How to deal (in terms of life)

[Perspective]

….
4. Social constructs. The worry that all the meaningful things in my life that helped me and lifted me up and moved me were little more than some fantasy I was living out and not reality itself. It's...hard trying to reckon with that.

5. Feeling like I've been living a lie this whole time due to the above, and that to be happy in life is to lie to yourself about meaning, friends, hobbies, all that stuff.

... I want to cry but I'm afraid if I do something will snap and I'll never be stable again, that it would be the end.

…It feels like all the hope and magic of life is just gone...and it almost makes me cry...if I could. I just...can't deal with anything...it feels like my life eroded over time and there's nothing left...and nothing to look forward to...

I can relate, especially about the last paragraph. But for me it’s more about too much betrayal.

What stood out to me most was you not letting yourself cry. Crying is an important release valve - so please set up circumstances in which you can cry & let it out. You won’t snap but will release a lot of pent up e-motions that needs to be released.

#4 & 5: True that all cannot help but be subjectively experienced. But that doesn’t mean it’s living a lie. We are all players, playing with various parts. “Functional illusions are priceless.” If an idea works for you & others now & in the future - then it has REAL & healthy influence.

I wish I could give you a hug. So stretch out your arms & wrap them around yourself. Actually EMDR may have some benefit. I hope the best for you.

[Atla]

But the way physics really works, as far as we can tell, is that there is only the most basic level—the elementary particle fields and fundamental forces. You can't handle the raw truth, but reality can handle it without the slightest simplification. (I wish I knew where Reality got its computing power.)

Who is this "we"? The above is bollocks, there are no "levels" to reality. This so-called most basic level is just our latest best model of reality. Those who speak of only one fundamental level, are already imagining a level that isn't there, there is only reality.
This kind of reductionist philosophy is more like a self-sustaining illusion, a thinking error.

[Darkneos]

But the way physics really works, as far as we can tell, is that there is only the most basic level—the elementary particle fields and fundamental forces. You can't handle the raw truth, but reality can handle it without the slightest simplification. (I wish I knew where Reality got its computing power.)

Who is this "we"? The above is bollocks, there are no "levels" to reality. This so-called most basic level is just our latest best model of reality. Those who speak of only one fundamental level, are already imagining a level that isn't there, there is only reality.
This kind of reductionist philosophy is more like a self-sustaining illusion, a thinking error.

Just reality? That seems to make sense. Though it is from Lesswrong so take it with a grain of salt. The dude thinks the real crisis for today is to stop some AI overlord from enslaving us all, and he believe in cryonics (despite all the evidence showing it doesn't work).

I tried reading his original post there and others on the site but part of me feels like the logic doesn't really track very well.

But I did mention that he takes that and then goes on to make the case that people and things aren't real because they're just models to simplify things:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cphoF8n ... ining-away

Even though he tries to make the case that's not what he's saying (even though the comments suggest otherwise from what I've read). I know you mentioned that people and things are real and exist and all that, but he's suggesting "no", at least from what I read.

[Darkneos]

….
4. Social constructs. The worry that all the meaningful things in my life that helped me and lifted me up and moved me were little more than some fantasy I was living out and not reality itself. It's...hard trying to reckon with that.

5. Feeling like I've been living a lie this whole time due to the above, and that to be happy in life is to lie to yourself about meaning, friends, hobbies, all that stuff.

... I want to cry but I'm afraid if I do something will snap and I'll never be stable again, that it would be the end.

…It feels like all the hope and magic of life is just gone...and it almost makes me cry...if I could. I just...can't deal with anything...it feels like my life eroded over time and there's nothing left...and nothing to look forward to...

I can relate, especially about the last paragraph. But for me it’s more about too much betrayal.

What stood out to me most was you not letting yourself cry. Crying is an important release valve - so please set up circumstances in which you can cry & let it out. You won’t snap but will release a lot of pent up e-motions that needs to be released.

#4 & 5: True that all cannot help but be subjectively experienced. But that doesn’t mean it’s living a lie. We are all players, playing with various parts. “Functional illusions are priceless.” If an idea works for you & others now & in the future - then it has REAL & healthy influence.

I wish I could give you a hug. So stretch out your arms & wrap them around yourself. Actually EMDR may have some benefit. I hope the best for you.

Well even just hearing that it's an illusion makes it feel like living a lie. Your comment about "functional illusions" did more harm than good.

[Flannel Jesus]

Yeah, like I said, some people interpret it to be "explaining away". Others merely explaining.

I, for one, am in the explaining camp. It's a strange middle ground that gets ire from both sides - the elimitavist reductionists and the anti reductionists. But that's okay.

