Loving vs Being in love

[0i0]

"We must differentiate between loving and being in love. To try to make definitions of these takes some courage.
Loving another person is seeing that person truly and appreciating him for what he actually is: his ordinariness, his failure and his magnificence. If one can ever cut through that fog of projections in which one lives so much of his life and can look truly at another person, that person, in his down-to-earth individuality is a magnificent creature. The trouble is that there are so many people, and we are so blinded by our own projections, we rarely see another clearly in all his depth and nobility. […] Loving is not illusory. It is not seeing the other person in a particular role or image we have designed for him. Loving is valuing another for his personal uniqueness within the context of the ordinary world. That is durable. It stands up. It is real.
Being in love is another matter. Being in love is an intrusion, for better or worse, of an archetypal, a superpersonal, or a divine world. Suddenly one sees in one’s beloved a god or a goddess; through him or her one sees into a superpersonal, superconscious realm of being. All this is highly explosive and inflammatory, a divine madness. The poets tell us about it in extravagant terms. If one watches people in love looking at each other, one knows perfectly well that they are looking through each other. Each is in love with an idea, or an ideal, or an emotion. They are in love with love.
The worst thing about being in love is that it is not durable; it doesn’t last. One day the bright vision of the beloved, which had previously danced with such beauty before one’s eyes, seems plain and dull. The transpersonal, godlike quality dims, and the personal, down-to-earth, ordinary man is revealed. This is one of the saddest and most painful experiences in life. The quality of being in love is a visitation of something divine. It is a god or a goddess on the face of the earth and does not fit at all well into human dimensions."

Robert A. Johnson: She – Understanding Feminine Psychology


I kind of agree with this quote, but what I'd add to it is that I believe glimpses of the divine can sometimes be seen even in mundane situations, this goes for people too. Loving one's failures or magnificence as a human being is to me almost the same as worshipping the divine that Johnson talks about in the section of "being in love", these are only different aspects of the divine.

What do you think about the quote, and what's your opinion on the matter?

[Pookie]

I don't agree. I love my cat and I don't do any of those things.

[0i0]

I don't agree. I love my cat and I don't do any of those things.

My mistake, that was supposed to be an exception.

[Xaiviay]

I kind of agree with this quote, but what I'd add to it is that I believe glimpses of the divine can sometimes be seen even in mundane situations, this goes for people too. Loving one's failures or magnificence as a human being is to me almost the same as worshipping the divine that Johnson talks about in the section of "being in love", these are only different aspects of the divine.

I do agree with you. I feel that loving another human being for who they are in all their human frailties and strengths is an uplifting, divine thing.

When I've felt really deep love before, it wasn't because I saw that person as other-worldly. I still saw their vulnerabilities, delusions, and mishaps, but I felt such a deep appreciation and respect for them anyway. I've also felt the idealizing, 'fake' love where I wanted to project an image onto them, and comparatively that emotion didn't feel as meaningful.

[Hays]

One can love another and be in love with that same person and this love can last a lifetime.

[niffer]

^ Yea.

If you truly love and see another as a magnificent creature with faults too, how can you not go mad sometimes. I think insanity (the reaction of madness) can be attached to something solid. It’s not the reaction in itself that’s the problem, it’s if nothing is actually there, but the “being in love” emotion doesn’t need to be conflated with that.

It would be like saying every time you feel happy eating food, the happiness and temporary feelings of satisfaction are empty and false lol. No; those feelings are a very valuable part of eating, not just the nourishment you get from the vitamins etc. Just because you’re enjoying your food doesn’t automatically make it full of MSG and worthless artificiality; no that’s stupid. Same idea.

[0i0]

^ Yea.

If you truly love and see another as a magnificent creature with faults too, how can you not go mad sometimes. I think insanity (the reaction of madness) can be attached to something solid. It’s not the reaction in itself that’s the problem, it’s if nothing is actually there, but the “being in love” emotion doesn’t need to be conflated with that.

It would be like saying every time you feel happy eating food, the happiness and temporary feelings of satisfaction are empty and false lol. No; those feelings are a very valuable part of eating, not just the nourishment you get from the vitamins etc. Just because you’re enjoying your food doesn’t automatically make it full of MSG and worthless artificiality; no that’s stupid. Same idea.

