Posts by bluemason3

Melissa Stewart6 said:If you look at *The Science of Logic*, it’s easy enough to categorize it as philosophy—much like how anyone would label the Bible as a religious text. But when you get into works like Boehm's Aurora, the Tao, the Ching, or Nietzsche's Zarathustra... things get blurry. It’s much harder to decide if those belong in the realm of art, philosophy, or religion, since they really seem to blend all three together.

Whatever they happen to be, if they aren't grounded in pure logic, they're just impressionistic ramblings and a waste of everyone's time.

It doesn't work like that 😁

As long as you're stuck in the middle of a landfill, you aren't actually aware of the trash. You don't need more junk; you need a change in perspective. Building a solid epistemology doesn't require millions of books. You can read a million volumes without ever developing a shred of actual understanding.

It wasn't that bluemason3 rejected cults or avoided extremism, as you’re implying. It was about leaning into better, more scientific sources and, more importantly, sound methodologies.

The other factor is just life. Unconscious existential needs, social pressures, and general circumstances often drive our interests and choices much more than "knowledge" ever does.

Hoarding junk is still just hoarding junk, not gaining wisdom 😁

Philosophy became trendy, so now you feel the need to act all hysterical here? 😁

hiddenhound3 said:I support this sentiment.

Pars, my advice to you is to refine your style, shed that wounded ego, and cease targeting other members, and everything will settle down perfectly.

Philosophy would surely miss 🙂

Furthermore, I appeal to everyone to stop badgering Adis Sabovic; he is incredibly lucid and witty, posing legitimate questions and contributing uniquely to the dynamic of this forum. If he begins to overstep, then inappropriate posts should simply be sanctioned, and that should be the end of it.

A great deal goes unnoticed here in our philosophical discussions. Neither Pars nor Adis are the primary issue, nor are they the only ones involved.

And please, let us find more moderators so this entire ordeal can finally reach its conclusion.

That’s an impossible demand. What’s the alternative? 😁

I also want to call for people to stop hassling Adis Sabovic. The guy is incredibly sharp and funny; he asks the right questions and brings a unique energy to this thread. If he starts overdoing it, then just moderate the inappropriate posts and leave it at that.

Sabovic's clones get banned by default, since he's already got a permanent ban.

The forum users are the heartbeat here. The advertisers? They’re just noise makers and data miners. 😁

ironmarlin1 said:Even Bernard Williams warned us about this specific Pinker problem. On one hand—much like you—there is an appeal to human nature, pointing out (as you do) that primitive peoples still kill, slaughter, and rape (take the Yanomami, for instance), yet on the other hand, there is this desperate attempt to convince us that progress is inevitable despite this innate human condition. To believe in such progress requires, as Williams puts it, a sort of "fatuous" psychology of transcendence. Of course, according to those "think tank types," for example, Weinstein's assault was "perfectly executed." A little riddle for you: Why?

To put it bluntly, out of sheer politeness, I won't label you as the alternative, but I will say you seem to be under the unconscious influence of American (or perhaps EU) think tanks, lobbyists, and the like, who want us to believe this or that because their supposed research (likely military-funded) suggests that certain outliers (for instance, if you hold a suspicious opinion regarding this or that) imply a lack of strategic interest or a disregard for pressing "social issues"—which can be fatal, etc., etc. Naturally, you can wrap all of this up in fancy psychological formulas, citing chemical imbalances and whatnot... but we know what's actually being said. You have to be seasoned with narrow-minded ideals; otherwise, well, we all know how things go. Someone shows up at your door—some newly arrived "neighbor"—and bam... suddenly there are guns, death threats, assaults, the full weight of Government agencies... and all it took was a little bit of optimism. We've been tipped off (from where? who knows) that people like you are potential Anders Breiviks.

And yet, people immediately emerge to say:

"Well, it wasn't quite like that."
"Why do you have to exaggerate everything?"
"How do you remember all these details?"
"Do you even have proof?"
"You're going to end up killing someone one day."

And so we see, there has been massive progress. It’s essentially a legitimate murder attempt designed to prevent a potential murder (without naming names, though it's certainly in their blood). These days, murder attempts aren't reported; they are simply "redirected." Besides, if someone doesn't inherently want to kill (unlike some of us), we will engineer circumstances until they do, and keep at it until the desire takes hold. It's quite simple... we have "software engineers for internal combustion engines" (to quote a Government agency) who specialize in exactly that. I tell you, we just need to find more "adaptable" people and everything will be fine. And you would still sit there lecturing about the molecular structure of LSD and the march of progress? I honestly don't know how it's possible. One really must be on LSD to be casually leafing through Pinker in the face of such realities.

