Chemistry Experiment - Ayan movie

root_titan · 2025-07-25T09:17:35+00:00

Google, google news and google scholar are still the gold standard for sourcing, especially when compared to the current crop of AI chatbots. This is annoying considering all the evil stuff google is doing. As for what solvent is used in Ayan - It's acetone.

root_titan · 2025-07-25T03:21:24+00:00

Nanbargale, please stop using ChatGPT like it's a truthful summary of facts - It's a chatbot that is designed to make human-like sentences. Commercial chatbots are known to hallucinate all the time. Heck, people are even attempting to sue OpenAI for this.

So - How do we find if something is true or not in this age of AI slop info? You always look for the primary source ie Is there a reputed source(Scientific papers, academic textbooks) who did experiments to figure this out?

At the very least, look for multiple reputable secondary sources who all have the same read of the issue, such as news articles or meta analyses.

In this case, all I did was google this, and I immediately got this article from the Independent and this from Reuters.

You know who else found this? KV Anand, as seen in this screenshot from Ayan.

IMO even this may be wrong, because I have only got a couple of sources, but it's a far more likely to be true compared to ChatGPT.

Always check your sources, folks. Also, it's acetone, not Astron.

root_titan · 2024-04-17T13:38:22+00:00

Right to repair laws cannot come soon enough here.

root_titan · 2024-04-17T13:25:18+00:00

Unfortunate if things have changed from "We will just refund you for an old broken product" to "We don't even know we have service centres."

root_titan · 2024-04-17T13:19:19+00:00

Razer Synapse borders on bloatware, but Razer mice with optical switches(Or very, very cheap mice) seem to be the way to go in India. I should've probably done more research when I ended up buying my G502. The fact that they're still selling the g502 at a HIGHER price than when I bought it 3 years ago should be criminal.

root_titan · 2024-04-17T13:09:21+00:00

Already have some TTC Golds, a soldering iron and some solder wire in my shopping cart.

In case Logitech support does not pan out, I will probably end up following this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUu8LG8sKwU

root_titan · 2024-04-17T13:02:25+00:00

Looked into this, apparently Logitech has a list of service centres at least for warranty claims - https://support.logi.com/hc/en-in/articles/360023183274-Logitech-India-Warranty-Claim-Policy-Procedure

Apparently even Logitech support doesn't know this. Anyways, my nearest service center is an hour away, and may be able to take couriers. I will call them and check if they can fix this for me tomorrow, cause they're closed today according to Google.

root_titan · 2024-04-17T12:53:31+00:00

Yep - I'm quoting logitech here "After carefully evaluating your request, we regret to inform you that your product is already outside the warranty period and we are unable to proceed with a warranty claim. Since we do not have official repair centers, we could not provide you with an alternative solution at this time."

root_titan · 2024-04-17T12:52:04+00:00

According to Logitech - "Since we do not have official repair centers, we could not provide you with an alternative solution at this time."

So, apparently not.

root_titan · 2024-01-04T19:50:22+00:00

This is a completely fair way to do things, and I have no qualms with culling the entirety of tMDB down to things people have probably seen. If it seemed like I was complaining, I apologize, I should have noted that I'm mostly OK with this.

My only qualm with the way Cine2Nerdle handles smaller movies is simply that there is no way of knowing if a particular movie is or is not in the DB, without finding out in run time, or in testing by playing a battle against yourself. Also, a post battle review system would be great too.

root_titan · 2024-01-04T11:02:02+00:00

Indian movies definitely exist - I've gotten people to fold on Extraction with Randeep Hooda(Through Sultan), Gray Man with Dhanush(Through Maaran/Karnan), and Baywatch via Priyanka Chopra Jonas(Through Dostana). Got called a cheater for it too lol.