I agree, I think this was what I was trying to add as saying the two can be the same, maybe in a more obscure way. The same can have two different aspects, but I liked the description of those two aspects he mentioned.

It's an interesting viewpoint about archetypes, because he mentions something similar to what for example Jordan Peterson talked about: how young men can be afraid of women, meanwhile it can be their own projection and fear of the divine feminine, which later kind of disappears, when you start getting to know the actual person behind the ideal.

[niffer]

I agree, I think this was what I was trying to add as saying the two can be the same, maybe in a more obscure way. The same can have two different aspects, but I liked the description of those two aspects he mentioned.

It's an interesting viewpoint about archetypes, because he mentions something similar to what for example Jordan Peterson talked about: how young men can be afraid of women, meanwhile it can be their own projection and fear of the divine feminine, which later kind of disappears, when you start getting to know the actual person behind the ideal.

Yeah now that I reread what you’re saying I see what you mean.

Meh, idk about archetypical stuff like that. I’m not convinced it’s really a thing; maybe in the sense of fearing your imago but that’s different for everyone.

I think his viewpoint is running away from desire too much in some kind of white guy flavour of Buddhism. If people weren’t so scared of desire and embracing it in the first place then they’d be better able to hone their radar for it, for what’s good for them or not rather than eschewing everything that’s reminds them of indulgence in life. But I guess that kind of running can take many forms, including a philosophical/archetypal one.

[niffer]

To clarify what I mean is that you can subconsciously viscerally be disconnected from your gut feelings towards desire, but you can also be consciously disconnected from it philosophically. If that makes sense. And it’s an important part of this experience of love.

[nickelslick]

If people weren’t so scared of desire and embracing it in the first place then they’d be better able to hone their radar for it, for what’s good for them or not rather than eschewing everything that’s reminds them of indulgence in life.

The guy who walks into a burger joint and then decides which burger to go with based on its nutritional value wants you to know that you may have changed his life with this epiphany.

[Sol]

When you like someone due to sympathy and pleasure - it's what motivates for love, but not love itself.

Love is unconditional merging with other one.
When 2 people introject personalities and the needs of each other and such create a new One. When the borders between people are reduced - the more, - the more of love they have.

this reminds this sentence
"Loving another person is seeing that person truly and appreciating him for what he actually is: his ordinariness, his failure and his magnificence."

"appreciating him for what he actually is" - unconditional acceptance, which is a part of love feeling

Love needs the efforts of your will, some sacrifices of personal interests to live for and by the other one's needs, to care about him [in love - it's mutual process and you'll be moving to the good state for the both; it's harder in the start]. The lesser opposing you have, - the easier to get the love feeling and to live with it. So initial sympathy is important for love. Good IR is one of factors which help with it.

[timber]

Loving ends in apathetic misery and being in love is transformative

[Adam Strange]

Loving ends in apathetic misery and being in love is transformative

You might not be doing it right.

https://vimeo.com/151793982

[Tallmo]

It's an interesting viewpoint about archetypes, because he mentions something similar to what for example Jordan Peterson talked about: how young men can be afraid of women, meanwhile it can be their own projection and fear of the divine feminine, which later kind of disappears, when you start getting to know the actual person behind the ideal.

Young men can be afraid of women because of insufficient differentiation from the Feminine (inside them). Mature men will not be afraid of the Feminine because they distance themselves from it and project it onto the woman. They have well developed masculinity and have distanced themselves from "soulfulness".

Healthy men can deal with the ideal feminine, with attraction.

Projection is a healthy part of sexual attraction. It is necessary for the initial connection. Getting to know each other comes later. Even later comes the integration of them feminine side of the man.

[Hope]

I've never seen a beloved as a god pr goddess, neither as perfect etc. Obviously idealization is not love. The quote is right, guess some immature ppl do fall in love like the second part of the description.

