I was watching a TikTok video by XerofoX that goes into a theory where one will live each life from different perspective before reach God status.

He says it is based on the Egg Theory which is based on Andy Weir’s book The Egg Theory.

Is he right, or is there an actual philosophy behind the idea?

cognitive science - are we doing it right?

has anyone ever looked into how cognitive science is being approached? are we sure we even have the right/complete perspective to come to conclusions? are we sure the people studying it and influencing future tech are approaching it form the right end?

Observation/conclusion are key words here because really cognition is ultimately being used to derive these, so could it be that these experiments are biased/flawed to begin with?

Hi! I want to read more cultural critical analysis by smart, reasonable, and logical thinkers. Can anyone here recommend philosophers/thinkers who fall into this category? It would help if they were accessible (not too difficult to read). Some writers I’ve been recommended before when I asked this question were Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson. I tried reading In Defense of Lost Causes by Zizek, but it was a little dry and I had a hard time getting through it. If you have any specific works, that’d be helpful, too.

Determinism and nihilism

A few years ago in the midst of an existential crisis I had a little epiphany and did some googlin’. I soon realized that in my naïve depressive pondering I had accidentally discovered determinism. I’ve since been in a constant nihilistic state and it’s been detrimental to my existence.

Has anyone else experienced this philosophical conundrum and pulled themselves out of it? I’ve talked to therapists but none of them have has the slightest understanding of what I’m talking about.

If everyone lies about an event….

I have been thinking about this for awhile and asking other people about it but no one wants to entertain my thoughts so I thought I would post it here. This I think is quite similar to the ‘if a tree falls’ philosophical problem. But here goes: When an event happens everyone recounts the story to relatives and friends in a slightly altered way. They may slightly exaggerate or under exaggerate certain parts of the story to fit a narrative or fit a perception they want other people to have of them.

For example: Two people in a car park have a minor fender bender. They both are pretty calm and exchange insurance details. But when each person goes back home and tells relatives or friends in the future they will slowly adapt and change the story over time whether intentionally or not…

I hope at this point you understand where I’m going with this.

If everyone’s account of the story is slightly changed did the original version of the story ever really happen?

And a follow-on question that is slightly easier to pick one side of is, if you lie about a dream you had last night it is technically no more true or false then what your dream actually was seen as all of it happened in your head?

The philosophy of being completely free -in both mind and body- I believe that the first step to such freedom is honesty.

It is quite apparent that the majority of humans living today are not free.  

They are more or less slaves, chasing after their thoughts. Society has conditioned their minds from a young age; their reality becomes set under something not made to aid their true nature, creating an ill mindset that tortures them daily, 24 hours a day.  

If one stops pretending, one can truly see that we know nothing. We have a collective and complete amnesia about everything.  

Our bodies know. We know. Jet, Why can't we remember?  

A thousand years ago, an individual had more freedom than a person living in today's society.  

We live in an enormous body structured like an ant's nest.  

Everything that is different will be viewed as abnormal. This affects a person's ability to be themselves.  

Back in the day, one could simply walk out of his village and live his life as someone completely different. His tribe doesn't reach the entire globe.  

There was no Internet for minds to intertwine.  

But since we live here, in the now,  

We must find a away to be.  

My philosophy of being truly free starts off by being completely honest.  

Honesty is a fundamental factor for trueness to spread.  

"What is real will prosper."  

The truth is a compass that guides us to itself.  

Now, understand that freedom is of great value, much more valuable than all the gold and silver in the world.   

And freedom requires strength. not physical strength but mental strength.  

The ability to walk away from the crowd and start one's own path becomes a key factor.  

That is why I love the misfits and the outcasts. Those who do not belong to society, jet remain pure in their truth.  

Sometimes I see God's intentions. It is a blessing to be born with the ability to think for oneself.  

A man one day awakens and looks around; the only thing he sees is that everyone else is still asleep.  

There is an unimaginable amount of effort involved in swimming against the flow of the crowd. And at the same time, it is one of the easiest things to do, like being honest.  

These things are just what they are, so all it takes for them to be is to just be. as simple as that.  

One needs to know oneself. Recognize the way one thinks. Question why he thinks the way he does and why he moves the way he does—everything comes together in one single unit.  

