Is the blue pill the rational choice?
If the matrix will give you all that you want and could ever want, without ever being aware that it is fabricated, would you chose the red pill?
All you are striving for in life is achieved in the matrix in the appropriate way and you'll die thinking that it was all real.
Would you still chose to escape it?
If yes, would you say that is the rational choice?
P.s This isn't a question whether the choice is right or wrong. I want to see if anyone can make the case that the red pill is the rational choice, and explore the implications of it in real life.
All you are striving for in life is achieved in the matrix in the appropriate way and you'll die thinking that it was all real.
Would you still chose to escape it?
If yes, would you say that is the rational choice?
P.s This isn't a question whether the choice is right or wrong. I want to see if anyone can make the case that the red pill is the rational choice, and explore the implications of it in real life.
Comments (147)
I'd say it's neither rational nor irrational. It's a question of values, which are non-rational.
If I didn't know it was fabricated, on what basis would I decide whether to escape it? It's not rational to escape from a satisfactory environment.
We may already be in that situation and we may never know.
If I was comfortable I would stay in the most comfortable scenario because I don't like suffering. I place a lot of value on my comfort I suppose and see no value in suffering.
This is like the Free Will issue to some extent. If we don't have free will nothing will change because we would already be living without free will.
In the matrix scenario if you left the matrix what would the alternative be? It could be better it could be worse or a completely mindf*ck.
Fair enough but that's beside my point.
Quoting Vera Mont
I'll take that as a 'yes' to the title question.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Maybe.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
The current real world.
What is the point? If I don't know there is a choice, how do I define "rational option"?
Quoting TheMadMan
If you like. It seems arbitrary.
There are a lot of scenarios I would happily chose over the current world.
but I would not exchange the current real world for an identical world in a simulator because that would seem pointless.
I would like to know what the truth is and live in a truthful situation.
I don't think a simulation could be identical to this world otherwise we couldn't know if the "real world" was another simulation ad infinitum.
The truth seems illusive under any scenario.
On what grounds are we deciding what is rational? Maybe only choosing the truth is rational.
Its a hypothetical where you are outside the matrix. The point is on the nature of the choice. Not the possibility of making it.
Quoting Vera Mont
I neither like nor dislike. It seemed pretty clear from your quote. I may have misunderstood it.
This is a good point. I myself am not clearly set on what to call rational. That's why I put it in such a question. To arrive at what you are alluding to: Is seeking truth rational or irrational, or maybe something beyond both?
I'm not sure what I would do in a situation like that.
Hypothetical: You have learned that your partner who you love has cheated you multiple times.
I give the chance to press a button and completely forget that he/she has cheated on you. So you continue your relationship blissfully unaware and you are happy.
Would you push the button?
I feel that rationality is a value statement about beliefs and behaviours.
On one account rationality could require consistency between belief and behaviour.
If someone says "I hate getting wet" but goes out in the rain without an umbrella that could be considered irrational. But we could argue that peoples beliefs and behaviour don't need to compliment each other we just value that personally.
I think how you respond to a choice like staying in the matrix or not would reflect your values and preferences probably. If you value living in the truth you might want to get out of the matrix.
I try to myself to some extent by challenging my perceptions and received information. At some stage it can get to the point of rejecting society, getting confused or having lots of unanswered questions.
I wouldn't push the button, but that doesn't change my answer to the previous question.
Unless they found out his reason for going out in the rain on that particular occasion. We do lots of things we hate for lots of reasons - some of them quite rational.
The plot of the first movie does not suggest that life in the matrix 'gives you everything you want and ever could want.' In fact, I think that's what caused the first attempts at the simulation to fail.
I think matrix world is something similar to our current world. So I think that the movies are suggesting a situation where the real world is much tougher than matrix world.
The plot doesn't make much sense, as a creature such as an electric eel produces much more electricity than humans do, so if the machines want a good organic battery, they could do much better than using humans. Electric eels would give them much fewer problems and much more power.
So, we are left with the modern dilemma, in the future, will we prefer to live in a star trek style holodeck or the 'real' world? For me, I return to the question of what is pleasure without pain?
To quote Captain Kirk in 'The undiscovered country,'"I need my pain."
We need to escape to the holodeck sometimes, so we need to experience 'unreal' and 'real' to feel human. We need both pills, and we need to be able to switch between them. We don't want either to be a permanent immutable state of being.
Mr. Anderson is mad of course, but shhh, don't tell anyone! :cool:
My rule of thumb: rational is inferential (algorithmic) and reasonable contextual (adaptive), they are complementary but do not entail one another.
