Actually, I think this gives me a deeper understanding of you. I tend to think of your POLITICAL ideologies in secular terms - separate from your spiritual beliefs and foundations. This is in part because your political ideologies are rooted in very secular, even atheist, belief systems. That is - most of the people who identify with Libertarian values are atheist or at the very least very secular. It is not a highly spiritual community in general. 

You may have heard me refer to my grandmother-in-law and her spirituality as a Christian. The thing I note about her was that her faith in the Will of God was so unshakeable - her "obedience" to His plan so complete - that I very rarely saw her express sorrow or frustration about situations. I mean, sometimes she expressed concern or uncertainty - but she was great about letting go and not being consumed, and also with not trying to fight an outcome that wasn't what SHE would want. That didn't mean she just gave in if something wasn't going her way - but if something DIDN'T go her way, she seemed content to accept that it was GOD's way. Her faith was very unshakeable. 

I'm seeing your outlook kind of through the same perspective after this explanation. Your spiritual values insist that you look at things through an optimists view. This is actually the message of the story/movie "Life of Pi," if you have the wisdom to decipher it. 

This is probably also contrasted with TheDave - who tends to express things in a far more secular, pessimistic view with more of a drive/desire to disrupt and correct BIG social things through his own will. 

I'm not saying one approach or the other is superior or inferior. Just observations of how my perception affects all of our interactions. 

Sat Jul 17 2021 21:08:30 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

I think you overestimate my global optimism pretty regularly. Probably because I'm a happy person and expect things to go well for _Me In Particular_. But you have to remember I'm a relatively literal reader of the Bible.

Before Adam even died, the world had fallen into global degeneracy. Enoch had to restart civilization once even in the first thousand years of the Abrahamic history of mankind. And they achieved a functionally ideal society. And the people around them hated them and when they left the entire world devolved into barbarians again. And we do this at least once every thousand years on each continent.

It's been a good run. We brought back the social technologies of the Greeks and hybridized it with the Dutch experiments on republicanism. We abolished the divine right of kings. We found a local maximum of the utility of materialism. No real spiritual progress since 1500AD.

It's just a mediocre Renaissance so far. If we get back to commonplace space travel it'll be the best Renaissance in 5,000 years and Richard Branson just advertised that to me on a YouTube interstitial. So it could happen. But the social justice crew is getting hyphy and I'm not here for it.

I prayed for some new revelation and I've had some really helpful thoughts. None of it makes me hopeful for the human race, but I'm seeing better what my contribution looks like for my lifespan, and it's beautiful. So I'll probably keep sounding optimistic. But it's because I know the meaning of life, not because I'm delusional enough to think our civilization does. We might get back to that. Start resurrecting people again. I hope so. I don't see it happening for 120-300 years but I love pleasant surprises. 

Oh, man. I'm in a paradigm inversion. This whole concept of the ontograph is just growing out of me like a baby about to walk out muh brain womb. I put a couple posts up on ontograph.org, but I need to write like 30 more. The latest idea I'm having is about fractals in perception, and how we humans are good at recognizing and playing with patterns like the hero's journey. But I realized I haven't been on here for a while, so I thought I'd stop by. I'm down to Facebooking once every three days or so. It's just not relevant anymore. And other social media isn't usually as fun as my job, which is a delight to say. Anyway, one of these days I may write a book about the ontograph. It's the reality we live in, not the one we're searching for. 

Often, Wangiss, you're at a level about me and assuming I know what you're talking about. I'm still working on grasping R and K Type selection theory. :D 

You should absolutely write about this stuff, in more detail, as if writing it for an audience to learn it - here. I'd like to have the content to read here. 

I agree. I was on a Facebook flurry this week, but it was in part because the guy who hired me told me he expected lots of posts - so it was part of the package. Now that I'm back - and I've got time to actually *consume* Facebook - I'm already finding I'd rather avoid it. 

I find that I am very reclusive on social media these days. I much prefer Citadels, with a small group of intelligent locals, compared to the big meat market social media sites. 

