So I was relaxing while leaning back in my chair, a significant distance away from the monitor, and I saw something that should have been “physically” impossible.
I have nearsightedness and I now wear a deliberately weak prescription glasses so that I can practice my eyesight (I’m am a bit lazy about it though, so I end up not really practicing all that much, but that’s the logic behind my deliberately weaker than needed prescription here).
So what I saw was very clear text on a background of fuzzy text, which is extremely strange. I mean, the text should either be fuzzy or clear but not both at once, which makes zero “physical” sense. However I saw very clear text as though overlaid on top of the fuzzy gray stuff that would have been produced by the nearsighted perception of that same text.
From the POV of subjective idealism what I saw isn’t surprising, because what I am looking into isn’t some external object, but a state of my own inner expectation/will. Since when I am looking out I am not literally looking outside myself, but I am merely examining the state of my world-building will, then of course this can be rendered in pretty much arbitrary ways and what I see doesn’t need to abide physical limitations.
All in all this is a relatively minor phenomenon, but it’s kind of curious, so I decided to make a note of it here.
Do you understand the concept of othering? In SI what you’re talking about is a solved problem and it’s solved by understanding othering, aka disowning. It’s when you deliberately disown and “other” an aspect of your own experience. This results in a number of features: a) an appearance of environment where there was no such appearance before, b) automatisms, c) appearance of beings with seemingly independent wills. Many of these can be considered “good” features, however, othering also brings with it the possibility of experience “going rogue.” Othering is not binary, but exists on a spectrum of less and more. An example of an experience with relatively slight othering is a lucid dream, where there is still an appearance of an environment and independently willed beings (dream characters), however, generally things in an LD go your way, you have influence or even outright control over all the scenarios, superpowers, etc.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-03-10 01:02:18 (dvfidqo)
Does the thought “Why am I doing this to myself?” ever cross your mind when you struggle with your eyesight?
Or you simply think “No big deal, it’s just a normal side-effect of my ‘humaning’ around…”
What does make your experience go rogue? Of course, it’s you.
If SI is true, this can’t happen “by itself”.
So, the question remains: why would you deliberately add unpleasant aspects to your experience?
Let’s call it “subjective theodicy”.
I’ve already heard seemingly plausible answers:
Bored god playing the pretend-I’m-a-human game.
Choosing a particular life challenge to learn something.
Purposefully experiencing bad things to better appreciate good things.
Self-limiting to experience growth.
But they’re all logically flawed.
An omnipotent being doesn’t need to actually go through “simulations”.
Originally commented by u/JohnnyStyle on 2018-03-11 18:47:43 (dvipgfh)
Never. I fully understand my condition.
If I disown something, of course it’s me who is disowning it. However, what happens to an experience in a disowned state? I will no longer feel like it’s my doing. That’s the whole point of disowning to begin with, to get a sense of something happening as though on its own. It’s not on its own, but is experienced as though it is, and so for many (not all, but many) intents and purposes, it can be treated as something independent.
Need is not the only motivational force.
I don’t want to argue with you. It seems you’re ideologically charged.
Let me ask you one more time, why are you here on this sub? What’s your motivation for being here?
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-03-13 05:41:45 (dvl6kjv)