[MrsTortilla]

I think it's interesting that all my life I've heard so many people comment on how that the ideal love in the beginning of a relationship doesn't last. But in really long term relationships, that infatuation period can fade and then be revived again and again. It's a natural pattern. The whole thing about love not being durable, it not lasting, is not as simple as this.

[Adam Strange]

I think "being in love" is a kind of limerence, whereas loving someone is a decision.

How long and how well that decision holds up depends on many things.

Humans thrive on emotional connections to their partners and become distressed at inconsistencies in attachment bonds. There have been studies done of marriages which resulted in the researchers claiming that they can predict with great certainty whether a couple will be together in a few years, and the criterion they use to predict the outcome is how often either partner responds to the requests for connection by the other partner.

These requests can be as simple as "Look at that squirrel outside the window!" or as potentially ominous as "We have to talk", but in all cases of successful relationships, the partners consistently respond to each other's requests for connection.

The ranking of socionics ITR's, I believe, closely tracks the willingness of one type to understand and respond to another type's requests for connection.

[MrsTortilla]

^ Wow. Really good point about requests for connection. I'll just say that I think that is at the heart of my current relationship problems. Sigh!

[Adam Strange]

^ Wow. Really good point about requests for connection. I'll just say that I think that is at the heart of my current relationship problems. Sigh!

When my ex and I were navigating our separation and divorce, she told me that I didn't tell her I loved her as often as I did when we were first married. That kind of hurt, but I can't contradict it. There was a lot of water over the dam since that time, and I clearly wasn't responding to her in the manner she needed. But I think that a lot of that was due to personality differences that Socionics describes, because we were otherwise good friends, and still are.

However, the study that I was referring to is described here: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...-after/372573/

The question is, why are some people able to consistently demonstrate kindness towards others, while others show contempt?

I believe that a large part of this ability stems from an individual's level of psychological health, and some of it stems from the ability to empathize with a person. This empathy is just easier to have with people who share one's values, and some of those values are described by Socionics.

Socionics ranks duals as the most compatible pairing because they not only share values (along with everyone else in one's quadra) but one dual is naturally skilled in areas which the other dual is not. Therefore, when one dual makes a request to the other dual, it is usually the unskilled functions which are asking for clarity, and the other dual is happy to respond using the functions that they excel at. It is the consistency of positive responses which makes (healthy) duals so compatible.

[Hope]

I think "being in love" is a kind of limerence, whereas loving someone is a decision.

How long and how well that decision holds up depends on many things.

Humans thrive on emotional connections to their partners and become distressed at inconsistencies in attachment bonds. There have been studies done of marriages which resulted in the researchers claiming that they can predict with great certainty whether a couple will be together in a few years, and the criterion they use to predict the outcome is how often either partner responds to the requests for connection by the other partner.

These requests can be as simple as "Look at that squirrel outside the window!" or as potentially ominous as "We have to talk", but in all cases of successful relationships, the partners consistently respond to each other's requests for connection.

The ranking of socionics ITR's, I believe, closely tracks the willingness of one type to understand and respond to another type's requests for connection.

I actually think it all could be related to having communication that is appealing to your seeking function.
I'll definitely attend to "look at that squirrel outside the window!" but I'd try to avoid and take as a heavy duty an "we have to talk".

[Myst]

@Adam Strange well things like with "we have to talk" are objectively harder than some other actions like looking at that squirrel. (More rewarding possibly though... in terms of improving yourself and hopefully the relationship too...) I've seen those studies btw.


As for OP: I do like the thought on noticing the personal uniqueness in some people. I don't think I'm truly familiar with the imagined infatuated version actually. o_o What I'm more familiar with is detecting something I really am attracted to and it really is in the other person, and I do attach to it special value, so in that sense it's subjective and almost idealized compared to just simply seeing the "gray" quantifiable or categorizable properties of the person but it doesn't mean it's not real to me in a sense or that it can't be lasting. I find these things are actually lasting for me. What I once found attractive in someone I still find attractive. And I can keep positive feelings about the person along with such attraction if they didn't try to kill all positive feelings too much with shit behaviours or anything. The way I experience the positive feelings - there can be of course more than one kind of this... some are romantic, some aren't - are me consistently having such a positive reaction to seeing the person or sometimes even if I just think of them (seeing them in real life is what elicits it consistently though). And all this lets me also see the person objectively still, the "flaws" too, and I can decide if I accept them, and I usually am not bothered by most "flaws" in people so that makes it easier too.

