yes, any such worldview is entirely subjective.Originally Posted by ITZ DENI3D
though, i don't see your basic distinction between pessimists and optimists. it doesn't seem to me as though pessimism is an accurate conception of reality when there are so many good, happy lives on this earth. there's only life and whether we make it a good or bad one is dependent on humanity, not on some cosmic force that is either intrinsically good or bad.
I disagree. Like I said If I was a psychopath I could easily make you or anyone else one of the most miserable people in this world no matter what your personality is. The funnier thing is when life does it for you... You can disagree all you want and say you've handled a bunch of crap before but this is just basic fact. What if you ran into some crazy serial killer/rapist tomorrow on some forum who had enough resources to track you down and torture your family and you kill some people you love, and cripple you for life? You can't seriously tell me this wouldn't change your outlook on life? This is a huge exaggeration but far from impossible. So for other people looking in on that situation it is a lot easier to judge, but putting yourself in that persons shoes would be impossible. For that person every single thing that happens is due to luck, whether it be good or bad. Perhaps if he hadn't turned on his computer his life wouldn't have been ruined, even though billions do every day. If that person didn't end up killing himself I doubt he would ever be an optimist again...
Its like a game of poker. you win some you loose some but if you play the odds you are very likely to win more than you loose.
its possible i guess but I'm not sure if your scenario has ever happened without the person taking some sort of risk that they could have predicted was a risk factor.
Heres another one, what if you were with your kids and you decided to help some old lady across the street. You have your kids stay behind and you help the old lady but by doing that a truck wasn't paying attention and it swerves off the road killing your 2 kids and clips you shattering your femur. What would you say then? I mean there are endless scenario possibilities that can ruin the rest of someones life and saying you wouldn't let something like that ruin your life just seems stupid to me. Hopefully no one has to go through those types of situations but unfortunately people do and sometimes even worse ones. I believe people are either lucky or unlucky so the same goes for poker. Of course ones opinion on luck can be different I suppose. Someone can get their arm bitten off by a shark and say they got lucky they didn't die even though the odds of getting bit by a shark are incredibly low...
but such things do not necessarily result in an eternally negative outlook. there are plenty of people who lose people due to others in seemingly meaningless acts (such as terror) or due to "the world" (natural catastrophes) but recover finding meaning in these incidences. for example, i've recently watched an interview with a woman who had lost all of her family (husband and two children) in a car crash but later attached meaning to her loss.
also, these things are all quite abnormal and unlikely for someone living in the industrialized world to happen. we are statistically very unlikely to die from terror, murder, or accidents. your hypothetical example of a psychopath killing my family just for the sake of it remains forever hypothetical as it won't plausibly happen.
whether it is easier to make someone miserable or ecstatically happy doesn't seem like a meaningful question to me but i don't see why i would tilt to either side.
and i disagree that it's all due to "luck", that is factors beyond our control. positive attitudes accomplish a lot, as do negative ones. they function as self-fulfilling prophecies. if you're an optimist you will act in accordance with that belief and your optimist bias will confirm reality. you'll construct your own positive reality. the same goes to the pessimist.
so don't be such an emo. be happy, man! become a nihilist instead. do what your sensual desires tell you to do. if you've truly lost all hope you're free to do anything. take drugs, have sex, disregard everyone. if that doesn't make you happy either you can still kill yourself but at least you won't sit alone in your room lamenting life.
Hmm luck is just a word that is used to describe results we haven't calculated. So if i go swimming in shart infested waters I could know that .01% (lets say) of the future me's will get their arms eaten and maybe i choose to sacrifice them in exchange for having some swimming fun for the other 99.99%.
And... I have an interesting thought that might be just total rubbish of course.....
that the odds of my continuality experiencing that .01% may actually be less than .01%....
this is to do with how multiple universes overlap and your continuality is most strongly associated with those that are most similar to the one you came from (ie since the multi universes interact anyway - that this similarity is the only thing that really holds together a time stream and prevents it being a set of individual 3D photos of the universe). ie in my 'stream' you might get eaten by a shark .01% of the time - and this may be true for me from a 3rd person perspective.. BUT in mine i will get eaten less as that would probably be a unusual and disjointing event that makes another universe closer for my 'pattern'.
