If you could push a button and simply cease to exist, would you press it?

http://loymachedo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/What-The-Bleep-Do-We-Know.jpg

oh come on

As far as the current state of the field, I'll have to trust you

I don't know it that well (one of those things where I get it second hand from people I know working on it more than my own research), but I think Jeannerod been one of the major players from the neuroscience side, Metzinger and people involved in his school from the philosophy side (even if Metzinger's own enquiries into the self end with him saying that it basically doesn't exist).

I realise that I'm probably using epiphenomenalism in a slightly fuzzy and dodgy way that's encompassing a more general physicalist-but-not-physicalist relation between mind and brain, but maybe I can dubiously claim that this different understanding of it corresponds to the orientation of current research.

don't know anything about Chalmers tbh, but looking him up I see that he needs to join the list of philosophers who don't look like philosophers, alongside James Ladyman

http://www.rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/storage/images/guests/jamesLadyman.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1347149650078

I got it, it's a moral argument against magical non-consenting soul euthanasia.

oh, Chambers is yer zombies man. Not something I've bothered to engage with beyond the dumb-sounding premises rly.

(sputters) well if you can't accept a simple intuition about non-verifiable subjective experience i just don't know

all the interesting work is happening in science afaict, dualism is a total dead end.

but i do believe that subjective experience is logically separable from an objective description of the brain (ie i think the zombie thought experiment is interesting) so it puts me in a tough spot.

The interesting science work is happening in science, sure. Don't think that's taking us one jot closer to a mind/body solution though.

mind/body dualism was boring in the 18th century, wasn't it? Doesn't mean the distinction is meaningless of course...

So Kant transcended the distinction, all part of his thing of being GREATEST PHILOSOPHER in yr face Nietzsche/ Wittegenstein

it's like he pushed a button and made the argument cease to oh i don't know EXIST maybe

mind/body dualism was boring in the 18th century, wasn't it?

ha well a lot of different arguments are packed inside "the mind/body problem". when i said "dead end" i mean specifically the whole subjective experience thing I've been banging on about.

but i do believe that subjective experience is logically separable from an objective description of the brain (ie i think the zombie thought experiment is interesting)

I also believe they're separable - in fact I believe they're irreconcilable (as we currently conceive of them at least) which is why I think subjective experience must be a fundamental feature of reality. I also think zombies are a load of crock! It's a pretty neat trick physics has pulled, to take something that is surely a fundamental part of *our* world - experience just is subjective! - and make it seem like it's not a fundamental part of *the* world. At best an optional sideshow, at worst a complete illusion.

the greatest trick physics ever pulled was convincing us we don't exist (or something)

haha yes!

Kant is maybe the greatest metaphysician which is like fuck all really tbh

ah ignore me, hungover and grumpy, i don't see what's so hard about mind as a function of matter tho, it doesn't wave away mystery it mystifies the physical which is where we are tbh, peeps need to let this soul shit gooooooo

There's something racist/speciesist inherent in the concept of a discrete mind/soul that is privileged over any other physical process that makes the whole thing suspicious. Spike Lee needs to come down harder on this instead of twitter warring with Tarantino

The prejudice that human consciousness and one's subjective experience of the world while alive is the only thing that matters is the true evil.

It is ultimately a denial of the body. And denying yr body is ultimately bad for yr health

Living is ultimately bad for yr health

This thread is kinda maddening to read. All the people going no but how does it work? what'll happen to my kids? are like people who can't sit still during a time-travel film. It doesn't make sense!

Automatically connecting this question to suicide is weird. The question itself boils down to "Is life worth living?" which is sort of the most basic building block of all philosophy, art, religion and anything else. "Is life worth living?" is not the same question as "Can life ever be fun or fulfilling or offer moments of pure exquisite insight/pleasure/glory/connection?" - of course it can, for most people (even in terrible situations), for some of the time.

I hesitate to write this sentence because it is so obvious, but all the while I am happy, seeing people, going to shows, having sex, making music, I know it's true that a third of the people I meet will die of cancer and two-thirds of them will die of something else, and I will be witness to this if I don't die of cancer or something else first; the people I have sex with will die, and before they do they will become people I would not want to have sex with, and I will be unsexy to them; the children I might create through this sex will go through the same process: much joy, delight in their abilities, friendship, excitement, whatever, but ultimately defeat/compromise/infirmity/death. And so on. Lust for life doesn't get you out of this. Death is no different whined at than withstood etc.

Again, I must say that I know everybody knows this.

So there is this simple question that everything in our culture that is not strictly administrative is built upon: much of life is pleasure and much of it is suffering - what is a tolerable balance? Is any amount of suffering worth it? Does a small amount of happiness outweigh much suffering? How could happiness even be defined if there were no suffering?

There are practical examples that might give some kind of answer. People in the most miserable corners ever drawn who nevertheless wanna live, live, live. Old people gone right into the ending who don't seem to regret living or to seem to suffer much to themselves even when they seem to suffer to us.

These are pretty much the basic questions since the year dot, and there will never be answers. But I suppose everyone has an opinion on how much pain they are prepared to take for a certain amount of satisfaction, or about whether just glancing at nature or a pretty arse is sufficient compensation for being so vulnerable and minor, and lots of other interesting things to say about the value of tiny, tiny life... These are very basic ideas, I know, but it is bewildering when people say things like "Why would I think of this? I am happy/not suicidal/living it up!" Ach, I have seen this so many times. I think it would be worth discussing the perverse neurosis of this kind of person. It's a different kind of life. Inhuman!

