Objective is Subjective, Reality and Rationalization

This is one of my more important and shorter posts, as I try indicate in the beginning of every post. Most of my important posts are not short, and this one is, at least relatively short, in comparison to others. 'Short' can only be defined in relation to others; there is no absolute 'short', of course. New to this blog? Start here.

This post is closely related to my post 'Absurdism' and 'Confessions' and I encourage you to check it out if you're interested in the ideas I discuss here. For a very brief version and overview of this post and others in the same series, check out the last section of my post 'The Diary of an Autistic Kid': just search for the first occurrence of the word 'Hitler' on the page and start reading from that section.

I also wish to make it clear, as I try to in every post in which I attempt to explain unconventional ideas: I am absolutely not endorsing my own beliefs or sharing some insightful knowledge that I happen to know because I'm an enlightened superior being and felt pity at such ignorant fools as y'all.

Definitely not, that's as far from reality as possible, but it occurred to me that it might come off like that to come people because I do say that I feel very different in the way I think and behave, always have felt different even before I was diagnosed with high-functioning Autism (earlier commonly known as Asperger's) and possibly due to which I happen to have a different worldview and some traits and obsessions certain topics (logic, psychology, rationality, philosophy, among others) which made me think that I could share my experiences and ideas with others, not to show them the "correct" way or "better" way to think or anything, but to have an open discussion and spread awareness about Autism to counter the stigma in society that makes neurodivergent people feel uncomfortable for no fault of their own. I also explain this in my meta-post.

All I wish to do is understand your thoughts and worldview of people who think differently, and everyone is most welcome to provide me with honest feedback or constructive criticism, or discuss in greater detail any of the ideas I mention in any of my posts. Moving on to the main content on this post:

It's a powerful tool, that influences very clever and intelligent people and has done throughout history, (and criminals too) so I'm glad I was able to control it before it causes me to do anything irrational- at least I like to think- and it might also relate with my linguistic ability, which I'm almost certain now from the external validation and feedback I have received, might be above-average, but I'm not sure if it's related.

This post is about a powerful and dangerous cognitive bias and thinking tool, and the above paragraph is something I'd written in my post 'Confessions' which is mainly focused on topics different from this one, as well as the examples of rationalization from my personal experiences and observations, and it had a lot of my own thoughts and ideas, which I wished to separate from a more rigorous and analytical treatment of this topic in isolation, without bringing in too many of my personal thoughts and experiences, so I created this separate post that is focused on just rationalization and cognitive psychology.

You do not need any preliminary knowledge of my previous posts or background in any of the topics I discuss here, because I have tried to explain all topics here itself, or provide further reading or references, as I do with all my posts.

Everything I say in this post is supported by scientific evidence, experiments from cognitive and social psychology and criminology that I won't share because this post is already going to be a long one, but that you could always ask me for if you wish, or even look up the terms I mention online; there is plenty of research literature on our brain's ability to rationalize, and I'm going to mention some more technical scientific terms soon that could make your research easier in case you're interested.

The trouble (and superpower, if harnessed correctly) is my brain is really good at rationalizing and coming up with logical arguments in favour of.. anything. Which is a problem if my brain is feeling down and I'm filled with negative emotions and pessimistic thoughts, in which case my mind will try to convince me it's the logical thing to do something which my healthy self would know is stupid and which I would never wish to witness another person do.

But fortunately I'm self-aware enough to catch my mind when it does that, and my brain is more under my control now, which is why I even know about this, and I am able to harness this power responsibly now, which means not trying to justify what I want to desire, but what I think is the rational and wise thing to do, what is the correct thing for me to do, constantly seeking counterevidence and practicing critical thinking and healthy amounts of scientific skepticism, though unhealthy amount of skepticism won't hurt too. I will very shortly elaborate on this rationalization technique in the next section, which I have briefly touched upon in my blog post 'analysis paralysis and the free energy principle'.

Coming back to something that might have made a negative impression in the mind of the readers and sounded like a complain- which it kind of is- I admit that it's one of the worst feelings to not feel understood and not being able to relate, and I was depressed for the longest time without being able to see the now very clear upside than I would be comfortable to admit- hindsight bias, of course- and it also involves finding the silver-lining in anything that makes you suffer and turning it to your advantage, because if you can not control something, you must accept it- learn your lessons, if applicable- and plan ahead according to what you can do moving forward.

The upside is that I am unable to relate which means something is.. different with me and so I am in some way unique. Now just to clarify, it caused me a lot of mental stress to think that something is wrong with my brain, and that I might actually be insane, but after getting diagnosed with Autism, I know that I'm just different, and my inability to relate with others, my rare specific interests and obsessions, passion for certain topics, worldview and thinking process, ideas and personal experiences, all of them are coming together beautifully like pieces of a puzzle, all of them are interconnected, with my values, interests, past, projects, and ambitions, and I have ideas that others might benefit from, so I could share my unique perspective and worldview with people who might be interested in expanding theirs.

Before coming to the cognitive bias and a hidden flaw and superpower of our brain, it's ability to rationalize based on our subconscious desires which completely escapes our conscious notice, allow me to dispel a myth that I had believed for longer than it should've taken me to realize the truth, or at least what's closer to truth. The myth is that intelligent people are wise and always correct, and intelligence is the only quality or trait that is necessary to succeed in- and live a fulfilling- life.

No. Intelligence is not sufficient on it's own, and that being what people call 'wise' and what I realized I call 'rational', is equally, if not even more important than mere raw intellectual ability. I also touched upon this in my post about the Unabomber. And if you're interested in this topic you should check out that post, because the Unabomber is a nice demonstration of how things could go wrong when you are a gifted high-IQ child prodigy and Harvard graduate who goes on to become a mathematics professor- the very embodiment of the stereotypical high-IQ person in society- and still somehow fall for dogmatic ideology to the extent that you decide to go down the path of violence, and that too in a way that is completely counterproductive to your goals.

Unabomber is just a rare and interesting example. The phenomena I'm going to talk about- this power of rationalization- has taken place more frequently in history than you might think, and some very renowned personalities who are thought to be highly intelligent and clever have fallen for it. Indeed, when you fully grasp and internalize this concept, you're going to see it almost everywhere in the real world, not just the intellectuals, but also the people who happen to be lower in intellectual abilities, down to criminals, serial killers and sexual predators.

It also affects you in your daily life without your knowing, and if you consider yourself intelligent and rational, you need to be especially aware of it because such people are more prone to it, and more likely to go wrong if they're not made aware of it before it's too late.

In very simple terms, it's your logical 'system-2' brain's ability to rationalize- come up with convincing logical reasons to justify your past behaviour, beliefs or intuitive preferences ('system-1' ) or visceral desires that you are usually not aware of till your introspect and ask yourself some questions, consciously and deliberately try to be aware of it, otherwise you will almost certainly fall for it, and the consequences would be larger when the stakes are greater, and you need to take it into account at least when you're making decisions that are important for you and that could affect the well-being of others.

(system 1 and system 2 are references to 'thinking fast and slow', I use this analogy very frequently throughout all my posts, and it's a nice way of thinking about the world and a large improvement over our current way of thinking. I have written a post about this, and it's based on Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman's now classic book with the same title.)

I might seem correct on the surface but when your brain does this, it's more prone to confirmation bias and this is why you must actively seek out evidence to the contrary, and always be cognizant of what new piece of information or evidence could make you change your mind, and the answer can not be no.

