Is there any value in rationality?

So far I've found it's not actually a schism, it's just that things work better when applied in a certain order. Which is equally true for normal physical feats. Athletes don't perform as well when they're depressed or lack confidence in their abilities or overanalyse what they're doing, It's just that the substance used in magic, which is a physical substance, is a fluid type thing that is consumed to pay physics the joules needed to have whatever physical effect you coded in. Being fluidic it's extra sensitive to mental states because it's not made of and doesn't have conveniently solid foundations like muscle or bone. I talked about some of this in my Energy Explanation and Psychological difficulties of psi techniques though there's always more to say.

I started questioning the value of rationality because this way of doing things is SO effective I can't even understand why people would use the other one in the first place. Certainly I don't see why I used it, beyond emotional trauma.


In that case, If you haven't, I do recommend checking out my links. And if you have any insights, questions, or things you think I should try then leave a comment. Except for The Dead Space Dream which I'm going to be eventually moving to PQ along with other things still on Skeptiko just to have everything in one place. So don't comment on it there if you feel like you want to. I write my stuff up in the hopes that other people might be able to use it for their own training and because it helps me with mine. Though I admit I spend far more time actually doing the training than writing about it so there's lots of holes and things I've yet to explain on here.

Thanks for all this, been meaning to catch up on your explorations. Skeptiko used to have an Explorer's section but it fell into dis-use so good to see someone taking up the personal exploration questing.

Rationality is what got the human race so far into discovery of the world. Science is rational.

Even parapsychology is based on rationality, just researching fringe topics.

It would also seem difficult to have a materialist grounding for rationality, no matter how much skeptics might wish it otherwise.

But there's already a thread for this.

Also another new one discussing the irrational "magic" of physicalism.

Rationality is what got the human race so far into discovery of the world. Science is rational.

Even parapsychology is based on rationality, just researching fringe topics.

I realized as I was talking to diverdown that it wasn't rationality per se I was wondering about but rather having a rational core. But regardless of that, desire is where "human progress" came from, not rationality. You can be as rational as you want but if you don't have any desire to build something with that then it doesn't matter. Furthermore, rationality naturally emerges from desire whereas the opposite isn't true. If you aren't getting the results you want your desire will make you start trying to figure out why, because you want to. There's lots and lots of examples of the rationalists of the day laughing at the idea that certain things could be invented that are now normal.

Thanks for all this, been meaning to catch up on your explorations. Skeptiko used to have an Explorer's section but it fell into dis-use so good to see someone taking up the personal exploration questing.

It's pretty much all I do, granted I have an ultimately "material" goal at the end of it, whether I achieve it or not.

I think the whole position for some can be boiled down to this. It's better "for me" to believe something is true rather than knowing something is true.

Knowledge is worthless if you're just gonna die anyways.

Knowledge is worthless if you're just gonna die anyways.

If that were true we would all be huddle fearing the darkness beyond. 
Ironically you dispense this bit of profundity using a computer and the internet.

If that were true we would all be huddle fearing the darkness beyond. 
Ironically you dispense this bit of profundity using a computer and the internet.

People might be huddled for a while but then they'd die and it'd be like it never happened so what's the difference?

At this point the way I see it the idea of cowing yourself to "reality" is totally nonsensical. Limitations should be seen as oppression and rebelled against rather than accepted. Happiness is far more important than knowing "the truth" of things unless knowing the truth makes you happy. Making rationality subservient to desire at best and having no value of its own.

A caveman can be just as happy or miserable as a super advanced hyperspace capable, nanomachine embedded transhuman or a mage so skilled and powerful they're actually a god. Therefore all that "progress" is meaningless, nothing was really gained or lost beyond maybe more choices in what you can do. Knowledge and rationality does a lot more to hurt the happiness of people than help it, especially when one gains knowledge of what they don't have or aren't capable of. As reality is pointless and absurd, limitations and structure are extra insulting, having no good reason to exist.

I'm still working on other aspects of this, but in general, regardless of whether reality does get influenced by willpower, it should. And when it doesn't, that should be seen as losing a power struggle rather than an absolute, fundamental aspect of "reality".

[Laird]

Interesting thoughts, Mediochre. I have been having thoughts about oppression too. Mine stem from the context of the mental health system, of which I am currently a prisoner, but also from the point of view of the treatment of non-human beings by humans: essentially as objects of consumption rather than as ends in themselves. I agree that we should rebel against oppression, especially in the two forms that I have just mentioned.

I also think you make a good point about the relationship between rationality and volition. I think others have made this point too: that reason serves volition rather than the other way around. Happiness - or, in "higher" terms, the well-being of sentient life - supersedes knowledge and truth. The caveat is that, especially in the context of systems of oppression, happiness is inextricably bound to knowledge, truth, and rationality, for one cannot extract oneself from systems of oppression unless one first understands and can reason about them.

Interesting thoughts, Mediochre. I have been having thoughts about oppression too. Mine stem from the context of the mental health system, of which I am currently a prisoner, but also from the point of view of the treatment of non-human beings by humans: essentially as objects of consumption rather than as ends in themselves. I agree that we should rebel against oppression, especially in the two forms that I have just mentioned.

I also think you make a good point about the relationship between rationality and volition. I think others have made this point too: that reason serves volition rather than the other way around. Happiness - or, in "higher" terms, the well-being of sentient life - supersedes knowledge and truth. The caveat is that, especially in the context of systems of oppression, happiness is inextricably bound to knowledge, truth, and rationality, for one cannot extract oneself from systems of oppression unless one first understands and can reason about them.

That's how I used to think, that's what defined what I;ll call my previous "rational core". Basically that your feelings don't matter, only the logic, because ironically emotions get in the way of getting what you really want. This led me to try and literally kill my emotions so that I wouldn't be distracted by them. Which failed because they weren't two separate forms of processing like I thought they were, like vison and sound, but part of a common process where emotions were the "return values" of logical calculations. 

For quite awhile this showed an interesting difference between my physical and spirit body. Where I was far more likely to have some sort of emotional outburst in my spirit body compared to the physical. Way, way more emotional control down here.

However now I don't want to use that method because it is in and of itself submissive. It's basically saying that you have no power no matter what and your only choice is to follow the rules, and if the rules just happen to be such that they screw you over, oh well, "that's reality". It kinda makes me think about how Gold said I was "letting the dream affect me more than it really was."

I've been trying to formulate this into a method to see if I can create a reality frame at will because as far as I can tell I have enough evidence to support magic, which means that technically, there is no solid laws of physics. The structure around us is at most emergent and almost certainly local rather than absolute. So it should be possible to just induce whatever you want into it and make it real so long as you understand that on a deep subconscious level. I suspect the first level of that is just knowing that there is no actual structure to any of this. Beyond that I don't really know but based on the memories it should be to recognize that if you want something to exist here then it has to follow the local rules. Like an API.

This isn't just philosophy for me, I'm trying to use this to get my magic working. And being forced to do this in such a restricted environment has taught me a lot about it. I don't have the raw power to just do things nor can seem to take advantage of the environment in ways I'm used to, though I might just not be connecting properly. So I gotta go really low level with my mentality to get anything to happen I think. But I also know this all relates to connecting to myself, because none of what I've said its actually new to me, it's just that my mind won't accept it. It keeps needing more tests and logic and whatnot but it never fully gets there.