I'm going crazy. I'm sure you can see by some of my previous blog entries. I'm really struggling to understand what is really real, what my purpose is if there is one, what I should do with my life, et cetera, et cetera. I could go on and on about my difficulties, but I think that would only send me down the rabbit hole.

Did you know that “down the rabbit hole” is actually from Alice in Wonderland, where Alice literally falls down a rabbit hole? While verifying this, I found on the Wikipedia page that there was a book made in 2021 called “Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny” which is really funny to me.

But people are like “you need to find your own purpose” and that just makes no sense to me. If we all have different purposes, but we are all (for all existential purposes) the same, where do the differences arise? I think people are deluding themselves and there aren't actually any purposes. Because if a purpose is like transcendent in some way (as in, it's there and we have to find it), shouldn't it be objective rather than subjective? That's why I understand the appeal of religion — religions rightfully claim that purpose is objective (albeit not rightfully claiming much more). As someone who has found (in the current moment of a lifelong pursuit of knowledge and thinking) in examining religion that it is largely unfalsifiable, I do be a little lost.

Philosophy should help, but I haven't found any foundational reason why a certain purpose is actually a purpose. All I've found are baseless value statements, turtles all the way down. Well that might not be completely true, I'm not about to say that there isn't the possibility for a rational objective morality, but it does all rest on subjectivity. Maybe I'll talk about morality sometime on the blog. But like the purpose of “helping people” — to that, I think, “why should I give a fuck?” I have only one life (that I can verify) — am I seriously going to dedicate my life to what could very possibly be philosophical zombies? More people need to look up solipsism. Or maybe they don't, people already largely don't give a fuck about other people.

I think it's reasonable to believe that other people have conscious experience. I think people don't talk enough about how we all know what consciousness is. This not only serves as evidence for consciousness existing, but that consciousness is something that interacts with the brain. Consciousness cannot just be a state of observing the physical processes of the brain, it also is something that is observed by the brain and thus the brain is influenced by consciousness. This knowledge serves as evidence for this. You could say consciousness impacts the brain, although it's hard to say what that means from an agency standpoint. Is consciousness awareness? Is it the marker of a soul?

There could potentially be an experiment to observe where consciousness is in the brain, I think. Literally just ask if someone is conscious while they're hooked up to an MRI. Get yourself to have the reflex to say “no”, a reflex that can only be overridden by a conscious reflection after which you say “yes”. Practically I think this would be incredibly difficult, with many confounding variables, but I think it is theoretically possible.

I wonder if there are any people who do say that they aren't conscious. That might help. When I looked it up on Google, I couldn't find anything.

I think that it's hard to say that philosophical zombies could articulate what consciousness is without actually having it. It's technically possible but like really unlikely if we believe in induction. It's maybe more possible that only some people have consciousness and others have picked up on what they have said. But let's not open up that bag of worms, dear god.

Tons of animals very well have consciousness if babies do, and I had (at least some form of) consciousness when I was a baby. I should probably be vegan or at least vegetarian. But hamburgers make me happy, so it's definitely ok!!!