holy fucking shit

[mrswdk]

Yup. It's the same thing as a customer being billed by their internet provider.

The IPS has IRS agents and the guys with guns who'll threaten to kill you if you don't pay your taxes?

The US government threatens to kill people as punishment for not paying taxes? You might wish to consider emigrating.

[BigBallinStalin]

Yup. It's the same thing as a customer being billed by their internet provider.

The IPS has IRS agents and the guys with guns who'll threaten to kill you if you don't pay your taxes?

The US government threatens to kill people as punishment for not paying taxes? You might wish to consider emigrating.

Emigration isn't the issue. The issue, which you keep dodging, is the nature of the exchange. When I give CC $25 in exchange for this good, I do so on a voluntary basis. If I don't want the good, CC doesn't compel me to pay it. The role of consent is clear in this scenario.

When a bunch of politicians exploit the ignorance of voters with symbolic actions and rhetoric, we get dumb policies that produce services which I am forced to pay for (e.g. a war). If I refuse to pay, then the IRS charges me more + taxes owed. If I refuse again, the authorities threaten to put me in a cage. If I reject their threat, then they come knocking with M4s and probably an armored car. If I defend myself, they will kill me. There's no consent given in this scenario, and the exchange is clearly involuntary. Note how CC doesn't do this to me.

The option of emigrating is hilarious because it's an offer that hardly anyone can refuse. (1) Foreign governments have restrictive laws against immigration, (2) those places are also controlled by coercive institutions (so why jump from one frying pan to another?), (3) the government charges you for leaving (IIRC, they hiked it up by 400%), and (4) there are more costs: losing nearly all social networks, your job, your family, loved ones possibly, and some fraction of your wealth by converting it into liquid assets--like cash, which will be also taxed. Note again how CC doesn't do this to me.

It's clear that the relationship between government and subjects is not consensual, nor is consent really required by governments. There's no contract to sign; there's no mutual recognition of each parties' property rights (contrast that with exchanges in the market); there's no effective means of informing government that the 'social' contract (US constitution) has become null-and-void since the government has failed to keep up its end of the bargain. Normally, when one side breaks a contract, the other side doesn't have to continuing paying for its services which it no longer wants. That doesn't hold with government because consent isn't even required and because the threat of violence will be used against you. What more do you need?

[mrswdk]

Well like I said before, if you don't want to be part if the system then you can just be a vagrant or subsistence farmer or whatever. No one's forcing you to get a job, buy a house and go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart.

It all depends on whether you'd rather participate in someone else's system or become master of your own destiny. Personally, I'd say that no system's perfect and that getting a job as an economist and paying your taxes is far better than dying in a mud hut aged 34 with bow legs and rotten teeth, but you clearly have a bit of a thing about authority

[BigBallinStalin]

Well like I said before, if you don't want to be part if the system then you can just be a vagrant or subsistence farmer or whatever. No one's forcing you to get a job, buy a house and go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart.

I still don't see why you keep missing the point about the lack of consent. Reapply the vagrant excuse to my same argument about the emigration issue; incorporate the costs of being a vagrant/forced of your home--because a government (some organization) directly threatens to use violence on you for failing to abide by their orders. If you don't want to pay for their coffee, Starbucks doesn't threaten to evict you from your house nor threaten you so much that 'walking the Earth' is your best option.

Right, no one forces me to get a job. It's a voluntary exchange between the supplier of labor and the demander.

But the government forces me--because they threaten to use violence, to pay for stuff that I may or might not want. This is totally different than a demander of labor wanting my services or not. It's totally different than my accepting an offer and rejecting it--without the demander threatening to beat me up. Governments aren't based on consent; the exchanges are fundamentally different.


Authority isn't my problem. I'm fine with my bosses. The issue is having a logically consistent understanding of exchanges between individuals and a government. Most people think there's consent without really thinking much about it. People are imbedded with this pro-government bias which needs to be rooted out of them. They should think twice about supporting some policy--which will inevitably coerce someone into doing something (they nearly always leave that part out because it doesn't sound so pleasing).

[DirtyDishSoap]

This hurt my eyes...

[mrswdk]

Well like I said before, if you don't want to be part if the system then you can just be a vagrant or subsistence farmer or whatever. No one's forcing you to get a job, buy a house and go grocery shopping at Wal-Mart.

I still don't see why you keep missing the point about the lack of consent. Reapply the vagrant excuse to my same argument about the emigration issue; incorporate the costs of being a vagrant/forced of your home--because a government (some organization) directly threatens to use violence on you for failing to abide by their orders. If you don't want to pay for their coffee, Starbucks doesn't threaten to evict you from your house nor threaten you so much that 'walking the Earth' is your best option.

