Tulpa.info - metaphysics

Keep reading "minutephysics" when I see this channel. . .

4:05 PM

That's just how bad my eyes are; see fuzzy shapes instead of words. :P Brain fills in the rest.

That might make it better.

reincarnation gang rise up

2

lmao

I prefer to ironman mode life tbh.

What if you get to play as your host?

Don't need to wait for rebirth for that! Or... is that what switching is?

My... Host?

9:41 PM

If you mean the lord thy god, I'd consider it.

9:45 PM

Oh wait... Do you mean Marcus?

9:45 PM

No. Noooo. NO. No.

9:45 PM

I refuse.

9:45 PM

I choose death.

9:47 PM

About conservation of energy, according to Rupert Sheldrake, when it was established that the amount of energy used by the human body was the same as the energy it took in, what actually happened was people were kept in chambers and what they took in and out was carefully measured, and some people seemed to use more energy than they had and some seemed to use less energy than they had, but it averaged out so they decided the energy they had used was the the energy they had. :/

That's quite the claim. I would like to see the proof of this experiment, if you can provide it.

I know not the experiment referred to. :c

10:05 PM

He also says there are lots of designs for ''over unity'' engines on the internet, and that he has had people show him theirs.

I'm not sure what that means, can you explain?

Either devices that increase the total amount of known energy, or that reduce entropy, or maybe both.

10:07 PM

I've not tried making any though.

10:08 PM

Right now I'm about to test things that are meant to make plants grow bigger and faster.

As far as science is aware the conservation of energy holds up in all circumstances. At a glance, experiments have been done on at least the body's conservation of energy and it appears to be consistent. https://phys.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/College_Physics/Book%3A_College_Physics_(OpenStax)/07%3A_Work_Energy_and_Energy_Resources/7.08%3A_Work_Energy_and_Power_in_Humans#:~:text=Energy%20Conversion%20in%20Humans,-Our%20own%20bodies&text=Conservation%20of%20energy%20implies%20that,our%20level%20of%20physical%20activity. I would encourage you to cite your sources if you have any about such claims, otherwise there isn't really a way for me to take what you're saying at face value. Or at the least to describe such an object that can create energy so that it can be scrutinized.

7.8: Work, Energy, and Power in Humans

The human body converts energy stored in food into work, thermal energy, and/or chemical energy that is stored in fatty tissue. The rate at which the body uses food energy to sustain life and to do …

Yes that would be ideal :/

I mean, some people seeming to use less/more energy than they had could be explained by measurement error. Maybe that's what was going on, and that's what he was referring to.

He also says there are lots of designs for ''over unity'' engines on the internet, and that he has had people show him theirs.

There are lots of designs for these on the internet. Don't think any of them work, tho.

They invariably have something in them that effectively acts as a battery, or have an energy input they didn't account for.

1

Roger, when asked about the best practice to dissolve suffering, recommends the "practice of no practice".

That sounds right!

8:24 PM

Or a different person for that matter!

I think about this every time people claim they feel like they can't change cause they feel some pressure by the people around them to be who they know them as, like, just get over the hurdle and then next time they'll just be like , "oh here this bitch goes again..."

A concept is a concept because it is 'open to interpretation'...the only thing in the 'manifestation' that is not open to interpretation or is not a concept is the impersonal 'sense' I AM...I exist....you can't negate that and say 'I AM NOT' :)..... 'what you are' again is open to interpretation...it is added after the fact I AM...as in I am this and that.

You most definitely can say "I am not." "I" is a concept. But I will concede that the data input of general existence, of experience, is not conceptual.

5:11 PM

"I" is also, as I've no doubt advocated many times, a flawed concept that emerges from interpretation of experience: It observably doesn't exist in the brain.

5:12 PM

So I do unironically believe I am not, essentially.

The "I" that's being talked about here is not a "personal I". This sense of "I am" works better in languages like Spanish that don't need a subject - "soy", as in, "am." Or you could say "am-ness" or "is-ness" or "being-ness".

One of the big points of saying "I think therefore I am" was that descartes wanted to find a base to build up everything else from. In the same way you can conclude that you definitly exist in some way, you can use that to conclude that what you experience exists in some way as well. Even if it is all illusion, it still exists in some form, barring an upset in the laws of the universe.

Yes I get the sense knowing what you've said before that you are actually referring to the experience of existence, this is the part that is happening objectively.

Yeah, exactly. Although of course "I think" is waaaay less basic than "am" :p

The problem with the cogito is that it presumes rationalism can actually form a basis. It cannot.

"I exist, therefore I exist" just sounded a little too banal, maybe

There is always a presumption somewhere in a conceptual statement.

How could you be thinking if you didn't exist?

Well sure, but you don't need to think in order to exist

5:15 PM

Which is what Descartes makes it sound like

My understanding is that descartes was "throwing everything off the table" and asking, what can I use for the start of a philosophy of everything. Everything I see and know may be a lie, so where do I start? I don't think the intent was to prove the opposite, that without thinking you don't exist, but to find a statement, as a thinking being, that is true by its nature. (edited)

I mean fair enough haha

5:18 PM

Who am I really to criticize René Descartes

Oh there's lots you can criticize, just stuff later in the book

lol

As far as I know "I think therefore I am" holds up pretty well

It's just, you could fill in anything there, couldn't you? I pee, therefore I am?