Who cares? All that loud-mouthed rambling, inventing problems that don't exist, pitting abstract concepts against actual facts, and other philosophical nonsense just to stroke one's own ego—it's all, quite frankly, completely irrelevant.

The fact is, that’s how primitive societies functioned. It isn't like that today. You’re going to have to perform some serious pseudo-intellectual gymnastics if you want to resolve the internal conflict between actual facts and your own biases. 😍

As far as I'm concerned, it all boils down to religious apologetics. 😳

This Williams guy is a total clown. Regarding what’s quoted here, I want to make one thing clear: I’m distancing myself from whatever vague, sweeping grand theories are being tossed around. I don't spend my time wading through the nonsense written by certain philosophers or theologians—people like Steven Pinker, for instance. I'm just not that kind of reader. It starts with a flawed premise—that because mega-violence is "natural," any attempt to reduce it must be "unnatural." That’s just a logical fallacy. It also shows a total misunderance of nature and evolution. Honestly, it's just someone retreating into conceptual abstractions and philosophical fantasies typical of a regressive mind. 🧐 😛

Humans aren't exactly simple creatures. We’re driven by a messy mix of impulses, and depending on what’s necessary for survival or passing on genes at any given moment, certain traits take the lead while others get pushed to the background. That high level of adaptability is exactly why our species has managed to spread across the entire globe and thrive in just about any environment imaginable. It doesn't even take evolutionary timescales to see this play out; it happens in real-time. Even a minor shift in economic stability or social security can immediately alter everything—from the types of men women find attractive to political leanings and the general dynamics of how we interact with one another.

Organized communities have always outperformed tribal ones. It’s simple math: staying organized requires suppressing certain impulses while amplifying others, which is exactly why they end up winning. I don't see any "transcendence" in the whole process—honestly, it's a pretty silly term. Of course, this balance is never perfect, which is why we still need a functional legal and judicial system to keep things in check.
It’s like the whole deal with junk food. Evolutionarily speaking, we’re hardwired to crave high-calorie meals because, for most of human history, food was scarce. Back then, grabbing every calorie you could get was a survival tactic; nobody was losing sleep over cholesterol levels. It's just as natural to be lazy and conserve those precious calories whenever possible. But the world has changed. Today, the environment is different, so we have to be intentional about monitoring our diet and basically inventing artificial ways to stay active. Some people are better at navigating this and thrive, while others struggle. That's just how it goes. So, what does "transcendence" actually look like here? It’s easy to say we should want more calories, but it’s equally natural to want to hoard food and ensure maximum food security. You just have to learn to navigate the tug-of-war between these conflicting biological drives. Good luck out there.
It doesn't mean we’ve transcended anything. It just means we:
- spotted certain advantages to larger communities and expanded specific tendencies (uniting and conforming) to broader groups. This happened through gradual, concentric circles via the evolution of trade and communication; we didn't just leap from tribes straight into globalization.
- reached a higher level of existential security, which naturally lowered the desperate need to huddle together for survival (that drive still fluctuates today depending on how secure we feel)
- developed more complex social structures filled with various subcultural identities we can latch onto, essentially projecting our old tribal needs onto them.
- decided to suppress impulses that don't fit this kind of advancement (using ideological control—once religious, now "human rights"-based, alongside the growth of state bureaucracy and civil law)

Also, nothing was actually "erased." The circle of "us" simply expanded. Our tribe wasn't just a literal group of relatives anymore; it scaled up using new tools for control and homogenization, like religion, race, or the nation-state. It’s only with globalization that we felt the need to invent concepts like universal human rights and equality. That's the phase we're in now.
Mind you, none of this is a clean break. There are layers of trends, conflicts, and friction everywhere. People form "tribes" based on all sorts of different criteria within much larger frameworks. Some lean heavily into an in-group mentality, others less so. It all depends heavily on social and economic security, and how much people actually trust the government and such. Honestly, a truly global tribe would probably require an alien invasion to exist, since those kinds of bonds usually only form when facing an "other."

