10 KiB
Universal Love, Said The Cactus Person
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Author: u/traverseda With dread but cautious optimism*
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URL: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-the-cactus-person/
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Score: 43
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Created: 2016-05-23T09:03:29
Post:
Comments:
u/Jiro_T [+8] (11 hours later)
I responded to that when it was originally posted.
Here you have a group of transcendent beings who look similar to fakes, and deliberately refuse to answer in such a way as to make themselves look exactly like fakes.
It's sort of like "what if creationism is true, but God makes the fossils look exactly as they would have if creationism is false and evolution is true". Only when it comes to mysticism and religion do believers have the nerve to say "well, it looks just like a fake, but you should believe it anyway".
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+11] (13 hours later)
This would only speak lowly of the beings' intelligence if they have some utility function that would suggest they demonstrate their existence.
u/PeridexisErrant [+11] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (16 hours later)
utility function
GET OUT OF THE CAR
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+2] (17 hours later)
Precisely.
u/ZeroNihilist [+7] (51 minutes later)
The correspondences between this and Unsong (by the same author) are—what's that phrase?—"just a coincidence because everything is always a coincidence".
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+1] (3 hours later)
Registering my intense disappointment that someone else used this line after I thought of it but before I actually used it. Oh well, the wages of being slow are being thought unoriginal, I suppose.
u/ZeroNihilist [+5] (5 hours later)
If I had a dollar for every time that happened to me... well I'd probably figure out how to use that to generate money, but I'd have at least $50 before any shenanigans.
u/GaBeRockKing [+7] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (14 hours later)
But wouldn't it give you a perverse incentive to think only the most unoriginal thoughts, while frantically clicking through youtube comments? Be careful of what you wish for...
u/psychothumbs [+7] (14 hours later)
I re-read this post and then did DMT, and I think it caused my DMT-entity hallucinations to become self-aware.
u/Roxolan [+8] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (a day later)
How did they feel about dying once the DMT wears off?
u/psychothumbs [+10] (2 days later)
They were not happy about it once they realized it was going to happen. Before that they were a little smug about having better access to my brain than I did, so I was thinking to myself "relax, they'll go away when it wears off" and they were like "whaaaat?"
u/thecommexokid [+4] (14 hours later)
The very first comment on this post asks the question
Obviously this is an allegoric metaphor, but I don’t fully understand it. Perhaps someone can elaborate on what it means in more literal terms?
and then there is a whole long nested-comment-tree of responses. Many of these responses continue the GET OUT OF THE CAR metaphor, which is somewhat frustrating because continuing to speak in terms of a metaphor is not a very useful response to someone asking the question "can you please explain this metaphor to me?" Anyhow, my point is, I don't see anyone who actually answers the question. So I'd like to ask it again: What the fuck is this story about?
u/thecommexokid [+6] (14 hours later)
...Well, since I am complaining that the last time this question was asked, none of the answers met with my satisfaction, maybe I should ask some more specific questions. Let's start with
But there are paths you cannot travel, because there are no roads to them, and you long to run through the forest, or swim in the river, or climb the high mountains. A line of prophets who have come before you tell you that the secret to these forbidden mysteries is an ancient and terrible skill called GETTING OUT OF THE CAR, and you resolve to learn this skill.
What are the pieces of this metaphor meant to correspond to, in DMT-hallucination-land? I realize that it's somewhat futile to ask what GETTING OUT OF THE CAR in this metaphor is meant to refer to; the whole point is that I wouldn't understand what it refers to. (Though if anyone wants to try please go ahead.) But what is the equivalent of the "paths you cannot travel"?
u/Fredlage [+12] (15 hours later)
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that, in this metaphor, the car is your body and the driver is your soul. The DMT-entity is telling him that his material world with scientific proof and all is just what he sees through the windshield (his physical senses), but there are places where the car (his body) cannot go, but his soul could. And so on. In this case, getting out of the car is kind of what hallucination-land is, with your mind/soul going somewhere your body couldn't.
Anyone feel free to correct me if I'm too far off the mark.
u/Jiro_T [+6] (2 days later)
Scientific proof isn't just something we came up with to be difficult. It's something we came up with for a reason--it's the only good way to tell the difference between things we're imagining and things that are actually there.
