Makaze

Thanks.

Thanks again, I'll have to put that into consideration...
I'll probably show you the finished thing, assuming I can finish it.

Uhm,I have this so far, Basically just the definition of Religion.

Religious Freedom.
By: Carson Reyes

"Religion- Its a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. But what does that all mean? In religion, most people find an escape, self-righteousness or something to love; this is why I’ve decided to do my paper on this. Love it or not, Religion has played a large part in the history of the human race, for better or worse, it has led to many wars and from those wars- inventions- that have helped move society along. Sometimes religion is its own downfall, Corruptness in the church have long existed since the dawn of religion. "

I feel like its missing something at the end... and the truth.

This is kinda like playing with fire, because regardless of weather or not its a good paper, I can't put "Praise Jesus The holy Savior Lord O Jesus!" Nor "Religion is corrupt, It causes wars and riots, destruction and the downfall of some of the greatest civilizations!" because the reader might not agree with my opinion, or what I write. So i have to be careful.

Thats great!
Well, Not war and everything.
I'm gonna present both sides, why its bad, and why people choose to believe in a higher power/being.

MMMMMMAAAAKKKKIIIIII!!!!!
You have strong opinions, I'm writing a religious paper and I'm in over my head. I have NOTHING, Its due tomorrow.
Why is religion a bad thing?Ect. Ect.

No, not really... Like I said, I'm interested in knowing myself, and people's thoughts on myself.

So, how do you perceive me?

You're... A cool guy, but you seem a bit closed off. It's hard to really get where you're coming from most of the time, but all in all, you're one of the smartest members in many aspects.

No reason, really. Just interested.

Oh well.

Anyway, earlier, you said you were doing the "same thing on the forum".
What exactly did you mean?

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But that argument is invalid, because no matter how well you think you know someone, you still only know the idea of them that you have built up in your head. You would have the exact same experience in a dream—if you were in a dream long enough, you would 'get to know' the characters there, and eventually you would drop these pretenses and start to wonder if they actually were outside of your mind. The more time you spent on them, the more complete they would become, just like with 'real' people that you meet. You could say that they changed, or you could say that you hadn't learned enough about them yet. It works in both the 'real' and dream worlds. You might say that you wouldn't, but you would if you were around them enough to fill in all of the blanks.

If they are both ideas, then how do you differentiate 'purely' an idea from 'an idea of something that actually exists'? I do not see any difference other than 'the amount of time I spend with them'. If you had a spirit following you around that only you could see (think Hikaru no Go), you would eventually stop assuming that you were hallucinating it after a while and start believing that it was 'real'. How do you explain or rationalize that?
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By disagreeing with it. The argument is not about my ideas of people (Which are the same in real life and in dreams, yes), but the manner in which they exist. Or, as you'd like to put it, the manner in which I perceive them to exist. I perceive you to exist independently of me, because you can interact with people other than me who also exist.

However, a spirit following me that only I can see obviously exists dependently of me and will die with me. If I knew this, I would not eventually start to think it was real. Look at my inner monologue, I interact with it the same way I interact with real people and with dreams, I even have a mental visual representation of it, but I understand that it does not exist. It is completely dependent of me, nobody can interact with it except for me, and when I die, it will not be able to exist. You would still exist if I were to die right now.


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There are hundreds of ways to gain from dropping this ridiculous pretense. Two them are that you would gain the freedom to consider anything that you cannot prove false. You would gain more capacity for thought and would probably learn something else by considering the idea. Maybe the person who saw it merely saw a castle that looked like it. Maybe magic exists and there is a school for it but it is not Hogwarts. But your first reaction is to decide that it doesn't fit with your boot programs and disregard it straight off. The second of the two reasons is that you are killing your own enjoyment of the world. You are refusing to think of what could be and would rather assume that nothing exists but what you have been told or have personally proven exists. I guess we know why they call you a conservative—you are extremely closed to adding new things onto your view of the world.
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Look, I don't believe it is impossible for Hogwarts to exist. For all I know, it could. But I believe that it does not. That belief could change. I think the only difference between me and you is that you simply consider it unlikely for Hogwarts to exist and stop there, whereas I, after weighing the likelihood, concluded that it does not exist. Is that correct?


