/lit/ - Literature

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>>10753701
r/iamverysmart

>>10753701
I intuited the vertiginous question years before I discovered its precise formulation

>>10753729
Can you PLEASE go back there?

>>10753701

I thought that God might literally be a particle of some sort that exploded and duplicated itself creating all matter.

I thought everything was subjective and relative, but also that everything subjective was stupid, so I guess I thought everything was stupid.

I thought that everything could be reduced to cause and effect and that phenomenological stuff and any questioning of "why" the universe worked the way it did was retarded (for some reason I didn't realize the conflict with the everything is subjective thing and this).

I used to visualize complex fractal patterns and stuff whenever I pressed on my eyes.

>>10753736
go back where?

I remember getting really frustrated trying to explain qualia to my mom, or someone when I was 10ish

>>10753701
This is the board about books, kid. Philosophically think about that next time you wet your bed and you're waiting for it to air out

>>10753744
You know where.

>>10753701
Solipsism.

I remember sitting in class in grade 1 just knowing that no one else in the room was really conscious besides me.

>>10753754
Never been there. sounds like a cool place though. Do you like it there?

>>10753751
Sorry, I forgot to put a sentence in there sarcastically asking for book recommendations on child philosophy.

>>10753701
I realize what it means to die and it scared me to the point I started crying.

>>10753757
No, not particularly. But from what I've gleaned you would probably enjoy it. Have a nice day, friend!

>>10753766
thanks stranger! +1

>How come letters and numbers and shit exist but they don't really exist. Like you can't go outside and see a 5 walking around. So what even is 5?

>Is it really okay to kill deer? How would I feel about it if I was a deer? But if I was a deer, I wouldn't be me. What does a deer have in common with me? Does the idea of "if I was a deer" even make any sense?

>Why did Mom have to die? Well, I guess I already knew that anyone can die and God doesn't make exceptions for people just because they have kids who'll miss them. I guess God will just let anything happen.

I conceptualized the is-ought divide and un/falsifiable binary when I was 12 and developed a psychological hedonist view of the world before I ever read any philosophy or psychology. I was very disappointed to discover that they were all pre-established concepts

dfdsdsd

>>10753701
I remember getting incredibly frustrated while trying to conceptualize the idea of nothingness. I just couldn't understand why there would possibly be something rather than nothing, but when I'd try to "picture" nothing I would physically tense up and get incredibly uncomfortable.

>>10753755
This was also something I thought about
>How do I know anyone else really has feelings? They act like they do, but how I really know?

I thought about the nature of eternity in Christian heaven when I was 5. No one — neither parents nor pastors — could adequately explain how life eternal was not the most terrifying thing imaginable. I then became obsessed with reading the Book of Revelations, which greatly expanded my vocabulary (KJV) but also gave me nightmares. Then I became obsessed with the nature of dreams and prophecy. Then, I skipped a grade and became isolated from my peers.

>>10753740
>I thought everything was subjective and relative, but also that everything subjective was stupid, so I guess I thought everything was stupid.
The most patrician philosophy.

Trying to trick determinism, then figuring out even if I did, that trick may have itself been predetermined.

>>10753860

I know that feel

>>10753876
I sweated over this for fucking DAYS as a kid. I also decided that a machine that predicts the future was impossible because knowing what the future holds allows you to act in spite of it. That bugged the shit out of me

>>10753701
I told my mom I wouldn't mind not having ever existed (because, logically, I couldn't mind anything in that scenario) and my mom got scared and thought I was depressed. I just thought it was a nice thought at the time. It was autumn and I was sitting with her on a park bench, looking at the leaves, and thinking "this would still be here even if I wasn't" and feeling the bird songs and warmth move through me.

>>10753733
This makes me realize I misremembered my train of thought about the deer in >>10753833
It was really more like
>Sure sucks for deer that they get hunted by people. I sure am glad I was born a human and not a deer. But wait, WHY was I born a human and not a deer? Because if I was a deer, I wouldn't be me. Does the idea of "if I was a deer" even make any sense?

>>10753740
>I used to visualize complex fractal patterns and stuff whenever I pressed on my eyes
Me too, now im curious about why this happens

>>10753904
They're called phosphenes. The pressure directly stimulates your photoreceptive cells
I used to press on my eyes for like an hour every night when I was little

I went into puberty at 9, and only started talking at 3.5 years old. Most of my memories are of sadness/suffering/anger. I remember sitting in a window technically being "depressed" at age 6. (Not my earliest memory) Yet, I feel "connected" to that moment, as if I then were who I am now, and now am then. I thought of the future, how I wanted away from where I was. Always tomorrow. I'm still there in the past thinking of tomorrow.

