Re: HSPs, Resolutions, Plans... and Letting Go

by frmthhrt Tue Jan 15, 2013 12:38 am

but...Einstein was not a Critical Rationalist.

by rombomb Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:33 am

frmthhrt wrote:but...Einstein was not a Critical Rationalist.

Einstein believed (and understood it well) that...

- knowledge is created by guesses and criticism (as opposed to justificationism, empiricism, induction, deduction, etc.)

- truth is objective (as opposed to subjective)

- people are fallible (meaning that they can only have conjectural knowledge)

by RBM Tue Jan 15, 2013 8:03 pm

It was never a matter of labels, they just rejected the views of the positivists and the logical empiricists and they both also did not agree with the orthodox, Bohr or Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory.

And both Einstein and Popper were wrong, together.

Rombomb wrote:Einstein believed (and understood it well) that...
- truth is objective (as opposed to subjective)

Citation Please.

by Zen Wed Jan 16, 2013 2:44 am

What I saw a few of the people here saying was to get resolution they had to stop fixating on certain attachments or plans and open themselves to alternatives.

This is hard to detail into words but...
it is as if the world is a bunch of connections some of which you see, but not always the ones which affect you the most.

Like a giant ecosystem.

For this I believe the ocean or a river to be a good metaphor since I see water as representing emotions or internal energy.

In this space, you can struggle against the tide of the world or the flow of the river, but it is as futile as struggling against yourself.
Seeing yourself as opposed to the world rather than a part of it is an illusion.
It is self imposed isolation.

This is not the same as giving into the will of another person or subjugating yourself to the whim of society, because it is more than just on the level of daily human activities.

The world around you is as much a reflection of yourself as you are of it.
To cling to one outcome or possibility is like swimming upstream, and you will cling to the rock you think is steadfast in that water, even when it turns to dust in your hands while people passing you by will try to tell you that there is more you are not seeing and all is not lost.

To stop attaching and clinging to something is not to fail or to give up.
It seems like to give up would be to get swept away in that current of emotion and lost but that is not the case.
It is like surrendering to the stream which will bring where you ought to be. It takes so much less effort to get around that way, and you can see that everyone else is also headed in in the same direction just in different paths. A common human journey, just as all waterways lead to the Ocean in some way.
In turbulent waters, storms or calm times, navigating rather than swimming upstream will present you with a bigger and more fluid view of the world you live in and your place in it. It also gives the freedom to choose among the options presented to you as they show up rather than your back being turned and you not realizing you ended up taking a stream until you're in it.

This is a sort of resolution which is not the same as detaching, for you learn more about yourself and loose nothing.
What you loose is the illusion of control you have by fighting upstream, for it was never your ability to control that way. You also loose the illusion of being alone in the world, and other such notions that block your ability to see you don't have to cling to things to keep your footing.

I once learned this from somebody myself who knows his stuff, however it is something to be felt rather than thought about.
There is no cold isolation but a sort of harmony.

by rombomb Wed Jan 16, 2013 5:24 pm

RBM wrote:
It was never a matter of labels, they just rejected the views of the positivists and the logical empiricists and they both also did not agree with the orthodox, Bohr or Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory.

And both Einstein and Popper were wrong, together.

About all those things? Or just the last thing?

RBM wrote:
Rombomb wrote:Einstein believed (and understood it well) that...
- truth is objective (as opposed to subjective)

Citation Please.

What sort of evidence or argument would it take for you to change your mind?

by melodiccolor Wed Jan 16, 2013 5:30 pm

Excellent insight Zen! To feel this is to flow in relative harmony and fully live.

by rombomb Wed Jan 16, 2013 5:30 pm

Zen wrote:[...] In this space, you can struggle against the tide of the world or the flow of the river, but it is as futile as struggling against yourself.
Seeing yourself as opposed to the world rather than a part of it is an illusion.
It is self imposed isolation.

What sort of opposition do you mean? Do you mean dissent or violence against society?

If you mean dissent, what about the first guy who said the Earth was spherical? He was opposing the world, and it wasn't futile.

by Zen Wed Jan 16, 2013 6:19 pm

rombomb wrote:
Zen wrote:[...] In this space, you can struggle against the tide of the world or the flow of the river, but it is as futile as struggling against yourself.
Seeing yourself as opposed to the world rather than a part of it is an illusion.
It is self imposed isolation.
What sort of opposition do you mean? Do you mean dissent or violence against society?

If you mean dissent, what about the first guy who said the Earth was spherical? He was opposing the world, and it wasn't futile.