Right, no one forces me to get a job. It's a voluntary exchange between the supplier of labor and the demander.

But the government forces me--because they threaten to use violence, to pay for stuff that I may or might not want. This is totally different than a demander of labor wanting my services or not. It's totally different than my accepting an offer and rejecting it--without the demander threatening to beat me up. Governments aren't based on consent; the exchanges are fundamentally different.


Authority isn't my problem. I'm fine with my bosses. The issue is having a logically consistent understanding of exchanges between individuals and a government. Most people think there's consent without really thinking much about it. People are imbedded with this pro-government bias which needs to be rooted out of them. They should think twice about supporting some policy--which will inevitably coerce someone into doing something (they nearly always leave that part out because it doesn't sound so pleasing).

You can either live as part of a human society and accept that doing so will require you to compromise at some point or another, or you can live outside of society and roam free like a bird (as a vagrant/subsistence farmer/whatever). Yes, the advantages of living in a society vastly outweigh the advantages of being totally independent, but that doesn't mean that there's no choice.

On a side note, it's also worth pointing out that violence would also be used as a means of enforcement in a totally free market, so violence is hardly a government thing. Starbucks don't come to your house to f*ck you and your family up because a) the stakes are much lower (a cup of coffee is only $5) and b) there are laws and a police force that prevent them from behaving like that. Try ripping off a loan shark and see what happens.

[tzor]

Thought of the day (because you can't really discuss these things if you don't really understand infinity).

Let's take the "worst case" scenario. You die. You stop thinking. Let's call this an absolute ZERO.

The universe is open, it is infinite. Infinity is also 1 divided by zero.

Your total remaining thoughts is literally zero times infinity or to out it in an math term ... 0/0.

What is the value of 0/0? Well it depends on how one approaches the two numbers but basically it is a non zero, finite number.

[TA1LGUNN3R]

Altered mental states are still mental states. Mental states are still just patterns of electrochemical stimulation of various parts of the brain.

It's funny that you use intuition as a critique against my method. I've always been a very intuitive person. Whenever it came to life or school pre-college I just understood how something worked, and in fact I struggle with the higher order mathematics required of my degree that are highly abstract because my intuition does not extend there. I have to work out the math in a method that I can associate with something tangible, which is something I never had to do before (because things like chemistry are not phenomena one experiences on a daily basis or interaction). For example, I was pretty good at vector calc but rubbish at series stuff because shapes and fields make sense.

Intuition is not a magic card. In fact intuition would be a highly advantageous evolutionary trait, and that's why it's so prevalent in humans. It's a way to make quick decisions that mean all the difference in a harsh environment.

Anyway, I think you're trying to ascribe too much mysticism to consciousness simply because you don't understand it. If I don't understand how something works, like gravity, it doesn't mean i can just attribute it to something outside the physical realm.

-TG

By intuition i was referring to events such as people knowing who is calling even before the phone rings, or twins knowing when the other is in trouble miles away.

It has been my intent to understand consciousness that has led me to the mystical approaches. I've been thru the scientifical and western philosophical attempts of explaining it and it's not enough for me.

And i still dont see how the positivistic approach can come up with an explanation, since in my understanding consciousness precedes it. That's the impass you and I reach and will continue reaching until you are first hand familiar with eastern culture meditation practices.

Meditation or eastern philosophy does not affirm mysticism any more than belief in it affirms god or ufos or Bigfoot.

Your examples of intuition are similar to déjà vu. They are a form of a normal thought or projection being confirmed by a similar incident happening.

Anyway, until you can disprove causality, I don't think you much of a leg to stand on.

-TG

I never said I could prove it. It's in the realm of ideas, all this, and that's why it fascinates me. I like talking about it but in an open minded kind of way. It's difficult to convey the whole idea on a post. I have more of a spatial mind, i'd need drawings and to speak my own language.

About the deja vu theory you just mentioned. How do you think the person from who you got the idea came up with it? "It must be that way, because I wouldnt accept it any other way". Truth is they cant have any proof of it being that way. They just write a journal article, are from certain university and you buy it because its in accord with your positivistic framework.

There's absolutly no proof that their description of the dejavu phenomenom is actually right. (I myself claim no different theory for it, im just using your example).

If you settle for the beliefs shared by conservative ( i didnt know which other word to use) understandings of consciousness youll find yourself limiting your own consciousness. That is a lot to say because you are consciousness. Going even further, i found that when i was adept to those ideas (not long ago) i accompanied them with a deterministic view of the world. Being a person that would follow take his ideas to the real world, the deterministic pov was confusing and incapacitating. Not saying it is your case, it might be only a hobby for you.