I heard that love is a mathematical principle. The digit 1 contains all other numbers. If 0 is a representation of nothingness,  

How can there ever be anything except that nothing is not simply no-thing but rather a thing that will become something.  

1 contains 2 just like they both are contained in 3.  

2 is just 1 split into two. and three, the one containing 1 and 2.  

2 can be one, 1 can be two, and both together will always be three. And when they all collapse into one, only one mass of energy is left.  

So everything comes back to oneself. And I am always left with the question, while being conscious, what consciousness is. Who am I? What am I?  

Why am I here?   I breathe. I think. I feel. I am just being me. existing as one. asking and searching.  

There is so much more.  

And my philosophy for all this is honesty, because it brings everything right back to oneself. It is simply what it is.  

The truth is simply what it is. Like water, it is clear and see-through. The words written all over the place creating our form and detailing the information.   Honesty is the key to freedom.      

Anyone read The Religion of Socrates by Mark Mcpherran?

Humans are naturally amoral. There is no such thing as objective morality, which is why everyone struggles to be moral.

Morality is a contrived set of standards that is meant to suppress human nature in order to get humans to be civilized; civilizations cannot function when their citizens are amoral. Hence, morality is pragmatism rather than a natural set of standards.

The damage that so-called immoral behavior causes to humans is ultimately caused by civilization itself.

For example, if there were no civilization, then there'd be no visual media and therefore no pornography; hence, one wouldn't have to struggle with porn addiction and suffer the mental health effects of it.

Another example is gluttony. In a natural environment rather than a civilized one, food is not abundant and is not readily available; hence, there is no opportunity to be gluttonous.

Morality is nothing more than a means of countering the negative effects that civilizations induce in humans.

Civilizations create an overabundance of opportunities, which is unnatural and which no species is naturally equipped to handle. Nature does not do this; nature's limitations induce balance in the species that live within it.

This logic applies to medicine as well. People who would not survive in a natural environment are able to survive in civilizations due to medicine, whether that be surgical procedures or prescription medication. The irony of this is that such people are subsequently able to reproduce, thereby creating subsequent generations of people who are dependent on medicine. Hence, civilizations then have to come up with means of supporting the increasingly burdensome need of medicine, such as publicly funded medical insurance or at least affordable medical insurance - which is a major political issue.

consumerism and the collapse of authenticity

Identity, as per existentialism, must follow existence and must thus be causally posterior to exposure to an empirical world. The identity itself is constructed reflexively in response to the material realm.

Impoverish the material realm, and you equally Impoverish the repository from whence identity is constructed. Homogenisation equals such impoverishment. So, totally administering the empirical life world must lead, causally, to a commensurate administration of identity formation. People become the same intellectually.

The loss of epistemic distance between people also marks the loss of conditions conducive to sustained dialogue. For dialogue, to survive, requires difference and asymptotic vascilation (similar to socratic inquiry).

The resultant collapse of epistemic distance positions people so closely together that the distance required for meaningful debate, and by extension true relation, is lost and people become alienated from each other.

The consumer industry totally administers the empirical life world. Authenticity, thusly, is lost...

I have a couple of questions that I would like to be debated about.

* Why is assisted/suicide due to mental illness still not accepted and illegal?

I know that there are countries (famously Switzerland (*1)) in which assisted suicide is legal, but a person that wants to make use of such services must meet a series of strict conditions (*2). In particular, among others, this person must suffer from an unrecoverable or highly disabling physical impairment or must be just old enough. It follows and is even explicitly stated that assisted suicide can't be offered to people with mental disorders.

I would like to understand the reason for such a broad exclusion. I know that a person can potentially recover from a mental condition and eventually achieve a fulfilling life. But, as far as I see it, as there are physical conditions for which there is no known cure, something similar might be said for mental illness.

I want to state a few reasons: sometimes (*3) a person doesn't fully recover from mental disorders. sometimes (or in some places) there isn't enough medical expertise to cure a illness that would be otherwise treatable. sometimes people are just broken beyond repair. sometimes a person just doesn't have the resources to obtain appropriate treatment.

And I'm noticing that these four reasons can be equivalently applied to physical conditions too.

