Peterson is basically suggesting self-reflection as a way to know oneself, which is a fair enough point. Humans have sophisticated capacities to self-reflect and be self-aware, which is a first step towards knowing ourselves. We can also enter in dialogue with others and integrate their perspectives on ourselves into the image we cultivated of ourselves. That way, we can try to counteract our perhaps natural and maybe even strong tendency towards having skewed perceptions of ourselves (on the other hand, we're ultimately the only ones with privileged access to our thoughts and will represent a black box to varying degrees to various people).

I don't know what argument Watts is making exactly here, but in general I'm quite skeptical of the notion that there's a true self somewhere hidden and unaccusable to us or that we're influenced or controlled by subconscious forces we're condemned to never fully understand or even be aware of (not that I'm ascribing this view to Watts).

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I see, thanks for the resource!

I enjoyed sword art more then Eva (which I found both boring, meaningless and frustrating, but still watched because people said it's one of the best animes ever smh...)

This show is helpful to me when I analyze a work of art because when people say that something is deep and interesting, and I don't think it is, I can just think of the Eva fandom and rest assured that a lot of people agreeing on something doesn't make them right.

I call these kinds of shows "all-aesthetics". All they're doing is trying to look cool and all people are doing when they say it's deep and interesting is also trying to look cool.

Works like Berserk, Eva, Cowboy Bebop, Bladerunner, just aren't as deep as people adamantly make them out to be. They're visually interesting or even great but that's it. I guess the issue is a relative lack of culture, leading to mistaking things that sound deep for things that actually are.

Well no, axioms are not typically a thing in philosophy. In philosophy we are concerned with trying to figure out what's true, not just declaring random things are "axioms" and thus true unless proved false. The latter approach would make just about anything an equally "valid" candidate for truth, and suggest, contrary to basic principles of reason, that we should believe things without having sufficient reasons to believe them.

With that in mind, the question has to be: why should we take your antinatalist principle to be true? Or perhaps, what makes it more plausibly true than the other things people typically believe that it conflicts with, e.g., that life has inherent value, that procreation is an inherent right, or that happiness as well as suffering is morally significant?

"meaning we are deliberately perpetuating their suffering knowing that a percentage of them will always suffer."

Again, there is two independent things here. The existance of the "happy ones" and the existance of those that are so un happy that would want to cease to exist. The first doesnt affect the second. Those who dont want to exist can cease to exist if they want to.

Now they can say that if the happy ones continue existing and reproducing then there will be some new "Unhappy ones" that will have to pass through suffering until they decide to suicide. But that amount of suffering is supersmall compared with all the happiness. And also, if we dont bring a person into existance then this person cant even decide if exist or not. By making new people we are giving them the choice to exist or not for a very small risk of suffering briefly.

Its like for them 1 "unit" of suffering is more important than 1000 "units" of happiness and the choice to exist or not.

google it? lol

Axiom is a very basic claim of most philosophies, its valid when you have no objective ways of proving it "wrong".

>Life? Existence? Are those such throwaway things?

You know about the repugnant conclusion?

Life and existence itself are not the things people value, its the quality of it.

If most lives are horrible with no prospect of betterment, I doubt we would want it to continue. lol

This is not the case, hence we persist, but this IS the case for some unlucky victims, which is why some philosophies argue that we must evaluated life from their perspective and concluded that we should end it to spare future generation of victims.

It is an extreme position, but it is not without merit.

If we want to argue that something is so valuable that we have no choice but to accept the existence of these perpetual victims, then it better be something really worth it, but what would it be?

Positive conscious experience for the "majority" of luckier people? Is this drug addictive enough to continue our existence and risk the suffering of millions?

According to their arguments, it is because the victims never asked for it, they were forced into such horrible fates because we continue to exist, meaning we are deliberately perpetuating their suffering knowing that a percentage of them will always suffer.

Therefore we have a moral obligation to stop this once and for all, if we cant create a suffering free Utopia (which is near impossible), then it would be easier and more practical to just blow up earth or something similar.

They have basically compared the options and found total annihilation of life to be much more achievable so that's why they went for it.

To be fair, a suffering free Utopia is not totally impossible, its just very hard to achieve and will probably take thousands of years if not longer, it would be much easier and create much less victims if we just blow up earth. lol

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lol I doubt suffering is just mental.

Stage 4 bone cancer, raped to death by gangs, tortured and murdered by ISIS, a lifetime of abuse, violence and deaths for some of the most unlucky people on earth.

Its both mental and physical.

The argument here is that if some of them have to suffer so horribly unworthy existence, then non of us have the right to exist. lol

>However, it doesnt address the axiomatic claim that if SOME have to suffer, then NONE should exist to risk this suffering in perpetuity, especially when nobody asked for it, we were all born without a chance to weigh the risk and reject or accept our births. It may be a minority moral claim, but it is still a valid claim that requires proper counter.

What is an "axiomatic claim" and what makes this one "valid"?

