New Discovery

i once told the doc over in the ethics thread that i had lost faith in this, but you’ve given me new courage, peacegirl, and i look toward a future brought to light by the beacon of hope that you shine so brightly.

can i buy you a coke?

Yes it’s exciting to be at an age where old world hostilities may be a thing of a past long forgotten, and participate in the new world, where liberty has sprung from the dark ages of oppression.

Can’t wait to get the book. I can really relate to the possibilities of the coming transition, which if the author is right , is happening as we are talking.

Yes, we are evolving as a human race every minute of every day. Look how far we’ve come, but this formal transition will catapult us into the Golden Age of man — an age where there is no war, crime, or poverty — more quickly than anything heretofore. I’m glad you’re interested in the book. If you find it compelling, I hope you will join me in the mission to get this knowledge thoroughly investigated and brought to light. I want to warn you that his chapter on Words, Not Reality (Chapter Four) has caused some people to react harshly since he claims that the eyes are not a sense organ and why this knowledge matters. Anything that challenges established science is going to be ridiculed at first. There’s no getting around it. I just hope you keep an open mind.

That does sound challenging , but am used to such , and because of the aforementioned , am willing to make allowances to benefit hope through faith.

excellent. now that the human species has finally stopped bullshitting around, we can focus our collective efforts on space colonization, exploration and expansion.

the headlines will read: the year two-thousand-something… when humans got their shit together and finally stopped behaving like monkeys.

I believe you’ll see the value of this knowledge once you grasp the fundamentals. It’s okay to have some doubt until all questions are answered to your satisfaction. What’s not okay is when people disregard someone’s work because he didn’t have the “right” credentials. The author urges people to read the book more than once because there’s a lot to digest. I also want to remind you that this is not a religious work. I hope that doesn’t discourage you.

Just remember we couldn’t help but go through the necessary stages of evil to reach this turning point in history!

yeah but 80,000 years? i’da done it in 40,000 if they put me in charge.

=D> :slight_smile:

Not at all, I consider organized religion somewhere between opium and ecstasy but not for the lucid mind but for the people.

However , fluctuations and overlaps can make that pronouncement probably self effacing.

But: You still got to “choose” to type those words, right? So, even though your own particular “I” is but one more thing that nature is wholly responsible for, it’s not completely intertwined in…what?

Somehow “in your head” the relationship that nature compels you to believe in regard to this relationship with nature is different from that which nature compels me to believe about it “in my head”.

In other words, me “choosing” [anything] is no less a necessary component of nature. There is no being external to it because nature is, well, “all there is”.

So, when you say “we have no control over what we think up and what we choose” you are still able to “choose” to say that in a way that…

Well, damned if I know what you mean by it.

And every attempt on my part to yank that out of you…

…results in just more obfuscation.

Okay, but you can’t tell me that I’m not making only the “choice” that the laws of matter [embodied in my brain] compel me to make. Your clarification then being no less compelled by nature itself.

John rapes Jane. Jane becomes pregnant. Jane aborts the unborn baby. What part of this existential sequence is not essentially compelled by nature? Hurt abounds here. Make it all go away in the author’s “progressive future”. Only this time actually demonstrate how it can be made to go away [in a world of conflicting goods and conflicting hurts] without all of the theoretical assumptions about how the “discovery” itself makes it all go away in the author’s head.

In other words, you can’t. Instead just another “general description” “assessment” in which words define and defend the meaning of other words that go around and around and around in circles. If only as nature complels it to.

The only idea that I can have [in a determined universe] would seem to be the idea that nature compels me to have. Thus my “agency” is but another component of nature. And that is no less applicable to you. In other words, our choices change only because our brain matter is compelled to change in order to remain in sync with all of the other mindless/mindful matter it comes into contact with. The mystery is still mind. Matter like no other matter before it.

That’s what the hard guys and gals in the scientific community are still struggling to come to grips with. But, unlike with you and I and the author, it’s not all just a “world of words” for them.

Yes, some believe the choice that they make is a manifestation of their free will. Others believe there is no free will and they “choose” only what they could never have not chosen. But either way once the choice itself is made, it can’t be unmade.

I can only presume that I must be compelled by nature to misunderstand what nature compels you to believe here.