On the contrary, when you start giving permission to your consciousness to discover more of what it is, you start finding more. How do you go about this? In a meditative state, you find your limiting beliefs, or simply beliefs if you dont want to pass judgement, and simply state that you will give chance to a different belief, at least for a while while you are exploring. Thats all its needed. If you are lucky, you'll experience right away changes in your body, like your dick growing bigger ( you wish)... Like the releasing of tensions in certain parts of the body, awareness of certain parts of your body and how they are related to certain states of mind, etc.

The evidence for a rationale reason behind the...we'll call it esp phenomena, like deja vu, has more merit than the mystical. Everyday you live your life in a "positivistic framework." You type on a computer which uses electrical potentials to turn a binary string into an image on your screen and software to watch your porn.

Again, simply because you or I do not understand a particular phenomenon, you cannot just attribute it to mysticism. If you were to ask somebody from a thousand years ago what they thought of a 747 flying through the air, they'd tell you it was magic or a god or something, but you would know it's the result of lift and thrust (hehe) and clever aerodynamics. So, too, is your assertion that something like mysticism drives or guides ideas and the workings of the mind.

Ideas, too, are a physical phenomena, and like I said, until you can disprove causality, I wouldn't put too much stock in ouija boards and astral dimensions.

So your goal in rejecting materialism is to maximize your joy in life? Great. There's nothing wrong with some hedonism. I think I can achieve that without buying the scented candles and crystals, but to each their own. If I'm trying to build a car, I try to learn as much as I can about the mechanics and theory behind the operation of the machine, the tools needed, etc. In this way I can build the best car possible. I wouldn't want to start building a car believing that the compression and expansion of the cylinders which drive the pistons is done by something which I cannot see. By pursuing science and tech, I hope to maximize life itself.

-TG

[Army of GOD]

I'd much rather read TG/nietzsche's debate than the stupid fucking government debate between BBS/mrstitsorgtfo

[BigBallinStalin]

I'd much rather read TG/nietzsche's debate than the stupid fucking government debate between BBS/mrstitsorgtfo

I like the BBS/mrstitsorgtfo debate because it's important for people to realize that they hold erroneous beliefs about government and consent. When brought to an individual level, the use of coercion to get someone to do something seems morally wrong for many circumstances, but when brought to a collective level, they insist on the opposite--for the same circumstances. Schizophrenic thinking leads to poor public policies. I'm just not concise and fun enough to get people to that conclusion.

[Army of GOD]

That's such a phatscotty post

[BigBallinStalin]

Why don't you go shit all over your mother?

[Army of GOD]

Because I just shat all over my aunt and need to digest my Taco Bell first before I reload

[mrswdk]

That's such a phatscotty post

[nietzsche]

Altered mental states are still mental states. Mental states are still just patterns of electrochemical stimulation of various parts of the brain.

It's funny that you use intuition as a critique against my method. I've always been a very intuitive person. Whenever it came to life or school pre-college I just understood how something worked, and in fact I struggle with the higher order mathematics required of my degree that are highly abstract because my intuition does not extend there. I have to work out the math in a method that I can associate with something tangible, which is something I never had to do before (because things like chemistry are not phenomena one experiences on a daily basis or interaction). For example, I was pretty good at vector calc but rubbish at series stuff because shapes and fields make sense.

Intuition is not a magic card. In fact intuition would be a highly advantageous evolutionary trait, and that's why it's so prevalent in humans. It's a way to make quick decisions that mean all the difference in a harsh environment.

Anyway, I think you're trying to ascribe too much mysticism to consciousness simply because you don't understand it. If I don't understand how something works, like gravity, it doesn't mean i can just attribute it to something outside the physical realm.

-TG

By intuition i was referring to events such as people knowing who is calling even before the phone rings, or twins knowing when the other is in trouble miles away.

It has been my intent to understand consciousness that has led me to the mystical approaches. I've been thru the scientifical and western philosophical attempts of explaining it and it's not enough for me.

And i still dont see how the positivistic approach can come up with an explanation, since in my understanding consciousness precedes it. That's the impass you and I reach and will continue reaching until you are first hand familiar with eastern culture meditation practices.

Meditation or eastern philosophy does not affirm mysticism any more than belief in it affirms god or ufos or Bigfoot.

Your examples of intuition are similar to déjà vu. They are a form of a normal thought or projection being confirmed by a similar incident happening.