Spare me the grand philosophy, transcendence, and other nonsense. It’s just over-conceptualizing a blurry gray mass by using high verbal intelligence to throw abstractions around while lacking any mathematical grounding or actual facts.

It’s just one idiot talking to another, man. If they weren't busy with this, they’d probably be doing something useful and concrete. The most successful among these pseudo-intellectuals succeed by playing minor roles or acting as sidekicks to real science—if they aren't actively trying to throw a wrench in something they can't even comprehend. They borrow and steal from actual experts, then twist things with their own brand of stupidity to cater to a niche audience. 😳 But hey, that’s evolutionarily explained: even a useless beta musician without any real advantages has to find a way to land a date, and there’s always some high school girl charmed by messy philosophical posturing and empty verbal gymnastics. It’s basically just a slightly more eloquent version of a cult leader or a guru. 🕺

The rest of your post is completely incoherent, but I'll be polite and won't bother explaining why. 😁

Nice is dead!

-Steven Pinker-

We’re all just being bankrolled by Gays and the CIA, obviously. 😳

William Palmer7 said:It’s true, but think about it—mainstream Western medicine doesn't even attempt, let alone succeed, at synthesizing a compound that could actually cure addiction. It’s practically unheard of in our medical establishment.

Meanwhile, Ibogaine actually has the potential to resolve addiction. I’m not sure what the exact success rate is, but that isn't really the point.

And yet, Ibogaine was "discovered" by tribal shamans in Africa.

It really makes you wonder if they aren't quite as primitive as we tend to assume.

The percentage actually matters quite a bit. If you get into extremely low percentages, you can basically find correlations for anything—like claiming milk for kittens or something equally absurd cures addiction.

But setting that hair-splitting aside, Ibogaine doesn't actually cure addiction; it might just help manage the withdrawal. Just like most drugs that help someone get through the physical detox only to have them fall right back into addiction, the same thing happens with Ibogaine.

From everything I know, psychosocial factors play a much larger role in recovery. Social and psychological therapy and support are more vital for long-term results than just handling the physical detox, so Ibogaine isn't a magic bullet either.

Also, who knows how much those African shamans actually discovered? They likely used Ibogaine for entirely different purposes. My guess is it was some Western drug user who actually identified its potential. 😬

William Palmer7 said:As you probably know, hallucinogens have actually been used to treat schizophrenia and various other mental health conditions.
The West just hasn't quite reached that stage of acceptance yet.

Instead, people are expected to rely on antidepressants, antipsychotics, Xanax, and that whole crew.

Then there’s the Ibogaine protocol, which helps treat heroin addiction. Here in the States, we still mostly deal with methadone, which is honestly a terrible medication—arguably worse than the heroin itself.

I don't recall schizophrenia being treated that way. Originally, they were used as tools to induce pseudo-psychosis—the idea was to give psychiatrists a firsthand look at what psychosis feels like so they could better help patients. Maybe there's a connection to schizophrenia there.

But maybe some of those heavy early psychiatric studies touched on schizophrenia; I just can't think of a single one right now.

Regarding current psychiatric antidepressants, based on other people's reports and my own experience (on one antidepressant, very little with anxiolytics (I think I tried Xanax once, Normaban a couple of times, and Phenibut a few times), through microdosing psychedelics, and after about 30-40 trips), they’re probably better, though these things are highly individual.

I believe there's potential for them to find a place in psychiatry and psychotherapy, but more as an extra tool in the kit rather than some miracle panacea that overenthusiastic advocates make them out to be. It’s been like this with a thousand different things before (cocaine included); eventually, things stabilize, a niche is found, and that's that.

It's all a bit overhyped. Look at addiction forums; half the people went for Ibogaine treatment, and a tiny fraction actually got cured. Personally, I haven't run into a single one. Usually, it's just a temporary shift. On the flip side, Ibogaine isn't as medically low-risk as classic serotonergic psychedelics, so the risk is high—there have even been fatalities.

The alternative scene loves taking anecdotal evidence—often outliers—and building massive narratives and theories around them, which occasionally leads to full-blown financial empires.

William Palmer7 said:It’s certainly not useless,

LSD actually traces its roots back to Bolivia, with traditions stretching back over a millennium.
A thousand years ago, Westerners probably would have just dismissed it as something straight out of a horror movie.

