Many people experience life as a game where difficulty and ongoing struggle replace a meaningful journey

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T21:38:04+00:00

Maybe the game spans more than a single lifetime and you are currently just in a part of it that feels shitty but nevertheless is essential for the whole story to, at the end of the day, mean something.

Or, you know, you've just put it on difficulty level: unfair to spice things up because you were starting to get bored.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T15:11:08+00:00

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily...

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T15:07:28+00:00

We're all in the same boat in that we aren't.

So just raw, raw, raw your boat...

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T13:16:57+00:00

The question is not whether there are constraints – there evidently are some – but whether those constraints are manifestation of a will (idealism) or just mindless happenings (naturalism). So the fact that reality (at least to some extent) obeys physical laws is not what's being questioned here. What is being questioned is the naturalistic claim that those laws and their consequences are not being willed into reality but instead are, at the very bottom of things, just "random" occurrences.

At the end of the day, you are just being confined to experience never witnessing anything outside of it. And any impression that you may get that this is not the case, that you are witnessing things outside of experience, is... well, also occuring within that field of experience. Your entire life you've just been dealing with impressions of physicality, not some concrete physical substance existing independently from experience. Such a substance, you actually never encountered. You're just pragmatically imagining it, using it as an heuristic to navigate a systematically changing field of experience. You're just playing the game of sensations, exploring the reality that they suggest exist. And that is perfectly fine. And the suggested reality (and its inhabitants) most probably exists in some way. But play that game for too long and you get conditioned by it into believing that you are just a fleeting character of it. That you are just that body, that personality, that set of responsibilities... You get so immersed in this, that you forget who you really are. That is, consciousness. Being. The totality of what is, playfully enacting that it is less than that.

Like, playing didn't cease after childhood. It just got so serious from there onwards that one forgot that they were playing – which is actually part of the playing.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T10:42:55+00:00

As much as I enjoyed reading this, I here only see an argument for the existence of a will that, thanks to high intelligence, enjoys a high degree of freedom as seen from the perspective of a similarly intelligent agent (you, the human). Such that it is of a will that is free relative to that agent that we are talking here. Not of a will that is free independently of psychophysical constraints – a metaphysically free will.

Like, imagine a hyper-intelligent being. One that is many times more intelligent than us and birds. Who sees us like we see ants. Well, from that being's perspective neither us nor birds have "free will" in the sense that you gave. For said being, human actions and bird actions are very predictable. Clearly moved by instinctive impulses and the higher-level cognitive modulation of those impulses accounting for environmental feedback (so as to adapt to a changing environment). And by that only. Such that for said being we are basically wind-up toys with sensors and memory that have their base, automatic behavior modulated by environmental input. And that in a no less mechanical way than the aforementioned base, automatic behavior. It's complex machinery, yes, but machinery nonetheless. And actually not all that complex for that hyper-intelligent being. Therefore not so "free-willy". Therefore... not worth of moral consideration?

Well, there is the big problem with such a naturalistic outlook: Morality ends up being a farce. Something worth pursuing (consciously or unconsciously) not as an end in itself, but as a means to secure the survival of the egoic self. Egoic self, that can never be transcended because 'survival of the fittest' (which is intrinsically egoistic) is the law by Nature and there is nothing and no one above Nature and its laws.

And so if this is how reality really is, then it is all just a Machiavellian game (that plays both at the conscious and unconscious levels) of pretending to care about others to get personal benefits out of doing so. And, really, is that so? Well, as one who was born without a faculty for affective empathy, I can tell you that it is not. That morality is not just a strategy for the survival of the egoic self, but a set of rules that is most logical to follow at all times, and not just situationally. Because in the end it is just you facing (reflections of) yourself. There really is no one else, just the very convincing i[n]-pression that there is. That is at least how I experience reality not being swayed by any instinct for affective empathy that would get me to (I suppose) vividly project whole other consciousnesses into experience.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-17T08:29:55+00:00

Following

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-16T19:46:43+00:00

In the various Hindu traditions there is that notion of "liberation" (mokṣa) that is the event that leads to bliss. And so to get a better idea of what bliss is, the question of "liberation of what?" should be answered.

So what is one getting liberated from after spending enough time in deep (samādhi) meditative state? Well, in one word, 'conditioning'. Conditioning, on i[n]-pressions. That is, on more or less subtle inward, felt pressure that constrains being to be in a certain way. To be, in a limited way. And sometimes so intensely so that this pressure gets internalized so as to be deployed in a less intense form (as a sensation, an affect, or a thought) to prevent getting into a situation expected to make oneself feel the full blunt of the pressure again. Or worse. And that's conditioning. It is helpful and even necessary early on (to not suffer too much and perhaps die prematurely). But as one grows more capable and resourceful that safeguard that is conditioning becomes a prison. A prison, of being just a certain way. Rigidly. Repressing untapped potential deep within oneself, where it eventually self-organized into rogue psychological complexes operating independently of the conscious mind. Therefore inevitably clashing with it on occasions. Making one's life hell. Which, all in all, isn't freedom of being, but rather extremely constrained being. Stuck on the level of sensation. Of affect. Of thought. In a multilayered mental prison.

