I'm playing a game by the rules.

Not mislead me.

Or you could address the way I've narrowed it down and show that I jumped to conclusions to early and missed an important option.
With what you've been doing you just bring up something you said as if that's enough to make things work but I want to see how that connects to other things you've been saying.

I'm very fixated on truth.

Break it down so you can tell me what makes it look different. For all I know this might be like you rejecting everything I say because you don't like my accent.

Don't jump back. Build back.

Isn't that the same as being outwitted but taking the person out of it?
That might actually be a better example for the second type of frustration than what I gave.

Well no, it blurs the first option too much. They're frustrated there because the authority has placed the burden of understanding on them rather than the person who first explained it. If their teacher had to explain math to them and couldn't go home until they understood it would be just like my first option.

But if I'm not implying that you don't perceive me that way?

It's nice to get a more direct admission of your motives.

Simple example with abra: "that's begging the question/scarecrow argument/false dichotomy/etc."
"That's an ad hominem attack."

He understands what a fallacy is and that you can't use them in arguments. Whenever I said he was using some fallacy or other he couldn't see the problem with it.

You veil it better than abra or JB but your posts to each other most certainly took that tone around page 40.

Well just within this post you've done it implicitly by adding in the explanation of a child doing schoolwork. Would you like to state that you were not saying that the rest of us are frustrated because we don't understand you concepts?

My subsequent argument is there to explain what I meant by the point nine times out of ten.

Glad you can admit it.

And there’s a good example of what you are ignoring:

1) The fact that your estimation of the randomity of the electronic RNG is totally irrelevant to the experiments. What is relevant is that it provides a verifiable baseline to compare against, which baseline is perfectly valid within the parameters and purposes of the experiment.
2) The fact that the RNG is only one of several devices use in the experiments.
3) The reference to the remote viewing experiments.
4) The actual answer I gave to the question you asked.

So in fact, you have ignored virtually everything I said in my response.

Thus, as far as I’m concerned, your accusations of ignoring things are hollow at best.

But in any case, you may completely ignore the relevance of the PEAR experiments if you wish and just reply to the answer I gave to your question – or not. It’s up to you.

I don't like this answer. There are two things you could be doing here.
A: agreeing with me and dropping the subject.
B: disagreeing with me here by implying that those aren't the rules for this game but not giving any kind of explanation for that.Ok, let me “build back”.

The basic premise is that the players of the game are also the creators of the game. Thus, the player-creators are the one’s who make and/or agree to the rules that they will play by. So if one decides that backups/restores are allowed, then that is a rule the creator of that rule will play by - if he so chooses.

By stating a hypothetical situation (stealing hubcaps) and asserting rule (backup/restore or new character) you’ve simply created a rule that one might play by.

So I was simply acknowledging the fact that the hypothetical situation you presented does not conflict with any of the premises.

Once anybody figures out how to exploit the system to do these things without getting caught word travels fast.Well, first of all, in this particular case, it hasn’t, which belies that statement. (Unless you’re asserting that no one has every figured out how to exploit the system because word hasn’t traveled fast – which, if I understand correctly, is formally called “arguing from ignorance”.)

Secondly, since “the system” is of one’s own creation (or by one’s own agreement with other’s creations), then “exploiting the system” is really only exploiting one’s own creation or one’s agreements with others. I.e. “exploiting the system” is really only exploiting oneself. (Such things as “Karma” have expressed this same concept.)

Don’t make the mistake of identifying characters with players.

No, a player cannot be “stupider” than a because a character(body/car) has no intelligence to speak of. It operates on a strictly mechanistic, stimulus-response basis. The intelligence rests with the player/self/driver, not the character/body/car.

Which is exactly what I did in the succeeding paragraph and which you seem to have chosen to completely ignore. (Or more accurately “quote mine out”.)

Again, remember that the players are also the creators. So the only “dicking up the game” possible is to “dick up” one’s own agreements with other players. Unless you consider changing one’s own creation to be dicking up one’s own creation. But no one can prevent that, since it isone’s own creation.

