EPT[Philosophy] Profound prisoner's dilemma. - Page 12
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
On July 20 2010 03:17 XeliN wrote: The cell is merely a self-projection, you are the jailed and the jailer, the mage is merely fear manifested and the lever represents the divide, the means, the moment by which you ultimately free yourself from the shackles of the self and coerced conformity and acceptance. The identical is merely an illusion, his reality does not matter, what matters is that it is believed, or ultimately that it is overcome. Am I playing right  ?Posts like this are why I made the topic. I said that it's a multifaceted dilemma, but it's another thing to see it for yourself. There is immense value in different points of view. Thanks a lot. | ||
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XeliN
United Kingdom1755 Posts
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gmsts
England61 Posts
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semantics
10040 Posts
On July 20 2010 01:42 PJA wrote: So the point of philosophy is to analyze an incoherent situation and make up some more rambling bullshit to "solve" it? What chair? | ||
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zulu_nation8
China26351 Posts
On July 20 2010 02:06 RhaegarBeast wrote: Zulu... Oh, I just think it's a great metaphor for life - say you can see the mage as the unknown force that keeps you in this world. The other side is what lies beyond your own experience. The dilemma is that you never have sufficient knowledge of the other side to predict what's best for any of you, but you must still make choices and those choices define you as a person. As long as you resist making choices, you're just a puppet of the unknown force (the mage). Everything you do comes from outside pressure. Definitely no free will there and hardly any life either. But slowly the pressure causes people to change and the bigger the pressure the bigger the change. Eventually the puppet makes a choice by itself, because it just can't take it anymore and it is suddenly alive. I like how they put it in "V for Vendetta". You become an idea and ideas are bulletproof. I also suspect that In the end the intention that you hold at all times will eventually manifest.Why do I believe that? It's difficult to explain. It's just that everything is connected. There is no vacuum in the world.Everything counts. In the end it's not all about whether you attack or defend or suicide or sacrifice. There is never sufficient information to judge what those choices will bring you if you're uncertain about what you want to accomplish. What matters ultimately is who you want to be and what ideal you want to manifest in the world. So leave the rest to the mage! If you're still uncertain why the mage is such a sadistic bastard - here is the explanation. Fear exists to bend people's will. Ultimate fear binds a person completely, but as I said - diamonds are made under incredible pressure. When torn between 2 impossibly bad choices one has no choice but to outgrow them. "Only when you've lost everything are you free to do anything." In the end the mage is not really evil. It's just necessity - weaknesses are always exploited, but one can't take away something without giving up something else in return. Sooner or later the boy ceases to exist and the man is left in his place. Is this so scary? I don't think so now that I'm no longer a boy. Similarly the prisoners have to shed their old selves to embrace new ones. And that's all folks. I'm done for now. Flame me as much as you want, but understand that I just wanted to share my most precious insight with you. Don't be too ungrateful. And last, but not least - what I love about this dilemma is that there are infinitely many roads that you can walk to arrive at a new solution. That's why I thought it would make for a meaningful discussion. It seems I was wrong. I assume you are talking about example #1 in which the lever kills yourself but frees the other prisoner. If so then the metaphor paints a rather pessimistic picture of life. The prisoner's only justification for living his current life is in hope of another existence free of pain and struggle. The path to the better life however is beyond the prisoner's control, so essentially the prisoner is doomed to a tortured existence with no reasonable hope for a better alternative than death. In this respect your metaphor is even more pessimistic than the Christian doctrine which agrees that this life is only worth living for another better life (afterlife), but there is hope of salvation for everyone through morality in this life. Your example also illustrates much like existentialism a life where whatever choice we make regarding our existence is a forced, burdening, insufferable decision that carries the weight of our past and present, of all mankind (blah blah sartre stuff). The choice needs to be forced out of us instead of carried out on our own inclination, and that our best wished state is to not have to make any choices at all. From these two parts I can only say I disagree with your perspective. You describe life as just so slightly better than death, with death undesirable I assume because it is unknown; but to the prisoner freedom is also unknown, and his life seems to be only for freedom and nothing else. Judging this life to be unworthy in itself shows extreme fatigue. But if you need justification, I can't think of anything more depressing than living for another life. In your metaphor for life you actually make choosing between living and dying a dilemma, something only an extreme pessimist can come up with. The perspective with which you approach choice makes creativity seem like the most unnatural and burdensome quality of all when it's in fact the exact opposite. I agree with your metaphor that any choice we make defines us forever, even aside from choosing between life and death. However I don't agree the decision has to be forced out until someone grows balls to choose for himself. Many cultures actually take pleasure in creating their myths. There's no anxiety or angst involved in carrying out the most basic task of human life. The prisoner should embrace his existence. He also was never a prisoner in the first place. | ||
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
On July 20 2010 03:44 gmsts wrote: Seems very simple really there is no other solution than to pull the lever. As not taking action and living in the torment of a cell is equivalent to waiting to die (ie no purpose to life). Yes, but death is the biggest mystery of all, the great unknown. It's akin to choosing random and that's not such a bad thing now isn't it? I hold that this route is also a valid choice. | ||
