Something Instead of Nothing

Evolution [on earth] starts with figuring out how [presumably] mindless matter configured into living matter. And we don’t even know for certain if life originated on earth or came from some object crashing into us eons ago. And then how living matter configured into human brains. And then how brains configured into minds. Minds on the level of human consciousness. Minds that, in my view, only a fool would insist they completely understand in relationship to the evolution of life in relationship to the existence of the universe in relationship to an understanding of existence itself.

As for my conception of autonomy…isn’t that in turn embedded in a complete understanding of Reality itself? Not unlike, for example, yours?

How do we grapple with human logic beyond that which we are able demonstrate it is in fact logical to believe? And for that we would need an actual existential context. So, pick one.

Then folks like Gib come along and suggest that mind itself somehow set it all into motion.

I agree, but: How on earth could we possibly come up with a set of definitions applicable to grappling definitively with human autonomy when we do not appear to have the capacity even to determine [and then to demonstrate] that accomplishing something like this is in and of itself within our capacity autononously?

Think of all the definitions that we can acquire in relationship to understanding the sport of baseball and the sport of basketball. But if we shift the discussion to whether baseball is a better sport than basketball, what set of definitions could we come up with in order to understand logically the meaning of “better”?

Same with a discussion revolving around this discussion itself. What entirely rational definition of “auntonmy” could be pinned down to determine whether that discussion was or was not only as it ever could have been?

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that technically my arguments here may well be flawed. But what else is there? Others are either able [freely or mechanically] to make me understand this or they are not. And if they can’t they can always [freely or mechanically] give up on me and move on to others.

But I suspect that none of us are likely to grasp these relationships wholly. And [it seems] the only way this will be decided is if they succeed in convincing the world at large that their narrative here is either the optimal or the only rational/logical/epistemologically sound explanation in sync with a complete understanding of existence itself.

Again, we need a context. Two apples plus two apples equals four apples. Given the extent to which we can all agree on what those words mean. Or you can say that two apples plus two apples equals one jar of applesauce.

Or you can note that two doctors performing two abortions equals four doctors performing four abortions.

But if we shift to the morality of abortion and some argue that freedom equals the natural right of the fetus to be born while others insist that freedom equals the political right of pregnant women to kill them, which definition of freedom here is the most [or the only] rational, logical, epistemoligically sound definition?

And then when we shift gears again in examining our capacity to sustain this very exchange autonomously, which set of definitions is able to be demonstrated to be the most [or the only] rational, logical and epistemologically sound one around?

Then I’m back to the autonomous aliens. The part that once again you have not yet commented on. This part:

[b]Let’s consider a hypothetical I raised with Gib…

Imagine that earth is in a part of the universe where everything – everything – is wholly determined by the laws of matter. Aliens from a part of the universe where autonomy prevails note the option that I chose. They are freely debating among themselves whether that was the right thing to do while pointing out that in making the choice myself, I was never really “metaphysically” able to choose other than what I did. But: my brain/mind has deluded me into thinking that “psychologically” I freely chose either 1 or 2.

Would they not note in turn that the question you posed to me and the manner in which I chose to answer was only ever as it could have been down on a planet existing in a part of the universe in which everything – everything – unfolds only as it ever could have.[/b]

On the contrary. Having to acknowledge that gap between what we think we know here and now about these things and all that there is to be known about the existence of existence itself could not possibly be of more importance.

It is just so exasperating to admit that, isn’t it? Then we are stuck with figuring out a way to narrow that gap. Knowing that this may well not even be within the capacity of the human mind here and now. Yet there are those among us will go to the grave convinced that their own “philosophy of life” or their own understanding of “existence itself”, was the right one.

But, again, that speaks more to the existential parameters of human psychology to me. And even here that may well only be as it ever could have been

Okay, choose a context. Note a set of circumstances where human beings interact and come up with a set of definitions that will allow us to fully understand them, describe them, pass judgment on them.

Its value either lies in the manner in which I have concluded autonomously that it is valuable to me or that conclusion itself is the only one that I was ever able to come to.

Then it comes down to the extent to which you are able to demonstrate that the sense you do make of all this, is that which all rational men and women are obligated to make. Or to demonstrate that the obligation itself is either in sync with human autonomy or in sync with a wholly determined universe.

