The Secret Decoder Ring of +5 Intelligence

[Frontside Back]

Examples, please?

Doomer meme, overall nihilistic tendencies. You know, the stuff that made Jordan Peterson rich from only saying that people shouldn't do self-destructive things.

Probably just my own skewed perspective, I'm knees deep in shit and trying to convince myself that it is all normal.

Still, I see so much of the attitude that goes "drink and be merry, world is gonna end soon and you're just lucky if you manage to die before that." around me that I can't help wondering; is this shit happening everywhere?

[hooplala]

Jordan Peterson became rich for refusing to use people's preferred pronouns.

Or, really, he became famous for the above and rich for what you stated. So, carry on...

[LMNO]

Speaking of aesthetics.

I feel like there's this movement in youth. They refuse the aesthetic of rich and successful. In fact they thrive to be the opposite. Instead of trying to claw their way up the pyramid to be the top dog who they've heard "ruins the stuff for everyone", They choose the path of least resistance and see what happens when they drill down.

Maybe the top isn't rising, but the bottom is falling off.

Examples, please?

Doomer meme, overall nihilistic tendencies. You know, the stuff that made Jordan Peterson rich from only saying that people shouldn't do self-destructive things.

Probably just my own skewed perspective, I'm knees deep in shit and trying to convince myself that it is all normal.

Still, I see so much of the attitude that goes "drink and be merry, world is gonna end soon and you're just lucky if you manage to die before that." around me that I can't help wondering; is this shit happening everywhere?

Ah, I see.  I don't consider that refusing to be rich and successful, though.  I think of it more as a bitter, ironic realization of how fucked they are to be living in a world of peak capitalism and climate catastrophe brought on by their elders, who don't give enough of a shit to make the world a better place for their kids.

They can't crawl up the pyramid because they aren't even allowed on the bottom tier, even with a 4-year degree and $100k in debt.

You can't live in the city where the jobs are because the rent's too high, and can't live outside the city because you can't afford a car?

[chaotic neutral observer]

Secret Decoder Rings???!??  I wanna collect the WHOLE SET.

"All models are wrong, but some are useful."
  --George Box

Collect as many models as you need, and use the best one for the current situation.  They don't have to be mutually consistent.  Relativity and quantum mechanics don't mesh together perfectly, even though they each predict certain aspects of reality extremely well.  Just use relativity for things that are really big or really fast, use quantum mechanics for tiny particle-wave thingies, stick with Newtonian physics if you're in your backyard, and let the physicists stress out about sorting the mess out.

[rong]

how is a decoder ring different from a reality tunnel? 

does reality exist without the tunnel?  can it be perceived without a tunnel?

[Telarus]

Secret Decoder Rings???!??  I wanna collect the WHOLE SET.

"All models are wrong, but some are useful."
  --George Box

Collect as many models as you need, and use the best one for the current situation.  They don't have to be mutually consistent.

THIS. If you are not concerned about how "right" your model is, but only how "useful" the model you are currently using is for the current situation, then it is your tool (instead of you being the TOOL for the B.S.).


Really good thread. Not sure how to apply the above to the problem Cram points out, as the crux of the problem is that the models the groups under discussion use have built in "this model is more right than mainstream models" built in...

[altered]

Really good thread. Not sure how to apply the above to the problem Cram points out, as the crux of the problem is that the models the groups under discussion use have built in "this model is more right than mainstream models" built in...

You, rong and CNO all seem to miss that the use of Decoder Ring here implies the "this model is more right" endorphin kick is built in. It's a little list of heuristics that apply to everything ever, and if you have the decoder ring to decode them, you're the smartest person in the room. It's wrong thinking as a lifestyle.

Any model can become a decoder ring, is the risk I think that Cram implies through the sanity checks of his own models of choice. But some models only EVER seem to become decoder rings, which is the talk about incels and the alt-right. No one casually examines a situation through that lens at some times and uses some other, better model for other situations. All messages are secret messages for the decoder ring.

[rong]

does objective reality exist?  if so, wouldn't the existence of objective reality imply that some decoder rings are, in fact, "more right" than others?

[The Johnny]

does objective reality exist?  if so, wouldn't the existence of objective reality imply that some decoder rings are, in fact, "more right" than others?

Its easier to speak of a "shared reality" by a majority of humankind than "true and objective reality"... the problem with this tho is the matter of consensus about what we deem real or true - thats the problem with psychosis, they see reality differently from the vast majority of people and some of them think they have access to "truer reality" and that others are just brainwashed or not perceptive enough... but imagine if everyone was psychotic, then a consensus about whats real and true would be impossible... this statement being a testament on how humankind cant agree on so many important issues, which means that the appreciation of reailty and truth is more subjective than objective, and thats as close as we can get to it.

So calling something "more right" (or less wrong, like some wiki named themselves) is dependent on mostly their weltanschauung, needs, emotions and ideology than its relation to reality.

[altered]

There is a ground floor reality that really exists, and we have indirect access to it by way of meat making electrical signals that tell other meat to process data that other meat creates the sense of knowing about.

For most purposes aside from philosophy and arguably the arts, this is close enough not to have any real difference. Remember There Is A Moon. Archaeology wouldn't be possible without a Really Real Subtrate. Barstools hurt if you are hit by them. We perceive a really really close approximation of reality and we have really really close to our perceived effects on reality when we act.