[0i0]

I've never seen a beloved as a god pr goddess, neither as perfect etc. Obviously idealization is not love. The quote is right, guess some immature ppl do fall in love like the second part of the description.

Think about it it not in a literal way of worshipping someone necessarily, like bathing in goat blood, but how you can idealize someone and worship someone through your actions, your intense emotions and blindness towards them and their faults.

As for OP: I do like the thought on noticing the personal uniqueness in some people. I don't think I'm truly familiar with the imagined infatuated version actually. o_o What I'm more familiar with is detecting something I really am attracted to and it really is in the other person, and I do attach to it special value, so in that sense it's subjective and almost idealized compared to just simply seeing the "gray" quantifiable or categorizable properties of the person but it doesn't mean it's not real to me in a sense or that it can't be lasting. I find these things are actually lasting for me.

I think being attracted to something and seeing those special things in a detailed way doesn't mean archetypes are not in work, or the feeling can't come from something else, like a need from childhood, a bad pattern, etc. But I don't think we disagreed here, it was just something that I added.

(...) but it doesn't mean it's not real to me in a sense or that it can't be lasting. I find these things are actually lasting for me.

Well, I think that's the exciting part about reality and objectivity. If something is subjective to someone, it doesn't mean it's not real in a sense - so what do we call real and objective in the end? I understand balloons can pop in the end, and what you meant by lasting things though.

[timber]

You might not be doing it right.

https://vimeo.com/151793982

k

[Myst]

I think being attracted to something and seeing those special things in a detailed way doesn't mean archetypes are not in work, or the feeling can't come from something else, like a need from childhood, a bad pattern, etc. But I don't think we disagreed here, it was just something that I added.

Oh I usually have no idea where the attraction comes from, I let it stay mysterious lol. I don't try to analyze it by default. Well yes I think I noticed one bad pattern before and Socionics did offer some explanation for some other things, but much of the rest is still mysterious.

Well, I think that's the exciting part about reality and objectivity. If something is subjective to someone, it doesn't mean it's not real in a sense - so what do we call real and objective in the end? I understand balloons can pop in the end, and what you meant by lasting things though.

I think a subjective response is real if one is responding to the actual experience and not something imagined beyond that that could be totally out of touch with what actually exists. The latter one is when balloons pop in the end yeah


And you said in your OP

Loving one's failures or magnificence as a human being is to me almost the same as worshipping the divine that Johnson talks about in the section of "being in love", these are only different aspects of the divine.

I've thought a bit more on this and I think I agree that it doesn't have to be unrealistic imagination of infatuation. The things I get attracted to that I find special (and not just some bad pattern for attraction), that could be this.

[timber]

Nice, Myst embraces the mystery. That's where its at.

[0i0]

Oh I usually have no idea where the attraction comes from, I let it stay mysterious lol. I don't try to analyze it by default. Well yes I think I noticed one bad pattern before and Socionics did offer some explanation for some other things, but much of the rest is still mysterious.

Maybe that's one part where that Ni or Fe can help.

I think a subjective response is real if one is responding to the actual experience and not something imagined beyond that that could be totally out of touch with what actually exists. The latter one is when balloons pop in the end yeah

What I meant is that maybe there is no "actual", or we don't really know what "actually" is... actually. You say reacting to something imagined vs "what exists", what I mentioned was that while in the meantime they might have different characteristics, we can't necessarily call one of these as it exists and the other as imagined. Think about it in the way someone posted that quote from Peterson in that thread (but it's not an unusual concept for some people who started to embrace paganism again): maybe there is no difference in the end between the gods living in us or the outside.

I know these would need way more explanation and analysis, but I don't want to go there now in this thread. Overall, I think what I'm trying to say is even though there are differences, what distinguishes reality from unreality (to me at least) is based on a set of rules that are not coming from an actual knowledge, only a consensus. And when a scene is waking up in someone - maybe it's real in another level of all of many.

