But why are so many surfers such dickheads?

The ancient philosophers didn't like intellectual laziness. The idea is that you don't just live your life doing what seems best, you have to constantly examine your own behaviour, assumptions and attitudes to be as sure as you can be that you are living the "best" life possible. To many people that seems pointless in itself, you know what you want to do so you do it.

Time is change, things always change, we can't stop it. The key is to control change, change things for the better. You shouldn't obsess over time or money, try to find things of value in your life. Time will keep marching on whatever you do, but you can use rationality and wise decisions to improve your life.

One of the main functions of our consciousness is to anchor us in time. It takes a tremendous amount of memory and prediction to create the bubble of time in which we create our personal narrative. It isn't surprising when disorders of the brain or mental illness disrupt this personal narrative, because it takes so much constant effort to maintain.

I agree, there isn't much utility in this sort of premise.

With all the determinists on r/philosophy I would be disappointed if I wasn't downvoted. I would expect more, they must be determined to ignore me.

"how all actions or events are determined by prior actions or events"

The problem is that there are an infinite number of prior events determining any event, (even in the seconds just before an event) and most of these are chaotic atomic/molecular scale events. You can't seperate events based on scale, they are all events and they all affect the future.

Then you have the problem of the big bang. In a determinist universe everything expands in a uniform manner, there is no time and no complexity. It is only by introducing quantum uncertainty that we get a universe at all.

Yeah, that's probably one of the things I'm wrong about.

There are definitely different ways of looking at life, but generally flexibility and adaptability will serve you better than stubbornness and selfishness. If people try to take advantage of you, you need to find ways to protect yourself. Sometimes easier said than done.

Metacognition - being prepared to admit you are wrong or in other ways deficient - is an important part of the path to wisdom. It seems easy to know when others are wrong, but it's much more important to see your own mistakes. Don't judge me by my successes, judge me by how I handle my failures. To be able to see yourself as others see you would indeed be a great gift.

I guess we'll just have to wait for the zombie apocalypse to see who is right.

That's all true but it isn't what Emerson was talking about. No-one can be fully self-reliant, but you can take charge of your own life, make meaningful decisions for yourself and not just be carried along by the flow of society. It is about living a rational life, rather than the life society expects of you.

There is a lot of real, useful information available on the internet, regardless of the way it is provided. If you want to be independent and self reliant you need to use all the resources at your disposal, people aren't born self reliant, it is something you learn. If you need to fix something or make something, you can probably find out how to on the internet.

These days, with prosperity, technology and the internet, it is more possible than ever to be independent and self reliant. We can research, find out how things work, and make choices better informed than ever.

I live in a forest, if you observe forests you can see how they are co-operative rather than competitive systems. Co-operation allows better utilisation of resources, so that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Humans can't separate themselves from the natural world, we rely too much on the resources it provides. My local authority recently removed some mature trees to pave several acres for a carpark for a sports ground. They didn't see any problem doing that, the trees were in the way, but future generations will pay as the expanse of paving heats up the whole area.

Time is change, nothing ever stays the same, everything always changes. To try to make time cyclical is to deny the nature of time and uncertainty. It is better to embrace change and uncertainty.

I was just reading about the probabilistic nature of the ChatGPT computer program. It uses enormous quantities of data to synthesise language, basically just taking apart millions of documents and reassembling them make new logical language. This shows how consciousness and the brain's prediction and decision making systems work - the brain isn't computing new activity to make decisions, just analysing troves of data stored in neural networks, chemical systems and DNA and applying the analysis to new situations. The difference is that our consciousness allows us to use our internal voice to "step back" and make considered judgements about possible actions, up to a point, rather than just following chains of logic the way a computer does.

So, you smoke some crack, then go on r/philosophy to boast about smoking crack. Living the dream!

Nothing ever stays the same. Of course if you are seeking the good life you should always be trying to improve your situation, seeking new knowledge and experience, but routine provides the bedrock for happiness.

To have a richer experience of life you don't necessarily need to seek out variety and new experiences, you just need to pay more attention to the world around you. Most people have a very narrow focus on life, just paying attention to the things that seem important. If you broaden your focus of attention you can have a much richer experience of life.

This is a very human-centred argument. You can make the world a lot better without making the experience of any single human any better. Things like saving the sea floor from trawling, protecting habitat in remote places, there are a lot of important things we need to do that won't help any individual humans very much, or even groups of humans. I want to live in a better world, that doesn't necessarily mean better (or worse) for any particular humans. I can pick up some litter in a forest, that is an inconvenience for me and doesn't help anyone, but it does make the world a better place.

This is classic straw man stuff. The defining thing about liberals is the diversity of ideas and opinions. Politically it makes them very vulnerable and hard to organise, but you can't lump them all together like this.

Enduring hardship and suffering is not popular these days.

I didn't think the phrase needed explanation. Measuring your happiness by your wealth and consumption of goods is obviously a very popular choice, but some people try to pursue happiness other ways.

The good thing about this article is that it shows how much the stoics were opposed to consumer culture. We become so attached to our possessions and wealth we lose a lot of our appreciation for what is really important. People have been saying that for a long time but consumer culture is so seductive. I think you can follow stoic teachings without being determinist.