Crocker’s rules.
I’m nobody special, and I wouldn’t like the responsibility which comes with being ‘someone’ anyway.
Reading incorrect information can be frustrating, and correcting it can be fun.
My writing is likely provocative because I want my ideas to be challenged.
I may write like a psychopath, but that’s what it takes to write without bias, consider that an argument against rationality.
Finally, beliefs don’t seem to be a measure of knowledge and intelligence alone, but a result of experiences and personality. Whoever claims to be fully truth-seeking is not entirely honest.
His conclusion isn’t incorrect, and he got there by the same kind of reflection which may lead to enlightenment. But he likely lacked empathy, which lead him to question the validity of empathy. If he had had empathy, even these realizations wouldn’t have been much of a danger, as the affective/emotional empathy is harder to destroy through thinking than the cognitive empathy is.
Being dangerous is not bad in itself, sometimes the tree of liberty needs to be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. The world has a tendency to degenerate unless one maintains it like a gardener removing weeds. But the unreasonable and ill are much more likely to default to violence, so the majority of the violence which occurs will be a net negative.
I think it’s true that “the dose makes the poison”, and this makes it so that good and bad things don’t exist in themselves. Nietzsche even wrote “Health and sickness are not essentially different, as the ancient physicians and some practitioners even today suppose. One must not make of them distinct principles or entities that fight over the living organism and turn it into their arena. That is silly nonsense and chatter that is no good any longer. In fact, there are only differences in degree between these two kinds of existence: the exaggeration, the disproportion, the nonharmony of the normal phenomena constitute the pathological state.”
I don’t like the framing that society needs to protect itself against those who harm it, but I do believe that the peoples of a society must protect themselves from elements which would harm their society (this subtle difference is important because society, considered as a super structure emergent from its parts, tends to not represent the interests of its parts).
I must also have benefited positively from thinking too much, since I’m basically devoid of malice by now. Even when I want enemies gone, it’s for practical reasons and not due to hate.
I feel like the east is really good at doing this by default, and that the west lacks this ability. The same is argued in the book The Master and His Emissary. this division can also be described as a lack of balance between the objective and the subjective, between machine-like efficiency and humanity, between qualia and replication, between materialism and meaning, and between rationalism and intuition. Perhaps “IQ vs EQ” as well. I’ve come to the conclusion that thinking itself might be pathelogical. Which reminds me, have you heard of the idea that language is a parasite? (I didn’t read that paper, it just seems like a good introduction to the idea). It’s a memetic entity with people as its host. I suppose I’m talking about language in the negative sense that people tend to talk about ego.
Anyway. I see what you mean about “the doubter dissolves”. I kind of did that to my own doubt. Just like how enlightenment tells you that it’s real, my experience of the world also considers itself real. It’s a reality, my reality. I don’t particularly care if other, conflicting realities may exist. You seem to rely a little more on the idea that enlightenment has to be true/real (your elephant seems to want this reassurance), whereas I’d be content with it being a state of mind. Your theory may be correct, I just happened to think of a counter-argument. But any belief and statement can be countered, attack is infinitely easier than defense, so my counter-argument doesn’t actually matter. My bad.
I don’t think “deriving pleasure from overpowering another” is sufficient for wanting to hurt someone. I like games because they make power dynamics possible. But we’re only enemies inside the ring, we’re friends playing the roles of enemies. But I do believe that evil mostly stems from weakness resulting in the mind employing self-defense tactics. Almost all psychological self-defence consists of hurting those around oneself by throwing ones own burden onto them, venting to them, draining their energy, fishing for compliments, using them as a means to achieve safety, manipulating them (e.g. guilt tripping), etc. (and this is why an abundance mindset leads to a large reduction in evil, and enlightenment seems like a state of abundance). And as you say, seeing the world as an extension of yourself means that benefiting oneself and benefiting others is the same thing. In a state of poverty, the framing is “self vs world”.