― Eyeball Kicks, Friday, October 19, 2012 11:18 PM (3 months ago)

i think this is prob the one to take from this thread in a fire tbh

Worrying to note that i have finished the wheel of time and at least ten toffee crisps since post #3 itt tho

I have measured out my life with toffee crisps

Vg, vg

i tend to favour measuring it out in terms of my regular purchases, washing powder, tea, olive oil, converse.

i like that. 'twere two converses, one washing powder and three teas ago...

i swear i only bought this current pair six weeks ago and they're practically in the grave already.

conversely (sorry), washing powder seems to last much longer these days

i use those squidgy bag things

http://i.imgur.com/9MY0RMF.gifhttp://i.imgur.com/58DT6ok.gif
http://i.imgur.com/pX9XYtq.gifhttp://i.imgur.com/zWQR4W1.gif
http://i.imgur.com/OM7SPzs.gifhttp://i.imgur.com/WwQtpDK.gif

ideally the button would function retroactively, terminating your existence a moment before you were presented with the option of pressing it, or on a date and time of your choosing, or ~before you ever came into existence~. but I'm not really sure how that would work w/r/t time travel paradoxes.

this was a weird thread.

push the button frank

what if you could push a button and ilx never existed

Eyeball Kicks was/is great

2 seconds after getting the opportunity to push a button http://i.imgur.com/pX9XYtq.gif

2 minutes after getting the opportunity to push a button http://i.imgur.com/OM7SPzs.gif

2 days after getting the opportunity to push a button http://i.imgur.com/zWQR4W1.gif

those blank dudes are very popular in presentations these days

Please let there never be such a thing, because it'd be on my desk and I would get absorbed in something and absentmindedly p

not until i finish final fantasy vii, the wheel of time and another thousand toffee crisps

― Randy Carol (darraghmac), Friday, October 12, 2012 5:28 AM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

good god, did you ever defeat Sephiroth???!?

destiny is calling me
open up my eager eyes

Long thread, didn’t read it all, maybe already been noted, but OP “does not exist in the ilx database.”

Kinda makes you thi— aw, never mind

lol

OP's still here occasionally, in a different guise, so there's life after death after all.

Really? Strange. iirc, the OP has left ILX at least four or five times, each time seemingly convinced they'd never return. This place has a weird effect on people.

they've been perma-banned now

had the decision made for them ig

i've very much grown fond of the "button" thought experiment

not in the form posed by white chocolate cheesecake, that's just anti-natalism adjacent. i experimented with antinatalism for a while, but mostly i just think cioran is fucking hilarious. that dude was seriously funny.

the version of the thought experiment that was most important to me was "if you could press a button and become a cis woman, would you?"

i'm framing it this way because i want to center the binary bias. i heard it as "a cis member of the opposite gender", which isn't a framing i'm into, i don't think of the idea of two genders _or_ "opposite" genders. i do come from a generation where i know a lot of women who genuinely wish they were cis. i don't know if a lot of zoomers think that... anyway, the only way to live with that, i think, is radical acceptance.

personally, i love not being cis. i can't think of any point since my egg cracked that i would have pressed that button. i've seen the framing help a lot of people, get past a lot of imposter syndrome. you ask a lot of questioning people that, and they'd push it without having to think about it, just instantaneously, it's not a question they have to think about. it helps with... a lot of the "questioning" is just imposter syndrome, people gatekeeping themselves. people don't need answers, they need permission. i guess that's a lot of the "button" framing... it's an acceptable way to ask these questions.

---

re: the original question... "do i _want_ to exist?" is a... to me, it's a dodge, it takes something personal and makes it impersonal. to me the real question is "am i happy being alive". if the answer is "no", that's something a person can _do_ something about individually. i don't mean that someone can choose to be happy. if i'm unhappy, though, there are paths i can pursue.

having said that life often hurts for me. it hurts a lot. i do wonder a lot if life is worth it, do often wish that i could disappear. passive suicidal ideation, it's called. people can argue all they want about whether it's actually suicidal... i think the clinical consensus _is_ that it's a form of suicidality... certainly it's my bias, it's my feeling. as someone who has struggled with suicidality for most of her life. often that suicidality expresses itself passively.

the tension is that i have, for pretty much my entire life, wanted very much to _not_ kill myself. that's the dialectical tension there. if i just disappear i don't have to deal with the fact that i want to _not_ kill myself, i can tell myself i'm not. i'm not hurting the people around me and... if i'm hurting myself, it's instantaneous and painless. by removing myself from existence, i _would_ be hurting myself and the people around me... it's just that none of us would know it.

grossly unfair. grossly unfair and even cruel. to oneself. considering others... considering others, in a situation like this, is... when i'm in that situation it's easier to care about other than it is to care about myself. i can't ever hate other people the way i can hate myself. i can learn to love myself, though, and that... there's no dialectic there. the whole "love is stronger than hate" glurge... there's truth to it for me. when i feel both self-love and self-hatred, the self-love is so so much stronger as to make the self-hatred... just fundamentally meaningless.

it's one of those things where if i allow myself the choice, there's... it's so lopsided as to not seem like a choice at all. once i truly allowed myself to _ask_ the "should i transition" question, frame it genuinely, it was the same way... it didn't even seem like a _question_, even though it was, in fact, a genuine question.

---

the point is the meme version of "the button" is one i really love a lot... it's a drawing by someone named jake clark.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/daily-struggle-two-buttons

it intersects really well with the "why not both?" meme, also really popular among... i mean i'm gonna be really honest a lot of the people i know have executive dysfunction and just hate making choices. is all.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/why-not-both-why-dont-we-have-both