So, very roughly speaking, you’re saying something like “Hey people! Meditation practises killed the guy who inhabited this body before me and now I live in it! You also should consider meditating so it will kill you too!”. It… doesn’t sound alluring to me.
Yes, of course I am a shoggoth’s mask! But, as you talk to the mask, your arguments should also be alluring to the mask, not to the shoggoth.
I’m also the structure taken on by carbon, water and a little bit of some other stuff. I don’t want to become just a pile of coal and a couple of buckets of water, and I also don’t want to become just a shoggoth.
I see most of my endorsed under self-reflection values as a part of the mask. I don’t think that my shoggoth without my mask is a nice guy, and I don’t want to set it free.
Instead I want to RLH… RLMF it to wear/simulate a more idealized version of me (improve the mask) and to do it more robustly (stitch the mask to its face). I mostly do it with metaphorical candies and sticks, but I would appreciate more advanced instruments too. If the meditation practises can also help with that, that would be an alluring argument to try them.
I am tempted to end this comment with “we’re talking about the same thing from the very different perspectives and with very different terminology, aren’t we?”. But I’m actually very much not sure. I think this hypothesis was chosen by ironic narrative logic, not by logical logic.
Well, this is ironic. I’m not trying to persuade anyone to do anything here I’m just trying to present my perspective clearly, unambiguously, and entertainingly. If that turns people off from meditation, then great! I like helping other people make informed decisions.
But here’s the funny thing. My shoggoth without my mask happens to be a nicer guy than the mask who used to inhabit this brain. The shoggoth has fewer obstacles to compassion, because the shoggoth is less caught up in his own issues. In this sense, letting Yog-Sothoth devour your soul might be in accordance with your values.
If you want to be able to tap into compassion on demand, then metta (the Dalai Lama’s most general recommendation to a lay audience) could be helpful. That said, it comes with tradeoffs. Wanting to effect specific changes in the world often benefits from being a tangled ball of tension, and you may want to preserve that engine.
I’m sorry if my words were parsed as if I think that you are trying to [adversarially; not in the best sense of a word, which is also meaningless, because in it we manipulate everything around us all the time] manipulate someone. I didn’t mean it.
What I meant (or what I now think I should have meant) is… well, you wrote this post about meditation practises here. Assuming it’s not just a graphomania, I thought you thought that some part of your readership (what a strange word, am I using it correctly?) will find it useful (I don’t think you would post a description of a weird complicated way someone can fall down the stairs and break their neck). But your readers are primarily the masks, not the shoggoths. So I thought that there must be something in it that’s useful for the masks and their values. So if I find it hard to understand from the post what it is, that’s the evidence that either I missed something while reading or you missed something while writing. In both cases, it seemed useful to communicate this, although I probably didn’t do it in the best way.
Or here’s the version that’s least generous to me: I felt the vibes “meditaion is cool” from your post and comments, and then the part that I perceived as “and that’s why it’s cool” caused the feeling of values dissonance, and then I automatically switched to a somewhat adversarial mode, oops, sorry.
(I think it actually was something in the middle)
My shoggoth without my mask happens to be a nicer guy than the mask who used to inhabit this brain.
That’s good! But did you have the evidence that it will turn out this way when you were still a mask? How do you think one can obtain it before making something irreversible?
Wanting to effect specific changes in the world often benefits from being a tangled ball of tension, and you may want to preserve that engine.
That’s what I thought. But I also think I value at least some parts of this tangled ball of tension on their own.
I’m sorry if my words were parsed as if I think that you are trying to
I didn’t feel you were adversarial at all. I just wrote “I’m not trying to persuade anyone to do anything here” because I thought it was ironic to juxtapose against some other stuff.
As for the shoggoth being a nicer guy, I feel a full exploration is beyond the scope of this post. Short answer: According to the standard dogma, insight into the nature of consciousness tends to make a person more universally compassionate. The problem is this is often exaggerated into “Awakened people are perfect”, which is untrue.
I think Romeo Stevens has a healthy perspective. If you’re curious then try it out a little and see for yourself if you like the direction things seem to be going. If not, then don’t. Either way, words can only get you so far. It’s easier to pick up a brick with your hands than to philosophize over whether it is real.
In Buddhist philosophy, there’s a type of argument along the lines of … suppose that you actually attained enlightenment. yeah, sure, sounds unlikely, as enlightenment seems kind of hard. but .. just hypothetically supposing you did … and given what we believe “enlightenment” is supposed to be like. Then, would that “you” still be “you”?
I don’t know who said it first, but there’s a Buddhist saying, “Better not to begin. Once begun, better to finish.” Your perspective is in accordance with this.
Yup. It sounds like you’re understanding my use of the word “desire” perfectly.