Tue Aug 24 2021 02:59:30 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

Oh, man. I'm in a paradigm inversion. This whole concept of the ontograph is just growing out of me like a baby about to walk out muh brain womb. I put a couple posts up on ontograph.org, but I need to write like 30 more. The latest idea I'm having is about fractals in perception, and how we humans are good at recognizing and playing with patterns like the hero's journey. But I realized I haven't been on here for a while, so I thought I'd stop by. I'm down to Facebooking once every three days or so. It's just not relevant anymore. And other social media isn't usually as fun as my job, which is a delight to say. Anyway, one of these days I may write a book about the ontograph. It's the reality we live in, not the one we're searching for. 

Sun Jul 18 2021 07:44:22 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

This is probably also contrasted with TheDave - who tends to express things in a far more secular, pessimistic view with more of a drive/desire to disrupt and correct BIG social things through his own will. 

I'm not saying one approach or the other is superior or inferior. Just observations of how my perception affects all of our interactions. 

 

lolwut?

BJ and I have extremely similar worldviews.  We just have different approaches.  His tempers mine and I don't care to speculate on if mine changes his at all.  I expect it probably does, but I wouldn't know how to express what it does, if anything.

Mostly I just have no patience left for communists and authoritarians, and want to hoist them with their own petard.

I'm a problem solver.  I see lots of problems.  I have solutions for many of them.  Some of them I want to just use copious amount of fire on.  As the left grows increasingly comfortable with violent rhetoric, it amuses me to think that they actually believe that violence will go well for them.

Alternately I can solve some problems with iEarn, using tech to make everyone have a better work experience, calling out bad actors and improving company policies.  This thing is going to be scary once it's big.  I want my server rooms rigged to blow just in case.

I didn't say that it was superior or inferior - only that it is a different approach.

Yours is strongly influenced by "generation lolwut". I'm not a huge fan of THAT... bruh. :) But... I understand that it is how your generation expresses yourselves, as much as guys my age are very likely to invoke 1337Sp33k and teh H@x0rZ.

In a nutshell, Wangiss tends to think that the singularity is fast approaching both in social awareness and technological progress - and that humanity will be forced to adopt a more progressive attitude toward individual liberty and personal choice.


You think the opposite, and think that specific, individual, activist action is necessary to avoid going 180 degrees opposite of what Wangiss sees.

That has been my general observation on watching and listening to the two of you over the last several years. Wangiss sees the problems as self-solving, you see them as self-perpetuating without intervention.

I think that is a pretty fair compare and contrast.

By the way, my ideology tends more towards yours, TheDave.

Wed Sep 22 2021 01:25:36 MST from TheDave

 

Sun Jul 18 2021 07:44:22 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

This is probably also contrasted with TheDave - who tends to express things in a far more secular, pessimistic view with more of a drive/desire to disrupt and correct BIG social things through his own will. 

I'm not saying one approach or the other is superior or inferior. Just observations of how my perception affects all of our interactions. 

 

lolwut?

BJ and I have extremely similar worldviews.  We just have different approaches.  His tempers mine and I don't care to speculate on if mine changes his at all.  I expect it probably does, but I wouldn't know how to express what it does, if anything.

 

Mostly I just have no patience left for communists and authoritarians, and want to hoist them with their own petard.

I'm a problem solver.  I see lots of problems.  I have solutions for many of them.  Some of them I want to just use copious amount of fire on.  As the left grows increasingly comfortable with violent rhetoric, it amuses me to think that they actually believe that violence will go well for them.

Alternately I can solve some problems with iEarn, using tech to make everyone have a better work experience, calling out bad actors and improving company policies.  This thing is going to be scary once it's big.  I want my server rooms rigged to blow just in case.

TheDave, you gave me the anarchy. Thank you. 

I'm going to record a meeting with TheDave where I explain the Ontograph for like 30-40 minutes. I'll post the link here. 

Mon Sep 27 2021 10:42:35 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

I didn't say that it was superior or inferior - only that it is a different approach.

Yours is strongly influenced by "generation lolwut". I'm not a huge fan of THAT... bruh. :) But... I understand that it is how your generation expresses yourselves, as much as guys my age are very likely to invoke 1337Sp33k and teh H@x0rZ.

In a nutshell, Wangiss tends to think that the singularity is fast approaching both in social awareness and technological progress - and that humanity will be forced to adopt a more progressive attitude toward individual liberty and personal choice.