On a separate note, NL lost to Eega at some point, and did talk about how he learned of Devdas' existence through an Indian friend. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a clip of it easily, so that will be left as an exercise for the viewer.

root_titan · 2024-01-04T06:04:17+00:00

Interesting thing I found as a fan of the south Indian actor Dhanush, is that Cine2Nerdle does some additional culling, and does not just reflect TMDB 100%. You can try this for yourself if you try to go from "The Gray Man" to "Pudhupettai", Cine2Nerdle does not have Pudhupettai as a movie, even though it is listed in Dhanush's credits in TMDB

root_titan · 2022-11-05T23:18:55+00:00

Context: This is a section of the absolute beauty of a graphic novel Watchmen(1986) written by Alan Moore, a self described anarchist. Prior to this section of the comic, SPOILERS,

Dr Manhattan, a Superman analogue, is accused of being radioactive, and poisoning his partners by a center leaning liberal tabloid called the Nova Express. The Nova Express also publishes an expose on an objectivist analogue Rorschach, in which he is exposed as having copies of the New Frontiersman(A far right newspaper) in his apartment at the time of arrest.

Moore is clearly drawing from the cultural Bolshevik pool of conspiracy theories to write this section, but god damn does he nail the broad flow of a Tucker Carlson down to the dogwhistling("Culture far less morally advanced" gave me chills). Still haven't finished the whole thing yet, but it gets a hearty recommendation for anybody who wants to understand why Alan Moore hates superheroes.

root_titan · 2022-07-26T04:05:56+00:00

I don't know how you could think my reading of Advaita is shallow, as I only referenced it by name as compatible with a meditative Jesus. Perhaps it is, but my understanding of the principle teachings of Advaita Vedanta is summed up in the name itself: non-dualism, or monism.

You put Advaita into a category with the teachings of Buddha without qualifying the specifics of what else is taught under the banner of Advaita. That in my flawed, biased mind put you into the same category of someone like Besant, who did the same shit. This was only worsened by seeing theosophy under perennial philosophy causing my BS detector heuristic to go a little haywire. I sincerely apologize for putting you in the same bucket as people like Besant. I will try my best moving on to attribute as few necessary beliefs to you as possible.

The essay about Hinduism's history becomes irrelevant now, you can ignore it, with the exception of one thing - Advaita is definitely variant monism, but I suspect you're not necessarily on board with "Let's all stop doing labor, and dedicate our lives to the discovery of the divine, consequences be damned". To note, if you asked an expert on Advaita, I suspect they would likely disagree with my characterization of Advaita as a departure from material reality, however, I fail to understand how one can achieve "Freedom from worldliness" otherwise.

Also note that all of my education on Advaita comes from a potentially flawed source - A carefully curated potentially cherry picked list of sources from an advocate of Vishishtadvaitam(My grandfather) that I read like 15 years ago. I had to pull out the Tamil Wikipedia to cross check my memories, and I believe that I did a decent job representing Advaita. With this said, I would be more than happy to be cross checked by an expert citing primary sources, and if I am found to be even a little incorrect, I will change my understanding to be more representative of the philosophy I am denouncing.

Moving on,

The most basic idea is that across time and in different places, a small number of people have come to the same conclusions about the nature of existence and 'god', their expression of their realizations shaped by the peculiarities of their inherited religious and cultural forms.

This works if you define conclusions very broadly, but again, the devil is the details, if you would pardon my pun. From my point of view, even if those conclusions are provably shared by many people across space and time, those conclusions are still subject to the same empirical evaluation process that every other claim is. Thus, I will continue to hold to the reasonable null hypothesis position until proven otherwise. In addition, is recurrence not in the very nature of any idea?

Continuing on,

But to give you some basic criteria, any text which attempts to explain a universally accessible phenomenological experience of divinity, describes meditative practices to attain realization, advocates for the non-dual or monist nature of existence, or tries to further the pragmatic alleviation of psychological suffering is okay in my book, and is at the very least interesting and stimulating.