Anyway, until you can disprove causality, I don't think you much of a leg to stand on.

-TG

I never said I could prove it. It's in the realm of ideas, all this, and that's why it fascinates me. I like talking about it but in an open minded kind of way. It's difficult to convey the whole idea on a post. I have more of a spatial mind, i'd need drawings and to speak my own language.

About the deja vu theory you just mentioned. How do you think the person from who you got the idea came up with it? "It must be that way, because I wouldnt accept it any other way". Truth is they cant have any proof of it being that way. They just write a journal article, are from certain university and you buy it because its in accord with your positivistic framework.

There's absolutly no proof that their description of the dejavu phenomenom is actually right. (I myself claim no different theory for it, im just using your example).

If you settle for the beliefs shared by conservative ( i didnt know which other word to use) understandings of consciousness youll find yourself limiting your own consciousness. That is a lot to say because you are consciousness. Going even further, i found that when i was adept to those ideas (not long ago) i accompanied them with a deterministic view of the world. Being a person that would follow take his ideas to the real world, the deterministic pov was confusing and incapacitating. Not saying it is your case, it might be only a hobby for you.

On the contrary, when you start giving permission to your consciousness to discover more of what it is, you start finding more. How do you go about this? In a meditative state, you find your limiting beliefs, or simply beliefs if you dont want to pass judgement, and simply state that you will give chance to a different belief, at least for a while while you are exploring. Thats all its needed. If you are lucky, you'll experience right away changes in your body, like your dick growing bigger ( you wish)... Like the releasing of tensions in certain parts of the body, awareness of certain parts of your body and how they are related to certain states of mind, etc.

The evidence for a rationale reason behind the...we'll call it esp phenomena, like deja vu, has more merit than the mystical. Everyday you live your life in a "positivistic framework." You type on a computer which uses electrical potentials to turn a binary string into an image on your screen and software to watch your porn.

Again, simply because you or I do not understand a particular phenomenon, you cannot just attribute it to mysticism. If you were to ask somebody from a thousand years ago what they thought of a 747 flying through the air, they'd tell you it was magic or a god or something, but you would know it's the result of lift and thrust (hehe) and clever aerodynamics. So, too, is your assertion that something like mysticism drives or guides ideas and the workings of the mind.

Ideas, too, are a physical phenomena, and like I said, until you can disprove causality, I wouldn't put too much stock in ouija boards and astral dimensions.

So your goal in rejecting materialism is to maximize your joy in life? Great. There's nothing wrong with some hedonism. I think I can achieve that without buying the scented candles and crystals, but to each their own. If I'm trying to build a car, I try to learn as much as I can about the mechanics and theory behind the operation of the machine, the tools needed, etc. In this way I can build the best car possible. I wouldn't want to start building a car believing that the compression and expansion of the cylinders which drive the pistons is done by something which I cannot see. By pursuing science and tech, I hope to maximize life itself.

-TG

On respect to deja vu I was not attributing the explanation to anything mystical. It could very well be a glitch in our physical brain. I was simply taking advatange of you bringing it up to show that the theories formulated about it contain a lot of faith in the expectation of the explanation of everything that is by the positivistic approach. As i said, might be very well explainable by science some day, but today it hasnt. The explanations that i once read about it are not conclusive at all.

That was my point, you are convinced it will be explained and that is a belief. We have adopted those beliefs in this era after the triumph of science and technology over some of our needs, quite rapidly lately, and it sort of makes sense that we should stay in that approach, doesn't it?

Today we ridicule those who don't share these beliefs. I mean, what once was the thought of the most educated, not many decades ago, is now mainstream. Just look at the cartoons, talk shows, movies, etc. Shouldn't we be careful on what ideas we adopt, are these ours or are they simply the ideas we've been more exposed to? Didn't our ancestors some centuries ago did the same, adopted the ideas they were more exposed to and ended up having erroneous theories abot how the world works? Are we really smarter? Or are we just doing the same?

About me forgetting the materialistic/ deterministic approach about my life: yes, you could say i did it to feel better. But i didn't just stop thinking and went to church on sundays. It took some time, it took asking the question and going deep within myself (stay away from me natty).

I remembered what i had been thinking forever, but specifically an idea i had in college when i was about 20. Long story short i heard about an electronics concept from a friend and this idea came to my head, so i went to the next class of this friend where the teacher was to discuss the topic. Turned out it wasnt what i thought but the idea that spurred the name of the concept stayed with me. I got into philosophy years later and that idea just reasurred in the back of my mind, some times i pondered but i never got into depth with it.