Again, referring back to the premise that the game is a co-creation of the players, the rules are created and/or agreed to by the creator/players. So the only thing that can be “broken” are the agreements. What you are referring to as “breaking the rules”, I would describe more accurately as “breaking the agreement to abide by the rules”. But the rules themselves are simply the creations of the players. From the perspective of a single player, excluding any agreements with other players, the rules are not “broken”, they are simply “changed”.

Well that's not anywhere even close to an accurate description of what I'm talking about

That would be exactly equivalent to saying "As just characters without knowledge flow from the player into the players the players are nothing more than an illusion."

I doesn't make sense to me. And I honestly don't know how to repohrase it so that it does makes sense.

I guess one might say that, from the perspective of the character, the player is just an illusion. Or from the perspective of the player the character is an illusion.

But in any case, the simple fact that the game involves other players removes it from the realm of solipsism.

Unless the one entity is playing with himself.

Actually it's their estimate. They defined what was significant and then the baseline went past that boundary. By their own definition the baseline isn't random.

Want to tell me about the others?

Also something other groups haven't found to work the way PEAR said it did.

What was that by the way? I may have accidentally skipped it.

I'm going to take this claim seriously but unfortunately I'm technically too tied up right now to even be taking the time to keep replying in here (bad me, bad,) but I'm going to have to ask you to dig up the relevant posts that show this stuff.

What did I skip?

So does this mean that morality is nothing but random nonsense? That our only reason for being moral is because our players feel like it?

No, it would be an argument from ignorance if I was saying my not understanding something was the reason it couldn't work that way.

The obvious other reason that word traveling fast yet there not being any exploiters would be that we don't reincarnate with any kind of ability to make use of what we learned in previous lives/characters, like what a player would know. To maintain that there is a player who may have played previous characters you can explain why word wouldn't have traveled fast or why nobody would know about exploits-

and I'd say the "everyone is a designer of the game so they don't want to screw it up" thing is an argument for why they wouldn't spread exploits, though I don't see why it would take billions to program the game engine and if most are participating at a more user-based level of creation then there are lots of reasons left for them to cheat.

It's getting relatively abstract though and I don't expect you to necessarily understand massively multiplayer meta-gaming mechanics so you don't have to keep pursuing this point if you don't want to.

Just look at company CEOs and the ilk who embezzle huge sums of money. There are very obvious motives to exploit your own system when it involves other people.

I meant exactly what that sounds like. A WoW character may be an expert leatherworker when their player knows jack squat about leatherworking.

Does a driver need to know how an internal combustion engine works to press the pedal that makes the car go forward?

*I'm considering this a two parter so if you want to respond to this read the next piece first.

And our bodies/the characters might be strictly stimulus-response. What would it look like if we weren't?

For all we know the player interface just lets them type in what they want us to do and then like pressing the gas pedal we go and do it without them having had to know how.

I didn't take it out of the post. It's sitting right there for anyone to read and say "oh, it was silly of Sho to complain like that right before sky did what he was saying he should."

But you're right (enough.) I write my responses as I'm reading through these so I don't know what's coming next. Any time I make irrelevant objections like that you can just say "way ahead of you" or something and move on~

But messing up someone else's creation is clearly possible here. If not for the sake of angering anyone you're not on the best of terms with then you can save it for coercion purposes (and if you don't go through with a few threats people learn that they're hollow and won't let you influence them that way anymore.)

Humanity has broken peace treaties many times. It should be plain as day that as time marches on people have reason to no longer feel so attached to their agreements.

Ya, I just didn't think there was any reason to type out that many extra words when "breaking the rules" conveys the same idea.

So why don't people change them to get their way? Why not just give your character a million bucks and servants to deal with the crap they don't want to?

The characters in a game are representations of people- are they actual, real people? No. They're illusions that look like people.

I know illusion sounds a bit more like magic than technology but there's no significant difference between how "real" these things are.

If our whole existence is a game we're all just imaginary. Whether it's exactly an idea in someone/thing's head or that idea has been written out into some kind of computer program doesn't matter. It's just as fictional.

These words are all interchangeable as far as the idea behind solipsism is concerned. It's the same concept and these little details don't matter.

Games, particularly computer games can be played with the programming or there can be an actual conscious person behind a player.

