Strawmanning Nonduality

Muttley: Ok, I listened to the first 15 minutes because you mentioned my name. It's a mix of philosophy and psychology. It's also grounded in a core hostility, and I can see why you resonate with that. Listen to the content of the question he starts off with.

A great deal of congratulations are in order to this gentleman for having solved the question of free will once and for all. I'm sure he'll go down in the annuls of human history as one of the greats for that.

But beyond this great accomplishment, is an entire field of scarecrows lining his yellow brick road. You say you can place my "world view" within what he says, but that is false. Review what you responded to that I wrote, and compare it with what he says. The two do not track.

Like you, he is interested in "proof". Have I ever offered you or claimed any "proof"? Of anything? He says that "Mind can deceive itself. Mind can prove anything, to its own satisfaction." .. directly after he states as his basis the current high-fashion of simulation theory to explain his theory of reality. Oh, the Irony! (cue the Hindenburg) Priceless!

Elon is undoubtedly a bright guy, and Nick has many academic ribbons and metals to his sterling and impeccable credit, but their beliefs in the simulation theory are as unprovable as the assertion that the Universe is created by a creator. The entire edifice is a misconceived shadow of your mind hiding in the plain sight of a tautology. Eventually, in the scope of history to come, it will be just another level on the totem pole of existential beliefs of the Sun God or the Sky God or the eternal circle or the eternal word. Those last two levels, btw, were the direct result of human kind's tendency to revolutionize their technologies, and correspond, respectively, to the invention of the wheel and written language. To state the obvious for the obtuse, AI is just another progression along that line, as is our understanding of the brain and subjective perception. These are the basis for the existential simulation theory, just as the wheel and books are reflections of those other (now relatively) archaic existential beliefs.

You're looking for love in all the wrong places 'dusty. Philosophy and Psychology will only ever give you finer and finer understandings of the machine, but you, are not a machine. Lemme know if you think I missed anything in the other 30 minutes I failed to waste. Mr. Video Schmuck quotes Descartes. Well, Descartes also said (paraphrasing from memory): "There comes a time in the life of any serious seeker of truth where they must question everything they once believed was true". As the character of Bill Lumbergh might have said to Mr. Schmuck : "yeah, why don't you go ahead and to that. That'd be great".

Coming back again to your misconception about my supposed "world view" : you cannot quote me denying physical reality. It's just not what you think it is. Similar to Bostrom or Schmuck I might, in the right dialog, characterize physical reality as contextual, but would certainly diverge from them once they started resting their minds on the juvenile comparison of "reality", to a video game. Spare me the theories about perception and the mind experiment of a brain in a vat. Much of that is undeniably correct, but, kindly refer back to what I wrote about machinery. Neither objective nor subjective. Pause, and witness the mind's rebellion to the neti-neti.


Oh, almost forgot: his projection that everyone needs to have some basis in a conceptualized "reality" in order to function and maintain sanity, is just as shallow and silly as his belief in a cosmic video game. Not everyone suffers from that sort of psychological dependency.

SDP:
I said very clearly, Michaels is answering a question. Someone asked him if ND-people are mentally ill (he's reading the question, and he comes back to it later to get [to answer] the specific question). It takes him 45 minutes to explain, no. He says they are inconsistent, not mentally ill.

The other, something has to supply consistency. If this world is not-real, you could walk around the corner, and there's a mermaid riding a unicorn. The world has to be consistent, to be able to learn. I have no problem if you just accept the world as consistent. sdp could never do that. For you, sdp is on a fool's (existential) errand. I have no problem with you having your view of sdp.

In the video, in a nutshell (yes, it takes 45 minutes) Michael's is explaining why it's not a fool's errand.

tenka:
I might pick the bones of this, bit by bit, but I skimmed the video and it landed at a part where he says, the world is real, it isn't an illusion, the illusion is that it is separated from Brahman.

This is exactly that. Same goes for the person. The person isn't illusory, it's the belief that it is separate from Brahman that is.

That's why the SDP has always been a red herring.

Niz or Ramana stated, it's not the person that is the problem, it's the person believed to be a separate person that is.

All these illusory dream characters arising in god knows what is just ridiculous beyond belief.

Tenka:
I don't study anyone/thing so I can't say, but I have just googled this and Buddhists believe that when someone dies, they will be reborn again as something else. What they are reborn as depends on their actions in their previous life.

So in a way this does reflect an ever-evolving someone-thing, call it consciousness or spirit or soul or whatever.

The ND mould doesn't entertain this at all. There is no one here at all. So there isn't anyone-thing that can incarnate.

I know there are some gems depending on what type of non duality anyone refers too, but seriously, it's way out there on it's own in a weird way when it dismisses and dissociates the individual self.