>>10753908
>>10753904

>>10753915
>>10753908
>>10753904
>Experiences include a darkening of the visual field that moves against the rubbing, a diffuse colored patch that also moves against the rubbing, a scintillating and ever-changing and deforming light grid with occasional dark spots (like a crumpling fly-spotted flyscreen), and a sparse field of intense blue points of light. Pressure phosphenes can persist briefly after the rubbing stops and the eyes are opened, allowing the phosphenes to be seen on the visual scene. Hermann von Helmholtz and others have published drawings of their pressure phosphenes. One example of a pressure phosphene is demonstrated by gently pressing the side of one's eye and observing a colored ring of light on the opposite side, as detailed by Isaac Newton.

WHAT THE FUCK
Why is it so scary to read people perfectly describing this?? I've never even put words to this experience before

>>10753701
I realized something among the lines that there's no meaning with anything, started crying and asked my mother what the point of me being alive was. Unfortunately I don't remember her answer.

>>10753908
h o l y f u c k i n g s h i t

I remember being kept up at night from just imagining and realizing that my parents are gonna someday. Really made me cry hard. I was like 6 or 7 years old.

>>10753939
Gonna die someday

>>10753889
>I also decided that a machine that predicts the future was impossible because knowing what the future holds allows you to act in spite of it.
Nothing wrong with this. All that happened is the world is in a state where the machine was mistaken about the actual future.

>>10753955

>>10753701
I remember being 8 and despairing about the inevitability of time passing by and forgetting the people I loved (mainly mama)
I think that's around when my depression started

>>10753955
>All that happened is the world is in a state where the machine was mistaken about the actual future.
So it didn't exactly predict the future, did it, Aristotle?

>>10753740
>I used to visualize complex fractal patterns and stuff whenever I pressed on my eyes.
Shit, I did too. This is the first time I've noticed that doesn't happen anymore

>>10753993
It still does. Just keep rubbing in small circles and wait a bit. I guarantee you

>>10753986
Okay how about this: the idea that the machine COULD act in spite of the future he knows is faulty. If the machine actually know the future, then he couldn't act in spite of it. Therefore free will doesn't exist.

>>10753755
That's just autism.

Around 4-5 looking up at my smiling parents and realising I had no way of knowing if anyone else beside me was really conscious. If that were true, I thought, so many things would lose their menace. Even being jailed and morally condemned by non-people, as limiting in freedom as it was, wouldn’t have that same terror of being badly regarded by other people to it. Though arguably being locked up arbitrarily by automatons would be horrifying in its own way. Like being mistreated by computers.

I remember seeing the Wikipedia article on p-zombies when I was a little older, maybe 9. Felt a shiver run down my back. I developed a superstitious fear of the concept, as if thinking about it might make it true. Later, in my adolescence, I’d develop OCD.

>>10753701
When I was younger, maybe seven, I was playing a game with myself in my backyard which involved a rocket. As I was thinking about the rocket, I started thinking about motion. I started thinking about how movement actually worked. So I started thinking about time. I'm still not sure how tf it works.

>>10754021
What in the actual fuck are you talking about?
There are 3 possible conclusions:
1) the machine will never give a perfect prediction
2) the predictor gets caught in an infinite loop, constantly adjusting at the step where it calculates your reaction to actually reading the prediction itself
3) you must do whatever the prediction states regardless of subjective reaction

>>10754099
haha i should bring that to work and leave out on a table just to fuck with people

>>10754099
>There are 3 possible conclusions:
Yeah no shit retard. I stated one of these conclusions in my post. Can you guess which one?

>>10753701
i was a theocratic imperialist totalitarian with a dualist conception of mind

>All that happened is the world is in a state where the machine was mistaken about the actual future
>the idea that the machine COULD act in spite of the future he knows is faulty
Are you ESL? Because no fluent English speaker would read these sentences and understand what the fuck you are trying to say without a good helping of benefit of the doubt.

>>10754121
If you weren't autistic you would have read the statement "Okay how about this:" to mean "Okay, let me take back what I previously said and state something else." You must have a hard life, sorry.