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>I feel like all these are built on the same foundations that suffering should be minimised to the extreme and suffering is unavoidable for life (at least some of it) so the only way to totally remove suffering is to remove life. If you reject the extreme minimisation premise then you don't have this dilemma. Perhaps we need to accept suffering as unavoidable and our philosophies should aim to avoid the creation of any avoidable suffering instead (and accept that we may not be able to get 100% of it)?

So if extreme minimization is not the goal, what is/are the goal(s)?

There has to be something much more valuable? Enough to make us accept the sacrifice of these unlucky sufferers? What is it though?

To become a zombie matrix is not the goal, the argument is to remove extreme suffering from existence, so that nobody has to go through it.

Is it a paradox we seek things we aren't cognizant of only because we believe we should seek them? ELI5: Alice wants to go from A to B but she never been to B so she doesn't know what it's actually like.

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No worries.

Thanks for the clarification. Meaning and intention is difficult for me to get across. Sometimes the ambiguity helps. Sometimes it hurts.

I'm also not sure how his arguments work with super prosaic statements like "hey the sky's blue" or "fuck me the sky's purple!" - context seems pretty irrelevant to the truth of statements like that (though of course it could change the inferences we'd make based on them), and I'm not quite sure how to avoid their overwhelming force.

Sorry both meant to be GTFT - generous tit for tat (a strategy for iterative prisoners’ dilemma games in game theory)

Whats GTF and GTFT. Good first time?

My fucking god man. This dude is in my brain! Just the first chapter is making me feel so much validation! I have been sitting here wondering if I'm just making all this shit up to make myself feel better but no. This is actually it. Thank you so very much for this book!

The nature of I, experiencing and experiencer, connecting to myself by disconnecting from what isn't real, the nature of reality, the power of love that is under it all. It all really jives with me. Two minds that I call my thinking Self and the other I call my emotional Self. The emotional Self is where we are all connected. It's where beauty and joy and hope lives. It's why when I get close to it I want to connect with others. The thinking Self is isolation. It's where judgement and blame and hate lives. It's why when I get close to it I want to be alone.

The more I read this the more I start thinking there are multiple realities. Each moment, each experience, is composed of the reality of the thinking Self and the reality of the emotional Self. It seems like he managed to exist in the emotional reality by denying the thinking reality. I lived my life in the thinking reality by denying the emotional reality. The thinking reality was extremely logical, constant awareness of the outside, and full of hate. It was the epitome of control. The emotional reality denies logic, concentrates awareness on the inside, and is full of love. It is the epitome of surrender. Living competely in the thinking reality and suppressing my emotional Self I was depressed and suicidal. Right now I'm leaning heavily into the emotional reality and as a result I'm full of laughter and hope. I'm also intentionally suppressing my thinking Self so I'm naive and vulnerable. This shift is how I have experienced life over the past few weeks. It is a war between my thinking and emotional Self. I was fully on the thinking side and I'm now struggling to stay on the emotional side. I'm doing trauma therapy.

There is something above this though, another reality. The place where belief and doubt lie. Those beliefs determine the reality we experience. Beliefs are also changed through experience. Experiences that can come entirely from my Self. With sufficient connection to my Self I can experience whatever I want. If I can experience whatever I want then I can change my beliefs. If I can change my beliefs then I should be able to willingly believe anything. But if I can willingly believe anything that makes an infinite loop, or redundancy, idk the words to explain this. It immediately breaks down. I would experience everything and nothing. I would exist everywhere and nowhere. If this were possible it would have already happened and it would always be happening. I feel like that all describes a singularity. Ultimately that's what we all are. What he calls the shining light. The best way I can describe it is we are the ability to believe and doubt. That is the true nature of Self. We are an unimaginable being going through the belief sim.

You can have an emotion or thought, an experience, without understanding it so understanding is a component of all this too. You need knowledge to get to an understanding. Knowledge and understanding is somewhere between experience and belief. Experiences grant knowledge which becomes understanding and (with enough of them? sufficient strength of them? I feel like understanding is binary) eventually belief. So it's Experience -> Knowledge -> Understanding -> Belief. Which is painfully obvious when I write it out like that.

So to willfully change a belief you have to change the understandings that compose it. You need to experience to gain knowledge to change the understanding. Ultimately, specific experiences can result in a specific belief. But this new belief has to fight with all existing beliefs. So it takes a sufficiently powerful experience or a great many smaller ones to change a belief, all while knowing and understanding. Again, this seems pretty obvious.

It's like a stack. My thinking reality affects my emotional reality, and vice versa, and they both roll up to affect my belief reality. So by having control over my experience I should be able to control my beliefs. But then control is a thinking concept while surrender is an emotional concept. I have to control my thoughts while surrendering my emotions. That's how I connect to Self. With a pure connection to Self I have complete control over my experience and with complete control over my experience I can directly control my beliefs. With a strong enough belief I become the singularity. I become Self.

Now I understand how people can spend their lives in meditation.

I just had an epiphany. I am an Idea. Shaped by belief that is built from experience.