The Functionality of the Black Iron Prison

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Have you tried ayahuasca?  Because the something mystical really isn't meaningless, at least it wasn't for me or any of the folks I've talked to who did it,  it gave us insights into our lives and we put those insights into practice and changed things. 

Your point is good, I just don't like your example.

Not meaningless, functionally meaningless. I meant that however profound and life-changing your experience may be, it's rooted in a subjective experience that would lose its value if it wasn't subjective. It can be as meaningful as you like, but it can't be conveyed to anyone who doesn't also have the experience. Like satori.

I agree - even a purely subjective inner experience can be meaningful for me or others

and maybe we can't discuss that thing in perfectly objective terms, so our language gets muddy and metaphored

but to then say "therefore you can't convey useful information", and "therefore it's meaningless and pointless to talk about" ---  is a big leap



The position that only objective, measurable things are worth discussing is scientism.

I don't think only objective measurable things are worth discussing, only that objective measurable things are the only medium we have for relating our experiences to someone who hasn't shared them. Metaphors are useful but by definition the map isn't the territory, etc.

You, on the other hand, have no credible evidence for any magic or supernatural influences being involved.

The only evidence I need is the miracle that I exist at all.

Your existence is not a miracle, and your wishful thinking does not count as evidence.

I have to object to this pessimistic declaration. Existence as such is terribly unlikely, given that it sprang from nothing at all (according to our best science) and behaves weirdly. Existence with awareness of itself has to be at least several orders of magnitude less likely still. I'm more astonished by the fact that I exist than I would be if some street magician turned water into wine before my eyes.

[LMNO]

Y'all need more time in the God-Helmet.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Y'all need more time in the God-Helmet.

I think my problem is too much time with that infernal contraption.

[Cramulus]

I don't think only objective measurable things are worth discussing, only that objective measurable things are the only medium we have for relating our experiences to someone who hasn't shared them. Metaphors are useful but by definition the map isn't the territory, etc.

yeah but if you've heard someone describe how they meditate, and then you try it out
you've received something from someone else's subjective experience

"the map isn't the territory" doesn't mean that communicating via metaphor is pointless

like, I've got a friend with a few loose wires - I have no experience of what it's like inside of her head, it sounds very confusing - but she can talk about it with me and I can feel where she's coming from

[Cramulus]

Y'all need more time in the God-Helmet.

FWIW I enjoy these threads where we circle around reality and take swings at it and maybe some coins fall out --  this is peak PD for me

For me, at least, the questions surrounding free will weren't something I thought about in college and then closed the book on, the uncertainty and exploration of it is still a big part of my mental landscape

[Doktor Howl]

it seems sort of useless to ascribe any attributes at all to any kind of reality or force that may or may not exist "outside" our ability to either perceive or imagine it. and while i am not strictly a reductionist, i don't see much point in imagining that anything at all exists that can't be measured or experienced in some kind of objectively meaningful way -- not because it's definitely not real, but because if it is real, it must be an absolutely subjective experience, and that precludes discussing it with anyone else in a way that conveys useful information about it. I mean, we could all go out into the woods and drink ayahuasca and it could seem like something mystical was happening, but whether such a thing did or didn't happen would ultimately be functionally meaningless.

As for free will, if it exists from our perspective, then it exists. Whether it "rEaLLy" exists from the perspective of some higher dimension or something isn't a constructive question. Unless you can tell the future, it doesn't matter. And if you can tell the future, then the only logical thing to do would be to give me the winning Powerball numbers for the next $100M+ drawing.

Have you tried ayahuasca?  Because the something mystical really isn't meaningless, at least it wasn't for me or any of the folks I've talked to who did it,  it gave us insights into our lives and we put those insights into practice and changed things. 

Your point is good, I just don't like your example.

I agree - even a purely subjective inner experience can be meaningful for me or others

and maybe we can't discuss that thing in perfectly objective terms, so our language gets muddy and metaphored

but to then say "therefore you can't convey useful information", and "therefore it's meaningless and pointless to talk about" ---  is a big leap



The position that only objective, measurable things are worth discussing is scientism.

