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Most controversial or unpopular political/economic/social opinions?

I don't understand what the big deal is about "I identify as" or transgenders or any body dysmorphic/dysphoric disorder. The body is... well... meat. It's a vessel for consciousness. Your body isn't you so why get hung up on things of the body? Dysmorphic and dysphoric disorders puzzle me and this is coming from someone who has body dysphoria in the sense of hating being stuck in the one I have and that it's not capable of doing the things I want it to do. I'm stuck in a pathetic and weak mortal shell with a brain that has below average processing and memory capability. I believe that my body is just hardware. My mind is software that's running on it. I live in a world that doesn't feel right either. I've/I'm learned/learning to make peace with this sort of thing.

To me it just comes off as unhealthy to obsess over what the body looks like or getting caught up in the idea that the body should match some perceived idea of what the mind is.

Sex is a thing of the body and by extension so is gender. There's not any real logical reason for a species to develop the concept of gender if they don't have a concept of physical sex or are only one sex. Gender is based on there being more than one sex and behaviors being ascribed to them. When you get down to it I don't believe a mind can be truly gendered since the mind is not the body though it can certainly think it is. Any concept of gender in anyone be it LGBT or Cis or any body dysphoric/dysmorphic disorder comes off as delusion to me. Why get hung up on behaviors that are expected of a given physical sex or inventing more delusion to add on top of the sex binary?

I view myself as genderless and don't care what my physical sex or body is as long as I can function at some level. If I woke tomorrow as woman, robot, alien, or whatever... it wouldn't bother me in the slightest beyond all the outside problems caused by interactions with others.
 
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I guess to some people the body is tied to one's sense of self and the means to interact with the world. So yeah, I don't know it but I imagine the feeling of something being wrong about your body can be distressing.
 
I guess to some people the body is tied to one's sense of self and the means to interact with the world. So yeah, I don't know it but I imagine the feeling of something being wrong about your body can be distressing.
I've just found that there's something wrong about defining yourself by trying to match a societally reinforced behavior or defining yourself by what you do, how you interact, how you're perceived, by sex/gender, by racial/ethnic history. We are all ultimately not our bodies, but each a unique experience, mind, soul, or consciousness. Whatever one wants to call it. This body is a shell. It's this that matters. Being too obsessive about the body and the things it produces or is related to just seems unhealthy to me.

When you get down to it what would we be free of our physical bodies with all their urges and compulsions and the delusions and constructs we create because of them?
 
Well that's the most hardline duelist/subjectivist nonsense I've ever seen, particularly given that it's been well-proven that the brain is a "Blue Box" processor, of the particular kind the hardware is the software. As in "by scanning your brain, we're starting to be able to tell what you are feeling and get the basics of what you're seeing". Your "subjective" experience of emotion has had progress made on reading and categorizing it as utterly objective data points in a matrix. Sure, the details that make this output aren't understood, but we know very well, as best it is possible to, that everything the consciousness is capable of is rooted in the brain, and have made quite a few strides in understanding the final output. The entire field of psychiatry is us categorizing and systematizing the human mind to bring it in line with what's needed to be productive in society.

We have vast reams of data proving that males and females are fundamentally differing neurologically, and the differences inform and align with neuroscientific theories relating to the brain generating behavior patterns. Hormonal differences are also known to affect behavior, with two categories being very specifically defined as generating the behavioral differences of men and women. Men being more aggressive and competitive is no social construct, it is a biological fact of being male to the best of our knowledge, including first-hand accounts from biological females who underwent hormone treatments and surgeries to be given a more masculine body and, through hormonal effects, brains, as well as second-hand accounts of their behavior changing from those around them.

There is nothing backing your view in the best that logic can give us. As you put in your signature, all we have to believe is our senses, and even if we disbelieve them, we must still walk the road they offer. And our senses give us nothing to show the mind is some spirit, and plenty to tell us it is nothing but an emergent property of oh so many ion exchanges and so very much weaving of acids. And we're figuring them out. The only thing to indicate anything special is one's own conciousness... And the still-present impossibility of communicating qualia means that accepting this as proof turns the existence of any other being in all of reality into purely a matter of trust in your senses. We also can't actually rule out consciousness being present in everything with a nervous system as an emergent product of the hardware/software overlap that is terrestrial neurology.
 