Luck? How, in a wholly determined universe that is unfolding only as it ever can unfold – re the laws of matter – does “luck” ever come into play? Something might seem to be luck to you and I but there was never any possibility that it would not seem that way.

All I can note once again is how fortunate you are that nature has compelled you to think this way. Thus providing you with a comforting peek into a future that only has to exist inside the head of you and the author to be true. In the interim however nature seems more content to let things unfold in an entirely more problematic manner.

Or: Nature compels you to believe that you are at a disadvantage because it compels me not to meet you halfway. It compels you to be stuck trying to explain to me something that it compels me not to do in regard to those chapters. In other words, it has yet to compel me to read them.

You will no doubt concur with this. And yet somehow I am still the one who is responsible for the impasse between us.

In other words [somehow]:

I am being compelled by nature to make the “choice” not to read the chapters by, in turn, being compelled by nature to shift the blame to nature.

Not to get too technical here, but…huh?!

Which I am now compelled by nature to bring back around to this:

Or it is probably eaisier for you because nature has necessarily paved the way for it to be only as it ever could have been for you. And only as it ever could have been for me.

Then what?

On the other hand:

Words are only another manifestation of nature embodied in the brains of matter able to become conscious of itself as matter able to define things. But: This doesn’t change the fact that the definitions [like our perceptions of reality itself] are only as they every could have been.

No less so than the manner in which you attempt to make “choice” here both of nature and not of nature. Whereas I don’t pretend that my own frame of mind is grasped as either wholly determined or autonomous.

I make certain assumptions [always subject to change] and…leap.

And, [b]again[/b]…

You simply duck the question. Another “general description” assessment that in no way brings us any closer to closing the gap between the author’s “world of words” future and the world we actually live in here and now. A world in which we are making choices over and over an over again.

Instead…

Ever and always you are stuck here. The only possible escape being that nature compels you to be stuck here.

You provide me with very, very little in the way of encouraging me to read the book from cover to cover.

What truly substantive points has he raised that might allow me or others to at least imagine a way in which evidence might be accumulated, experiements conducted, predictions made and results replicated.

Just one then. That which you deem to be the best example from the book.

There’s really nothing I can add that hasn’t already been stated ad nauseum other than to say that I’m sorry you didn’t take the time to read anything I offered. You’re obviously not to blame because I know you can’t help yourself, but it’s futile for this conversation to continue as a result. If no one else participates, this thread will die a natural death and that’s okay too. I’m sorry iambiguous that we were not able to progress further. All I can say is that the laws of our nature that make us who we are do not always cooperate. :confused:

listen to your heart, peacegirl, before… you tell him… goodbye…

Yet again nature has compelled you to end an exchange with me. So, sure, yet again, nature might compel you to start it back up.

Here I can only assume that nature is compelling me to point out that bit by bit my arguments are chipping away at your arguments. And that can’t be good, right? You simply have too much invested psychologically in the comfort and consolation the author’s discovery has provided you. So, above all else, your defense mechanisms will kick in to sustain that.

Just as it has with all of the other objectivists I have encountered over the years – fierce folks adamantly convinced that in either the either/or world or the is/ought world, they and they alone have pinned human reality to the mat.

The irony here being that I can only assume the possibility that I am wrong regarding my own understanding of determinism…or in failing to understand the relationship you have between “no free will” and “choice”.

And that’s before acknowledging that in fact “I” may well embody some measure of autonomy here that is simply not understood by those who, unlike the author, actually do approach these relationships phenomenologically through actual experimentation with actual human brains in the act of actually choosing.

True.

But what peacegirl fails to provide [me] is the sort of empirical evidence that might encourage me to explore further the author’s discovery as it relates to this so-called “progressive” future. Is there anything at all that I can do [or an experiment that I can perform] in order fathom how the near future is both the embodiment of “no free will” and of “choice”?

What on earth – in terms of the behaviors we choose – does she mean by that? In other words, “for all practical purposes.”

After all, what are neuroscientists who explore this experientially doing but probing actual brains in the process of choosing. Are there chemical and neurological processes going on biologically in the brain such that it can finally be determined once and for all if any particular choice is only that which it ever could have been?