You think the opposite, and think that specific, individual, activist action is necessary to avoid going 180 degrees opposite of what Wangiss sees.

That has been my general observation on watching and listening to the two of you over the last several years. Wangiss sees the problems as self-solving, you see them as self-perpetuating without intervention.

I think that is a pretty fair compare and contrast.

By the way, my ideology tends more towards yours, TheDave.

 

Wangiss and I are comfortably in the middle of those two generations, so we're fluent in both.

I agree with him that it's approaching.  I think that the status quo is going to violently resist it and that's bad for everyone.  I think that individual action is literally the only kind of action.  There are no groups.  There are only people who believe in groups.  People are generally lazy and so treating them as groups is effective because those people believe it should be.  It's not so much that I see them as self perpetuating without intervention as that I see the people currently in power making it stay the way it is for their benefit, but in practical terms that's essentially the same thing, so you're pretty much right.

It's hilarious and depressing and exhilarating watching the government try SO HARD to seize total control based on a virus that doesn't measurably increase the death rate.  Yeah, Covid is a thing, but it's not that bad of a thing to justify removing freedom.

Directed individual action toward a shared group goal is the most likely to be *successful*. 

Occasionally one defiant person can make a difference. Tianiman Square Tank Man wasn't that guy - though. 

Neda Agha-Soltan wasn't that individual either. Neither were any of the individuals who took action at Ruby Ridge. 

The GROUP efforts that all of these defiant people were involved with failed, too, though. 

So, I think it depends. Sometimes a single person can affect a change, sometimes a group is necessary, and sometimes, neither has any hope. 

Tue Oct 05 2021 03:24:29 MST from TheDave

 

Mon Sep 27 2021 10:42:35 MST from ParanoidDelusions <paranoiddelusions@wallofhate.com>

I didn't say that it was superior or inferior - only that it is a different approach.

Yours is strongly influenced by "generation lolwut". I'm not a huge fan of THAT... bruh. :) But... I understand that it is how your generation expresses yourselves, as much as guys my age are very likely to invoke 1337Sp33k and teh H@x0rZ.

In a nutshell, Wangiss tends to think that the singularity is fast approaching both in social awareness and technological progress - and that humanity will be forced to adopt a more progressive attitude toward individual liberty and personal choice.


You think the opposite, and think that specific, individual, activist action is necessary to avoid going 180 degrees opposite of what Wangiss sees.

That has been my general observation on watching and listening to the two of you over the last several years. Wangiss sees the problems as self-solving, you see them as self-perpetuating without intervention.

I think that is a pretty fair compare and contrast.

By the way, my ideology tends more towards yours, TheDave.

 

Wangiss and I are comfortably in the middle of those two generations, so we're fluent in both.

I agree with him that it's approaching.  I think that the status quo is going to violently resist it and that's bad for everyone.  I think that individual action is literally the only kind of action.  There are no groups.  There are only people who believe in groups.  People are generally lazy and so treating them as groups is effective because those people believe it should be.  It's not so much that I see them as self perpetuating without intervention as that I see the people currently in power making it stay the way it is for their benefit, but in practical terms that's essentially the same thing, so you're pretty much right.

It's hilarious and depressing and exhilarating watching the government try SO HARD to seize total control based on a virus that doesn't measurably increase the death rate.  Yeah, Covid is a thing, but it's not that bad of a thing to justify removing freedom.

I'm looking forward to this. 

Mon Oct 04 2021 15:33:19 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

I'm going to record a meeting with TheDave where I explain the Ontograph for like 30-40 minutes. I'll post the link here. 

Still haven't done it. We got another philosopher at work, though, and she agreed to the same as well as our famously open-minded and high -IQ friend Jimmy. So it's already a series in the making. Pretty stoked about it. The revelation is blowing my mind on the daily at this point. 

Absolutely looking forward to seeing it explained and discussed with other people. 

Fri Oct 15 2021 22:47:47 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

Still haven't done it. We got another philosopher at work, though, and she agreed to the same as well as our famously open-minded and high -IQ friend Jimmy. So it's already a series in the making. Pretty stoked about it. The revelation is blowing my mind on the daily at this point. 