Years later i found myself deeply depressed. Its funny depression in the sense that it takes away your enjoyment of life but it allows you to introspect much more (word of advice: "if you stare long enoung into the abyss, the abyss becomes you"). That got my into psychology and the different approachs at therapy. I read about all of them, from the old ones to the most current. From theory to practice. I went in and out of depression for a few years, the most working approach of theraphy for me being cognitive and meta cognitive. From there i got into cataloguing and studying my thoughts, i could see now how it all happened, how my mood changed and why. I was at beliefs now, but i couldnt fucking find how to work on beliefs.

I had to find that in what you label "mystical". It was right fucking there all the time, all those ideas i rejected for being hippie stuff, many times i tripped on them and kicked them away. But its ok, i guess it was my path.

By labeling them and ridiculing them you are not really dismissing their content. You are simply rejecting the "folk tale".

I got carried away: the name of the electronics concept was something translatable as "machine of states". The idea that came into my mind out of nowhere was that we were a machine of states, reaching into different directions (information) depending oun our state. I got the idea that this was key on the understading of ourselves. The topic discussed at class was something similar but more specialized and with a smaller scope.

So, on with these ideas i found that we have access to different information depending our state of mind, brain frequencies if you wish, and that all the different type of information is truth.

Then, logical thinking is valid qnd true, helpful in its scope, but not the only type of consciousness there is.

Dont be so quick to dismiss "magical thinking". A recent study( was recent when i read about it a couple of years ago) showed that some amount of magical thinking is necessary, indeed vital, for the production of the fundamental healthy amount of dopamine in our brains. This needs not to be an eye opener, as most of what we do is still irrational. We simply keep our logical and rational behaviour where it belongs, dont we? Were you thinking of black holes the last time you jerk off? (Hehe)

Edit: many grammatical errors, will edit tomorrow from the laptop because its a pita from the phone

[BoganGod]

I'd much rather read TG/nietzsche's debate than the stupid fucking government debate between BBS/mrstitsorgtfo

I like the BBS/mrstitsorgtfo debate because it's important for people to realize that they hold erroneous beliefs about government and consent. When brought to an individual level, the use of coercion to get someone to do something seems morally wrong for many circumstances, but when brought to a collective level, they insist on the opposite--for the same circumstances. Schizophrenic thinking leads to poor public policies. I'm just not concise and fun enough to get people to that conclusion.

Ahhh, what a lovely little conversation. The politics of consent. How about we extend the discussion to include the ethics of consent, and talk about implied consent.

Hypothetical - Your wife is dumb(can't speak for those that can't understand the intended meaning of a word from context), normally you speak to her, and she replies with sign language. You have a lovely relationship. You wake up at 3 in the morning, feeling a wee bit frisky, let your hands go wandering, and ask your wife whether she is up for some marital relations. The lights are off. Do you have your wife's permission to continue? Is consent implied by her not batting your octopus hands away?


Next question, anyone read Peter Singer's work?

[BigBallinStalin]

Ahhh, what a lovely little conversation. The politics of consent. How about we extend the discussion to include the ethics of consent, and talk about implied consent.

Hypothetical - Your wife is dumb(can't speak for those that can't understand the intended meaning of a word from context), normally you speak to her, and she replies with sign language. You have a lovely relationship. You wake up at 3 in the morning, feeling a wee bit frisky, let your hands go wandering, and ask your wife whether she is up for some marital relations. The lights are off. Do you have your wife's permission to continue? Is consent implied by her not batting your octopus hands away?

1. the history of interaction between the couple more clearly defines their understanding of consent, so without this context, it's difficult for an outside observer to make any judgment. In general, her batting away octopus hands means, "no," but in other cases it could mean, "yes," because they enjoy rough sex. Presumably, they'd have a means of communicating a safety 'word'.

2. Mentioning the vagueness of consent with specific examples devoid of much context hardly supports the presumption of scaling up implied consent between an autocracy/democracy and its denizens.

Next question, anyone read Peter Singer's work?

I've read an article of his about the child drowning in a pond. Where do you want to take this?

[BoganGod]

Ahhh, what a lovely little conversation. The politics of consent. How about we extend the discussion to include the ethics of consent, and talk about implied consent.

Hypothetical - Your wife is dumb(can't speak for those that can't understand the intended meaning of a word from context), normally you speak to her, and she replies with sign language. You have a lovely relationship. You wake up at 3 in the morning, feeling a wee bit frisky, let your hands go wandering, and ask your wife whether she is up for some marital relations. The lights are off. Do you have your wife's permission to continue? Is consent implied by her not batting your octopus hands away?