Folks like Gib here [if I understand him] seem to argue that “metaphysically” we are not free. But that the evolution of matter is such that “psychologically” the human “I” is at least able to note that they made a choice. Even if that was the only choice they ever could have made.

Again, making me the issue – the problem – here. If we assume human autonomy then I am freely making the wrong assumptions because you are making the right ones. The sensible ones. And if human interactions are wholly determined given the actual existence of the immutable laws of matter, my failure to grasp “choices” here as you and others do, was never going to not be the case.

But how do we determine the extent to which any of us do bring them to bear was within our capacity not to?

Utterly, utterly abstract. So, again:

Choose a context. Note a set of circumstances where human beings interact and come up with a set of definitions that will allow us to fully understand them, describe them, pass judgment on them.

That will allow us to make an attempt to determine and to demonstrate that one’s “character” is not just another aggregation of dominoes intertwined with all the other aggregation of dominoes going back to a complete understanding of existence itself.

Et tu, Gib?

What kind of post is this? A series of retorts?

Look, if you no longer respect my intelligence, okay, fine. But if this is actually what I have reduced you to in responding to me, then once again it is time for you to move on to others. Those more worthy of your time.

Posts in which the points I raise are abandoned and replaced with snide comments that make me the point, are of less and less of interest to me.

So, decide.

Assuming of course that this is within your capacity as metaphysically determined but psychologically free human being to decide. :wink:

A retort to a retort!!!

It’s always sad when someone with a mind of your caliber sinks this low.

Of course you do still have your ambiguous God and your ambiguous objective morality and your ambiguous autonomy. So let’s just chalk it all up to my inabilty to define “ambiguous” correctly.

Also, you do still manage to sustain a hell of a lot more “comfort and consolation” than “I” do.

So, as ecmandu might put it, you win! :wink:

Yeah, it seems about that time. I’m very selective in what I respond to. Anything I don’t respond to isn’t being ignored, it’s just that there’s nothing more to say about it. I try to avoid these vicious cycles.

No, I don’t disrespect your intelligence. You are highly intelligent… just a little frustrating to converse with sometimes. But frustration is ephemeral.

We’ll get into this again some other time. Chow!

Here’s a word I invented “gurlabada”
I don’t know if we have gurlabada… I don’t know if we even could have gurlabada in a world with fish… How do you recommend we proceed in a conversation about gurlabada?

Are these aliens free to think however? if so neither I, nor they could know how they would think before they thought it. It would be random and chaotic… they could think one thing one second and contrary thing the next.
If however their thinking had a method (one might say “a system” or “character”) to them, then they would not be so different from us… the only notable difference would be that the rules that governed their thinking could not be found in the material world.

Exactly my point…

Hmm… you do see the irony of misinterpreting the sentence that warned about misinterpreting and started with an “if”

If my conversation partner cannot or will not make an effort to understand what I say… what would you recommend I do?

Thus far, you have not addressed any of my points nor questions… until you do, I cannot see a path forward.

Gib’s comment was not a retort. It was an honest expression of the confusion and frustration that your posting produces in people. Karpal Tunnel and I have said essentially the same thing.

It goes like this :
You post as if “your hole” is a big problem for you. People respond and try to “help” you with it. After dozens (or hundreds) of posts, you finally reveal that you easily deal with your problem. People feel that you have misrepresented your problem and that they have been jerked around.

Apparently you don’t see that or you don’t care.

I expect that Gib is not going to be the last poster who goes through this same process with you.

I’m not sure if that is true. You seem oddly comfortable with what you are doing. You don’t take anybody’s advice or change your position based on their arguments.

One would think that an “uncomfortable” person would shift around to try to get into a more comfortable position. That seems like an obvious and natural way to act.

Maybe you have “comfort and consolation” and maybe you don’t. I don’t know you (aside from what you have posted and that’s contradictory).

Similarly, you don’t know whether I have “comfort and consolation”.

I always find it weird when life is viewed in terms of winning and losing.

I sometimes wonder of all of us overlook something. That the deeper question, for there may be one lurking on the very edge of conscious awareness, overlooks the position that the mediating , rational nexus between the microcosmic feeling(sophistry) harbored by Imbigious and that held by philosophical discourse.

If The matter is looked objectively, then it becomes evident, at least to me, that Iambig’s position is shared by the larger philosophical background in which we all participate.