>>10754133
both of the statements seemed to miss the point. It's a thought experiment about determinism; it's not supposed to have a right answer (or whatever that was you tried to offer). You can't use it to come to the conclusion:
>Therefore free will doesn't exist
Goddamn it triggers me how many people can't deal with thought experiments

>>10753701
anytime I thought of how our limbs work, my mind would freeze, as if I thought about something illegal

I also had a deep desire to kill myself just to see what death is like

>>10754152
>free will
it's literally nothing

>>10754152
>Goddamn it triggers me how many people can't deal with thought experiments
It's okay, you'll make it.

>>10753701
I sort of came to the conclusion of the heat death of the universe by myself one day. I just thought about how eventually every star would have to burn out and eventually everything would gravitate towards a center. Years later I brought up that idea to a friend and he told me it was already an idea a lot of scientists had.

>>10753701
>Stirred ice in a cup and wondered why it continued to spin after I stopped spinning it with my straw
>Thought about stabbing myself with scissors in the neck because I first entertained atheism as an actual possibility

>>10753701
I was disappointed to find casual determinism, or as I called it the 100 percent chance theory, wasn't original at all

>>10753740
You're freaking me out, that's so similar to my own experience; right down to the fractals. I can no longer experience that if I do it willingly, but if I get stoned and close my eyes they appear

>>10753701
Six year old me would've gotten along well with Zeno. Not even pseuding.
The arrow and achilles vs tortoise are both paradoxes I can specifically remember thinking of very similar scenarios too, and being unable to answer.

>>10753873
I remember my parents trying to console me about this saying that heaven would have everything good I could ever want, but what I was scared of was eternity, and that I cannot conceptually understand how I could be happy for eternity. I still feel I would become exhausted with existing eventually.

>>10754687
I'm not very familiar with Christian theology but I think the point is that you wouldn't get exhausted. You would be in a perfect state, incomprehensible by earthly standards.

>>10753701
I remember trying to explain to my mom that morality is relative to the individual. She tried to explain that there was a, heh... """God""" that decides what is and isn't moral. How quaint. It wasn't until I was 10 that I first picked up Max Stirner, how intrigued I was to find a kindred soul.

>>10753843
>I was very disappointed to discover that they were all pre-established concepts
>>10754546
>I was disappointed to find casual determinism, or as I called it the 100 percent chance theory, wasn't original at all
This is weird. Wouldn't your ideas be less likely to be true if a daydreaming child was the first person to ever think anything like them? I always felt vindicated when I found out there was a famous philosopher who thought the same as me.

>>10755163
>This is weird. Wouldn't your ideas be less likely to be true if a daydreaming child was the first person to ever think anything like them?
I was a pseud as a kid with big dreams of wowing the world with my fresh take. It was satisfying to know many people thought my theories were right but other than that it bugged me

>>10753755
This. But, I think most people learn the solipsistic worldview by themselves as a child sooner or later. It's a pretty basic thought.

>>10755179
>I was a pseud as a kid with big dreams of wowing the world with my fresh take.
this sentence is absolute art anon, you have wowd me with your take

>>10755188
th-th....
t-t-th-thhhh....
thhhhhhhhh-th-th....
th-thhank you....

>>10753701
I remember realizing very young that I WILL die one day.
I've never been mentally secure ever since. I feel like i'm avoiding IT.

>>10755198
that happened to me on shrooms once, it was like i felt like i was in a super slow 60 year long car wreck and some day i will finally hit the wall and die, it was fucked, i was only like maybe 16 or 17 but i just laid there in some chicks bed staring into space like "oohhh nooooo" in my mind, i try not to think about it, u triggered me fucker

>>10755198
i feel that I still haven't realized this because I have literally no fear of death. i was in the hospital once and the doctors thought I was dying, and I had no fear then, and Ive also had a gun pulled on me and same thing.

And normally I do feel fear like a normal person, it's just about death that I feel no fear at all. I can't even conceptualize it as something different than going to sleep

>>10755213
You're either retarded or enlightened.

>>10755213
WHEN I BUST MY GAT MOTHER FUCKERS TAKE DIRT NAPS

>>10755219
neither m8. It's just a kind of blind spot in my mind, the concept doesn't register. It occurred to me that it could be a defense mechanism because like I said I am normally quite emotional

I remember realizing that if you had no idea whether God existed or not you'd be better of gambling on the chance that he did since the worst thing that would happen would be death and nothing else instead of eternal suffering.

>>10755245
I thought that of that, but then I realized it was fucking stupid.

>>10755208
God I hate druggies.

