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☮ Social ☮ PD Social Distancing Tripping Thread: Viruses Can't Penetrate Hyperspace

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perpetualdawn

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sorry for derailing the tripping thread.. fwiw i am having a few scotches.

I think this is the trippiest stuff of all :) it's the kind of thing I bet many of us contemplate whilst tripping (and not tripping).

I'd like to add more to this topic later on when I gots a second... it's one of the big big questions, maybe (probably?) unanswerable, but worthy of investigation.
 
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I don't consider it "derailing" the tripping thread to engage in philosophical discussion; psychedelics and philosophy are like muffins and tea. EDIT perpetualdawn beat me to it. :)

In science you use outer instruments to create and formulate an inner experience. In psychological and spiritual work you use inner perceptions to formulate an inner experience. That's what I mean by science, i don't feel there should be a distiction.

If I were to ask you for an example of such an "inner perception" in psychological or spiritual work, what would be the first to come to mind?

It's hard for me to imagine why we would have a sense of some of our functions being automatic and others free-will-able (like heart beating vs. moving my arm to pat my head), if it were actually all just automatic.

The difference between patting your head and beating your heart is that one happens as a purposeful decision, and the other does not. A purposeful decision is what happens when you put a plan into action. There's no reason why you can't create and execute a plan in an entirely deterministic universe. It's a logical process much the same as a computer program turning an input to an output.

Furthermore I think the way it feels like we have free will counts for a lot and that if there is ultimately predictability to it that it doesn't change as much as you'd think. It sounds shocking, but it only really becomes that way when you overthink it to the point of driving yourself crazy.

I pretty much agree. However I wouldn't say that it doesn't matter; I would argue that (a large degree of) determinism is in fact essential for the operation of your free will, because logic is impossible without predictable outcomes.

I will never understand why anybody ever decided that there was a conflict between free will and determinism.
 
I'd ask you to clarify what type of inner perception you'd like an example of. there are four flavors of inner perception I know of: physical, mental, emotional and vibrational. The outer reality of the physical world is still ultimately an inner perception as far as my senses tell me.
 
damn... I'm very much into scotch and The Night Manager but I fear they will fuck up my ability to work a normal job (I carpool early in the morning). I could be wrong... have been taking my dexamph script again since the last 2 days and it's been quiiite invigorating in the morning.
Anyway, it's not a paid job yet, but I've been fucking up a bit since last week (I tried going almost a week off the dex).... so wish me luck cause I'm really not making it easy on myself. That scotch is just dwindling like snow in the sun, hard to say what I will be like in the morning...
The liquor is much lighter somehow than wine or beer, but not in every sense. And my self control isn't doing too well.
 
I will never understand why anybody ever decided that there was a conflict between free will and determinism.

The conflict between them is responsibility. In a world where everything is ultimately the unescapable effect of a previous cause, then we have no responsibility over our actions, we are just victims of our circunstances and have no power over them. Everything is just written since the beginning of time, we are just the aftermath of the big bang, a product of inertia.


I think scientfic knowledge will never be as perfect and complete as it would need to be to be able to predict everything that will happen in the future by understanding it as the default effect of the state of being in a given time.

And until that happens, I think the arguments in favor of absolute determinism are as speculative and close to an act of faith as the arguments against it are. We know some things in the universe obey some certain regular laws we have observed to be logical. But how do we know EVERYTHING is logical in the universe?? I agree that a rather wide amount of determinism is necessary for the universe to be logical, but I dont really think everything is rational. Love, will, life, the will to live and the love of fate, they all seem pretty irrational and capricious to me, I dont think all of the consciouss experience is reducible to an effect immanent to material cause.


But yeah, that sort speculation, in both ways, is an act of faith, but that's exaclty the point Im trying to make. Our understanding of reality will always be incomplete, and our onthological assumptions are therefore choices, interpretations, ultimately always just fictions.


So I choose to believe in the fiction of free will. Because I see more moral value in accepting that we are responsible for who we are and where we are in this world. I see the acceptance of hard determinism as a decadent excercise in futility.
 
I don't consider it "derailing" the tripping thread to engage in philosophical discussion; psychedelics and philosophy are like muffins and tea. EDIT perpetualdawn beat me to it. :)



If I were to ask you for an example of such an "inner perception" in psychological or spiritual work, what would be the first to come to mind?



The difference between patting your head and beating your heart is that one happens as a purposeful decision, and the other does not. A purposeful decision is what happens when you put a plan into action. There's no reason why you can't create and execute a plan in an entirely deterministic universe.

The 'plan' would be immaterial, the results are predetermined by every prior cause. Free will would be an illusion.

Time would be an illusion too, any subsequent effect being simply part of the first cause. Only conscious entities would see it differently.

Relativity of simultaneity suggests cause and effect is a matter of perspective.
 
The conflict between them is responsibility. In a world where everything is ultimately the unescapable effect of a previous cause, then we have no responsibility over our actions, we are just victims of our circunstances and have no power over them. Everything is just written since the beginning of time, we are just the aftermath of the big bang, a product of inertia.

