All of grumpyfreyr's Comments + Replies

Works for me - thanks to The Work I'm not even vaguely the same person as the one who started with it.

Moreover, in 15 years I have yet to find a single problem that didn't, upon investigation, turn out to be an instance of the counterfactual curse.

Good advice! Not that it's any business of yours.

3Gordon Seidoh Worley
Then keep drinking until the reflection in your cup is you!

Apparently I have no mind at all.

3Gordon Seidoh Worley
But what is it to have this mind of no?

the goals you present to have

What goals do you perceive me as having?

5ChristianKl
You speak about being on a journey towards freedom of suffering and it seems you see it as a spiritual path.  Otherwise what are the goals you care about?

There is no 'better'.

Speaking of enlightenment is the height of vulgarity.

I would rather reveal my own foolishness and be corrected, than hide it and keep it.

Speaking eloquently, I would have nothing to say.

By speaking at all, I reveal nothing but my own unenlightenment.

Leaving shit out in the sun, flies are attracted.

3Gordon Seidoh Worley
Mmm, the rabbit bounds under the full moon.

If I understand your meaning, then yes, that is correct.

Edit: actually no, not quite. Those things happen to be true (I think), but it might not be because I wouldn't trade a minute of my time for them. Might just be a coincidence. I don't know.

5ChristianKl
This seems like you have biases that prevent you from effectively persueing goals by trading different resources against each other. There's likely also a bunch of Dunning-Kruger going on. Learning from spiritual teachers would likely bring you further in the goals you present to have instead of online doing things alone and reading lay materials.  

I'm glad you asked this question. I read my post to a friend who sees as I do, and she suggested that people would react very negatively to that part and it might explain the volume of downvotes. She has much greater insight into how normal humans think, and so I'm inclined to defer to her judgement on this.

It's quite an offensive idea isn't it.

I recommend you check out The Curse Of The Counterfactual.

Fear and guilt about suffering (whether perceived in ourself or someone else), do not undo suffering. Nor do they motivate us in a healthy way to act.

Humour liberates.

That sounds to me like an expression of your own beliefs. You believe that bias and a lack of money/time/attention holds you back from crafting a life where you could put your time and attention in places that you fundamentally enjoy.

It's really the other way around. When you start to put your time and attention in places you fundamentally enjoy, your situation changes to support you in that (though it rarely seems that way at first). No crafting required.

Matter rearranges itself to suit whatever purpose the mind sets. Ultimately there is no matter, becaus... (read more)

3Matt Goldenberg
Just to check, are you making a claim like The Secret that without taking any actions, without expressing the contents of your thoughts in any way, without any sort of traditional "causal connection", your thoughts will shape the universe to get you what you want? I think you have made a classical enlightenment mistake of failing to separate your experience of the world from the world itself.  The map is indeed not the territory, even when you're enlightened.

I'm not sure what "an excess of time and attention" would even mean.

Let's say every moment is a unit of time and attention. I get to choose what I spend it on, but I can't choose not to spend it. It will be spent, one way or another. Nor can I spend more than the time and attention of this moment. I can't get into time/attention debt, nor can I accumulate a stockpile of it, to spend later.

I suppose, running out of things on which to spend it - that would constitute "an excess of time and attention". That sounds, abso... (read more)

2Matt Goldenberg
I mean, excess time and attention would mean that you used your lack of bias to craft a life where you could put your time attention in places that you fundamentally enjoy.

By rich, I assume you mean "having more money than I need". Thankfully no.

Time and attention, not money, are my most precious resources (I would not sell a minute of my time for all the money in the world). An excess in money would be a responsibility I would need to spend time and attention on, to determine its most helpful disposal. The more the excess, the greater the responsibility. Who wants that? Not me.

5ChristianKl
That basically means that you don't spend any time to do things you want to archieve that could also be done by throwing money at a problem. If you would have a personal chauffeur that reduces the time you need to get from place A to place B, it wouldn't have any value for you. There's no knowledge that you are seeking that another person that you pay for research could help you acquire faster or teach you. 
2Matt Goldenberg
If you're so unbiased, do you have an excess of time and attention?

[Epistemic status (am I using this term right?): I am not a scholar, nor well versed in any school of Buddhism. My understanding comes from a combination of personal experience and insight cross-referenced with wikipidea articles]

I see Buddhism as split into two basic schools of thought:

The Sutrayana is the method of perfecting good qualities, where the Vajrayāna is the method of taking the intended outcome of Buddhahood as the path.

I would class that Indian Buddhist as Sutrayana and the Chinese one as Vajrayāna.

In simpler terms, one is getting... (read more)

1Slider
How would one know that there is no some advanced form of hidden thought?

Eventually, yes. If you keep removing wrongness, eventually there won't be any left, and you'll be right. But that approach takes a long time.

Imagine you've lost your keys. You know they are in your flat somewhere but they could be anywhere. So after eliminating a few likely places, you systematically go through every object in your flat, checking "are these my keys?"

But imagine another scenario, where you don't know that they are in your flat. And in fact, you believe that they aren't. Will you search as systematically? ... (read more)

That is a question that would only concern someone who has not found it.

"You can't know" - how do you know that? Can you prove that rightness is impossible?

2Matt Goldenberg
Isn't that the whole point? You can't prove that rightness is impossible, the same way you can't prove rightness is possible.

By that logic "all models are wrong" is wrong. "all models are wrong" is a model.

"some models are useful" is also a model, which, according to you, is wrong, because all models are wrong.

4Matt Goldenberg
Yeup, all models are wrong, even this one. From some perspective there's a way in which 2 + 2 = 4 is  just "right."

Less wrong is still wrong. There is a way of seeing that is not wrong.

2mako yass
Less wrong can be right. If you believe there is a way of seeing that is not wrong at all, it will be arrived at by becoming less wrong.
1mako yass
But how would you know when you'd found it? You can't know. All you can know is that you're becoming less wrong.
2Dagon
Unlikely. All models are wrong, some models are useful.