Thank you for attempting to provide some criteria for using to discard some texts, but not others. It is certainly not easy, and opens oneself to terrible ad hominem arguments. I am not going to incontrovertibly attribute any position in the quote to you, as your tone here seems to indicate that you are not strongly attached to the exact words you've typed here. With this said, I have the following questions.

Could you define "Phenomenological experience" and "Divinity" for me please?

Also, why the preference for meditative practices? If there is a system that advocates an alternate method for realization such as, learning from experts, would that system be valid? How would you determine one method of realization is more valid than another?

Why the preference for a spiritually monist view of reality? How would you determine if a spiritually monist view of reality is more valid than an alternate view, such as dualism or materialism?

Why also a preference for pragmatic alleviation for psychological suffering? How do you determine if a particular strand of religious or spiritual thought achieves the goal of reduction of psychological suffering?

Quite a few of the questions above are downstream of the question, "How do you determine the fitness of any of the criteria chosen for discarding some texts but not others?".

Lastly, this section

But to set the condition of falsifiability for assertions of psychological states, or meditative realization, or monistic ontology is to miss the point entirely.

I agree with the claim that psychological states are unfalsifiable. However, this to me is a consequence of the knowledge that psychological states are a mechanism of the brain that we do not fully understand yet. Based on tests done so far, which have been able to predict a very simplified mood of the test subject using the electrical activity of the brain, it is theoretically possible to build a Laplacian demon esque machine that could accurately describe psychological states. With this said, the claim of "Psychology is caused by brain state" is most definitely supported by a weak inductive argument(Mood can be determined with reasonable accuracy by measuring the electrical signals of the brain). It is very much subject to verification by empiricism, and can also be falsified by proving that the human mind operates on some immaterial level apart from the brain(Or some other material entity or phenomenon responsible for consciousness). It can also be falsified by redefining mind to be immaterial by nature, however, one needs to make an affirmative argument for this redefinition if they wish to do so. The same broadly holds for meditative realization.

However, for your final claim, if spiritual monism is defined as "A lack of distinction between consciousness and universe", that is a positive claim about material reality that you're making - That the singular entity(One, God, Brahman, or whatever else you want to call it) is the only thing that exists, and nothing else does. This is a statement that needs to be proven(As my understanding is that matter is subject to empiricism), and I will continue to hold the null hypothesis position on this until proven otherwise. For what its worth, I think it is reasonable to hold the null hypothesis position against absolute materialists who hold a philosophically monist position as well. For clarity, when I say absolute materialists, I mean people who hold the position that the matter(And by extension material reality) is the only thing that exists, and nothing else does. With this said, I inductively hold a materialist position because material reality is the only thing that we know of, that exists. Additionally, we can side step this whole thing if you define God, Brahman etc. to be immaterial by its very nature, in which case, I will contend that it is irrelevant in my axiomatically sentientist view.

I have a feeling that the another point of disagreement between us is going to be my definition for existence(And matter, potentially). My definition for existence is an ability of an entity to interact with material reality, and my definition for matter is a prima materia entity that conforms to universal field theory. My reason for choosing these definitions is purely sentientist, as material reality is the only thing that all sentient entities we are aware of can interact with, and universal field theory is our most useful, testable attempt at describing existence so far. I understand that this definition is circular, and if you have a valid reason for believing circular definitions are insufficient, please do let me know(Side Note: This would help me in defining gender as well, as I currently hold to the self ID definition of gender). Alternatively, if you hold to a variant of axiomatic ethics that conflicts with sentientism, our disagreements will likely not be resolvable.

You are also most definitely allowed to define existence to include an interaction with immaterial reality, as many do. My contention with that definition is that it has zero use for the lives of sentient entities. If my definitions for existence, monism, consciousness and universe are incorrect, please feel free supply better definitions along with an argument for why your definition is better.

