>It is a flawed and imperfect guess at reality based on the best available data. That is why illusions exist.

And persistent objective reality is why you can test and find illusions even though they deceive your senses.

> is unambiguously made up by your brain.

Unless you wanna fit the universe inside your brain you're limited to your model but that's very different from external world skepticism.

Right?

Bet all these big brains brush and floss to prevent cavities.

Is that faith, or is it just an estimate using probability? Do I have faith that I can steal candy from a baby, or do I just suspect the chances are good?

To me, I don't have faith that my sensory experiences are reporting what is "real", I have just noticed if I try to impact the environment around me, it usually has a noticable effect.

To support this, think of a worm. They likely do not have a concept of faith, or the mental faculties to have faith. But they get sensory information that they use. Not because they have faith that their senses are reporting the truth, but because it their senses are the only source of ostensibly outside information that they have available, and they seem to be working correctly.

From a personal side, I had a giant retinal tear in each eye that made it look like tiny dot-like gnats were flying everywhere at all times (it was actually lots of floaters). While it was obnoxious, it did not shake my faith, I just learned to ignore the inputs that didn't seem to be correct. Then, when I actually came across a cloud of gnats, I relied on my other senses to confirm that they were, in fact, real. I didn't have to change my faith at any point, I just reacted to the inputs.

There is no such thing as a 'true nature' and one's role in the larger world is rarely ever is of consequence to you or the world.

>cancer cells, invasive plants, and deadly plagues are exactly about a unitary "self" expanding and is behaving as if it is the most important thing

I'm not sure how you classify those as "unitary selves".

They each strike me as a collectives of units each behaving selflessly entirely according to their nature. A cancer cell does not decide to divide. It's just random damage. A seed does not decide to land in virgin soil or in it's home environment. A plague might not even be alive—viruses aren't even living things, let alone self indulgent. That's why they're so effective.

It makes sense to me we'd each see the metaphor completely differently, coming from two fundamentally different worldviews.

You may see their collective behaviour as analogous to the actions of an individual—but I say they are better representations of a culture that does not value individuality or allow freedom of choice. Each example mindlessly consumes without conscious self interest. That's not a model of individuality, it's a model of conformity.

An individual has the capacity for destruction through self glorification, but a culture that does not value individuality cannot change. The world is change, and a unchanging culture inevitably glorifies itself in the same irrational destructive way.

In between we find a better balance. Stability and change—liberal and conservative—push and pull. The individual has a self—recognized or not. The individual is part of the collective—recognized or not.

A sense of self need not be fixed to be strong—a healthy sense of self includes the ability to recognize and guide change. It sure helps to know where you are if you want to get somewhere else.

Balance comes when we recognize and glorify both—the individual as a vital part of the collective and the collective as a group of diverse individuals with a shared purpose. The individualist and collectivist views aren't just compatible, they need to be integrated or each only half works.

Yes, "I think therefore I am" is the famous quote by Descartes which illustrates his ideas about reality. Even if everything is a dream, there remains the fact that he is dreaming, and so there must be something to contain that dream.

There's a difference here. If you want to make sure that a fruit you are holding is what was described to you as the guava fruit, then yes, you do make a certain leap of faith. But you do not need faith to actually experience a guava if that makes any sense. The sensory experience is the most certain and vivid experience that we all have.

What metric are you using to determine how close our experience is to objective reality?

Edit: I'm asking in good faith.

I've never heard that we can find the difference between our experience and objective reality beyond comparing our personal perspectives with each other.

Yep. “Know thyself” is pretty much the oldest piece of advice we have in our civilisation

Then we are acting in order to impact that simulation, and we often think we see the results and consequences of our actions. Still no leap of faith, we are just not looking at what we thought we were.

You say "No argument was made that the self isn't important." That's funny. Examples of arguing "the self" isn't important:

1. "All in all, this article argues (against) giving it (the self) too much importance"
2. You say "the argument being made is that too much importance placed on such an insignificant part (the self)"
3. "Feeding this ego of “what is me(the self)” limits your consciousness and freedom"

I agree that there's nothing wrong with being personally successful and happy. But you are missing the principle that success and happiness are relative, ie. they are different for different people. It sounds like you are saying that you shouldn't base your happiness on other people, and doing this requires a strong self confidence and knowing yourself. SO I guess you agree with me that the self is important.

One point that may help clarify some of the general thoughts on ‘self’ in terms of Buddhism - there is a concept of who is watching the watcher. Meaning, if you stop to pay attention to the various thoughts/biases/whatever that pop into your head and watch them flow in, who then is the true self? Are you those thoughts? Are you the watcher and not the thoughts? Are you both.

This is where the concept of self gets very sticky, and is why articles about self and Buddhism speak about the fleeting transitory nature of self and how we all evolve over time.

Cogito, ergo sum.

