Sociopath Community

AppleGenius said: 

Oh my God, this food tastes like heaven. After 3 days of fasting, having some fatty pork. This is my 3rd repeat of the same dish. Heavenly.

Regarding religion, it's tricky for me. Not really sure how to implement religion in my life without faith.

I'm culturally Christian, whatever that means. I used to be very religious, until I slowly grew out of it and went into buddhism and I wanted to find fulfillment by making people around me happy. That was fulfilling for some time, until I discovered how selfish people can be and how immediately entitled people can become if you help them. So I developed my own philosophy, which was something like, do unto others what other do to you, as opposed to do unto others what you want them to do to you, because most people won't reciprocate and are deeply selfish. I also think there's more to life than "it's all suffering" so I guess I deeply disagreed with the Buddhist doctrine.

Then I got interested in scientism, skepticism, and bayesianism. I don't like these philosophies, but I find that it's incredibly difficult to disagree with them. I mean, what are the chances that the bible stories were made up by a group of people vs that it's actually true? If we reject, say, islam or hinduism, then we at least know that it's possible that any given religion is untrue, and we're lead to believe anyway that any given religion, in lieu of further evidence, must be more likely untrue than true. That's Bayesian logic. I mean, how do you even argue with that, without introducing highly esoteric ideas? I feel powerless, and no matter how much I'd love to believe Christianity and accept religion into my life, it seems like logic compels me not to.

I've also practiced "phenomenology" but that doesn't seem to be fulfilling to me at all. It seems, rather, deeply unfulfilling, but maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Turncoat said: 

AppleGenius said:

Id say masochism is pretty common. Chronic boredom seems less common

How common for each?

10% - 0.1%

Factor 100.

 What is there more to life? Do you know what suffering means in Buddhism?

Friedrich said: 

AppleGenius said: 

Regarding autism, I'm not autistic.

I'm highly logical, but I am in tune with people's emotions and my work requires a significant amount of people skills. I'm also empathetic in that if I see a friend of mine suffering, I feel very much in tune with my emotions and will volunteer to help them. I've sat on the other side of things enough, in addition, to see multiple viewpoints and I'd like to think I am less influenced by stereotypes and biases than most people, but who can really tell.

I know I tend to behave somewhat autistically, like a robot, here, occasionally, but I'd like to think that I am "aware" of what I am doing. So I don't lack the ability to introspect or observe how Turncoat and others likely see me. I know, for example, how Turncoat's mind works from reading research articles related to cognitive psychology, and hamster experiments. Especially with these resources, I have no trouble understanding how human brains function.

So, no, I'm not autistic, thank you very much.

 What you wrote here sounds highly autistic..

Which part, specifically?

Friedrich said: 

 What is there more to life? Do you know what suffering means in Buddhism?

Potential for fulfillment, happiness, and pleasure, and indeed everything except suffering, I think. Pleasure is not impermanent in the sense that you can always follow the local maxima and aim for a moving target.

But you're asking about fulfillment. The answer to that depends on how far "gone" you are, I think. Once you've tasted the forbidden apple, it's difficult to return to God, is what I think.

Suffering in buddhism isn't all that different from what we would call suffering.

you didn't even mention enlightenment

suffering comes from the attachment to pleasure, bro

janitor said: 

you didn't even mention enlightenment

suffering comes from the attachment to pleasure, bro

I've studied buddhism under a monk. I was pretty serious about it.

AppleGenius said: 

Friedrich said: 

 What is there more to life? Do you know what suffering means in Buddhism?

Potential for fulfillment, happiness, and pleasure, and indeed everything except suffering, I think. Pleasure is not impermanent in the sense that you can always follow the local maxima and aim for a moving target.

But you're asking about fulfillment. The answer to that depends on how far "gone" you are, I think. Once you've tasted the forbidden apple, it's difficult to return to God, is what I think.

