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What’s mainly depressing is that so many people think that every religion is exactly like Christianity, but with a different object of worship and a slightly different flavor of supernatural belief. They don’t know anything about philosophy, they haven’t examined their own beliefs, they just parrot whatever pop science they’ve heard last and think that somehow gives answers to metaphysical questions.

Read some philosophy, people. Examine your own beliefs a bit. I’ve just recently seen a bunch of Lemmings who I’m sure consider themselves very rational and scientific freak out at the idea of not having free will, and by extension, there not being absolute good and evil. They can’t even argue about it, they just immediately fall into ad hominem attacks and strawmanning. Bring in the fact that whatever virtue one thinks they have is just the result of genetic lottery, and suddenly the idea of some kind of an untarnished soul becomes awfully tempting. Dare to suggest that nobody is inherently evil and boy do people get mad because their favorite pasttime of judging others has been called into question. Yet these same people often consider themselves above religious folk because they actually think that their worldview is purely science based and not at all colored by what they just want to be true.

Oh, not to even mention questioning if matter is the fundamental aspect of reality (as opposed to consciousness). Many people with 0 understanding of philosophy will start arguing about this and then get mad because they can’t prove that there’s matter outside consciousness. They’ll do the science equivalent of saying “God is real because the Bible says so, and the Bible is the word of God so it must be true”. Matter is fundamental because my scientific framework that is built on the idea that matter is fundamental says so (it actually doesn’t, because again, so embarrassingly many people don’t even realize that science has never answered a single metaphysical question).

Unless you have spent several years with philosophy and actually scrutinized your own beliefs honestly, you are likely living in just as much fantasy as most religious people. In some cases, more so.

And because I’ve hit my quota for entertaining poor arguments for now: if you want to argue, unless you can provide scientific proof for the existence of free will, absolute good and evil or matter being fundamental, I may not reply.

True that. But I think it’s valuable that there are people trying to find ways to make it ethical, since there’s no way to put it back in the box either.

Good news is that there are people out there who are trying to make an ethical AIs. It’s still an atom bomb (and as ethical) as you say, but at least it could be in the hands of those that actually value human well-being, not just their profit margin.

This podcast had an interesting conversation on it: https://shows.acast.com/tantra-illuminated-with-dr-christopher-wallis/episodes/new-horizons-ai-neuroscience-awakening-with-ruben-laukkonen

And the research paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.15125

Or does it just make you want to dismiss me as some tiresome armchair shrink who clearly needs better creative outlets than Lemmy.

At least I think it’s nice to see people here give thoughtful replies every now and again. I see way too many people on Lemmy who fancy themselves smart but really they have just memorized the latest trending science news without actually thinking about how any of it connects to anything.

Edit: there does seem to be a larger percentage of thoughtful people here than certain other platforms though. Or maybe the smaller community allows for more visibility at least.

There was a good podcast on the political activism part recently: https://shows.acast.com/tantra-illuminated-with-dr-christopher-wallis/episodes/finding-freedom-in-troubled-times-with-tina-rasmussen

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Of course, ‘everyone can be artist’. But wouldn’t the lack of the dramatic lead to a lesser chance of ‘making it big’?

Depends, because you’re not going to be conveying your experience perfectly anyway. It first goes through your own interpretative lens to the art, and then the art goes through the viewer’s lens. Big and dramatic emotions are easier… yes and as such may be more predictably marketable. But it’s a fickle business. Of course this is a concern only if marketability is how you measure “making it big”. We have a lot of art these days that’s easy to get into… and easy to drop. If you want world to remember you (Gogh wasn’t appreciated until after his death), you can try to convey something deeper and more complex.

I am having a hard time recalling positive experiences right now, especially ones that are “vibrant” in any way.

There’s vibrancy in deepest depression and the most boring line in the blandest grocery store. That’s for an artist to discover. But I’m not saying you should or should not take meds. But depression tends to lead to bad outcomes, and the world is full of depressed artists who didn’t make it.

Taking antidepressants does not have to reduce your creativity. Artists express their experience with their art. Sometimes it does it so well that people observing the art (through the lens of their conditioning) get moved. More damatic emotions get noticed more. But art can capture subtler experiences too. Antidepressants won’t remove your capacity to experience, it just changes the quality of the experience. Pay attention to all the qualities of your experience and you’ll notice it’s not just the intense ones that have vibrancy. You can convey that in art beautifully as well.

The suffering artist is a known trope but don’t think it’s a prophecy.

Hell yeah

You’d have to settle for close enough here.

This is my point. We can’t do it exactly, we just approximate. With every single experience we have, we can only approximately communicate it to other people. But here’s the kicker: does thinking about the taste of water feel like you’re actually drinking water? If you were parched in a desert, would thinking about water really hard actually bring the experience of water? Obviously not.

Once you have experienced something, thinking back to it, you are already kind of approximating it to yourself. You can’t manifest the exact experience even for yourself. Let alone to others.

I’m just highlighting this because it’s a pretty significant thing to get in this world where we are communicating by text a lot, and being very quick to judge other people’s experiences. Not saying you’re doing that though.

But how would I know if our experience of the taste of water is the same?

What does water taste like?

That’s a pretty tall order. How do you confirm that you objectively share the same experience if you can only ever access your own subjective experience?

You don’t have to but it’s good to be aware of if you’re really saving time or giving more of your energy to something other than your own needs.

No, but it seems unusually aggressive for very little reason.

Lots of psychoanalysis in this thread.