THIS THREAD IS REALLY COOL

[PANZERCATWAGON]

i wrote this long piece of babble not too long ago and i figured i might aswell share it. theres hardly anything more interesting flowing through the lounge these days anyway so why not. this is just me talking about humans and shit so dont bother reading unless you are bored and have nothing to do and maybe want to argue shit like that




humans are apparently quite interesting. i cant recall meeting someone who doesnt do what they think is best for them.

most people, object when i say that my conclusions are drawn from just the observations i have of the people i meet. i first faced those objections many years ago, and i then accepted that they must be right. after thinking about the objections for a very long time, i began to sort out exactly why it is people made them. apparently first hand observations are not good enough because there are people out there i havent met and therefore my conclusions could be wrong if there were any exceptions. it seems, these people would only be happy if i were a god with infinite knowledge otherwise they would carry on adding the next level of objection in relation to my current knowledge

this is where i decided that this thing called common sense should be the the way forward. rather than using the unhelpful science logic, common sense says that we will never be gods. common sense says because we will never be gods we cant carry on debating using the scientific method because at all points in the quest for knowledge the barrier of celestial existence will eventually show itself. we could build a machine which could analyse every atom in every dimension of all the universes at all moments of time and still not be sure if we know all there is to know. at one point you have to accept that you are most probably right. that is throwing away the scientific method. and that is what scientists do everyday. but it is still regarded as the scientific method for some reason

using the more relevant, purposeful and helpful common sense method i can then carry on with coming up with laws for humans without having to worry about the previous objections, so long as i dont take my assumptions too far. i reckon if most people would generally accept that an idea is most probably correct, then it is. of course it is prone to potential failure. the world is flat. but its the better option when placed alongside the method which will always give failure rather than sometimes



humans are apparently quite interesting. i cant recall meeting someone who doesnt do what they think is best for them

no human will ever carry out an action that he believes will be bad for him without it being at least slightly beneficial for them

we are all selfish. this goes hand in hand with the evolutionary theory. it makes sense that if life has evolved by getting rid of the bad and keeping the good, that brains would have evolved to actively want to seek out every good choice rather than the bad ones. carrying out an action which is bad for the being would cause it to die out most of the time, and after a long while this would leave only the selfish ones

most people will argue, and i had similar arguments from kazuki i think, that sometimes humans do carry out selfless actions. like if a man gives a beggar some change. thats generally seen as quite a selfless act by most people. however it doesnt take much thought to imagine yourself as that man giving the change and discovering the only reason why you would be doing such a thing is so that the guilty feeling you would get if you did not give the beggar change does not appear in your mind. if you did not have any emotion, and therefore no guilt, you would view the situation purely on how the matter in the space around you could be affected. you would be giving the beggar change and therefore losing money and not gaining any, therefore you would make a loss, and so you would not give the beggar any change because it is not beneficial for you. why would you care what happens to the beggar. it will not affect you so there is no point



so im not really sure why. but lately ive been actively trying my hardest to see if i can get as close as possible to choosing a bad situation over a good one even if i know its completely not beneficial for me. i dont know why. other than because i want to

so i threw some of my money into a bin yesterday. i really needed it. i didnt want to throw it away. quite a lot. but i went ahead with it. why. i wanted test the law. of course its easy to say i only did it because i wanted to feel good about having accomplished the problem and test the law. but then i thought what if i already knew that i was going to feel good about testing the law. then i no longer feel good about doing the action because i know its only going end up with me feeling good and therefore it is not testing the law, it would be a selfish action still

thats the nearest i could get myself to. it probably still was selfish at some point. but it felt very strange. its something that i believe almost no one does. only crazy people. its a very strange feeling to carry out, in the nature of, something which 99.9% of all the people in the world will never do

humans are quite funny. running around doing weird sorts of things for strange reasons. animals are no different relatively but no where near as interesting

it would be quite strange to see a world inhabited by only beings which had no emotion. only some sort of overall purpose i suppose. or perhaps even no purpose, which seems more likely

humans seem to want to do all these mindless egocentric things with next to no thought as to what it achieves. its quite funny to watch a lot of the time though and im glad we are the way we are




at any rate. i will carry on trying to break down exactly what are the laws of humans probably until i die. they are very useful. once you have a rule you can use them like you would approaching any other problem where you use deductive logic to solve problems and act in ways you never would have been able to. predicting human behaviour is very fun

about a month ago now i managed to work out which college a new guy at work was studying at without talking to him first and with only a small handful of observations, based almost entirely on how he most likely acts. of course predicting human behaviour is not nearly as easy or absolute as this might sound, a lot of the time i am wrong, but it works most of the time

[-Major-]

well, if it's less benefical for you than it's bad for you, you're doing an act that isn't selfish. for something to be called something the majority should be pointed towards that.

as for example, if it's 6-5 for you in a football match you make 4 goals and then 5 self goals, your aim was to lose, even though you did try to win for some time, you tried lose more. altho this still does not work, since even if you do 1 self goal in a match on purpose, it still counts as ruining for yourself.

also, I'm pretty sure everyone got their times where they want to fuck up for oneself, can be small things like throwing away something you like (mostly because of anger issues) or bigger things like saying fuck you to your boss just to ruin for yourself.
everyone aren't stupid enough to take life seriously, since life is basically a game which doesn't contain bugs and you only got 1 chance, makes it quite useless to only do good things for yourself.
altho, Curiosity may be seen as a selfish act, but it's still just curiosity, you may or may not earn anything on it.

[Hair|Trigger]

Now it is.