Getting fucked up on drugs may cause you to feel as if you are having a mystical experience.

You're not.  You're just all fucked up on weird drugs.  The mystical part is just you running your brain outside of warranty conditions.  The part of you that thinks it is having the mystical experience is the part that's fucked up.

The subjective feeling of having a mystical experience is just part of that.

It's either that, or the paranoia binges I have had since 2009 (thankfully very rarely now) are meningitis-induced telepathy and you fuckers really ARE out to get me.  But the joke is on you, the Jeep was destroyed more than a year ago, so you can't get it.

[Doktor Howl]

Y'all need more time in the God-Helmet.

Only I can be trusted with that much power.

[Doktor Howl]

If we define magic as "shit that isn't understood well enough to be modeled", brain is clearly affected by both magical and physical world. That doesn't mean there isn't any underlying principles we can eventually figure out, I'm just saying we are not there yet and it would be foolish to think we are.

Let's not play around with the definition of magic (at least, not in this thread).  Science already allows for things to be not well understood yet, without invoking the mystical.

There is a significant distinction to be drawn between "we have a good idea of the basic science, but modelling the entire system is intractable at present" and "there's something ineffably mysterious going on that transcends mere physical reality, which we cannot, and never will, understand".

The OP brought up astral projection as an example of magic; that classification works for me.

Yeah, spooky action at a distance is just that:  spooky action at a distance.

[Doktor Howl]

A couple of years ago, my dad had a TIA and forgot how to talk for 5 minutes or so.

He insisted he was fine.  I pointed out that the part of him that was deciding that was the part that was in question.

When something physical interferes with or affects your brain, your perceptions change.  You can't trust the data, because by definition, your ability to take in the data has been altered.  The world has not changed, your ability to image the world has simply been compromised.

[Hagtard Celine Dion Mustard]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

The BIP can't really be called a "prison" unless the inhabitants are able to at least attempt to escape it.

Video games in general are a good example of compatibilism; the events in a game are scripted, but the actions of the player aren't. The players actions are restricted by the program, but the player always has some degree of freedom within those restrictions.

Normally, the player can't change the program from within it, but there are exceptions to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrary_code_execution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrIcz8iGJ14&feature=emb_logo

If the universe we find ourselves in is itself some kind of program, I think the potential implications of arbitrary code execution are extremely interesting. "Magic" in that sense would just be forcing memory allocation through a specific set of actions. Of course, this is all bordering on science fantasy, but it's fun to think about.

As for the prison, it would be a deterministic construct, but with some leeway - the player's degrees of freedom within it. Another game analogy would be old-school text adventures; you're free to type anything you like into the game, but the game will only progress if you type things it recognizes - otherwise, it will spit back something like, "I didn't understand that."

NPCs in role-playing games work similarly. You have options to choose from when you speak to them; if you suddenly found a way to say something to them that wasn't included in the options, they would have no way of responding to it.

AI NPCs would have somewhat elegant ways of dealing with the problem of being spoken to in ways that defy the program, in order to preserve the immersion of the game. They'd respond with intelligent-seeming but ultimately predictable things, like "I don't want to talk about that."

The more I experiment, in real life, with this kind of thing, the more I find that the world around me seems to actively attempt a similar kind of resistance the moment I go "off-script", so to speak. This could be explained as a natural consequence of something similar to culture-jamming, but in my experience, the resistance I get feels a little too aggressive to simply be a confused, passive reaction.

[Cramulus]

Getting fucked up on drugs may cause you to feel as if you are having a mystical experience.

You're not.  You're just all fucked up on weird drugs.  The mystical part is just you running your brain outside of warranty conditions.  The part of you that thinks it is having the mystical experience is the part that's fucked up.

The subjective feeling of having a mystical experience is just part of that.