I'm not using the plot of the matrix. I only borrow the idea of the matrix and red/blue pill. In my setting you can have the perfect life. Where even pain and discomfort is in appropriate proportion so you can enjoy pleasure.
Quoting 180 Proof
... or "happiness before truth", which is not necessarily to the exclusion of "truth".
So your main complaint is about 'excessive' individual suffering that is present in our 'real' world.
This is 'uninvited' and 'unwelcome' suffering. I assume you would prefer to have more control over how, when and why you experience suffering. So would I, to an extent, but I also celebrate, uninvited and unwelcome happenstance suffering, due to the 'learning' opportunity such can offer.
I don't include sufferings such as hunger, poverty, homelessness, disenfranchisement, natural disaster, mental illness, etc, etc.
The solutions to these problems lie in the will of humans to unite and work together, pool all available resources, etc to solve these problems. That's why I am a secular humanist/socialist who believes the scientific method is our best hope for creating tech that can reduce or eliminate the current extreme forms of unjustified human suffering as well as correct our ecological mistakes and offer humans more options (more lifespan, more robustness (via transhumanism)).
In reality it may be not. But in my hypothetical it is.
Quoting 180 Proof
Got it.
He is just Alice who sometimes visits wonderland and meets a wicked queen called agent Smith.
The switcheroo was just that Alice starts off in wonderland and wakes up in dystopia.
For me, Alice was always a bit of a mad character. She has such strange dreams!
But is your main driver for choosing one against the other based on suffering?
You are presenting the cost of gaining truth as increased suffering and that the only road to 'real' happiness is to embrace delusion and accept you will never know the truth of the world.
No.
Quoting universeness
In choosing the truth the suffering is not necessarily increased in the real world. One is merely refusing the addition of happiness from the matrix.
So, why do you choose a hypothetical that excludes the possibility of achieving truth AND happiness?
To me, that's a mad mans hypothetical and belongs firmly to the mind of the pessimist.
Because there are certain moments in one's life when they are exclusive.
Quoting universeness
It's not pessimist or optimist. It's a pragmatic hypothetical.
I am glad you confirm that these are 'moments' and not permanent immutable states.
I disagree that your hypothetical is pragmatic, as a pragmatist would emphasize the fact that your hypothetical is not suggesting a choice between truth and happiness which is forever mutually exclusive.
If you are now saying that your hypothetical is only referencing those times in a persons life when you have a choice between two evils, 'happiness at the expense of truth' or 'truth at the expense of happiness' then fine.
Quoting TheMadMan
Quoting T Clark
Neither would I. Although I suffered, I also experience happiness in the truth of the situation because I found out about her before we became too economically entwined and had kids etc, etc.
Yep, that did actually happen to me. Another part of that story is, she came back years later with a child in tow and suggested we got back together as 'I was the one she should have chosen.'
I did not take her up on her offer. In my opinion, I ..... eventually gained happiness from the bitter truth of her earlier actions. For me, truth before happiness but I don't assume such for everyone else.
Would I tell someone they were going to die within months, if I thought it would mean they would live their last months in terror but at least they could prepare themselves? Very tough choice indeed!
Alice is an archetype and what does she possess?
An interesting but slightly mad imagination!
I disagree. The pragmatism is very clear.
Quoting universeness
That is it. Although I don't agree that 'truth at the expense of (illusory) happiness' is evil. In your own words: Quoting universeness
Evil is a personal judgement and a personal manifestation, as well as an interpretation based on the notions of morality held by individuals or based on legislated morality (law). I agree that 'truth at the expense of happiness' ALWAYS being an evil, is subjective. It's always has been an evil for me. The fact that I have often been able to turn such experiences to my personal eventual benefit does not mean the initial pain caused, ever goes away completely.
The evil is still there, but it is unable to defeat me, anytime it is remembered.
Well, fair enough.
1. The robots have complete control over when you live and die. If you had cancer or a problem with your actual body, you think they would spend the energy to fix it? No.
2. The robots have complete control over your program. In the matrix, some people are poor, programmed to be poor, and programmed to live miserable lives. Lets say you get lucky and have the nice life, for now. There is no certainty that it will continue no matter what you do. Your free will is extremely limited, much more than in reality.
3. The program is not designed to give you a perfect life. It is designed with its entire intention to farm you for energy with you becoming aware of it. Wouldn't you have a much greater interest in your own benefit then someone using you as a battery? What if in the future the robots figure out other ways of farming you for energy then what they are currently providing?
4. Your ability to do anything meangingful is gone. You are living a dream the entire time. You really do not invent anything new. Physics discoveries? Programmed by the matrix. Your child? Just an artificially cooked up kid from genetics that don't belong to you that you've been programmed to have an imprint on.
