https://www.theschooloflife.com/article/wu-wei-doing-nothing/

In Tao, being at peace with and accepting reality is not the same as being apathetic to it.

Dan Carlin talks about how Ghengis Khan was also very Nazi like and makes direct comparisons to Hitler. His point was that though they were evil at the time they still had massive impact and historians study their impact.

Is that maybe like Chaung-Tzu talking about the mushroom not knowing the seasons? That we cannot judge the right and wrongness as maybe these events and people led to a greater good? Or greater evil?

Reminds me of a Taoist story:

There is a story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“Maybe,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy for what they called his “misfortune.”

“Maybe,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son's leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“Maybe,” said the farmer.

Yeah that is pessimism. In nihilism there is no room for that but it is the opposite even, loving that everything is as it is.

It only begs the question what truth is, since that can only be pointed out with a true sentence. Truth is a contract that something is true. Surely we can say that x is the longest river of y but we can disagree about the limits of that state y which would shake that assertation. Nothing is true means just that there is no obligating contract about the subject matter at hand. Observations would still be there but their metaphysical implications and the affective power would (if x tgen i need to think/do y) not be agreed upon.

I’m being subjective here, but in my opinion “live and let live” is only going to work if everyone’s on board. Taoism is great at a personal level but on a whole I find apathy to be detrimental.

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The way we're going I'd be surprised if we even had anyone still working on AGI by the 2030s

They might in a different way we do not understand; same as the concept of mourning is exclusive to certain animal species, there may be certain behaviours that are unique to caterpillars you cannot fully understand or even be aware of.

I’m struggling to understand fully how “shaping one’s reality based on the decisions one makes”, “struggling to understand reality due to its ever changing nature” and “reality is shaped by perception, not by its true nature” are statements that are interconnected, and yet I can see they are all but one and the same thing. At the end of the day, the philosophy tries to put forward a way of life by which we are able to accept the outcomes of our decisions as part of the inner workings of an ever changing system of which we can only see but a few moving pieces. Not sure the writer wove the argument in a coherent way, as he starts discussing perception and the nature of reality through the butterfly parable and then jumps into decision making-shaping reality according to the Tao.

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Dude could’ve just said that outright and I’d have backed off.

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Yea we agree on that, but I disagree with how you characterise Tao that’s all. Yes overly subjective is bad, but no the Tao is not overly subjective.

Uh, in summary I was saying that Good and evil being subjective is fine. But resorting to basing your decisions off of what other people want is useless.

So we basically agreed.

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Relevant/related video: Emergence and reasoning in large language models - Jason Wei (Google)

I think a philosophy sub would offer the best dialogue when not debating, but sharing views instead. And the dude you spoke to really didn't want to have a debate I think.

Yeah, respectable would have been a better word than friendly

So in my understanding, Tao is actually antithetical to the kind of intellectualising that you’re mentioning that it’s weak to. That’s not to say you’re not right in that it can be twisted to justify any point you want, because it can. But Tao at it’s core is about embracing life as an unquantifiable and undefinable personal experience. Living in the moment, doing what you feel is right in your heart, and all those other intuitive but intellectually empty cliches.

Eastern philosophy is thus extremely different to western philosophy. In this regard it can be pointless to point a western scientific/logical scrutiny at it. It’s literally designed to be paradoxical, empty, and impossible to analyse. Once you reach that peak of mental fatigue and frustration, you are forced to sacrifice a logical, objective or scientific approach for an intuitive one that ‘feels’ right. So anyone who analyses Tao and finds a flaw either doesn’t understand it or hasn’t embraced it the way it’s meant to be embraced. It therefore tries to guard itself against the intellect and ego using it as justification for evil by making its true and honest practice impossible to dissect. You can see this in their extensive use of analogy, metaphor and paradox (in the article, in zen koans, etc) instead of a western logic like A therefore B. Again this is why it’s described as the ‘middle path’, or the third option. Do I struggle to find an objective reality to do good? No that’s impossible. Do I become an amoral ass who does what he wants because everything’s subjective? No because that’s evil. Instead you choose the Tao, the middle path, the one that’s impossible to define but that followers insist is intuitive to all ‘life’.

A lot of zen koans have this moral, such as the goose in the bottle analogy, where the correct choice is some impossible but intuitive third option. “If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?” Is another classic. Yes and no are both incorrect answers. How should you live your life, for yourself or others? Both are similarly wrong answers. The Tao says to stop thinking about it and just do.

Look at it like this- he illustrated the idea of relativity by mentioning a cicada never knowing spring or fall, but other creatures in which thousands of years are just a season to them.

So, it isn’t so much about what is morally right or wrong in that moment, but rather, it is impossible to tell all the events that unfold from the choice, thus defining it impossible to truly say anything is one or the other when you factor in all that comes from it.

On a mundane level, many years ago I wimped out going over to a guy’s place I really liked for a long time. It was my one chance, but as soon as I got to the door, I bailed and never said anything out of crippling anxiety. At the time, that was a negative experience I beat myself up for. Fast forward years later, and that turned out to be a giant blessing in disguise. My inability to even knock on his door is the reason why I dodged the not so great person he became. Social anxiety is “not good”, but holy moly am I glad it was too overwhelming for me in that moment. Just a month later he began dating someone he now has a child with. If I had done the “right” thing in that moment, be brave and face my fears, none of those “good” things would have happened.

So it’s in that way I understand him questioning what is considered virtuous, because there are times in which abiding by what is traditionally accepted as the right thing to do may have us end up in situations that aren’t good at all.

Was this your best attempt at a generally friendly online argument?

No, you should do what you think is right, whatever that is. But when you can’t go by your own judgment then you need to rely on another’s. In my opinion still useless since if you’re not making decisions on your own judgment you have to necessarily be using another’s. Only pointing out your criticisms miss the actual ideas of Tao.

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