My brain is really good at it. I have realized how it's able to come up with seemingly logical reasons for anything, and it's irrefutable and really convincing because I am obsessed with being logical, but my brain knows it, and so it employs logic to convince me, which has led to some really confusing situations of mental frustration, one very clear example of which is my thought process as I have tried to capture and document to the best of my abilities in the post 'Logical Reasons to be Ethical'.

I'm sure there are more examples but this one readily jumps to my mind, because this was when I had to reconcile my belief in a universe where there is no absolute objective 'evil' and 'wrong' or incorrect way of doing things, because I realized it's all social constructs (everything is, even reality and time seem to be subjective, a construction of our own brain, see the philosophy of neuroscience, psycholinguistics and David Eagleman's theories if you're interested, and get in touch if you are unable to or wish to have a conversation about it)

A universe where there are no logical reasons to be ethical, (there are, but there aren't any for people lacking an internal moral compass, as you'd realize if you've read the post where I've explained it very clearly with several examples and personal experiences.) And now I know my nihilistic inclinations and frustrations with the society due to my autism were most likely behind it, because I'd been annoyed with people anyway- not being understood for instance, and a few behavioural and cultural mindset problems not relevant to this discussion- and all the evil in the world- plus my realization that it's all random chance, determinism and external factors that may turn out to be impossible to control- was making me depressed, and so my brain had started coming up with interesting reasons for why such a universe is not worth living in, and that nothing I can do could change it.

I fortunately am self-aware enough to know how to deal with it, and I ask myself if there is something that I feel drawn towards and feel strong emotional affect for that I my brain is trying to rationalize. On the occasional good day, however, when there is really nothing about the day that's good but my biological and external factors happen to make me feel more upbeat, it's the reverse, and I feel I can do anything I want, which is why it helps to not depend on your emotions and rely on your intuition and be swayed by your whims and what your emotions say without logically scrutinizing them first.

I have come up with an elaborate set of meta-cognitive strategies to detect when it happens and I'm uncharacteristically proud of my brain for coming up with this system to catch my brain red handed (system-2 brain coming up with strategies to be free from influence of intuitive and mostly irrational system-1 brain, but I'm guessing here.) and I have described those questions elsewhere (Blog post 'analysis paralysis' but I'm not sure.) so I won't do it again but very briefly it involves-

Taking a step back, emotionally detaching yourself from your decision or whatever you were about to decide, evaluate all the alternatives, compare them with each other including all the pros and cons, costs and benefits, including associated probabilities and opportunity costs as well as best and worst case scenarios and other tools from decision science and related fields and lessons from your own personal experiences and past mistakes to arrive at a well-informed decision and take a calculated risk if applicable,

And judging a decision from all the info that was available at the time you took it so it remains a good or bad decision regardless of outcome because outcome is influenced by several factors of of your direct control, and so a bad decision will remain bad even if outcome is good, and a good decision would remain good even if outcome is undesirable. (I might have written about this elsewhere, else check out Taleb's Fooled by Randomness, it has some similar points, or just contact me cause I won't get into it here, too off-topic already.)

It's the same process the makes it easier for criminals and sexual predators to stifle their morality and commit crimes, justify their behaviour and actions to avoid cognitive dissonance and allow them to live with themselves, though it does help to have the genes and early abusive or rough childhood to be inclined that was and be desensitized or mess up your brain so some don't even think about it much, but most probably do- I have a certain level of confidence what I say that, but the "probably" is not just due to the epistemic uncertainty inherent to all knowledge but also the fact that we simply do not have reliable accurate objective scientific tools to measure subjective mental states and experiences or qualia.

It's also the very same process that drives people to be willing to go at stake for their beliefs, which I have also talked about elsewhere, but to clarify and in very brief, it only makes sense to stand by your beliefs if you have good logical reasons and evidence to do so, but if you're closed-minded and not willing to change your mind when presented with good evidence, you might as well do yourself a favour by going to stake yourself and prevent your closed-mindedness and ideology from harming others and save yourself some suffering.

Rationalization helps in avoiding cognitive dissonance while also helping you get what you want, even though it might turn out that when you finally get what you want it's nothing like the rosy vision you had in mind and you actually hate it, something like how people realize while choosing careers that they liked the idea of being a scientist or doctor, but not that actual work and reality of the job and everything that goes into the daily responsibilities-

Such as dealing with people whose lives depend in your snap judgment and decision-making skills, the stress of disclosing info about deceased patients to their loved ones, the long hours and endless training with no fruitful conclusions in sight and poor pay in academic research.. it's also related to our poor ability of predicting how we're going to feel at a future point in time, called affective forecasting (look up Dan Gilbert's research).

This is just one small example of how rationalization can make you act irrationally and not always help you- just like the dictator who might wipe out a race cause he thought it's right but then feel guilty but now he has already done it and won't be able to live with himself and show his face to those who support him unless he sticks by his old mistaken beliefs so even though he knows he's wrong he will try to keep rationalizing his actions and keep doing what he has already done because now he can't go back and change his actions so to feel good about himself and avoid cognitive dissonance he'll engage in self-deception and create a convincing false reality for himself-

Successfully convincing himself that he's doing something for 'good' and that everyone who disagrees is "bad" and must be killed because they threaten his false reality and if he is not able to maintain the delusion of false reality he would not be able to live and it goes on till he either ends it himself or is assassinated by any other, but there once he does that important action- the extermination of the one race, in this example- there is no going back and the process has been set into motion, the arrow has been released from the bow, it can't be changed, and it's all predictable and history repeats itself once again, and will do so unless people understand this.

("Good" again of course here is a subjective value judgment and you can redefine the word at your own will to literally mean whatever you want- and I have used literally correctly here if you think I've not read that once again- because once he realizes it's all norms and social constructs, he can do whatever he feels like, but it goes even deeper- recall Taleb's Butterfly Effect and Spinoza's good and simple good old cause-and-effect from the Scientific Method, and you'd realize that every action could have some ethical consequences and some hidden good down the line even if we can't see it,

Which is why if you're clever and intelligent and good with words you can reframe anything to mean anything, turn good into bad, bad into good, find good in bad, bad in good, influence masses with your power and rhetoric, get what you want, and maintain your status quo by keeping the common people under your rule,

Which is exactly what most people in power and most of the ultra-rich people are doing today, distracting everyone from the real issues so they don't think and question their status and the social hierarchy and systems and why things are the way they are and how they could be better, just simply accept it all because "it's the way it's always been, this is how it's always going to be, and nothing can be done" and so they don't even try- that's the tiny few who even think this much- and they're effectively brainwashed and conditioned to think so which is why no one takes initiative and tries to help people who are suffering. Even education system is structured in a way to produce slaves and prepare people for jobs instead of educating and teaching them how to think. See my post series 'Schopenhauer on Steroids' for a more rigorous and analytical treatment of this topic.)

(for the dictator's actions: also slippery slope, sunk cost fallacy, status quo bias, endowment effect, loss aversion, confirmation bias.. the list goes on, which is why I think it's all more deterministic and perhaps a bit random but we can predict pretty much anyone's thoughts or behaviour with enough knowledge of psychology, neuroscience, sociology and allied fields. Though neuroscience might be enough on it's own if it's sufficiently advanced.)

With the right charm, personality and cognitive abilities, you can deceive people for your own ulterior motives, and deceive yourself to make yourself believe in a false sense of reality, and cause harm to everyone involved. Remember Hitler? He fits the description of the dictator very well, and I'll get back to the dictator very shortly.

