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Ohhh, no, then I didn't understand what you meant. Yes, that is blatant, it's what I described as fishing for agreement. I naturally wrote the questions as valid, being backed-up by the rest of the rant, as part of it. Kind of rhetorical, perhaps. It wasn't subtext, it was text - as in yes, I'm assuming what I'm describing is strange because the strangeness is exactly what I'm writing about. Is asking such questions incorrect? It wasn't meant to close off discussion, the answer to "What happened to our species to make us blind?" may as well be "Our species isn't blind." (Which, I think, it largely was, and I'm okay with it.) Am I rationalizing it away now?

But you're still not actually going to put any time or thought into taking apart your own questions and critically examining the assumptions behind them, are you?

Consider that your critical thinking and analytic skills may differ from mine, so much that what for you takes little effort to see is not the same for me, rather than me being in denial or too precious to question myself. Because I'd like to understand what you're getting at, but I really don't.

I'm going to be completely honest here, and say that I flat-out assumed from the beginning that my critical thinking and analysis skills are different from yours. The reason for that is because they ARE skills, learned skills that don't come especially easily or naturally to most people, and I've been working on them for a long time.

As Howl said, it takes practice. I keep asking you questions because that's where you start; if you can't come up with your own critical questions, answering other people's gives you a good launching-off point.

But you don't seem to want to ask or answer questions about your assumptions or the validity of your statements, so I can't help concluding that you aren't interested in improving your critical thinking skills. Which is too bad, really, because you don't seem stupid, but ultimately it means that you and I will probably have little to talk about, and I love a good conversation.

Good. But I am interested in it. Maybe you're right and I'm lying to myself, like that guy who's totally gonna write that novel and start going to the gym tomorrow, but I don't think I am. What I'm trying to say is, I haven't answered your question about my assumptions not for lack of will or trying, but because I just don't know. I can't. That they assume everybody else's experience has been similar to mine is the only thing I came up with.

[edit: you posted the explanations while I was musing over this post, I'll read them and then post again.]

Holy shit.

This should win some kind of Picture of the Year award. Time Magazine, National Geographic, Boys Life, don't care.

This.

Yes. So much time, across all of humanity and all generations, that could have been productively spent (for example, by playing with a cat, or thinking about dinner... literally anything, really) has been wasted arguing with people who can't argue.

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  An interesting thing I've read is that America has a higher murder rate than other countries even excluding shooting deaths. Americans just kill each other more, guns or no guns. But, I guess at least school shootings would only have as many victims as one guy can knife before being taken down, had firearms been unavailable.

As much as I don't mind self-indulgent fantasies of any kind (and ponies), the second-person fanfics... creep me out just slightly.  Especially since they seem to be mostly in the dominion of Hetalia, Homestuck and MLP, and these fandoms sure can be sticky and smell weird.

I wonder if the second-person may someday become more mainstream, maybe in part due to this trend.

Examining your own beliefs is a learned skill.  It takes practice.

I know, I'm doing my best.

axod - Suppose we must on some level assume we know and notice enough to consider our judgment sound. Open to reconsideration and adjustments upon receiving new data, but still stable enough as to not be crippled with

Then the question regards the importance of what we care about noticing, recognizing and carying-on.  Is there something then perhaps, not itself percieved, that goes about ordering their relevance according to an a priori unifying principle?  Otherwise my capacity for "sound judgement" may result arbitrary and incomplete.  Funny business.

I think so. People who reject science in favor of their gut instinct have a different "judging thing" than those who do the opposite. I think you can even alter that thing, start consciously valuing some kind of stimuli higher than others, and eventually it'll come instinctively.

Say the alteration you mention fashions consciousness to be an emergent property, like a self-correcting/learning/evolutionary algorithm.  What is it that allows said experience to be something that particularly concerns you?  Imagine a world of objects percieved absolutely without relevance.

Huh, that's a good question. Of course people have to assign value to everything, rank them in importance, so it is not really strange that they do so in different manners. I guess I'm curious about what allows us to be so different.

Aha, so, is it possible, for the ground of similarity, which enables said distinction, to then also be itself both part and parcel of the percieved?  Or, does the set of all sets contain itself?

Hrrm. Tough. But I'd say yes, the very fact that we're discussing it means it can and is perceived, and as such can be judged. What do you suppose this ground of similarity is, exactly, though? Men can have vastly different outlooks, for many reasons, even on things as seemingly basic as "pain is bad" or "eating is good". Or do you mean a more general basis, higher-tier so to speak?

