steve's statements are contradictory

[mysterygal]

Has anyone noticed that Steve's statements are often contradictory? He'll describe subjective reality as if you are the only conscious one, yet when you ask him he completely denies ever making such a comment. He claims that subjective reality is completely distinct from solipsism, but I fail to see the difference.

[Steve Pavlina]

That's because I write from different contexts.

Imagine playing a computer game and describing it to someone. You can talk about the game world and the characters. Or you can talk about the hardware and the programming that allow the game to run. You can talk about the team that developed it and how it was designed. You can even talk about the sales figures for the game or how many subscribers it has. These are different POVs, but they're not really in conflict unless you assume they're all supposed to be stuck in the same context.

Your context isn't your identity -- there's no need to remain stuck in just one.

[JiriNovotny]

Plus Steve grows and changes rapidly so he might even disagree with some of his older statements now.

[Shamou]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Your context isn't your identity -- there's no need to remain stuck in just one.

Great observation Steve...

And I am tempted to add that, "Humans are walking contradictions, breathing paradoxes."

.

[Max Power]

Originally Posted by mysterygal

Has anyone noticed that Steve's statements are often contradictory? He'll describe subjective reality as if you are the only conscious one, yet when you ask him he completely denies ever making such a comment. He claims that subjective reality is completely distinct from solipsism, but I fail to see the difference.

That is exactly how I felt after being here for a while. One minute Steve's saying something and then obviously contradicting himself the next and then saying as below, that he does this so as not to confine himself to any particular belief and/or POV.

At first I was suspicious that he wanted to please everyone to maximize the site's potential. If you talk about SR all the time, some folks will get bored with that POV and leave, best to cover all the bases.

If you really want to understand why Steve seems like a fish flip floppin' all over the place, then you're not ready for SR because in SR Steve is the PD teacher inside you educating you as you see fit. Why does he go off topic and cover something I already know about and don't need? Because that's how I need it to be.

When I truly wanted to find out what the *bleep* was going on in my life, when I really got serious about it, I found this place and then discovered SR, now all of it makes sense. Could it all be wrong? Yes, but that doesn't matter because it's a good way (I think) to view exsitance.

Also Steve's SR theory is not solipsism, solipsism, is still placing identity with physical body mind and that's not SR.

Imagine that you know the truth about existance and that you want to know it, but if you get it all at once you'll meltdown, you'll be perfect and that's not the point. Now imagine that Steve is a part of you giving you another piece of the puzzle, he doesn't have all the pieces (only you do ) but he does have some pieces.

The missing piece for me was SR, I already had the other pieces and now he puzzle is almost done.

Works for me

Max

[Chinese Dragon]

Originally Posted by mysterygal

He claims that subjective reality is completely distinct from solipsism, but I fail to see the difference.

Subjective reality is the opposite of solipsism, I'll explain why.
Most of the time when I hear people talk about solipsism, the people who believe it only care about themseleves. Nobody else matters because they don't exist. You can hurt other people and there won't be any consequence because you're the only one that matters. Now, with this mentality you'd think that solipists define themselves as their physical bodies.

Now with subjective reality, everyone and everything is an indispensible part of your reality. You wouldn't be reckless around other people because they are in your life, and you'll have to pay the consequeces. Weither you like it or not, everything you do and everything everyone else does will have an affect on you personally because our universe is not made up of separate and distint people, we're all part of one whole. When you think you yourself you don't think you are a walking object, you think of your consiousness.

The universe as I percive it is this; there is one or more objective reality that our physical bodies exist in. (I have no idea how many exactly there are) In this realm the laws of physics are enforced with perfect mathematical percision. It's like a big simulation constantly running, like The Matrix.

Of course, if all it is is logic then we'd have no free will. We'd be like computers, not even able to think. We'd only react. That's why I believe that the mind is an entirely different entity than the kind that exists in the objective reality. Your body is the bridge between YOU as in your consiousness and the physical universe. Everything we know about this physical world was learned only by input and output via the brain. So, what we think the universe is is not what it truly is, we'd need an ernomous amout of data for that, but the model in out mind of what the universe is. All the people you've ever met, you can only prove that they exist in your own mind, your model of the universe.

Now your model of the universe is your subjective reality. Nothing is good or bad in the phyiscal world, but your subjective reality is because you define it as good or bad. That's why everyone and everything is indispensible, because they exist in your life. If there is a war or disease and you feel bad about it, it's your fault. The hard data of disease is not bad, you choose to make it bad. To a computer which is objective disease is nothing but another string of binary digits.

Now that doesn't mean that we're the only consiousness, of course not. No we can't exactly prove that there is another consiousness connected to other people's bodies, because you can only detect your own consiouness. But for me believing that I was the only consiousness would be way to lonely, even though I'd think other people are myself. I believe is that there are other consiousnesses, but we only communicate by outputting information into the physical world, and the other person collects it as input.

