Posts by Etude

47

REALITY may not be what you think

by Terry in

a counterfeit $100 bill looks virtually the same as a genuine bill.

ask yourself what actual difference exists between them?.

a really good elvis impersonator may look and sound pretty darned close to the real elvis--but, is "close" the same as genuine?.

Etude

Reality vs Delusion" Reality can only be realized through rational thought & reasoning. However, that reasoning must be based solely on whats really there & that isn’t always easy. "

Well R v D, I think it's a happy coincidence, your avatar name. As for its appearance, your description is quite amusing and close to my slightly warped view.

I think I mostly agree with you about perception with one major difference: the way we achieve or determine reality. You say:" Reality is not a perception, an idea, or a belief. Our personal understanding, knowledge, and feelings are simply NOT reality. They are only our limited understanding, our limited knowledge, and our feelings " and "Reality is simply fact and is beyond our personal perceptions and feelings". My major fundamental concern is that reality, whatever it is, is limited to how we attain it. I mean that in a very profound sense as well as in everyday life. Here's one example:

I have a recurring pleasant reality when I pet my tiny fuzzy dog. But along with other capabilities, I have determined that I have never done anything like pet my tiny fuzzy dog. Petting involves touching and atoms do not actually touch. So my perception of touching, softness, warmth, smooth or rough does not involve the experience of my atoms "mingling" with other atoms. It has more to do with the secondary effects of forces I don't fully understand operating on my atoms and causing tertiary waves that my brain interprets as touching, softness, warmth, smooth or rough. Moreover, I can actually experience the exact same sensation without actually petting anything. I have done so many times with other sensations in my dreams and it seems just as real.

But for a slight condition in our brains (like not being able to feel pain), our reality is severely altered. CIPA (Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis) is a rare genetic condition that makes the bearer unable to feel pain, heat, cold or even the urge to pee.

As we move in complexity up the world line, reality is even more subject to our limited perceptions. Imagine if we could see the world in the entire range of light spectrum. Our reality would be significantly different. What I'm suggesting is that while we share a great deal of commonality in our share reality, there are variances, subtle and not so subtle, that affect that reality.

I think you're right in saying that "Reality can only be realized through rational thought & reasoning". That is precisely an indicator that reality is not always correct by virtue of our perceptions. With reasoning we can possibly come to a more accurate understanding of what reality is. If we just hold to what we observe we are giving in to our person delusions, the ones that cloud our perception of what we would like to know is true and real.

I'm suggesting that as a species, we have limitations and that as individuals we have a nuances that affect our view of the world (reality). Even with the deepest kind of reasoning, it may still not be possible to determine what the nature of the world is, in a literal sense. We have not yet determined whether light is a particle or a wave or both. We can't determine where an electron is and if we do, we know nothing about its state; we can't determine the nature of matter at all. Yet, we assume something and go on.

I was a Mathematics major in college and was blown away when my Calculus professor proved, using the basic rules of addition and subtraction that 1 + 1 = 3 (given a=b and a=1 so b=1). I know that it's based on a mathematical fallacy. But you can't tell that using notation and can only know after substituting for real values. Even so, there are a lot of mathematical oddities that push the boundaries of reason. Math is not a natural science and therefore is not subject to the same rules of verification. In the observable world, however, we must constantly test our observations in order to determine what is real. Why? Because what we think is real sometimes is not.

47

REALITY may not be what you think

by Terry in

a counterfeit $100 bill looks virtually the same as a genuine bill.

ask yourself what actual difference exists between them?.

a really good elvis impersonator may look and sound pretty darned close to the real elvis--but, is "close" the same as genuine?.

Etude

Terry:

"The problem you are experiencing is due, once again, to WORDS and not the reality itself." -- OK, I grant you that there may be some semantics there. Therefore, we should consider what it is we mean. In your statement above, you refer to "reality itself". I think, from reading your entire comments, that you speak about an extrinsic reality, the one that exists whether we exist or not, the one that tells us the universe will still follow the laws of nature whether we're here or not. That reality is based on deduced principals (the laws of nature) which we have devised to explain our observations.

Based on those observations, we believed once that there was a luminiferous æther permeating the universe. Based on those observations, we decided that time was universal and absolute (Newtonian). Then we decided that time was relative (Einsteinian). Now, there's a new theory where time may contract but only locally (the revived Lorentzian) or that time does not exist all-together (the Julian Barbour premise). Those are serious conclusions (not yet full proofs) that explain reality in fundamentally different ways.

