically brains in jars and assume our senses are reporting the outside universe to us correctly, because we have no way if knowing if they aren't.

Neither position entails belief in any particular deity, and only the former carries any hint of a suggestion of how one should live one's life.

Oh I'm fully aware of how little actual "Philosophy" the internet's on call Wise Old Man on the Mountain Cosplayers Society nonsense actually contains.

Descartes still ducked if you threw a rock at his head.

 

[Scorpion]

We experience reality on a different plane than subatomic particles but that doesn't make it any less real.

Again with the ill considered word 'reality' You cannot define it, and you cannot really know if anyone else experiences the same things as you. If anything physics supports my view that we are in an illusion. If the nuclear forces were weaker, we would be able to walk through walls.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Again with the ill considered word 'reality' You cannot define it, and you cannot really know if anyone else experiences the same things as you. If anything physics supports my view that we are in an illusion. If the nuclear forces were weaker, we would be able to walk through walls.

"Throws rock at your head to see if you duck."

 

[TragicMonkey]

Oh I'm fully aware of how little actual "Philosophy" the internet's on call Wise Old Man on the Mountain Cosplayers Society nonsense actually contains.

Descartes still ducked if you threw a rock at his head.

Descartes was a 17th century Frenchman, if you threw a rock at him he'd either challenge you to a duel or take you to his bed. Or both.

 

[Foster Zygote]

It's actually a childish misunderstanding and conflation of two separate legitimate (note that "legitimate" doesn't mean "necessarily true") philosophical positions: a Buddhistic (among many others) belief that the material world is illusion ("the world of red dust") and that spiritual enlightenment can bring one to the true, real world (possibly after death); and the nonreligious oldtimey Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, et al. proper philosophers' "problem of perception" which is that we are basically brains in jars and assume our senses are reporting the outside universe to us correctly, because we have no way if knowing if they aren't.

Neither position entails belief in any particular deity, and only the former carries any hint of a suggestion of how one should live one's life.

This is one of those posts that shows us that TagicMonkey isn't just an accomplished smart-ass, but is also genuinely smart. And of course, therefor, deeply unhappy and filled with hate... But smart.

 

[Scorpion]

"Throws rock at your head to see if you duck."

I am not saying the illusion is not convincing. If you are hit by a rock it will cause pain. But that pain is nothing but electrons flowing through our nerves to our brain and being interpreted as pain. I believe some yogis can overcome the pain message and not be effected by it. There were Buddhist monks in Vietnam who immolated themselves with petrol, and sat in the lotus position while they burned alive. As far as I could tell from some photos I saw, they did not roll around screaming like the rest of us would.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I am not saying the illusion is not convincing. If you are hit by a rock it will cause pain. But that pain is nothing but electrons flowing through our nerves to our brain and being interpreted as pain. I believe some yogis can overcome the pain message and not be effected by it. There were Buddhist monks in Vietnam who immolated themselves with petrol, and sat in the lotus position while they burned alive. As far as I could tell from some photos I saw, they did not roll around screaming like the rest of us would.

Self-immolation as political protest seems the opposite of a conviction in the world being illusory.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I am not saying the illusion is not convincing. If you are hit by a rock it will cause pain. But that pain is nothing but electrons flowing through our nerves to our brain and being interpreted as pain. I believe some yogis can overcome the pain message and not be effected by it. There were Buddhist monks in Vietnam who immolated themselves with petrol, and sat in the lotus position while they burned alive. As far as I could tell from some photos I saw, they did not roll around screaming like the rest of us would.

Oh this crap again. "It's not reality, it's just functionally identical to reality so I can live there all the time but pretend it's not there when ever I need some Woo."

You can't even muster up the intellectual honesty for solipsism, you're stuck at "Solipsism only when it's convenient for me."

 

[Foster Zygote]

Ninja magic.

In other words, you can't provide a real answer.

And yet here you are.

Are you happy with how this is going? Are you going to look back on the effort you put in here today with a sense of contentment? Are you going to go to bed tonight, think of the time you spent in this thread, and say to yourself, in the words of our own applecorped, "time well spent"?

You seem to be seriously overestimating the importance of this exchange in my life. I am neither happy nor unhappy with its results. It is what it is. I simply asked you a question, and your response has told me all I needed to know.

It sounds like you have a wonderful family. You could be spending time with them. You don't have to be here right now, defending your self-image against outrageous canards from inconsequential strangers.

And yet here you are.

And yet here I go.

I have spent time with my family today. Certainly far more than I've spent with you.

As I said, our brief exchange has told me all I need to know. I have no interest in further participating in your performance. You'll have to get that third nail in all by yourself.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Self-immolation as political protest seems the opposite of a conviction in the world being illusory.

And for most non-Buddhists, self-immolation involves rather more liquor and fireworks than conviction of any sort. Hence the rolling and screaming and riding to the ER in the back of a pickup truck with Florida plates.

 

[bruto]

Skimming this thread, I see a couple of issues that don't seem completely addressed.

One is of course the idea that there is a single thing called happiness, that we either have or don't. A person who thinks hard about things finds that the world is difficult and is often unhappy with how things are. For ninety years he is not always happy, but not always unhappy. Another person looks at the world, says **** it, takes dope, and is in a state of stuporous bliss until he overdoses and dies at twenty-five. I'm not sure he got the better deal.

Another is that the sample from which one deduces that clever or smart people are not happy may not be very useful. We're on a forum where people come often to piss and moan. Does this mean that the clever people are generally unhappy, or just that they know which buttons to push?

Another is that the cause of unhappiness cannot always be attributed to faults in the person suffering from it. It's true, for example, that a smart kid who is bullied at school will be unhappy, but the cure for this is not to make him as stupid as the bullies.

Peace of mind, comfort and satisfaction are indeed good things to feel, but I suspect that there's a qualitative difference between the sporadic happiness of, say, a research scientist or a poet or a saint, and the constant low-grade happiness of a fellow sitting on a park bench eating chocolates.

Of course, I'm probably unqualified for this discussion. I am, overall, a pretty happy guy. I enjoy my life and the world as it is and that, according to some, means I must be too dumb to understand the subtleties here.

 

[acbytesla]

Again with the ill considered word 'reality'.

As if we both wouldn't perceive the same things when confronted with it.

You cannot define it, and you cannot really know if anyone else experiences the same things as you. If anything physics supports my view that we are in an illusion. If the nuclear forces were weaker, we would be able to walk through walls.

And NO physics doesn't do that at all. Yes, if the nuclear forces were weaker we would be able to do that. But nuclear forces ARE NOT WEAK. In fact they are very strong. All you just proved was the eternal maxim that "if" is a condition contrary to fact.