Well that's the most hardline duelist/subjectivist nonsense I've ever seen, particularly given that it's been well-proven that the brain is a "Blue Box" processor, of the particular kind the hardware is the software. As in "by scanning your brain, we're starting to be able to tell what you are feeling and get the basics of what you're seeing". Your "subjective" experience of emotion has had progress made on reading and categorizing it as utterly objective data points in a matrix. Sure, the details that make this output aren't understood, but we know very well, as best it is possible to, that everything the consciousness is capable of is rooted in the brain, and have made quite a few strides in understanding the final output. The entire field of psychiatry is us categorizing and systematizing the human mind to bring it in line with what's needed to be productive in society.

We have vast reams of data proving that males and females are fundamentally differing neurologically, and the differences inform and align with neuroscientific theories relating to the brain generating behavior patterns. Hormonal differences are also known to affect behavior, with two categories being very specifically defined as generating the behavioral differences of men and women. Men being more aggressive and competitive is no social construct, it is a biological fact of being male to the best of our knowledge, including first-hand accounts from biological females who underwent hormone treatments and surgeries to be given a more masculine body and, through hormonal effects, brains, as well as second-hand accounts of their behavior changing from those around them.

There is nothing backing your view in the best that logic can give us. As you put in your signature, all we have to believe is our senses, and even if we disbelieve them, we must still walk the road they offer. And our senses give us nothing to show the mind is some spirit, and plenty to tell us it is nothing but an emergent property of oh so many ion exchanges and so very much weaving of acids. And we're figuring them out. The only thing to indicate anything special is one's own conciousness... And the still-present impossibility of communicating qualia means that accepting this as proof turns the existence of any other being in all of reality into purely a matter of trust in your senses. We also can't actually rule out consciousness being present in everything with a nervous system as an emergent product of the hardware/software overlap that is terrestrial neurology.
The brain is just a body part, no different than the other organs. Can you look at your own brain and see where these neurons become you? Humans don't actually know why we have qualia or how a cluster of neurons creates consciousness. Your mind is not the same thing as your brain.

Yes, it is true that what affects the body affects the mind, but altering the hardware on a computer will affect how software runs.

I have recurring derealization... the sense that the world is false or wrong, but what I do know is that I am a mind. I think. I have consciousness. I know my mind exists. That's the only thing I have concrete evidence of in this world. Cogito, ergo sum.

I've come to the conclusion that a consciousness without a body would not be concerned with bodily things such as sex and gender.

"All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end."

The reason I have that quote you're mentioning in my signature is because of the derealization problems I have. I'm unsure of everything else, but I have my senses and my thoughts and my memory and regardless of the feeling of unrealness or wrongness to me I have no choice but to follow what my other senses show me of this world whether it is real or not.
 
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Well that's the most hardline duelist/subjectivist nonsense I've ever seen, particularly given that it's been well-proven that the brain is a "Blue Box" processor, of the particular kind the hardware is the software. As in "by scanning your brain, we're starting to be able to tell what you are feeling and get the basics of what you're seeing". Your "subjective" experience of emotion has had progress made on reading and categorizing it as utterly objective data points in a matrix. Sure, the details that make this output aren't understood, but we know very well, as best it is possible to, that everything the consciousness is capable of is rooted in the brain, and have made quite a few strides in understanding the final output. The entire field of psychiatry is us categorizing and systematizing the human mind to bring it in line with what's needed to be productive in society.

We have vast reams of data proving that males and females are fundamentally differing neurologically, and the differences inform and align with neuroscientific theories relating to the brain generating behavior patterns. Hormonal differences are also known to affect behavior, with two categories being very specifically defined as generating the behavioral differences of men and women. Men being more aggressive and competitive is no social construct, it is a biological fact of being male to the best of our knowledge, including first-hand accounts from biological females who underwent hormone treatments and surgeries to be given a more masculine body and, through hormonal effects, brains, as well as second-hand accounts of their behavior changing from those around them.