Remember Ted Bundy? He was convicted for crimes that would make anyone afraid and ashamed but he was getting love letter till the day he was sentenced to death, and a perfect example of the halo effect, the irrationality of humans, psychopathy or sociopathy, and how easy it is to influence and manipulate people if you do it right and are inclined in such a way.

It's also what drives people to commit heinous crimes and cult leaders to make their followers suffer and enjoy the privileges of being in power, and this might also be the force that corrupts those in a position of power; if someone is in power, they could take advantage of it, and if they are clever enough, they can distort morals and responsibilities and rephrase it in a way to make themselves believe that they are not actually doing anything wrong and might even be trying to help others by doing something that's very clearly benefitting them. (remember cause-and-effect, and the butterfly effect?)

And the amusing thing is that the more gullible and less clever people would believe them and be convinced especially if the person is good with rhetoric and persuasion tactics- nonsensical distractions like micro-expressions, body language, tone, inflection, pitch, eye contact and much more that distracts the person from the main topic and are employed with the sole purpose of influencing and persuading, and that those who are not trained in the basics of logic, rationality, rhetoric or debate might miss, fall for it and not even be aware of it.

And when you try to imagine being such a person yourself, you'd realize that what they're saying would actually make sense, because nothing is really objective, and I've been saying this throughout this post and other posts, but now let's go a layer deeper and this is really interesting so try to understand this-

Everything is subjective, yet everything subjective could be described 'objectively'. It means that nothing we consider objective is, and I'm not talking about subjective value judgments that involve words such as "good" and "evil" and everything that's so obviously subjective, I'm talking about the real objective stuff- logic, facts, scientific method.

Try to imagine a superintelligent AI system for a moment. We know that the current way of thinking about the world is the best we can do with our intelligence that is limited due to it's biological constraints, but we know that intelligence, theoretically and objectively (!), has no bounds, and so if we could somehow engineer a superintelligent AI system that has no such biological limitations, we can't conceive of what system if might come up with, but we can imagine it being something much better than our current systems of formal logic and scientific method, which are simply frameworks and product of our brains.

There is an interesting series of textbooks that I currently don't remember the name of, it's open source and written by an academic about the history and philosophy of social sciences, and it explains very well how everything we consider 'objective facts' in all of science and history is never a 'fact' because it's impossible to describe 'facts' without bringing in subjective value judgments, it's simply impossible. (If anyone wants to read it just ask me.)

Coming back to our brains, reality and time are probably also illusions and nothing like we think- remember David Eagleman, I mentioned earlier?- now also get this- a photon can experience the past, present and future all at once, so what does that tell you about 'time'? There is much more about the nature of reality in not just philosophy of neuroscience but also philosophy of physics, and I encourage you to check it out and message me if you want any recommendations or topics to start with.

Now the very origin of our thoughts and ideas is not certain, and we can invent any mental models of the universe and frameworks to justify and test and explain anything and everything, if we have the computational or cognitive resources, ability, time and motivation to do so. And you could bring about any reality by simply manipulating your brain.

You can alter your perception of the world, and that combined with- now I'm going to connect this with where we started from- the right words and power to influence and convince, influence masses and gain power, and with power you can literally alter and control not just the general public's thoughts and behaviour, but their very way of thinking about the world and their place in society and their purpose in life and their perception of reality.

I doubt that most of those in power have thought too deeply and even if they have are doing something at such a fundamental level, but I can't say for sure, but I'm sure that they are already controlling our reality enough to control our whole lives- poverty, unemployment, wars, hatred, ideological divides, barriers, wealth, nepotism, animal cruelty, suffering.. I think you get the idea, and why I might not be too insane when I talk about taking charge of your actions and beliefs, and coming together to eradicate all suffering and create a better society for all, and I might have at least some merit and not just inventing concepts from thin air.

As I explain in my post 'analysis paralysis', it usually serves a useful purpose by helping you focus on one decision after you've thought enough so you don't fall for analysis paralysis and end up doing nothing. But it's dangerous when it's used by your brain to avoid cognitive dissonance, especially if you happen to believe in something such as moral relativism or that absolute morals don't exist or have some sort of moral code that is inconsistent with the prevalent ethical code in society. That's how serial killers and sexual predators are made.

(For scientific literature on this topic, check out the Aeon Psyche essay Why Research on Sex Offenders is Important, David Finkelhor's work on rationalization and intellectualization, as well as the process of 'grooming'.)

Why not? This is point I've repeated and explained in other blog posts, so I won't explain in detail here again, but very briefly, it means you've fallen prey to ideology, closed-mindedness and rigid thinking, and it's going to be hard for you to acknowledge that you've fallen into established patterns of thought and behaviour that would make it harder for you to see reality closer to truth and change your mind in light of new discoveries or logical arguments, but you must, if you wish to be rational and as correct in your worldview as possible.

This could be a very powerful tool if harnessed well, but I request you to not even try, just be ignorant in fact I'd even say, if you happen to be someone whose values don't include open-mindedness, compassion or honesty, because if you use this in your favour to justify your own means, it could go disastrously wrong for not just you but the people you affect.

And I know very well that some people might think upon reading this that if I cared that much, I should never have given them such ideas by writing such things, but- and this is something I'd like you to remember not just while reading my posts, but in everyday interactions- so I'll take a short detour without going too far off tangent- as I've learned after some experimentation and trial and error- you must assume that the person is at least as intelligent as you and has already thought about your arguments, and has some good reasons to do what they are doing despite knowing it.

Which doesn't mean you should not question them- you absolutely should, otherwise you'd never know and you must never assume something you're uncertain about- but it also means that you should practice and cultivate intellectual humility and be curious and inquisitive in nature, try to learn from the person because they might have something to teach you, some piece of information or insight you were not aware of, and if you assume that the person is dumb and never had thought of it, you're never going to get far with such an attitude.

On the other hand, if the person actually hadn't thought of it, you'll know anyway, but the opportunity cost of learning something new and potentials risks of keeping such an attitude in my opinion is simply not worth it. I take it a bit too far by playing some interesting thought experiments and simulating imaginary conversations with the person by assuming that they had thought of it already and so what could their intention be, and how could I convince them that I had even taken into account their latest move and prepare for it, which they could also already have considered and thought of, and it's fun and stimulating but I'd strongly advise you to not play this game if you wish to preserve your sanity.

Such an attitude would also help you understand the other person's perspective well and not try to give half-baked counterarguments in a debate, which is consistent with values such as open-mindedness and empathy. Coming back to the topic, as I was saying, I had anticipated the event in which I could give such people with malicious intent some interesting ideas.

And I realized that if the person is inclined in such a way, they would most probably have known about it already, and the potential risks don't seem to outweigh the potential upsides, and the probability of the worst case scenario is negligible by my talking about this process; it could only help those who don't already know about it to be more aware of it in themselves and others, to be able to help others when they think they might going wrong and bring them on track, by detecting when they might be trying to rationalize based on their desires.

So those who are inclined in such a way already know it, and those who are not need to know it, which is why I'm letting everyone know about it so no one is left out and the information gap doesn't weigh in favour of just those with malicious intent or ulterior motives that could cause harm to them or people around them in one way or another.

This ability to rationalize can also at times help generate some interesting arguments and counterarguments on sides that strongly believe in their side of the debate, and that's great, but they should also be aware to not take it too far, and keep in mind that if the logic and evidence very clearly points towards one side, they must change their mind if they believe in being open-minded and being closer to truth, having a worldview consistent with reality.

