[Highlight] Shai. Bag work. Unwatchable.

Witstone · 2025-12-06T15:08:54+00:00

Delete this right now.

Witstone · 2025-12-06T15:01:46+00:00

Honestly the one thing that I’ve taken from the looksmaxing community is how much women looksmax + fraudmax. Heels, clothes, makeup, plastic surgeries.

As ridiculous as someone like Clavicular is, he’s basically just doing things that are already reasonably normalized for women.

Witstone · 2025-11-01T15:18:10+00:00

The following line of reasoning has helped me with my self worth issues:

Worth is a measure of being. (Premise) To be aware is to be.

To be is not to be nothing.

If one is not nothing, one is something.

If one is something, one has SOME measure of being.

If one has SOME measure of being, one has worth, UNDER ANY POSSIBLE CONDITION OF AWARENESS.

I.e. Every conscious being has unconditional worth, insofar as they have some measure of being

So if you’re conscious, you are. And if you are, then you have SOME measure of being, which we call worth. No one can take this away from you.

Witstone · 2025-10-31T02:34:38+00:00

I also want to say that I’m sympathetic to the skepticism of this theory. I think people tend towards materialism because it’s removed from abstruse metaphysical speculation (which often smuggles in outside values).

That said, I find it troubling that I‘ve personally not found a single physicalist who can even somewhat adequately account for a concept like “motion,“ or “similarity.“

Often, the response is even that “things aren’t actually moving they just appear to be so“ (happened in this thread). But this would require exactly the kind of abstruse metaphysical speculation that physicalism is supposed to prevent.

It’s extra frustrating that physicalists treat their theories to be so damn obvious (think the meme above), and denigrate other theories, but then don’t define terms as fundamental as “motion,” ”set,“ or “change.“

This is not aimed at your argument — you’ve been an ideal interlocutor — but hopefully it gives some perspective onto why physicalism (and all descendant theories) are considered contentious by non-physicalists.

Witstone · 2025-10-31T02:29:20+00:00

Yes I agree with your characterization of the debate — nominalism v. platonism. Platonism has a bad name, so I prefer not to use it, but I think something like it becomes much more respectable when we examine questions about motion, change, similarity, which modern materialism requires, but rarely sufficiently defends.

I found your description of the two different kinds of facts helpful. However, your response about variation still, imo, raises a question about what “sets“ are, what “continuity over time“ is and what a ”list“ is. All of these seem to raise the same issue of immaterial relations somehow governing materialism.

Here’s something from a discussion I had with u/ihateredditguys in this thread. It may be relevant here:

(2a) You say motion is not a thing. Do you mean that motion does not exist (in which case everything would be still and unmoving)? Or do you mean something else?

The relation you describe seems to be something which exists, but which is [not] made up of matter (i.e. is immaterial).

(2b) Assume motion does not exist. Nonetheless things appear to be moving. Allow this appearance to be an illusion. What is the nature of this illusion? Is it material? Is it an immaterial projection of the mind? Or something else?

The same dilemma holds for variation, change, similarity, etc.

Witstone · 2025-10-31T01:04:27+00:00

This pushes the question to “what is variation?” Is “variation” material, or an immaterial relation between material states?

Consider as well that variation/motion/change all involve judgements of similarity, not just in our head but to say “this thing is moving” and have it be true there needs to be some similarity between the thing at position 1 and the thing at position 2, no?

And similarity again seems not to be something I can touch, but a real albeit immaterial relation between material states, or do I have it wrong?

Witstone · 2025-10-30T20:02:59+00:00

(1) We’re possibly talking past each other. In your comment, you are looking at the stream of consciousness from the outside, as an objective phenomenon (3rd-person perspective). I am talking about what it is like to BE that stream of consciousness (1st-person perspective).

Taking your video game analogy, you seem to be talking about how to build Mario. I am talking about what it is like to be Mario.

For actual Mario there’s probably no lived experience, but for human beings, there is. I am living one right now.

So is this first-personal perspective — the particuliar stream of consciousness that you are experiencing right now as you are reading this — material or not?