There is nothing backing your view in the best that logic can give us. As you put in your signature, all we have to believe is our senses, and even if we disbelieve them, we must still walk the road they offer. And our senses give us nothing to show the mind is some spirit, and plenty to tell us it is nothing but an emergent property of oh so many ion exchanges and so very much weaving of acids. And we're figuring them out. The only thing to indicate anything special is one's own conciousness... And the still-present impossibility of communicating qualia means that accepting this as proof turns the existence of any other being in all of reality into purely a matter of trust in your senses. We also can't actually rule out consciousness being present in everything with a nervous system as an emergent product of the hardware/software overlap that is terrestrial neurology.

And your opinion on this relates to their gender... how exactly? What do you care if they hold a different belief about themself than you accept as truth.
 
I don't understand what the big deal is about "I identify as" or transgenders or any body dysmorphic/dysphoric disorder. The body is... well... meat. It's a vessel for consciousness. Your body isn't you so why get hung up on things of the body? Dysmorphic and dysphoric disorders puzzle me and this is coming from someone who has body dysphoria in the sense of hating being stuck in the one I have and that it's not capable of doing the things I want it to do. I'm stuck in a pathetic and weak mortal shell with a brain that has below average processing and memory capability. I believe that my body is just hardware. My mind is software that's running on it. I live in a world that doesn't feel right either. I've/I'm learned/learning to make peace with this sort of thing.

To me it just comes off as unhealthy to obsess over what the body looks like or getting caught up in the idea that the body should match some perceived idea of what the mind is.

Sex is a thing of the body and by extension so is gender. There's not any real logical reason for a species to develop the concept of gender if they don't have a concept of physical sex or are only one sex. Gender is based on there being more than one sex and behaviors being ascribed to them. When you get down to it I don't believe a mind can be truly gendered since the mind is not the body though it can certainly think it is. Any concept of gender in anyone be it LGBT or Cis or any body dysphoric/dysmorphic disorder comes off as delusion to me. Why get hung up on behaviors that are expected of a given physical sex or inventing more delusion to add on top of the sex binary?

I view myself as genderless and don't care what my physical sex or body is as long as I can function at some level. If I woke tomorrow as woman, robot, alien, or whatever... it wouldn't bother me in the slightest beyond all the outside problems caused by interactions with others.
You have no frame of reference for feeling the way a transgender person does, because, by your own admission, you have no sense of gender (though I doubt that genderlessness is as complete as you assume).

I can speak to the fact that, while my life or mental state of being is far from perfect, being able to present as the gender I actually am, rather than the gender I was assigned at birth based on my sex organs/etc, has done wonders for my mental health in a great many ways, reliving agitations stressors and pressures I've been dealing with for years, even before I realized I was transgender.

You look a the world in a way a lot of people don't - most people, even cisgender people, don't feel the way you do about gender.
 
You have no frame of reference for feeling the way a transgender person does, because, by your own admission, you have no sense of gender (though I doubt that genderlessness is as complete as you assume).

I can speak to the fact that, while my life or mental state of being is far from perfect, being able to present as the gender I actually am, rather than the gender I was assigned at birth based on my sex organs/etc, has done wonders for my mental health in a great many ways, reliving agitations stressors and pressures I've been dealing with for years, even before I realized I was transgender.

You look a the world in a way a lot of people don't - most people, even cisgender people, don't feel the way you do about gender.
I have considered that feeling of genderlessness is the result of a disconnect from my body and the world around me. Depersonalization goes hand in hand with derealization for me. Feeling that my body isn't mine or my actions are not under my control at times. I think it's all my mental problems that make me see things like this. I've been off my meds for two days and I've noted going off them there's always this strange sense of clarity.

This is reason for one of the quotes in my signature again: "You're not going crazy, you're going sane in a crazy world!"

It feels like everyone else around me is in some form of collective delusion not just on concepts like gender and sex, but so much more. I could spend quite a lot of time discussing it actually. People behave in such odd ways and I'm aware even I behave strangely according to everyone else, but it feels like at some point I experienced a sort revelation or maybe I always knew this and am only realizing it as I've gotten older. The world's broken and so many people hurt themselves and each other and part of me thinks if everyone could see this clarity maybe the world wouldn't be as bad as it is... or it might be worse. I don't know. I just have a hard time putting these thoughts into words.

I just know that I am a mind riding around in this apparent vessel I never asked for (an ideal vessel would be able to shift form freely to suit what is needed or wanted) and at times I worry that other people don't exist for simple reason that I can not verify anyone's consciousness but my own.