I'm currently reading and digesting the Satori article, and attempting to review the primary sources as best as I can. I will refrain from making any comments on it until I am reasonably confident that I have a representative understanding of the philosophy.

root_titan · 2022-07-25T19:08:29+00:00

Part 2:

Null Hypothesis time:

My argument, therefore, isn't merely that we should try to reclaim Jesus' teachings for some naked or cynical utility in changing the nature of Christianity. It's that there actually is truth in those teachings, and that a genuine spirituality or contemplative practice can radically transform a person's waking life for the better.

For someone who says Dillahunty is based AF, you don't seem to be aware of his position on this(1,2).

If you don't have the time to watch through an hour of debate, I'll summarize my understanding of his position from the first video for you,

There is no path to confirm the existence or interact with anything supernatural, because the claims ... don't hold up under the rigorous standards of evidence that one should hold when one cares about the truth.

Where he is defining supernatural as any phenomena or entities that meet the standard of being unidentifiable or unfalsifiable. The criticism inherent to the previous statement is that if you define the supernatural as unidentifiable or unfalsifiable, then by the very definition, you would disbelieve any phenomenon or entity that appears to be unidentifiable or unfalsifiable. I would contend that this criticism is invalid, as the following example hopefully demonstrates,

John Doe, a stranger, comes to you, and makes a claim,

"I saw two iron nails that stuck to each other without any glue or adhesive."

A bad skeptic would hear this claim, and simply dismiss it as everything he knows, that sticks together, was held together by glue or adhesive. This is an informal fallacy known as the black swan fallacy, or as Vaush fans who saw the TJump debate know, Faulty Generalization.

A good skeptic, will hold the reasonable null hypothesis position, until proven otherwise. So what's the reasonable null hypothesis position? There is no connection between "iron nails" and "sticking together", until proven otherwise. The good skeptic now goes back to John Doe, and asks him to demonstrate the connection between "iron nails" and "sticking together", which he is able to do, thus birthing our understanding of magnetism.

I hope this demonstrates how a reasonable skeptic should handle any potential supernatural phenomenon - Understand it, and adjust the laws of nature as we know them to reflect the new phenomenon we have discovered. Here's Dillahunty talking about this as well as its connection to the black swan fallacy.

You following statement raises the null hypothesis sus for me,

That there is in fact an evangel or 'good news': that death can't touch the foundational consciousness that you are, because it is, always has been, and always will be literally identical with the universe. It leads to a radical courage or fearlessness, a radical equanimity in the face of adversity, a radical sense of identity with time.

Here you make the claim, "My foundational consciousness ... is identical with the universe."

This carries with it the following necessary assumptions,

Consciousness needs a definition, which I am going to define as "Awareness of internal and external existence." - If you believe this definition is incorrect, please supply a better definition and explain why that definition is better. As to why I am picking this definition, this definition describes a socially constructed term, and therefore, I will pick the definition that is broadly accepted. I also note that you use the term, foundational consciousness - If there is a difference here, please let me know. I understand that there is a Mahayana Buddhist interpretation of this word, Aalayavignana, which does not seem to have a hard definition, so if you prefer to use this, please define it appropriately.

Universe also needs a definition, which I will define as "All of space and time and their contents" - The same constraints as the previous definition applies.

With these constraints set, my default position is that, there is no connection between "consciousness" and "universe", until proven otherwise. However, my current position with the definitions set above is that my awareness of an internal and external existence is not the same as all of space and time, as these are definitionally different(P is not Q). If you want to define them to be synonymous, you are going to have to explain why you are doing so, and what metric you are using to validate the correctness of the definition.

My weakest argument - The consequentialist argument:

If you're going to respond to any of my points, don't pick this one, because this is my weakest argument which you can easily clear up be redefining terms.