I think the only rational decision is to take the red pill. Someone who does not have your well being at interest but is only interested in using what you have should not be in control of your life and fate.
That's very fair!
I suppose the question can be rephrased like this then.
1. Your life is an illusion created in your mind. An outside being feeds you this illusion, crafting a world to your innate desires. By your life's end, you will obtain everything you wanted in this illusion.
2. There is a "real world". You don't know what it is or what it would entail. But in the real world this outside being would not be feeding you illusions or controlling the outcome of your life.
3. One day someone comes along and informs you of all this. You can be assured that this is not a trick. You are given the option to enter into the unknown. Do you?
The problem to answer this adequately is we must know what the alternative to the simulation entails.
What is the outside world like, and what is going on? Are people living harsh lives and working to make it better while my body leeches off of this being? Do I have loved ones that miss me? Are we all experiencing this? Could it shape my life in such a way that I would think I would want something in its world? That I was being programmed to be satisfied?
We don't really have a choice otherwise. We can craft the question to get the outcome we want which is, "Yes, its optimal and rational to take the blue pill". But a good question should present us with known choices to be more than a personality quiz. Saying, "Would you take what is familiar and beneficial to you or lose it for the potential of something better." isn't really a rational discussion, as its an inductive question that relies on a personal choice.
Now if you are more interested in personal choices, that is fine, its a very good question. I can answer that some will say yes, and others no based on their risk aversion/reward systems. If you want something where rationality can enter into the mix and we can debate a correct choice, I think we need to be presented with the full set of alternatives and possible consequences of choosing the red pill over the blue.
I don't think its radical at all! Thanks for the discussion. :smile:
Thought 2: this is a very different scenario from the film. People in the matrix did not have everything they wanted.
So, we have this choice - we return to the matrix with no memory of there being anything else OR we find out some of what is really going on.
Thought 3 - we are choosing between a known - if we've been in the matrix before and it was good - and an unknown. The latter having as a positive aspect that it would be more real. But, as in the film, much of the realer life might be very unpleasant. (short term, long term)
Thought 4 - I believe that we are all, right now, choosing the blue pill (and to some degree the red pill) already. I am not suggesting a formal conspiracy theory is the case. I am thinking of our willingness to notice out own motivations, desire, emotions, judgments, etc. that are ego dystonic or just plain unpleasant to notice/experience. I say this because anyone taking a very firm pro-red pill stance needs to consider that they are probably choosing with great regularity to not known things about themselves and other people. Some peoplel make that kind of red-pilling a priority. If they catch a flicker of a feeling or judgment or desire they can tell they don't really like catching that flicker, they make a conscious choice to investigate, allow the feeling to express, find out what they are really thinking and feeling (also).
Thought 5 - in the film Neo feels like there is something off about 'reality'. Further, his life doesn't look great. You are proposing a perfect Matrix. In the situation where I am choosing pill, how did I get out of the Matrix? What does it seems like is really going on? Do I have any hints about the motivations of the Matrix makers? What is the person like who is offering me the choice?
Which is fine. You have your situation, as described, though it seems very partial. It's not the film scenario which I got, but it's not clear what it is. Some will not find that a problem, but I actually think they are answering about a choice they have no idea if they would make it, because the scenario is so vague AND utterly unlike the choices we have in this world.
Not necessarily. I think it would vary from situation to situation.
The red pill gives us what is uncertain, possibly misery, disease and premature death in some foreign reality. Though this hypothetical is colored by what we know happens in the film.
I'd take the blue pill, assuming I could ever trust that the promise is true.
Afterall, we've got super smart folks pontificating about how our everyday sense of phenomenal reality is already an illusion. I don't think whatever constitutes reality here offers us the promise of control. Maybe it does in a collective sense, assuming I'm a member of Zion who has some knowledge of the world as it stands. I guess I'm uncertain about exactly what is on offer.
What if the probability was that 99 times out of 100, choosing the red pill results in death, or transport to a kind of life our ancestors lived 10,000 years ago, but we can't know this. While on the flip side, however short our simulated life is, it is determined to be a good one.
Edit: But I hope God (the Architect) isn't recording this as a preference...
This is debatable. To take a common example, many value money over happiness. This might be irrational, as money might be valued as instrumental towards happiness. Similarly, understanding might be valued as instrumental towards the joy of deeper understanding. What use then is this understanding, if in this case it leads to a state of perpetual joylessness?
Just as bad, suppose these values are not instrumental. Suppose that money was valued absolutely, as an end in itself. Wouldn't this be irrational, a kind of arbitrary idolatry? Especially if it supersedes other values, such as the happiness and well being of yourself and others. Similarly, mightn't understanding as an absolute end in itself, be a kind of irrational idolatry?