Footnotes:

(*1) In my country (Italy) assited suicide is illegal and we happened to have a few cases of people going to Switzerland for the service. Marco Cappato helped people travel to the clinic and subsequently challenged the Italian law by self-reporting for some specific crimes which such law mentions.

(*2) This might be a whole other topic, but I always wondered how ethics and laws choose thresholds for various classifications.

(*3) I just use "sometimes" because I didn't research any known precise statistics.

* How is civilization dealing with the flaws of the legal system?

There have been many cases of people unjustly sentenced to prison or even with death penalty. It's clear to me that often there can't be a total certainty that the defendant was really responsible for the crime. Conversely sometimes it's obvious that the defendent is guilty, but by a glitch of the law it happens to be walking free.

Watched a fantastic 8 minute video essay about Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It posed the question of what if you interpret it as the opposite of its accepted interpretation and it is actually Adam creating god? It really made me stop and think and is honestly a great video essay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPk0Gng2oTM

What did the ancients say about dreams? (Other than Aristotle)

In your opinion what philosopher had the best description/definition of justice?

Hey yall, its Chester here,

Now I spent plenty a long years now sitting back thinking bout the simple things in life, like how to mend a fence line, or what to make myself for breakfast, but as I been getting on in my life I been startin to considering some notions of a more philosophical nature. I've always just sorta considered those things to be irrelevant, mainly cuz typically a man oughta just keep his mind upon and tend to his business and get it done, just like his woman oughta keep to hers. That being said though, a few weeks past I went ahead over to the local school library to browse, and I stumbled upon their old dusty books in the philosophy section.

Now, first thing I began to realize as I leaf through pages of this book about a fellar named Socrates, is that there sure seem to be the same sorta people back then as there are now. One thing I noticed was that folk Socrates spoke to seem to have a way with words that makes the words themselves seem to just get in the way, and whatever they're saying seems to make sense for minute, but it don't tend to hold up. Like, he kept discovering that these people with whom he was interlocucating with were plumb unaware of the fact that they ignorant about what they thought they knew all about. Furthermore, these folk were accusing him of weaving a web of words to work a way out in which they was wrong, but tehy actually was wrong, and the pussies end up running away each time to prove it I thought.

And hell, that seems to happen sometimes when I'm talking to people out in the town. It really made me pause and consider myself for a bit. Like, seems to me that I really do know how to mend me a fence post, and hell my neighbors even come to me for help. But, there are things that I think I have an opinion on, but I ain't too sure I could even explain it too well, or not too well enough to be entirely precise like a philosopher would do, using the anal methods.

Like for instance, it seems to me to be normal how a man is typically attracted to a woman, even if she is really a man, but it also seems normal to me how a man could be attracted to another man too. Like, if its a good man with a good character, I could see how he'd be loveable. And therein lies another conundrum. In the first place I was speaking kinda bout a sexual love, and in the other, I sorta put the horse somewhere else, as the saying goes, and talk about some different type of love. But that being said, what really is the difference if you love someone? Youd just make a partnership I'd guess.

And yet, even though I'm straight up confused about there being types of love, there are people out in my town right now that say they know otherwise about what love is, and how it is a simple thing so easy to explain between a man and a woman. It gets me thinking that I oughta just go forth and interlocucate myself upon them. I just aint too sure of myself cuz I ain't often get out into public speaking much.

Anyhow, what it boils down to is, it seems like whether or not I should go out and start figuring peoples opinions out, that is itself a question to be answered by philosophical methods. And damned if I don't know to go about beginning upon my inquiry.

So, thank you in advance for your helpful sharing of wisdom.

Chester, out.

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I have realised that a lot of the time, whenever people choose to follow idealistic philosophies, here meaning any philosophy that strives towards some form of higher ideal or purpose in life, the restrictions that this way of life poses ends up corrupting the individual from within and strengthening their urges and desires to a point that they become unbearable. Usually this happens when a person is in a very bad stage in their life, for example if they have had a lot of stress, problems with their relationships, bouts of nihilism and a lack of belief in their own philosophy, etc. This strengthening of desire, be it lust, sloth, greed, passion or melancholy, leads to cognitive dissonance: because most idealistic philosophies limit specifically the animalistic nature of humans, when people start to desire the very things they are limiting, they start to subconsciously question their own ideals and act against them. Once a person does what is considered "sinful" for long enough, they lose the light that was once guiding them, and become numb to the ideals that once drove them and light a spark within them. They become nihilistic, seeing life as inherently meaningless and they no longer feel guilt for "tripping" or going against their ideals.