I admit I don't understand a lot of the things people construct themselves around or define themselves by. It just comes off as "Why do you people do these things if hurts you and others. Does any of this matter? Assuming anyone else exists, are we not all minds/souls and in our purest forms are we not far more than our bodies that drag us down? What's more real than consciousness? Should we not devote ourselves to some form of transcendence from from this or making peace with what we are, what we have, and what we've done and barring that why not simple hedonism? If actively inflicting pain is morally wrong then so must the active denial of pleasure be wrong as well."

I don't think I have the words to explain things in the best way of how I view the world, but this seems like something I needed to say for the moment.

I probably wouldn't posted anything in this thread today if I weren't off my medication. I apologize for this.
 
I think politeness is, largely, a collective delusion that only wastes time, but it's the reality we're all stuck with, and not everyone sees it the way you and I do. Just because you perceive it that way doesn't mean you're right - on the other hand, it doesn't mean you're wrong. In a perfect world, we wouldn't need terms for these things, people would just be attracted to who they want and be able to change their body and presentation as they saw fit to the specific and exact idiosyncracies they want. We don't live in that world yet.

The very act of labeling a thing is both defensive and offensive - it constrains, but also helps to establish and define.

I don't think you need to apologize - I just don't think you're right because your position runs entirely counter to my own lived experience with how I relate and understand my gender identity and what coming out as trans to myself and to people around me and proceeding with things in that vein has done for me. Gender is a social construct, which why I really wish we had a better term than 'transgender', but that is the commonly agreed upon word (partially because the porn industry appropriated and abused the word 'transsexual', so it immediately has pornographic connotations when used)
 
I believe that the nations of the world must ultimately coalesce into one government or polity. Not because of nation or creed, but because if we continue to waste effort and resources on war and its fellows Humanity will run out of some resources necessary for leaving the gravity well. And if we are planet bound our civilisation is, in the long run, doomed.

I agree with this, almost wholeheartedly.

Threats such as Climate Change, TRUE artificial intelligence, a meteor strike, and just a country dumb enough to have nukes but don't understand the responsibilities of being a nuclear state... these are issues that a global government (WITH TEETH mind you) has to solve. Solving these issues would require unprecedented coordination with various world governments, and that's just a bit too much cogs and wheels for my liking for things to break down.

It's linked into the unipolarity and liberal democracy argument I made in page 1. If we have to unite into a singular world government, then we have to unite in the best form of government possible to our current knowledge.
 
incoming stream of consciousness beware of misunderstandings

People behave in such odd ways and I'm aware even I behave strangely according to everyone else, but it feels like at some point I experienced a sort revelation or maybe I always knew this and am only realizing it as I've gotten older. The world's broken and so many people hurt themselves and each other and part of me thinks if everyone could see this clarity maybe the world wouldn't be as bad as it is... or it might be worse. I don't know. I just have a hard time putting these thoughts into words.

I just know that I am a mind riding around in this apparent vessel I never asked for (an ideal vessel would be able to shift form freely to suit what is needed or wanted) and at times I worry that other people don't exist for simple reason that I can not verify anyone's consciousness but my own.

I admit I don't understand a lot of the things people construct themselves around or define themselves by. It just comes off as "Why do you people do these things if hurts you and others. Does any of this matter? Assuming anyone else exists, are we not all minds/souls and in our purest forms are we not far more than our bodies that drag us down? What's more real than consciousness? Should we not devote ourselves to some form of transcendence from from this or making peace with what we are, what we have, and what we've done and barring that why not simple hedonism? If actively inflicting pain is morally wrong then so must the active denial of pleasure be wrong as well."

I don't think I have the words to explain things in the best way of how I view the world, but this seems like something I needed to say for the moment.

I probably wouldn't posted anything in this thread today if I weren't off my medication. I apologize for this.
"People behave in such odd ways and I'm even aware I behave strangely according to everyone else"
"Why do you people do these things if it hurts you and others."
"Should we not devote ourselves to some form of transcendence from this [truth about the universe]?"

