Source?

You missed my point entirely, there is no judgement but your own. You view your life and you see both the good and bad you have done. There is no score, only the realization that you could have done better or worse. The people who experience this, express it more as a learning experience than a judgement. You express disdain for amoebas and trees without knowing a single thing about their experience as beings. It is arrogant to determine because those two examples aren't like us that they could not have a conscious life.

I find it curious that you see it this way. There was a study done a few years ago on what makes a creative individual.. creative. They found that it was not intelligence, nor brain size that mattered, but the ability to make absolutely random connections in the brain, seemingly unnecessary connections. In that way, creative people would be able to come up with the most absurd ideas, but not necessarily have the ability to judge the viability of them. Maybe be need both, some people who are 'open' and others who are 'closed'.

Ana-banana WHO?

It's not wrong to go astray, but to go astray and not reflect upon it would lead to repeated actions. There are many who are of the belief that practice makes perfect, I am of the belief that practice makes permanent. And so, if you repeatedly go astray you'll make a habit of it, instead of doing the right thing from the start. In the first place, these are all our perceptions, there is nothing which is right and wrong. So in an absolute nihilistic way of thinking we need to search within us to find what is right for you. In a human with proper upbringing this is often correlated with things which we view as positive values.

'The universe itself want us to explore it' was meant in a poetic and exploratory way. In a more factual way I would say 'We are the universe exploring itself, therefore the universe want to explore itself, because we are part of the universe' If that were not true we would not have the urge of curiosity and exploration, novelty. I am fully aware that we developed this through evolution, and i argue that it is not we as a species who have evolved, but the universe who evolved into a more advanced phase.

I thought parents were by and large the greatest offenders when it came to child sexual assault and abuse not teachers.

I mean, we would have used the simpler model because it would be more useful, but if in the fullness of time space telescopes had allowed us to see that the geocentric model was correct, we would have still called it true. That is, you have cherry picked an example where Occam's Razor correctly pointed us to the truth, but that doesn't prove much.

My point is that we could have made an overly complex theory that perfectly models our solar system geocentrically. In the extreme case, imagine we used a neural net fed with geocentric images—this model could have millions of parameters and perform predictions perfectly. However we wouldn't call this model true because it's not simple. The truth is always at the edge of what is unfalsified and what is simplest, by convention

I think religious people probably do adhere to genuine beliefs and resist temptation more reliably than the general population, but it's easier to perceive the opposite because:

1. Those circumstances stand out more because the stark hypocrisy highlights the case as more significant. Teachers are one of the most likely demographic to commit sexual assault on a child, yet when a priest does it, even if it happens only a handful of times, it stands out as far more significant, even if it's less representative. (and every instance is an abominable tragedy)
2. While genuine belief confers stronger resistance to temptation, religious prevelence creates other cultural impacts that create incentives for those with disengeuous belief. If a republican candidate can make career strides by advocating traditional marriage and sexuality, then why not appeal to a Christian voter base while getting some action at the gay bar on the side?

Im also not talking about your personal observation. All of us come from the same species so of course our brains will decode reality almost the same and we will all agree. For a truly unbiased perspective, you would need a different entity. As a colorful example think of the movie Arrival if you have seen it.

That something works, just means it works. There is nothing more to conclude. Just like when a mouse pushes a lever and someone always gives it a piece of cheese after doing so

As i said, the mysticism comes from admitting thai it would be a huge coincidence if humans have access to fundamental truths just based on their limited reason and logic. We already know that there are truths that presumably escape your pets, so why assume it ends with us. That is what i mean in saying that humans are either special or they aren't; we cant just put ourselves on a pedestal of knowledge and at the same time claim we are just another animal

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

>it's important to use critical thinking so that you are not led astray.

That is a closing move, though. Or can be. We need to better explore what openness does before we set up a watch over it.

A frictionless, permeable barrier would be madness. But movement with some level of surface coherence would, due to the openness introduced by the movement, naturally increase coherence or mitigate fragmentation. Again, paradoxically.

Imagine a surface with a number X of connections and/or connectors. These connections are with the surface itself (endogenic, reflection, or preoccupation I suppose too) and adventitious (exogenic, external). By movement [in the external] the potential connections multiply in proportion to how one (the surface) moves.