I've been told this since I was a kid... You believe this based on your life experiences, not simply because you believe it to be a fact because it isn't. It makes you a more positive person and is healthier for you, I agree with that. But it changes nothing in what happens in your life.
You don't think being a happier healthier person changes what happens in your life? Of course being happy and motivated won't stop you from being hit by a meteor or something but it certainly makes a difference in your interactions with the world.
ahh.. but - what happens in your life is not THAT important - (in fact maybe it doesn't happen at all.. maybe you are just experiencing a matrix scenario or maybe via quantum mechanics it is indeterminate what the world you are experiencing is...)
the only thing you can really know is real is "your experience of what happens" and that is shaped by your attitude towards it
Yes I agree that its better for you but it won't change anything for better or worse. If BS is going to happen, its going to happen no matter how positive you are.
My attitude is shaped by my experiences not the other way around.
you and your pre-quantum mechanical approach to the universe :P~~~
That's not totally true. Quantum mechanics has in proven the opposite. It has proven that experience shape reality, not the other way around. Think about the two slots experiments with the electron existing possibly in both, but as soon as we verify where the electron pass, we force him to decide where he is. So the experiment shapes reality.
I really don't agree with Itz perception of reality this is too passive and an heavy form of victimization, but I don't think he is pre-quantum or I just didn't got your point.
are you saying itz's approach is that experience shapes reality? I thought it was that reality is depressing and thus in the end that shapes his experience. Ie that changes to his internal state (ie his 'experiment') dont matter, even changes like hydrodragon was talking about like being positive in ones relations.
That's how I perceived it. Something bad happened (experience) so life (reality) is a b*t*h. I agree with you though that past that first bad experiences it went the other way around, so you are right.
I was just trying to be picky on quantum mechanics because it's so interesting. I just finished a book on the subject and I'm looking to read a new one more recent. I'll go to my public library when I have time. Do you have suggestions?
I used to read heaps of these things but they all merge into one for me now. I take it they all say similar things its just a matter of who writes the best.
In terms of science books -0 when i was pretty young i really liked 'azimov' guige to the physical sciences" it'd be way out of date now but It covered everything and I culd read it coverto coverwithout effort.
Yeah, I was under that impression too. The last one I read dated from 1984 and was called ''Schrödinger's cat''. I saw some new one just released that I wanted to pick up at the library. It seems that nothing that new happened since then. Only new hypothesis and new particles...I used to read heaps of these things but they all merge into one for me now. I take it they all say similar things its just a matter of who writes the best.
In terms of science books -0 when i was pretty young i really liked 'azimov' guige to the physical sciences" it'd be way out of date now but It covered everything and I culd read it coverto coverwithout effort.
What are we talking about here? Are you guys arguing thoughts have mass? Quantum mechanics deals with subatomic particles. If we are talking about reality there are so many ideas about reality it is impossible to have a right answer. I like the idea of biocentrism though if we are going that route. Otherwise trying to determine how what we do affects reality is pointless since nothing we do affects reality...
I just finished watching an hour and a half show they had on Stephen Hawking and other physicists, very interesting and it delves deep into quantum mechanics and relativity, they make it incredibly easy to understand even though it is incredibly complicated. Everything I know I have pretty much just researched online and/or watched interviews.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcyhqvptlJA
Its fascinating watching these geniuses of our time work out these huge, seemingly impossible questions...
Thanks for the link, I'll definitly watch this soon!
Let me know what you think. The idea for the theory of everything just makes my brain tingleI guarantee once we figure that out 10 more questions will pop up behind it, thats just the way the universe is.
I just found this on youtube and I wanted to share lol.
"Religion is like a (male dong) (we aren't allowed to say it)....... It's ok to have one, but IT'S NOT OK TO GO AROUND SHOVING IT DOWN PEOPLES THROATS!!!! lol"
I thought that was freaking hilarious xD
I think then thre was a tendancy to have a slightly mystical interpretation of quantum mechanics and now the multiverse explanation is more dominant. I Could be mistaken of course. Ie it is less that the cat is both dead and alive and more that we arent sure which cat we are in the same universe as (in as far as that makes any sense anyway.. as we arent really in the same universe as anything until we interact)
It's the same conclusion as the book I recentrly read finishes. If I remember correctly the author still thought that he was both death and alive, but when we open the box the universe separates in two. The question between the two interpretations is, does the universe split at the beginning of the incertitude or when it is lifted (ie. when we close the box or when we open it).
