weirdway

So, I've been trying to adopt the subjective idealist view, but my materialist mindset is struggling to accept it. I'm very close to fully adopting the idealist part. I can't see how physicality could ever be fundamental. But the subjective part is a bit harder to accept. All sorts of questions and possibilities come into mind to try to negate the idea that this is not an objective world.

So you're saying a way of thinking that changes even the very fundamental assumptions you've come to fully rely on, assumptions that by now you rely on instinctively, is hard to adopt?

For example, most occultists view their mind as entirely private, unless they make it otherwise. But I don't see this as being true. I've looked deeply into technological progress, and I am very convinced that within a decade or so, we will have brain/mind reading technology that will allow "others" to know what you are thinking of, what you are visualizing, etc. Yes, perhaps through will, you will be able to occlude your thoughts from being viewed, but I'd venture out to say that most occultists will not have the capability to do this.

In the view of subjective idealism your will has the power to shape your experiential reality. So what you're talking about here is not merely a prediction, but possibly your will. If that's the case, you may experience something like that, but that wouldn't prove you were right in some objective sense. It would only be you creating an amenable experiential reality for yourself. If you were using subjective idealism as your understanding, you'd also then realize some very different types of worlds could also be attainable with different kinds of commitments and mind training.

I like privacy. So I will directly break any dream that disrupts that value. In my projected timeline there will not be any tech that can read minds. I'm just not interested. Travel to the stars? Sure. Getting the innards of my mind uncontrollably plastered to some website? No thanks. Even physicalism has gotten so bad that I am now canceling it. Why would I want a really bad feature of physicalism such as mind reading through the brain to be allowed to stay?

But even dreams will be fully recorded, and you and "others" will be able to view them through your computer like a movie.

That won't happen. It doesn't have any utility anyway, once you really think about it. Even photographs and videos are crap. If anything, photographs and videos allow people to stay at home more while satisfying their senses with visions of variety as if they're traveling. My long term plan is to become fully self-powered to the point where I will go and do whatever I want, ignoring all else, even other Gods, never mind people, etc. Like in a lucid dream, I do anything, and recording it is not what I want, but living it all the time is what I want. I don't want to reminisce. I want to live. Reminiscing is basically death and any tech that encourages and supports reminiscing is a life-denying tech that promotes conservatism and stubborn backward trends. So I am against all that at a very deep level. I'm not so fanatical that I want to tear down every photograph, hell no. But all that sort of tech is super-low value. Totally not worth my time. I don't dream about it for sure. All this recording tech is not at all in my visions of the future.

If your mind is potentially not solely under your control, how do you guys reconcile subjective idealism with these possibilities?

This is a dumb question. It's like asking if subjective idealism is potentially wrong, how do you think subjective idealism can be defended? It's nonsense. If subjective idealism is somehow wrong, it's just wrong. There is no point in defending it then. Of course it's not wrong. :) So there is no problem.

There are other future technologies that complicate things, such as, the possibility of "mind uploading" and conscious artificial intelligence. I'm not convinced the former is possible, but the latter probably is.

It's all nonsense. I don't worry about it at all. Even if it were possible it would be irrelevant. I mean, it's possible for me to stick a fork in my thigh. I don't think about it. It's not on my mind a lot. It's irrelevant.

When I think about the future, cognitive upgrades, superintelligent machines, etc, I feel a bit disempowered.

Empower yourself! Stop letting the way things appear govern your life and intent. You know better than that by now. Empower yourself.

Understand this: no one wants you to be empowered. The more power you have, the less others around you will have. No one wants you to be powerful! They won't help you. No one will help you. If you want empowerment you have to empower yourself. It's fucking scary to be surrounded by powerful entities. Just the idea of others reading your mind is scary right? You don't want that. You don't want other people to become more powerful than you. Flip this around. They don't want you to be more powerful than them. So that means if you want power you have to seek independence. You cannot wait for people to help you. It won't happen.

Basically people will help you on the minimum condition that this won't degrade their own abilities to pursue their visions. Think how scared most people are of everything. They're scared of diseases, of crime, of poverty, of natural disasters, of political instability, etc. With a frightened chicken mentality that most people have, what sort of help do you think they will render in terms of empowering you? It's a huge mistake to wait for the frightened chickens to help you get empowered. No way. They will instead create technologies of control and subservience that will keep people under control and suppress them. That's what fear does. They'll agree to become suppressed as long as everyone else is also suppressed. That's how fear works. That's how people will "help" you. Think carefully.

It seems anything can happen in the "future." Things that can undermine personal power.

Subjective idealism agrees with the idea that anything can happen in the future, but not with the idea that anything will happen in the future. Will overrides can. Will/Intent > possibilities. Possibilities are infinite but only one specific scenario happens. Which one? The one you intend to happen (consciously or not). So infinite possibilities are not frightening to a subjective idealist who is well practiced. They're simply the space within which we operate our ships as captains. The ship that you operate is your perspective. Your perspective contains the totality of your present knowledge and experience along with how that relates to other possibilities. Your perspective also contains a direction, a teleological vision you're moving toward, be it consciously or not. Even something like "more of the same" can also be your teleology.

Instead of worrying what the future may or may not be like, consciously walk toward a future you want to be in.

Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-10-10 21:26:20 (do5w9aa)