But, one can move the surface too fast to enable this virtuous tempo.

Additionally, there are many ways to move the surface. Many people find reading to be a mode by which connections are made bountiful. Others do not. Some find travel nourishing. But again, at a virtuous tempo.

EDIT: what the tempo is, is not universal, certainly. When and how to rest the surface -- to sleep -- varies in its meaning and operation in human societies, for example. I would expect a lot of variation, even at the individual level. Thank goodness for language. It gives us some semblance of a common timeline of "what's happening."

Problem solved if you are s philosophical zombie: -Reverend Nagasena, what is the difference between the lustful man and the man free from lusts?

• My King, the man free of lusts experiences the taste only of the food. The lustful man experiences both the taste and the pleasure of the food.

To me, I find it convincing that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter. Matter is ‘aware’ on some primitive level of other matter, and interacts with it in such a way. You could also say that the universe interacts with itself in such a way. I believe evolution has harnessed this universal ‘awareness’ through the brain/nervous system, creating an ego. The ego ties all of our matter to a singular conscious entity (ourselves) for the purpose of understanding our body’s relationship with its environment (to sustain its life). When we remove the ego to a degree with the use of psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, DMT), people are said to experience a more fragmented, universal form of consciousness which transcends the human body. I really do see the weight in panpsychism, but I admit my excitement could very well be influenced by an underlying fear of/inability to properly grasp death. The conscious becoming unconscious seems more and more absurd the more I ponder it.

Occam's Razor says only that simpler explanations are to be preferred to more complex ones, because complexity often arises from people using motivated reasoning to plug holes in their pet theory rather than admitting that it is probably wrong. But it's not some law of nature that the simplest explanation is always right. We say the planets revolve around the sun because they do, and Occam's Razor pointed towards that, but special relativity is more complex than Newtonian physics, creationism is simpler than evolution, etc.

I'm not talking about my observations. Of course my personal observations are subject to bias. That's why empiricisms foundation is producing repeatable, testable, independent observations.

Although many things are not observed yet, because we lack the instrumentation capable of doing so, that does not negate that which we have already observed. Planes fly. Computers function. Medicines work. Chemical engineering is possible. The nuclear bomb works. And on, and on and on. Every single invention we have is the result of repeated, independent empirical observations. You can't just say maybe everything we know about chemistry or biology, or nuclear physics is incorrect, but by coincidence, everything will build with that knowledge, works. I mean, you can, but at that point you're just rejecting any common reality. Which is fine. maybe you are plugged into a simulation, and everything is an illusion. But, if that's the case, why bother with all the mysticism and god of the gaps, and just say that.

he cited some studies on it. Typically people look at the past 10 years and recognize all the ways they changed, but cannot extrapolate that into how they will continue to change in the future. It's an identity thing, like "this is who I am, of course I won't change"

It sucks that this is the study used to prop up the opinion. That study is so shit.

Interesting idea, anyway.

Ive met so many people who grew up poor and got into insane debt even with high income jobs.

Take the same jobs, but a person who grew up wealthy, no debt.

Theres definitely something to it either in terms of availability or resources, peer group, or something else.

Well typically I refer to the labels given by the dictionary. No sense in using anything else. The real question is what you're using?

Not at all! They jive together very well

I rarely do this because its a little gross, but judging by your comment history, you've been making comments on reddit for a few hours straight. Is that not giving into a temptation?

What I'm getting at is, what are you labeling as a temptation? Maybe I should read the article.

You mention verification — verification of empirical statements actually isn't possible! Because of problems with induction explored by Hume, Popper, etc where induction on empirical statements uses circular logic.

This is why science deals only with falsification!

That's kind of getting at my thesis: in science, nothing is ever really there. All we have is the ability to falsify statements given some basic statements we make given sensory information.

There are a vast number of statements we can make that would be unfalsified by sense statements: what we call true are the theories and models that have highest potential for falsification. Because of some set theory assumptions I make in the article, the models with the highest potential for falsification are the simplest ones! (Out of a set of as-yet unfalsified theories)