Why would you think that just because we are involved in a game, that we would be imaginary?

The difference is that we are conscious thinking self aware entities with a will of our own. Does that sound imaginary to you? Even if you want to call all of that "imaginary" if you make it real enough to call it "reality" then call it "reality."

Things are what we make them, after all. Things are what we say they are. Things are what we believe them to be.

We are the designers. We are the ultimate authority of what is. We decide what we will call "real" or "illusion."

It really does not matter what the truth of it is. What matters is what we believe it is.

You can't expect the young greenhorns to comprehend this kind of wisdom Jeannie. This is the kind of wisdom that only comes with time. And unfortunately, some people don't even get it with time. It's just beyond their ability to comprehend.

So if we're made of billiard balls this changes everything?

I find this funny.

Some people find the idea that our true essence is eternal spirit to be more "real".

Other people find the idea that we are nothing more than a temporary collection of lifeless billard balls to be more "real".

I guess it's all a matter of personal preference.

Like Jeanniebean points out, what you ultiamtely believe is what's real for you no matter what the 'physics' behind is. That's basically irrelevant.

So for Sky, life is a game that he, as an eternal spirit is playing.

So that makes that real for him because that's what he believes.

If Shoku believes that he's a sack of atoms that's not playing any game, then that's his reality because that's what he believes.

In the end it truly doesn't matter because everyone is what they believe in the moment, because the moment is all that exists.

Even Einstein showed us the scientific truth of that.

So everyone believe what you like the best because that's what you are. You are what you believe you are. I AM that I AM.

That's the bottom line.

Regarding this...



Abracadabra wrote:



This is the kind of presuppositional claim that completely depends upon age being equivocated with wisdom for it's truth value. Age does not equate to wisdom, and has nothing to do with the logical validity of the original claim(s).

A discerning individual notices the difference along with the childish name calling, yet does not reciprocate with an equal emotionally immature response, and that my good man, constitutes wisdom being put to use.

Nice ad hominem and non-sequitur.

How old was Heisenberg when he proposed the HUP?


How old was Einstein when he set about his STR?


How old was Stephen Hawking when he realized Hawking radiation?


Honestly Abra, your a fool for making this your point. Your a fool anyways so it matters little to me, but its really quite illustrative of the weak arguments you propose, and how your mental faculty is either failing or never was strong.

And so we're back to where I was about a dozeon posts ago - "Apparently, you and I have very different ideas about what consititutes solopsism."

As I understand it, solipsism rejects the idea that anything other then self exists. And since I believe that things other than self exist, I don't see it as fitting under the label of solipsism.

Ok, we all know reality is not necessarily what we entail it to be, this is why solipsism is so idiotic.

Please pay close attention to the distinction between what is, and what can be known.

For a philosophy to be solipsism you must have an environment that has only a single consciousness and a single creator, or trickster, or provider of detail, whatever you want to call it.

Here is the sticking point, either you believe that there is a separate reality from what you perceive or you don't. Beliefs as we all know are subjective and hardly a good starting point for rational discourse.

If you think that reality starts with mind, and thinking builds up to form, then the first principle is that thought must occur before form.

The only logical conclusion from that is that a singular mind starts it all.

From that all you can assume is that a single mind exists. Which given Cogito Ergo sum ( I think therefore I am), means it could very well be your mind tricking you into thinking other minds exist.

If a single mind exists as your premise you must assume a mind at least one, exists.

However you cannot prove, or even know, if another mind exists. So with out assuming that laws of nature exist this situation puts you in a place where solipsism is the difference between epistemology, and ontology.

Where what is known, is no different that what can be . . .


You can never know anything about reality, you are stuck in a situation where you must assume everything, quite a pathetic place to be in given all that we can accomplish with naturalism . . . .


Essentially naturalism is a given becuase it explains so much more of the working reality we experience, and other philosophies just flounder around seeking meaning even several thousands of years after there introduction . . .

_______________________________________________________

Buzzed philosophy on a Monday, who knew . . .

And still I smash my opponents, I knew there was a reason I was so mature and knew more than anyone else on the planet earth. Wow such an authority on every subject I am, I think ill start a thread where I talk about how poeple under 31 are so smart and mature . . .