Sorry for the mumbling, it's very early in the morning.

[WVBRY]

I think the author of the quote is creating a kind of black/white picture where being in love is bad, unhealthy, and blind, and loving is the opposite. I'm also not sure that I agree that the experience of each is so distinct so as to be able to separate it conceptually: you might have some projection of the divine on someone who you see in a day to day context, without it blinding you to who this person is completely.

[ooo]

"Love vs falling in love" is a very old argument, already Plato was calling the erotic feeling "a pathology", while dedicating to Love one of his best works. Even Freud differentiated Love from desire, and, before of him, many mystics and philosophers made a mission to refrain their passions so to reach a(nother) form of transcendence; that, even if falling in love involves the flesh, the places it leads to are no less high than the (other) divine states.

I like how the greeks had many words for love, phileo for what you love dearly; epithymeo for the passionate love; agapao for a divine, all-encompassing kind of love. I like the idea of distinguishing such things because even if they're all branded under "love", for us, and are perhaps different emanations of what is one Go(o)d, they're really responding to different impulses, they're moving towards different things.

I agree that when falling in love we tend to believe in a new alternate reality where there's nothing better than our partner, I think it is one of the necessary conditions to fall in love: to hold in a great estimation the "object of our desire" and wish that their desire for us was reciprocated. We don't fall in love with everyone but we are drawn to those people who seem to show something new of us, to us. This is the kind of transcendence of the self that belongs to all forms of love. And why love is so important. When we can step out of ourselves and embrace the other in their totality, this corresponds to a new discovery of the self too. I think it's thanks to this initial sparkle, to this rush of adrenaline and hormones that make us feel so alive... that we can become so attached to someone as to chose to dedicate to them our lives, our fidelity and all that love requires. A love that starts without that initial madness is really missing something, somehow.

[Bertrand]

I agree there's a weird connection between loving another person and it making you love the world as well. sort of how being in love is the byproduct of loving an individual and its the sense of the world being awesome, i.e.: a kind of euphoria or enchantment with life itself

[Myst]

Maybe that's one part where that Ni or Fe can help.

Heheh yeah possibly

What I meant is that maybe there is no "actual", or we don't really know what "actually" is... actually. You say reacting to something imagined vs "what exists", what I mentioned was that while in the meantime they might have different characteristics, we can't necessarily call one of these as it exists and the other as imagined. Think about it in the way someone posted that quote from Peterson in that thread (but it's not an unusual concept for some people who started to embrace paganism again): maybe there is no difference in the end between the gods living in us or the outside.

I know these would need way more explanation and analysis, but I don't want to go there now in this thread. Overall, I think what I'm trying to say is even though there are differences, what distinguishes reality from unreality (to me at least) is based on a set of rules that are not coming from an actual knowledge, only a consensus. And when a scene is waking up in someone - maybe it's real in another level of all of many.

Sorry for the mumbling, it's very early in the morning.

No worries. As for the consensus issue... there is also such a thing to me as internal consistency mentally: so if x thing was experienced as true (in the sense of: real) now, and nothing was supposed to change its reality, it's still true (real) now. Taking an extreme example... if someone starts having the condition called psychosis, this type of internal consistency is lost. So the mind by default is to be consistent about what was experienced as existing and not change the reality of things randomly. And in that fashion, when I speak of having the emotional reaction to something I experienced as existing, I'm referring to this internal mental consistency in terms of something existing. In contrast to something that's just imagined and not experienced as existing. And of course, all this is technically based on the belief that the world out there is also consistently existing*... hence the experiences and facts about the world - and anything else resulting from these experiences and facts - are to remain existing consistently, too. In this way, I believe in my own experience of the world. But yeah, I know sense of reality is often just called the consensus by people.

*: But at least, our minds want to be consistent to a degree at least, as a basic psychological principle for how the mind works. Regardless of the matter of what's actually out there outside the mind.