Some of these questions I feel like answer each other. We all agree that people are different, behave different, act differently etc. Evidence that people are different and have different priorities. That's why we can't agree on what's a transcendence truth to devote ourselves to. Our life-journeys have taken us to different worldviews and it's very, very hard to reconcile worldviews between each other. I don't have the full range of knowledge and experiences that you have that helped you get to where you are, just as you don't have the same knowledge and experiences that I have. If you know everything I know, and I knew everything you knew, who's mind would change the most?

But since we can never sample each other's consciousness & history like that, the only thing left is communication. If I don't communicate with you, any revelations and lessons I've learned in my life that I consider to be valuable may never reach you, and that's a tragedy. I wish I could share my insights with such accuracy that people instantly understood what I meant and what my intent is so I never have to wonder if I explained myself right.

That's why miscommunication is frustrating. If somebody misunderstands me, it could be for an infinite reasons and I'd hope we can try again until we get it right. This is why I believe in "Good Faith" and charity when debating. I want to give people all the attempts they need to translate their idea to me using the words they know. Bad faith discussions, on the other hand, are one of the most vile acts people can do towards each other. It's a charade of communication where you're trying to frustrate that person's attempt at getting their ideas across. That person isn't a font of insight, they're an obstacle that needs to be overcome. If that person has some truly valuable insight and can't convey it properly, everybody loses in the end.


OK, observations on worldview & communications out of the way, let's talk about pleasure & happiness.


I think a lot of people underestimate their biology. Happiness is not a permanent state of being. It's simply not. You just got a new promotion? Great, enjoy that high for a few days before you realize 'work is work' and mundanity has returned. You just completed a marathon- but your credit score is still shit. You've just bought a motorcycle during your mid-life crisis. Well, you're still old. I mean, if rich people & famous artist still kill themselves, then even success isn't the solution.

No matter the success, your brain will find a way to fuck up your day. It's actively looking for those things that will fuck up your day. This isn't a special condition, this is the human condition. We've all inhabitants of the evolutionary tree and have all sorts of modules & service packs that are running on instinct that's hundreds of millions of years old. No amount of achievement will change that. Happiness will never be permanent.

Remember how you said there's nothing more real than consciousness? I agree 100%. That's why suffering sucks and is bad, and happiness is awesome and is good. It's because those are states of beings that we're conscious of. BUT I don't think it follows that since actively inflicting pain = wrong then denial of pleasure = wrong. Pleasure can be very inconvenient sometimes and it's just pragmatic to not chase pleasure at every opportunity. For example, exercise isn't very pleasurable for most people and neither is eating healthy. But both of those things can result in a lot more long term well-being at the loss of some short-term happiness and pleasure. Suffering is a signal your brain is sending when it thinks you're in a bad spot or doing something stupid to hurt your survival. Happiness is the opposite, its your brain rewarding your behavior and wants you to continue doing what you're doing. But in both of these cases, you might know better than the signal your brain is sending you. Your priorities and worldview will line up and say "even though I'm hurting myself, this is what I have to do. Fuck off instincts." When you see some people hurting themselves, there might be a good reason behind it. If there isn't... well that's just sad and unfortunate.

You might think of a sci-fi world where we can alter the biology of humans to always feel euphoric or something similar (I've heard arguments like this), but that's not the world we're in. We could perhaps do drugs all the time, but that's not sustainable. There ARE some people who think that euphoria is a symptom that belongs on a warning label of medication, but that's not me. Either way, we don't live in the ideal world and honestly, we should stop trying to build the ideal world, because many many people won't fit into it due to their worldviews.


Where does that leave us?


With the understanding that people are different, act different, believe different, then it's going to be hard us to create a "one size fits all" solution that works for everybody. It's utter hubris of me to think that my revelations would work on anybody else who hasn't had the same life ingredients that I've had. I can only hope that when people are hurting themselves and others, it's out of a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding of each other or of themselves. Or perhaps a misunderstanding of a philosophy, principles or way of life that was set up for them by somebody else, like a parent or <<THE SYSTEM>>

So I fully expect a variety of worldviews and transcendent goals. I even believe that people will have many personal worldview revolutions in their life as well. What we should avoid, at all cost, is the idea that we've found the "Last Truth" or "The End of History" because, frankly, we could all be wrong. And I'd hate for all the suffering that would be inflicted because we huff our own farts and think we know what's right for everybody else.



And with that I've hit my word quota for the day. Thanks V4Guss.
 
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