1. the history of interaction between the couple more clearly defines their understanding of consent, so without this context, it's difficult for an outside observer to make any judgment. In general, her batting away octopus hands means, "no," but in other cases it could mean, "yes," because they enjoy rough sex. Presumably, they'd have a means of communicating a safety 'word'.

2. Mentioning the vagueness of consent with specific examples devoid of much context hardly supports the presumption of scaling up implied consent between an autocracy/democracy and its denizens.

Next question, anyone read Peter Singer's work?

I've read an article of his about the child drowning in a pond. Where do you want to take this?

1. Example a lame attempt to point out that there are multiple shades of grey. Things are not black or white.
2. You are correct sir. However most of the stunted attention span posters in this sub fora would not read a long example setting out extended context.

Peter Singer - Writes a lot about globalisation, effects of a global economy on the environment, world hunger, poverty etc. Has highlighted the fact that sometimes charity increases the gap between poor and rich. Handouts, can keep you down. Peter as philosopher has the courage to look at and consider any question. Google Peter Singer and beastality. Highly amusing, and quite rational. When you take time to fully examine the context.

The broader question/discussion on government power/force and personal rights. Unless you vote you don't have the right to complain. A nation gets the government that they deserve. Doing nothing is a choice. Choosing not to choose is a choice...... Get active at a grass roots level, elect independents rather than sheep from the two party duopoly. Bracket creep in governmental services is happening the world over, because we let it happen.

[BigBallinStalin]

The broader question/discussion on government power/force and personal rights. Unless you vote you don't have the right to complain. A nation gets the government that they deserve. Doing nothing is a choice. Choosing not to choose is a choice...... Get active at a grass roots level, elect independents rather than sheep from the two party duopoly. Bracket creep in governmental services is happening the world over, because we let it happen.

How does that follow? Is that somewhere in the imaginary contract which delineates the duties between citizens and state? No. You just made it up in order to browbeat nonvoters. Bad form, sir. There is no 'right to complain'. You can simply do it with legitimacy and without an appeal to some sophist philosophy.

RE: 'just deserts', you're ignoring the negligible impact that an individual has on affecting outcomes over a country. Also, you're ignoring the role of coercion. If the state beats you for resisting, and if you stop resisting, it doesn't follow that the nation justly deserves to rule. It's quite rational for people to obey when they are forced to do so, but your position requires that they act irrationally, which isn't a good standard and rides the slippery slope for justifying all sorts of violence.

RE: the rest, there's other ways to affect change which are more effective, and there's plenty of problems with the means you mentioned.

[mrswdk]

Like when my parents used to coerce me into eating more vegetables at dinner time.

[TA1LGUNN3R]

On respect to deja vu I was not attributing the explanation to anything mystical. It could very well be a glitch in our physical brain. I was simply taking advatange of you bringing it up to show that the theories formulated about it contain a lot of faith in the expectation of the explanation of everything that is by the positivistic approach. As i said, might be very well explainable by science some day, but today it hasnt. The explanations that i once read about it are not conclusive at all.

That was my point, you are convinced it will be explained and that is a belief. We have adopted those beliefs in this era after the triumph of science and technology over some of our needs, quite rapidly lately, and it sort of makes sense that we should stay in that approach, doesn't it?

Today we ridicule those who don't share these beliefs. I mean, what once was the thought of the most educated, not many decades ago, is now mainstream. Just look at the cartoons, talk shows, movies, etc. Shouldn't we be careful on what ideas we adopt, are these ours or are they simply the ideas we've been more exposed to? Didn't our ancestors some centuries ago did the same, adopted the ideas they were more exposed to and ended up having erroneous theories abot how the world works? Are we really smarter? Or are we just doing the same?

About me forgetting the materialistic/ deterministic approach about my life: yes, you could say i did it to feel better. But i didn't just stop thinking and went to church on sundays. It took some time, it took asking the question and going deep within myself (stay away from me natty).

I remembered what i had been thinking forever, but specifically an idea i had in college when i was about 20. Long story short i heard about an electronics concept from a friend and this idea came to my head, so i went to the next class of this friend where the teacher was to discuss the topic. Turned out it wasnt what i thought but the idea that spurred the name of the concept stayed with me. I got into philosophy years later and that idea just reasurred in the back of my mind, some times i pondered but i never got into depth with it.