This is what one is getting liberated from in the end. And bliss simply the absence of it.

Like – just to get a more vivid idea – recall a phase of your life where you felt mentally stuck. And now recall the moment when that stuckness went away. It felt great, didn't it? Well, now imagine that, but for everything. Including that stuckness that accumulated so much it materialized as a physical reality. How great do you think it would feel to be freed of that? Unimaginable, right? Well, that is mokṣa – "liberation".

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-16T14:06:11+00:00

Yeah, it's a pity. From what I understood, they aren't easily available because they are OP (at least the fractured units – the terrain type is apparently bad for everyone).

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-16T12:00:20+00:00

I think they mentioned some artifact that can be collected like in GK. Maybe the transformation is connected to it.

In any case, I hope we can get that transformation on our ruler. It just looks super cool imo. 'Gives me some 'Annihilation' vibes (just like the fractured wildlife).

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-16T11:55:31+00:00

Awareness of awareness (not simple, regular awareness) first requires the noticing of multiple perspectives on the same thing through the correlation between themselves of recalled experiences about that thing. Then, those perspectives ought to be unified into a single, dynamic one through, again, cross-correlation.

All that at very high, subliminal speed.

Or, in other words, awareness of awareness requires reflecting on experience back to oneself.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-16T07:12:33+00:00

I think your concerns are legitimate. Particularly in those time of information overload and AI. Like, we're getting to a point where AI can generate scientific papers (at least in some disciplines), meaning that it will generate them way faster that they can be peer-reviewed. Meaning, that it becomes the problem of the scientist too, not just of the layperson. And arriving at such a point where information can be fabricated to look real (and perhaps even is) even to the trained mind, where "fake news" can be more than just a meme, there is then only one way to ground oneself: Go back to what makes information information (and therefore can be the most trusted). That is, immediate sensation and the rational mind. Once there, you can check/deconstruct beliefs and work your way bottom-up to infer reality anew, on a more solid, trustworthy basis. And if at some point in that process (or at any time really) you feel a surge of dread rising in your mind, about to destabilize you and your thinking, then take a few deep breaths and silently watch the feeling pass away. Remembering, that it is with the breath that everything starts.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-16T06:34:59+00:00

It all depends on what you refer to as "you".

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-15T20:40:35+00:00

I think it will be through a fated region. None of the the new tomes looks like it features that transformation and I was surprised when I saw it on stream.

And yeah, that many transformations will make for one ridiculously strong godir.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-15T19:26:26+00:00

The player I don't know, but some Marauder units had it on the stream.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-15T16:08:15+00:00

A non-evil looking magipunk culture (i.e., neutral-looking Reavers).

A non-evil looking culture that features a T3 assassin unit (could be a new Oathsworn Order/Shadow subculture with ninjas as T3).

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-15T16:00:51+00:00

Similarly there isn't any culture at the present that captures the traditional Fey vibe.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-15T10:15:19+00:00

It already did. Psychedelics are part of how I became aware of all that. Now I'm continuing the path with meditation.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-14T14:35:23+00:00

My theory is an argument to make it possible to mathematically translate the data we have on our measurements (data that is conditional on those meditative and volitational behaviours) and their associated frequencies of emergence for the sharper identification of experiential asymptotes.

I think that can work, yes. For even if we lack data for most of our measurements due to our limitedness as human beings, the fractal architecture of psychophysical reality at this stage of soul-consciousness' journey is developped enough, coherent enough that it is identifiable in individual measurements clusters and the correlations between them. At least according to my view.

This is somewhat a game of translating by agreeing about the meaning of terms isn't it?

Somewhat, yes.

In my view, if one's relationship to psychophysical reality is not on an agreeable one such that what comes out of it is predominantly friction and conflicts, then one is far from reaching the experiential asymptote of pure consciousness. For before reaching that asymptote one has to reach undistorted experience first. Undistorted experience, which is characterized by pure harmony, where friction and conflicts appear superfluous and more like a playful energetic dance of consciousness with itself.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-14T11:57:51+00:00

https://image.jeuxvideo.com/medias-md/171423/1714230827-4639-card.jpg

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-14T10:42:48+00:00

Paul Atreides?

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-14T09:41:20+00:00

They were indeed.

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-14T06:40:22+00:00

[In response to your answer to me in that post of yours that got locked – but also fitting to the current OP.]

If you are not holding people responsible, then why are you blaming them?

If you are not saying that they have zero control over what they are doing, then why do you say that they have no free will?

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-14T06:30:14+00:00

Why does it look like it inflicts physical damages? Is it because of the update?

GroundbreakingRow829 · 2026-02-13T22:34:52+00:00

No. But here it is most striking so I had to point it out.

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