Without a 'self' the first principle of philosophy becomes meaningless. You can have my self when you pry it from my cold dead hands - only you can't, because at that point my self wouldn't exist anymore.

The self is all we ever have. It is the only thing that can be depended upon to be real. The self is all we can ever truly know. The self is how we relate to the larger world, for we stand always in relation to that world by virtue of that self. No self, no relating to anything, because nobody is home even if the lights appear on.

We don’t find ourselves, we invent identities, whether intentional or not.

I've been going round and round with these topics for months.

Short version: Embracing my culture (Irish Catholic) was the right choice for my family.That is irrespective of the truth the Holy Ghost showed me once i was willing.

I'm more at peace now then anytime in my 40 odd years.

Oh no need to apologize for sounding condescending, I do that all the time lol

>But I would argue that if the nature of self is always changing quickly no matter what, then why would we need to emphasize on it, develop it in a particular way, or stroke it.

Well, I'd ask in return, if a river is always rushing why attempt to control its flow with dams and stabilize its banks to prevent erosion? Often letting the river just do whatever it does is the best thing to do, but sometimes it's also best to rein it in.

I'm going to continue with this terrible analogy because I like it. The "Easterners" might say, "why the hell did you build your house in a flood plain?" And the "Westerners" might say, "why the hell would I want to walk two miles to get water?" They're both perfectly valid questions and the answer depends on an individual's needs and, as you said, cultural factors. If Easterners can be satisfied without worrying about a Western conception of self, great. If a Westerner can be satisfied with their own concept of self, also great. I personally find a holistic concept of self to be useful for clarifying my path in life, speaking as someone who used to struggle with depression and derealization - I'm not even sure how I would function without such a concept.

>"The main obstacle to finding your true nature, true "self" if you'd like to call it, is obsessing over it."

This I would absolutely agree with. But I do think finding the self takes contemplation - I'm not sure if one can find it without thinking about it at all.

True. The last decade or so I've seen an argument emerge around the value and role of emotions as a source of truth with most proponents seemingly more interested in validating emotions as equally valuable, equally capable, as reason. I've always been wary of these argument as they seem like an attempt by emotionally indulgent people to justify being indulgent, especially if they aren't considered particularly intelligent in the normal sense.

'Emotional Intelligence' is a phrase that makes me cringe for similar reason. I'm still not even sure what that's supposed to be as every definition sounds more like a skillset for, or knowledge base of, emotion, not intelligence. We wouldn't say a physicist is Physics Intelligent or a doctor Medical Intelligent or an athlete is athletics intelligent. The choice of calling it intelligence seems a disingenuous attempt to equate emotions with intellect, as emotion is much maligned as a trustworthy system of assessing truth. One could make a similar case for being culturally aware and call it Cultural Intelligence, and it would seem equally inaccurate. It's a bit confusing tbh.

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….that’s not how being rich works.

I imagine this article would've landed far better a decade or two ago, when being true to yourself seemed to be an obsession of many.

I obviously don't have any statistics, but at least in the circles I move in, the general sentiment seems to be that you should work on bettering yourself, as opposed to 'finding' yourself. Figure out what you want yourself to be, and then work on making that a reality, so to speak.

So it feels strange to me that the article addresses attachment, and emphasizes a need for change in life. I think society has moved past attempting to be true to itself, and we are beating a dead horse here.

I also want to point out something the article says, which is:

>I bet many of you have a similar experience, feeling that the 5-years-ago “younger you” is hardly the same person, at all

I feel this in its entirety, but I also want to point out that by this logic, lifelong prison sentences shouldn't be a possibility, because the person that committed those crimes doesn't exist 5 years on. Person, here, including their personality, and obviously not just their physical existence.

> It's entirely possible that this train currently running over me is an illusion. There is no objective proof it's really happening

It's basically just a stupid thing for people like lex Fridman to wax eloquent about in podcasts. No one actually can or does live their life as if it might be true

Swinging any which way to an extreme is bad. Why is this news?

The self worshiping manifestors are writhing.

You made some good points and you have understood my article very well. Sorry for sounding a bit condescending in the article (I understand this tone alone would inevitably generate some controversies).

But I would argue that if the nature of self is always changing quickly no matter what, then why would we need to emphasize on it, develop it in a particular way, or stroke it. Ultimately, it is a highly cultural thing, from my experience, even contemporary "Easterners" (since you use Westerners) don't care about the concept of "self" that much, it doesn't mean they starve themselves or they don't make themselves happy, it is just that the idea of caring about that mental construct of self never cross their minds i.e., we rarely talk about it.

I also respond to another commenter below embodying similar logic: "The main obstacle to finding your true nature, true "self" if you'd like to call it, is obsessing over it." I think nouns that deserve a "shoutout" or "emphasis" are things that are quite stable in the human sense of lifetime.

This legitimately blew my mind