I don't think you can derive an ought from an is. A preference for happiness might be pre rational.
I don't think facts about the worlds should necessarily compel any behaviour and if facts should lead behaviour it is not clear which behaviour and which facts.
Should I take an umbrella out if it rains? Should I give to charity? Should I eat more fruit and vegetables?
I am not sure if reality is or has to be rational at its base. In one sense it seems nature must obey rational laws and that reality can't have contradictory happenings or even things like uncaused causes.
Matrix style skeptical situations lead to an infinite regress of possible illusory states of being it seems.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/768538
I suppose, but I stand by my judgement. Going beyond that is outside the bounds of this discussion.
Going beyond your judgement is out of bounds? I see. You argued that values are arational, and so the question does not apply. I say that values can indeed be irrational.
That's a good question.
I would say that worshiping understanding without realizing it (living it) is irrational idolatry.
It's like praying to the statue of the prophet while shunning the actual prophet.
Yes, I understand that.
So, the question is whether taking the blue pill - that is, whether opting to live in a fantasy - is something we have overall reason to do if, that is, doing it would mean that we get what we want (or, and this would need clarifying, if we would be maximally happy).
It includes matters of right and wrong, for if doing x is wrong, then we have overall reason not to do it, and thus doing it would be irrational.
But anyway, there's an ambiguity in your description of what the blue pill does. Does taking it make one experience a life containing the maximum quantity of happiness, or does taking it mean that one will have one's preferences met?
These are not the same. For meeting some of my preferences may make me unhappy, and I may also not wish to be maximally happy.
Note too, that I typically prefer actually to be doing the things I want to do, not merely to have the experience 'as if' I am doing them. So, for example, if I want to be a famous painter, then that preference will not be met unless I actually become one. If taking the pill will merely result in me having a virtual experience of being a famous painter, then my preference has not been met (I will just not realize that it has not been met).
So, I think the question is really whether it is sometimes more rational to live in a fantasy world than the real one. And yes, I think that can often be more rational.
For the most part it is more efficient, in terms of securing happiness for yourself, to imagine you are doing things rather than actually to do them. Let's say that you quite like the idea of being president. Well, just imagine you are for a bit - engage in the fantasy. That won't be quite as good as the real thing - not unless you're incredibly good at imagining things - but it'll be a hell of a lot easier than actually going to the trouble of becoming the president. Imagining things is really easy and can often give one as much happiness, or near enough, as doing the real thing, but without the hassle of actually doing it.
But there are some things where it seems better to seek the real thing than simply to fantasize that you have it already, even when other things are equal. For example, to be in a real loving relationship is surely better than simply imagining you are, even if there is no experiential difference between the two.
You're confusing normative reasons with causal reasons. When it comes to 'being rational' we're talking about what it is rational 'to do'. That is, which actions are the rational ones. Reasons for action are known as 'normative reasons'. So the question of what is rational is one that concerns what we have normative reason to do, not what is the cause of what. Now, it cannot - as a conceptual matter - be rational to do something that you have overall normative reason not to do.
If I understand you correctly, you are asking how this can be if there can be two or more equally rational actions.
How is that inconsistent with what I have said, though? The claim that being rational involves doing what one has overall reason to do is entirely consistent with there being many occasions where one has as much reason to do one thing as another. It is just no more rational to do one than the other, when that's the case.
Should I have peas or carrots? Well, I have as much reason to go for one option as the other. So I am not irrational whichever I do.
Now, there is one form of rationality: doing what one has overall reason to do. Okay?
And the question is whether we have overall reason to take the blue pill, if the blue pill does x.
No. It. Can't. I don't think you know what the words you are using mean.
Do you accept that rationality concerns action? That is, it is only actions - whether the act of doing something or believing something - that can be rational? Or do you think, say, that sunsets can be rational and that bits of cheese can be?
Do you accept that 'rationality' concerns 'action'? That is, that only actions - construed broadly so that we include the 'act' of believing a thing - can be rational?
Or are you going to put it beyond doubt that you really don't know what the words you are using mean and you're just cobbling them together in ways that you hope will constitute something profound?
Acts and beliefs - and only acts and beliefs (and note, to-believe something is to be doing something - so 'believing' is a kind of action) - can be rational.
Note too that in the OP the questioner is askng whether it is 'rational' for us to do something, namely take a blue pill or a red pill.
Rationality is a feature of actions.
Only agents can perform actions.
And it essentially requires reason-responsiveness. That is, to qualify as an agent you need to be reason-responsive.
Why?
Because if you behave without your behaviour being a product of a reason-responsive process, then that's just behaviour and not 'action'.