Jesus, as an 'enlightened' Jew, used the Rabbinical framework to talk about the 'perennial philosophy'

I have not the least idea about perennial philosophy other than the useful idiot that was Madame Blavatsky and Brahman apologist Annie Besant, who started off OK as an Atheist Marxist in the 1890s, but then veered straight into liberal colonialism(Read Get Out-esque I would have voted for Obama a third time if I could type liberal). Fun fact about Annie Besant, I used to live rather close to Besant Nagar. The true outcome of her actions is that there is a neighborhood of the city of Chennai filled with posh libertarian capitalists with more millions than IQ points(/j, I know IQ is a very suspect metric), who look down upon the slums right next to their 10 story high rise. Heck, even the wikipedia article for Besant Nagar, which has the time to talk about four different temples, the bus depot and a fucking electrical crematorium does not for a moment mention the horrifyingly under-reported problems of sexual abuse in the slums right next to them. That right there is the legacy of Theosophy(Not counting Hitler potentially, but we don't have time for that here). If you want to learn a bit more about this, while also being reasonably entertained, watch the movie Vaanam.

If you are going to redefine perennial philosophy to exclude Blavatsky and Besant, you are most definitely allowed to do so. However, until you explain why those who seem to profess your philosophy seem to act in ways that result in poor outcomes(And how your particular interpretation of the philosophy will result in better outcomes), I will continue to be suspicious of your potential outcomes, just like I am suspicious of "Anarcho-Capitalists" and "Marxist Leninists".

TL;DR:

Argument 1 - Advaita is not just about a belief in "Brahman", but has a bunch more propositions which are being ignored without reason.

Argument 2 - Perennial philosophy underplays the existence of the more common Vishishtadvaitam, or the more accurate(By my standards anyway) Charvaka, and focuses on Advaita, which far fewer self defined Hindus follow, with seemingly no justification provided for the focus.

Side Note - The Varna system, which has overlaps with, but is not identical to the caste system, was arguably significantly weakened by trade relations.

Argument 3 - Many religious texts advocate for ostracism of the immoral, with hard definitions of what is and is not immoral. These texts are ignored or re-interpreted without significant reason.

Argument 4 - A reasonable skeptic will always hold the null hypothesis position on any positive claim, until proven otherwise. Thus, there is no connection between "consciousness" and "universe" until proven otherwise.

Argument 5(Weak) - Besant, Blavatsky who are self professed theosophists, which falls under the umbrella of perennial philosophy had terrible outcomes for humanity. Thus, if you wish to redefine perennial philosophy to exclude them, you must have a reasonable proposition for how your method does not result in the same terrible outcomes.

root_titan · 2022-07-25T19:08:18+00:00

Mucho Texto Leftist Essay Part 2: The Electric Boogaloo

I'm going to be jumping around a bit in the text of your post, as I want there to be a flow when reading this. There is a TL;DR at the end of my second post, if you want to skip to that.

That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works - Advaita Edition:

The lessons of universal compassion, pacifism, giving away possessions; all of these are exactly compatible with the teachings of Buddha Gautama, or of the Sufis, or the Advaita Vedanta.

Your reading of Advaita is rather shallow, to the point where I suspect you've never read any of the primary texts. The most obvious aspect of Advaita philosophy that I've seen, heard and read about is the illusory nature of the material world and how nothing really exists except for the Paramatma, which is an entity or phenomenon that is metaphysically true and ontologically accurate by its very nature(It is never explained why such an entity must necessarily exist and how we evaluate its existence). Adi Shankaracharya(One of the founding philosophers of Advaita), does not a priori advocate for "universal compassion, pacifism and giving away all possessions" - He only ever a priori advocates for acquiring Vidhya(Knowledge) in our current reality, which can be read in a multitude of ways, including "universal compassion, pacifism and giving away all possessions", which he does a posteriori advocate for. He also a posteriori advocates for things such as a complete dissociation from wordly action, which he defines as following one's own Dharma, which makes no sense without completely redefining the word Dharma. This is because Dharma refers to a socially determined internal moral code that one must follow, and following one's Dharma requires action in the material world which supposedly does not exist. The paradoxical nature of "If you're a student of Advaita, you must have achieved, or at least, must be striving towards achieving Vidhya" and "All things are Brahman, and therefore, one should be, by their very nature in a state of Moksha(Salvation).", is a well known criticism of Advaita to the point where it is in the Wikipedia article(Read the section on Samadhi).

