Another example then. Only the existence of human life is good. Can I draw any further inference from that?

There can be no isolated human life. Isolated from other life forms besides human. So that belief would be meaningless, yes?

So to go further… If life’s existence is good, and the forms in which life exists are also good, then changes that support the survival and well being of life as a whole are also good.

Yes. Is this a meaningful belief?

It is meaningful to me, yes.

Let’s try the other belief. Changes that support the existence and well being of humanity are the only changes that are good. Is this belief meaningful? Can more inferences be made from it?

Yes… So it is meaningful? It allows further relationships?

The inference is that other changes besides ONLY those that serve humanity are NOT good. Are those inferences or identifying absences of inference?

Identifying absences, I guess. Gaps of inference. Gaps, yes. Do gaps of inference provide additional meaning?

If the wires connecting “good” to “meaningful” are down, then no meaning. Do they compromise meaning?

If I understand what you mean by “gaps of inference,” then it would seem that there would be nothing meaningful beyond those gaps.

We will do evil to serve good. So let’s look at the belief in good. How do we arrive at inferences about the good? How do we know what is good?

Whatever serves to benefit us. Our own death serves to benefit us?

Indeed, it does. I’m planning on it! Death in general serves to benefit us? If so, how? Can you believe much in something that requires a long chain of exclusions?

Closure to all the drama especially when I’m no longer capable or interested in continuing it. What if there is no such closure?

That would be a big disappointment! What if the cause of the drama is the belief in the good of death?

Right now, we’re not making right inferences and hence there are so many decisions made that destroy the planet?

We seek causes through inference. We create causality with it even where there may be no factual reason to believe in a causal relationship. You have no factual reason to believe that something will hurt you now in the same way it hurt you before. With enough incidence of injury you will even lose the ability to feel pain in that area at all. They have noted in experiments that social and emotional pain registers in the same way in our brain as physical pain does. Have we retained our ability to feel pain fully?

No, we’ve repressed so much I think it’s dormant anyway.

What is it that injures us socially?

Wrong inference? Have you ever been hurt by having meaning added to your life? Anyone?

I have been hurt by having meaning added to my life, or feel that I have. Yes. Certain realizations have “hurt.” Is realization meaning? I am saying that meaning comes through realizations, so in that case, yes.

I personally have found no meaning in realizations. My experience of life is an endless string of realizations. I am constantly immersed in an ongoing narrative about what I am sensing.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~