What do you believe?

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sologdin

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« Reply #60 on: November 17, 2013, 04:37:11 pm »
yeah, as though one were whole at the point of origin and then traded away essentials for mere ephemera.  you were granted purity of virtue, but you sold it for a momentary backseat blowjob.  sin! you were given clean sobriety, but you exchanged it for mere seconds of crack euphoria. sin!

it's odd.  you traded it, but you shouldn't have.  it was not yours, really, to trade away.  the property implications are bizarre. virtue is not quiritary, not allodial, not even held in fee simple absolute.  more like a lease, with many punitive conditions subsequent--as in the lease agreement in eden before the eating of the FotToKoG&E.

the implication is kinda ugly: moral doctrine as double-entry bookkeeping, but the account only and always depletes.  progress is only the advancement of decay of the origin.  it is a nasty, barbaric pessimism, contrary to the economic concepts that it uses.

anyway, EAMD, &c.

Madness

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« Reply #61 on: November 17, 2013, 04:39:31 pm »
Lol - redemption as fiat currency. Brilliant, solo.
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sciborg2

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« Reply #62 on: November 17, 2013, 04:50:38 pm »
Heh, good stuff Solo!

jamesA01

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« Reply #63 on: November 17, 2013, 04:55:07 pm »
I don't know what you're conceding. My point was just that you are bringing it back to you, whereas I am not interested in attacking people, just ideas. But if you want to know about 'me':

I don't see myself as having any choices at all, at least not intellectually. Sure, I experience it as this, sure, I have determinants - I will not do this and that ever again, I resolve not to do this etc. But I never see myself as being in a situation where I pre exist the world and can alter it with my decisions. I drift in a perpetually baffled flux. That resolution to quit smoking succeeds until it doesn't, and when it doesn't I at least know that there is data in my brain that future technology will be able to interpret and even intervene in. But ideas still affect us all, ideas still unconsciously influence me, and it is a rare and lucky moment when I truly realize this. I will continue to loudly and aggressively sneer and annoy others by pointing out how their unconsciously held beliefs are unexamined post christian biases.

I think I understand what Sologdin is saying, except the abbreviations.

sologdin

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« Reply #64 on: November 17, 2013, 05:10:00 pm »
resolution to quit smoking succeeds until it doesn't

nifty example.  i just went without cigarettes for a month, until job became a 100-hour week marathon for a while.

the cool thing is that the words of the resolution remain true, even though the facts of non-smoking are null.  these resolutions make actual facts fictive by their pronouncement (is that austin's illocutionary act, or jakobson's poetic function, maybe): the resolution is spoken, and, though normally indifferent to the words of men, the world listens.

jamesA01

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« Reply #65 on: November 17, 2013, 05:17:12 pm »
My job now involves selling electronic cigarettes. Highly recommended, a good quality one with the right oil has about 4 ingredients compared to the hundreds of unnecessary ones in regular tobacco.

Royce

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« Reply #66 on: November 17, 2013, 05:27:42 pm »
Quote
My job now involves selling electronic cigarettes.

how about some electronic mushrooms?

jamesA01

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« Reply #67 on: November 17, 2013, 05:38:24 pm »
Good idea. A unit that could scan wild pickings and detect toxicity, then perhaps grind and pulp them so drops of the psychoactive ingredients could gather in a small container.

Royce

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« Reply #68 on: November 17, 2013, 06:09:17 pm »
Yes, no more endless wandering to find it, and less vomiting too :)

Madness

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« Reply #69 on: November 17, 2013, 06:10:27 pm »
I don't know what you're conceding. My point was just that you are bringing it back to you, whereas I am not interested in attacking people, just ideas. But if you want to know about 'me':

I don't see myself as having any choices at all, at least not intellectually. Sure, I experience it as this, sure, I have determinants - I will not do this and that ever again, I resolve not to do this etc. But I never see myself as being in a situation where I pre exist the world and can alter it with my decisions. I drift in a perpetually baffled flux. That resolution to quit smoking succeeds until it doesn't, and when it doesn't I at least know that there is data in my brain that future technology will be able to interpret and even intervene in. But ideas still affect us all, ideas still unconsciously influence me, and it is a rare and lucky moment when I truly realize this. I will continue to loudly and aggressively sneer and annoy others by pointing out how their unconsciously held beliefs are unexamined post christian biases.

I think I understand what Sologdin is saying, except the abbreviations.

My bad. I meant to communicate that I'm having a hard time generalizing from what you are saying; if I summed up what I think you are trying to generalize, I find myself confused.