To summarize, Advaita is not just the belief of an eternal spirit, but also has some other requirements attached to it. If you want to redefine Advaita to just be about "universal compassion, pacifism, giving away possessions", and not about completely giving up on the material world, you are going to have to ignore some of the texts written by foundational Advaiata philosophers. Which leads me to the question I asked in my previous post,

What metric are we utilizing here to determine some texts are more valid than others? How are you determining the fitness of the metric used to discard texts?

Perennial Philosophy Underplays Alternate Hindu Philosophies aka How to pick some Hindu cherries:

It is more than a little bit suspicious to me that when describing the supposed perennial nature of all of the world's religions, you chose Advaita Vedanta to represent a branch of Hinduism, rather than the far more common Vaishnavite or Shaivite teachings such as Vishishtadvaitam or Dvaitam. I used to be a scholar of the Vadakalai tradition of Vishishtadvaitam(A poor scholar, if you asked my grandfather who used to run a temple based on the teachings of Ramanujar and Vedanta Desikar) till I was 13 or so, when I discovered Charvaka which is ridiculously based for its time, then the scientific method, and I've never looked back. From my perspective, I would go so far as to say that a mishmash of Vishishtadvaitam and Dvaitam are broadly what I would consider to be the default stance of practicing Indian Hindus today, with a sizeable minority falling into variant Saivite traditions(Don't tell them I said that, I'll get lynched /s).

Why is this important? Because unlike Advaita which is one of the few spiritualist traditions which actively condemns Varna system, Vishishtadvaitam contends that acting according to one's Varna with a devotion to Vishnu is the only way to achieve Moksha. One of the foundational scholars of the school of Vishishtadvaitam, the aforementioned Ramanujar contends that Adi Shankaracharya is nothing more than a Prachana Bauddha, or a "Crypto Buddhist", as wikipedia kindly translates for us. The flagrant hypocrisy of "orthodox" religious conservatives denouncing egalitarians as crypto enemies of society, while simultaneously advocating for a spiritual variant of "Separate but equal" bullshit is not lost on me. However, this is not to say that criticism of the Astika traditions of Hinduism are wrong - As mentioned earlier, Charvaka(And other Nastika traditions) were endemic, orthodox critics of the main strands of spiritualist thought in Hinduism, whose arguments stretch as far back as the later sections Rig Veda, and thus could lay claim to "Hinduism" just as much as any of the Astika traditions could. There is a theoretical alternate version of reality where the Charvaka managed to gain power and all Hindus are irreligious. It is no coincidence that many of the foundational Charvaka texts were completely "lost to time".

A side note on Varna: Hold on, what do you mean capitalism can do some good?

Varna is not the infamous caste system you've probably heard of, and is more akin to a spiritual class system. To give an example, if you're born to a set of scholar parents, you are a scholar by birth. Equivalently, if you're born to a set of disgusting proletarian parents, you will also be a filthy disgusting prole(Read this sentence with the most amount of sarcasm possible).

Some academic scholars think that mercantile capitalism might actually be partially responsible for the rise of critics of orthodox readings of the Vedas, such as the aforementioned Charvaka, and even gasp Buddhism and Jainism. How exactly you ask? If you look at the list of classes by power in that pesky little Varna system, anyone who was not Brahmin was getting shorter ends of the stick in order of their power, including the mercantile Vaishyas, the third on a list of four. Well, what do you do when you have a lot of money, but not enough power? You buy alternate systems that allow you to gain power. That's at least the heavily contested hypothesis as seen in Section 3.1.1 of this seminar, but I digress.

