Philosophy of existence

[Not A Communist Shill]

Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos. From the beginning it was never anything but chaos; it was a fluid which enveloped me, which I breathed in through the gills. In the substrata, where the moon shone steady and opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord. In everything I quickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the unreal the irony, the paradox. I was my own worst enemy. There was nothing I wished to do which I could just as well not do. Even as a child, when I lacked for nothing, I wanted to die: I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had not asked for. Everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure, ridiculous. Especially the successful ones. The successful ones bored me to tears. I was sympathetic to a fault, but it was not sympathy that made me so. It was a purely negative quality, a weakness which blossomed at the mere sight of human misery. I never helped any one expecting that it would do any good; I helped because I was helpless to do otherwise. To want to change the condition of affairs seemed futile to me; nothing would be altered, I was convinced, except by a change of heart, and who would change the hearts of men? Now and then a friend was converted: it was something to make me puke. I had no more need of God that He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.

[MysticSonic]

The answer really depends on the sort of answer for which you're looking. If you want a practical answer that you can actually work with, the answer is, yes, existence does not simply stop existing nor does its laws change simply because the nature of our observations change. At the same time, however, if one wishes to seek an answer for truth's sake and simply explore the entirety of possibilities within that realm, then it seems quite impossible to separate the likelihood that the world is simply a solipsistic ideal world created from the mind or an actual reality that holds true regardless of the nature of the observer's perceptions. It's not a matter with an answer at that level, and it simply becomes a matter of choice: in which do you choose to believe? That is your answer, with neither being more wrong than the other.

[tcaudilllg]

The answer really depends on the sort of answer for which you're looking. If you want a practical answer that you can actually work with, the answer is, yes, existence does not simply stop existing nor does its laws change simply because the nature of our observations change. At the same time, however, if one wishes to seek an answer for truth's sake and simply explore the entirety of possibilities within that realm, then it seems quite impossible to separate the likelihood that the world is simply a solipsistic ideal world created from the mind or an actual reality that holds true regardless of the nature of the observer's perceptions. It's not a matter with an answer at that level, and it simply becomes a matter of choice: in which do you choose to believe? That is your answer, with neither being more wrong than the other.

But you can put them together, too, can't you?

[Not A Communist Shill]

But you can put them together, too, can't you?

And there's the rub.

[tcaudilllg]

And there's the rub.

I don't get it.

On the Borderless Empire guy:
What if there were actually two personalities trying to talk at once? I mean really, that guy does not make any sense. Look at this excerpt:

The April 5, 2004 issue of Businessweek magazine reported that the EU ruled against Microsoft’s success in European markets. The EU Competition Commissioner Mario Monti fined Microsoft $600 million plus he forbids Microsoft from including Media Player in its operating system plus he is making Microsoft reveal its proprietary source code to competitors. Businessweek is an allegedly pro-free-market publication yet it supports the crippling of producers as its editorial says, “The EU should be commended for its efforts…” The editorial goes on to say, “The EU ruling strikes the right balance on the regulation of the software giant. … The ruling can be likened to putting some obstacles in front of a moving truck -- the driver has to slow down and steer more carefully but doesn’t have to stop. And that, in the end, is the right way to deal with Microsoft.”

With an abundance of mysticism and a gross lack of principles, the unprincipled mind creates problems where no problems exist. It undercuts rationality, competition, creativity, production, honesty, wealth and life itself. It ultimately delivers death to all. That fact becomes strikingly clear to individuals who develop a principled mind.

Pot calling the kettle black....

With a principled mind you can know in advance what anti-civilization people will do. And you can exploit them for endless streams of riches until they can no longer survive in the mystical, unprincipled mode. They too will have to evolve to compete for survival and prosperity once they encounter the man or woman with the no-limit principled mind.

Endless streams of riches... well duh. I mean, people are going to survive and make more stuff. Did he ever think though, that if everyone took his advice then maybe this strategy would end up not working, because then everyone would be playing a zero sum game? Probably not.

There is no need to be dogmatic, boastful, boisterous or vengeful. You can bankrupt people who advance the anti-civilization and you can do this quietly, indifferently yet ruthlessly. You can in essence direct their future moves so they continually pour wealth into your hands. Even their ultimate tools of government guns, subpoenas, prosecutorial dishonesties and prison camps become ineffectual. Evolutionary dynamics trump physical force. If this were not so, humans would still be living in trees as physically-stronger apes.

Next comes the fall:

You can outflank the entire anti-civilization by delivering objective values to earthlings through unregulated markets. Of course within the anti-civilization those unregulated markets are called “black markets” and are illegal; they are punishable by fines and imprisonment. Yet people who have developed the wide-open principled mind can produce and exchange values without limits or regulations. The puny, sick, unprincipled mind simply cannot block value production fast enough to cripple the work of healthy, principled minds. Thus by developing a clean, healthy, principled mind you can outflank all attempts at value destruction.

"Puny, sick"... Some Se there, Si... the existing standard of Se, Si are puny and sick, respectively, he thinks. But if you embrace the id arbitrarily, then there is "evolution". Where I'm at in Wild Arms 3, the villains are talking about the exact same stuff but in a different context: the planet is sick. By embracing the inner potential of the planet and absolving oneself of moral responsibility, it can be evolved into a superior being, a "demon". Taking this Borderless Empire guy at his word, you end up engaging in supposedly moral chains of non-reciprocity, taking advantage of people who somehow "deserve" to be taken advantage of. Hmm.... Well now if the planet must be sucked of its energy to create the demon which cures the decay (although it's the demon's creation which is centering all that energy in the first place and causing the decay of most of the planet)... you know it seems like it's all a matter of some man-gets-fired-kicks-dog-bites-cat-scratches-baby (well of course the cat would stop the negative-reciprocity chain, and for that matter the dog wouldn't bite the cat because it was kicked... but you get the idea) that just ends up feeding itself. I mean really, how is what Borderless Empire advocating any different from the demon who is sucking up all the energy to fix the problem it is itself exclusively responsible for? The regulation only exists because people who see the nature of the demon (destroying everything but itself) want to make sure it doesn't succeed, because it worries the heck out of them. Eventually the demon would suck them up too, as would have eventually been the case with Bill Gates. (of course he changed course, but I think that was because he recognized the demon in his own heart -- but what is a "heart"?).

[Not A Communist Shill]

I don't get it.

A pure solipsist would not agree with a pure empiricist, and vice versa, and a person who holds both positions would say that both positions can be fit together, and the person may or may not believe that they are able to prove this position or any position.

This may or may not matter, depending on your view (that is, if you do not have any problem with the term 'your view', and whether you consider the level of mattering to be of any objective or subjective importance, and if you believe that any such importance could be defined).