Belief systems as are being discussed here primarily take three forms:

Comfort, because human thinking meat fears lack of control. By believing something understandable is controlling things rather than random chance, it can have less fear.

Understanding other humans, because we model other humans actions on a combination of how we think and act and the actions we have seen other humans take. When someone doesn't act according to our model, we feel like we are losing control. Believing we have found the root cause of the differences in expectation and reality lets us believe they can be acted upon.

And superiority, because we have the answers and others do not. More of this is innate in picking our belief systems than people might think. Hell, I'm confident I'm more right than the average person on the street and, I gotta admit, it feels good.

We like being better than others, because we have a cultural framework for all that happens then: other people are just stupid, and they hate us because we are not. We are punished for our superiority and all bad things that happen to others are because they are inferior. Even if you actively don't think this way anymore, the good vibes seem to be baked in.

We like understanding other humans, because it makes society something we can learn how to manipulate. No one likes suffering. If you could completely predict everyone you met, suffering would mostly become a thing of the past for you, no matter who you are.

It also provides us with comfort, a feeling of control, and these are things we as a species also enjoy.

These things have little to no interaction with ground floor reality. Talking about them as if they could be more or less accurate in that respect is silly, because they are, at best, responses TO it, and, at worst, responses to human irrationality and cultural difficulties.

Let me be clear here: these things are not ground floor reality.

That lady named Sarah doesn't laugh when you tell an anecdote because you are somehow capital F Funny. There is no lady, no name, no Sarah, no laughter, no telling or anecdotes, no funny, and certainly no Funny. There is a collection of particles acting in a deterministic manner based on how other particles act. All the other stuff is humans trying to make sense of the chaos.

So when you, say, believe that laughter is bad and leads to societal breakdown, you aren't reacting to reality. That isn't real, none of that is real. You're reacting to culture.

Flat Earthers and anti-vaxxers are wrong about reality. They are wrong about things that continue to be true even when we delete all context and human interpretation from the problem.

Belief systems as are discussed here are not like that. If you remove context and human interpretation from Discordianism, it ceases to exist. It is nothing but a bad smell in the electric meat. There is no Objectivity To Maintain. It is not possible to think of divorced from human experience.

[altered]

That ended up fucking enormous. It's late, I'm drinking, and I thought it was really really fucking important to remind everyone that there is a real reality that can act on you and be acted upon in turn, but also that that is so fucking far from the topic of discussion that it's like talking about the invention of modern citrus fruit when trying to figure out how to manufacture plastic forks.

[altered]

Also by way of example why objective reality only matters in physics and chemistry:

Look at whatever device you are using to read this. The idea that that device is not you is a human myth, because that device is not a singular entity, there are no singular entities anywhere if you eyeball the quantum foam closely enough. Everything we collectively know about and a probably unthinkable amount more than that, it is all one singular thing.

Division is a human concept. Saying something is separate from something else may convey useful data about reality but it is nothing more than that, a useful falsehood.

Try to remember this fact, and treat yourself as nothing more than the universe and the universe as nothing more than you. Don't divide it up by saying you are "part of" — no, you're the whole thing and the whole thing is you. Try it for ten minutes.

If you can do it, congratulations on experiencing Zen Buddhist enlightenment, new bodhisattva. If you, like most people, found it somewhere between impossible and fucking stupid and useless, now you know why chasing objectivity is a fucking stupid idea.

[rong]

on the flip side, i think we now live in a post-truth world (a quick search reveals i am not the first person to think this and it was 2016 word of the year) *

but what that means to me is that, for any given set of beliefs (within reason) it is now so easy to find anecdotal evidence to support these beliefs that you can literally believe whatever you want and back it up with FACTS 

I think what sets discordians apart from greyfaces (or normies or NPCs or whatever suits you) is that discordians are aware that you can change your beliefs system (BS or reality tunnel or decoder ring) to suit your whimsy while those other lesser types that we are so much better than are unable to realize that their BS is no better than anyone else's BS.

does this make discordianism a meta-decoder ring?


* see?  i believed something, and easily backed it up with FACT therefore I AM RIGHT!

[Telarus]

good re-frame


All Affirmations are True in Some Sense, False in Some Sense, Meaningless in Some Sense, True and Meaningless in Some Sense, False and Meaningless in Some Sense, True and False in Some Sense, AND TRUE, FALSE, AND MEANINGLESS ..in some sense.


Wilson would have said All Affirmations are Models with Truth Value Ranges of .000000000000000000001% to 99.999999999999999999%, but apply the wrong model to the current context and the results are meaningless.

Or something like that...

[rong]

good re-frame


All Affirmations are True in Some Sense, False in Some Sense, Meaningless in Some Sense, True and Meaningless in Some Sense, False and Meaningless in Some Sense, True and False in Some Sense, AND TRUE, FALSE, AND MEANINGLESS ..in some sense.


Wilson would have said All Affirmations are Models with Truth Value Ranges of .000000000000000000001% to 99.999999999999999999%, but apply the wrong model to the current context and the results are meaningless.

Or something like that...

Haha - gotcha!  If you believe it is possible to apply the wrong model, you must therefore believe there exists a right model.

Or - alternatively: Funny you should mention meaninglessness as I've been dabbling in absurdism lately.  Do you mean to say that all models are wrong (in some sense) and therefore meaningless?  (in some sense)