So what is reality? Is it that which we observe on a daily basis -- the sun comes out; the streets get wet when it rains; I feel pain and pleasure; if I get too drunk I'll vomit and have a hangover; etc. If we deny that what we observe or experience is filtered and manipulated by our senses and limitations, then we have no need to question what we see, hear or learn via our senses. We would accept and assume everything without question. We would then trust our feelings, imagination without question. There would be no differences of opinions.

On the other hand, it is the doubt of what we observe that has led many to question their own reality regarding what nature is and go beyond what the majority believes. So reality, in the most fundamental way, may be something other than what we can experience the way we cannot experience what matter really and truly is, because we can't really touch it or see it at its most basic nature.

We think it is atoms, composed of protons, electrons and neutrons, which in turn are made of quarks, which in turn are made of... Perhaps matter is not made up of atoms at all and is really made of one-dimensional strings that go in and out of several of a total of 11 physical dimensions. Perhaps matter is neither of those and instead is made of minute propagating waves that not only connect everything in the universe but do away with all the problems of Quantum Physics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BTcmuGdLCU

If we can conclude that a bolder in the middle of the road is one reality, it doesn't mean for example that my near-death experience, when I saw a light at the end of a tunnel and saw all my dead relatives on the other side awaiting for me full of immense love is also reality. Think about all the little things in between the bolder on the road and vision of heaven that can vary in perception from person to person. Yes, there is a reality. But I think that while we can identify and agree on some if it, there are slightly different versions of it due to our individual perspective and also to our physical and sensory limitations.

" The way physicists locate a quantum partical explains why the path is changed in the process of observation." That may be. But the classical quantum conundrum is that if you locate it, you cannot know its weight, charge or anything much else about it. If you know its weight or charge or spin, you will have no idea where it is. That is the Heisenberg Principle. It's like trying to figure out what a snow flake is like by touching it. The very act of finding out via your touch prevents you from ever knowing its makeup. The snow flake is real. But, your idea of what it really is (but for our other senses) will remain elusive.

That's how sometimes reality is to us. Our bolder in the middle of the road could be made from card board and happened to have fallen from a truck headed to a movie set. What is reality? Reality is a bolder. Is it? When you stop to examine it using other ways (not your sight because it looks just like many other boulders; not your smell, because boulders generally don't have odors; etc), you may find that it's not made up of cardboard but of synthetic foam. If you could look at it not in person but from a video, you might be able to tell that vegetation is crushed leading up to the bolder (telling you it come from somewhere else). Maybe that might indicate that it's real and not foam. But if someone else just drove past it, his reality of the boulder would be different from your reality tested by careful examination and verification.

" The 'two places at once' strangeness is a result of how location is measured in the first place ." -- Not quite. The discovery has led some to suggest "faster-than-light" communication and the possibility of instant tele-transportation. What you suggest is that the method of measurement yields two different location. OK. If the methods are correct, then there ARE two different location each with the entity being measured. This is also related to the Heisenberg Principle since any number of measurements of a particle can yield multiple locations.

47

REALITY may not be what you think

by Terry in

a counterfeit $100 bill looks virtually the same as a genuine bill.

ask yourself what actual difference exists between them?.

a really good elvis impersonator may look and sound pretty darned close to the real elvis--but, is "close" the same as genuine?.

Etude

Reality vs Delusion:

"Reality is not a perception, an idea, or a belief. Our personal understanding, knowledge, and feelings are simply NOT reality. They are only our limited understanding, our limited knowledge, and our feelings."

Your avatar and its creation date seems too coincidental for this subject. Nevertheless, I want to respond and state that the statement above confuses me. On the one had you say that reality is not a perception but then you say that our understanding, knowledge and feelings are limited by our understanding and limited knowledge. If our perception or ideas or beliefs do not involve knowledge and the feelings we associate with them, how can that not possibly be our reality? My interpretation of your statement is that "our limited understanding, our limited knowledge, and our feelings" are indeed our perception of reality. What else could there be?

So, I contend that our perception is in essence our only reality. That is all we really have. If we have limitations ascertaining how real something is, because our senses fail us, because events turn out to be something other than what we thought, because science cannot fully explain dichotomies in nature, then reality becomes what we have left, namely our own perception of the world. That doesn't mean that we can't question our perception, indeed our reality, and glean something different that what would follow for someone else. We could for example decide that our reality (perhaps aspects that appear to limit us) can be changed, altered or bypassed.

