Purposes and goals of mindfucks

[Captain Utopia]

The Tao you can discuss is not the true Tao.  (Alternate forms: replace Tao with System, Way, or Chao)

Who says?

Kurt Gödel, for one.

Enough with the symbolism? Mathematics paints a pretty picture and religion makes nice rhyme, within a hundred years Gödel will be proved wrong, should we just sit around twiddling our thumbs in the meantime?

If you explain your first principles, I'll do the same with mine with my knowledge regarding Mr Gödel. Although the latter is not really relevant to the question I asked.

[LMNO]

Dude, the entirety of communication is symbolism.


This very sentence is a series of symbols of agreed-upon concepts.


I'd like to know how you expect to either receive or transmit knowledge without symbolism.


When you can describe a non-symbolic means of communication, we can continue.

[LMNO]

Also, you seem to enjoy the symbolism of "first principles."

But I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Cramulus]

Re: Purposes and goals of mindfucks

I can speak only for myself here.

Some people claim that they are not very gullible. They say they are hard to manipulate, hypnotize, or influence. It turns out that these people are actually the most susceptible to hypnosis. They put too much trust in their own brain and are therefore blind to intrusions upon it.

I kind of view the mindfuck as a reminder that I don't necessarily have it all figured out.

A good mindfuck produces confusion. Through that confusion, we're able to examine the components of our reality tunnels in a different light than when we were certain.

I'm reminded of a prank I pulled on my roommate in which I had him convinced that dozens of people were all having dreams about him shitting his pants. He couldn't figure out how anyone could have orchestrated all these unconnected people from his past to contact him out of the blue like that. He didn't realize the prank instructions were in his AIM profile, and was how people he hadn't seen in 10 years seemed to be in on it. Due to the Law of 5s, he started seeing shit everywhere.  He didn't know what to do. On one hand, it could be a prank, but he couldn't fathom how. On the other hand, he had a existential crisis - he thought this was the universe's way of telling him something -- but what? The lens of introspection came out. In the end, a good time was had by all and I only got punched in the stomach once.



In more traditional usage, the mindfuck is a tool, like any other, to provoke certain types of introspection. For many Discordians, it's a rewarding activity in of itself. But more traditionally, it's just a form of prank or culture jam.

I'm going to try and say the next part without opening a big can of worms -- there's a certain poster who will remain nameless. He didn't have a very good reputation on this board. But he wanted to participate. Or mindfuck us. Maybe both. So the person in question made up a new identity and used it to release an Intermittens issue (on mindfucks, of all things). This is a mindfuck on a few levels:

1. He mindfucked his target audience by proving he could communicate within the forum as long as he was willing to sacrifice some of his old identity.  Now that the jig is up, some people are saying, "Alright, he wasn't that bad."

2. Acting within this new identity prompted him to question assumptions he had previously made about this forum and his involvement with Eris. In the end, pretending to be a stranger made him a stranger to himself -- which afforded him a growth opportunity. (I may be off-base on this because I can't speak for the poster in question.. but this is my gist)

[Template]

I meant speculation as opposed to the kind of truth you have to live with, every day.

Ah, I think I see what you mean now. I'm not sure I can draw the distinction quite as clearly. Once I can predict the barstool then to a certain degree the model seems to work, if not, the model needs work.

Please explain or clarify or expand upon the phrase "predict the barstool".  It's pretty much nonsense to me.

Furthermore, I'd like to make sure some of your vocabulary gets straightened the fuck out:
A theory is a statement that explains all or most of the existing evidence/data, and doesn't contradict any good data.
A hypothesis is an idea about how things are or how things will happen, which can be tested.  Example:  "My hypothesis that the sun rises every 30 hours is in error: the sun is rising now, and last rose 24 hours ago.  I may have to adjust my sleep schedule accordingly."
(Someone who knows more, please point out if I'm off here.)

Use the search function in the forum, for posts by LMNO containing "quantum".  It's probably at the top-right of the page.

[Captain Utopia]

1. He mindfucked his target audience by proving he could communicate within the forum as long as he was willing to sacrifice some of his old identity.  Now that the jig is up, some people are saying, "Alright, he wasn't that bad."

2. Acting within this new identity prompted him to question assumptions he had previously made about this forum and his involvement with Eris. In the end, pretending to be a stranger made him a stranger to himself -- which afforded him a growth opportunity. (I may be off-base on this because I can't speak for the poster in question.. but this is my gist)

What about a third possibility? That he couldn't become a productive member of the community because of the communities memory of his reputation - so that when he was ready to make that growth, the only avenue open to him was to pretend to be a stranger. Or is that already implied in 1+2? Given that the community seems to believe that I'm four different sock-puppets already, I know I'm on thin ice, but I don't think that changes the observation.

[Kai]

Isn't it all maps and symbols? If it's just about finding and experiencing the sacred in everything, then surely _any_ religion will do?

Yes, thats what I'm saying. In fact, there are mystic branches to all of the mainstream religions. The Quakers, the Sufis, Jewish Mysticism, Hindu Vedanta, Zen Buddhism (particularly engaged buddhism ala Nhat Hanh), many Unitarian Universalists...I think I've captured a bit of all the big ones. There are certainly mystics in Catholicism, though there isn't really a mystic branch. Hm (something to look into).

Search came back with pages and pages of metafap, still not sure of what you're trying to say.

You don't know what you're talking about. LMNO knows what he's talking about when it comes to quantum mechanics. He's covered many topics including the double slit experiment in this forum. All you have to do is use the search engine.

If we take our ancestors, as the original poster did, as a barometer of what we should consider "valid choices" then please explain to me how the reference to the amount of genetic material we share is an irrelevant point. Putting aside my mistake with ancestry/cousins - the DNA is the agent of replication, not the host.

