Atla wrote: ↑Sat May 10, 2025 9:54 am
Darkneos wrote: ↑Sat May 10, 2025 8:24 am
Atla wrote: ↑Sat May 10, 2025 6:17 am
As usual I blame Kant. On the most fundamental level, solipsism can't be disproven, but nor can anything else ever be fully disproven. There is always some inherent uncertainty.
But aside from the inherent uncertainty in everything, when we look at what we CAN know, solipsism seems almost certainly bollocks. So I assign probabilities to things, how likely they are to be true.
Solipsism for me goes in the <5% category, along with other random stuff we have absolutely no evidence for, like brain in a vat, simulated universe, an evil demon deceiving me etc. And then I just forget about the <5% category.
I just exclude things from my thinking that we have absolutely no evidence for, like solipsism. There can be an infinite amount of random ideas that we have absolutely no evidence for.
That's...actually a pretty healthy way of looking at stuff like that. I know every now and then people try to throw something like that at me and I get two feelings. One is just "whatevs" and I roll my eyes, the other is...well fear and paranoia.
Maybe it's a self esteem/confidence problem, I hang on everyone else's every word because I think they know better, know something I don't, have a secret to reality that upends everything I know, some hidden truth, etc. You get what I mean?
I remember staying up all night in elementary school because some kid convinced me that Death was gonna come for me and that he was gonna try to stop it. I guess...I never really matured past that.
Though, and I'm really sorry about this (I can't stop my brain from going there), when it comes to ideas with no evidence for my mind goes back to the stuff at the top in my original post. Stuff about the self gets me because then I'm not sure how to treat people (just to give one example). And then there is the external reality and other people existing or not...(not saying I think other people don't exist or that there isn't an external reality, but the old wounds of solipsism haven't healed...)
And what the dude said about planes and people. I think what he meant is that anything beyond the standard model is just the "mind projection fallacy" (which I don't think is a real fallacy) and not the territory. He likes to throw around the map not being the territory and he applies that to stuff like planes and people, etc (because they're just patterns of atoms and not independently existing things, but that sounds...wonky to me, like REALLY managed form of Buddhism or something, even process philosophy put it better).
And it goes back to what you said about the dimensions and stuff, that's still gnawing in my mind. I know you said it doesn't matter and to forget about it but...I can't. Is that really true or is it just a personal stance?
Nah you already know more than most people, that's why they have simple confident answers - they don't even know about most of the stuff that's bothering you, many of them couldn't even grasp it even if they tried.
The dimensions stuff is of course just my favourite QM philosophical interpretation, it's Occam razor-friendly. Literally no one (including Nobel prize winners in physics) knows what the correct full interpretation of QM is. And it's quite possible that we will never know. So people come up with dozens, hundreds, thousands of different interpretations. This real/unreal business is just another interpretation.
My advice would be to learn to block out stuff we have no evidence for. Sometimes it helps to write out these things on paper using a pen or something, to help the hemispheres communicate with each other.
I appreciate the vote of confidence but I fear you are overestimating my ability here. I have HEARD of a lot of things and read a bunch of different stuff people have said, but as for understanding it...I have no idea. In all honestly...I don't even know why I'm reading most of what I read. It's rooted in insecurity, not curiosity.
I feel like I would be lesser for not knowing any of this stuff, but the weird thing is that even after reading everything I've read I can't really say it made much difference in my life. Like...nothing really changed (apart from my poor mental state) but I still have to eat, work, etc, all that stuff, so what was it all for? More to the point...what is the end goal of such a pursuit?
A thought came into my head, when I was in paranoia about being wrong, about this. I was so obsessed with being right and "living in the truth" and all that but then I thought "and what will do you once you have the truth"? And I had no answer. I was like the dog who caught the car and had no idea what to do next. I am so obsessed, so fixated on "being right" that there is no room for anything else in my life, it's a poison that's slowly killing me.
If you've seen Vinland Saga you'd understand (I won't spoil) but suffice to say it hit me hard for that reason.
It's even worse because I view getting help and getting better as choosing to live in ignorance with the masses, probably because that's the idea I grew up with. Getting help with mental health was seen as weakness or not being able to live in reality and having to choose ignorance. But...recently I'm seeing that makes no sense, equating wisdom and knowledge with pain. But yeah...I need serious help because I've got some pretty big issues mucking my head up, and now I'm wondering if it's the topics...
I think...I might check into a hospital, I can't keep going like this anymore, breaking down at the sight of every new thing I read.
Hearing you say that about the dimensions bit does help, and you might be right...we may never know. Not that I understood any of it when I read it. I tried to understand quantum physics and all of it flew over my head, then again regular physics did too when I was in college, embarrassingly. But hearing it's a personal take, one of many, does help me move on. Though yeah...I don't know anything to make a call about it either way. I just hope I can let it go.
Though...I can still feel it gnawing at the back of my mind, along with the time stuff we talked about in that thread (I also didn't really understand it but it scared me a lot).
And I get that forgetting about stuff that we have no evidence for it good advice, but in my mind I might start twisting that to negate the things I like. Like if someone says they love me, or whether other people have feelings and are being honest, etc. It's sound advice, but I have a habit of twisting such things into a noose to hang myself with.
Or rather, if something isn't clear and direct then I assume the worst unless someone explicitly tells me it's NOT bad or doesn't mean the worst, things like that.
I guess...my main goal in life is just a life of peace and prosperity (not getting rich but enough to do what I would like to), keep it simple. Maybe Buddhism had some merit to it, I mean...Buddha never commented on metaphysics because it didn't matter nor much else besides just living, and I respect that.
Yeah...just living well and a life I like is my ultimate goal, not knowing "universal truth" or something like that. Well...that's my hope anyway.
(Just popped into my head from 'The Sounds of Silence')