See?
Actions and only actions are rational or irrational.
To behave 'rationally' is to behave in ways that you have overall normative reason to behave in.
A 'normative reason' is another name for a 'reason-to-do something'. That is, it's another name for a 'reason-for-action'.
Now, to get back to topic: the question is whether it is rational to take the blue pill. Another way to express the same question would be "do we have overall normative reason to take the blue pill?"
And the answer, unsurprisingly, is that 'it depends'. It depends for one thing on what exactly the blue pill does.
Back on topic, is taking the blue pill rational? I would say the blue pill is not rational, but it is possibly utilitarian. If the blue pill pays homage to Platonist and Cartesian traditions then it is not in the spirit of rationality to take it. The common spirit of rationality in these cases is to overcome illusions.
No, they're called conceptual truths. It's a conceptual truth that 'rationality' is only something an agent can exhibit.
Look, you don't really know what the words you're using mean, yes? For example: Quoting introbert
That's incoherent. So's this:
Quoting introbert
It's just a combination of words that you think sounds impressive, but actually makes no sense.
There's no such thing as 'normative reason'. There are normative reasons. You can have a normative reason to do something. But there can't just be 'normative reason' simpliciter.
Now, no such incoherence attends anything I am saying. That's because I know what I'm talking about.
Normative reasons are reasons-to-do things. That is, they are one and the same. A 'normative reason' is just fancy for 'a reason to do something'.
Only an agent can be rational. If you think that things that are not agents can be rational, then you're a crazy person. That is, if you think that 'the sun' can be rational, or that the colour green can be, then you're nuts. Yes? Can you see that it makes no sense to ask "is that sunset rational or not?"?
Take it from someone who knows: only agents and their actions can be rational.
An action is 'rational' when it is an action that the agent has reason-to-do. That is, to get technical, when they have a normative reason to do it.
And an action is fully rational when it is an action that the agent has overall reason-to-do (for there are different sorts of reason-to-do things and they can compete).
How can you get back on topic when you don't even know what the topic is? You don't know what you mean by ratonality, do you? And now you're at it again - you're throwing in big words in the hope that you're saying something meaningful. You're not.
"the blue pill is not rational, but it is possibly utilitarian". What does that mean? What are you on about? It's gibberish. Do you know what utilitarianism is? No, clearly. (It's a view about what it is rational to do! And it is not the blue pill that is rational, but the act of taking it. So it's just nonsense.
And we are not on a date so stop throwing in 'Platonist' and 'Cartesian' to sound clever. I know you haven't a clue what they mean. Say what you mean.
What you were saying was incoherent. It was not missing a single letter. For you didn't intend to say "a normative reason' and accidentally left off the 'a'. No, you didn't have a clue what you meant to say and so just stuck some words together. You didn't leave off the a. You had no idea it needed to be there for the sentence to make any sense at all. Correct?
Yes, and who are they?
If 10 of your dumb friends think that the mole on your arm is nothing to worry about, but one medical doctor thinks it looks suspect and you should get it checked out, are you a total idiot if you a) think the judgement of your friends trumps the judgement of the doctor or b) think the judgement of the doctor trumps your friends?
Now, you and I both know that you don't know what you're talking about. None of your sentences make sense. Nothing you say is getting by.
Distinguish for me the different meanings the word 'reason' can have. Let's see what you know.
No, it is because I keep calling you on your nonsense.
This:
Quoting introbert
doesn't begin to make sense.
And note that we once more have 'normative reason' and not 'a normative reason' (not that the addition of the 'a' would make the sentence any more coherent). So again, it isn't the case that you left off the a, rather you did not know that it needed it at all.
I think people should be called on their nonsense, don't you? At least in a philosophy forum they should. I mean, that's part of the point of philosophy. Anyone can just string big words together
Show your working. Explain why you think it makes no sense. Shall we go through it word by word?
So, this "John has normative reason to do x" makes sense.
This: Quoting introbert doesn't.
As you'd know if you knew what the words 'normative reason' denote. And you don't. So you don't know how to handle it.
There's no such thing as 'a rational normative reason'! Normative reasons are what make actions rational. Jesus.
Stop using words you don't understand.
I never used this combination of words.
That means you're presupposing that there are rational normative reasons - that the idea makes sense. Which it doesn't. Seems you know less about what you're saying than I thought!
When I say 'a' normative reason is rational I mean having a normative reason. Having is implied. It's like saying 'if a logical idea is rational' the 'having' is implied.
Oh really. And when I said "is are being rational is are" I meant "I'd like a packet of crisps, please".
Again: you don't know what you're talking about. You're using words before you know what they mean and writing gibberish. Stop wasting people's seeing juice with such stuff.