[0i0]

No worries. As for the consensus issue... there is also such a thing to me as internal consistency mentally: so if x thing was experienced as true (in the sense of: real) now, and nothing was supposed to change its reality, it's still true (real) now. Taking an extreme example... if someone starts having the condition called psychosis, this type of internal consistency is lost. So the mind by default is to be consistent about what was experienced as existing and not change the reality of things randomly. And in that fashion, when I speak of having the emotional reaction to something I experienced as existing, I'm referring to this internal mental consistency in terms of something existing. In contrast to something that's just imagined and not experienced as existing. And of course, all this is technically based on the belief that the world out there is also consistently existing*... hence the experiences and facts about the world - and anything else resulting from these experiences and facts - are to remain existing consistently, too. In this way, I believe in my own experience of the world. But yeah, I know sense of reality is often just called the consensus by people.

*: But at least, our minds want to be consistent to a degree at least, as a basic psychological principle for how the mind works. Regardless of the matter of what's actually out there outside the mind.

Hm, about the fact that someone's psychosis wouldn't change the outside world (which is a good argument), have you ever heard about solipsism? How are we sure if not is everything in our head? Just for the sake of argument and game. That would kind of eliminate imaginary and real things, right? I think this is a bit similar theoretical play you have in science document series meant for larger audiences, with titles like "What if we are in a simulation?" Or this https://www.iep.utm.edu/brainvat/, but I might be slowly going off topic here. I though you'd be interested in this though.

And I liked the fact you put "based on the belief that the world out there is also consistently existing", that's how I try to grab this whole thing, I guess.

I'm wandering now about how even people with psychosis have a kind of structure, it's just (seems) nonsense.

[Myst]

Hm, about the fact that someone's psychosis wouldn't change the outside world (which is a good argument), have you ever heard about solipsism? How are we sure if not is everything in our head? Just for the sake of argument and game. That would kind of eliminate imaginary and real things, right? I think this is a bit similar theoretical play you have in science document series meant for larger audiences, with titles like "What if we are in a simulation?" Or this https://www.iep.utm.edu/brainvat/, but I might be slowly going off topic here. I though you'd be interested in this though.

And I liked the fact you put "based on the belief that the world out there is also consistently existing", that's how I try to grab this whole thing, I guess.

I'm wandering now about how even people with psychosis have a kind of structure, it's just (seems) nonsense.

Yeah, I heard of solipsism and I'm not a solipsist personally. It's not very logical to me to imagine my mind and all its mental contents existing in a vacuum. I guess I really trust my sensations strongly enough too to not be a solipsist. Your "brain in a vat" link has the argument we can't construe logic to be able to even state with an actual truth value that we are brains in a vat and that's a pretty valid argument too to me. Also you could say I got too much of a positivist bent to consider the question valid, at least as far as we cannot ever determine its truth. Going past that and considering the simulation idea itself, that involves extra assumptions to deal with... your "brain in a vat" link does mention actually that there is an argument it's not physically possible to reproduce the same consciousness that way... (though I'd have to find the original source for that argument.) Well I'd say it's definitely not proven that the world can be simulated like that in a computer, it would depend on understanding the world enough to simulate it *completely* and that depends on it even being possible to understand it enough.

Mind saying more on what you meant by how you try to "grab" this thing?

Your last sentence is what really is interesting: what kind of structure do you mean there? While the original internal consistency for how the world exists is lost in psychosis for sure, I'm interested in what you thought of there, I'd really be up for discussing this topic

[0i0]

Yeah, I heard of solipsism and I'm not a solipsist personally. It's not very logical to me to imagine my mind and all its mental contents existing in a vacuum. I guess I really trust my sensations strongly enough too to not be a solipsist. Your "brain in a vat" link has the argument we can't construe logic to be able to even state with an actual truth value that we are brains in a vat and that's a pretty valid argument too to me. Also you could say I got too much of a positivist bent to consider the question valid, at least as far as we cannot ever determine its truth. Going past that and considering the simulation idea itself, that involves extra assumptions to deal with... your "brain in a vat" link does mention actually that there is an argument it's not physically possible to reproduce the same consciousness that way... (though I'd have to find the original source for that argument.) Well I'd say it's definitely not proven that the world can be simulated like that in a computer, it would depend on understanding the world enough to simulate it *completely* and that depends on it even being possible to understand it enough.