Also, by predeterminates, I meant, we could bulletpoint where we were brought up, who did the rearing, the experiences that shape you, etc, before we realized that they were predetermining us.

resolution to quit smoking succeeds until it doesn't

nifty example.  i just went without cigarettes for a month, until job became a 100-hour week marathon for a while.

the cool thing is that the words of the resolution remain true, even though the facts of non-smoking are null.  these resolutions make actual facts fictive by their pronouncement (is that austin's illocutionary act, or jakobson's poetic function, maybe): the resolution is spoken, and, though normally indifferent to the words of men, the world listens.

So neither of you think that unhealthy habits can be changed or replaced? Those coalescing random forces were always going to make you a smoker? (Semi-aside, I think changing from smoking to vaporizing is nearly as healthy a choice as moving from smoking to quitting).

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jamesA01

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« Reply #70 on: November 17, 2013, 06:17:01 pm »
Well, we now have evidence that certain individuals have a genetic disposition to being able to easily quit smoking.

I can tell you for a fact that the last 3 times I've quit, about 6-9 months later I end up in bed with an unspeakable depression and extremely odd sensations in my body. I relent and go smoke and feel a kind of anxious relief. Choice? This has nothing to do with it. Proper scans of my brain and body could determine what is going on. Whenever I quit, I do so and within a few days I no longer even REMEMBER I ever smoked, there is no temptation, I don't even think about it. Then the depression comes. It's a mixture of extreme mental shut down and agony with disturbingly pleasurable sensations all throughout my body. I don't know what the fuck is going on, but it will be understood by science eventually. It is that intolerable that the only sane and sensible thing to do is to have a cigarette. Last time it happened and I had my first smoke, I felt a rush throughout my entire body and my fucking POSTURE and style of walking changed dramatically. This is how much these things have affected my body.

The thing is - the forces may be chaotic but they are DISCERNIBLE - we know that now. I may agonizingly switch between resolutions to quit, terror that I won't be able to, the desire just to say fuck it, shame at said desire etc. etc. but ultimately these are all manifestations of internal physiological processes.

And I agree with you about e-cigs, they genuinely are fantastic.

sologdin

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« Reply #71 on: November 17, 2013, 06:31:30 pm »
madness--

my position is that one can quit smoking, for example--but that transformation will have a chain of causality.  we can shorthand that as "will," though i think that is mystificatory to the extent it implies no causality other than otherwise uncaused volition.

Madness

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« Reply #72 on: November 17, 2013, 06:42:48 pm »
Science could probably explain it now.

The only counterargument I can make is that you aren't replacing what has been a constant activation for your brain. And I mean, you might have already altered your brain past the point of returning to the innate homeostasis (the brain will usually stablize at a new homeostasis until ultimately there is a crash) but I don't buy that.

I'm struggling with an analogy. But ultimately, the more we indulge habits, especially one's which introduce exogenous chemicals into the body's system, the more we ingrain patterns of activation, which the brain changes to facilitate processing. This is partially why quitting anything cold turkey can cause such problems for people.

Also, the 'choice' conversation is only one aspect of this belief discussion and the other generalities you're trying to articulate. I'm interested, I just don't seem to get the themes in your words.

madness--

my position is that one can quit smoking, for example--but that transformation will have a chain of causality.  we can shorthand that as "will," though i think that is mystificatory to the extent it implies no causality other than otherwise uncaused volition.

I inherently agree but I'm fighting for a moment of leverage, I think. Lol, I just wrote about four or five different sentences to try and offer an alternative - unlikely.

Not to bring it back to the individual, exclusively, but I can't digest that I'm predestined to have an outrageous life as the Crier of the Real. It seems unlikely that I was always going to make this commentary about how by believing we have free will generates more instances of making the world a less dismal place than by believing we don't have free will.

Hrm. Deep thoughts.

It brings me back to the idea that I just can't, I won't, excuse people who do shitty things and then suggest that they're predetermined to be dicks.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2013, 06:44:37 pm by Madness »
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Callan S.

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« Reply #73 on: November 18, 2013, 07:56:13 am »
And I agree with you about e-cigs, they genuinely are fantastic.
Always freaks me when the guy takes a drag right in the middle of games club, then I smell the absence of smell. It's like listening to shave and a hair cut, without the two bits. You're hurting my sense of aesthetics man! Think of the aesthetic children!

Callan S.

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« Reply #74 on: November 18, 2013, 07:58:32 am »
So neither of you think that unhealthy habits can be changed or replaced? Those coalescing random forces were always going to make you a smoker? (Semi-aside, I think changing from smoking to vaporizing is nearly as healthy a choice as moving from smoking to quitting).
To be honest that sounds more along the lines of alchoholism - you don't stop being an alchoholic, you just become an alcholic who doesn't drink.

I'm not sure if it genuinely, mechanically works that way. But it may be a strong feedback loop does build itself in the brain - and maybe that doesn't get dismantled. Only, at best, ignored.