1) why should we take from our ancestors "valid choices"? 2) Its not irrelevant. You just shouldn't talk about it because the sort of shit you were saying is why people are damn confused in the first place, and its honestly up to biologists (like me) and other scientists (like Thurnez the paleontologist) to try to sort the public out. Hearing the "we came from chimpanzees" line for the 1000 time just about boils my gray matter. So please, just don't talk about it. Read, learn, don't talk till you actually know what you are talking about.

And I'll talk about evolution until I get it right. Emergence seems to be one of the most important features of the universe, I'm not going to stop trying to understand more about it just because you choose to get sanctimonious on my ass. Educate me, please.

You obviously don't know anything about me if you think I'm bothered by talk of Emergence.     That's not what this was about. What this was about is you doing it wrong just like thousands of other people I've heard talk about evolution aka descent with modification aka transmutation of species. You are nobody special in that regard. Unfortunately for you I'm sick of hearing things like "we came from chimpanzees". Fortunatly (or unfortunatly if you liked it) I'm actually kinder than I used to be.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Existence of multiple realities is a matter of speculation in physics.

By that measure, so is a single reality.

Are you saying that there is no evidence that this reality exists?

No, I was just pointing out the pointlessness of the original premise.

But logically speaking, there is no flaw. There is, from a physics perspective, ample evidence that this reality exists. There is no evidence that multiple realities exist. Therefore, the existence of multiple realities is speculation, but the existence of a single reality (this one) is not.

If that's true, then I was wrong.

Back to the original point though, the OP didn't mention quantum effects, nor require them implicitly.

What do you mean, "if that's true?"? Do you mean that you don't have a scientific background and did not research your statement before you made it?

No - you've got me - I didn't research the statement where I argue for the existence of multiple realities at all. Unfortunately for me though, I don't exist in the universe where the original parent to this thread makes any reference or mention of multiple realities - and that part is really confusing me.

What puzzled me before is the double-slit experiment, which I've always seen described in terms of waveform collapse, as that would seem to imply the existence of multiple universes - at _least_ for a brief period of time. I didn't research the discrepancy,, and I wasn't entirely convinced, but I gave you a technical point with an "if that's true" primarily because it's not relevant to anything I've been saying at all.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "scientific background".

[LMNO]

What puzzled me before is the double-slit experiment, which I've always seen described in terms of waveform collapse, as that would seem to imply the existence of multiple universes - at _least_ for a brief period of time. I didn't research the discrepancy,, and I wasn't entirely convinced, but I gave you a technical point with an "if that's true" primarily because it's not relevant to anything I've been saying at all.

How the hell did I miss that?


Some of the later theories attribute the "apparent" (not "actual") collapse of the function to decoherence, which when simplified, says that the function only appears to collapse when it interacts with the environment.

[Thurnez Isa]

The main problem here is burden of proof

If your arguing for this existence of this reality there really isn't any burden of proof there, we more or less know this reality exists through laws and experience, ect. there are always really weird ideas way out in left field that say even this reality is nonexistent and they really can't be disproven, but have no evidence in support so therefore can be more or less rejected for now.
If your arguing for multiple realities then first you have to prove it is indeed possible (and from what I read this is still debatable) but even then, possibly does not mean existence.

In other words the burden of proof is on multiple realities not on a singular reality.

...which is pretty much what Nigel said

The burden of proof rests upon you - show me where I argue for the existence of any reality schema in the OP.

I don't know what to say other then your wrong.... I'm not arguing any point, only asking for an argument for a point you made
and if you're too stupid to see that... I don't know what to tell you man

[LMNO]

Actually, it was yhmnz (or whatever the fuck his name is) who brought up multiple universes.

ficpuss was talking about reality tunnels.

[Thurnez Isa]

Actually, it was yhmnz (or whatever the fuck his name is) who brought up multiple universes.

ficpuss was talking about reality tunnels.

true enough
I kind of lost track of that part

[Template]

I.e. Is it possible to use the scientific method to map out the problem space towards the end of recognising the "ultimate mindfuck" (of the current selection) which leads to the most robust reality tunnel currently known? Is there any evidence that the appearance of multiple "truths" is not itself an illusion?

Assignment #3: do assignments #1 and #2 if you still think this paragraph makes sense.

I'm failing these assignments, since I did and I do. The existence of multiple realities does not grant them equality.

Emphasis added.  Yes, I probably came out misinterpreting it, I may even have been agreeing in a very indirect matter.  But fictionpuss is the first to use the phrase "multiple realities" ITT.  I was going to say, "speculation in physics and magick," but thought better of it.

Perhaps we should ask why the seemingly misguided are using certain words certain ways, or at least to explain what they think those words mean.

[LMNO]

"Mutiple realities", in terms of the OP, seems to be referencing multiple reality tunnels, not the Multiple Universe theory in quantum mechanics.

[Captain Utopia]

I meant speculation as opposed to the kind of truth you have to live with, every day.

Ah, I think I see what you mean now. I'm not sure I can draw the distinction quite as clearly. Once I can predict the barstool then to a certain degree the model seems to work, if not, the model needs work.

Please explain or clarify or expand upon the phrase "predict the barstool".  It's pretty much nonsense to me.

Pretty much this. If your model cannot be used in a practical way which fits in with existing models, then you either need to improve your model or ditch it. If the kids at the bar were on the right track, then eventually they could use their fantastical knowledge to construct a model of the universe whereby they could avoid being hit over the head.

The analogy pretty much breaks at that point because two individuals are unlikely to make such significant progress within their lifetimes.