I have some interesting experiment ideas too- how people could be asked to rationalize anything regardless of how they feel about it, but then the problem is there won't be that intuitive preference or desire, the system-1 liking such that the mind feels about it strongly enough to invent logical reasons for it, so maybe we could try asking people with high linguistic ability who very strongly believe in something to defend their beliefs, by presenting some novel and ingenious counterarguments and invent something on the spot-

And then putting their brains under machines and try to see which areas are involved in this rationalization process, so we can be more aware of this little devil that is such a large hurdle for anyone who thinks logic can save them from everything irrational, and might even lead them to self-destruction if they are not made aware of it.

Edit: A comment I made in response to something completely different yet relevant, where I invented a whole sci-fi plot revolving around topics discussed in this post (let me know if you decide to write such a book, I'm just storing this away for now. Or even feel free to even just borrow my idea and use it as your own; in that case, just let me know):

https://www.reddit.com/r/aspergers/comments/11dipg6/comment/jae7a25/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I also just developed the ideas presented in this post in greater detail, which I will now present as part of this edit. I also recommend you to read my post 'Absurdism' because even though it's not necessary to understand it, it would make it much easier to understand and develop an intuitive understanding of the ideas I'm trying to convey:

I have become more expressive and confident after learning that I'm an Aspie and external validation in domains such as writing, research and music, and I've also become less anxious and much more comfortable being much more true to my self than before, when I used to feel, had been conditioned in a way that everyone is, (which leads to unhealthy masking and coping mechanisms in neurodivergent individuals) and now am more confident not being someone I very clearly am not, and much happier, without caring what people think or being unreasonably afraid of judgment, I have decided that being myself is the rational thing to do and to don't need to act according to norms and perceived expectations if all I'm doing is being different in the way I think, simply being more logical and less irrational than the people I observe.

So now not only am I more expressive, I am more confident and less anxious, somewhat more indifferent to stuff that used to affect me and that people find interesting- games, shows, parties, love- but much more fascinated by everyday events everyone overlooks that are a constant reminder of the mysterious ways of the universe and the sheer absurdity of everything, all events and human nature, and a constant source of sense of joy and wonder that allows me to be much more grateful for everything I have, suffering and all, and appreciate the journey.

But more importantly, coming to human nature, though I am also able to now mock the absurdity and laugh at the hilarious ways people usually fall for ideologies and convention ways of acting and thinking in established irrational ways, I can notice how it's effects on the human condition and how everyone suffer greatly due to it, which is not as funny and which is the reason I'm pushing myself out of the comfort zone despite being extremely introverted, because now I know I have certain ideas and traits that others don't, as I describe in other blog posts about Asperger's and this LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dhruve-dahiya-045327234_youtube-neurodiversity-activity-7038095952754225153-2I2S?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

And with this newly discovered ability, it might seek like I'm more prone to join the dark side (why is it dark? I like dark; can't dark mean "good"?) but in fact it's quite the opposite, because even looking at my track record, I have never picked fights or even raised my voice while always making sure to stand up for myself and put forward my opinion firmly but politely and tactfully, whereas people who keep talking otherwise fall silent in such situations when they need to speak up, (Asch's conformity experiment) which is why it's my responsibility to be more confident.

Plus as my morality is now based on core values such as kindness, empathy, compassion, and love for all beings, I'm not simply driven by my emotions and selectively kind and compassionate to people I feel like being kind towards. Such hypocritical behaviour I observe- understandable because people don't even seem to be aware of it, and generally and specifically this case especially, I apply the heuristic or rule of thumb to not attribute to malice what could be attributed to stupidity- much more frequently than I'd like to, and it'd be fine really cause I'm like live and let live if this such irrational behaviour was not causing great harm and suffering to the people themselves and those around them, which is why I try to explain very clearly my thoughts and ideas, with personal experiences, evidence and analogies with other disciplines, in my other posts and also the reason it's a recurring theme throughout my posts: Everyone should have compassion and everyone deserves to be loved, without exception.

So while it's much easier for me to rationalize and justify any unethical desires I might have, as I already acknowledge that morals and values are not just subjective, but to my surprise, much more easily influenced by external factors, words, and other tools being employed (or possibly in the near future that could be employed) by those in positions of wealth and power.

I can easily see how subjective all of it is. I am able could not just convince my conscious system-2 brain with logic and reason to alter my very worldview, including my morality and values, such that with the right emotional affect my bra0ni can rationalize pretty much anything and everything, because nothing has an absolute basis in objective reality, and it's unsure whether there even is any objective reality, so that makes everything including 'good' and 'evil' nothing more than societal and neuroscientific constructs, and there is no single correct way to do things; there is no correct way to do things, and nothing matters in the grand scheme of things and we are free to create our own values and morals according to our inclinations in order to live a fulfilling life by living rationally in order to maximize the probability of your achieving your goals and desires.

But I am also- and it was a huge realization, I was really surprised, when I understood this intuitively and still trying to make sense of it and figure out the implications- I can, and so anyone can, tweak their own values to achieve anything they wish. What I mean by that is by modifying the right genes and early environment, you can raise someone who values kindness and empathy, but also someone who believes that it's the correct way do to things, the way it should be done, is to torture beings and maximize the amount of suffering, even if that requires bringing into life more beings who could be tortured, perhaps even somehow making them immortal so they suffer for eternity.

I'm deliberately using an extreme example, and exaggerated dramatic fringe case that is unlikely but possible to demonstrate the abstract principle I just explained, to show you what's possible. And it's not sci-fi, genetic engineering and neuroscience is already there, and I won't do this but I can tell you several techniques including specific steps and algorithms with various interventions and ways in which we could achieve them using tools from multiple disciplines, so it's far from an unrealistic dystopian world. And likewise it's also possible to make not just an individual but the masses and even the vast majority- with the right power, wealth, influence and intelligence- to believe in pseudoscience and wipe out the human civilization itself, and I'd be honestly surprised if anyone even noticed (and those who noticed survived long enough to have any significant impact on society and steer it away from it's eventual doom) just like no one is noticing while beings suffer now.

Make them believe that using logic is unethical, that no one deserves kindness, or whatever, and before you arrive at the judgment that no person is capable of such evil, just read about Carl Jung's Shadow theory and Rawl's Veil of Ignorance, and you'd realize that with the right environment and genes (nature and nurture) anyone is capable of anything. Even just a good enough environment would do, if you have the bare minimum requirement for the underlying genes, just the right environment and you'd realize how similar we all are despite our individual differences and how anyone could have bee Hitler, both literally and figuratively, similar to him, and if you think I just misused "literally", that statement again. And even if not that, just read some books about psychopathy and how those people are more likely to be either in prison or in positions of power- political leaders or executives of multinational corporations. I have some recommendations; reach out if you want them.

Not just that, let's go another step forward and with the right power, intelligence and scientific and tech progress, you could alter the very sense of reality and how people perceive the world, and we don't even need to bring in Nozick's machine or the metaverse, even just simple behavioural and sociological tools would suffice.

Look at David Eagleman's research, philosophy of neuroscience and physics, as well as certain topics in psycholinguistics for some concrete real-life examples so you know I'm not talking nonsense in abstractions and bluffing, just frightening readers for no good reason. It's as real as you reading these symbols right now and being able to comprehend them.

So, can influence anyone by logic, and can even directly influence someone's reality by directly modifying their genes, environment or brain. Oh, of course, the brain. You need to logic, genes or environment (unless you're not the mad scientist who does this all by himself) if you know how to control the brain, and you can't- and I definitely won't say I do, though I still have a much broader sense of what's possible, all the possibilities- imagine; nothing is impossible.