If you ever grow up let me know, maybe we can actually have a mature conversation someday. I won't bother holding my breath, so take all the time you need.

I simply brought up the PEAR research because I accept it as evidence. If you don’t accept it as evidence then fine. We can exclude it from the conversation. I have no problem with that.

But I’m not going to quote all the details here, nor am I going to try to summarize it for you. If you want to know details, here is a link where most of the papers I know of can be foundhttp://www.princeton.edu/~pear/pdfs



Shoku: And when do we ever interact with anything but the body?

Sky: If you consider communicating with someone else as “interacting” with them, then I would say we interact with things other than bodies all the time, if indirectly.

And I would say there is ample evidence of other “direct” interaction, a couple of which I have experienced myself. But then it’s up to you to decide what you want or do not want to accept as evidence. And since you apparently do not accept PEAR findings as evidence, then I assume you would not accept any of the other evidence, so there is no point in bdragging them into the conversation.

So the bottom line is really that I believe what I believe and I’m only telling you what I believe. I cannot force you to accept any evidence whatsoever.

Well since you were the one to first come up with the accusations of “ignoring”, I’ll let you got first. If you want to. But personally, I don’t even consider it worthwhile since I’m not really interested in “debating the debate”. It doesn’t lead anywhere I’m interested in going.

Depending on how you define “morality”. If you define it as “rules of conduct that we agree to abide by” or even “rules of conduct that provide for optimum ‘health and wellbeing for all’” then morals are no more or less “random nonsense” than are rules of the road.

This indicates to me a fundamental misunderstanding. One that is usually the source of much confusion (as it appears to have been throughout this conversation).

We don’t “have” players, we are players. Unless and until that is fully understood, nothing much else in this philosophy will make much sense.

Well, in general I would agree with that, with the clarification that you always have the ability to discover the exploits. But you can’t use them if you haven’t yet discovered what they are and how to use them.

Possible reasons:
1) The exploits had not yet been discovered by anyone
2) Those who did discover them might not have been able to explain them to well enough to enable everyone else to use them (Some of the greatest religious leader in history might fall into this category.)
3) Some might know about the exploits but not want others to know about them, in order to retain an advantage over those who did not know.

You’re right. It’s getting pretty abstract. At some level of detail, all analogies fail to maintain a one-to-one correspondence to the concepts they are intended to represent. Which is what is starting to happen to this one.

For example, the idea that “it takes billions to program the game engine”. That implies that the game is first created, as a self-perpetuating system, and then people “enter into” that system and start playing with the pieces. But actually, it’s more like the rules are agreed upon first, and then the game is created by the interactions of the players. That is, if we differentiate between “the game” and “the rules of the game”, then “the game” itself doesn’t exist until the players start interacting according to “the rules of the game”.

Also, FYI, although I’ve never had the opportunity to work on a modern MMORPG, I’ve played a few. And I was playing and programming computer games since before you were born. So don’t worry about my ability to understand computer games.

Perfect example of different people playing by different rules. While some rules are adhered to by both (e.g. physics and finances), other rules are not. The embezzling CEO plays by the rule “get what you can get while you can get it and screw everyone else”, whereas the people from whom he embezzled play by the rule “trust the people you work with” (or something to that effect.)

So really, he is exploiting his rules, not the rules of others. He is using “screw everyone else” to his advantage. He is not using “trust everyone else” to his advantage.

It would probably look to other players like the character was being played by another person.

Wait.

Who is “they” and who is “us” in that statement?

The player interface can’t make the players do anything. The player interface allows the player to make the character do things.

(And since you brought it up, I might as well stick this in for possible future reference. In this game analogy, the “player interface” could be likened to “the mind” in my philosophy. That doesn’t really relate to anything we’ve talked about yet, but it’s there for future reference and clarification as needed/desired.)

I tend to do the same.

Well, I think what you’re referring to is that one could, for instance. smash a clay pot created by someone else. And in that context, yes, messing up someone else’s creation is possible.

However, that is allowed by the rules of the game. It is part of what makes it a game. I can smash your pots and you can smash mine. And we both have various options that can avoid out pots being smashed. Just like in the game of chess, I can capture your pieces and you can capture mine. But in both cases, it is done so in accordance with other rules, such as “pots can be smashed” and “pieces can be captured”.