>>10755278
you'll never truly know yourself until u dose on lsd holmes

>>10755213
>Ive also had a gun pulled on me and same thing
I've had nightmares of people pulling guns on me. Sometimes they would actually pull the trigger but I woke up in exasperation before the bullet reached me. The very thought this thing being pointed at me could kill me in an instant and it is completely outside my control TERRIFIES me. I've never had a gun pulled on me in real life and I hope it never happens.

>>10753764
I did too but then I realized everyone else dies too so my logic was "hey at least they're going with me so it's not like I'll be missing out on anything."

>>10755256
*tips fedora*

I remember being fascinated by the idea that everyone else in the world had a life that was probably more complex than mine.

I used to sometimes wonder what other people were doing when I was alone. What did my friend at school do when he went home? What was he doing right now, in this one moment that we both share? What's he thinking about? And did he ever wonder what I did? What did he think I was doing?

Those thoughts blew my mind, because I guess up until that point I never thought about how people existing in reality is different to how you temporarily perceive their existence in your mind while you are interacting with them.

I'm guessing this is also what took me off of the solipsism pill. Before those thoughts I kinda had the idea that things might stop existing the moment you stop perceiving them, sort of in the same way a videogame only loads in areas you're likely to see and doesn't load the inside of a building until you enter it. I didn't believe that to be true, but it was an uncomfortable thought that lingered in my mind.

Oh and there was that time about 8 years later when I was like 14-15. I developed really bad depression and anxiety, and started to freak out because I was sure other people could read my mind and knew all my secrets. Anxiety's still here, comes and like every other week. Fuck knows what all that is about though.

>>10755213
u sound like a hardcore badazz : O

>>10753904
This is how I used to pass time at church.

>>10753911
I also think of my past self and wonder what he would have thought of me

>>10755222
where the paper at

>>10755367
my past-self would probably think they way i'm livin' life is p rad, but my past-self was a fucking dumbass and a bit of an asshole so that doesnt give me a lot of comfort

so many Peterson fanboys itt

I thought about whether my blue was the same as your blue.

I remember watching at some industrial building for a long time and the longer I watched at it the more I grew fascinated with it's view. The shape of this building seemed to be strange, although I used to see it almost every day when I was a kid. I was asking myself: "why does this building have this odd shape?" and "who had built it like this?" and "why do I even watching at it?" and so on. It's like when you stare to much at words they start to lose meaning.

>>10753938
Wtf this looks exactly like it

>>10755408
ya i thought that cuz my eyes saw color slightly differently so like if i closed one eye my couch was blue af, then i close that one and open the other and now it's greenish, so i was like woah if my eyes are like other people might be seeing totally different shit, although what was probably happening was the light was hitting the fabric in a weird way and one of the eyes from its position just picked up more of it but i was a kid and dumb

>>10753701
i remember trying to bluff God into thinking I was going to do some trivial thing differently from how i actually intended to do it. i was probably like seven at the time, and have since learned the virtue of humility.

When I was nine, I got in a really bad accident, that my mom also died in. I was in a hospital for a couple months recovering. I could only move my arms. Within a couple weeks physical therapy began and I just wouldn't do it. I spent all day crying or vomiting up medicine. One night, I was lying there in bed, feeling bad, not wishing I was dead but wishing I was anywhere else, when I realized I couldn't be. This was the reality of my life. I was near paralyzed, I had to undergo incredibly painful therapy and disgusting medicine. Whether I wanted to or not, that is what was going to happen. I basically changed overnight, it freaked the doctors out.

Basically, I kinda invented stoicism at age nine.

>>10755451
I remember sitting in Bible study thinking God was just a big dumb idiot cause he'd forgive and forget about all my sins as soon as I confessed.

>>10755452
sorry to hear that bro, hope you're all good now

>>10755452
Goes to show how superficial stoicism is.

>>10755456
Eh, I don't usually tend to think of anything that's happened to me as too fucked up, just when I tell someone for the first time and they freak out.
>>10755470
It got me through hard times. It's better than endless navel gazing.

>>10755474
I wouldn't say that "to accept one's condititions" is basicly stoicism because it's philisophy is not as passive as you depict it.