O.K., I concede, I can see the temptation to think this way, because it intuitively feels like determinism strips you of your power and responsibility. But it is simply not the case.

Let's explore the concept of control for a moment. What does it mean to have control over something? In other words, what does it mean to have the capacity to do something? It means that, hypothetically IF you were to desire it, you would produce it, because you have the prerequisite faculties and tools. This is 100% compatible with the notion that, in reality, whether or not you actually DO choose to exercise your power is predetermined from the very first moment of time.

In other words, even though our deterministic universe means that there is only one *real* timeline, in which the future is a predictable outcome of the past, this doesn't change the fact that there are innumerable *hypothetical* alternate timelines, representing all the scenarios you have the power to create.

I wish Roger&Me were still hanging around. He would back me up on this all day. I'm somewhat passionate about the idea too, because I might be wrong, but it seems important to recognize that your own actions are an inevitable result from your past. It allows you to have compassion for yourself when you make mistakes.

I think scientfic knowledge will never be as perfect and complete as it would need to be to be able to predict everything that will happen in the future by understanding it as the default effect of the state of being in a given time.

I agree. I think the best we could do would be to create an extremely sophisticated computer simulation of reality, and fast-forward the playback. But I doubt technology will ever be able to predict the behavior of a human.

I'd ask you to clarify what type of inner perception you'd like an example of. there are four flavors of inner perception I know of: physical, mental, emotional and vibrational. The outer reality of the physical world is still ultimately an inner perception as far as my senses tell me.

Describe to me an example of how one might use a physical, mental, emotional, or vibrational perception for spiritual purposes. I'm not trying to corner you in any way, I'm just genuinely curious as to what you mean by "spiritual work" as opposed to scientific investigation.
 
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There's a lot of great people that have addressed the idea of "spiritual work" far more eloquently than I ever could like A.H Almaas or Stanislav Grof, but I can summarize a bit. I'd start by using a term like psycho-spiritual work since spiritual work is a bit of a misnomer. the psychological investigation is the aspect that inquires into self according to perceptions, circumstances and established lines of inquiry. Things like marriage difficulties or difficulty controlling anger might necessitate the need for this. The spiritual aspect is a kind of a surrender in that there isn't anything to do really. It is the part that enables change and transformation as directed by an intelligent, transpersonal field of awareness beyond that which one is capable of perceiving. Without the higher-self (you can omit words like spiritual since they cause a whole host of conflicts with people's world view) one could never transform oneself. We'd be like dogs chasing our own tails. The dog needs a guide to stop it for a second, hold the tail and wave it in front of its face a bit so that a new perception can arise than includes a comprehension of the futility of that chase. That's the idea at least as I've internalized it. The extent to which one surrenders can speed things along, though people will debate the nature and extent of the reality to which one surrenders oneself.
 
^ Thanks levels, I like that description a lot. I will be chewing on that one for awhile. It resonates with me though. And in fact it seems tied into the whole free will discussion we've been having.
 
I think the universe is both deterministic and operated through free will. It's again another paradox of one or the other, yin and yang, that in the light of true understanding melts away into rationality and truth. The simple truth is that anything that is possible is. Thus, everything is.


____________________________________________

Someone tell me if this statement sounds like gibberish and I will try to elaborate. However, I feel it speaks the truth aptly if pondered and fully understood.
 
The simple truth is that anything that is possible is. Thus, everything is.

This is the only bit that I didn't understand. But, as you can see from my previous post, I have emphatically argued that the universe is indeed both deterministic and operated through free will, so I believe we're in agreement there.
 
I meant that every single possibility - what you've referred to as timelines - exist in spite of each other. Although now I lament the fact that I spoke with such authority, as who am I to say "the simple truth..." when I have not personally experienced it?
 
That is not right... even if anything is possible from every plausible or possible fork in the road, that definitely does not mean everything. Some possibilities you might imagine are NOT a possibility lying at any fork of any road, because it just was not self-consistent at one point or another in that path.
The mistake would be thinking that lawfulness itself can be abandoned to make anything possible, but instead this theory supposes that any law is possible. Some universal constants may yield a world that will crumble after no more than a few moments because its physical laws can not sustain it. And so there are milder versions of that effect that don't simply preclude a world from existing past a few moments but that do pose limits on it when all the prerequisite determinants are not congruent. Not all things will be congruent because they all presuppose quite a number of things that are necessary to make them possible. All of those presuppositions have to align with all other presuppositions to be possible.
 
Ah yes, the limitations of possibility. How many different ways might a certain result be obtained? Or the inverse, how many ways might something happen so as to not result in a certain way?

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -The Mad Hatter
 
I am being bothered a lot by flashes of Madonna's material girl - material world

aarrrghh!
 
^Pretty hilarious xD so what then

immaterial girls dying in a material fantasy?
Immaternal people living in a matriarchal world?
I'ma t'eerie ol' P pollinating a mabeerial We-hive?
Three little tripping piggies living in a deterministic world?
Stabat mater The Real World arterial aids?
 
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