[Rose of Cairo]

Has anyone noticed that Steve's statements are often contradictory?

oh! that's really interesting! no, I didn't. To me everything seems logical. Of course he's growing fast, so the older articles are a little bit different, but that's normal. He's permanently gaining new insights.

But that's really an interesting question. I just realized I never asked myself if Steve's statements are contradiction-free, because I don't expect him to have a congruent and logical theory.

For me Steve is something like an oracle : if I have some problem or difficult question, or if I feel I'm not growing any more, I visit his site and click on a random article. It may be something that has nothing to do with my problem, i.e. I'm thinking about university and read an article about relationships. I just click on the first link I feel attracted to. Can't explain that, maybe the title doesn't sound interesting but I just feel I want to read this one. And this article always contains something very inspiring to me. An answer to my question, or a new way to see the problem, or a very useful insight, or something completely new that boosts my mind.

Steve's job is to tell me what I need to hear right now. That might be very different or even contradictory depending on my situation, so of course he's making contradictory statements!

Someone else using Steve like this? (I mean, using Steve's site like this )


P.S : I DON'T mean I always agree with Steve, or believe everything he says, or see the world like he does, or do everything he recommends. That's more complicated than that, but reading his blog always helps me understand something, make a decision, gain clarity and so on. Sometimes I will think "wtf is that?! how weird! and what does this stuff has to do with me?!" but then I start thinking and soon I know what it means. If given a topic P I'm interested in, Steve makes the statement A(P') about some topic P', I might not agree, but while thinking about A(P') I will find out my own opinion B(P') about P'. if P==P' there is nothing more to do. if P != P' I always understand after a while how P and P' are related, so using this relation, A(P'), and B(P'), that will finally lead to my own answer B(P) about the topic I was interested in. so Steve is a catalyzer!
Hope it's clear now.

[Max Power]

Originally Posted by Rose of Cairo

Steve's job is to tell me what I need to hear right now. That might be very different or even contradictory depending on my situation, so of course he's making contradictory statements!

Someone else using Steve like this? (I mean, using Steve's site like this )

Yes, that's what I've found also. Practically nothing of Steve's except SR has been of interest too me. Steve's the part of my consciousness that gave me the info I needed when I needed it, just like any other part of consciousness aiding me, but because they are brought into reality and are helpful, you think everything they share will be helpful, but no one part of consciousness has all the answers, because it's all one, but many parts.

Max

[Shamou]

I believe that people who see Steve’s opinion as being contradictory do so because they are using a binary method of evaluating his material where no other options are acceptable…

As an example, it could be said that, “Exercise is good for you.” And it could also be said, “Exercise makes you tired.” At first glance, these seem to be two contrary statement… when in fact they are not… it is simply expressing an opinion from two points of view…

.

[rontocknell]

Originally Posted by Chinese Dragon

Subjective reality is the opposite of solipsism, I'll explain why.
Most of the time when I hear people talk about solipsism, the people who believe it only care about themseleves. Nobody else matters because they don't exist. You can hurt other people and there won't be any consequence because you're the only one that matters. Now, with this mentality you'd think that solipists define themselves as their physical bodies.

I think what you're describing here is psychopathy (which only rarely leads to violence. Mostly it is simply a rather antisocial personality disorder). A psychopath considers his or her relationship with the self as supreme and disregards the needs of others in service to the self. Solipsism is the concept that the self is the only reality that can be truly known beyond doubt. Everything within our experience may simply be an illusion and there is no way of quantifying this outside of our own experience. This does not mean that solipsists think that nothing but the self exists. Only that experience must have an entity (the self) to experience it but everything within the experience is less certain.

Subjective reality implies that nothing can exist or occur without being experienced (ie; the old tree-in-the-forest thing) and that experience manifests existence (ie; did my bowels exist before I shoved my head up my arse?)

[JimC]

Didn't read any of the long posts here, but I know that you shouldn't base everything off of what Steve says. He offers good advice, but use other sources as well. You might actually find a lot of other sources that contradict Steve, even though both might be good advice. It's up to you to analyze everything and choose what you think is correct.

And like Steve says, try different point of views.

[The David]

Words like 'I' and 'you' don't mean as much to Steve as they do to most people. The idea of subjective reality is very hard to understand. I haven't grasped it entirely, but I've disbelieved in ego identity since the age of five, so I guess it makes more sense to me.

As far as Solipsism goes, there isn't necessarily a huge difference. Subjective reality might could be considered an advancement of Solipsism. However, Solipsism is generally ego-based.

[openeyes]

Originally Posted by JimC

you shouldn't base everything off of what Steve says. He offers good advice, but use other sources as well.

Agreed. This is "personal development for smart people", not for sheep

[Flyingwithoutwings]

Originally Posted by openeyes

Agreed. This is "personal development for smart people", not for sheep

Ooo, I'm looking forward to the personal development for sheep people forum!!!