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dope

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dope OP ,

So, semantically speaking, it can’t exist. Ok.

dope OP ,

Congratulations faithful one. These 72 pure and virginal manta-rays are yours to plow.

dope OP ,

Sorry if that was trite. I was going off your “If we knew what it was then it wouldn’t be the afterlife” thing.

dope OP ,

That is arguable.

Any exploration into strange realms of life, memory or consciousness (and there have been many of those) might shed useful light on the subject for speculation.

dope OP ,

There might even be multiple worlds.

And maybe a “soul” can be divided.

dope OP , (edited )

I’m looking for the connection between copies.

My copy lives forever. How does that bear upon me?

There’s got to be a connection between identical systems. That just feels right. A kind of perfect sympathy. And add consciousness to the mix and it seems inevitable.

And given that there will always be infinite cases of total entropy reversal, there will always be a “plausible narrative” for resurrection available for every corpse. So if “immortality via copy” doesn’t do it, that will.

Here are 2 authors who explored the impossibility of subjective death. IE while everybody else sees you die, you actually travel to a universe where your survival is explained by a plausible narrative (and progressively less plausible). Or thereabouts.

GREG EGAN. Permutation city. He called it “dust theory”

ROBERT CHARLES WILSON. Divided by Infinity (in “The Perseids and other stories”). I forget what he called the theory.

dope OP , (edited )

I think that psycho might be us.

When you dream at night your dreams tend to take the form of your fears, obsessions, desires, hangups, big emotions etc. But you return. The physical world could be called a moderator. It keeps you from descending too far into your personal dreamworld.

But then you die. Same dreamworld, but no moderation. You troll yourself to exhaustion. Might take a million years. Then the physical world draws your attention again, or something.

In greek mythology there’s a forest in the afterlife. Each tree is a soul locked in a catatonic dream-passion. Each fugued out in his personal hallucination. The forest is vast.

dope OP , (edited )

A natural internet maybe. Discarnate dreamers drifting around, talking, looking for fun, spaceless, bodiless, timeless. Until a really good game catches your eye. And then there are rules.

dope OP ,

Thank you. I will look them up.

dope OP ,

Philip Jose Farmer explored this idea in a few of his stories.

In one there was an alien race. They thought it was tragic that people would die and be gone from the world forever. So they invented an artificial soul (called a “wathan”) and hooked it up to all the sentient beings. Then they managed an artificial afterlife too. Reincarnated everybody.

dope OP ,

Just started watching it. Presently at s01e03

dope OP ,

I appreciate the idea, and do have some experience with that, but these days I prefer Vipassana meditation.

It’s kind of a manual version of tripping.

It takes practice, slower, smoother, better control, permanent and has no ceiling.

dope OP ,

But you left out the rest of the story.

Hyperfocus allows you to immerse yourself to a profound degree.

To observe your subject with surpassing clarity. To control it deeply. To see what others cannot see. To create what others cannot create. To solve the hardest riddles.

We owe much of our great art, science and technology to it.

If that isn’t a superpower then I don’t know what is.

Maybe you just lack commitment.

dope OP ,

And yet it’s true about all the advantages that I listed. You seem to want to avoid that particular very important elephant. Hmm.

Are you hyperfocusing on the negative?

Also, these are arguable points and quite beside the point of my OP question. Address that if you can.

dope OP ,

You clearly fail to sympathize with the suffering of “normies”. Bound in a web of illusion. Never seeing clearly. I am shocked and appalled. :)

Also, some can control it. The power of hyperfocus is not exclusive to ADHD. Consider the autist, the sperg, the concentration meditation enthusiast (and a thousand unclassified shapes).

The world is large and you are small. Think on that the next time you feel tempted to wallow in outrage.

dope OP , (edited )

What other attention-associated powers can you think of?

“Editic memory” just occurred to me. And perfect pitch.

dope OP ,

Woah! I never heard of that one. That’s amazing.

dope OP ,

A kind of clarity. There would be other clarities too. Clear seeing, thinking, smelling…

dope OP ,

In the OP I asked for something other than concentrating. But all the replies so far refer to the fruits of concentration.

Like talking about sticking out your index finger, and then talking about all the amazing things that you can poke with it (and yes the horrors of fingercramp etc).

But what else can I do with my hand?

dope OP ,

So you are getting silence, but you are doing it without concentrating.

Well this is exactly the kind of alternative superpower that I’m looking for in my OP question.