Coming back to my ability to alter my morals based on logic which is in turn influenced by emotions which is why you need to train yourself in scientific skepticism, critical thinking, cognitive biases, logical fallacies and rationality:

If I had malicious intent, I'd not be sharing not just these ideas but my own thoughts so openly for everyone even though I'm going to apply to universities this year, and I know some ideas may be controversial even though I always try to stay true to my values such as open-mindedness, logic and compassion, I am still taking some risk by putting it out there for everyone, because I'm not my old self who used to keep to himself and not bother myself with other people's business, because now it's got serious, it's about people suffering and the state of society itself (and it's future, which is in the hands of people in the young generations such as me, and I realize the weight of this responsibility and trying my best to create a better world) and the worst case scenario is too bad to take any foolish uncalculated risks or leave it to blind luck or random chance, even taking into account the associated probabilities of the future consequences and the opportunity costs.

Which is why it's important to understand that this is not just me rambling about my delusional theories of a distorted reality while being socially isolated in my room; it's just that being detached from society and peers and everyday reading and learning (though there is so much more to read; so many books, so little time) everyday all day without any distractions such as socialization, games, shows, movies etc.has made me realize the importance and urgency of the situation, as well as my being an Aspie and some other unique traits and experiences of suffering put me in a unique position to help those less fortunate than me and help those who need to be helped without delay, which is why I'm not just relaxing and watching netflix and playing the piano and drowning myself in escapist literature fantasy fiction or YA or something (left fiction a while ago but don't deny it's importance; it's a powerful and highly effective tool to educated and entertain, sometimes both at the same time.) Which is why people need to be aware of this.

Break out of your false reality and plug out of your Nozick's machines, and no I'm not forming a cult or endorsing an ideology, because for the quintillionth time, I'm open to changing my mind, having a productive debate, and discuss these ideas and get to understand different worldviews with open-mindedness and empathy, because I believe that open debate and the ability to listen and understand keeping in mind that the other person is a human, as intelligent as you and who also deserves to be understood and loved like every being, is an increasingly rare quality more urgently needed in today's society more than ever, judging my the present state of of the world.

For more on this topic, read my post Confessions and Absurdism, including the edits. Also the edit 3 of the post 'Heated Arguments'. But here's a little more clarity on my ideas in brief: The following paragraph is something I wrote in my post Diary of an Autistic Kid, and I'm going to expand on it here, no prior knowledge of the post required:

One of the more dangerous and powerful of the cognitive biases.. rationalizations based on intuitive preferences and subconscious desires which enables my brain to come up with logical reasons for.. anything; see my post Objective is Subjective and Confessions. I even just came up with an interesting experiment to counter this: just deceive your own subconscious brain into desiring the goal that is the polar opposite to your current preference, and then allow it to come up with some clever rationalizations for the other side of the debate, and then later switch back into the logical and rational mode of your mind to evaluate both sides of the argument with your logical and reasoning faculties and all rationality and decision-making tools you have in your toolkit; this way you have the advantage of not falling prey to the logical fallacy of Strawman by attacking the weakest argument in order to avoid cognitive dissonance, and you'll be able to compare the strongest sides of any belief in a very objective manner. (necessary- can't say if sufficient- prerequisite is you need to be already good with rationalizations which requires you to either by learning, training or naturally be good at language skills and have at least above-average linguistic ability; also need to be logical enough to have control over your emotions and irrational impulsive intuitive thoughts, having the ability to emotionally detach from beliefs and evaluating them with cold logic.)

This could help you be true to your core values and beliefs, and also help people in positions of power and privilege (with control over systems that determine the well-being of the vast majority of not just humans but non-human sentient beings indirectly through their decisions) to make better decisions related to policy anything that affects the lives of the people, by every single person in any committee doing this in isolation and then comparing their best arguments for both the sides. In case you are thinking that's called debate, no it's not, because in debate you are usually given a side regardless of what you happen to believe, or you argue for whatever you believe based on your intuitive preferences. You don't alter your subconscious desires and intuitive preferences and hence they govern your thoughts and often lead to irrational beliefs.

Want to go a step further and alter your values and nature of reality itself? Manipulate your genes and neural processes that control your beliefs that are social constructs values, beliefs and morals, and neuroscientific constructs such as time and reality, so you could belief in literally anything you want, or even come up with systems- in theory I don't see how it's impossible- more logical and effective than formal logic and the scientific method, languages more rigorous and closer to truth than mathematics, but also expose yourself to the risk of coming up with reasons to be unethical and influence masses to believe that suffering is desirable and even make people immortal through digital mind upload, AI personas, biological immortality or whatever, and torture them for eternity, (I explain how this is possible in my post Objective is Subjective) so I advise you to tread cautiously because Jurassic park was not wrong in depicting how bioethics and philosophy is as important as scientists who might do something just because they can without taking into account the consequences and implications on society, which is why nuclear arms race and eugenics and lots of other stuff exists in history books and act as cautionary tales to not just not repeat the mistakes but also be more careful with things that could be used by people with malicious intent and evil selfish desires to cause suffering and widespread harm to other humans, yet history repeats itself.

I know some readers might be thinking why I'm even talking about this if it's so possible and disastrous, and doubt my own intentions, but I would like them to think again and point out the fact that 1) those who are intelligent enough to do so would do so regardless of what I write on this post that very few people read anyway, and the people who need to be aware of such possibilities in order to prevent such events from taking place are the same people who would not realize it themselves and need to read this, while those who- some people would say- should not be aware of such things would be smart enough to figure it out on their own, 2) Even if not, you can as always- especially for such important decisions and ideas on my own blog that could harm others- rely on me for doing a rigorous cost-benefit analysis taking into account the opportunity costs, associated probabilities and best and worst case scenarios, and concluded that it's overall a better decision to talk about these ideas than not and all risks are well-informed decisions and calculated risks rather than foolish uncalculated risks (which means that I accept the consequences as the expected utility or potential benefits are greater than the probability of the worst case scenario, and the decision remains a good decision even if the worst case scenario materializes.) and last but not the least, 3) If I had any evil intentions myself (regardless of the jokes I sometimes make about world domination, or world optimization, or whatever) readers of my blog would know how I so frequently talk about creating a better society, and even how I myself am prone to such things due to certain inclinations (see post 'Confessions') yet still work for the betterment of society and help the less fortunate who suffer due to not fault of their own and factors completely out of their direct control; and if that's not convincing enough, there's the fact that I don't even need to be stupid enough to talk about my ideas (I could just do it, no need to go around telling everyone to prevent me from achieving my desirable goals. I know some people might think I'm so stupid, and they'd be right, but at least I deserve credit to be rational enough to not be that stupid, okay) or convince anyone about my intentions because I can do whatever I want to do and I have good reasons to do so (logical reasons to be unethical and the fact that morality and values have no basis in objective reality and could be rationalized with my logical and linguistic skills to justify anything I want; and even tweak genes and brain processes to actually believe without going to the extent of deluding myself and engaging in self-deception tactics) but still I don't, even though my brain sometimes tells me to, because I strongly believe in some core values or virtues like empathy, compassion, kindness and love for all sentient beings, to the extent that a perfectly logical unbiased external observer like a perfectly rational alien would call be stupid and irrational for rationalizing what I don't want even though it's clear I don't need to do everything I need to do, the universe is unfair and people suffer but it's none of my business and I can be perfectly selfish and live a life without helping the less fortunate who suffer.