But you're still not actually going to put any time or thought into taking apart your own questions and critically examining the assumptions behind them, are you?

Consider that your critical thinking and analytic skills may differ from mine, so much that what for you takes little effort to see is not the same for me, rather than me being in denial or too precious to question myself. Because I'd like to understand what you're getting at, but I really don't.

I don't think it's guts, or willingness, that I lack, it may be ability (look, something I'm blind to!). Haven't I already admitted that those were loaded questions? Assuming people's lack of interest in x is caused by a lack of curiosity, and fishing for confirmation that there's something strange and mildly negative about it?

And I am aware that there's quite a few reasons people may not be interested, chiefly that they have already been exploring a subject and moved on, and also personal differences in openness to new experiences being attuned to different things and blind to others. Myself included. It just doesn't seem to me like that's all.

Am I still missing your point?

I was making assertions here because it seemed to me like we could be miscommunicating and I wanted to clarify exactly what I'm trying to say. I might simply be misunderstanding what you are saying, though. How am I not curious about people? I'm not extrapolating about a person from a single instance, I may add. All the individuals I've used in examples were people I consider my friends, genuinely like, and interact with often enough to see whatever I'm describing was not aberrant behavior. Maybe I should have mentioned this. None of them are shallow or stupid people, and that makes it all the more perplexing. And there's plenty of people I know who are not like this, people who'll bite into anything interesting you show them, who will talk about any subject, people who pay attention. Why are they this way, when others aren't? Simply personal difference?

[upside-down Barstool Experiment]

Oh but I did, I just didn't get an answer.

All of them? How many people are we talking about, here? Are we talking about enough people to allow you to generalize about human beings, or about enough people for you to have asked them why they think it's weird to go for a walk in the woods, and for them all to have, for some reason, ignored your question?

We're talking about two that I have asked this. And you're confusing not getting an answer with not getting a response. I did get the latter, and it amounted to a shrug and "I dunno, it's just weird." I'm not generalizing about human beings based on this, it's just another little thing adding to how mystified I am about them.

What other motivations can they be then? Honest question, I really have no idea.

That is the thing, isn't it? That you don't know their motivations, so you're making up stories that fit within your own experience to explain other people's reaction. The problem with this is that it's more revealing about you than revealing about them; it doesn't say anything at all about them.

This seems like a good place to tell a fairly boring story.

When I was in my early 20's I thought that middle aged people were really boring. They weren't interested in having conversations about any of the deep topics my friends and I were into, like the problems with capitalism and how fucked up the school system is or  the oligarchy or social justice any of those big, brand-new, world-changing ideas. If the conversation turned in that direction, they would often act kind of bored or just walk away. So boring! Come on old people, why don't you care about important stuff? And then one day I said something to a co-worker who was an older guy, and he just said "How many times can I have that conversation?" and I suddenly realized that it wasn't them who was boring. It was me. They were having far more interesting conversations than I was even able to understand because I was just then picking up the foundational information, having the foundational conversations with my peers that they had with their peers 20 years ago.

Do you need to re-learn how to read every time you pick up a book?

Once you learn something, you have already explored it. Therefore, when you go back to it, it is no longer exploring, it is visiting.

I could be wrong, but it sounds as if you are in a very exploratory mental place. many things are wondrous and new to you. That's great, keep doing it; exploratory behavior generates new neurons and keeps you healthy and resilient. But when you are exploring something and feeling good and see people who don't seem to think that what you're doing is interesting, rather than pitying them as poor uncurious monkeys, it might be wise to wonder whether they already know what you are just discovering.

How else am I to understand other people? There's three methods, basically - try to do it based on what I already know; ask them, which isn't always possible and not always reliable; or ask others' opinion and contrast their thoughts and experiences with mine, which I'm doing now or IRL or when I read stuff. Is there any other way?

I appreciate the story. It certainly is the case sometimes that people simply know already what I'm just now thinking about. But that can't always be the case, especially when I'm talking to people my age or younger, like at school (in the group, we're anywhere from 18 to 38). Some of 'em are barely out of high school and they just aren't interested in things outside of work, personal relationships, a few choice subjects like marijuana legalization, and hilarious internet memes. Some may grow out of it, but some won't. And hell, it's not like I want all humanity to share my hobbies, not everybody has to be interested in roguelikes or recognize every bird species that lives around here. But when I point out that there's a lion relief on the facade of a building, or a cool car always parked in a certain spot, or an unusual beggar lady (all these things having been there forever) and the person I'm walking with says "Huh, I've walked here a million times and I've never noticed," I have to wonder why. It's just about a general awareness, curiosity, open interest in one's surroundings, in the world in general -- that thing that animals and children have, but adults largely don't.