Bah humbug. I still haven't recorded an ontograph conversation. Getting fired and then building a book of business for myself and now apparently they're going to try to get me back at work... Preparing for the contingencies necessary to feed these babies is murdering my disposable time. Phooey. 

Anyway, I'm starting to see the "world" we each inhabit as a virtual organ. Like other organs, it interfaces with objective reality on some level. But just as I can't tell if I'm smelling limonene from a lemon peel or limonene from a bottle of expeller-pressed oil, my ontograph is a cluster of perceptions that are interpretations of stimuli, not objective experiences. That is to say, there are no objective experiences. Experience is instead "what it's like" to live in reality in the same way that love is "what it's like" to experience an oxytocin bond. 

So, the philosophical arguments about if you're smelling limonene from a lemon peel or limonene from a bottle of expeller-pressed oil don't *really* matter that much to me. 

We start to steer in the direction of "your personal truth" in a discussion like this - and that isn't where I intend to take it - but... 

I think what may have you thinking this way is that we are most likely very near the singularity. VR is going to change things - and though most people think it might take a while, I think it is rushing at us like a freight train. Imagine if your kiosk could be remotely manned via VR with an android/robot at the kiosk? Instead of paying that guy to be in the store, he can work from home, and effectively do all the same things. Once it gets to this point, though - the question is - who is going to GO shopping, right? You'll do it remotely via VR, and it'll be delivered. 

But, as far as immediate vs. alternate realities and their tangibility or real-ness - I am not overly concerned with realities I cannot perceive or observe. That might be naïve - as I have a theory that some of the stranger scriptural directives may have to do with the science of what our state is in higher planes of existence. We might do things in THIS reality that have negative ripple effects in "higher" realities. But regardless, understood, shared and agreed upon *experience* in this reality, this world, is all that matters. Everything else that we can observe - Facebook, VRChat, Second Life - whatever - is secondary, and lesser. Any higher consciousness, is not available to us. 
For all practical purposes, subjective agreed upon reality and objective actual reality are indistinguishable one from the other. 

Sun Dec 26 2021 04:37:30 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

Bah humbug. I still haven't recorded an ontograph conversation. Getting fired and then building a book of business for myself and now apparently they're going to try to get me back at work... Preparing for the contingencies necessary to feed these babies is murdering my disposable time. Phooey. 

Anyway, I'm starting to see the "world" we each inhabit as a virtual organ. Like other organs, it interfaces with objective reality on some level. But just as I can't tell if I'm smelling limonene from a lemon peel or limonene from a bottle of expeller-pressed oil, my ontograph is a cluster of perceptions that are interpretations of stimuli, not objective experiences. That is to say, there are no objective experiences. Experience is instead "what it's like" to live in reality in the same way that love is "what it's like" to experience an oxytocin bond. 

"For all practical purposes, subjective agreed upon reality and objective actual reality are indistinguishable one from the other."

Yes and no. I don't have to agree with anyone to have an experience. And there are experiences of which consensus or even agreement is impossible or at least unreliable such as the experience of death. And what's more practical than death? And yet when you go through an experience it doesn't have to be articulable enough to agree on for it to be objective. That is, it happened. What exactly happened in every detail is already beyond human understanding. So doing some exploration of that line--how fuzzy it is and where it's drawn and how it behaves--seems like a frontier, and I'm predisposed by my personality to be intrigued by frontiers.

Sorry for my sentence structures. This post wasn't very readable. But perhaps that speaks to my point about articulability. ;) 

That is the problem with this entire segment of philosophy. The language isn't precise enough to convey the ideas - and trying to put it in language always leaves the person doing the articulation feeling like they didn't do a good enough job... 

And they didn't. I have to read each paragraph written three times to begin to understand what you're trying to say, and I have to write mine 3 times to try and say what I mean. 

If you don't agree with ANYONE about your experience - generally you are unwell and your interpretation of your experience is not sound. You may have THOUGHT you were battling Godzilla on the streets of San Francisco last night - but the police, your family, and your victims all agree that you were just tripping on very bad LSD. There may be exceptions, outliers, to this general truth - but in the vast majority of cases, consensus determines what we call OBJECTIVE reality. Really, nothing can be objective - but group subjective interpretation is the closest we can get.