I think of looked at this way, the conclusion may not be avoided that his position is one that many modern men participate in, who try to get put from under the almost impossible center that has modern man been inscribed between the traditional and the post modern world.

Between policy, politics of tradition and ones of experience. It may be futile not to avoid reducing politics to experience , because we members of an internet sight do not really known each other, then merely from reading each other. I don’t know but it seems like we are all missong something that could be important and useful in more in-depth analysis.

It’s not that Iambig’s position has no truth in it. It does.

But it’s impossible to discuss it with him.

I get that , but maybe its because he is spoken to referentially and he speaking preferentially, where he is trying to express his preference for a largely determined conditionality, (intentionality) , whereas he probably thinks that he is spoken to as of his freedom to choose overrides those conditions.

Does he ? Can he? Is he able to generate the will to do so? These questions as of yet remain undetermined, and until then, no clear picture arises to be able to sort it out.

I don’t think that anyone is telling him that “freedom to choose” overrides conditions. They’re telling him that “choice” is not about “overriding conditions”. Even in a “determined world”, a person is making a choice.

Yes but free choices are more undetermined, by far, to the degree of determination. That is a very wide grey area.

And in an undetermined future, this greay area may widen or narrow, in accordance to a specified necessity.

How accurate do specs need to accommodate the degree of necessity, maybe even one molecular lengthy or even sub-atomic.

Sure, in the here and now, I would be very hard pressed to sustain his conditional requirement ’ to bring it down to earth’, especially in light of an example of far flung future civilizations. However in principle, this could be a contention.

In addition , all communication failing, bridge building may be the last way to communicate.

Okay. But when the question being discussed is this big aren’t we all going to reach the point where the exchange topples over into the profoundly problematic turbulence embedded in the gap between what we think we know and all that there is to know about the ontological parameters of All There Is?

The vicious circles – I think this and you think that and around and around we go – are basically built right into such exchanges.

Or so it seems to me.

It’s just that, even if true, philosopher types like us are still drawn to them. Fascinated by them.

A few though are able to convince themselves that they actually have come closer to grasping “the answer” than all the others.

This can console them. However faintly.

Well, given that I certainly do respect your own intelligence, I look forward to it.

But that just takes me back to pondering the extent to which I can ever be absolutely certain that anything I recommend was not just that which I was never able not to recommend.

Also, at the very least it would all need to be brought down to earth. To the best of your ability, you would need to describe gurlabada; and then attempt to explain its existential relationship to a world of fish in an existential relationship with the human species.

And then grapple with the part where you take a stab at determining [and then demonstrating] if your effort here was ever within your capacity to articulate and resolve autonomously of your own volition.

But [in my view] an answer to a question like this will take us back to the answers to questions like these:

1] why something instead of nothing?
2] why this something and not another something instead?

The hypothetical assumption is that, however these two questions are able to be answered, the aliens reside in a part of the universe where they do have the capacity think freely; while we on earth do our own thinking and feeling and behaving strictly in accordance with the laws of matter. The assumption here being that the human brain/mind is no less matter. Just a very, very unique kind of matter.

And it would seem that in a wholly determined universe anything deemed to be chaotic was only really being misunderstood. The quantum world is no less embedded mechanically in the laws of matter. We just haven’t figured out how yet. On the other hand, in a wholly determined universe, wouldn’t our attempts to figure things like this out also be no less mechanical.

For the aliens though, the laws of nature would allow them to grasp certain inherent continuities that are true objectively for all of them. In the either/or world. But what of the is/ought world? Even assuming their capacity to choose freely those behaviors deemed to be either right or wrong, how would the components of my own moral philosophy be factored into that?

If, on earth, we are in fact free to choose, that doesn’t make the part about dasein, conflicting good and political economy go away. Or so it seems to me.

Bingo. The age old conundrums/quandaries revolving around dualism. How are thinking and feeling connected to the material world? Through God? Through some qualitative leap in the evolution of matter that we are not yet privy to?

You can start by assuming instead that your partner is not obligated to agree with what you say in order to be deemed as making an effort to understand what you say. And then grappling with the extent to which both factors might come into play.

So, in “addressing” them, you are not suggesting that I agree with them?

If so [all the while assuming of course we do have some measure of autonomy in the exchange] note what you construe to be the most important point of yours here that I have not addressed.

Then together we can bring this point down to earth and examine it as it relates to actual human interactions. In either a wholly determined universe, or in one in which we are [up to a point[ able to freely choose what we think, feel, say and do.