I'm really not that guy proudly flaunting "You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're all the same" on a Hot Topic shirt or "98% of teens has done/likes X, if you haven't/don't put this in your signature." in their deviantArt sig. I know I'm not special or smart, really, I do. I'm not pitying anybody. My original post was a rant, hence the whiny tone, but what I'm bemoaning is not that it's lonely at the top of these heights of consciousness and different-ness that I've reached, but rather than I still don't understand why do people act like they do.


@axod What you're saying is... really intriguing. What if we learned about, say, bones and their function mostly through comparing healthy ones to those broken or wrecked with osteoporosis or whatnot?
But what did you mean by

Srlsy though, I do think Cotard's represents an acute form of a delusion that is more prevelant than generally recognized.  I wonder how well an upside-down Barstool Experiment would work in that respect?

?

axod - Suppose we must on some level assume we know and notice enough to consider our judgment sound. Open to reconsideration and adjustments upon receiving new data, but still stable enough as to not be crippled with

Then the question regards the importance of what we care about noticing, recognizing and carying-on.  Is there something then perhaps, not itself percieved, that goes about ordering their relevance according to an a priori unifying principle?  Otherwise my capacity for "sound judgement" may result arbitrary and incomplete.  Funny business.

I think so. People who reject science in favor of their gut instinct have a different "judging thing" than those who do the opposite. I think you can even alter that thing, start consciously valuing some kind of stimuli higher than others, and eventually it'll come instinctively.

Say the alteration you mention fashions consciousness to be an emergent property, like a self-correcting/learning/evolutionary algorithm.  What is it that allows said experience to be something that particularly concerns you?  Imagine a world of objects percieved absolutely without relevance.

Huh, that's a good question. Of course people have to assign value to everything, rank them in importance, so it is not really strange that they do so in different manners. I guess I'm curious about what allows us to be so different.

Oh but I did, I just didn't get an answer.

What other motivations can they be then? Honest question, I really have no idea.

I'll be sure to digest what you said properly, and research deeper, you've given me a good starting point.

RE:Demolition Squid: That's just terrifying.

Do you go bump in the night?

I can be sometimes, I won't deny it. But I don't really think myself superior or special. Just a bit different, apparently. And it's not a source of misery or loneliness as much as confusion.

And, hm, a big city? But then the people I heard this from were born out in the country. Maybe they grew up so used to nature and forests they don't consider them interesting anymore? I wish I knew.

Why the hell indeed? To me, the intricacies of music are like magic. I even have a similar sort of awe, respect, puzzlement and a pinch of fear for music people as if they'd really spawned a rabbit in their hat. How the hell do you do that, and why can't I? Why don't I hear it, why don't I comprehend it? I was in music school for a year so it's not like I haven't tried, but I seem to be deaf to a whole world of stuff.

Why?

This is goddamned brilliant, and if not for the bump I may have not dug it up. Thank you, bump fairies!

I don't exactly feel capable of contributing to this in much of a meaningful way, but I do have an example to add. One thing I think hasn't been brought up in this thread is that strong nihilism, as OP describes it, is not only tied to religion in the 21st century. Look at people I'll generalizingly call 4channers, where whether or not they browse 4chan is irrelevant. They don't blow things up for their beliefs (they just commit school shootings sometimes) but they think society as it stands now is disgusting and worth purging. They lock themselves away, with or without a circle of like-minded people on some website or another, where they form echo chambers for their hateful beliefs. They have a morbid fascination with gore porn and degradation of women - in fact they blame what they call feminism for ruining the world (see: MRAs who don't help men, but just shit on feminists). There was (is?) a whole movement cheering on Ebola (with a cute moe mascot to boot) to wipe out the world, or at least Africa, because this would somehow usher in an opportunity to rebuild the world as a better place. And it's all the Jews' fault.

I used to browse the chans a lot, still do sometimes, and I sure know that the "destroy everything" mentality used to appeal to me, in the darkest days. It seemed to be the only alternative to the toothless, coddling, moderate ways of mainstream society. But then I learned better. And Discordianism sure helped.