[Mr. Blonde]

I don't like to argue these days, as it only causes suffering usually, which is my prime concern, but I do have a deep desire to help you understand my mindset, that it may bring you at least some peace in what I see as a very turbulent mind. I truly hope you read this entire post.

In 100 years, we all be dead, and in 500, most of us may as well have never existed, completely forgotten in history.

Ponder this often. I also recommend the thought exercise of vividly imagining yourself on your death bed, about to make your own, inevitable, final exit.

If true human organic immortality is out of the question, isn't leaving a legacy the next best thing? Go out into the world and make that legacy. You are free to do whatever you want. I truly believe with a mind like yours, you should be writing, out in the public sphere, going to Consciousness Conventions, "getting in the shit", as it were. That's how you will make the biggest impact on the world. Not on some backwater internet forum that started as a porn site, desperately trying to convince borderline strangers that your particular views of consciousness are correct.

Originally Posted by Dent

"I don't think that means what you think it means"

. As long as we are repeating catchphrases --- everyone is the hero in their own story. I cannot emphasize the importance of this seemingly simple-minded quote enough. Your dislike of Yudkowski's self-described "Savior mentality" ironically sprouts from the same tendency. Simply getting on a soapbox and saying "Ha, I'm pretty sure you are just misunderstanding that, bud", ultimately just causes the discussion to go in circles.

Are you speciesist? what are you classing as a person here? do we classify personhood?

I don't know how how you and others do, I have chosen to independently define my own morality in dealing with other beings.

I try to view all conscious beings, no mater their degree of sentience, as "persons". I'm trying very hard to become a vegetarian, although it is difficult with my preexisting dietary conditions. I have been killing insects my entire life --- now I simply capture them and let them free elsewhere. I am currently fundamentally unable to even kill gnats and flies . On this small level, I only kill beings on accident --- driving, running, walking, instinctively scratching an itch etc.

In terms of humans/persons and animals, I try to treat them with the same level of respect and decency as if they were an absolute equal. I look past all the other layers and see a conscious being, and try my best to treat them with the respect and niceties I would want to be extended to myself. That is all.


"Our scientists and philosophers may find more and more about it as time goes on, but do you ever think we will reach a point where we'll just understand everything about it?"
----

I haven't ruled this out.

Always a wise choice to never rule anything out. But I refer to the Seneca quote from the other day, about there always being more mystery to unfold.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

You can search an entire lifetime and still only uncover a small bit more than what we knew before. Any PHD student knows this. What i'm curious about is --- what part of you is it that seems to absolutely refuse to accept that you may possibly not understand the entire Universe before you die? If that is not your goal behind your obsessive search for knowledge, then what is?

I am asking this as a serious question, friend to friend.

"Language (guttural flapping of flesh in complex patterns) created by sentient apes simply cannot encapsulate the sheer magnitude, inexplicability, and ineffability of existence itself."

how do you know?

I don't "know" anything really, other than how absurd existence itself is. I do know that other hypothetical forms of communication, which may already exist in other beings that were born in the Cosmos billions of years before Earth coalesced, or perhaps on a future timeline of Earth, are possible. I would certainly suspect that telepathy, or telepathic mathematical language would be much more likely a culprit to explain the universe rather than our shoddy guttural transcriptions of the energy pulses in our brains (thoughts). Don't you ever speculate about intelligences greater than Man? Forgive the accusation, but you seem like a very stringent Universal anthropocentrist.

No the real question is "why is there something instead of nothing"

Here you and I agree 100%. It's rather amazing that something exists rather than nothing, and, not only that --- that "something" has produced conscious, rational beings that are capable of exploring and questioning (and for some, driving themselves mad obsessing over such "why's"). Existence is spectacular.

That book I mentioned the other day, where Dan Harris interviews the likes of Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra skeptically (and very critically), has a quote in it from Deepak Chopra that I surprisingly found myself agreeing with, given my background with Chopra's standard unintelligibility:

Originally Posted by Deepak Chopra

The fact that you exist is a highly statistically improbable event, and if you are not perpetually surprised by the fact that you exist, you do not deserve to be here.

I actually have to take anxiety medication at this point in my life simply because of how truly amazed it is that not only I, but we, the Earth, and everything else DOES EXIST versus not. But I have no self-delusions that make me think that I'm going to be the one to "figure it all out" or that I even have to. Based on the sheer number of variables involved alone, I have since given up thinking I can take the universe head-on. Perhaps our supercomputers will have a much better chance, but what then? I am reminded of one of my favorite short stories.... The Nine Billion Names of God - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

or maybe
What is ultimately there?
What is it like?

I had not realize you had become so interested in Metaphysics, as I'm sure you know those are the two questions central to the branch of knowledge's existence. They are, indeed, interesting questions, and VERY fun to speculate about, but I try not to take them too seriously. People much smarter than you and I have been tackling these questions with relatively little progress for centuries. I picked this book up a bit ago, although I haven't started yet --- you may be interested in it. IMMANUAL KANT - Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

trapped in the cage of the human construct of language and the compulsion to "define" everything in some sort of logical framework, the further lost you will become."

Originally Posted by Dent

*sigh*

I'm going to ignore that sigh, having been guilty of issuing it myself many, many times in the past, but I wish you didn't think so intellectually poorly of me to send one my direction. Linguistics is astounding, miraculous -- we have come from egg-stealing rodents to be able to create complex verbal and material symbols to explain so much --- yet fundamentally, limited. HUGELY limited, as we can only talk about what we know and experience, and one look into the night sky or a book on quantum physics tells us that it isn't very much.

Originally Posted by Ludwig Wittgenstein

The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.