Mind saying more on what you meant by how you try to "grab" this thing?

What I meant is that in the brains and vats argument there was an extra assumption needed. This is an axiome so to speak in this theory (also, I just ran through it, I might need to actually read it, haha), and it's an axiome too in our world that this is reality, or for example here we could see what we could create in a world where this would be only an illusion. But if we are in a simulation - how would we know we are incapable of creating these simulations? This very thought would be the part of that simulation. Tell me, if you feel I skipped important parts from the link I've sent you.

Your last sentence is what really is interesting: what kind of structure do you mean there? While the original internal consistency for how the world exists is lost in psychosis for sure, I'm interested in what you thought of there, I'd really be up for discussing this topic

For example if you imagine a paranoid schizophrenic (I might be wrong here, I admit, I lack the knowledge, this will be based on an example and theory), you might see some structure in the psychosis. I'll try to use an actual example with changing a few things in it. But imagine a guy, being afraid of people, because they follow him. These people have the same characteristics that you can recognize (for example their hair has always silver streaks in it), and they have the same agenda towards him. Therefore - even though this is psychosis, it's madness and chaos - it still has some structure in the patient's mind. Causality, an agenda their enemies share, motives that come back.

This is one reason why I could see chaos actually having a pattern if you look at it from a fruther point of view. Some kind of rythm, maybe. Or it doesn't, I have no idea.

[Myst]

What I meant is that in the brains and vats argument there was an extra assumption needed. This is an axiome so to speak in this theory (also, I just ran through it, I might need to actually read it, haha), and it's an axiome too in our world that this is reality, or for example here we could see what we could create in a world where this would be only an illusion. But if we are in a simulation - how would we know we are incapable of creating these simulations? This very thought would be the part of that simulation. Tell me, if you feel I skipped important parts from the link I've sent you.

Oh there were several versions of reasoning at the link but yeah, technically, at least with where we are today, we wouldn't yet know what this world really is, so it's all an assumption if we state anything about it. I.e. that we are referring to actual external objects with our statements. But if we want to state (on our own) that we are in a simulation, that's logically inconsistent if we would not know anything about external objects such as the simulation itself. Unless the simulation somehow includes info for us on those... assuming now that we are able to interpret that info, ofc. It also depends on whether the simulation can even work in this way to offer such info. I'm not a physicist so I'm going to skip on details for this. We have not got such info so far though. I said I'm a bit of a positivist but I acknowledge that in theory (i.e. can't exclude this) this could be possible somehow - maybe. Meaning, we could construe the logic then to state we are brains in a vat, but right now we cannot.

(For the last statement, I believe the original argument relies on logic extracted from the world as we know it now, or from whatever we see as the world, but we could later have new knowledge from which new logic can be extracted to change the reasoning...)

As for how we would know if creating a simulation is possible, like I said we'd need to see first if the understanding of the (real) world required for this is even achievable for us. If we are in a simulation, sure, I don't know if the simulation necessarily has enough information available on this (see above note too). But I don't think the issue of the thought on this being part of the simulation is necessarily a problem (again as per above note).

Which extra assumption were you referring to specifically?

For example if you imagine a paranoid schizophrenic (I might be wrong here, I admit, I lack the knowledge, this will be based on an example and theory), you might see some structure in the psychosis. I'll try to use an actual example with changing a few things in it. But imagine a guy, being afraid of people, because they follow him. These people have the same characteristics that you can recognize (for example their hair has always silver streaks in it), and they have the same agenda towards him. Therefore - even though this is psychosis, it's madness and chaos - it still has some structure in the patient's mind. Causality, an agenda their enemies share, motives that come back.

That makes sense. It's like, the basic information structures get mixed with this new structure in a chaotic way but it's a structure in the psychosis nonetheless. I do wonder if following that structure and figuring it out can lead the psychosis to resolution.

This is one reason why I could see chaos actually having a pattern if you look at it from a fruther point of view. Some kind of rythm, maybe. Or it doesn't, I have no idea.

Like I said if we had any idea on it it's no longer seen as chaos