Few options that don’t necessarily even require a whole lot of capital (and I’m already doing one of these):

• Work in finance (and stay educated to be good at it), donate as much as possible to well researched charities.

• Work in healthcare, volunteer your services where they’d be otherwise unavailable.

• Build a community with certain values and offer life-enhancing (basically odd jobs) services freely to people outside the community. Or just offer community, just be transparent about the rules and expectations (don’t be a cult).

If you want to be friends with people interested in certain stuff, it’s a good idea to know about that stuff.

Pop culture is easy and common, meaning you’ll increase the amount of people available to make friends with.

I know a little about a lot of things to the point that I can easily make pleasant, inconsequential conversation with most people as I somehow learned small talking growing up but being an introvert, I’m not particularly interested in making friends with anyone who isn’t into the stuff I really care about.

Certainly we must rely on experience to learn anything about matter so from an epistemological point of view it is the foundation of knowledge but I do think we can discover a deeper foundation for reality through science.

There’s the crux of it. Problem is that science is the product of the human mind. Experience isn’t just the foundation of knowledge, it has to be the foundation of everything because to say anything about anything, nonsense or science, you need experience first. This includes any idea about what matter is or isn’t. We must first have an experience, and then we conceptualize it in some way - and then we try to desperately conceptualize it in a way that makes sense in the context of our previous conceptualizations. Because ironically, while some people insist on matter being prior, without realizing it they often make the human mind equally prior (“thoughts ARE the thing itself”). Bring them the map-territory problem and they get it, but it’s often hard to get them to apply the same idea onto their own mind.

To be sure, science is a great and reliable way to make predictions. However, ultimate reality will always be grander than anything the mind can capture, and as such, science will never be able to distill it either. That said, one hopes, eventually science will meet this realization (and indeed some scientists have). To put it very shortly, as long as one insists on a logical continuum, one can keep asking “and what’s beyond that” as logic necessarily requires a continuum of values to function. Foundation on which logic operates though, must be beyond what can be captured with logic.

You know, I feel like I see a surprising amount of people on Lemmy who have stepped out of the basic materialistic view. It’s encouraging but also a bit bizarre. There seems to be a weird subsection of people who are able enough computer nerds to not be scared by the interface here, but have actually looked into some pretty deep philosophical stuff (though some definitely have just done enough psychedelics). I include myself in the weird subsection of course but I really didn’t expect to see as many others here as I have.

Assuming people are actually able and willing to recognize when they start hiding in circular reasoning (or other logical fallacies but by experience, begging the question is most common):

Argument about matter being the foundation of reality. It’s not. And I’d start by questioning your understanding of the word “matter”.

Look into Waking Up app. Listen to the talks on psychedelics.

Makes a fun sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dsvj5yoH9c

Can you step out of consciousness and prove there’s a reality outside it? Or do you just keep pointing to an extracted brain existing inside consciousness and insist that it somehow proves that matter is prior?

Sam Harris talks about this in the Waking up book. Highly recommend giving it some thought.

What a wonderful day to have eyes

The materialists hate this one trick.

I literally cannot continue this conversation before we understand each other on the nature of wanting. Or like, I can… but we’d just keep going over the same things, reducing us both to just practicing intellectual wankery. And I have a feeling you have more self-respect than that, if you think that my argumentation is “unbecoming of an intellectual”.

And in any case we’ve been at this for 4 (very delighful) hours but this body really wants a different activity for now.

Pity, I had so much fun with this discussion. For that I thank you. Lemme know if you want to return to it later.

I’m not going to get into a discussion about justice with you before you explain what is an acceptable want and how it differs from a want in a controller population.

“As to your second question, I’m afraid I’ll need for you to give me an example of something independent of biological, societal or cultural factors before I can answer that with any candor.”

The fact that you ask this from me specifically highlights the problem in your arguments. It is your view that necessitates the existence of something independent of biological, societal or cultural factors. I don’t think such a thing exists. I don’t think it’s possible to have a want independent of imposition. However when you say that “the notion of want is not applicable to a controlled population” as an argument against me positing that the guy in the comic is doing what he wants, implies that in your mind there is a “pure” want, independent of any imposition. You then refer to the rat as an example of consent, implying that a biological drive to survive is an example of a pure want. If you wish to make the case that a biological want is an example of a pure want, then I can say that the guy in the comic is following his biological drive to survive over any personal opinions on wearing pants - meaning a want is applicable to a controlled population.

How do you defend applying human idea of consent to a rat, but very conveniently for your own argument, refuse to apply oppressor to the hawk?

Simply restating a human-centric definition of consent doesn’t address the lack of consistency in your position.

The rat is neither consenting nor not consenting. It’s following a biological drive to survive. “Consent” remains a human construction. The rat isn’t arguing that it “should” not be consumed. And if we want the cycle of life to continue, some things must be consumed. Furthermore, if you want to say that the rat is displaying consent in nature, then you must also accept that it is being “oppressed” by the hawk. Meaning the rat is a “controlled population”, meaning as per you own words “The notion of want is not applicable to a controlled population.” And if you want to say that he hawk isn’t oppressing in the same way as a human oppresses another, then how is the notion of consent allowed for the rat? Consent requires agency.

Can you point out where in nature does consent exist independent of human minds? And can humans want anything independent of biological, societal or cultural factors?

Consent is also just a belief some people want to have. I’m not saying that it’s a bad belief to have, I’m in full support of it but that does NOT give me some divine right to impose the belief of it on others. We’re talking about wants, and that necessarily leads to a discussion on whose wants matter more. I am of the opinion that nobody’s wants are inherently (as in, outside human constructed narratives, cultures, norms) more valuable than those of others. I happen to value human well-being and respecting consent logically follows from that. However, because of exactly that I cannot impose consent on those who don’t believe in it. As such, I can only defend myself and others who agree with me against those who would try to impose their beliefs on me but I cannot go out and force them to obey me. This necessarily leads to the situation where I HAVE to accept certain results that may be undesirable in a realistic scenario. Including death in the hands of those that would oppress me. And that’s on me to do for myself - but that is also freedom for me to live according to my ideals without imposing them on others, Meaning, I accept that I can’t have the cake if I want to eat it. IT IS NOT EASY but it is what I have realistic power over.