[Atla]

But the way physics really works, as far as we can tell, is that there is only the most basic level—the elementary particle fields and fundamental forces. You can't handle the raw truth, but reality can handle it without the slightest simplification. (I wish I knew where Reality got its computing power.)

Who is this "we"? The above is bollocks, there are no "levels" to reality. This so-called most basic level is just our latest best model of reality. Those who speak of only one fundamental level, are already imagining a level that isn't there, there is only reality.
This kind of reductionist philosophy is more like a self-sustaining illusion, a thinking error.

Just reality? That seems to make sense. Though it is from Lesswrong so take it with a grain of salt. The dude thinks the real crisis for today is to stop some AI overlord from enslaving us all, and he believe in cryonics (despite all the evidence showing it doesn't work).

I tried reading his original post there and others on the site but part of me feels like the logic doesn't really track very well.

But I did mention that he takes that and then goes on to make the case that people and things aren't real because they're just models to simplify things:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cphoF8n ... ining-away

Even though he tries to make the case that's not what he's saying (even though the comments suggest otherwise from what I've read). I know you mentioned that people and things are real and exist and all that, but he's suggesting "no", at least from what I read.

Looks like he doesn't understand that if humans and things are non-real models, then elementary interactions and quantum fields and quarks etc. are equally non-real models. The latter don't get special treatment. And so the logical conclusion of this nonsensical philosophy is that nothing exists, not even this sentence exists. And yet the sentence is clearly there, just like the world is clearly there.

[Darkneos]

Who is this "we"? The above is bollocks, there are no "levels" to reality. This so-called most basic level is just our latest best model of reality. Those who speak of only one fundamental level, are already imagining a level that isn't there, there is only reality.
This kind of reductionist philosophy is more like a self-sustaining illusion, a thinking error.

Just reality? That seems to make sense. Though it is from Lesswrong so take it with a grain of salt. The dude thinks the real crisis for today is to stop some AI overlord from enslaving us all, and he believe in cryonics (despite all the evidence showing it doesn't work).

I tried reading his original post there and others on the site but part of me feels like the logic doesn't really track very well.

But I did mention that he takes that and then goes on to make the case that people and things aren't real because they're just models to simplify things:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cphoF8n ... ining-away

Even though he tries to make the case that's not what he's saying (even though the comments suggest otherwise from what I've read). I know you mentioned that people and things are real and exist and all that, but he's suggesting "no", at least from what I read.

Looks like he doesn't understand that if humans and things are non-real models, then elementary interactions and quantum fields and quarks etc. are equally non-real models. The latter don't get special treatment. And so the logical conclusion of this nonsensical philosophy is that nothing exists, not even this sentence exists. And yet the sentence is clearly there, just like the world is clearly there.

I mean...the idea he's championing is "rationalism", which is about training yourself to be "more rational and optimal", though in my experience people who talk like end up becoming the opposite and their logic ends up taking some really weird turns.

But that was my first thought when I read that. Someone else also told me that "what it really is" is just another model, another story. So if you want to decry something for just being a model and "not real" you'd have to apply that for literally everything that we do.

It's why I sorta rolled my eyes reading this: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/p3TndjYbdYa ... mwnF7SBwkM

The rest of the sequences don't seem much better:

https://www.lesswrong.com/rationality#wAXodw6LPScjrdnkR

He often say how the "map is not the territory" but when it comes to what he's talking about isn't it...all maps?

[Darkneos]

Yeah, like I said, some people interpret it to be "explaining away". Others merely explaining.

I, for one, am in the explaining camp. It's a strange middle ground that gets ire from both sides - the elimitavist reductionists and the anti reductionists. But that's okay.

You say that but what you're doing is more the explaining away like he is, hence suggesting all that stuff doesn't exist by extension of what you are saying.

[Atla]

He often say how the "map is not the territory" but when it comes to what he's talking about isn't it...all maps?

We can't get outside of our own minds and see the external territory directly. That sounds like direct realism deep down, the position that "rational", "lesswrong" people no longer take imo.

Direct realism is dead, rather the remaining debate is between indirect realism (we experience a representation in our head, that lets us infer what the territory is like to some degree, but technically things like quarks and quantum fields are also just representations in our head), and that horrific Kantian philosophy (we can't infer anything at all about the territory, so we just have to guess that there are other minds and they work the same way as ours). I subscribe to indirect realism of course which is also the scientific position, but philosophy forums are home to many Kantians.

Map vs territory is also used for contrasting two or more levels of thinking in our head: the concrete perception of the world and abstract thinking about that perception, there can be one or more abstraction layers.

[Flannel Jesus]

Yeah, like I said, some people interpret it to be "explaining away". Others merely explaining.

I, for one, am in the explaining camp. It's a strange middle ground that gets ire from both sides - the elimitavist reductionists and the anti reductionists. But that's okay.