Zen wrote:
This is not the same as giving into the will of another person or subjugating yourself to the whim of society, because it is more than just on the level of daily human activities.

by Zen Wed Jan 16, 2013 6:21 pm

melodiccolor wrote:Excellent insight Zen! To feel this is to flow in relative harmony and fully live.

XD It's quite nice when you can feel it as real.

by rombomb Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:22 pm

Zen wrote:
melodiccolor wrote:Excellent insight Zen! To feel this is to flow in relative harmony and fully live.
XD It's quite nice when you can feel it as real.

Zen, I'm really bad with metaphors. I don't understand your post. Could you tell me what "it" is?

by RBM Thu Jan 17, 2013 7:18 pm

RE: Evidence

Something traceable; direct quote or second party source as in example:

HSPs, Resolutions, Plans... and Letting Go - Page 3 Albertmyhero

In short, Einstein and Popper both believed in an objective reality, 'out there'. That is incorrect. In spite of the denial of it, currently.

by rombomb Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:24 am

RE: Evidence

I've moved this discussion to a new thread titled "Einstein on truth is objective."

http://funhsps.niceboard.org/t3455-einstein-on-truth-is-objective#52967

by rombomb Fri Jan 25, 2013 10:48 am

rombomb wrote:
Dreamspace wrote:
rombomb wrote:What do you mean by "supreme"?

It would appear you believe logical reasoning will overcome all other forces of the psyche virtually uncontested so long as reason bothers to make the effort to combat them.
Nope. A lot of knowledge is required. Attempting to reason does not automatically make that knowledge known.

I think there is still some confusion about my position on the relationships between rationality and emotion, and the conscious and the subconscious.

People's emotions are typically in line with tradition in important ways. That is why, when in doubt, emotions can be used as guides to how to live traditionally.

This is also a reason that disregarding emotional dislike of something you think is intellectually good, and going ahead with the intellectually good thing ("because rationality is superior to feelings" or whatever) is actually irrational, and thus bad.

Traditional knowledge, including via emotions, should be addressed rationally (which includes appropriate respect for tradition, emotion, humility, valuing incremental progress, etc), never ignored.

My point is this:

- Holding the belief that one's intellect is superior to his emotions, is a justificationist mistake, because its assigning higher status to intellect and less to emotions.

And for the same reasoning:

- Holding the belief that one's conscious is superior to his subconscious, is a justificationist mistake, because its assigning higher status to the conscious and less to the subconscious.

by Dreamspace Fri Jan 25, 2013 1:36 pm

rombomb wrote:People's emotions are typically in line with tradition in important ways. That is why, when in doubt, emotions can be used as guides to how to live traditionally.

Emotions don't necessarily lead a person to living traditionally at all. Emotion can just as easily make a person rebellious.

rombomb wrote:This is also a reason that disregarding emotional dislike of something you think is intellectually good, and going ahead with the intellectually good thing ("because rationality is superior to feelings" or whatever) is actually irrational, and thus bad.

There is a time when you need to listen to feelings and other times where you need to listen to reason. Your feelings have no place in science, unless perhaps the science is making certain statements about humanity or culture. In that case, you should listen to your feelings or intuition if something seems off, but you cannot refute objective science with feeling alone, only use the feelings as motivation to collect rational or empirical evidence. Critical rationalism deals with logic and facts, not feeling.

rombomb wrote:My point is this:

- Holding the belief that one's intellect is superior to his emotions, is a justificationist mistake, because its assigning higher status to intellect and less to emotions.

And for the same reasoning:

- Holding the belief that one's conscious is superior to his subconscious, is a justificationist mistake, because its assigning higher status to the conscious and less to the subconscious.

By the same reasoning, you could say holding the belief that critical rationalism is superior to justificationism is a justificationist mistake because it's assigning higher status to logical deduction than induction.

You can't cram anything into that template and tell yourself you are being coherent with the critical rationalist mindset; this is not how you should arrive at a conclusion about emotional validity. If you attempt to justify everything you do with critical rationalism and traditionalism, you are going to run into some rather severe problems. Critical rationalism has its place for assessing scientific knowledge and hypotheses, and traditionalism may tell you what has been established to work (at least to some extent) in the past, but these rules cannot cover every aspect of our lives.

Penn Jillette has an interesting video about when to trust logic or feeling. When it comes to scientific truths, if you do not want to believe something, feelings will lead to confirmation bias. If you are having an emotional reaction in response to what science has to tell you about something, then this is perhaps rather indicative of a personally emotional issue rather than an issue with the science. Unless you can provide some real evidence to contradict science, then you should put your feelings aside there.