If you are someone who has read my others posts with enough attention (and have an above average pattern-recognition and ability in other higher-order executive functions) to detect an inconsistency that I myself almost overlooked until now, here's the reply (and you have my respect): you might read elsewhere how I almost cried when I stepped on an ant and a clear and accurate description of my thought process using vivid imagery, in my post 'Courage' or 'Heated Debates', and now I know I can override any emotional affect generates by anything related to subjective morals or values; even though I'm not a psychopath, I know I'm not because I've read several textbooks and even talked to some, I can somehow override my emotional and intuitive brain using my logical mind and linguistic abilities, and it's more powerful that you might realize- a superpower rare even among Aspies- and you'd know I'm not one to brag about my abilities due to my inferiority complex and self-doubt so you can be sure when I tell you this one is capable of some great good or evil, depending on the course I take now. I've chosen good, which is why I'm even writing all this in the first place and working day and night to document all my ideas, planning to soon expand to other social media to expand to a larger audience. Join me on this journey, or perish. Just kidding. As always, I am open to honest feedback and constructive criticism, and open to changing my mind in light or new evidence.

Update: I just talked about one rationalization thought experiment (elsewhere, I don't remember where and for reasons I explain in the meta-post I won't find where but in brief it involved using direct neurotechnological and behavioural interventions and self-deception to make your own brain belief in one side and then another side, and then arriving at the strongest points of both sides, and doing this with a conference of people to make a very strong cost-benefit analysis to arrive at the best decision, better than other current methods) but I realized that's currently impractical and there is a far better and realistic method. I described the old experiment here or elsewhere, and I admit that the one I'm going to explain now is more realistic but less effective, but still sounds good enough to help prevent a lot of irrational beliefs and behaviour in daily life and in science. You are a scientist- imagine- and you have a research question that you wish to solve. And the current consensus of the scientific community is two major schools of thought, divided 50-50 percent between each of the thoughts.

Now, I do realize it's never just two schools of thoughts, and never neat little categories, lots of grey areas, overlaps between ideologies and sides of the debate, fuzzy areas, sometimes you need to barnstorm alternatives, reconcile different viewpoints, think on a spectrum, because every belief has- focus on how I'm not saying "may have" or "would probably have", because I have very good reason to believe it's as close to a hundred percent possible as it can get, and if I, a person who always thinks in probabilities and says nothing is certain, am saying that this is as close to certain as it gets, then you can rest assured I have good logical reasons to believe this. In short, the reasons involve the fact that every event in the external 'objective' observable universe is interconnected by a continuous chain of cause-and-effect, and even if something sounds like the best ever theory with no negative consequences or undesirable effects, it would still probably have some butterfly effect that could have some negative future effect that would not have happened otherwise, or at least have been less likely to have occurred had that starting event not taken place.

Continuing the idea: You are a scientist, two sides of debate, unclear where consensus lies. Now what people usually do- not just scientists, even the layman average human of the modern society in a situation like this when they're choosing a flavour or choosing a religion to believe in- yes, I'm serious, people rely on such unreliable inaccurate mental heuristics or shortcuts all the time to make very important decisions concerning not just their lives but the lives of other people too (check out some behavioural economics books like those written by Dan Ariely, Richard Thaler and Daniel Kahneman if you need real-life examples from accomplished serious academic researchers). There is an online tool that gives arguments both for and against and I forgot it's name, but there is an even better tool now whose name I remember, and it might be unreliable so even though it can give you arguments for or against anything with references and readings, you need to verify by checking for yourself; it's called ChatGPT. Continuing with the plan: You try to figure out what you prefer, what you'd like to be true- you'd almost always have a preference of one solution over another, for any reason, or no reason at all. You actively try to disprove the side you like, and try to prove right the other side, and by this your brain would try to rationalize- give you logical reasons that are convincing and would compel you to just give up the other side and succumb to your desires or intuitive preferences, the side you'd feel happy believing in- after all, you have good logical reasons now, that also justify and explain away- rationalize- the counter-arguments, so why not?

Here's the reason why not: if you do this, you might as well not make the effort to do everything I just explained, except if you just want to feel happy about being "rational" or "logical" about it. You hold all the sides of the debate or discussion- in this case, just two- and detach yourself emotionally from all sides, and evaluate the pros and cons, potential costs and benefits, best- and worst-case scenarios, opportunity costs and probabilities associated with each consequence of each alternative and other decision-making tool all the while being aware of logical fallacies and cognitive biases.

You still stick with the side that is opposite to your desired side, and seek counter-arguments, and it might be hard after a certain point, in which case you seek help from people who genuinely believe in that side- who are not, like you, trying to actively shoot down their beliefs before adopting them, and strongly believe in their side- rigid, closed-minded, dogmatic ideological belief- that's the kind of people you'd want to talk to now. You pretend to be one of them, and you say that you came across this argument while talking to one of your friends, and you know it's wrong but you can't find any logical reason to give to them, and then they give you the logical reasons- either legit or made up, you don't know right now, but you listen and try to understand their worldview- one very important point to remember here is that you do NOT try to change their mind or say anything that makes them suspicious that you're not actually one of their own, an impostor, and this could literally be life-and-death if it's something related to religion or politics, and so you need to be careful to not try my idea in real life and get killed- which is why you should absolutely not try this if you are emotional, neurotic, not able to detach from your core beliefs, be calm, indifferent and apathetic while using cold logic without any emotions or feelings and trying to passionately defend your side. You go and ask and see what they say, you don't try to change their mind or even casually talk about your own side- you could, but probably should not, unless you're really good with language, logic, psychology, influence and rhetoric in general (or perhaps someone in power, but that's still less effective than the aforementioned skills)- you understand, you return, you add their arguments to your list of pros and cons, all arguments for and against, and then you get into your mindset of changing beliefs- yes, you need to be able to hold multiple contradictory beliefs in your head at the same time without emotionally attaching your sense of 'self' or ego to any of them, something I am able to do easily but not something that comes to most people naturally or intuitively, it requires conscious deliberate practice, just like everything with logic and applied rationality (actually, just to for the sake of completeness and staying true to my core value honesty, I did once fail at doing this and suffer from a mental breakdown when I was unable to reconcile multiple contradictory beliefs and worldviews involving my core values, but there were other life circumstances and external factors like social isolation and loneliness that contributed to that, and I recovered and reconciled the beliefs in just a few days, less than a week, to be accurate).

Also, just in case anyone is thinking that you're not supposed to change beliefs just like that, as that's irrational or being inconsistent, then I'd like to assure you that it's not. I myself quite frequently say that it's good to be open-minded but not so open-minded that your brains fall out, something I once read somewhere and liked. So then why do I do this, and also suggesting you do try it? Because if you adopt a belief at the first argument you see in favour of it- even if you don't, you would almost certainly fall for confirmation bias, p-hacking, cherry picking data, whatever you wish to call it (many intelligent scientists and politicians in history have fallen for it, so unless you have an intelligent quotient of the top few percentile; no, not even then, because intelligence is not enough, you need rationality, or wisdom, if you will).