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A good example of why you might gain from broadening your worldview is by accepting that maybe someone isn't lying when they tell you a ghost story. If the ghost is real, then you gain several things—a knowledge of it, a heightened chance of noticing them when they are around, a better chance of accepting that they are there and that you are not dreaming, and the capacity to analyze it scientifically. You lose all of these when you assume that science rejects the very idea of them. "That's not possible" is the line said by those who die first in ghost stories, remember?
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Again it's not a matter of simply dismissing the idea of ghosts, it's a matter of weighing the possibility and likelihood, and coming to a conclusion.


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I would definitely say that you have tons to gain by acknowledging that you know next to nothing and that your entire view of the world could be flipped upside down by a single realization. Why don't you believe that?
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I do acknowledge both of those things.


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This is your argument in a nutshell: "I don't see how I stand to gain from anything by booting up another operating system like Linux."
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I'm pretty happy with my Virtual Box.

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And when you take those measurements, you do so subjectively. Using an eye and using a microscope are functionally the same action and they are both subjective experiences. Using an X-Ray is akin to having different filters for vision; for example, some animals can see heat. If you could 'see' someone else's brain with whatever-ray filtered eyes, it would be the same as viewing it with your naked eyes—this is subjective. To make this simpler for you, since you value others' existence, let's say that you and one other person are the only people in the world. You want to prove that you are not hallucinating them, but you cannot measure your own brain. You have them measure your brain for you, and you accept that you are not hallucinating because they are outside of your mind.

But wait! You used what could have been a hallucination to prove that it was not a hallucination. You have already assumed that they are outside of your mind. This is akin to asking your imaginary friend if he is real and accepting his answer.

Substitute a machine that would do the measuring in for the person, and you have the same problem. It is logically impossible to measure one's own consciousness.
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God dammit, you're right again...


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No, it does not. Think about it—you just conceded that what your existence revolves around is not the actual people, but your ideas of those people.

You have also stated that people in dreams are 'merely' ideas of people.

Why do you need the people to be there to have the ideas of them? When your friends move away, go into a coma or die, never to be seen again, your idea is all that you have—but I assume you would still keep any promises you made to your idea of them because your idea of them lives on, and you still feel accountable to them even though they are no longer present. This is an obvious double-standard based on an arbitrary property called 'real'.

Why shouldn't you respect the 'imaginary' idea of a person just as much as a 'real' one when you have already admitted that what you truly respect is your idea of the 'real' one rather than their actual self? It doesn't make sense to differentiate if they are both your ideas of people.

You might argue that a fictional character can't come out of a book and or your dreams and do things to you, but neither can most of the people on this site. Those fictional characters and dreams have the same kind of interaction with you that we on this site do, that through text and ideas only. The only thing I can do to you is ridicule you and dislike you, and any fictional or dream person can do those things too. So why should the fictional characters be any less respectable? Why should you feel more accountable to me than a dream character? And don't use "because they will be gone the next day". I could be gone and never speak with you again the next day, too. There is no guarantee that they will not, so that excuse is invalid. For now, assume that this character can appear in any dream. Why should you feel more accountable to me than to them for what you do to them?
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And again...However, my argument is that you exist independently of me (At least, I think you do), a dream character does not.

I don't see how I stand to gain anything by entertaining the idea that Hogwarts is real.

Oh, and I said this in my last post:
That last part has definitely opened my mind up a bit and made me more understand the value in practicalism.

Dammit, I already replied to this. I guess it didn't go through. :/
Retyping...


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Like I said, it would be technical in both cases. Did the world change to one where light was particles to one where it was waves when we did the experiments that proved each? No, you would argue, we simply did not understand reality fully.

It is the same in a dream. You say the dream changes, I say reality changes. You respond by saying we merely misjudged reality, I say you merely misjudged the dream. Do you have a way to differentiate them that is not arbitrary?
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Nope, you've got me there.


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That is a meaningless distinction (and it is based on the assumption that you are not also hallucinating your body). A mind is subjective and you cannot watch yourself watch the tree, so to you, or as far as you personally can tell, the experiences are exactly the same.
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The subjective experience that I go through is the same, but objectively the experiences are different because you can measure which parts of the brain are active.


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It revolves around the idea of others. If you acknowledge that you do not know anyone fully, or that knowing someone fully is theoretically impossible, then you acknowledge that what you revolve around is actually 'what your mind is capable of seeing' and not 'how things really are'. Do you acknowledge that?
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Sure, by what my existence revolves around still needs other people to exist. If they didn't, I couldn't have my incomplete perception of them.