Suffering in buddhism isn't all that different from what we would call suffering.

 Suffering in Buddhism is different from how people use the term colloquially. It is threefold and you could call it suffering of suffering, suffering of change and suffering of conditioned phenomena. The first one is painful experiences how one would think. The second one is that even happy experiences end and are constantly changing. There is no permanent happy state that could be achieved and chasing the fulfillment, happiness and pleasure you are mentioning could be compared to drinking salt water. The third one is more difficult to explain and you would need some knowledge about Buddhist phenomenology. However, these realities are unrefutable. 

My comment from before is in particular regarding the 2nd point. About how assuming that we as people are in equilibrium whereas the environment is changing is fallacious and refutable, because we change with the environment. Hence the earlier comment about the local maxima.

If you think of buddhism in terms of differential geometry, then happiness refers to a local plateau on the differential surface, whereas the statement about impermanence refers to the landscape changing. Hence, a local plateau will not stay a local plateau, so a given static point (representing a person at a fixed point in life) on the surface will at times be high or low (happy or sad), which is to say that the things around us are impermanent, and what makes us happy now may not do so in the future. But the point is that we're not static, we can aim for moving target. Hence my earlier comment aimed at the 2nd principle of suffering you're talking about.

The observer in buddhism was ever worked out only to 0th order, neglecting even the linear corrections, while correctly assuming that life is highly non-linear. My philosophy, on the other hand, correctly incorporates the highly non-linear and dynamic nature of us as observers on an equally dynamic, non-linear landscape.

So while it's true that the landscape around us changes, so can we. So let's call my philosophy differential buddhism, and yours 0th order linearized buddhism. Differential buddhism says we can achieve permanent bliss. We just need to change constantly.

We can call the state of permanent bliss ultra-nirvana.

AppleGenius said: 

My comment from before is in particular regarding the 2nd point. About how assuming that we as people are in equilibrium whereas the environment is changing is fallacious and refutable, because we change with the environment. Hence the earlier comment about the local maxima.

If you think of buddhism in terms of differential geometry, then happiness refers to a local plateau on the differential surface, whereas the statement about impermanence refers to the landscape changing. Hence, a local plateau will not stay a local plateau, so a given static point (representing a person at a fixed point in life) on the surface will at times be high or low (happy or sad), which is to say that the things around us are impermanent, and what makes us happy now may not do so in the future. But the point is that we're not static, we can aim for moving target. Hence my earlier comment aimed at the 2nd principle of suffering you're talking about.

The observer in buddhism was ever worked out only to 0th order, neglecting even the linear corrections, while correctly assuming that life is highly non-linear. My philosophy, on the other hand, correctly incorporates the highly non-linear and dynamic nature of us as observers on an equally dynamic, non-linear landscape.

So while it's true that the landscape around us changes, so can we. So let's call my philosophy differential buddhism, and yours 0th order linearized buddhism. Differential buddhism says we can achieve permanent bliss. We just need to change constantly.

We can call the state of permanent bliss ultra-nirvana.

 That's just diarrhea and mental masturbation. How is it going for you? Are you happy? Semantics and mental gymnastics seem to serve you well avoiding real feelings. 

You're being rude.

I'm bored, not necessarily unhappy.

You're right that it's mental masturbation, but true nonetheless. It is also among the principal reasons that I abandoned buddhism after practising it for years, including under a buddhist monk for a period of time. I tried to explain what made me grow out of religion.

You misunderstand me and what you don't understand you dismiss as hocus pocus. Basically I'm an autist and a shill in your eyes. That's fine, I don't blame you. You think I'm just writing garbage thoughtlessly, but that's not really the case. It's a shame we communicate at such different wavelengths.

You misused the word shill. Maybe your English vocabulary is not as strong as your mathematics. A shill is someone who is trying to sell you something, his interest therefore in the subject is disingenuous, usually to make the sale, only.

English is not your mother tongue, am I right?