And what do you mean by those words? It too was nonsense. "For normative reason". You don't learn, do you? Is are doing normative are consequential transcendental epistemologies. Reason is the conjunction of friendly Humean supervenience relations that disambiguate quietly.
Rather than stringing words together and hoping the result makes sense, try understanding what you're talking about. That is, use little words - regular words - to say what you mean. What do you mean? Anything? Is there any coherent thought that you're trying to express with these linguistic burps?
Utter nonsense. First, you can't disagree with a normative reason. That's like thinking you can disagree with cheese. Do you disagree with cheese? You can 'have' a normative reason for doing or believing something. You can disagree with me, when I say that I believe I have a normative reason to do X. But you can't disagree with a normative reason. They're not little people.
Second, "which correspondingly is an argument about rationality". Well, putting aside that the 'which' there refers to some total garbage, it is not 'an argument about rationality'. An argument has premises (at least one) and a conclusion. Confused rubbish doesn't.
Quoting introbert
Culture's don't have beliefs. People - agents - do (or can do). Cultures don't. They too are not people. A collection of people is not a person.
Quoting introbert
Galileo was a person, not an example of rationality. A person may exhibit rationality. But a person cannot 'be' rationality.
And you can't defy normative reason. You can defy a normative reason. You can't defy normative reason.
Quoting introbert
Are you pulling sentence parts out of a hat?
Yes, I can disagree with a normative reason when it refers to a culturally influenced argument which is a belief about rationality.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes cultures do have beliefs, they don't have them the same way as people, but cultures have beliefs the same ways they have traditions, or practices. A culture is a cultivation of all the objects of a given people. The total cultivation 'has' different parts.
Quoting Bartricks
Not being very creative repeating the same non-argument over and over. A nit-picking point doesn't invalidate that Galileo is an example of opposing rationality.
No you can't, because the term 'normative reason' refers to a favoring relation, and one can't disagree with those for they do not have attitudes or beliefs with which one can be said to be disagreeing.
Now, if you're using the the term 'normative reason' to refer to whatever occurs to you at the time or at some other time, then you could disagree with a normative reason on those occasions when you're using it to refer to a person. But someone who uses the term in that way is a tedious idiot who doesn't know what he's talking about but isn't letting that stop him. So it depends....
Quoting introbert
No they don't. So, to be clear, you think the Chinese culture believes things? Does it also get upset? Can all the members of a culture - now and throughout its history - have believed not-x, yet the culture believe x?
Shall I answer for you? Let's see "A culture is belief has when normative transcendent Galileo confers disjunctively on it, by prescription". Is that about right?
The blue pill is you blew it
Didn't Morpheus mention something about control? Or power? Been a while.
These could be reasonable factors.
Anyway, the Oracle, as an intuitive program, recognized that the fight between the machines and humans was just going to continue in the same cycle, so she wanted to find a way forward where they could both coexist in a less combative state. A way for humans and machines to evolve their relationship. To do this, she had to risk everything to force both sides into making peace. The Architect and the machines lose control over Agent Smith, forcing Neo to make a deal they will accept if he gives the machine he's plugged into the ability to identify the Smith virus and eliminate it. The Oracle shows Neo the way by letting Smith turn her into another Smith. Neo must concede the fight so Smith will take him over, allowing the antivirus to take out Smith, and the Architect will then honor the peace agreement, as you see when he meets the Oracle in the park.
As for Agent Smith possibly being the the actual One, you could argue the Oracle lied to everyone including Neo so that she could use Smith to force the peaceful resolution. Neo was necessary because of his special status (somehow both connected to the machine world and humanity), and that needed to be transferred to Smith so he could become a virus.
A continuous thing that happens in The Matrix is how people feel that something is wrong with the world. Existence within the matrix gives the same sense of meaningless existence as can be experienced in the real world. This is common, but in The Matrix, it has a literary meaning.
However, the real kicker is not the red or blue pill; it's that our reality is not different from the one in The Matrix.
Are we not all connected to a "machine" that gets its lifeblood from our contemporary life? Our consumption, our marketed lifestyles, our constant attempts at creating unique identities?
Look around you and tell me if any object is genuinely not part of a manufactured life. I'm not talking about function, but rather how design and branding, the materialistic aesthetics, shapes, and forms program us into a hypnotized zombie state, believing our materialistic lifestyle is "the real world."
Baudrillard criticized The Matrix for not understanding his concept, while I think the whole trilogy better follows his ideas. The one thing that he pointed out is that we cannot "wake up" because we don't know what is real and what is a simulacra. Since we don't know and have become lost in this "desert of the real," we cannot wake up to anything else because nothing else exists.