[Farah]

this is where i decided that this thing called common sense should be the the way forward. rather than using the unhelpful science logic, common sense says that we will never be gods. common sense says because we will never be gods we cant carry on debating using the scientific method because at all points in the quest for knowledge the barrier of celestial existence will eventually show itself. we could build a machine which could analyse every atom in every dimension of all the universes at all moments of time and still not be sure if we know all there is to know. at one point you have to accept that you are most probably right. that is throwing away the scientific method. and that is what scientists do everyday. but it is still regarded as the scientific method for some reason

i somewhat disagree here. the scientific method just looks at what works by observation, but never makes a conclusive argument to say "hey this is true and that's that". it merely infers that one's conclusions correlate sufficiently and reliably enough to imply such causation. it's probabilifying the belief from one's observations via reliability, but the "truth" is uncertain and therefore it cannot be 100% discerned whether it is right or not. now, your example here raises a bigger question i think: what CAN we know? what is knowledge? what is one's standards for knowledge?

personally, i don't think we can really "know" anything that isn't inherently deductive and outside of one's interpretation(like mathematics). you might refute me and talk about statistics, but i'd pose the question: you see correlations, but do you KNOW that your description is completely actually? you might calculate the product-moment correlation to be a +0.9(which IS a high positive value as the scale is from -1 <-> +1), but can you conclusively say that the correlations are strong and therefore there is causation? of course not, this probabilifies your belief but may not be neccesarily true.

now one may dispute why mathematics is not inherently a priori, and i can explain that. one may ask: what is 2+2 was 5? well, let's get rid of the descriptions of values here:

-- added with -- will always give you ----. those lines added with those lines always give you the last number of lines. you can do this with pens, grab a few in one hand and grab a few in the other. put your hands together and providing none drop, they will always give the same amount of pens when you put your hands together. the names of the numbers are irrelevant, those are merely descriptions to make it easy for us to comprehend.

but anyways, this post was somewhat fragmented but i hope you understand.

[Smegma]

-- added with -- will always give you ----. those lines added with those lines always give you the last number of lines. you can do this with pens, grab a few in one hand and grab a few in the other. put your hands together and providing none drop, they will always give the same amount of pens when you put your hands together. the names of the numbers are irrelevant, those are merely descriptions to make it easy for us to comprehend.

This method of proof is now subject to the problem of induction.

[Farah]

ah yes that is true.i'll concede for now since i can't think of any way to refute that at the moment. goddamn hume.

[Blacksheepboy]

most people will argue, and i had similar arguments from kazuki i think, that sometimes humans do carry out selfless actions.

It takes training to control naturally occurring emotional reactions to certain events. Anger, pride, anxiety, frustration, nervousness, stress, and other such mental reactions to varying actions in time. I'm sure the same could be applied to selfishness -- don't ask how.

What say you to people like Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and (in the "he was a good prophet" sense) Jesus?

[{LAW} Gamer_2k4]

so i threw some of my money into a bin yesterday. i really needed it. i didnt want to throw it away. quite a lot. but i went ahead with it. why. i wanted test the law. of course its easy to say i only did it because i wanted to feel good about having accomplished the problem and test the law. but then i thought what if i already knew that i was going to feel good about testing the law. then i no longer feel good about doing the action because i know its only going end up with me feeling good and therefore it is not testing the law, it would be a selfish action still

thats the nearest i could get myself to. it probably still was selfish at some point. but it felt very strange. its something that i believe almost no one does. only crazy people. its a very strange feeling to carry out, in the nature of, something which 99.9% of all the people in the world will never do

You threw the money away for the same reason people punch walls when they're angry: they get something out of it.  When you punch a wall, you release tension and reduce stress, even though you may be injuring yourself in the process.  When you threw your money out, you did so because it was intriguing to you.  You were doing something which you told yourself no one else had ever done, and you were going to learn about yourself and mankind in the process.  That's definitely worth a couple bucks (or even a couple hundred, depending on who you are).

There's no denying that your actions and observations offer a lot of support for your theory.  A rational human being will never willingly hurt themselves (absolutely; relatively is another issue that I'll address shortly).  People who give up their possessions do so because they think they can achieve some sort of enlightenment without the burdens of the world.  People who cut themselves do it because they want to feel the pain or get attention.  Even people who kill themselves do so because they're absolutely convinced that the world has nothing but hurt in store for them, and they're trying to keep from experiencing that.

Now, the flip side of that is just as simple, and really only unclear when you look at it with too narrow of a perspective.  Why does altruism exist, since it seems to hurt the giver? It's not because people are afraid of feeling guilty, but rather that they know they're helping people, which gives them a sense of satisfaction.  (You may argue that's semantics, but I think there's more to guilt than the absence of happiness).  People give because they feel good for doing so.  This holds true for any seemingly destructive actions; after all, people wouldn't do that sort of thing if there was no reward.

[PANZERCATWAGON]

When you threw your money out, you did so because it was intriguing to you.  You were doing something which you told yourself no one else had ever done, and you were going to learn about yourself and mankind in the process.

that makes a lot of sense. taking that then i suppose there really is no way to be truly selfless as far as i know

What say you to people like Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and (in the "he was a good prophet" sense) Jesus?

well i guess gamer answered that above as he mentions how they only carried out their selfless acts because it made them feel good to do so. even if it were not directly rewarding they believed that eventually they would be rewarded with good feeling eventually

[Smegma]

that makes a lot of sense. taking that then i suppose there really is no way to be truly selfless as far as i know

When the universe is no longer viewed as a subject/object experience, than there is no selfishness or selflessness.

People who give up their possessions do so because they think they can achieve some sort of enlightenment without the burdens of the world.

The process is then being reversed and most likely nothing will become of it. First enlightenment should be reached and then worldly possessions can be "lost."