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Why do you?

You do gain. You gain the freedom to view things without loyalty. You gain objectivity and a freer mind. Think of your conscious mind like RAM. When you 'believe' in things, as soon as you become conscious, it automatically loads up those beliefs or programs in the RAM. This not only decreases your capacity for thought but will inhibit you from running ideas through your head that conflict with these boot scripts. Let's say you are running Windows, and can only run Windows programs, or programs that do not conflict with the Windows startup programs. What I suggest is to go back to nothing, so that when you are faced with a problem, you deal with only that problem, and are not hindered by all of the predefined variables that Windows has. You can boot into Linux, Mac, FreeBSD, or build up from nothing if need be.

So I say do away with unnecessary assumptions and deal with each problem without assuming anything. That position of full capacity and freedom is reward in itself.

Do you have anything to lose, or is this somehow not a gain?
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I can still do all that without letting go of my perception of reality, it's called suspension of disbelief. Look at my Harry Potter video. Obviously reality did not matter to me when I made it.

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As they can change in reality, but it is technical in both. The way in which the dream can change is still limited, so there is consistency, it just becomes more complex. Like with reality.
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We don't know that the laws of reality can change. Nobody could prove that they couldn't, either.


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It is also functionally true that you are hallucinating the tree, since hallucination and a 'real' sensory experience are can be exactly the same. There is a 50/50 chance the tree is outside of your mind. Why do you default to assuming that it is external? What makes you so sure that it si more likely to be external?
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Because it's different, when you hallucinate (I'm thinking of dreaming while asleep here), you are not perceiving what your eyes see, you perceive thoughts in your head. It's a different part of your brain.


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Why do you believe this? If every other sentient being ceased to exist, you could still exist, right?
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That was a bad way to put it on my part, I meant, "My existence revolves around others".


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Then why do you value reality more than remaining flexible?
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Because there is no reason to extend my flexibility on my basis of reality. I wouldn't gain anything from it. My concept of realism is my concept of what I can and can't make use of. I don't have to be a practicalist to make use of a dream. I can make use of the dream with the understanding that it isn't real. In that sense the line between what is real and what isn't real doesn't matter, but I still choose to acknowledge the distinction.

That's true, for the time being.
I suppose I can be as well-read or knowledgable as I want, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm still young and, on some levels, immature.

I always thought I seemed my age, though, to be perfectly honest.

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Then are you completely unobservant or am I the only one of the two of us who can work out the dynamics of each dream individually and find them to be consistent within the dream, like how magic is consistent within Harry Potter and others? It seems more likely that you are unaware of or ignoring it because it doesn't support your position.
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Oh sure every dream has its own consistent rules, but the point is they change with each dream. They can also change mid-dream, however.


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Why do you believe that?
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Because it is functionally true. Take when I perceive a tree, for example. The tree exists outside of my head. My eyes see the tree, and my brain unscrambles the mess that my eyes see, allowing me to perceive (See) it.

Okay, I will use your definition of dreaming.

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Let's say that you jump into the middle of a game and the world is set in an age that is greatly affected by a past war. But you never play through that war in the game and the only existence that it has is through the 'consequences' you see while playing and the text that told you about it. Did the war 'really' happen or not? You have the consequences and the history. The parts you played through really happened because you were a part of them and experienced them, but what about the backstory of the game?
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That's interesting. The backstory is less real than what you play through in the game, even though it must have happened, even though it didn't happen...that's a good example. I see where you are coming from now.


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Your morality is borrowed from others. More, you only have a conscience if you 'trust' those others; that they exist, or that they are the people you think they are. I have no respect for it as such.
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My entire existence depends on others, so.


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Do you profit more from caring about what is real than from being a practicalist? Yes or no.
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No.

I care about politics, actually. I care enough to know what's going on, but I'm not the most aware.
I should be, probably. But, like you said, I'm young.

Completely.

And, eh. Either bad or good luck depending on your perspective.

I'm 14.
Younger than people here expect, apparently.

I'm coming to terms with how people see me, and how I see them in turn.

Hm. Well, the sole benefit to being as young as I am is not needing to find a job.
And I hope everything goes well.