Sports writer kills himself, leaves behind website describing how and why

Famm_sl said:

So do you think he's living a more fulfilling existence prone and comatose developing bedsores while his brain is stimulated to simulate being a rich actor? If this was a choice right now, but you had to eternally give up your physical body and live the next 20 years as a brain in a jar, would you take that choice? We will put your wife and kid in jars too, all three of you can share experiences simultaneously. You'll never physically touch them again, but you can hug all you wish via electrode stimulation. Can I sign you up?

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Parts of the Matrix (the original, not the crappy sequels) really are a good commentary for the masses to grasp, on some level, the human condition and what it really meansto bea human being.

The answer for me, of course, is absolutely not. I'm sure hodj will squirm, go full cognitive dissonance and say no too.

Famm_sl said:

So do you think he's living a more fulfilling existence prone and comatose developing bedsores while his brain is stimulated to simulate being a rich actor? If this was a choice right now, but you had to eternally give up your physical body and live the next 20 years as a brain in a jar, would you take that choice? We will put your wife and kid in jars too, all three of you can share experiences simultaneously. You'll never physically touch them again, but you can hug all you wish via electrode stimulation. Can I sign you up?

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If it's a perfect simulation of reality within the jar, to the point that the electrical signals to your brain (By whichever sensory path they might take) are perfectly simulated, then it's effectively the same thing as the human body interacting with it's physical reality. You have a bunch of electrical impulses dictating what you perceive is there and is not. And from what we saw in the movie, the Matrix is an absolutely perfect simulation--the reason humans "rejected" it was because of our free will, and the satisfaction of choice.

Which brings us back. If you gave me a choice to live in a cold world, with gruel and dirty water, with no chance of happiness, vs putting my brain in a jar and letting me live in a perfectly simulated reality? I'd certainly take the alternate reality. (IF humans were running it.) Again, though, this is getting into metaphysical interpretations of what is "real", and a simulation as advanced as the Matrix would be real enough that if you weren't part of some glitch, you'd never know.

Long and short, your reality, is predicated on how your brain interprets signals brought to it by sensory organs. Those signals are reality, for you. In a jar or in your skull, it doesn't matter as long the signals are the same and the rules of the world match.

hodj_sl said:

Well they didn't develop bedsores because they were in the jelly womb stuff, but I'd say if he was a real person that his subjective opinion of whether his existence was truly fulfilling would be the criteria by which I would judge his fulfillment levels and that would be entirely up to the individual. I'm sure some people would love it, and others would hate it, much like some people like football and hunting and other people like video games and dungeons and dragons

I would definitely be down for uploading my consciousness into a computer though.

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Well we will get you right into guild navigation trials immediately sir. I'm sure your wife and child will appreciate the devotion to the Imperium.

hodj_sl said:

I'm completely on board with this idea, actually. Let's do it.

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There is a lot of romantic BS up in here bro. These fools rejecting the singularity will need to be crushed with our super robot bodies under the banner of the enlightenment.

Use these, much easier. Won't have to worry about oiling your cybernetic rocket launcher arm.

Lithose_sl said:

And from what we saw in the movie, the Matrix is an absolutely perfect simulation--the reason humans "rejected" it was because of our free will, and the satisfaction of choice.

....

the reason they left the Matrix was a philosophical/spiritual one.

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Well that's a big aspect of the matrix as an allegory. But my question involved that youdidknow. Not a perfect simulation, a choice. Which is what Cypher was all about in the matrix. He was the guy making the choice to accept or deny with full knowledge.

How about if you knew there was a 50/50 chance you would remember being unplugged? Worth the risk? Would you worry that the knowledge would drive you insane if you had to live in the matrix but know it was fake?

Lithose_sl said:

Which brings us back. If you gave me a choice to live in a cold world, with gruel and dirty water, with no chance of happiness, vs putting my brain in a jar and letting me live in a perfectly simulated reality? I'd certainly take the alternate reality. (IF humans were running it.) Again, though, this is getting into metaphysical interpretations of what is "real", and a simulation as advanced as the Matrix would be real enough that if you weren't part of some glitch, you'd never know.

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What if the cold world did have happiness but it was less ubiquitous and it involved higher heights despite the lower lows?