So my question is this: if you knew you could live a long life in ignorance of how the world works; eating well, finding pleasure, and dying in wealth, would you do it? Or would you "take the red pill" and understand how a modern form of totalitarian control over the population has taken the form of an eldritch monster that has no master, a system like an algorithm that has been fine-tuned to continuously keep going with us as its cogs?
The main point I'm making is that you don't have to use The Matrix as an analogy. You can use our actual reality as an example, and the question becomes much more potent and scary.
An interesting take on The Matrix Trilogy. The two, Mr. Anderson, ultimately Neo, The One, and Agent Smith, later the Smith virus, were like positron (positive) and electron (negative) - polar opposites of each other. The Oracle (intuitive program as per Matrix lore) in collaboration with the Architect (reason incarnate), mother & father of The Matrix, it appears, had been planning this all along. They anticipated the Smith virus and so they needed Neo; Neo serves as a trap for Agent Smith (suicide-murder kinda deal).
Quoting TheMadMan
How could it even be possible to have one at the expense of the other??
Really, possibilities are endless.
I never said they should be mutually exclusive. I said they could be, and gave you a simple example.
So much for hedonism.
That's correct, which is to say maya (illusion) is the cause of suffering, and out goes the window the first noble truth - life (reality) is suffering. Samsara is not suffering, a wrong/distorted view of it is. That is what distinguishes the Buddha from a non-Buddha is drishti (view), the right one and the countless other wrong ones. Nirvana then is not about exiting samsara, but about understanding what it is. I met the Buddha, we all have (there are more molecules in a cup of water than there are cups in all the waters of the world), we just didn't recognize him. :cool:
:fire:
If this is said to a Buddhist, the response is said, sometimes, no, no accept what is inside also. 1) the processes of Buddhism and Buddhist practice and community through implicit messages do not treat the inside and outside the same, but further 2) Expressions of expectation and 'negative emotions' and to some degree even positive emotions are intentionally cut off and dampened both by practices and then by social pressures in every Buddhist social community I have come in contact with East and West.
Just observe can be claimed to be neutral, but actually there is an injunction to not express. To cut off the natural ----> expression process of emotions/expectations/desire.
So.......
Quoting Agent Smith.....yes, I met the Buddha, recognized him, but found him judgmental and dualist in a way that I dislike and that I don't think he quite notices. I have sympathy for his concerns and intentions. But ultimately I consider him part of the problem.
Blame it on Brahma who, as per legend, descended from heaven with a retinue of other gods, and begged the Buddha to turn the wheel of the dharma. Buddha, very reluctantly, did as asked and here we are. The Buddha is a problem, I concur - inter alia, he provides one more reason for us to hate each other.
The one outside the matrix, or the one you've known your whole life within it?
In my opinion, both are as real as one another. They both exist and both are a part of the whole reality as a simulation must exist in some larger set of conditions (external reality).
If a simulation mimics perfectly the physics, possibilities and outcomes of actual reality there is virtually (excuse the pun) no difference between the two. You have the same capabilities, the same autonomy to achieve or not achieve whatever you want in either case.
But if there is a clear difference - in sensation, feeling, behaviour or state of affairs (which is probably more likely) etc of the real world verses the matrix world, that is sufficient reason to warrant the consideration of what life may be like unplugged.
Our individual conscious awareness are all similar to simulations in that they are constructions of how to perceive and process the raw data of objective reality. If people have different beliefs, different body morphologies, differrment sexes, different abilities to see, feel, touch hear etc, for all intents and purposes their reality behaves differently, is reasoned/understood differently, has a different quality of meaning to others.
Just as a blind man does not experience the world the same way as able sighted people do. Describing something visual to them means little if they are blind from birth.
If everyone existed in my minds reality. It would be drastically different to their own. Some people may enjoy it, some people may hate it, and that likely reflects in who I woukd get along with if I spent time with them.
Well, isn't desire a, if not the, cause of suffering? :chin:
Remember the "desire" to shut down the limbic system is proportional to the intensity of suffering one experiences. If one hasn't felt extreme pain, you'll be ok with having a limbic system, experiencing but mediocre emotions.
Self hatred or self restraint? Hatred is an emotion/mood which is biased and has an opposite. Apathy, stillness or the eternal middle ground would be more apt to Buddhism - neither good nor bad, it is what it is.
As far as I know Buddhism tells one to always be conscious of where an emotion towards /or attachement to something comes from and recognise that it's transient and will pass. Both the good and bad ones.
And that if you dare to feel emotions to their fullest - in pursuit of love for example, you must be prepared for the mutual opposite that that will inevitably generate when love is lost.