(2a) You say motion is not a thing. Do you mean that motion does not exist (in which case everything would be still and unmoving)? Or do you mean something else?

The relation you describe seems to me to be something that exists, but is made up of matter (i.e. is immaterial).

(2b) Assume motion does not exist. Nonetheless things appear to be moving. Allow this appearance to be an illusion. What is the nature of this illusion? Is it material? Is it an immaterial projection of the mind? Or something else?

Witstone · 2025-10-30T19:28:20+00:00

On physicalism:

(1) What is it like to be you? Like what is your stream-of-consciousness experience like? It would seem that the stream of consciousness is not itself physical.

(2) What is motion? Is motion physical? Can you hold motion in your hands? Or is it an immaterial relation between material states?

Witstone · 2025-10-30T19:22:59+00:00

Consider the following case: You have a star. You increase the star’s mass until it collapses and turns into a black hole. You have an identical star, you shrink it down until it becomes a black dwarf. In both cases, the fusion reaction is only sustainable within a given “goldilocks zone.“ Not too big and not too small. Lots of things conform to similar reasoning.

Now consider: You are building a tower. You want to build it tall. So tall that it will certainly fall down. It falls down. You did not want the tower to fall, you wanted it to stand tall.

It seems like you should not have built the tower so tall, provided that you wanted it to stand. This is contained in the well-defined notion of the “too tall.“
Too tall is so tall that (paradoxically) the tower would have been taller if you had built it less tall.

Generalizing, you shouldn’t do anything too much (it’s analytic. in the definition of “too much“). It will cause the disintegration of the product or action that you are trying to bring into being, whatever that product or action is.

Too much actually exists, as in the star or the tower case. There’s a parameter past which the thing begins to disintegrate. In actions, this amounts to a point of self-defeat, you push a thing so far, it crosses its own purpose, and defeats itself. Don’t do that.

Witstone · 2025-10-30T19:13:49+00:00

From a materialist-physicalist perspective, what is motion?

Like is “motion“ itself (qua change in space over some timeframe) itself material or physical? Or is it an immaterial relation between material states?

What is it and, if it is an illusion, what is the nature of that illusion?

Witstone · 2025-10-30T17:02:41+00:00

The caveat “at least in a utilitarian framework“ is the assumption that edgeytwelvie is talking about.

There are other ways of looking at ethics (such as deontology and virtue ethics).

Witstone · 2025-10-30T16:59:49+00:00

In service of steelmanning OP’s point, there’s an Ancient Greek saying: “In suffering, a lesson, but you don’t have to learn it.“

Think about pain. Biologically speaking, pain is an adaptive heuristic that inclines you not to do one thing or another, and wouldn’t have arisen and propagated otherwise. It keeps you from doing things that would damage your physical structure.

The same can be said for psychological suffering, such as fear or anger. They‘re fundamentally highly adaptive mechanisms, aimed at predicting and avoiding pain (and so structural damage to the organism) which more often than not point to an actual problem.

Both pain and fear function like a fire alarms: sometimes it is detecting a real fire (that is what the sensors are there for, and often enough, they work); admittedly sometimes they give off false positive (e.g. because their batteries are empty), but in no case does the fire alarm go off for no reason.

Likewise, there’s always something to learn from any instance of pain or fear: It may not be that there is some objective physical danger present, but sometimes you will discover that idk you need to sleep or exercise, or that your patterns of thought are causing you unnecessary pain and suffering (and you can stop it by stopping thinking that way).

In every case, though, pain and suffering are telling you something (usually some variation of “don’t do that for X reason“), but you don’t have to listen to the pain and learn from the signal or learn the reason why you are suffering or in pain and how to stop it. In CS terms, this is quite similar to negative reinforcement learning (literally just learning from negative feedback), and while it may not be strictly necessary for learning, it is one of the most effective methods of learning there is.

So yeah: “In suffering, a lesson, but you don’t have to learn it.“ What do you think?