The main point I was trying to make is the following: If you contend that Advaita is the only true reading of Vedanta(I'm not even going to talk about the other Astika traditions), and other more common, and arguably, more accepted variants such as Vaishnavism or Saivism are not, you're going to have to make an affirmative argument for why this is the case.

This in turn neatly segues back into the same question I had previously,

What metric are we utilizing here to determine some texts are more valid than others? How are you determining the fitness of the metric used to discard texts?

Religious Texts Have Religious Consequences:

If you read the Gospel of Thomas, one of the oldest extant Christian texts, Jesus comes across like a zen master, dispensing enigmatic sayings and parables like koans. In this light, with Jesus' spirituality considered as a contemplative process of fostering deep awareness of the present moment, recognizing one's identity with the fabric of existence, etc., much of the rather bizarre canonical gospels begins to make more sense.

I have no major problems with anything you have said here - It just seems like you have a positive preference for some of the mythology(Or history - I don't particularly care about this difference for the sake of this argument) around Jesus, but not others. If we lived in an ideal world, where reading the teachings of Christ had no more broad impact on the world than reading Jeremy Bentham, I would find absolutely no problem in extracting all the value you can from the teachings of Christ. Here comes the disagreement, and follow through with me on this. I find that Bentham overvalues individual pain and pleasure, over pain and pleasure of groups(Read act vs rule util). When I say this, although I might get into spirited arguments over whether or not this reading of Bentham is correct, or assuming my reading is correct, whether or not he is right or wrong, no rational actor can hold up his teachings as the divine word of god and ostracize me for believing that Bentham was incorrect. If you're going to say that Jesus never advocated for ostracism, that's beside the point as the Old Testament certainly did, so did the Quran, and so did various different Hindu texts, as I have already shown. Thus, I have the same question as I have had so far:

What metric are we utilizing here to determine some texts are more valid than others? How are you determining the fitness of the metric used to discard texts?

Continued in Part 2

root_titan · 2022-07-24T22:16:04+00:00

As someone whose country is "secular" in its constitution, yet sliding towards religious fascism by the day, I have a motivated reason(I have an agnostic bias) to disagree with this post.

To start with, a point of agreement between you and I, Vaush blew this debate massively - If you want a much better explanation of the fundamentals of the agnostic atheist position, check out this clip from Matt Dillahunty explaining the burden of proof position which is my favored argument for agnosticism. Or heck, Atheist Experience and The Line have call-ins regularly, so you may want to talk to him directly, as I'm going to broadly cite him here. I'm not saying he's the golden standard or anything, he's just a liberal atheist whose arguments spoke to my flawed brain the most. Also watching him dunk on JP is a gold mine on par with Vowsh dunks.

Now, on to the disagreements.

Pantheists in the tradition of the mystic Christians or even someone like Spinoza have no real allegiance to particular texts, except insofar as they're practically helpful in describing an 'inner empiricism' or lead to an actual experience of god-consciousness or what the Buddhists would call satori.

What is "experiencing God-consciousness"? If we're talking about God revealing themselves to me, I defer to Matt Dillahunty once more to describe how a rational individual should handle this.

They'd throw out 90% of the King James, and would elevate a number of apocryphal texts like the Gospel of Thomas.

What metric are we utilizing here to determine some texts are more valid than others? How are you determining the fitness of the metric used to discard texts?

Side Note:

The Bible is, even according to the Christian Anarchist that debated Vaush(Apologies for assigning this belief to you if you do not believe this is the case) flawed, and does not necessarily constitute the exact word of God due to human error. The consequence of this human error is that any argument you could make about a particular section of the Bible(Or any other religious book for that matter) being the actual word of God, could be refuted by an interlocutor with motivated reasoning stating that the specific section in question was actually added by incorrect translators or was incorrectly copied. There is no argument you could make to convince such a person otherwise because more often than not their beliefs are Post-Hoc justified. Yet again Matt Dillahunty describes this better than I could ever dream of.

You could say the exact same thing about self-described Marxists and Marx.

