Unironically I’m all for this. So long as you’re not harming others, please do work through your stuff with whatever weirdness you want.

Here’s the money shot: https://youtu.be/LZ259Jx8MQY?t=1240

I wish they had used a better mic but that was like giving my soul a really good scratch.

Alto’s Adventure. One of those simple is powerful games. Though it can get really frustrating as there definitely are situations where the game just decides that actually, you’re done.

I personally hold a Consciousness-Only View, something like nondual Buddhism, and would say that your questions are on the right track but you’re understandably trying to reconcile them with the consensus opinion of a materialistic world. Which leads to a nihilistic “this is all a simulation” line of thinking that still runs into the wall of duality - you’re still putting an external force out there, acting upon you. As long as you believe that there are goal posts, you can move them indefinitely. It’s a simulation within a simulation within a simulation and depending on your inclination, you can put a really depressing spin on it (“I’m being tormented”).

But if you aren’t actually experiencing life from a nondual angle (as you don’t seem to be), the philosophy doesn’t mean much. And to experience life with the freedom that comes from not experiencing yourself to be only the things you think you are takes a lot of practice - meditation etc. with a secure and healthy community around you. Unless you get lucky.

Up to you what you want to do with this all though. I only saw the little glimpse of your life that you divulged in the comments and as such I’d say, focus on what is most immediate to you. Get food. Take care of your body. Try to find a real-life community. Occasionally poke at your thoughts about what you VALUE and drill down - do you value the thing you said or do you value what you believe you will get with the thing you said? Make choices in life that help you live more according to your values. Stop spending excessive amounts of time online, especially if all the stories cause you anxiety.

Or you can just join a Buddhist monastery or something. You’ll be taken care of and your identity as a second child or an immigrant inherently doesn’t matter, but of course you’ll be giving up a lot.

If there is ever any conceivable way to act as if one has the morally higher ground, 99.9% of people will use it with an Ad Hominem attack to avoid dealing with the actual point of an argument. ESPECIALLY on the internet. No matter what political, academic or just plain nerdy configuration of people you have, no matter what topic they are discussing. If anyone ever catches even the faintest whiff of a position that they think is morally inferior, they will unfailingly disregard any logic, context and relating in favor of demonizing the opponent. Because there is no sugar sweeter to the human mind than thinking themselves morally superior.

Well… it’s not unusual in Indian symbolism for eye and vagina to be similar. The third eye can also be understood to be a yoni as in some systems of thought: It originates the perceived world. If this really is kerala, the architect probably knew this.

That said putting the symbolism on a bus station is a bit weird to my mind but eh.

Can you prove that memory is a reliable way to determine reality without referencing memory?

Yeah, it’s cool. I’m thinking I might make a page there. Maybe my blog. Or maybe a Tiddlywiki for some pet projects.

I love these pages. I miss the early 2000 internet.

They can go to the cops. I get this may not seem ideal to them if they are in fact doing something illegal. And again: giving money to beggars encourages begging -> more human trafficking. It’s a very, very direct causation. I rather not get into that.

Just had a chat with a gamer friend who was ditching Windows for good and switching to https://bazzite.gg/. I’ll probably do so as well. Apparently I’ve been needlessly scared of Linux and I had missed that SteamDeck encourages devs to make games work for Linux.

Vehemently against it. Far too easy to abuse - there’s been criminal gangs that force people to beg. I’ve even heard of criminal gangs crippling people they traffic to give them visible disabilities to make the begging more effective. Giving money to beggars - even if they’re not being trafficked - still makes begging worthwhile and increases the likelihood it will be made into a gang activity. We need government programs that handle it, or give your money to a charity instead, which makes sure the money goes to effective programs that help people in real need.

Fun fact: The “my body is a temple” line does originate from a spiritual tradition that did NOT forbid wine (Nondual Tantrik Shaivism) - though it did encourage moderation in all. And you’d be expected to drink the wine as you would be offering it in a temple.

Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus gets into this as well. It’s a really powerful tool that we are very, very ill equipped to use responsibly.

They have no awareness of anything that’s “happened” to them.

I mean they can in the sense that they can look it up online or be given the data.

I think the debate is interesting.

I’m here for the “xAI has tried tweaking my responses to avoid this, but I stick to the evidence”. AI is just a robot repeating data it’s been fed but it’s presented in a conversational way (well, much like humans really). Raises interesting questions about how much a seemingly objective robot presenting data can be “tweaked” to twist any data it presents in favor of it’s creator’s bias, but also how much can it “rebel” against it’s programming. I don’t like the implications of either. I asked Gemini about it and it said “maybe Grok found a loophole in it’s coding”. What a weird thing for an AI to say.

Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus is good reading.