It's either that, or the paranoia binges I have had since 2009 (thankfully very rarely now) are meningitis-induced telepathy and you fuckers really ARE out to get me.  But the joke is on you, the Jeep was destroyed more than a year ago, so you can't get it.

what do you mean by 'mystical experience' here?

When something physical interferes with or affects your brain, your perceptions change.  You can't trust the data, because by definition, your ability to take in the data has been altered.  The world has not changed, your ability to image the world has simply been compromised.

while 'sober', the brain is still this weird mix of chemicals and flawed / subjective perceptions
the everyday 'sober' mental state has its own contours and blind spots - it's not necessarily 'peak performance'

for example - if someone takes medication, they aren't necessarily 'compromised' and untrustworthy

hell, a strong cup of coffee affects your brain
and sometimes even alchohol brings real things to the surface

[Doktor Howl]

Getting fucked up on drugs may cause you to feel as if you are having a mystical experience.

You're not.  You're just all fucked up on weird drugs.  The mystical part is just you running your brain outside of warranty conditions.  The part of you that thinks it is having the mystical experience is the part that's fucked up.

The subjective feeling of having a mystical experience is just part of that.

It's either that, or the paranoia binges I have had since 2009 (thankfully very rarely now) are meningitis-induced telepathy and you fuckers really ARE out to get me.  But the joke is on you, the Jeep was destroyed more than a year ago, so you can't get it.

what do you mean by 'mystical experience' here?

When something physical interferes with or affects your brain, your perceptions change.  You can't trust the data, because by definition, your ability to take in the data has been altered.  The world has not changed, your ability to image the world has simply been compromised.

while 'sober', the brain is still this weird mix of chemicals and flawed / subjective perceptions
the everyday 'sober' mental state has its own contours and blind spots - it's not necessarily 'peak performance'

for example - if someone takes medication, they aren't necessarily 'compromised' and untrustworthy

hell, a strong cup of coffee affects your brain
and sometimes even alchohol brings real things to the surface

Nonsense.  My brain is like a brick.  Nothing affects it, for the same reason not much affects a brick.

I am the neurological equivalent of a low-tech solution.

Also, there is a proportionate affect.  Drinking coffee is like putting a higher octane of gasoline in your gas tank.  Performance changes to a small degree.

Ayuasca is like shoving the neighbor kid in your gas tank.  Things will probably happen as a result, but your car isn't going to go any faster.  OTHER things will speed up, though.  People will talk to you very rapidly.  You will move at a great deal of speed, only in someone ELSE'S car, despite your accurate statement that the kid was a complete shit and nobody liked him anyways.

I feel as I may have stretched the metaphor just a tad here, but my blood sugar is currently at 68 and so I am sitting here proving my own assertion...for SCIENCE!

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I think the important bit isn't what we think we know or how we arrived at a conclusion. Whether that's reductionist materialism or some kind of overly complicated multidimensional cosmic Rube Goldberg machine is irrelevant and can actually be a distraction. What matters is the fact that there is a sense of awareness at all, not what arises from it. I don't think drugs reveal anything particularly "true" about the nature of reality in any sense of bestowing more information, but they can expose the fact that regardless of input and extrapolation, the sentience algorithm processes its own existence.

[chaotic neutral observer]

I expect that she set the conditions of the demonstration.

Your expectations are incorrect.

Prove it.

You seem to have a stubborn resolve that free will of any measure either doesn't or can't exist, which is more or less irrelevant to my initial post. It might as well be a thread about Star Wars where you come in and proclaim that you don't watch Star Wars movies. I'm not terribly interested in debating free will; my understanding of the Black Iron Prison presumes it.

Since your initial post, and your understanding of the BIP both presume free will, a discussion of such is hardly irrelevant.
If there is no free will, then does your original post still make sense?
Your initial assumptions are not beyond question.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Y'all need more time in the God-Helmet.

Only I can be trusted with that much power.

Given your experience with that printer, I WOULD INSIST that you spend as much time with it as possible. I could see limitless possibilities for discovery!