I think a bit of both..
It depends on if you see your universe as being the cloud (ie the fuzzy reality that splits into concrete realities as you open the box) or the " realized universe" that you can infer from the results of the interactions. it seems to be so many of these debates come down to some sort of subtlety of definition (ie two different ways of looking at things - or sometimes a slight misunderstanding of a seemingly common sense concept)
But I also suggest that the best model is probably one that says the universe is never whole. bits of it are connected from time to time by interaction. after that interaction they automatically drift apart again. So cutting the connection (closing the box) allows the drift to begin, and opening it re anchors you with a certain "in box" reality.
That's interesting. I try not to reject idea that I can't see applied in life, but I have difficulty doing it, because so far, I've seen so many physics concept ''reuse'' by Life, that I have difficulty to not doing so with all of them.
For example, tHe idea of probabilty is used by life to allow diversity in order to maximize the survival of life in general, why would ''universe(s)'' wouldn't be allowed to do the same. THat's why I was less shocked than marveled when I first read about the non-determist approach of quantum physics.
it seems that quantum mechanics has a lot of implications for how we view the world. someone should have told me about that when i was still a scientific determinist. determinism seems to have been completely displaced by current conceptions of quantum theory.
in particular, it may support the view that humanity completely creates reality itself instead of being a passive observer of it.
it may also support relativistic views of reality. it seems to conflate what something is and what it isn't and support classical eastern religious notions of one thing being simultaneously its opposite and so on.
i always found it quite interesting that it is theorized that the rules of physics of larger matter follows logically from the rules of the quantum laws. what a mind spin!
quite exciting field. i have now 3 months of holidays so i may just find the time to read into it
yeah but my sister used to go out with a theoretical quantum physisist.. and when i tried to go into that wiht him he was like "we have moved away from that sort of interpretation of it" not that it is entirely wrong but he was highlighting that the human mind is no more special than any other set of connected things that might cause such a result.
I think it would be interesting if after we die we fall into one of the other dimensions we can't see. If string theory ends up being correct...
You will all get closer to the workings of the universe when you stop thinking about it and start experiencing it. That means no thought (opinion, therories, etc...)
Just look up at the stars and breath... see it, but don't discribe it... don't try to fiqure it out... Don't let the mind interupt you... If it does, say to yourself... "not now, I'm just looking..." Be aware of a feeling... not a thought.
Better yet, do this now... You don't have to create the circumstances... You don't need to see the universe...
You are the universe... You were never not the universe.
Sounds like you've taken more LSD than me
see below...
Last edited by johnfeddersen; 06-02-2012 at 08:13 PM.
I'll take that as a compliment... Because one seemingly cannot be in one's (right) mind and experience life in an alternative state...
However, drugs, alcohol and thrill seeking are temporary pathways to muting the mind, until you realize you can operate in consciousness without the necessity of external means...
In the past, I bored most of the forum members with this "mindlessness"... prior to 4/12.
EDIT: ...and apparently a Forum Discussion Killer as well...
Last edited by johnfeddersen; 06-04-2012 at 06:10 PM.
it's always exciting to wait for the next day in order to find out how many people obama will then kill in pakistan without sentencing and how many civilians will be collateral damage.
it's also a wonderful feeling waking up to find out that germany will donate another three war submarines to israel which will then there be armed with nuclear weapons in defense of the grave military danger of palestine.
we're quite fortunate not being the towelheads!
Show,
You got the ball rolling again! For me, no comment though...
Perhaps you should go to Palestine and help them out?
like how? throwing stones at israeli tanks?
perhaps the west should stop arming israel and enslave the arab population. if "fairness" were an honest wish of the west the conflict wouldn't exist.
Peaceful protest, if they start doing what Gandhi did many of the problems would be solved...
They could try just not caring so much about things like who's elite will rule over exactly what sections of dirt.
Or both sides could just sit there smugly talking to eachother about how the other side is going to have a reall sh*tty afterlife. Maybe the more charitable ones can observe that eternal damnation is really a million times worse than even they deserve and so they really deserve a little pitty.
they protest peacefully oftentimes. i agree that if they would never under any circumstances turn to violence and consistently protest the problem would be solved gradually. that's barely humanely possible, though, when faced with such great injustice and when you're sometimes shot at and so on when protesting peacefully.
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