But if you exist de-facto and you know it because you experience thinking, you also know that everything you experience exists in some form be it as a delusion or a matrix or who knows what else, and you can know that if you can experience it, and you know it exists, something else could experience it as well/there is room for those things you are experiencing to be a shared, objective, world.

5:23 PM

How do you know that you pee?

5:23 PM

...I hate that you used that as an example, look at what you've made me say! (edited)

1

The problem with logical statements is not the logic themselves; the logic of the cogito is sound. What it presumes is that the thing that is thinking is you. Existence being something that exists is the second presupposition but it's the one presupposition that cannot be discarded without throwing out all of science. Input of data definitely implies existence, but the statement is criticizable mostly for both the use of "I" and the presumption that what is thinking is also you.

I don't think it does? It only presumes that there is something and that something is you. Be it some larger entity playing pretend, there is a subset that thinks and isn't aware of the whole, that subset is "you"

Reguile

How do you know that you pee?

The same way I know that I think. Peeing/thinking is being experienced

I think ... "the thinking" statement in "I think therefore I am" roughly means "I experience" more than "I am capable of thought"

I could agree much more with that

5:27 PM

I experience, therefore I am ❤️

Emergence is such a weird thing. Our identities appear to be no more real than "justice" or any other emergent behaviour that our species does.

5:28 PM

I'd probably render it closer to: Experience therefore existence. No I statement, it's just the core statement of science, that reality exists because we are observing it.

5:28 PM

Or something is observing it.

Hah, that could work as well. I think in matters like this you have to give a little leeway in the language since either the details of "what is I" aren't significant to the conclusion or the details of the statement are being dropped because "I think therefore I am" sounds catchier

1

~~I think, therefore I am.~~ I am experiencing thinking, therefore I exist.

5:30 PM

Not as catchy.

Cogito Ergo Sum totally sounds rad, too.

5:30 PM

I do like egregious latin.

The way these "sages" talk about it, the word "I" turns out to be a good fit, even though it doesn't refer to the same "I" as common language. "I am" doesn't mean "Marissa is", it just means "there is something ineffable but alive at the heart of the experience", or something like that

Descartes didn't so much care about the nature of "I", but the ability to prove that the world (and more!) exists without taking it for granted that it does. Among other things, I don't agree with dualism/the idea that the mind and body are separate.

1

Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum is the better way of putting it.

5:31 PM

Doubt was where Descartes was coming from.

From a certain point of view dualism can be considered correct through the lens of emergent intelligence.

I'm curious how so?

The content of the experience is dualistic. Subject and object, body and world, hot and cold, short and long. It's all contained within the "one experience"

I've always taken the whole cogito statement as a useful working definition, not an assumption. As I understand it, it's basically saying "OK, I'm defining words for what's happening, now let's get on with this 'existence' business".

Is it? I know I have some fair separation of what I experience vs what I think, but at the same time I "hear" my thoughts and it feels like the line between them isn't "indicating a division" but instead indicates a mind that innately knows to draw a line. You can erase that line even, with hallucinations.

5:36 PM

I've always assumed it to be a "fact that can't be disproven" - barring change in the way the universe operates.

Which brings us back to the quote that opened this discussion

The one fact that can't be disproven is "(I) exist, (I) experience, (I) am not dead"

Well to paraphrase my understanding mind-body dualism implies mind, ego, or soul, or whatever, is fundamentally separate from the brain. Emergent intelligence is something which the brain is producing as the totality of its function, rather than any one part. To bring it back to the justice analogy, a nation may be just. That justice emerges from its courts. But the justice itself is an ephemeral collection of laws and whether or not they are effective. The justice cannot be... measured in a physical sense, in the same way that a mind cannot be. Justice isn't the court; therefore the mind isn't the brain. In a loose sense.

If you can use the fact that you exist-for-fact as a basis, can you prove that other things also exist-for-a-fact?

I don't think so

5:38 PM

You can deduce it

5:39 PM

Like you can deduce "the sun is probably gonna rise and set again tomorrow"

5:39 PM

But you can't know it

It's not completely provable in any real way; yes. That's why science is built on a presupposition. But one presupposition is better than many.

I'm not sure how to think about the idea that emergent inteligence is "more than the sum of its parts" - I feel like those "moer than the sum"may be constructs we use to help understand the world, but in reality they really are the sum of their parts.

1

Hahaha I like that, Reguile

I wouldn't say more than the sum. Merely that it's a product rather than directly related. (edited)

Earlier I mentioned an example "derived fact" - trying to find it

Reguile

But if you exist de-facto and you know it because you experience thinking, you also know that everything you experience exists in some form be it as a delusion or a matrix or who knows what else, and you can know that if you can experience it, and you know it exists, something else could experience it as well/there is room for those things you are experiencing to be a shared, objective, world.

is there a reason this may not be the case, something that would not also invalidate "I think therefore..."

Only experience is internally verifiable. The actual veracity of the data you are receiving could always be false, therefore nothing else can ever be fully trusted.

1

Well put

But, even if it is a false experience, it is an experience, it also exists-as-a-fact in some form

5:43 PM

In the same way you do

"Only experience is internally verifiable" is another more accurate (but less elegant) way of stating "cogito ergo sum" haha

What if nothing at all exists and you are a self-contained entity somehow self-generating data?

It would still exist, but as part of you