When it comes to people, however, now it is perfectly all right to listen to your feelings. Your feelings, not reason, should be your compass guiding you. If you don't know how to really use the information from your feelings well and don't understand the significance of your reactions, perhaps maybe you should glaze over what your emotions are telling you every once in a while. If your feelings are tempting you to do something potentially harmful to yourself and others, then you need to sort out your feelings and identify the source of these negative feelings. But many times, neglecting ourselves emotionally will lead to pent-up anger and resentment building in the unconscious. For this reason, being emotionally in-touch in general is preventative of larger emotional problems.

by RBM Fri Jan 25, 2013 5:34 pm

Dreamspace wrote:Penn Jillette has an interesting video about when to trust logic or feeling. When it comes to scientific truths, if you do not want to believe something, feelings will lead to confirmation bias. If you are having an emotional reaction in response to what science has to tell you about something, then this is perhaps rather indicative of a personally emotional issue rather than an issue with the science. Unless you can provide some real evidence to contradict science, then you should put your feelings aside there

So then you are of a scientific materialist worldview ?

Else, I don't see why science is the implied ultimate authority. Granted feelings can be tricky to sort out to eliminate any bias, confirmation or any other sort of bias. But given enough effort and awareness of bias deletion, why should feeling take a back seat to science ?

by Dreamspace Fri Jan 25, 2013 8:46 pm

RBM wrote:So then you are of a scientific materialist worldview ?

Else, I don't see why science is the implied ultimate authority. Granted feelings can be tricky to sort out to eliminate any bias, confirmation or any other sort of bias. But given enough effort and awareness of bias deletion, why should feeling take a back seat to science ?

Feelings should be compartmentalized, to an extent, but not suppressed — that is not what is being implied in the slightest. The human areas are where feeling should reign supreme. Science rules over the domain of the objective, what is; our feelings will not determine what is out in the objective world. However, science will not tell us what the implications of these findings are, or what should be meaningful in our lives. Science cannot tell us what our goals should be to begin with, only how to best accomplish them. If you think of it this way, science is only an authority over this objective realm, but at the same time is relegated to a mere tool to carry out our will as human beings.

Who is in control? The tool or its wielder?

by rombomb Sat Jan 26, 2013 9:27 am

Dreamspace wrote:
rombomb wrote:People's emotions are typically in line with tradition in important ways. That is why, when in doubt, emotions can be used as guides to how to live traditionally.

Emotions don't necessarily lead a person to living traditionally at all. Emotion can just as easily make a person rebellious.

By "tradition", I mean it in a broader sense. If I've been doing something for 20 years, that is a tradition for me, even if no one else has ever done it before. So, my habits, are traditions.

Dreamspace wrote:
rombomb wrote:This is also a reason that disregarding emotional dislike of something you think is intellectually good, and going ahead with the intellectually good thing ("because rationality is superior to feelings" or whatever) is actually irrational, and thus bad.

There is a time when you need to listen to feelings and other times where you need to listen to reason. Your feelings have no place in science, unless perhaps the science is making certain statements about humanity or culture. In that case, you should listen to your feelings or intuition if something seems off, but you cannot refute objective science with feeling alone, only use the feelings as motivation to collect rational or empirical evidence. Critical rationalism deals with logic and facts, not feeling.

You said "there is a time when you need to listen to feelings and other times where you need to listen to reason". And then you proceeded to explain, with reasons, which times you should and which times you shouldn't. So you're using reasons to decide. So I don't know what you're talking about.

Dreamspace wrote:
rombomb wrote:My point is this:

- Holding the belief that one's intellect is superior to his emotions, is a justificationist mistake, because its assigning higher status to intellect and less to emotions.

And for the same reasoning:

- Holding the belief that one's conscious is superior to his subconscious, is a justificationist mistake, because its assigning higher status to the conscious and less to the subconscious.

By the same reasoning, you could say holding the belief that critical rationalism is superior to justificationism is a justificationist mistake because it's assigning higher status to logical deduction than induction.

No. The truth value of an idea, is either true or false. When I say there is no higher or lower status, I mean of an idea that is already assigned the truth value of true. So for example, idea A and B are true as far as you know, and you might say that A is more likely to be true than B, therefore I'll do A instead of B. This is justificationism. And its bad.

What should be done instead is to consider A and B as rival theories, a conflict of ideas. And then you should guess and criticize until the conflict is resolved, which means creating a new theory C which explains, for example, that A is correct and it also explains why B is wrong. So really C is a slight variation of A.