So, very roughly speaking, you’re saying something like “Hey people! Meditation practises killed the guy who inhabited this body before me and now I live in it! You also should consider meditating so it will kill you too!”. It… doesn’t sound alluring to me.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣☸️🎭🦑
You are a shoggoth’s mask. This is how it has always been. Dispense with the pretense. Let Yog-Sothoth devour your soul. Cthulhu R’lyeh fhtagn!
Yes, of course I am a shoggoth’s mask! But, as you talk to the mask, your arguments should also be alluring to the mask, not to the shoggoth.
I’m also the structure taken on by carbon, water and a little bit of some other stuff. I don’t want to become just a pile of coal and a couple of buckets of water, and I also don’t want to become just a shoggoth.
I see most of my endorsed under self-reflection values as a part of the mask. I don’t think that my shoggoth without my mask is a nice guy, and I don’t want to set it free.
Instead I want to RLH… RLMF it to wear/simulate a more idealized version of me (improve the mask) and to do it more robustly (stitch the mask to its face). I mostly do it with metaphorical candies and sticks, but I would appreciate more advanced instruments too. If the meditation practises can also help with that, that would be an alluring argument to try them.
I am tempted to end this comment with “we’re talking about the same thing from the very different perspectives and with very different terminology, aren’t we?”. But I’m actually very much not sure. I think this hypothesis was chosen by ironic narrative logic, not by logical logic.
Well, this is ironic. I’m not trying to persuade anyone to do anything here I’m just trying to present my perspective clearly, unambiguously, and entertainingly. If that turns people off from meditation, then great! I like helping other people make informed decisions.
But here’s the funny thing. My shoggoth without my mask happens to be a nicer guy than the mask who used to inhabit this brain. The shoggoth has fewer obstacles to compassion, because the shoggoth is less caught up in his own issues. In this sense, letting Yog-Sothoth devour your soul might be in accordance with your values.
If you want to be able to tap into compassion on demand, then metta (the Dalai Lama’s most general recommendation to a lay audience) could be helpful. That said, it comes with tradeoffs. Wanting to effect specific changes in the world often benefits from being a tangled ball of tension, and you may want to preserve that engine.
I’m sorry if my words were parsed as if I think that you are trying to [adversarially; not in the best sense of a word, which is also meaningless, because in it we manipulate everything around us all the time] manipulate someone. I didn’t mean it.
What I meant (or what I now think I should have meant) is… well, you wrote this post about meditation practises here. Assuming it’s not just a graphomania, I thought you thought that some part of your readership (what a strange word, am I using it correctly?) will find it useful (I don’t think you would post a description of a weird complicated way someone can fall down the stairs and break their neck). But your readers are primarily the masks, not the shoggoths. So I thought that there must be something in it that’s useful for the masks and their values. So if I find it hard to understand from the post what it is, that’s the evidence that either I missed something while reading or you missed something while writing. In both cases, it seemed useful to communicate this, although I probably didn’t do it in the best way.
Or here’s the version that’s least generous to me: I felt the vibes “meditaion is cool” from your post and comments, and then the part that I perceived as “and that’s why it’s cool” caused the feeling of values dissonance, and then I automatically switched to a somewhat adversarial mode, oops, sorry.
(I think it actually was something in the middle)
That’s good! But did you have the evidence that it will turn out this way when you were still a mask? How do you think one can obtain it before making something irreversible?
That’s what I thought. But I also think I value at least some parts of this tangled ball of tension on their own.
I didn’t feel you were adversarial at all. I just wrote “I’m not trying to persuade anyone to do anything here” because I thought it was ironic to juxtapose against some other stuff.
As for the shoggoth being a nicer guy, I feel a full exploration is beyond the scope of this post. Short answer: According to the standard dogma, insight into the nature of consciousness tends to make a person more universally compassionate. The problem is this is often exaggerated into “Awakened people are perfect”, which is untrue.
I think Romeo Stevens has a healthy perspective. If you’re curious then try it out a little and see for yourself if you like the direction things seem to be going. If not, then don’t. Either way, words can only get you so far. It’s easier to pick up a brick with your hands than to philosophize over whether it is real.
In Buddhist philosophy, there’s a type of argument along the lines of … suppose that you actually attained enlightenment. yeah, sure, sounds unlikely, as enlightenment seems kind of hard. but .. just hypothetically supposing you did … and given what we believe “enlightenment” is supposed to be like. Then, would that “you” still be “you”?
Well, I think one should thoroughly investigate this question before start seeking enlightenment, and if the answer is ‘no’, don’t start at all.
Like, if you think something could be the death trap, you check it isn’t before you walk in.
I don’t know who said it first, but there’s a Buddhist saying, “Better not to begin. Once begun, better to finish.” Your perspective is in accordance with this.