That’s why I always come back to dreams. In my own dream states, “I” am utterly convinced the interactions are “in reality”. My own dreams in particular because they almost always revolve not around the fantastic but around contexts that I am completely familiar with – childhood dreams, army dreams, war dreams, college dreams, political activist dreams, job dreams, family and friends dreams. They often involve people I once knew intimately. And “in the dreams” the events are unfolding not at all unlike they once did “in reality”. And they are astoundingly elaborate. I find myself reading things, hearing things, experiencing things in great detail.

How to explain that?

From my frame of mind however this discussion is for another thread. When morality is discussed in terms of particular political prejudices, I can only assume that value judgments are embodied in autonomy. Otherwise “right” and “wrong”, “progressive” and “regressive” behaviors are all embedded only in the psychological illusion of good and bad behavior.

If the brain is necessarily in sync with the laws of matter then anything it concludes about the is/ought world is merely another manifestation of the either/or world. The future will be only what in can be – only what it must be. You and I are just along for the inevitable ride. We are basically nature’s dominoes that “choose”.

But never choose in the sense that free will advocates are compelled to believe.

Or so it seems to me.

And she simply refuses to explore the points I raise about dasein and conflicting goods and political economy. In part because, once again, these things would pertain only to a world in which at least some measure of human autonomy exists.

Completely false. Like I said, if the premises are sound, the conclusion will be sound. The principle that we always move in the direction of greater satisfaction IS SOUND, and the principle that nothing in this world has the power to make us do what we make up our mind not to do, IS SOUND. He also showed how conscience works given a different environment based on the two sided equation which you have no understanding of.

You are using the word “choice” as if “free” is automatically assumed. We can have options iambiguous, and still not have free will. That’s why he said the word choice is misleading because that would indicate we are free to choose this option or that option equally, or without compulsion, which is false.

For all practical purposes, the fact that we are compelled to choose what gives us greater preference is the underpinning of his entire discovery, since under new conditions we can’t prefer (in the direction of greater satisfaction) to hurt others without justification. It’s the most practical knowledge of all!

Exploring actual brains can do nothing to understand the behavioral aspect of what these brains do under environmental conditions. You believe that neuroscientists will have the answer when it’s right in front of you. You’re disrespecting him by saying it’s in his head, without understanding anything he wrote. How ironic!

We know our dreams are not real but they serve a purpose. We also know we have no control over our dreams, just like we don’t have control over other autonomic systems. What does this have to do the discussion? :-k

No they aren’t autonomous. Of course there are prejudices. These prejudices are based on the culture, the political climate, and the history of that culture which is all in sync with the laws of matter (as you put it).

There is no good and bad objectively. We’re not talking about good and bad. We’re talking about hurt, which is a real thing. If someone shoots you, I would say this person hurt you. I don’t think you would want to get shot which you would call a hurt to you. That’s what will be prevented unless you want to get shot. Then you don’t have to become part of the new world. :smiley:

We are just along for the ride. We have no control over what gives us greater satisfaction, and in that sense the future will be only what it can be – only what it must be. That’s true, but our choices are part of the necessary unfolding which will lead us in a direction that will bring sustenance and peace to the entire world.

Iambiguous, you refuse to read the book. The economic chapter is filled with how conflicting goods and political conflict will be eliminated only because everyone will never be poverty stricken where they need to hurt others (whether it’s hurting individuals or countries) for self-preservation. I’m not going to spoon feed this knowledge to you. You’re the one that’s losing out because of your stubborn resistance to reading what you don’t believe is possible. That’s your problem, not mine. And, btw, I will answer posts that are between you and others. I don’t want to answer posts from you directly because you make false accusations about the author and you tell me these premises are assumptions, which they are anything but.

I am going to read the original New Discovery thread you began back in 2007 to see what I can learn
I still do not know what it is that will eliminate all suffering but I shall hopefully discover it in there

Surruptitious75, why not read the actual text? I know you tried to buy the print book. I’m so sorry there was a problem. I’ll let you know when it’s been published. I suggest you read the first three chapters again. That’s not enough to understand how this knowledge plays out in the real world but it gives you a foundation. Reading posts from 2007 will be extremely frustrating.

I will be reading the actual text because you posted extracts from the first eight chapters
Anyone else who wants to truly understand the premise of the book can simply read them


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