LSD holds quite a bit of prestige.
Sure, pure DMT might be technically superior, but good luck manufacturing pure LSD or DMT while you're wandering through the woods.

Just because something is old doesn't mean it's good. Just because it alters consciousness—making it seem strange or mystical to a primitive mind—doesn't make it quality stuff. In reality, it's basically controlled poisoning mixed with a heap of superstition.

It’s popular right now because it’s a trend among hippies; tomorrow it'll be something else.

Of course I can't manufacture it myself when I'm living like a caveman without any tech.

William Palmer7 said:The chemistry aspect here is actually pretty fascinating,

Even the most primitive tribes typically knew how to isolate various toxins, hallucinogens for rituals, or prepare medicinal herbs.

We honestly have no clue how they mastered that. It’s not just some cliché scene from a Western where someone wraps a wound in a leaf; it was much more sophisticated than that.

And they pulled all of that off without any modern labs or formal science,

They knew what they were doing, but there's a catch.

Some people love to pretend "natural" means better, but if we're talking about hallucinogens, taking something from nature can be way worse than LSD. I mean it in terms of physical toll—what the DEA might call "body load." Since they couldn't perfectly isolate a single active ingredient, you end up swallowing a massive pile of alkaloids that don't help the trip, but definitely poison your system.

William Palmer7 said:We can't know how they lived without contact if we haven't reached out yet.
Bringing up the Stone Age doesn't really help our case here.

When I mentioned chemistry, I was referring to man-made, patented compounds.

Though, I suppose even some primitive tribes knew how to isolate and extract certain chemical elements.

"Uncontacted" is a pretty heavy term. Some people argue there aren't even truly isolated groups left. Most have had some indirect contact through neighboring tribes, or there was contact in the past before they decided to isolate themselves.

Besides, every tribe we interact with today was once uncontacted, so we can learn about their way of life through them.

The Stone Age is definitely relevant since it’s essentially the same lifestyle.

Future hunter-gatherers rely on their environment rather than independent food production (even if some tribes dabble in small-scale farming); just by looking at the location, we can infer a lot about how they live and what they eat.

If the chemical compound is identical, it shouldn't matter whether it's synthetic or pulled from a leaf.

William Palmer7 said:We don't really know for sure. All we know is that we eat chemicals, drink chemicals, and take chemicals to fix ourselves, while isolated tribes don't. Personally, I'd say the natural way is better.

And we can't even be certain if isolated tribes fight amongst themselves.

What exactly don't we know?

Budweiser, everything surrounding us is made of chemical compounds. There’s no such thing as "non-chemical" food or medicine.

And obviously, we eat much better now. We have way more control over food production and storage compared to people who rely solely on whatever they can scavenge in the wild.

Non-standardized medicines where active ingredients haven't been extracted and purified are just worse. You can't dose them precisely, and you end up swallowing a bunch of useless plant matter along with the good stuff.

We actually know quite a bit. I wrote this a few posts ago—people are being silly.
Violent death rates among Stone Age tribal remains sit around 20-50%, while violent death rates in the modern US are about 0.046%.

Granted, not everyone died from violence; many succumbed to disease and malnutrition. But hey, at least they lived their three years to the fullest, dealing with parasites (pretty much everyone in the modern era gets tested for them), rotten teeth, and the constant dread of being speared by a neighboring tribe. Maybe women had it easier and were just picked up for labor, who knows.

Anyway, it's a utopia. 😍

William Palmer7 said:There are plenty of arguments:
1. We aren't living healthier lives.
- We eat more junk food, drink garbage, and move around much less.
2. We aren't happier.
- More and more people are relying on antidepressants.
3. Our diet isn't improving.
- See point number one.
4. Violence is increasing.
- Think wars, homicides, and so on.

Compared to, say, isolated tribal communities.

Out of all that, only number 2 carries any weight or serves as a real basis for debate. Everything else is just nonsense that flies in the face of actual data.

William Palmer7 said:Progress means moving toward a destination.

But what is the ultimate goal of a society?

There isn't some singular, absolute abstract goal, obviously. However, it's relatively in the interest of any social, biological, or organized group to be as successful as possible (whether that's survival, resource management, military strength, economic power, security levels, healthcare quality, and so on). That's why it makes sense for a developing nation to try and catch up to—or even surpass—the success of a superpower like the US.