You would commit to a belief without scrutinizing it, and then when you hear another convincing argument on the other side of the debate, you'd either:

1) change your mind in which case you'd be gullible (the sort of person so open-minded whose brains fall out) if you're influenced by the next charismatic, influential, intelligent person who is good with words and convinces you to change your mind, and you'd just be at the mercy of the people who do your thinking for you and manipulate your strings, feed you your beliefs and make your decisions for you, or you would 2) fall for some cognitive bias or logical fallacy and deny or overlook that reason, or understand it but rationalize it somehow- I think it's painfully obvious how the former is like deluding yourself into a false sense of reality, self-deception, and the second is just a very slow and inefficient version of my own plan, something that is alright but that could take years- maybe even a lifetime- for you to encounter all the arguments in favour and against, and slow down the rationalization process. I hope that answers your question why this is not irrational, and why being inconsistent is okay in this case.

I should also include the fact that I myself was very confused when someone with otherwise good ideas once said in an interview that inconsistency is the only good thing for humans. I thought that's stretching it too far, but I can now understand how this is true in many situations and a relatively rational worldview more aligned with observable reality. When you have completed this process, and decided your beliefs- after logically evaluating all alternatives and searching for evidence- even then you would not be perfectly consistent. Just a quick recap in case you're confused before explaining why: in this plan that I describe, you first deliberately, intentionally act inconsistent in order to find which belief holds true in observable real world and not be influenced by your emotions and biases, trying to make a well-informed decision so you don't blindly follow your emotions and act irrationally in a way that causes harm to you or others. In the next stage, when you determine your beliefs, you still aren't perfectly consistent, and it'd be irrational and foolish to believe that it's even possible for you to be perfectly consistent with your beliefs and values.

Why? I'll explain with an analogy with the scientific method. In science, every physicist and mathematician know for a fact that you can never be absolutely certain about anything (but how are they certain about the fact that we can never be certain about anything? In other words, If we cannot be certain about anything, how can we be certain that we can never be certain about anything? Need to think. Edit: Solution towards the end of the post.) and you can only gather evidence in favour of something in the real world, but never test everything about everything in every possible situation, so if you need to disprove something, just one anomaly one relevant data point is enough, but it's impossible to prove something in the real world, with regard to events in the external observable universe, as in order to prove a theory you'd need to make sure that it holds true universally, that is, in every situation in the universe, and stay same regardless of space or time, so even if you somehow cover all space- which is still impossible- you'd also have to know it was true since the big bang and will hold true till the cold death, or big freeze. Until and unless you do that, you can never be certain. So, the scientific process constantly keeps getting closer to truth, it's a process, it's never perfect, you find new evidence, come up with a better hypothesis, adopt it if it works, using experiments that adhere to the current scientific standards, and you keep an open-mind so that you always know what new piece of evidence could change your mind (there has to be such evidence. If there isn't, you've fallen prey to dogmatic belief, ideology, rigid closed-mindedness, and that is a direct violation of one of the core values and pillars of the scientific method: open-mindedness. Which is also why your hypothesis need to be falsifiable. More on this later.)

Likewise, in real life, with any decision or belief, be it religion or politics or education or career or relationships, if you have any belief or way to arrive at decisions while making hard choices or solving problems, anything that you strongly believe in, you try to be as consistent with your current values and belief system as you can, but you can never be perfectly consistent because if you are consistent, that means you think your belief system is 100% true- similar to having a theory that predicts everything and is absolutely true- and so you'll never learn, be open to new evidence or ideas or reasons that could allow you to re-adjust your belief system to be more in line with reality.

So of course you don't deliberately, intentionally act inconsistent to your own values and beliefs, but stay open to the possibility that you might be wrong or mistaken, there might be some flaws in your belief system that you are unaware of, or that we don't currently have any sufficient evidence to test for sure- and this is also the reason you respect other people's opinions and personal preferences, and beliefs when it doesn't harm any sentient beings- but then you could also respect their beliefs if it does affect sentient beings, because I am biased as my own morals don't allow me to harm and sentient beings, and if you choose to do this, be prepared to engage in a debate with me and explain the reasoning behind such a worldview, because if you think that you don't care about sentient being suffering, unfortunately for you, you're going against one of my core values, and I won't let you rest in peace till you either change your mind or explain why you believe what you believe and give me good logical arguments and answer my own questions and counter-arguments.

Maybe you could say you're not open-minded and not open to debate, but that won't work with me, because it just happens that I am inclined to believe (I have logical reasons and evidence and emotional affect generated by my morals and inclinations, and so it'd evidence more than my current evidence to convince me) that no possibly sentient being shall suffer and as long as I'm alive I'll try my best to make this reality, and so even if you try to sneak out by saying you don't care, I can assure you with a certain amount of confidence that I'm going to make you care. If not now, very soon, in the very near future. I'm serious, unlike my other beliefs regarding which I don't try to enforce- in many cases even endorse- my beliefs on others, I never try to change anyone's mind, just understand their worldview, but this is the only exception- possibly sentient beings suffering due to being unfortunate enough to be at a relative disadvantage due to no fault of their own due to random chance, blind luck or accident of birth.

A second close would be trying to be aware of how external factors influence our life and decisions, things like genes, the brain, society, and how much of it is under our control- with regard to morals, values, traits, inclinations, abilities; but even this I don't think I'd try to convince someone to influence their worldview, it's more like one of the research questions high on my list of priorities that I'm strongly passionate and highly motivated to solve, just because I'm curious, and it does indirectly relate to the previous goal, but not enough for me to enforce it on others or actively seek counter-arguments or convert, update, recalibrate, readjust or align their belief system to be more in line with reality.

On consistency- So, the ideal is perfect consistency, but in real life you give yourself the freedom to change and you won't be irrational unless you're refusing to solve your inconsistency despite being aware of it, in which case you definitely would be irrational (maybe not if you have some sort of values that somehow lead to a belief that says consistency is right and so you just redefine rationality, but let's keep it simple for now, though that could be one way out of it) and so you can never be perfectly consistent, but you try to be consistent.

It's funny but I feel it's my responsibility to give you this alert: what I'm going to say now if based on my own beliefs, and your worldview might differ; I have sound logical reasons and scientific evidence to back up my beliefs, but we're talking about belief-formation itself, so this might be confusing to some, so I'd just say that what's coming after this might be influenced my own subjective bias and inclinations, even though that's exactly the thing I'm going to talk about. Now before I myself get confused, I'll just talk about the next step in my plan, but just let you know that it's an unconventional idea, and unpopular opinion, nonetheless, in my opinion, perfectly logical and as always, I'm open to changing my mind in light of new logical arguments or evidence, so feel free to reach out if you have such arguments.

We already do this to some extent, even if without being aware of it, or at least we should ('should' being normative and hence as arbitrary and subjective as subjective values, but assume ignorance of this piece of information, just forget this for now, at least this part of the discussion)- getting feedback from other people in order to know if your ideas have any merit or if it's just you who thinks it has any merit, or the converse where you think your ideas are useless but actually they have merit; you seek external observers free from subjective bias (at least your own subjective bias) in ordered get honest feedback and modify and improve your ideas to be more rational and realistic.

In the last step, you follow your intuition take a leap of faith, and commit to what side 'feels' right. I know this might come as a surprise to some, especially after all the science and logic that comes before this, in the previous step, but believe me, this is still the logical and rational thing to do, I believe, and I have good reasons. Check out my post Analysis-Paralysis for one reason, and you'd understand that there comes a point when you have to stop and start the exploit stage of the explore-exploit trade-off, a concept from theoretical computer science. When do you stop? There is no absolute criteria; it should be an arbitrary pre-determined limit that's not too low but also not too high, and you decide that for yourself based on the importance of the decision, the stakes, consequences, and a lot of factors dependent on the individual situation, and you, of course. You need to stop at some point because rationality depends on values, values depend on inclinations which depend on your genes and early environment, so factors out of your control. Similarly, logic depends on emotions, which depend on inclinations, which depend on genes and early environment. Do you see a pattern here, and do you see the implications? This means that you can never really choose, as you don't really have free-will, and you can only explore and experiment and discover what you truly enjoy (assume that you can do at least this much) and finally you commit to what you like. The only important thing is to stay open-minded and keep in mind everything I said earlier about inconsistency.