My point is that what we do with our reality seems to be what determines where we end up. We see it here on this discussion site. Many have a common reality about what the Jehovah's Witnesses actually represent and do. Within that number, some decide that they must remain inside and explore what they do and others decide that remaining is an untenable situation and must separate. What makes that difference is their perception of how the lie must be dealt with. Their common reality is that there exists a horrible lie. Their separate reality is that they need to deal with that lie in very different ways. Perception seems to be everything.

47

REALITY may not be what you think

by Terry in

a counterfeit $100 bill looks virtually the same as a genuine bill.

ask yourself what actual difference exists between them?.

a really good elvis impersonator may look and sound pretty darned close to the real elvis--but, is "close" the same as genuine?.

Etude

Terry: reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined.

You always seem to introduce interesting and thought-provoking topics. Kudos! For me, I would have to alter your statement to read: "Reality is the perceived state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined."

The reason is that I find individual reality regarding the same events or things differs, sometimes in imperceptible ways and other times in significant ways. This may be due to our unique point of view (either physical or attitudinal or both). This is demonstrated in the classic eye-witness experiments that show how poor our perception can be when describing a crime scene. http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Eyewitness-Misidentification.php, http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/71/2/291/,

Above and beyond the everyday events we experience, there seems to be a fundamental problem with reality even in the quantum world where the position of a speck of nanoscopic matter is reduced to a statistical probability and where another particle can exist in two places at the same time. How do we reconcile that?

So, what is reality, really? I really, really want to know (insert X-Files theme song). Even as a Jehovah's Witness, I thought about what was becoming a more certain cruelty of life, the one that deceived us into thinking we really had a choice about the big things in life. For me, the emerging reality was that my past environment, my physical limitations, my emotional make up and my present situation set me up for failure in so many ways.

It's not that there's absolutely no way to surpass one's shortcomings. The problem is that our perception of what is possible (reality) is often distorted. Early on, my religious and personal experiences let me to zig instead of zag and I ended up with the wittlesses. A different experience or maybe a defiance of my up-to-then reality would have led to an entirely different path.

Perhaps as you say " Reality doesn't require you to know anything. " But it seems to me that reality does provide knowledge. When I wake up in the morning or any other time from a dream or sleep, my brain tries to assess where I am. It's mostly an unconscious reaction for my brain to acknowledge my bedroom surroundings and not question whether I live there or not. But that's not always the case. There are times when I wake up totally disoriented. One thing seems true: we take cues from our environment via our senses. How we deal with those cues is a totally different matter.

In the case of what you're proposing regarding the witlesses being unwitting zero-personality criminals, I tend to disagree. The fact that you made it out is an example of triumph on the part of your personality. Otherwise, you, me and many others would have continued on like lemmings. Rather than the suppression of our personalities, it is the occasional jolt of a different realization that wakes us up to the inconsistencies that gnaw at us and finally cause us to break free.

I can recall a very specific moment when my reality or what I perceived the world to be came to a profound change. I was about 4 or 5 years old. I was accustomed to sit on the stoop of my front door (with strict supervision) and watch people and cars go by. On that one particular day, while looking to the left and then to the right of our one-way street, as if the skies suddenly opened, I realize that around the corner from my block there was another street and even more streets beyond that. I had visited those places before with my dad and other people. But up to that point, my world consisted of what was in front of me. I was for the first time able to conceptualize that the place in front of me was somehow connected to every other place I'd been to.

I've seen experiments where a 7 year old (I believe they can count from 1 to 10 at that point) will tell you that there are more marbles in a glass tube with 10 marbles than in a plate with 10 marbles, even if you have them count the marbles over and over again. The problem is that most children at that age are not yet able to abstract the "quantity" aspect of things and only work with the "volume" aspect of things. So, the "stacked" marble container has more marbles. There are discrete states of perception associated with growing up. Unfortunately, some of us, for whatever reason, develop less keenly and perhaps end up lacking the sophistication to make determinations of reality, especially in moral and psychological instances. I think that the best we can do to is keep questioning and testing if our reality is going to hold up.

30

F&DS New Light Official JW Statement

by konceptual99 in

the new light (tm) is on jw.org.

not had time to digest it but it's looking pretty much whathas been divulged already.

looking forward to seeing the responses from the forum and the brothers and sisters now it's in the open.

Etude

...and there they go again, using those cargo phrases:

"Logically, then, “the faithful and discreet slave” must have appeared after Christ’s presence began in
1914."

and

"It is reasonable to conclude, then, that Jesus appointed “the faithful and discreet slave” over “his
domestics” during his presence, “the conclusion of the system of things."

Is Fred Franz still alive?