How would human interaction in these two contexts be the same or different?

For all practical purposes, all I can really do here is to come back to this:

In regard to particular human behaviors unfolding in a particular existential context that most of us will be familiar with, what constitutes an “honest expression” relating to either 1] moral and political narratives or 2] human autonomy and free will.

Apparently, I’m not doing these exchanges in the way that they are supposed to be done. In the way that you and KT have been “helping” me to understand.

On the other hand, what else is there? We need a context in which the definitions and the meanings we give to words in these exchanges are fleshed out…illustrated…insofar as they have an actual impact on what we think, feel, say and do.

Also, as though there are not dozens and dozens of exhanges here at ILP in which conflicted folks don’t hurl at each other the same sort of accusation that you are hurling at me.

From my frame of mind, this is often just one more example of objectivism. I produce “confusion and frustration” in folks because I don’t come around to their way of thinking. Whereas with respect to the “the big questions” and/or the “is/ought world” I don’t expect there ever not to be confusion and frustration.

Of course you have no way of really knowing the extent to which I construe this as a hopelessly mangled and distorted assessment of my own frame of mind. But then [in my view] this sort of thing is built right into discussions like these.

And even though I have accumulated “distractions” as my own “whatever works” method of achieving some measure of “comfort and consolation”, it doesn’t make the hole go away. It doesn’t make the parts embedded in an essentially meaningless world and oblivion go away.

All I can do is to go in search of others who have an interest in exploring these questions. See what they have to say about them. Knowing all the many, many times in my own past when I once believed this but than believed that.

Maybe. Maybe not. In any event, I am running out of time to find out.

And yet I am still convinced that any number of folks like you and KT and Gib are repelled not by my “methodology”, but by the arguments that I make. In particular, the part where I reconfigures into “i”.

The fractured and fragmented “I”, unable to pin down right and wrong behavior objectively. The mere mortal “I” that tumbles over into the abyss that is nothingness. The “I” that can’t even decide with a measure of self-assurance that “I” is all his own, autonomously.

Well [here and now] you know that better than I ever could.

Okay, over the past 10 years, what positions [regarding important matters] have others managed to change your own point of view about?

And you seem to insist that the problem here is always me not them. There have been arguments that would have worked but I refused to listen. Willfully refused apparently. If I had really been willing to listen to the advice of some I would finally understand once and for all how a rational human being is obligated to think about things like, say, Communism.

Truth be told, so do I. But there are clearly some instances where winning and lossing are more easily calculated than others. Sporting events, gambling, playing the stock market, board and video games.

Instead, it’s when the discussion shifts to the morality of these interactions that “winning” and “losing” becomes more problematic.

Likewise, the extent to which we can ascribe either winning or losing to our abilities or to a wholly determined universe in which either winning or losing was never going to be anything other than what it had to be.

Did you review his comments? Can they be better described as a retort or an honest expression of feelings?

Surely you can make such an evaluation.

At this point, it seems fairly obvious that the help we thought you were asking for is not the help that you actually want. (If what you want can even be called ‘help’. )

You seem to be asking for help with a big problem but then it turns out that your problem isn’t much of a problem for you after all. That’s the source of the “confusion and frustration”. “What the fuck is going on.”

It’s not because you “don’t come around to their way of thinking”.

Nothing to do with this expectation of yours.

That’s like saying that painkillers don’t make the cause of the pain go away. No shit. They make the pain go away.

As for dealing with the cause, I haven’t seen you try anything that has been suggested to you. It’s been 8 years. One would think that at least one worthwhile idea would have popped up in all that time.

It’s always general, abstract, scholastic, in the clouds, existential contraption, etc.

Believe me, it’s the way you post. Your “arguments” about “i” or “I” are not particularly frightening/repelling.

Ooh scary. Just kidding.

But they’re not asking for help. You seem to be asking for help.

It comes down to “Do you want help? Do you want to change? Are you doing something in order to change?”

I really think that all you want is to talk.

Not to talk with any goal or intention - just talk.

That’s fine as long as you make it clear to your discussion partners. That way they won’t try to 'help" you.

Given that we do have freedom to choose, the distinction between the either/or world and the is/ought world becomes paramount to me.

In the either/or world, you can choose to believe things able to be demonstrated as not true. Just as you can choose not to believe things able to demonstrated as in fact true.