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BottleAbuser
Korea (South)1888 Posts
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semantics
10040 Posts
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
Death can be transformed from the scary nothingness into the greatest adventure. Endless suffering creates endless power to gain whatever you want. No one can take away anything from you without giving you something in return directly or indirectly (for example a third person might make things right by taking advantage of your enemy while he's busy exploiting you.). Finally, I've just recently come to believe that in the end our dreams do come true. It's just... the servers are very laggy at this time of the century. | ||
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
On July 20 2010 04:01 BottleAbuser wrote: It's true that once we experience death, we cannot think about the experience and remember it, and therefore we cannot "know" death. However, we're pretty fucking sure that when your brain goes, you're gone. It's not unknown. I believe this is one of the greatest fallacies of our civilization. No offense of course; it's just my opinion on the matter and it's quite a foggy matter indeed. Linking the specific structure "brain" with the phenomenon of existence seems rather weird. In fact the closer philosophers are getting to anything resembling a solution, the more they're opening up to the possibility of panpsychism and the like - everything is conscious, just in very different ways. When one structure falls to pieces, our persona will remain stuck behind in space-time, but I believe that we never truly cease to exist. Reincarnation seems almost inevitable to me if conservation of energy holds and consciousness is a universal phenomenon. But like I said, this is just an opinion; i'm way over my head here. | ||
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zulu_nation8
China26351 Posts
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
On July 20 2010 04:04 semantics wrote: To think about life after death is a waste of time as you cannot prove anything, and it assumes something happens after death that gives us meaning. It's not unknown when you die you die end of story until you can prove other wise without hearsay i'll stick to my guns on how we think the universe works. How did you learn what dying means? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_immortality Take a look at that please. It's hard science. | ||
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catamorphist
United States297 Posts
On July 20 2010 04:05 RhaegarBeast wrote: I believe this is one of the greatest fallacies of our civilization. No offense of course; it's just my opinion on the matter and it's quite a foggy matter indeed. Linking the specific structure "brain" with the phenomenon of existence seems rather weird. In fact the closer philosophers are getting to anything resembling a solution, the more they're opening up to the possibility of panpsychism and the like - everything is conscious, just in very different ways. When one structure falls to pieces, our persona will remain stuck behind in space-time, but I believe that we never truly cease to exist. Reincarnation seems almost inevitable to me if conservation of energy holds and consciousness is a universal phenomenon. But like I said, this is just an opinion; i'm way over my head here. That's a really bizarre statement. Why is it weird? It doesn't seem weird to me. If you don't think that our mind comes from the activity of our brain, then what alternative are you suggesting? There's plenty of scientific evidence that our brain is the seat of our thoughts; we can perceive internal changes in people's mental state by looking at fMRIs, and people's personality and mental ability is drastically affected by changing the brain, either chemically or through injury and disease. "Our persona will remain stuck behind in space-time" are fuzzy words that don't seem to actually mean anything. I have no idea what "persona" is supposed to be, and I wonder how you think it's "in space-time" if it's not part of our physical body. | ||
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Cerion
213 Posts
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
On July 20 2010 04:12 zulu_nation8 wrote: Well I'm trying to stress that the choice between life and death is not a contest, living should win by default every time. I can see why you (not you personally but the author of the dilemma) may think it's close when living is compared to suffering in an unknown prison for an indefinite time. I really think it's not. When you choose to pull the lever no one is being freed, it is not an equal trade off. The immediate payoffs of all choices are different (unless we look to infinity in which case it's probably a perfect cycle) , that's true. But I believe our fear of the unknown is biasing our views in favor of the good old suck. When the good old sucks, change is the right answer. If the only way to change is to end the current existence, weeeeell... Why not? | ||
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
On July 20 2010 04:17 Cerion wrote: If you believe the jailors will let you go when you pull the lever (a pretty big if), pull the lever. The jailors have all the power in this situation and thus the ultimate moral responsibility for the fate of all prisoners involved. I believe one of the morals of the story is that you can never be truly cornered. The more they take from you, the less you have to lose, the stronger you become. | ||
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
The brain... How can the brain exist if it's not perceived by anyone or itself. It can't. So therefore it either perceives itself and this is what consciousness means - perceiving oneself or we get to an unsolvable paradox. All consciousness is basically perceiving oneself. I'm quite certain of this. I expect a lot of flames too. The part about space-time and personas is valid. The world is not made out of quarks only. It's made of stories. How so? Well, everything is interconnected and the complexity of it all gives rise to incredible, never-ending stories. Just like the one we're living right now. | ||
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semantics
10040 Posts
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RhaegarBeast
Bulgaria113 Posts
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