This might sound weird, but I consider the disillusioned eye to be perverted. The purpose of decoration is hiding that which is under, and that which is under is rather crude and unattractive compared to the surface. The underground world is ugly, the person below the mask is a mess, the face without makeup is imperfect, the “behind the scenes” of every performance is filled with problems. Now that I think about it, the state of enlightenment you’re describing is not disillusioning per se, but the process which results in enlightenment rubs me in the wrong way because it’s essentially the opposite of enlightenment (e.g. doubting everything to achieve the state of non-doubt)
I was wrong if you meant existential threat such as the emergence of superintelligence. I took it to mean “existential crisis” which I still believe is psychological. Most people might ask philosophical questions as they get older and reach higher states of awareness, but it’s only excessive anxiety (manifesting as doubt and the need for certaincy) which keeps one stuck with these questions. Many simply go “I am”, and this is an assertion, not the answer to a question, but an axiom which doesn’t bother to question itself. The immersion (grounding) is too strong, and the process which disrupts and disorients is weaker than the stimuli in the surroundings. It’s like when you’re about to wake up from a lucid dream and you rub your hands together, feeling the friction between them in high detail, and thus stabilize the dream.
I disagree that everyone thinks about questions relating to meaning. Meaning is a feeling, not a logical conclusion, so thinking about it analytically is a mistake. People justify effort to themselves, e.g. “Do it for your family”, or “work so that you can feed your dog”, or “If I improve, maybe somebody will love me”, but this internal conflict is emotional, it’s still attached to illusions of self and to subjectivity (the first-person view). The third-person view, and the analytical and detached nature of philosophy, is unable to find an answer because it’s detached. Meaning is a property of the first-person perspective, it dissolves when you look at life from the outside. Hence the importance of immersion.
Reflection only happens when something is wrong. Only anxious minds get stuck in reflection because they don’t achieve the feeling of resolution which is required to go back.
While I do have answers to questions, because I too have been anxious for most of my life, these are past conclusions and simple deductions. I no longer consider the questions meaningful nor the answers necessary. I simply am. Reality is what I can get away with. ‘Good’ is what I like, ‘Bad’ is what I dislike. If I want something to happen, I make it happen. Nobody is to blame for anything, everyone is fully responsible for everything which happens. I’m just a player who loves the game. When we play Minecraft, we don’t ask “What’s the meaning of zombies? And we don’t write long dramatic texts like “What’s the meaning of our struggles? We collect items only to lose them, the sun rises only to descend, we heal hitpoints only to get damaged once more”. In other words, the problem is that one thinks there’s a problem to begin with. The solution is to deny the problem, not to solve it. The existence of the problem is not a fact, it’s a perspective, an interpretation.
I experience it, just like I experience ornaments. And all information must come from the senses, right? So experience is the highest source of truth we have access to. Well, perhaps consciousness is first, experience second, senses third, and reasoning fourth, or something. I just don’t think that reflection is more correct than what is being reflected upon, as that is like putting the map before the territory.
I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t putting in effort, but my own motivational system tends to do what I just described (I solve my ADHD with coffee, which makes me more anxious. It’s not ideal). When I really want to do something, the feeling of effort does not even exist, because there’s no friction. I think the feeling of effort might come from internal conflict between desires.
You’re intelligent, so you should be able to make plans which secure a better future for yourself. You may have problems which make it harder for you than most, but you’ve probably found that, on days where you can be proud of what you’ve accomplished, your elephant lets you relax.
In short, when the brain judges “If I continue like I am now, everything will work out”, the elephant is happy. Jordan Peterson went as far as saying “The vast majority of positive emotion that you’re going to experience in your life is a consequence of pursuing meaningful goals.”, but the meaning is actually the substance which helps one believe in it and move towards it without doubt. It’s the absence of meaning, and not the existence of pain, which makes a goal feel not worth it. This is the default process, anyway. You can live accordingly, disrupt it, do neither or do both at once. Whatever works for you. You know yourself the best!