You guys seem to like invoking words such as "metaphysical" and "philosophical" and "spiritual" as if they are laughable dirty words that should be waved away like a Jedi at an imperial checkpoint in Mos Eisley. But these are the very sorts of considerations that lead people to suicide. Choice, versus the illusion of choice. Happiness, versus the illusion of happiness. The validity of reality, versus the validity of abstraction.

But when those concepts are brought up they are met with derision. Anger. Hatred. Sarcasm. Mockery. Ridicule.

Why? Because these concepts aren't tactile? Because they aren't measurable? Humans find themselves in existential crisis over them every day.

Citation on brain studies showing the chemical imbalances prevalent in suicides versus deaths in non suicidal populations?

Are neurotransmitters creating these existential contradictions or is the reverse the case? Are you postulating that some people are born predisposed to suicide? Are depressed people creating chemical imbalance through depressive thought patterns or are depressive though patterns creating chemical imbalances?

How about some stats on people who had been treated with antidepressants but still committed suicide? People with suicidal ideation who never sought treatment, and never followed through, were they more or less likely to off themselves than people who did seek treatment?

hodj_sl said:

Supernatural terms are useless because they describe things which don't exist.

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You don't think thought and emotion are natural?

Famm_sl said:

What if the cold world did have happiness but it was less ubiquitous and it involved higher heights despite the lower lows?

You guys seem to like invoking words such as "metaphysical" and "philosophical" and "spiritual" as if they are laughable dirty words that should be waved away like a Jedi at an imperial checkpoint in Mos Eisley. But these are the very sorts of considerations that lead people to suicide. Choice, versus the illusion of choice. Happiness, versus the illusion of happiness. The validity of reality, versus the validity of abstraction.

But when those concepts are brought up they are met with derision. Anger. Hatred. Sarcasm. Mockery. Ridicule.

Why? Because these concepts aren't tactile? Because they aren't measurable? Humans find themselves in existential crisis over them every day.

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I think they are getting waved away because they are being confused with what is tactile and measurable. When you "touch" something, for example, all you are doing is having your atoms electron clouds, interact with their atoms electron clouds. Then your nervous system gets various information from that environment, like their structure, energy ect. These things are not existential. How weperceivethem is (Well, I mean, the actual stimulation of the brain is not--I mean our conscious interpretation of reality). Changing themethodby which perception happens has no bearing on perception unless there is a variance....which you can perceive.

Which goes toward what you're asking. If the cold world had less happiness, it would depend how well crafted the virtual world was. It would depend on how I was able to perceive it. If I could run multitudes of testing in the virtual world and findnodiscernible difference? I honestly wouldn't care. I'd be happy to explore a new world. But that's because I understand the realities of what we consider "real". It comes down to perception, which is what the choice would have to come down to.

It's only after the perception that the human condition becomes something unto itself. And in my view, experiences are experiences. If your robot body can feel, touch and perceive in the same way as your human body--but can broaden your experiences by allowing you to do more? It's an overall win. If there was some flaw in perception that made it different from the real world, then the choice would not be simple, I might just go and choose the cold world then.

But the matrix was able to fool 99.999999999% of all people with it's perfect simulation. And even the people that did escape, went back in for enjoyment. So it seems pretty good to me!

Famm_sl said:

How about if you knew there was a 50/50 chance you would remember being unplugged? Worth the risk? Would you worry that the knowledge would drive you insane if you had to live in the matrix but know it was fake?

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I know I covered this kind of, above--but again it depends on the quality of the perception. If I absolutely could not tell the difference? Then just the knowledge that it was "fake" wouldn't phase me, but that's because I understand what our perception really is. Again though, the simulation would have to be perfect--which from the looks of it, it is. (Which is why 99.99% of the people will fight to prevent being unplugged, it IS their reality.)

That was completely erroneous. Mental illness, like almostanyother illness such as heart disease, has a combination of causes: biological physiological, and environmental.

There's even debate that the medications prescribed are the cause of hormonal imbalances themselves.

hodj_sl said:

Of course depression itself, which is the leading cause of suicide, is already known to be primarily caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, hence so many sales of anti depressants.

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Were any of your suicidal friends on anti depressants? Why weren't they cured? Do you imagine there will be a vaccine for depression someday?