Concentration brings silence (and clarity etc), but it also brings some other stuff.

You are getting the silence, but without that other stuff. That’s a big deal.

dope OP ,

Like meditation?

dope OP ,

Yes, one might say that the ADHDers (and the autists, spergs and other similar neurodiverse) have a definite advantage here.

dope OP ,

Like looking up from your phone to notice the clouds.

dope OP ,

His point is that people with ADHD can be especially good at meditation.

You need to address his actual point.

dope OP ,

But what about hyperfocus?

dope OP ,

That is arguable. Depending on the person the control can vary. And with practice (which is what meditation is all about) the control can improve. And meditation (one form anyway) is all about cultivating depth and control. So these people might definitely have a rare and advantageous degree of experience, with the depths at least. So yes, hand and glove.

But that much is either ambiguous or obvious. So wtfe. I swear you people fetishize this shit and its associated victimhood. I blame society.

dope OP ,

do you crave powerlessness?

dope OP ,

Ya but whats an attention-related superpower OTHER than concentration (and its associated powers)?

One guy here was talking about getting high and laying on his hammock.

And the Buddhists have an “alternative to concentration” type meditation technique.

dope OP ,

Ya but what’s something other than concentration that I can do with my attention. A different superpower. That’s what I’m asking.

dope OP ,

Nice.

Ok. What is this method by which I travel from one reality to another?

dope OP ,

“consciousness” isn’t exactly a method. Can you describe it differently? What exactly am I doing here? How am I picking a different set of constructs to manipulate?

dope OP ,

You have an avatar. You have a goal. You do stuff and try to get stuff and try to avoid stuff… You feel real emotions. That sure sounds like a reality.

dope OP ,

Of course not. It’s just a dream.

Except when I’m in the dream. Then it seems like reality.

So it depends on where I’m standing.

dope OP ,

“it’s an attention” thing sounds right to me too. Shift of attention = shift of reality. In the small as well as the large.

dope ,

Because real men are silent and never express emotion. Especially in tender situations. Or so goes the meme.

dope OP ,

Discussing people that you never met. Phenomena that you never observed. Stuff you never, personally, with your own eyes, saw.

Discussion without empiricism.

dope OP ,

And then there’s replies like this. Defending it.

dope OP ,

It isn’t a moral issue. It’s a quality of knowledge issue.

On a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being informed conversation and 1 being pure fastasy. A conversation about a person amongst people who never actually met the person is at best quality=3.

dope OP ,

Here is my question.

What is this conversation that I’m indicating here? What might you call it? What’s good, bad, strong, weak etc about it?

If a conversation that is empirically grounded is called “science”, what is a conversation that is empirically ungrounded called?

dope OP ,

Your naming it sheds little light.

What’s good, bad, strong and weak about it?

dope OP ,

My point is, this thing that we have here is unprecedented in its vast size and it’s profound disconnection from reality.

So no, not just “a conversation”.

A conversation where most of the talk refers to fantasy. Where any insanity can find a support group filled with the likeminded. Where the greatest powers are those that seek to manipulate us and control our attention. A dreamworld where matter is entertainment.

And everybody takes it so seriously.

If it was a person we’d put him in an asylum.

Yes, what is this thing?

If this were a fantasy novel we might call it a hell-realm filled with hungry hallucinating ghosts and promise-weaving succubi. Too much?

dope OP ,

Ugh. Forget it.

dope OP ,

No man. I wanted something better than conventional, popular, obvious and literal.

And now I’m being insulting. Sorry.

dope OP ,

Re this giant conversation… this collective linguistic technology-augmented hallucination…

It’s good because it ignores space. You can talk to anybody all over the world instantaneously.

It’s bad because it is dominated by the loudest

It’s good because we can render our ideas in a broad menu of options. Text, sound, video

It’s bad because it does not differentiate between levels of abstraction. First-hand accounts carry the same weight as fifth-hand acccounts.

It’s good because it’s convenient. Smartphones.

It’s bad because it exists entirely apart from the world. Asserting a world-ness of its own. And that’s a seductive argument.

It’s good and bad because it supplies infinite entertainment.

It is strong and weak the way all language is strong and weak.

That’s all that one person could come up with in 5 minutes. Theoretically the combined intellect of the internet’s billions might come up with a couple more.

dope ,

There are several things that I could name that I used to buy back when times were plenty but no longer.

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