>>10755455
What the fuck did thou just fucking say about me, thou little bitch? I will have thee know that I am the God of Heaven and Earth, I have been involved in numerous secret raids on Satan, and I have over 30000000000 confirmed kills. I am trained in divine warfare and I am the top sniper in the entire universe. Thou art nothing to me but just another infidel. I will wipe thee the fuck out with omnipotence the like of which hath never been seen before nor since on this Earth, mark thee well my fucking words. Thou thinkest thou can get away with saying that shit to me on the Internet? Think thee again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of angels across the world and thy IP is being traced right now, so thou hadst better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing thou callest thy life. Thou art fucking dead, child. I am everywhere, every time, and I can kill thee in an infinity of ways, and that be only with my bare hands. Not only have I perfect knowledge of unarmed combat, but I have access also to the entire arsenal of Heaven and I will use it to its full extent to wipe thy miserable ass off the face of the planet, thou little shit. If only thou could have known what holy retribution thy little “clever” comment was to bring down upon thee, maybe thou would have held thy fucking tongue. But thou could not, thou did not, and now thou art paying the price, thou God damned idiot. I will exact judgement all over thee and thou wilt perish in it. Thou art fucking dead, my child.

>>10753729
Please leave

I remember not believing in god, and being really bothered by it. But then I reconciled things by thinking of the universe as god's mind. I felt like everything was in harmony. That's the highest I've ever felt without drugs.

Don't believ that shit anymore tho.

>>10754155
Our limbs move because of muscles stretching and relaxing but we are not conscious of this. It feels like our limbs move through something like telekinesis.

I wasn't exactly a child, but when I was 13 or 14 I developed some really bad depersonalization and derealization brought on by anxiety and I was absolutely horrified by the realization that there was no way I could prove to myself that even my own memories were "real" since they no longer felt real. Still haven't entirely shaken it and I have my doubts about the existence of objective external reality but it doesn't really bother me any more

>>10753755
>Solipsism.
me2, at one point I entertained the idea that once I died I would be able to choose my next life, choose a story so to speak.

>>10753701
I remember when I was 5, my brother and I both had one of those inflatable plastic balls that you would see in Walmart stacked up several feet high within a flexible wired pen. We were playing around with them and at one point tried bouncing off them held flush to our chest, so that our whole bodies would bounce with them. His ball was smaller than mine (he was my younger brother), and when he tried it, the ball popped and basically caused him to belly-flop onto hard ground. He immediately started crying, and with purely prognostic motives I asked him if he was crying because he lost his toy ball, or because he was hurt. It was the latter reason, but it made me conscious that physical and emotional pain are two separate concepts, and for years after that I developed an odd pride complex over the fact that I only ever cried from emotional pain.

Around the same age, before my parents started raising me into Christianity, I used to watch these fluffy pollen spores come out of nowhere every spring (don't know what plant they came from) and wondered if one of them was the soul of my dead cocker spaniel Missy, wandering aimlessly to find a new life to start. I probably got the concept of souls from Looney Tunes or something, but I'm not sure what could have compelled me to believe in reincarnation.

How wrong everything is. How I know nothing of life and how little I want to know of it. How horrifying personhood is.

Even if religion were to be wrong, it's still a part of our identity and therefore shouldn't be discarded.

>>10756202

>>10755163
>This is weird. Wouldn't your ideas be less likely to be true if a daydreaming child was the first person to ever think anything like them? I always felt vindicated when I found out there was a famous philosopher who thought the same as me.
I was retarded, and I thought there was literally no chance the 100 percent chance theory was wrong

>>10755415
>why do I even watching at it?

>>10755735
>Don't believ that shit anymore tho.
>*tips fedora*

>>10755783
I used to stare at myself in the mirror (and I still do sometimes) and think "it's so strange that this is me... is this really me?" or something to that effect. Scary shit.

I wondered what would happen to my consciousness after I die. Would I wake up as a different person with a different body, with no memory of my previous self? It seemed inconceivable to me that "I" would sleep in darkness for all eternity... experience had to continue somewhere.

>>10753899
ah, how beautiful. you gave me goosebumps. thanks anon

>>10753904
nerv cells in the eye are still active. pressing onto the eye somehow activates them. if you concentrate enough and look at the emergin patterns you may find yoursil returning to childhood joys

>>10753929
now words have stolen your experience

>>10755208
todesangst. its a concept. you have to break through.

>>10755223
>It occurred to me that it could be a defense mechanism
i guess so

>>10755301
please, do not take any psychodelic drugs. ever!

>>10755367
once i had a dream, in it i encountered my younger self. he told me it would be ok if i spend my life musing about art and such. at the same time a felt "being both persons" young and old.

>>10753701
Determinism. I remember being 12 and working out that free will is a myth while in church.

>>10755455
na, he is just a nice guy

When I was about 4 I said to my mother, concerning the staff of Moses, that "sticks can't turn into snakes". I still maintain that belief but as a child I was completely devoid of philosophical insight. My entry was late and tumbling by the time I was almost adult.