"I saw a comet." 
"I saw a comet too." 
"Me as well..." 

"It was a Pegasus ridden by a Valkyrie, you idiots!" 

Door #4 is least trusted. 


But... that doesn't mean that maybe the first 3 aren't wrong and the 4th guy has the best grasp on what he saw. 

Sun Jan 16 2022 21:18:12 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

"For all practical purposes, subjective agreed upon reality and objective actual reality are indistinguishable one from the other."

Yes and no. I don't have to agree with anyone to have an experience. And there are experiences of which consensus or even agreement is impossible or at least unreliable such as the experience of death. And what's more practical than death? And yet when you go through an experience it doesn't have to be articulable enough to agree on for it to be objective. That is, it happened. What exactly happened in every detail is already beyond human understanding. So doing some exploration of that line--how fuzzy it is and where it's drawn and how it behaves--seems like a frontier, and I'm predisposed by my personality to be intrigued by frontiers.

 

Sorry for my sentence structures. This post wasn't very readable. But perhaps that speaks to my point about articulability. ;) 

Totally with you! And still, if a Sleep Paralysis Support Group gets together they can all agree that Sleep Paralysis Demons are a thing. Or maybe nine out of ten of them do. And then the "sane" guy is crazy. Except it's not really crazy to experience a sleep paralysis demon. It's normal for people with sleep paralysis. It's something our minds do.

Where this all comes into play for normies is that we ought to be highly skeptical of our own interpretation of experiences. And the fact that some entire cultures have whole categories of experience that are different from ours should provoke us to expect that our own culture doesn't really have a lock on subjectivity despite worshipping it. 

So... I've got a theory about this... and it starts with Stephen King who used to like to postulate, "what if the lunatic who claims his dog was telling him to murder someone over Twinkies is actually the one with the OBJECTIVE experience on reality - and it is the rest of us who are in denial? Does it matter - if we all agree that he is crazy - that he is the odd man out - the effective result is that the reasonable and rational is NOT in practice. 

Lots of horror writers kind of approach this topic... the person who goes to the insane asylum all the while knowing the truth. Sarah Connors in the Terminator faces this dilemma - and so does Neo in the latest Matrix movie. 

But King takes it one step further - and I kind of grew this idea from that, and I tie it into the story of Jesus casting Legion into a group of pigs and then driving them over a cliff... 


I think obviously Legion was based on multiple personality schizophrenic disorder. The idea that one person could occupy multiple voices and that some of them could be very malevolent - fits the clinical description too perfectly. 

And we now understand the science of multiple personality disorder as a mental disorder. 

But that doesn't mean that the root cause may be a metaphysical possession. 

I occasionally have periods of very spiritual, revelatory dream states - they're vivid, they go beyond my normal dreams in tangibility - and just because they tend to be spiritual in nature - doesn't mean they're always *pleasant*. Frequently, not. 

Most people comfortably dismiss these kind of experiences as "just dreams". Because... blue pills are easier to swallow than the red ones. 

But objectively - I understand that lucid dreaming, the old hag dreams, paralyzed intruder dreams, and alien abduction dreams are all related. I experience lucid dreaming and paralyzed waking dreams, as well as stacked dreams. Have since I was 9. But they come and go. 

But the *science* is objective - and research based. The idea that demons are responsible is absolutely a subjective perspective with very little evidence to support the claim. 

Wed Jan 19 2022 22:30:54 MST from Wangiss <wangiss@wallofhate.com>

Totally with you! And still, if a Sleep Paralysis Support Group gets together they can all agree that Sleep Paralysis Demons are a thing. Or maybe nine out of ten of them do. And then the "sane" guy is crazy. Except it's not really crazy to experience a sleep paralysis demon. It's normal for people with sleep paralysis. It's something our minds do.

Where this all comes into play for normies is that we ought to be highly skeptical of our own interpretation of experiences. And the fact that some entire cultures have whole categories of experience that are different from ours should provoke us to expect that our own culture doesn't really have a lock on subjectivity despite worshipping it.