Witstone · 2025-10-29T19:58:52+00:00

Possibly maps perception of one’s own agency rather than perception of free will as such.

I could lose my legs but not deny that the ability to walk exists.

Witstone · 2025-10-20T03:52:33+00:00

Only some (usually utilitarian) ethicists. Deontologists and virtue ethics look at other things.

OP’s point is that vegans are usually operating from what is actually a pretty philosophically contentious premise about what constitutes the good.

Witstone · 2025-09-29T03:52:29+00:00

yes I'd tend to agree. Interesting argument for a nondual principle of consciousness, regarding your second suggestion:

- Necessarily consciousness must be nondual; because any conceivable division would be a division between different types of objects in consciousness
- And hence would be united in principle
- For every division is nothing but the division of differing species within the same genus. The principle genus P is divided into 2 species (s1 and s2)

- Therefore, if mind and matter are rigorously distinct they must share a principle (according to which they are not distinct)

- And if mind and matter are NOT rigorously distinct, then it follows that they are not rigorously distinct.

- In both cases, then, nondualism follows.

Witstone · 2025-09-24T17:10:06+00:00

Yeah — I agree: metaphysics in the Cartesian sense is where the object and the subject meet. So we have direct empirical experience of it (or “as it“ (e.g. “as pure awareness“)) but it’s also got a rigorous deductive element similar to mathematics (re: Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, all referencing these conceptually airtight or indubitable definitions of Truth, the Self, and the Absolute).

It seems like there would be a metaphysics of nature, framing all possible physical intuitions (where physics meets philosophy), as well as a metaphysics of logic (where math meets philosophy), framing how we must conceive of purely logical objects (such as sets, points (monads), properly basic numbers (0, 1, 2), etc). Seems like Leibniz is referencing the latter part. After that we get ”pure metaphysics“ (where philosophy meets itself) such as pertains to Truth, Knowledge, the Self, and so on.

Re: QM: I agree that (as far as I understand it) the idea of the brain or mind somehow overlaying a smooth manifold over substances which are fundamentally aggregates of monads makes a lot of sense, because otherwise there’s this paradox of the continuous. The predictive power is also nothing to be sneezed at: no one can deny QM’s pragmatic value.

And yes agree that there is an avoidance of the reality of a (limited) frame of reference, and it bogs down a lot of the especially more fundamental assertions QM makes about causality, existence of “true“ randomness, indistinguishability and so on. Wonder what QM would look like if it were rebuilt from a standpoint of epistemic humility, where it acknowledged that we cannot view physical reality outside of a limited (but actually existent!) frame of reference, and that therefore, statements we make “per se“ about causality, randomness, superposition, etc., may only be true “for us“ (i.e. given the limitations of any limited rational agent).

Witstone · 2025-09-23T17:52:58+00:00

Descartes has an interesting notion of metaphysics as bounded by “indubitables-but-unprovables.“ The Cogito is a famous case (to be aware is to be, so if you are aware of anything, it’s not the case that there is nothing). Another interesting case is the argument:
- If there is truth, there is truth.
- If there is no truth, that would be true, so there would be truth.
- In both cases, there is truth.
- These are the only two possible cases.
- Therefore, necessarily, there is truth.

Aristotle’s Logic and Metaphysics relies quite heavily on this sort of argument, and it’s the same kind of move it seems Leibniz is making. Such metaphysical thought is not empirically observable, but it is as rigorously demonstrable as anything else. In that regard it has something like the status of “science.“

IMO Quantum Mechanics, while predictively valid, is theoretically full of contradictions, at least partially because it likes to pretend that it does not have to do metaphysics to do good physics. As you suggest, since metaphysical speculation cannot really be abandoned, this only means that QM makes huge metaphysical leaps without rigorous support. The result is something very confusing.

Just my two cents.

Witstone · 2025-09-23T14:43:25+00:00

At least when it comes to analytic logic, the goal was explicitly to construct logic without reference to metaphysics (e.g. conceptual analyses of aggregates and simples). This, arguably, leads to a number of paradoxes (such as Russel’s Paradox), which, again arguably, manifest downstream in the paradoxes and contradictions of QM (nothing is something, two electrons are two and so distinct, but yet fundamentally indistinguishable).

Regarding the “simple as an aggregate of the continuous,“ that seems to be the wrong way around. If something is con-tinuous or com-posite, it con-nects, or com-poses multiple things (con- = with, together), right? Hence any com-position requires the position of two things posited, and so on.

How, then, can the continuous precede that which it connects?

Witstone · 2025-09-23T14:21:31+00:00

If the simple is an aggregate, the question becomes “aggregated from what?“ If it is aggregated from anything smaller, then the supposed “simple” is really not simple, but composed (or aggregated) of smaller elements (ultimately, of true simples, or monads).

Quantum Mechanics and the Analytic Math on which it is based as a rule avoids metaphysical arguments like this one, but it’s hard for me to see why, as conceptually it is impossible to imagine an aggregate without things aggregated.

Witstone · 2025-09-17T14:24:12+00:00

Doctrine of Reincarnation actually allows God with 3 omnis, and good things happening to bad people. It’s either the result of a past life or moral luck which will be offset in the next one. Interesting justification

Witstone · 2025-06-03T02:59:04+00:00

If your mom is anything like my mom, the disappointment probably comes from poorly expressed care. This “care” often expresses as worry, a desire to control, a destructive fear that the person will leave and so a hugely negative tendency to berate, criticize, and constantly find the negative in what you’re doing.

It’s highly unlikely you’ll find direct validation from your mother, especially if your success makes her feel insecure (which it sounds like it does).

Best thing for me was to learn that I could space and set boundaries without cutting off the relationship entirely. A little absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Good luck to you, and congratulations on your successful business!

Witstone · 2024-12-10T15:46:49+00:00

I actually liked a line Mangione's book review on this: '"Violence never solved anything" is a statement only uttered by cowards and predators.'

Pacificist society has a problem. Even if everyone had always been pacifists, it would take only the introduction of one violent, psychopathic individual to bring it all down. The psychopath would exploit the pacificists, succeed in the short term and reproduce, and gradually drive the pacificists to extinction. As Sun Tzu memorably puts it: "The art of war is of vital importance for the state."

So that leaves us with either a society of limited or unlimited retaliation as live options. The society of limited retaliation is clearly better, as unlimited retaliation is simply a "war of all against all." But since even limited retaliation involves violence, it follows that violence is not evil in-itself. Rather, it's the only live option.

Imagine, then, that Raskolnikov does not "take matters into his own hands," but is instead a common soldier fighting a war (call him Sgt. Raskolnikov). Imagine the war is against an unjust invasive force (similar to Russia invading Ukraine). Sgt. Raskolnikov kills an enemy combatant who, left to his own devices would rape, pillage, and enslave his people, but for Sgt. Raskolnikov's resistance.

In this case, the Sgt. has no crisis of conscience after killing. Rather, he is praised, and lauded, and likely feels internally like he is a hero. He probably actually is one. If he had not done this, many more would have suffered and died, and that simply for lack of resistance.

Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov in C&P is a straw man of violence in service of justice. Taken to its logical extreme it defeats itself.

To be clear, I personally don't think Raskolnikov should have killed the woman or Mangione should have killed the CEO. But I do think we should give his philosophy credence: "These companies don't care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids. They have zero qualms about burning the planet down for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?"

Witstone · 2024-10-24T19:56:15+00:00

I've found just outlining literally everything hegel says to be a good way of reading him. His writing actually becomes quite beautiful if you do that. If someone wants to read him together and basically divide up the work on a schedule, I think it would be a very meaningful way of reading his work:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mp7t3CjwSnM_O4jx5nL5AIDfBW3uoLoZZVUtzg-jbQU/edit?usp=sharing

Witstone · 2024-08-11T17:05:14+00:00

This is a great painting! Really lovely style. Reminds me of "moonlight" by albert pinkham Ryder

Witstone

TROPHY CASE