27

Zeitgeist The Movie

by DATA-DOG in

jw
friends

i just watched the first part of this film.

i am now more screwed up than ever....... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a36_cwza0bk .

Etude

I didn't watch the whole thing (I'm still downloading it and others). From the comments here, it remindes me of the movie "Thrive". It has the same conspiracy themes even though it's very well made and a bit more narrative and less "stylistic" than "Zeitgeist". Here's a review about it: Commentary on the documentary “Thrive”

18

My Introduction

by Left in the Cold in

i have posted on here a little, and i thought i should probably introduce myself the best i can right now.

i stumbled upon this site and told my sister about it.

then, sometime later she started discussing things with me that's she has seen or read (she's in therapy, as well, which probably has made her kind of rethink things).

Etude

Left in the Cold:

Watt spelen erorz? Hey, a big hug to you and my sincere desire that you thrive as you go on your new journey.

It's really hard and very different for each person. You have a unique set of circumstances. They are unique because you are you. Many other people have been in similar circumstances, but your response and experience are exclusively yours.

Still, I would hope that you don't go back and shore up the consequences of feeling alone and abandoned with either a determination to work through it or start now and build some alternate relationships. ldrnomo is right and they will probably start to think of you and treat you as if you were DFed. Very few people get to show compassion in the JWs because they are trained not to do so and the ones that do show some caring often hold back for fear.

I think you'll find a lot of encouragement here. I saved myself a lot of money on therapy by being here. I hope you do the same. Welcome!

25

did the elders ever discover they were taped at ray publishers apostasy hearing

by reds in

Etude

Unfortunately, I wouldn't put it past them, the elders at the suggestion of the WTBTS, to pat down potential DFs before going in front of the committee. I image that, remaining typical, they will never announce that patting someone down will become part of their modus operandi in a judicial hearing. Hmmm..."Judicial Hearing" -- Do they call it that?

376

How is creationism DISPROVED?

by sabastious in

jw
friends

it is disproven.

but let's start another thread, because this one is being yanked off track again.

creationism/evolution always deserves its own thread.

Etude

sabastious:

I'm glad if I can help. I can only imagine the burst of ideas going on inside you. I think that that overabundance is what drives some of us to tell the rest of the world, to be heard and considered. Do I have it right? Just remember that our reality in this respect is similar to a child learning to walk. You're going to fall and get hurt.

I suppose we could characterize that as bad. I, on the other hand, consider it necessary and an important part of the learning process. When I was a snot-nosed-know-it-all JW, my biggest fall was the deception I felt having lost my faith, my ideals, my family, my hope and my friends in a short span of time. I was alone and devastated, but I said: "Bring it on!" I had to not just explore other ways of thinking but I also had to live them and experience them (my "wild" days) in order to decide if they were right for me.

It took a while before I let myself question the only thing I had left, my belief in God. It took a while longer to do my own personal exploration regarding what I could and could not know. I was humbled by two things: Descartes "Discourse on the Method" and Einstein's "Theory of relativity" (Bantam 1964). Since then, I have not looked at the world the same way.

For me the profundity of it is that when I usually touch something or see a great sunset, I realize that I'm not touching anything (because atoms don't really touch) and I'm not seeing all there is (because I can't detect ultraviolet or infrared light with my eyes. That is present with me every single day. I also realized that we are prisoners of our own minds. That our perceptions, not just of our senses but also of what we interpret, can betray us; that there are limitations between what we hear from others and what others hear from us; that we could well be living in a dream that we must nevertheless assume is our reality. Cogito ergo sum. That's it. We can't really conclude much beyond that.

Up to then, my certainty about the world and about god was immutable. But after I was knocked on my ass when the carpet pulled from under my feet, I vowed to forever question everything, never be absolutely sure of anything and always leave room for a different explanation or a different understanding of reality. To say that I can now live with uncertainty is a very liberating thing indeed.

I hope that in your efforts to do for yourself (" This is all for me, not anyone else "), as it spills onto others, your thoughts will inevitably come under scrutiny. Be prepared. How do you do that? By using the tools that others can agree upon. Critical Thinking is more than an ability. It is discipline going back to Socrates; it uses reason and goes beyond an examination of facts; it also examines HOW we think; it involves thinking about thinking; it's methodological (explores discrete steps); it's self-critical (doubts to test). Think about that next time you present a topic.

Best wishes,

Etude.

13

Just saying hello

by AllTimeJeff in

jw
friends

i'm still around.

i'm waiting to post till after the election because i don't want to waste my energy arguing politics, and i know i'm still not mature enough to ignore the bullshit.

hello to old friends.

Etude

Hello.