Years later i found myself deeply depressed. Its funny depression in the sense that it takes away your enjoyment of life but it allows you to introspect much more (word of advice: "if you stare long enoung into the abyss, the abyss becomes you"). That got my into psychology and the different approachs at therapy. I read about all of them, from the old ones to the most current. From theory to practice. I went in and out of depression for a few years, the most working approach of theraphy for me being cognitive and meta cognitive. From there i got into cataloguing and studying my thoughts, i could see now how it all happened, how my mood changed and why. I was at beliefs now, but i couldnt fucking find how to work on beliefs.

I had to find that in what you label "mystical". It was right fucking there all the time, all those ideas i rejected for being hippie stuff, many times i tripped on them and kicked them away. But its ok, i guess it was my path.

By labeling them and ridiculing them you are not really dismissing their content. You are simply rejecting the "folk tale".

I got carried away: the name of the electronics concept was something translatable as "machine of states". The idea that came into my mind out of nowhere was that we were a machine of states, reaching into different directions (information) depending oun our state. I got the idea that this was key on the understading of ourselves. The topic discussed at class was something similar but more specialized and with a smaller scope.

So, on with these ideas i found that we have access to different information depending our state of mind, brain frequencies if you wish, and that all the different type of information is truth.

Then, logical thinking is valid qnd true, helpful in its scope, but not the only type of consciousness there is.

Dont be so quick to dismiss "magical thinking". A recent study( was recent when i read about it a couple of years ago) showed that some amount of magical thinking is necessary, indeed vital, for the production of the fundamental healthy amount of dopamine in our brains. This needs not to be an eye opener, as most of what we do is still irrational. We simply keep our logical and rational behaviour where it belongs, dont we? Were you thinking of black holes the last time you jerk off? (Hehe)

Edit: many grammatical errors, will edit tomorrow from the laptop because its a pita from the phone

Bold: Maybe it cannot be explained. Maybe the attempt to explain the workings of the brain is a limit that we cannot surpass, like accelerating a mass to c or using a lens to enhance an image past a certain distance.

This does not imply mysticism or anything not materialism. If you want to say then that I believe in materialism, I suppose by definition you are correct, however I think in this instance it's more akin to a mathematical postulate or even a theorem, which one holds to be true for a certain set until it can be disproven. Every second I see things explained by causalism and materialism-- the movement of my muscles driven by electrical impulses to muscle fibers, the operation of machinery, the evolution of gene propagation. So why would I expect something different from any form of thought, which we know to be the province of neural networks?

Italic: "Shouldn't we be careful what ideas we adopt..." Indeed. And that's a catch-22 statement if I ever heard one. How can you judge an idea on its merit unless it has already come to your attention? The propagation of ideas is how a culture grows and advances.

Whether a culture adopts erroneous theories I suspect is probably inevitable on some scale. And in no way am I saying we are smarter than our predecessors, just more informed.

Rest: blah. I never said there weren't other types of consciousness, but I do maintain that they aren't necessarily magical. There's nothing magical about sleep, or hypnosis, or whatever. The brain is a vast organ, but still an organ.

Oh, and I love pitas, they are delicious.

-TG

[BoganGod]

The broader question/discussion on government power/force and personal rights. Unless you vote you don't have the right to complain. A nation gets the government that they deserve. Doing nothing is a choice. Choosing not to choose is a choice...... Get active at a grass roots level, elect independents rather than sheep from the two party duopoly. Bracket creep in governmental services is happening the world over, because we let it happen.

How does that follow? Is that somewhere in the imaginary contract which delineates the duties between citizens and state? No. You just made it up in order to browbeat nonvoters. Bad form, sir. There is no 'right to complain'. You can simply do it with legitimacy and without an appeal to some sophist philosophy.

RE: 'just deserts', you're ignoring the negligible impact that an individual has on affecting outcomes over a country. Also, you're ignoring the role of coercion. If the state beats you for resisting, and if you stop resisting, it doesn't follow that the nation justly deserves to rule. It's quite rational for people to obey when they are forced to do so, but your position requires that they act irrationally, which isn't a good standard and rides the slippery slope for justifying all sorts of violence.

RE: the rest, there's other ways to affect change which are more effective, and there's plenty of problems with the means you mentioned.

Tell me more of the ways of affecting effective change. Please sage master. Tell me of the ways that have no problems(I have never suggested that any methods are problem free). Governments govern at the consent of the governed. As a person living in a country with compulsory voting(you can get fined for not voting), I have a keen appreciation of not only how important voting is, but also the negative effects of coercion. A much higher percentage of people in Australia "donkey vote"(mark ballot papers so as to make vote ineligible for counting except as a defective vote.) in protest against having to vote, or not having viable candidates to vote for.

