JoshuaZ comments on Open Thread: July 2010 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: komponisto 01 July 2010 09:20PM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 02 July 2010 04:47:53AM 3 points [-]

Actual Freedom (AF) is not a religious system/cult; I am none too sure how anyone got that impression here as the very front page of the AF website mentions "Non-Spiritual" in bold text.

Calling something "Non-spiritual" doesn't make it not a religion. To use one obvious example, there are some evangelical Christians who say that they don't have a religion and aren't religious, but have a relationship with Jesus. Simply saying something isn't religious doesn't help matters.

To answer your specific questions: I define these things by personal experience. I did not claim that they are "everything." - only that they are ways in which one experiences (i.e., consciously perceives) the world. As for "experimental evidence" - there are no experiments needed other than one's ongoing conscious experience.

See that's not ok. Any LWer would explain to you that the human mind is terrible at introspection. Human cognitive biases and other issues make it almost impossible for humans to judge anything about our own cognitive structures. And to claim that t there are no experiments needed is to essentially adopt an anti-scientific viewpoint. You aren't going to convince anyone here of much while acting that way.

No, not enlightement (where feelings are still in existent), but an actual freedom (a permanent Pure Conscious Experience). It is rather interesting that this objection (AF == Enlightenment) is raised even in a forum pertaining to human rationality.

Of course it is, because what you are describing sounds nearly identical to classical Eastern claims about enlightenment. As to the difference between "enlightenment" and "actual freedom" I don't see one. Of course, this might be the sort of thing where defining terms in detail would help, but you've explicitly refused to do so.

Please go and read some of the major sequences, and maybe after you've done so, if you still feel a need to talk about this, you'll at least have the background necessary to understand why we consider this to be a waste of our time.

Comment author: LucasSloan 02 July 2010 04:49:53AM 1 point [-]

I would be greatly edified if you would heed Blueberry's plea.