What becomes crucial here is the fact that, sans sim worlds, demonic dreams, solipsism etc., there is an objective truth to be found. Now, we may not be able to pin this down beyond all doubt but in the either/or world something either is or is not true.

On the other hand, in the is/ought world, we can all agree that certain things are in fact true, but we don’t all agree regarding our reaction to those truths. The state executes John Doe. That’s a fact. Jane supports this execution. That’s a fact. Jim does not support it. That’s a fact.

But if the discussion shifts to whether or not capital punishment is a good thing or a bad things [moral or immoral] that’s when I broach the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. Those are the “conditions” that are of most importance to me.

Now, if, instead, we presume that human interactions [and everything else] are embedded in a wholly determined universe, what does it mean to speak of one of us choosing one thing rather than another?

Yes, a choice is made. A woman chooses to have sex and becomes pregnant. This woman then chooses to have an abortion. A doctor chooses to perform it. A law official chooses to place them under arrest because abortion is illegal where they reside. A jury chooses to find them guilty. A judges chooses to sentence them to prison.

Now, in a wholly determined universe, is there anything that unfolds in this sequence of events that could ever have possibly been anything other than what it was?

That’s what I can’t wrap my head around here. And I will readily admit I might not be thinking this all through in the most reasonable manner.

But: if in fact we do choose something only because in fact we could not not have chosen it, how can we speak of a “compatibility” between a so-called “metaphysical determinism” and a so-called “psychological freedom”?

I must be missing something really important here.

If we live in a wholly determined universe then the manner in which I convey my own moral philosophy [nihilism] is just one more set of dominoes toppling over in sync with all the other ones. I choose to convey this here, but I was never able to not choose to.

Surprise, surprize…

Iambiguous trolls another thread without responding to mine.

If you simply conclude that conflicting good are inherently bad, you have a stable philosophy.

The reason I pick on iambiguous so much, is, that if you want to create a docile population that you can control with impunity, you will aregue that they don’t exist, and you will argue that consent violation is meaningless to ethics and morality.

I’ve stated before: I’m 100% certain iambiguous is a psychopath.

You respond yet again to a subtext that was never there…

You are effectively speaking to yourself…

Allow me to clarify one last time, and I do hope you make an effort to hear me this time…

I was saying that I can only aspire to make reasonable arguments, I cannot and do not dictate how persuasive that might be.
The faculty of reason is a shared one… it could be our common ground in such a conversation.
If ANYONE decides that they do not value that faculty nor find it’s conclusions persuasive, then we no longer have common ground.
And if they were honest about that, well we’d very likely agree about everything…
You could claim anything, literally anything and I’d agree that you could get there by ignoring reason…

The same holds true of people who straw-man the counter-arguments and thereby ignore them entirely… this is an act of deception
Whether it’s meant to fool me or themselves I cannot say… but regardless they are made deaf to reason all the same.

Now as you like to bring things back down to earth…
Whenever someone responds to an argument of mine by saying “I remain unconvinced”, I can only respond by saying “I don’t care”
If what I said was unreasonable or I was overlooking something important or failed to address something… THAT I would care about.
Whether or not someone was convinced is of no concern to me.

of course not… in fact I’d very much appreciate any reasonable criticism or counter arguments.
So long as our responses are reasoned into being and address the points… all they can ever do is improve our thinking

  1. Systems are not slaves to the rules that govern their fundamental building blocks… they subsume those rules and build their own rules from them.
  2. Define your terms “autonomy” and “choice” (What quality must you possess in order to qualify as being “autonomous” or what circumstance must you be in, so as to have “choice”?)
  3. Defining “self” dictates what is considered the thing that must be “isolated” so as to possess “autonomy”… Even a dualistic notion self still has input from the material world, you see, you hear, you smell, you feel etc. If the brain is considered the “self” it has the same influences. What you do in response to that input… well that’s a function of the “self” in both scenarios, except one is located in the material world, the other is not.
  4. If your character, if your will and wants are perfectly predictable, then so are your choices… that may well mean things are only as they ever could have been, but your will is part of the reason why.

But see, that there is a trap… Those of us not suffering from some insanity all agree that THIS is what is…
What is debated is which of these models best fits the reality we are experiencing… if there were big differences in outcome, the impostor would be easy to spot.