You can't feel happiness without feeling sadness. You can't chase thrill without being chased by boredom. So they say allow both to pass through you without dictating your behaviours/ desires ans motivations. Feel them, but try not to cling onto them.
Easier said than done. Perhaps an untenable ideal. No one can prove it for sure.
I don't think so. No. And the suffering does not go away in Buddhism.
Quoting Agent SmithThat's cultural. I don't think that's universal at all. The difference between Italian and British mourners (as statistical tendencies with individual exceptions of course). Or white Protestant middle class culture, high church, vs. afroamerican culture when mourning celebrating, expressing anger or sexuality.
What they call clinging is, in my experience, merely feeling them.
It's a bit like how Big Pharma has been pathologizing grief and other emotions.
The time limit on healthy grief has been going down and people are encouraged to take pills earlier in the process of grief. Through a bunch of clinical jargon they've come round to trying to get us to see the natural evolution of grief as clinging.
I agree that there is certainly a conflict between business models and healthcare. One is trying to maximise profit and the other is trying to maximise well-being and often those two aims are at odds with one another.
The sad fact of this is that money is a very powerful shaper of these political and institutional dynamics, and its influence likely is impeaching on best medical practice.
However, all is not lost. Society has an excellent record of intense public outcry and backlash when any company, policy or industry pushes that little bit too far. We are also very innovative with alternative therapies.
And personal autonomy in medicine still has a core/fundamental rule over what doctors can insist you take. Grief would have to be quite extraordinary to be involuntarily medicated. Coersion is most frowned upon.
I think you're denying a truth that is staring you in the face any time you engage in Buddhist practices and/or engage in relations inside a Buddhist community.
So, what do we do now?
I could explain my long engagement with Buddhism and also go into a very complex explanation of what my spirituality is now, to try to show that you (like the Buddhists) are making assumptions that lead you both to assume only one possible way to alleviate suffering exists and that the problem child is emotions and desires.
But actually I'll just suggest you keep an open mind.
But noted: you think you know what phase I'm in and it's a phase you've transcended. It's like I've been called a teenager.
What is your practice of Buddhism like? How much do you meditate? Do you have any supervised meditation? I guess I am asking if you live by the beliefs you seem to be saying you believe in. How hypothetical is all this for you?
Here's what I see happened. Instead of responding to the points I made, you went ad hom. The insult was open. You're in a phase. (one that I, Agent Smith am not in or no longer am in) The ad hom is implicit, since instead of responding to the points I made you decided to place me as a person in a category. I must be wrong, due to some personal lack on my part.
There are points I raised that you have not responded to, and that they are not dependent on whether desire is the or the only cause of suffering.
So, for reasons unknown you decided to go personal. And here you are condescending to me, the person who is taking the position that emotions and desires are fine.
There's an irony in that. Perhaps you'll figure out that irony. Perhaps not.
And nice try as far as shifting the burden of proof. You're the one who brought up desire causing suffering as a point against the issues I have with Buddhism. You haven't demonstrated that or that it means the points I made were not correct.
Whatever my position on Buddhism is, I do know they've got discipline. You don't pass off your chores or the practice on others.
The irony extends.
I'm done with ya.
Desire is a cause of suffering. When you say it isn't then the onus probandi on you to demonstrate why not. As for evidence of the second noble truth, visit Wikipedia on dukkha and find out why this is a truth.
Pardon my simplistic (Therav?din?) interpretation I think Buddha teaches that attachment to impermanent 'relationships and things' as if they were not impermanent e.g. trying to hold on to smoke (i.e. m?y?) causes dukkha (i.e. frustration, distress, anxiety). Yeah, 'attachment is desire', but it's how one attaches, or desires, that causes dukkha, and not just "desire" itself; thus, the Buddha teaches the Noble Eightfold Path as exercises, more or less, for sustaining habits of aligning expectarions with reality to align letting-be with impermanence such that ego-desire (craving) transforms into nonego-desire (renouncing) and then trannsforms further into eco-desire (à la wu-wei), or as you've pointed out, Smith: understanding samsara. :fire:
:fire: :clap: :pray:
To tell you the truth, I quite like what bylaw is getting at. The Buddhist recommendation to end suffering by extinguishing desire seems to me a trivial solution, like morphine drips for everybody are in hedonism. Thus I second your motion - "how one attaches, or desires" - which you seem to relate to my view that samsara needs to be understood rather than transcended.
I know this Buddhist monk who likes the occasional drink and he always makes it a point to say (paraphrasing) "drink, enjoy, but do realize, it is empty (sunyata)" :lol:
O empty glass another round, barkeep. :pray: :sweat: :party:
:up: