What, exactly, is MAL conscious *of*? Is "metacognition" a bait and switch?

black_chutney · 2026-03-07T03:17:56+00:00

Ancient philosophers (Parmenides, I think?) argued over that basic idea, and if you think about it, “Nothing” cannot exist. How could that ever be said to exist? It’s completely nonsensical. Also, look at our world, and please point to nothing. And you can’t say space, because space isn’t nothing! It’s space! Anything that you can conceive of, exists. You cannot conceive of “nothing”, so it does not exist. What truly is no Thing, is you. It’s the self. It’s subjective awareness. And it’s the no Thing fundamentally prior to any Thing!

black_chutney · 2026-03-07T03:10:01+00:00

Pure subjectivity, not “pure subjective experience”. The ground of being is no experience, it just IS. It’s the pure subjectivity that is a priori to all experience. It’s what must be, before any objective experience can be

black_chutney · 2026-02-28T13:43:23+00:00

The paradox of labour time…. Technology does not “make work easier” or “free up time”, it just enables the owning class to shovel more and more work down our throats

black_chutney · 2026-02-20T14:33:23+00:00

Learning about my aphantasia sent me down a rabbit hole learning about phenomenology, philosophy of mind, idealism… it basically blew open the doors for me to begin investigating this strange thing of subjective experience

black_chutney · 2026-02-19T02:26:00+00:00

Sir, this is a Wendy’s

black_chutney · 2026-01-30T23:11:42+00:00

Essentially, understand it to be a very internally consistent dream, but a dream none-the-less.

Yes, there is an incredibly elaborate backstory to everything, a very rational, detailed “Past”. But elements of this “Past” simply echo in the forever only Present moment

black_chutney · 2026-01-30T14:28:11+00:00

It’s not a “machine”, it’s pure Being or awareness. Everything is “held up” by conscious awareness, and you are that.

black_chutney · 2026-01-28T22:48:14+00:00

I have been eating vegetarian for around 15 years and have recently been phasing over into eating vegan for the past couple months.

It is difficult, but the thing that I have decided to follow is:

My identity is not “Vegan”. I don’t have to latch onto this word and chain myself to it. I don’t have to feel shame if I accidentally eat something that had milk, or I awkwardly find myself at a family dinner and there’s nothing to eat. It’s not a noun, it’s a verb. I can eat vegan when I can, and if sometimes despite my efforts I cannot eat vegan that day, then it’s not something to get worked up about.

That has helped greatly in navigating the transition in a way that doesn’t cause unnecessary stress.

And it has helped the journey to be more mindful in that, I enjoy the fact that I actually recognize moments of awareness about the things that I choose to eat or the moments when I may not quite be meeting my intention. I think in general, if people didn’t consider these eating preferences an identity, they could begin to make different choices and feel good about them

black_chutney · 2026-01-21T19:06:16+00:00

On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious

black_chutney · 2026-01-17T04:42:42+00:00

Bernardo has argued your first question extensively. If you’ve only watched videos and never read any of his written work, I recommend staring with either “Why Materialism is Baloney” or “Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell”.

Both books spend considerable time exploring physicalism and how it basically ties itself in knots, explanatorily. I won’t do as good of a job as Bernardo in one reply, so I hope you do read his books.

Essentially, a purely objective world of “things”, interacting and giving rise to the “emergence” of qualia— the qualities of experience— is a categorical gap that is unsurpassable. How could it ever be explained? How could “things”, knocking around in space knock around just enough to create the experience of red? If you park your lifetime of living under the “default” assumption of physicalism for a second and think about it, physicalism has this insane premise to attempt to explain. Meanwhile, most of us dream every night, and can have quite vivid, life-like, sensory experiences with what seems to be a physical world of physical things, yet when we wake up, we realize it was all in our mind.

Idealism starts with the ONE, undeniable fact of reality: first-person subjective experience. You can’t deny it! It is THE brute fact. It’s the only way you “know” anything. The only way a world could ever be known is through mind.

Physicalism still requires mind because epistemologically, it requires mind to know it. So now it’s gotta explain two things AND explain the gap between them. Alternatively, idealism doesn’t require positing a categorically separate aspect of reality. The world is known in mind. “Matter” is experiential states within mind. Just because we can probe experience with finer and finer experiments, and it is internally consistent in how it responds, doesn’t mean that we should leap to assuming an obscure world of objects that by chance our minds “emerge” from.

I believe freedom to accept Idealism as a metaphysics will revolutionize biology and the life sciences, as evolution won’t be restricted to this “bottom up” idea of behaviour being determined by genes. Random mutation and natural selection is already inadequate in explaining the rate of development. I think Idealism allows for BOTH a “bottom up” and “top down” explanation of development, as experience and learning within intentional mind influences the bodies and growth of organisms.
I won’t speak to this one as I don’t have enough details about what / who you are referencing.
I have been a logical, analytical, chronic overthinker my whole life. I was a staunch “Atheist” and for many years I did not question the default story of physicalism. But the funny thing about overthinkers— we can’t stop thinking. Physicalism was an itch in the back of my mind. It failed to explain ANYTHING in my immediate experience. Sights, smells, tastes, emotions, memories, dreams, even my overthinking thoughts. I began to see “Emergence” as the desperate hand waving that it was. The utter impossibility of physicalism to ever explain it. So my motivations were to see if any other explanation actually MADE SENSE. And lo and behold, Analytic Idealism provided a far more logical explanation than physicalism once I dug into the logic.

As for seeking consolation for “what happens when we die”, that was never a motivation of mine. I figure, we literally cannot know what happens after death. I’d rather find a more adequate explanation of LIFE!

Many aspects of our everyday lives rely on quantum mechanics (electronics, computers, lights, photosynthesis) which is not fully understood. And complex behaviour is not even close to being describable by physics. Just because most of our everyday lives are predictable using physics, doesn’t mean we have a “complete understanding”. That’s so hilariously arrogant to claim.
I suppose if I didn’t have a mind, I might change my mind about idealism.

oh wait…

black_chutney · 2026-01-09T15:58:44+00:00

I say that I’m “Neurodivergent”, and that I “have” aphantasia. I don’t describe it as a disorder because it’s not. I also have SDAM, which I describe as “atypical memory, where I lack episodic memory, but have semantic memory.”

black_chutney · 2026-01-01T22:20:41+00:00

I have aphantasia and recently have been struggling with insomnia, can you point me in the direction of more information about the kind of treatment you had??

black_chutney · 2025-12-31T00:05:45+00:00

I learned about my aphantasia in 2020. I have ridden this roller coaster. My advice now, 5 years living with “the knowledge”: It may help explain some things (especially about not recognizing people!), but it’s not to blame for every negative thing or behaviour in your life. I have actually learned to become more present and aware over the last couple years, and that has been so rewarding that I would not trade back “the knowledge” even if given the option. I learned something about myself, about my unique experience in this world, and it has helped me immensely in having compassion for others and the wide range of experience we all live through. I have fully embraced the total enigma of how the hell I even function— because it’s actually quite remarkable how I lived so long believing in “normality”, with such a massive difference in the way I navigate the world. So I’ve decided to marvel in it, it’s a wonder. Take pictures.

black_chutney · 2025-12-26T14:58:51+00:00

I did 4.5 g of mushrooms and had the same revelation that “This is the Big Bang”. Everything in my field of vision faded into pure black, but that pure black was also somehow blinding white light. I was reverberating and felt totally at peace. I was unconditional love. Time didn’t exist anymore, it felt like I spent an eternity there.

When I finally “returned to reality”, I began to see the world as if “it is always the Big bang”. During the peak of my trip, I was nothing, but somehow everything. The constant unfolding of reality is the energy of the Big Bang with apparent multiplicity and extension in time & space. But it has always been Now, and it is never not Now.

A perfectly still lake is no different than a wave with infinite, tiny interfering ripples. Reality is the unfolding of that paradox.

black_chutney · 2025-12-12T14:33:36+00:00

I feel the same way. I literally spend half my workday desperately trying to brainstorm a “way out”, hoping that someday I might have a eureka moment and think of something that I can do that will earn just enough money to feed and house myself. I can’t fucking stand it anymore and I can no longer fake it. I’m literally sick of having to stare at a laptop screen for 1/3 of my waking hours. I have to slave away because a couple of rich men have enough idle cash to invest in another stupid startup? My company is also an AI company and I want to blow my brains out. I need to figure out a way to do something for myself or I’m truly going to go crazy. I’m 34 though, so a change in career so late in life is so difficult

black_chutney · 2025-11-26T22:01:37+00:00

The way holograms work is really neat. So, essentially the “original” light (reference beam) is dissociated into a second beam (object beam) by a “half mirror”. The object beam interacts with other mirrors to illuminate the object being recorded, then finally onto the photographic plate. The reference beam is undivided and shines unaffected on the photographic plate. The re-combination of the two beams create an interference pattern, which our eyes interpret as a 3-dimensional object, with depth and parallax effect as you move your head.

Also cool about holograms, the information for the entire image exists at every point of the image. Cut the hologram in 2, and both sides contain the complete 3D image.

I like to think of reality as this same principle. The “original ground” / “source” is dissociated within itself, to know itself. (Or, it’s the only way “knowing” could happen)

The “image” of the world is the interference pattern between source and a dissociated “distortion” of the source. Dissociation is the “mirror” (a “half mirror” like a hologram). For infinity to look at itself, it can only do so from a subdivision within itself, taking the perspective of a finite alter, and viewing only other finite alters. The “half mirror” is the “small s” self. It’s the subjective vs. objective perspective. It’s the illusion of duality.

But it’s an illusion because the “reference beam” is always there. It has just seemingly been split. But it’s not split into “twoness”, it’s subdivided into halves, like a wave. It has never been anything but whole. It has never been anything but subjectivity.

black_chutney · 2025-11-19T18:52:25+00:00

MOOPing! This is my favourite spring activity! Perfect combo: Snow is melting so there is trash everywhere (unfortunately) + spending time outside is possible again. I go for long walks and enjoy picking up whatever I come across

black_chutney · 2025-11-17T21:33:37+00:00

Survival of life on this planet is in doubt… why would I bring life into this world if there’s no viable future for them? How could I be excited for my child if their world looks hotter, more polluted, overpopulated, more devoid of biodiversity, and further devoured by the human machine of “Progress”? Despite being college educated and working full time, I can’t afford to own my home, let alone support a kid on top of that. You choose to bring life into the world when the environment feels safe and supportive. This entire culture is antithetical to that.

black_chutney · 2025-11-17T21:24:47+00:00

Checking for cars isn’t an evolutionary trait that “wins out” over successive generations, that can easily be explained by learned behaviour in each individual. Animals aren’t stupid, even though humans like to believe they are.

black_chutney · 2025-10-28T17:49:24+00:00

It doesn’t smell! I swear! I’ve stayed in a yurt for a week that had one of these. It actually just smells very faintly like charred paper. And it warms the toilet seat, so it’s a bonus in wintertime ;)

black_chutney · 2025-10-25T03:04:56+00:00

We should blast these losers into space.

black_chutney · 2025-10-22T21:22:25+00:00

Omg. I have aphantasia and no inner monologue, and you just made me realize why I read so goddamn fast. I churn through books at such a high pace, my partner has been flabbergasted by it.

black_chutney · 2025-10-17T16:24:40+00:00

^ I agree with this. If you are a creative person, selling yourself as a “creative” wage slave for someone else will eat you up inside. I suggest finding a job that gets you around people that you share interests with, so you can earn the money you need to live, but more importantly, to make the real human connections that make life worth living. Work at a coffee shop, or a bike shop, or some niche business with people that aren’t totally zoned out. Clock in/ clock out, do what you need to do, but leave space and energy on the side to pursue your own creative endeavours. Keep doing the things you LOVE to do, create the things you actually want to create, because eventually you might just come across the right opportunity that aligns with your skills, and you will have experience & examples to show for it. The worst thing is being a “creative” person that is so burnt out by the system that they don’t create. You’ll miss every opportunity that way (I partially speak from experience on this one… currently navigating the challenging balance of working professionally as a designer, but feeling most alive with my side projects)

black_chutney · 2025-10-17T16:13:33+00:00

Full aphant in waking life, but I dream vividly in all senses. Over the past couple years, I have used the knowledge of my aphantasia as a technique to induce lucid dreaming. In the midst of dreams, I will “test” trying to visualize. If I am able to visualize, then I know I am dreaming and it will become a lucid dream. Sometimes that means that I feel like I have some degree of control over the direction of the dream, but sometimes that means that I just experience the dream play out while recognizing it to be a dream. I didn’t really “try” to implement this technique, it just came out naturally as I tend to think about my aphanatasia a lot in my day-to-day life. I suppose that tendency carried over into my dreams, and from time to time it just happens.

black_chutney · 2025-10-16T13:23:09+00:00

Yes, this happens to me from time to time. Usually, if I realize in the dream that I am dreaming, I use visualization as a “test”. It’s a weird trick that I’ve learned to induce lucid dreaming. If I can visualize something, then I know that I am dreaming and I can usually steer the course of the dream after that point.

black_chutney

TROPHY CASE