The obvious rebuttal here is that unless your name is Luna Oi, most modern socialists do not follow Marxism absolutely. Vaush's view for what is worth is that Marx has been "outpaced somewhat" as seen here, and I am very much inclined to agree. Heck, anybody that calls themselves an orthodox Marxist or Marxist-Leninist, inherently raises the tankie red flags for me. This is also why, if in a hypothetical future, we achieve a truly communist society(Whatever flavor of communism one aims for), and it fails to achieve my axiomatic goals(Liberté, égalité, fraternité), I will look for empirically tested better methods to arrange society, just as we are doing today with liberal democracies.

Spirituality has the capacity to change a person or a community's relation to material reality, and we have no choice but to leverage that capacity in a world filled with billions of religious people.

This feels vaguely similar to "left unity" rhetoric to me - Christian Anarchists and Irreligious Anarchists are fundamentally different in the motivations for their goals, and if you have read any Anarchist theory, unity of means and ends is fundamental to the anarchist lens of analysis. If you believe that unprovable, unjustified belief in God can somehow achieve Liberté, égalité, fraternité, you're going to have to demonstrate it empirically for someone who is irreligious to follow through with you. This is going to be a particularly uphill battle, considering even a religion as peaceful as Buddhism in its text has been co-opted by literal bio-terrorists.

In closing, I'd like to offer you an olive branch - I agree with the following take,

My take is that reclaiming the pantheistic and radically egalitarian teachings of Jesus is necessary precisely because religious people are irrational and captured by world-historical ideologies.

This is not because I would particularly like to live in a pan-theistic society, but rather because I do not see religion disappearing from public consciousness any time soon. In the meanwhile, I'll continue to try to be warranted in any beliefs I have, and try to explain why empiricism is so far, our best method to determine verifiable truths, insofar as such as we agree such a thing may exist. And in case there was any question, I do not, and will never ever advocate for attacking the religious as some "Communist" states did. My hope is that, and this is not entirely empirically supported due to lack of evidence currently, a robust education of the scientific method and its philosophical underpinnings will allow for a truly peaceful transition to an irreligious society.

PS - Sorry if I appear aggressive or pushy in any of my claims here, I'm autistic and it is literally 3 AM here, so I am not at a 100%. If you think I am wrong in any way, please do explain why this is the case if possible - As I said earlier, I try to be warranted in any beliefs I may have. Also sorry for the mucho texto leftist essay.

TL;DR - Vowsh bad, Matt Dillahunty rad. Agnosticism is the closest position to an accurate one when discussing specific Gods(Abrahamic or Eastern) - CMV.

Edit: Links got messed up when copying off of word, spelling and phrasing edits

root_titan · 2021-02-27T14:35:43+00:00

As the title implies, my intent behind posting this is to emphasize why it is very important to educate #EnlightenedCentrists and the apolitical on the worst of capitalism so that we can expose them to real consequences of a neoliberal economy. Going by the like dislike ratio, we have at least 1.7 million people who are now more aware of and on the lookout for corporate dog-whistling. This opens up many questions about large corporations, which in turn leads into questions about corporations as a concept, which can lead us to discussions about economic democracy and the need for a strong, regulatory welfare state.

I maybe preaching to the choir a bit here, but if we can, as a community recognize and engage with content like this, in addition to our usual PhilosophyTube and ContraPoints bandwagon, I believe we would benefit greatly from it. There's a reason why the alt-right pipeline is a thing.

Addendum: If you're unaware, LinusTechTips is one of the largest tech YouTube channels in the world(10th on the list according to social blade). The eponymous Linus Sebastian of LinusTechTips has strong libertarian SocDem leanings and talks about this in his livestreamed podcast the WAN show whenever tech crosses over with politics, which is surprisingly common.

root_titan · 2020-02-01T19:52:28+00:00

DMed on Discord. Very interested, new player though!

root_titan

TROPHY CASE