It didn’t to me at the time, but as long as we agree, I’m good.

Similar to the reason you don’t give yourself a million bucks, Boardwalk and Park Place with hotels on them, all the railroads, all the utilities, and someone to roll the dice, move the token, and decide what to buy and sell for you, when playing Monopoly. If you did that, then there would hardly be any point in playing the game at all. In fact, you wouldn’t even really be playing the game.


Now to address all these arguments in general, they all seem to be oriented on the idea that the player is somehow forced to play a game he doesn’t want to play. But that’s identifying the player with the character. Yes, the character has no choice. In fact, attributing the power of choice to a character is as nonsensical as attributing the power of choice to a car. It has no volition with which to choose. It is a purely mechanistic, stimulus-response construct.

And I completely understand how the whole philosophy does not make sense from a materialistic viewpoint, where “self” is a product of the physical universe. The reason it’s so difficult to make sense of is because it starts from the exact opposite position – the physical universe is a product of self.

No problem so far.

Yes it is a sticking point for me. Not because of the conclusions derived from that premise, but because of the premise itself.

Personally, I look at it as there being multiple realities, one for each individual by himself, and one for each combination of individuals that interact with each other.

Think of it kinda like the intersections of sets. Each individual has his own reality. Those are the sets. And each intersection of individual set-realities constitutes an intersection-reality.

True. (Providing that your use of “mind” coincides with what I call “spirit”.)

Starts the reality for that individual, but not for all individuals and not for all “intersction-realities”, which are dependent on two individual realities.

Well, that doesn’t really follow from the viewpoint of my multiple-person, set/intersection-realities premise.

I assume at least one mind exists, but my premise is that multiple minds exist.

True. It is simply postulated out of thin air. (Or maybe induced from observation. But as you say, that is not reliable. Although, it is a very practical assumption.)

Hmmm…. “Laws of Nature” doesn’t really have a very concise meaning from the multiple-realities viewpoint – other than that each reality has it’s own “laws of nature”.

Well, I would say the exact opposite. “What we know” is what constitutes reality.

Not if one considers Naturalism to be simply a philosophy about the “largest intersection-reality”.

Yes, it is definitely the best explanation for that “largest intersection-reality”.

Possibly. But I don’t know that my philosophy has been around for very long.


I have no disagreement with any of the logic here. Only with a couple of the premises, which I addresed.

Now if you would label my philosophy as "solipsism, then so be it. BUt I think there is enough difference from the general view of what consitutes solipsism that doing so would cause some confusion.


In any case, well done Bushi. Very well constructed.

Let me make a correction to that, which may help avoid future misunderstanding...

And I completely understand how the whole philosophy does not make sense from a materialistic viewpoint, where “self” is a product of [the interaction of components of] the physical universe. The reason it’s so difficult to make sense of is because it starts from the exact opposite position – the physical universe is a product of [the interaction of "selves"].

Ya, it applies less to your vision but with what sky has described these characters would most definitely be fictional entities.

So we could decide that sniper bullets just bounce off of people?


Hey sky. See what he's doing here? It's relevant to what I was talking about earlier.

I don't believe anything, I've just been explaining atoms and things because you claimed to be an authority on science and were terribly inaccurate in your descriptions of it. I'm more involved in philosophy now because everyone seemed to prefer that and you stopped claiming your science was any good.

-

And I'm a goldfish but that doesn't make me have gills of scales or a swim bladder. Belief doesn't have much impact on what you are, just a lot of impact on what you think and do.

The problem with religion (that I think everyone here recognizes,) is that it stalls your personal growth. You end up a permanent child and the only form of maturity praised is the growing dull enough to not ask questions.

Unfortunately I see most of this spiritualism in the same light. What I would really like right now is not for them to go on the defensive about that but look at themselves and see how this "whatever you believe" stuff is just a way to halt ever having to accept reality.

There's nothing to be found in what you believe. To say that's all that matters is to claim that you already know everything and with as much distaste as they seem to have when they claim we're doing that I can only hope that this is eye opening.