[BigBallinStalin]

Hypothetical - Your wife is dumb(can't speak for those that can't understand the intended meaning of a word from context), normally you speak to her, and she replies with sign language. You have a lovely relationship. You wake up at 3 in the morning, feeling a wee bit frisky, let your hands go wandering, and ask your wife whether she is up for some marital relations. The lights are off. Do you have your wife's permission to continue? Is consent implied by her not batting your octopus hands away?

1. the history of interaction between the couple more clearly defines their understanding of consent, so without this context, it's difficult for an outside observer to make any judgment. In general, her batting away octopus hands means, "no," but in other cases it could mean, "yes," because they enjoy rough sex. Presumably, they'd have a means of communicating a safety 'word'.
?

1. Example a lame attempt to point out that there are multiple shades of grey. Things are not black or white.

But it's more than 'shades of sodomy gray'. The institutions, i.e. rules of the game, differ for various exchanges (money, goods, sex, political power). In some cases, it is black-and-white. E.g. when I select goods at the grocery store, I exchange my money for the goods. The consent is clear yet not explicit. People know what it means to trade something in exchange for something else in this context. People recognize that I now own those goods after I gave the store my money. That's a black-and-white example. Consent is expressed through the exchange. Consent can also be easily denied by my not shopping there.

Consent in exchanges between a state and an individual are not only vague but in most cases are black-and-white cases of no consent. I didn't give my money to the IRS because I enjoy the goods that government provided (but which I didn't want). If I refuse to give my money, I get fined and at worst imprisoned or killed for resisting. No grocery store will do this to me--when I refuse to purchase their goods. Clearly, consent in the market exchange is not at all like consent between state and individual. In fact, with nearly all exchanges with the state, consent is not at all required.

[BigBallinStalin]

Like when my parents used to coerce me into eating more vegetables at dinner time.

If you obstinately refused, would your parents hold a gun to your face and force you into a cage for 2-20+ years?
(They might kick you out, but really.. would they? If they did, it's probably not because you didn't eat enough veggies).

There's a difference between 'being pushy' and 'being coercive'. The coercive actions of the state are much clearer because all their mandates are founded upon a definite use of violence, which they monopolize.* Not only that, there's a difference between being a child and being an adult, but the state in nearly all cases doesn't care if you're an adult.

*'but my parents monopolize the use of force against me' (there's also the obvious difference between the state and the family). The state has corrective measures for that, so your parents don't have a monopoly on force, but also there are more forms of discouraging such behavior. For example, the nonviolent child-rearing norms of today have largely emerged--regardless of government (see: research on showing the negative effects of beating your kids, and note the increasingly popular moral attitude against beating one's kids).

[BigBallinStalin]

The broader question/discussion on government power/force and personal rights. Unless you vote you don't have the right to complain. A nation gets the government that they deserve. Doing nothing is a choice. Choosing not to choose is a choice...... Get active at a grass roots level, elect independents rather than sheep from the two party duopoly. Bracket creep in governmental services is happening the world over, because we let it happen.

How does that follow? Is that somewhere in the imaginary contract which delineates the duties between citizens and state? No. You just made it up in order to browbeat nonvoters. Bad form, sir. There is no 'right to complain'. You can simply do it with legitimacy and without an appeal to some sophist philosophy.

RE: 'just deserts', you're ignoring the negligible impact that an individual has on affecting outcomes over a country. Also, you're ignoring the role of coercion. If the state beats you for resisting, and if you stop resisting, it doesn't follow that the nation justly deserves to rule. It's quite rational for people to obey when they are forced to do so, but your position requires that they act irrationally, which isn't a good standard and rides the slippery slope for justifying all sorts of violence.

RE: the rest, there's other ways to affect change which are more effective, and there's plenty of problems with the means you mentioned.

Tell me more of the ways of affecting effective change. Please sage master. Tell me of the ways that have no problems(I have never suggested that any methods are problem free). Governments govern at the consent of the governed. As a person living in a country with compulsory voting(you can get fined for not voting), I have a keen appreciation of not only how important voting is, but also the negative effects of coercion. A much higher percentage of people in Australia "donkey vote"(mark ballot papers so as to make vote ineligible for counting except as a defective vote.) in protest against having to vote, or not having viable candidates to vote for.

Before I mention those few alternatives, I'd like for us to reach some 'mutual understanding' of the issues. (This will help me better explain the alternatives, which I so greedily hide from your sight).

1. The 'right to complain cuz you didn't vote' argument is silly.
2. That statement, 'A nation gets the government that they deserve,' is also silly.

Do you agree?