Nihilism, however, is only an in-between stage, for it eventually leads to hedonism: no individual can stay perfectly sane in nihilism, for without purpose, one doesn't know how to act and can't see any purpose in living, which goes fundamentally against our animalistic nature, our desire for self-preservation. Thus to combat the feeling of meaninglessness and the pessimism inherent to it, the individual begins to find more joy in the hedonistic actions that they once were shameful of. The hedonism turns into a light at the end of the tunnel that brings purpose to life and satisfies the animalistic urges of humans. It's a win-win situation: not only do you now have a purpose, but the purpose in question also agrees with your very nature.

However, the core problem with hedonism is that it loses its value after some time: the individual soon ends up questioning what they are doing, wondering whether it is correct or good. The pleasure no longer feels pleasurable and suddenly their idealistic urges start to creep up on them: the individual suddenly becomes desperate, as if they awoke from a coma realising that they have wasted all their time on nothing. This panic and fear leads them to try and somehow prove themselves to the world and repay their sins: they don't want to end up in hell, whatever hell means to them, so they try to be a good person again. I must quickly state that this text is by no means religious, I merely use words like "sin" and "hell" metaphorically. Anyway, suddenly the individual gains back their consciousness and seeks to be idealistic again, pushing away their hedonism. However, this sudden surge of power doesn't usually last long, since it comes back in the form of an extreme and considering people don't like change, especially drastic change, the idealistic will quickly degrade back into nihilism and hedonism.

What I am trying to get at here is that idealism and hedonism are strongly connected to each other when you consider the dual nature of humanity: humans are simultaneously both idealistic and hedonistic. We have moral and intellectual qualities, such as intelligence, rational thinking, wisdom, creativity, deep and spiritual emotions, altruistic characteristics, empathy and compassion, but at the same time we also have deeply animalistic qualities, such as the need for self preservation, sexual love and pleasure, the desire for power and submission, and the need for physical and emotional closeness. I must state here that by idealistic qualities I simply mean the qualities we usually associate with high intelligence and thus consider "humane", while animalistic qualities are those characteristics we share in common with other animals and that don't require especially high intelligence. The core issue here is that humans try to separate themselves from the animal kingdom and thus argue that those qualities that fundamentally separate humans from other animals, idealistic qualities, are more "humane" and thus "better", while animalistic qualities have nothing to do with humanity at all and are "sinful". Therefore anyone who seeks to be idealistic and practise "human virtues'' is considered "good" or even "divine", while anyone who dares to practise animalistic, hedonistic qualities is considered "bad" or even "sinful". The problem is that these animalistic qualities are just as much part of our humanity as idealistic qualities, and thus we can't fully avoid them. Humans are very aware of this fact, and because we all know deep down that we are animals, we try our hardest to forget this fact so that we can maintain our egoism and narcissism. We assume that everyone is good. We project this optimism oftentimes to the entirety of the animal kingdom, depicting animals as "innocent" and "pure". And whenever we do anything animalistic, instead of feeling guilt or hatred towards ourselves, we call it "humane weakness" and don't attempt to confront it in any way, simply accepting it and moving on with our lives. Thus the entirety of the human race (slight exaggeration) is in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. What does this mean in terms of the cycle I originally presented? It simply means that because we chose to be ignorant of our animalistic nature, we constantly overestimate ourselves in seeking idealistic highs, and thus end up falling into the cycle of idealism and hedonism when our animalistic subconscious comes creeping up on us. As long as we stay blind to our hedonism, we will continue to suffer indefinitely.

A question regarding Interstellar movie and Kant’s transcendental idealism

As per Kant’s transcendental idealism, time and space are not determinations that belong to things in themselves but features of our own mind. Long story cut short, the protagonist finds in a similar position in the Interstellar movie. Is there any similarity or am I making any straw man fallacy kind? If somewhere posted, request for some link please. Thanks 🙏