And the protagonist could claim he doesn't care whether something is actually there, but he'd probably be lying.
u/Fredlage [+6] (2 days later)
Sure. I don't disagree with the protagonist wanting some scientific proof, I was just interpreting that to be the Bat's argument.
u/earnestadmission [+3] Singular "they" user (2 days later)
One interpretation (certainly not definitive) is:
The car is your conscious mind. The road is your body, and the various places that you drive are physical experiences. The story rests on an identity separate from continuity of thought, so we need to talk about "you" (qua agent or person) versus "you" (qua personality and memories). The story insists that you qua agent is the more fundamental metric of identity.
In the story, a person has used their body to imbibe DMT, a psychadelic drug. The person then converses with a hallucinatory cactus and a bat of multiple identities, pressing the hallucinations for the proper factorization of a large number. This is implied to be a test for the objective existence of the hallucinations (especially as having access to knowledge or power beyond the chemically stimulated brain of the drug user).
The story equates chemically changing the protagonist's mental state with driving to the top of a mountain to ask how to get out of the car. The road has taken the car to a scenic vista on top of the mountain. Similarly, the protagonist's physical body has taken the mind to an exotic state. But, the protagonist is still trying to use conscious thought, even in this exotic mental state. Thus, the protagonist qua agent is refusing to get out of the car (i.e. abandon conscious thought or logic).
The more coherent of the hallucinations proposes the argument that even providing evidence (by factoring the protagonist's very large number) will not help the protagonist to achieve their goals. Specifically, using the vantage point outside of conscious thought ("outside the car") to improve the functioning of conscious thought ("inside the car") will not help the agent to abandon conscious thought.
The story concludes with the protagonist falling out of the hallucinatory state. However, the characters remain, and appear to have successfully factored the very large number.
The context of the story relies on a long tradition that distinguishes the self from the mind. Even in western thought, there is a divide between experience and the memory of experience. The book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance follows a similar line or inquiry while discussing various aesthetic and metaphysical questions since the foundation of philosophy (Socrates / Plato).
Now, it's worth saying that patience with these ideas will vary across and within populations. But I am curious about why/how your parsing of the analogy was different than mine. Is the Zen idea of (ill-defined) "experience outside of conscious thought" something that you have run across before?
TL/DR: "Get out of the car" == adopt a non-cognitive experiential framework.
Edit to add: "Paths you cannot travel" are experiences that cannot be had by the conscious mind. If you've read Godel Escher Bach, you might think of these paths as true theorems that cannot be derived by the set of axioms your conscious mind has adopted.
u/narfanator [+2] (8 hours later)
A) What's your experience with psychedelics?
b) https://www.erowid.org/columns/teafaerie/
More specifically, ah... This one is good: https://www.erowid.org/columns/teafaerie/2014/12/ although, click around, there are others.
PS - The getting out of the car metaphor is actually pretty good, I think. Not that I've gotten out of the car, so I really couldn't say, but, well, let's just say I'll get back to you in a week or two?
u/narfanator [+1] (14 days later)
I don't think I managed to get out of the car, but I do think I managed to roll down the window, at least.
Near as I can tell, it's an orthogonal action. If you could take the cross-product of everything you've already done, the action you need to take is in that new direction. By definition, anything you've already done is not Getting Out Of The Car.
Also, I got a tarot reading (I did Science! on it, actually) which was suprisingly helpful, advised me to meditate, and so I've been doing that with I think the effect of greater energy / verve / happiness. (The tarot reading basically said "You're exhausting yourself (you know why/how), so stop that, and start meditating.")
u/Green0Photon [+2] Student in Cyoria, Minmay, and Ranvar (3 hours later)
"Transcendental Joy!"
u/jesyspa [+2] (a day later)
I found it mildly disconcerting that in Unsong, people said "Transcendent Joy".
u/Green0Photon [+1] Student in Cyoria, Minmay, and Ranvar (a day later)
Transcendent Joy!
u/Jello_Raptor [+2] The Last Tool User (5 hours later)
"Universal Love!"