We could look at the findings of neuroscience and observe where certain notions of dualism become cumbersome… now needing to invent unobserved phenomena to explain the unobserved phenomena they invented to explain the observed ones.
Determinism otoh is a strange beast… technically it has nothing to do with materialism… you could have a deterministic reality, that had multiple dimensions at play, yet all equally determined.
The only alternative to determinism is any measure of randomness…

As I understand the words, autonomy is not contrary to determinism…
Even if something remained completely unaffected by everything else, that would not mean that this thing would not be orderly and perfectly predictable on it’s own.
And so long as it is orderly and not at all random, it seems perfectly congruous with determinism…
The most fundamental forces of reality, whatever they may be, qualify as autonomous by definition (unless you are using another definition)… determinism, as I know it, does not deny their existence, only claims them to be orderly.

You have two cases here : looking forward at an event and looking back at it.

Looking back, the event has already happened. It’s done, finished. You can’t undo the event. It can’t be anything other than what it was because of the one way direction of time. That’s true both for a deterministic world and a non-deterministic world.

Looking forward at an event in the future, you don’t know what is “determined” to happen. You don’t know how the infinite number of factors, swirling around you, affect your decisions.

Is it “determined” that you sit on your couch eating cheese doodles or that you get up and do something else? You don’t know until after you do what you decided to do. It’s when you do it that it becomes the thing that “had to happen”. Before that, you could have chosen something else, you could have done something else.

You seem to mix up past, present and future. As a result, you treat future events as if they are somehow in the past - as if the future has already happened. So you say " unfolds{present and future} in this sequence of events that could ever have possibly been{past} anything other than what it was{past}".

Which doesn’t make sense.

Well, after a series of rather substantive exchanges between us, that post had shrunk down to what I construed to be retorts. Zingers aimed at making me the point.

And that’s an honest expression of my evaluation. Or, rather, as honest as someone who thinks like “I” do can be.

The help I am asking for revolves basically around three things:

1] figuring out if, on this side of the grave, there’s a way up out of the nihilistic hole that “I” am in when confronting conflicting goods

2] figuring out if, on the other side of the grave, there’s a way up out of the abyss

And on this thread in particular

3] figuring out if my thoughts and feelings regarding the first two are in sync with at least some measure of autonomy pertaining to “I”

And here what else is there but to exachange points of view? I merely prefer them to be anchored [as much as possible] out in the world of actual human interactions.

First of all, you keep noting this as though it is something that you can in fact actually know. Again, just because I am able to distract myself from those things I am trying to figure out, doesn’t make them go away. And I recognize how ultimately futile it is likely to be for you to grasp this from my point of view. And vice versa. But I never lose sight of the possibility of bumping into someone who thinks about these things in a way that manages to reconfigure how I think about them. Dasein [for me] is everywhere here.

Then it comes down to to either grappling with or impugning each others motives. The trickiest part to say the least. Hell, I suspect I am not even close to fully grasping my own. If grasping anything at all is even within my capacity as someone in possession of a “free will”.

It’s true: I have no way of demonstrating that this is in fact applicable to you and to others here. All I can do is to extrapolate from past experiences with exchanges of this sort.

Meaning what? If expectations here are construed by me to be profoundly problematic, it then comes down to finding someone able to convince me that they don’t have to be. But here I always come back to the gap between what any of us think we know about these things and all that there actually is to know.

You tell me: How can the expectations that any of us have be fitted snugly into that?

Huh? You’re comparing taking aspirin for a headache to embodying distractions able to numb the brute facticity of an essentially meaningless world that tumbles over into oblivion?

What can I say. All those ideas later and it still seems more reasonable to me to distract myself from the hole that I am in on this side of the grave and the nothingness that awaits me on the other side.

I’ll leave it to you to explain to others why that is all my fault.

Okay, fine. Let’s leave it at that. Again, all I have to fall back on here are my own personal experiences with objectivists over the years. The part about “I” always seemed to be particularly aggravating to them.

This part:

If you say so.

What’s that really got to do with answering my qestion? What positions [of late] regarding important issues have the arguments of others managed to precipitate change [helped you] in your own life?

What can I say? Yes, I really would like to come upon arguments that might “for all practical purposes” help me to “figure out” the three things I noted above. And I am more than willing to at least make the attempt to understand the experiences of others that helped them.

But: there are only so many [realistic] options open to me “here and now”.