Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I believe the chair I'm sitting on in real because I haven't toppled over and landed on my ass. Or, to gussy that up, concordance between my priors and ongoing sensory input.
You are correct that some beliefs are fundamentally unjustified by further reasoning, but those are far fewer in number than the beliefs that are contingent on more load bearing ones.
Someone might be a Communist not just because they believe in equality, but because they genuinely believed that it was a more economically productive regime. The numbers of those who weren't True Believers in the innate glory of communism fell drastically with the wall.
I have met, just today, someone who is convinced he's a deep cover MI5 agent and someone who believes their mother is alive and in urgent need of their help (despite being 95 years old themselves). My profession has me running into people who hold all kinds of deeply seated beliefs that can't be dispersed by abundant evidence. They're delusional, and usually legally detained by the time I see them.
Someone holding something to be true is often a terrible argument in favor of those beliefs being true.
While the person we're discussing isn't insane by DSM-5 criteria, that's mostly because his beliefs are benign enough that I presume he's a functioning member of society.
Maybe doing jumping jacks for an hour while blindfolded would lead to instant enlightenment. Doesn't seem dangerous if you take proper precautions. The experiment seems worth doing for a few months for the cardiovascular benefits.
As our rules gently suggest, it's good form to affirmatively produce evidence for your claims in proportion to how controversial or inflammatory they are. Semen retention is a kooky idea, and the bare minimum downsides, not getting laid or going on a date with Rosie Palm and her five sisters, requires quite a bit of justification.
You're sitting on something, but there is no such thing as a "chair". Luckily, this doesn't seem to matter. Communism seems to be positive associations with sharing. Even an animal can recognize somebody who is willing to share with them vs somebody who does not, and to dislike the latter in the same way that a communist would dislike a capitalist. So neither of these concepts exist, nor do they need to exist. There's also no need for logic and reasoning, unless we just assume that even animals are capable of reasoning, and that 'thinking' itself means something like 'to reason'.
If somebody stops masturbating and feels better as a result - it's true that they feel better, even if that doesn't make any sense. If one were to say "That's nonsense, they should go back to feeling bad", then that would imply that reality has to conform to our theory, which is backwards. If our theories of reality does not explain reality, then our theory needs to update.
If there was 100s of people online who had tried this and had positive effects (by which I mean ones which sound like enlightenment, and not just cardiovascular benefits), I'd actually give it a go.
When I watch less porn, I personally feel better in general. Here, feeling better is reality (something true to me), but any explanation I come up with will be guesswork, and therefore weaker than my experiences. Saying "It's probably because of a spike in testosterone" will make me look sane again, but I think it's weaker evidence than raw experience since it comes after. That said, experiencing that a family member needs your help is not solid evidence that they need your help, but the experience is just as real as if somebody did need your help.
The rules are useful, but the more pragmatic you get, the less true any statement is. If you keep going you will find that the world is absurd, that you can't know anything, that every model is wrong, and so on (you're probably even familiar with these ideas). But how can I say for certain that nothing can be said? I can only arrive at a contradiction and cancel out everything, which brings me to zero/nothingness.
Anyway, I think that, as you become enlightened, you stop caring about things like proof. Just like you might cure anxiety and find that you don't really care what philosophers are saying about the meaning of life, or that you might fall in love and have no time to waste on people trying to explain to you how love is just chemicals and therefore not real. Finally, I don't think coffee enjoyer's comment provided evidence or proof (though I don't remember exactly). It was just a likable comment for human reasons?
Actually, I once almost screwed myself over with my mental models. My mood got really good, and then I remembered that I had no reason to feel good, but before that made me stop, I luckily recognized that I didn't need a reason to feel good. I also realized that if you don't need a reason, the reason can never be taken away from you, meaning you've "won". You won't need validation ever again. And since at least one person can live without needing a reason, it proves that the idea that we need reasons to live is wrong, that it's a fabricated limitation, it only exists in the territory and not in the map. The problem is the idea that there is a problem. If living required meaning, then life must be meaningful already, or else we wouldn't be alive to ponder the meaning of existence. Of course, I still argue and use logic even now, but the sheer amount of troubles which goes away when you think like this is so incredible that I, a former "intellectual", dare to throw it away and to call former self silly for taking concepts like truth seriously. (I do get your point though)
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