You should not be so rigid or closed-minded to not change your mind in light of new convincing logical reasons or evidence, and even though you can rationalize anything and everything if you have the ability, if you don't, or you can't, then you do what evidence says, even if goes against what you feel is right. Remember how intuitions misguide and are very unreliable; read Thinking Fast and Slow if you haven't already, or just go through a list of cognitive biases. People used to believe that certain women are witches and should be burned, homosexuality should be "cured", mentally ill should be imprisoned and tortured, the Sun revolves around the Earth, The Geocentric Model, The Theory of Spontaneous Generation, and many more; a quick search would give you thousands of examples from history where all of human civilization has been fooled and acted irrationally and caused harm to people. In the modern society in the present times, there's pseudoscience, politics, religion, conspiracy theories and so on. And if that's not convincing enough, (see what I am doing here? hint: "convincing") remember that this also led to Phrenology and Eugenics and Hitler and almost every serial killer and sexual predator who is infamous today in modern society (see my post Confessions and Objective is Subjective for more about this).

My beliefs in this regard- whatever comes after my alert- are heavily influenced by my belief in determinism and moral antirealism, as well as my own logical reasons and scientific evidence that suggests that everything is a neuroscientific or social construct, including values, morals, reality, time- I have evidence, for instance, check out David Eagleman's research on consciousness and time, check out psychophysics and philosophy of physics, and philosophy of neuroscience or neurophilosophy, for a start, all of them real scientific fields with serious researchers investigating such topics- and so all these things, not just subjective value judgments like 'good' and 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong' or 'evil' seem to have no basis in events in the objective (!) external observable universe, and so with the right logic, language and psychological tools, you can do anything you want- see my post Objective is Subjective.

All beliefs and values are equally valid, I'm not more correct than anyone else, and that includes the dogmatic religious aunt who I'm annoyed because she's no willing to listen- that's irrational- and grateful I wasn't born in such a family- I mean, she is family, but I mean to such parents or with such genes and early environment- but she would be thinking that same for me, and here the essential difference is that she'd be unable to logically explain the reasoning behind her beliefs without resorting to rookie mistakes in rationality, very basic logical fallacies and cognitive biases. So strike that off, that's a bad example, and I take back my claim that she's as justified in her beliefs as me or anyone who has good reasons to do so. But consider my cousin, who believes in the same religion and god (the same aunt's daughter) but is also able to give sound logical reasons for her beliefs, with reasons that I know science uses different terminology for but is all experimentally verified or at least there's evidence, so that's rational, and her opinion is as justified as mine, or anyone else. For instance, she says she believes in god because of it's emotional benefits (there is scientific evidence that religious people have better mental health than non-religious people, though I have invented a workaround to be non-religious and derive the same mental health benefits; I describe this idea elsewhere.) she also believes in fate (determinism, Spinoza's god, causal chain of cause and effect, Laplace's demon) and karma (dialectical materialism, butterfly effects, cause-and-effect; she even agreed that something 'evil' could have positive consequences or desirable effects, depending on the situation) and that you don't need to believe in outdated traditions and other irrational stuff that religion tells you do to, you just need to make sure that you do no harm to anyone else (My own idea of morality, Kant's Categorical Imperative, Rawl's Veil of Ignorance, Accident of Birth, Dialectical Materialism, Jung's Shadow Theory, Schopenhauer's idea of morals, External Validation and Power and much more- the last one is dependent on the person's inclinations, but the rest are all logical and if anyone wants me to elaborate and explain how they imply you should do no harm, message me.

I myself consider it a religious text, which to be fair it is, but just as you said, why could religious texts not have something to teach us- I mean, I have myself thought what hidden gems and insights we might be able to gain from.. not just the Gita, but even the texts of other religions, and old proverbs, traditional sayings, just old passed down wisdom and ancient knowledge that has somehow survived, and that to a large extent is just pseudoscientific and dogmatic beliefs that worked in the old times but not the present, but I still believe that people are too quick to dismiss such texts without even giving it a try, which is why I find it great that you gained inspiration from such works, which makes sense because they are so highly philosophical in nature, you could try to find some meaning out of it and discover something that others might have overlooked- even better if you happen to have knowledge about the present tools and techniques like the scientific method and make connections with them for instance- using experimentation and modern tools of decision science and theoretical CS to test theories presented in the Gita or any other ancient religious or non-religious text at a general level and see if it holds true! I even created a post about a very similar topic titled analyzing traditional proverbs. The basic idea is trying to understand ideas in all religious scriptures of every religion and taking the more realistic sounding ones, eventually coming to the counterintuitive ones too, and finding similarities with tech, scientific and philosophical knowledge, and also testing the stuff with the scientific method to bridge the gap between science and religion.

You might have noticed that both the aunt and the daughter believe the same thing, just have different reasoning behind it, and so yes, you can believe in the right. That's my idea, and it's funny because I should be saying opinion, but it's not an opinion, it's a belief, but it's complicated, because just like Eliezer and Scott Alexander I'm writing about what I think is the right thing yet I'm talking about what IS the right thing yet I'm open-minded to anyone who can critique and find flaws in my reasoning, so just ignore this sentence if it's confusing, because it's also confusing for me, yet I just wanted to clarify for the sake of clarity and avoid misconceptions, in case anyone had been wondering this, though if you were, I'd like to have a chat. No, I'd actually like to have a chat if you're even reading, still reading till here, and I'd like to know what you think. Because if you are still reading, you are thinking, and you almost certainly have thoughts I am interested in knowing; I estimate the probability of this not being the case very low, such an event is very unlikely, in my opinion. So let me know your comments after you finish reading the post.

I also want you to just think that I'm not imposing my idea of morals on anyone, even though I believe suffering is bad and everyone deserves to be loved and understood, all sentient beings, I'll just say that if you think differently, just let me know your reasons, and as I usually do- I'll make an exception for this exception, so just the general rule- I promise to listen and try to understand your worldview, but this is kind of a limited time offer and dependent on my mood, because even though I know you're under no obligation to explain your differing beliefs to me, I also know that I feel it's my obligation to either change your mind about this or force your brain to come up with good reasons- again if it's good enough and you reply to all my arguments, I promise to change my mind- and this one isn't for a limited time, it's for life, as open-mindedness is one of my core values, and the day I give it up is the day I die; physical death is insignificant to me, literally means nothing to me.

Another interesting observation my brain just made, something that just occurred to me, is that you could somehow justify not abiding by my idea of morality by having a belief system that says 'I don't need to follow any belief system'- but that's a paradox- or 'I should not follow anyone else's belief system' or maybe 'acting inconsistent and random is right' or just total chaos, as I'd understand, I'm chaotic too, just organized chaos, as I explain in my post series about Asperger's. Whatever, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things anyway, nothing matters, nothing really matters, anyone can see, nothing really matters to meeee... unexpected Queen, right? One of the few songs of this genre that I like, because I don't usually like rock or metal, but the tune and melody and even lyrics of this one is exceptional. Another one is counting stars (add west coast too), which I think I discussed in my post 'I will not give up'.