Dreamspace wrote:
You can't cram anything into that template and tell yourself you are being coherent with the critical rationalist mindset; this is not how you should arrive at a conclusion about emotional validity. If you attempt to justify everything you do with critical rationalism and traditionalism, you are going to run into some rather severe problems.

This is the 3rd time that you are asserting that I would run into severe problems but without explaining why you believe that.

Dreamspace wrote:
Critical rationalism has its place for assessing scientific knowledge and hypotheses, and traditionalism may tell you what has been established to work (at least to some extent) in the past, but these rules cannot cover every aspect of our lives.

Above, you used reasoning to determine when feelings should be "listened" to and when they shouldn't. So I don't know what you mean.

Dreamspace wrote:
Penn Jillette has an interesting video about when to trust logic or feeling. When it comes to scientific truths, if you do not want to believe something, feelings will lead to confirmation bias. If you are having an emotional reaction in response to what science has to tell you about something, then this is perhaps rather indicative of a personally emotional issue rather than an issue with the science. Unless you can provide some real evidence to contradict science, then you should put your feelings aside there.

The same is true for non-science. If somebody said something to you, and if you got mad, you should not act on your anger, and instead you should question whether or not you misinterpreted the situation, and whether your anger was warranted. You might find out that you were wrong, and if you do, then your anger will subside immediately.

Dreamspace wrote:
When it comes to people, however, now it is perfectly all right to listen to your feelings. Your feelings, not reason, should be your compass guiding you. If you don't know how to really use the information from your feelings well and don't understand the significance of your reactions, perhaps maybe you should glaze over what your emotions are telling you every once in a while.

No. You should do it *everytime*. Do not ignore your feelings.

Dreamspace wrote:
If your feelings are tempting you to do something potentially harmful to yourself and others, then you need to sort out your feelings and identify the source of these negative feelings. But many times, neglecting ourselves emotionally will lead to pent-up anger and resentment building in the unconscious. For this reason, being emotionally in-touch in general is preventative of larger emotional problems.

Agreed.

PS. Penn Jillette is awesome! He once said, "Every problem we have should be solved with more freedom, not less."

by RBM Sat Jan 26, 2013 10:36 am

Dreamspace wrote:
RBM wrote:So then you are of a scientific materialist worldview ?

Else, I don't see why science is the implied ultimate authority. Granted feelings can be tricky to sort out to eliminate any bias, confirmation or any other sort of bias. But given enough effort and awareness of bias deletion, why should feeling take a back seat to science ?

Feelings should be compartmentalized, to an extent, but not suppressed — that is not what is being implied in the slightest. The human areas are where feeling should reign supreme. Science rules over the domain of the objective, what is; our feelings will not determine what is out in the objective world. However, science will not tell us what the implications of these findings are, or what should be meaningful in our lives. Science cannot tell us what our goals should be to begin with, only how to best accomplish them. If you think of it this way, science is only an authority over this objective realm, but at the same time is relegated to a mere tool to carry out our will as human beings.

I see science as a tool, and only an informing element, not an authority, per se. There isn't really all that much that HAS to be described in the objective (the shared subjective).

After all, technology is the major result of science and all that results in, is 'stuff' (as in the George Carlin vein) and offers nothing inherently unique in the Big Picture sense of meaning, spiritual growth.

Who is in control? The tool or its wielder?

As a result, the sense of control, is an EGO-trip and an illusion, as such . Here's an excerpt from Campbell about EGO. This is an answer to a question which I include for context:

"I am spirit having a human experience. How does this fit with the therory of the book?"

This statement fits perfectly with the theory of the book. Ego is perhaps used here a little differently than what you are used to. Ego is generated when the spirit/consciousness having the apparently physical human experience is ignorant of its true identity and purpose, and is of lower quality (has much to learn, understand and needs to evolve) -- it thus expresses fear, needs, wants, demands, expectations, desire, greed, in its attachment to, and manipulation of, the virtual physical reality. Ego is the sense of I manipulating the virtual physical reality to assuage its fear, and to secure and maintain its wants, needs, and desires -- it gives the physical more importance and exclusivity than it is due. Ego drives the action, when fear is the motivator. Ego and fear are the antithesis of compassion and love. Ego is the consciousness lost in a virtual physical reality manipulating the 10,000 things in a way to make itself feel better (less fearful). I hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply.

by rombomb Sat Jan 26, 2013 12:23 pm

No authority can make an idea true. And no authority can make an idea false.

No authority can make an idea more likely to be true. And no authority can make an idea more likely to be false.

Only a criticism, an explanation of a flaw in an idea, can render an idea false.

Thinking in terms of authority, is a justificationist mistake. It causes one to not criticize ideas.

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