Generally speaking, things like a higher standard of living, better health, improved nutrition, and less violence represent progress for most individuals within a community, which in turn drives progress for the whole society.

Melissa Cooper3 said:And apparently, there's this claim that a human actually contains more bacteria than there are atoms in their entire structure—which, if it turns out to be true, is absolutely mind-blowing.

That's not true. The claim usually floating around is that we have more bacteria than cells, not atoms. Even that is debatable; it's not exactly easy to count them all, and the idea stems from an old scientific anecdote that isn't taken very seriously today. More recent attempts at calculating this suggest the number of cells and bacteria might be roughly equal, but honestly, they're all just approximations.

Gerald Jackson48 said:So, would this be some kind of Buddhist economics middle ground? You know, trying to find that sweet spot between total hedonism and extreme asceticism—where you basically try to reconcile those two extremes. But it feels like John Zerzan is chasing something else entirely. He’s taking this hardcore stance that seems way more aligned with our raw, primal instincts.

The thing is, he doesn't seem to see this as an individual struggle. A typical ascetic would focus on their own discipline, but he’s calling for massive social shifts instead. That’s classic leftist thinking right there. They rarely start with the person; they go straight for the collective, hoping to fix things for the individual by changing the whole system first.

The term "Middle Way" in Buddhism carries very different meanings depending on whether you're looking at it from a practical or a philosophical standpoint.

For instance, philosophically, it represents a path between "extremes"—from their perspective, things like nihilism and essentialism. The whole Madhyamaka school (one of the major Mahayana branches, most famously represented by Nagarjun) actually got its name from this concept (madhya-middle).

That’s actually a much more frequent and central meaning of the phrase in Buddhist thought.

When it comes to discipline, if we look at formal Buddhist hagiographies, the Middle Way refers to the space between extreme asceticism and a "normal" life, rather than a balance between asceticism and hedonism.

The Buddhist monastic lifestyle implies poverty (your only possessions might be an alms bowl and a few basic items, mostly because the early monastic tradition was itinerant and they didn't have permanent monasteries to store things in), celibacy, wearing a few scraps of discarded cloth (which were later replaced by more formal, donated robes), living on alms, and eating just one meal a day... it’s still pretty ascetic, but it’s considered the "middle way" when compared to the previous extremes of starving oneself to the brink of death.

----
But honestly, kill me now, I have no idea how any of this relates to what we're actually talking about here. 😵

There isn't enough substance in any of this to even bother commenting on a mention of Buddhism. Most of these posts seem to just tack on labels without any real reason, maybe because someone thinks it sounds cool or they have some random personal association. Who knows?

And that guy trying to push those micro-farming methods in the developing world basically wasted his life. Fine, if he managed to sell it to someone and make a buck, or if some misguided fan gave him free praise, then whatever. Trying to force ideological backdrops onto everything or hunting for connections in things like Buddhism or papal encyclicals is... well, I’d better just stay quiet.😁

Generally speaking, it's all nonsense. A society can't progress without freeing up resources to shift "energy" into activities beyond mere survival. That requires high-efficiency modern agriculture with minimal human input (you could achieve this through slavery or serfdom, but that only frees up a tiny fraction of society and is ethically questionable) and universal education to retrain the workforce for other sectors.
So, it is absolutely necessary for developing nations to move in that direction if they don't want to stay stuck in the Middle Ages forever, and any sensible government will try to make that happen.
Unless, of course, we're calling for a return to the crven kmer or some other idiotic neo-primitivist garbage that usually just succeeds in pushing society another century backward.
At least the old-school communists had some semblance of an economic logic—even if it was flawed or nonsensical at first glance—and occasionally they actually managed to spark a short-term positive shift. These modern primitives, though? They’re just irrational, pseudo-religious zealots. They cling to this fabricated "golden age" that doesn't exist, fueled by ideological fantasies about returning to a past that never was. I suppose there might be some logic in how they seek out religious backings; their entire approach is such a mess of irrational cognitive loops and transparent rationalizations. It's clearly just a way to project their own fantasies because they can't handle reality, so they go looking for a kindred spirit.

Oh, look, it’s hiddenpuma75 again, hitting us with those intense, dramatic "revelations" that anyone in elementary school could have figured out. 😬

Between the bizarre leaps in logic and the current obsessions, I can't say I'm surprised. 🤔