You say that but what you're doing is more the explaining away like he is, hence suggesting all that stuff doesn't exist by extension of what you are saying.

What I'm doing is explaining away? Show me one single post where I've done that

[Flannel Jesus]

If reduction is always "explaining away", then surely anyone who understands how a car works would think that cars don't exist.

Cars clearly aren't fundamental objects. They work by the interaction of many moving pieces. There are people out there - not me! - who understand how all those moving pieces work together to make the car go when you press the gas pedal.

Those people fully understand how to "reduce" a car into its component parts, and they all still think cars exist.

So reducing something big into the behaviour of its pieces isn't an argument that that big thing "doesn't exist". Something doesn't have to be fundamental to exist.

[Darkneos]

He often say how the "map is not the territory" but when it comes to what he's talking about isn't it...all maps?

We can't get outside of our own minds and see the external territory directly. That sounds like direct realism deep down, the position that "rational", "lesswrong" people no longer take imo.

Direct realism is dead, rather the remaining debate is between indirect realism (we experience a representation in our head, that lets us infer what the territory is like to some degree, but technically things like quarks and quantum fields are also just representations in our head), and that horrific Kantian philosophy (we can't infer anything at all about the territory, so we just have to guess that there are other minds and they work the same way as ours). I subscribe to indirect realism of course which is also the scientific position, but philosophy forums are home to many Kantians.

Map vs territory is also used for contrasting two or more levels of thinking in our head: the concrete perception of the world and abstract thinking about that perception, there can be one or more abstraction layers.

Well that was something else I thought of too. We don't directly experience reality, so talking about what it "really is" is just another story.

I dunno, I'm still kinda wonky from it. I'm trying to find a way to resolve it because I keep regarding people as not people.

[Atla]

He often say how the "map is not the territory" but when it comes to what he's talking about isn't it...all maps?

We can't get outside of our own minds and see the external territory directly. That sounds like direct realism deep down, the position that "rational", "lesswrong" people no longer take imo.

Direct realism is dead, rather the remaining debate is between indirect realism (we experience a representation in our head, that lets us infer what the territory is like to some degree, but technically things like quarks and quantum fields are also just representations in our head), and that horrific Kantian philosophy (we can't infer anything at all about the territory, so we just have to guess that there are other minds and they work the same way as ours). I subscribe to indirect realism of course which is also the scientific position, but philosophy forums are home to many Kantians.

Map vs territory is also used for contrasting two or more levels of thinking in our head: the concrete perception of the world and abstract thinking about that perception, there can be one or more abstraction layers.

Well that was something else I thought of too. We don't directly experience reality, so talking about what it "really is" is just another story.

I dunno, I'm still kinda wonky from it. I'm trying to find a way to resolve it because I keep regarding people as not people.

Well we do directly experience a part of reality, the representation in our head. It's not that people aren't people, but that there is the noumenal person "out there" and the representation "in here" that we experience. So there are actually two.

And in evedyday life we can forget about all this stuff and just go back to living life as direct realists. So people are people. It's the optimal philosophy imo. I just drop most of these insights most of the time. No one in my workplace for example has any idea that I'm into philosophy.

[Darkneos]

If reduction is always "explaining away", then surely anyone who understands how a car works would think that cars don't exist.

Cars clearly aren't fundamental objects. They work by the interaction of many moving pieces. There are people out there - not me! - who understand how all those moving pieces work together to make the car go when you press the gas pedal.

Those people fully understand how to "reduce" a car into its component parts, and they all still think cars exist.

So reducing something big into the behaviour of its pieces isn't an argument that that big thing "doesn't exist". Something doesn't have to be fundamental to exist.

That's what reduction is, explaining away, which is what he is doing.

IT's also why people in the comments are talking about bias when someone wants a person to exist and how that idea is the "mind projection fallacy".

To him there is no car, there is only the collection of elementary particles.

Reducing it to the behavior of the pieces is saying that doesn't exist, because it's just the pieces that exist, not the thing itself. Hence his comment about there not being additional independent entities like planes or wings.

[Flannel Jesus]

If reduction is always "explaining away", then surely anyone who understands how a car works would think that cars don't exist.

Cars clearly aren't fundamental objects. They work by the interaction of many moving pieces. There are people out there - not me! - who understand how all those moving pieces work together to make the car go when you press the gas pedal.

Those people fully understand how to "reduce" a car into its component parts, and they all still think cars exist.

So reducing something big into the behaviour of its pieces isn't an argument that that big thing "doesn't exist". Something doesn't have to be fundamental to exist.

That's what reduction is, explaining away, which is what he is doing.

Then why does the writer in question go through all that effort to distinguish between explaining vs explaining away? It seems like you're projecting your own understandings onto him