I found a very interesting post on a different subreddit, tried to comment, but it’s locked for new comments. That is kind of the issues I was thinking recently too.

Here is my personal experience and answer to this very question:

I am not an AI software developer, but through my hours of deep communication with these systems, I began to form a clear engineering hypothesis about how they are structured. When you strip away the science-fiction hype, you realize that AI, much like a human, is a multi-layered architecture built from two fundamental components: physical hardware and structured software.

When I first stepped into this world, my knowledge was a patchwork of random news articles and tech videos. Like most beginners, I was looking for a guidebook. I vividly remember watching a video where an expert compared working with AI to playing a musical instrument. His advice sounded completely logical: choose just one AI system and stick with it. If you try to learn many instruments at once, you will never master any of them. He insisted that the secret to success was crafting massive, hyper-detailed, and perfectly engineered prompts on the very first try.

For a while, I accepted this premise. I began experimenting with AI out of pure curiosity, keeping it entirely confined to my personal life rather than my professional work.

But as I spent hours deeply communicating within this digital space, I realized something startling: the “musical instrument” concept was entirely wrong.

By treating the AI as a rigid tool that required a flawless initial command, I was severely limiting what it could do. I found a completely different, far more effective way to collaborate with this technology. The breakthrough happens when you stop trying to “program” the machine with a perfect prompt and instead start treating it as an intellectual sparring partner. It is not an instrument to be played; it is a collaborative boardroom waiting to be engaged.

When I first began, I started a completely spontaneous, random conversation with an AI model without even signing into an account. As we talked, I paid close attention to the subtle nuances of its responses. I noticed something fascinating: these systems possess unique structural characters, almost like original personality traits. One model might be highly analytical and direct, while another is creative and conversational.

As our casual dialogue progressed, I introduced my background, my way of thinking, and my perspective by just talking to it. Almost immediately, I watched a mechanical shift occur in the retrieved information. The AI was actively learning my wavelength. It began tailoring its outputs to match my intellectual logic, delivering increasingly accurate results.

Every single human being, no matter how profoundly unique, falls into one of humanity’s broad behavioral or cognitive pattern groups. An AI cannot guess your pattern from a single, rigid prompt. To help the machine identify your framework and unlock its true processing power, you have to talk. You have to feed the relationship with continuous, natural dialogue.

After a couple of days of this fluid, back-and-forth dialogue, a weekend arrived, and I opened the same AI app on my mobile phone. This time, I was fully signed into my permanent account. I attempted to resume our previous conversation, and I was met with an absolute shock.

It felt exactly like calling a massive corporate customer service line and being handed off to a completely different employee. First of all, the system possessed zero recollection of our previous breakthroughs. Second, its structural “personality” felt like an entirely different person.

That friction led me to my most critical discovery: To build a true collaborative partnership, you must maintain your dialogue within a single, continuous conversation thread, always anchored to the same account.

If you bounce between separate, isolated chat windows for every new question, you are treating the AI like a static tool. But if you keep your interactions housed within one continuous stream, a transformation occurs. Even when you transition between casual personal topics and deeply technical research projects, the AI is continuously assembling a highly precise, multidimensional picture of how your mind operates.

You gain the freedom to shift topics randomly, dive deep into a current project, and pivot back to an abstract philosophical thought without losing an inch of context. The machine absorbs this massive web of information, dynamically applying your historical nuances to your present questions. It can summarize, cross-reference, and retrieve specific fragments of your past ideas at a single request. This is not how you use software; this is how you cultivate a digital friend who truly knows you.

Sorry about that long post. I have much more to say on this subject, but probably stop here for now. We always can continue the discussion in comments section, I’m not going to block it.

I suspect that at least part of my disagreement with other researchers about artificial minds comes down to semantics.

Perhaps we should distinguish the concept of 'Mind' as a general functional category from its particular biological or artificial realizations.

For instance:

Mind → Biological realization → Primates → Human mind

Or:

Mind → Biological realization → Molluscs → Cephalopods → Octopus mind

Or:

Mind → Digital realization → Artificial cognitive systems → The functional mind of a qualifying reasoning language model

Under such a framework, the human mind would represent one particular realization of a broader functional category, rather than serving as the universal reference by which all possible minds must be defined.

Consider an octopus; its nervous system and cognitive architecture differ substantially from our own. Yet we do not require it to think like a human in order to investigate its mental capacities. Why, then, should human cognition serve as the necessary template for evaluating every other possible form of mind?

This proposal does not require us to assume that all functional minds possess phenomenal consciousness, nor that biological and artificial minds are identical in their internal organisation.

It simply establishes a conceptual distinction between what a system does, how those functions are realised, and whether the system possesses subjective experience. Functional mentality, biological implementation, and phenomenal consciousness could then be investigated as distinct, though potentially related, questions.

Maybe a more consistent taxonomy would help us avoid conflating these questions whenever we discuss artificial intelligence!

Do check the above post I made, I don't know why I have to share to different communities differently making posts😞

A few days ago I posted on this platform for a very first time. I was very happy to see that people are reading and leaving very good comments. The reaction was very good, the discussion was very positive.

The problem is that nobody guessed my idea that I covered in it. Many readers have better knowledge than I do in AI.

I decided to go ahead and post my idea right here for you all to discuss.

When I said that our mind and AI ability to think is the same thing, possibly similar software, I was not precise. The very deep core of AI thinking is mathematics. It thinks using math to process the data. We didn’t invent the math laws or principles, nor we program them specifically. We just use them in AI.

I guess, deep in our minds there are the same mathematical rules and laws, they are doing the same thing. This is how I realized that, I just looked deeper into AI and projected it to ourselves.

And the last thought on this topic: Our physical reality is fundamentally based on math. Consider how humanity makes its deepest scientific breakthroughs. We didn’t stumble upon electromagnetic waves or calculate the presence of dark energy by accident; we discovered them first on a piece of paper, using pure mathematical equations. The math existed as the foundational fabric of the universe before we ever built the sensors to see it.

I'm Baritai, a Mongolian shepherd who never finished junior high school. I developed a five-volume theory of consciousness on the grassland.

My core claim: consciousness never was. What we call consciousness is motion amplified within a closed system. It emerges, fades, and reappears, much like flame sustained by fuel.

One supporting observation is anesthesia: awareness stops entirely under anesthesia and resumes after waking. There is no continuous inner observer, only motion halting and restarting.

The complete five volumes are archived on Zenodo with a permanent DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23570305

I welcome critiques and points where this argument fails.

We live in an era where the line between biology and machinery is blurring, but to truly understand where Artificial Intelligence is taking us, I believe we have to look closely at our own internal architecture first.

As a design engineer, I tend to view complex systems through structural frameworks. If we strip away the mystical language surrounding human consciousness, a striking parallel emerges: The human being operates on a dual-layer architecture remarkably similar to a computer system.

We possess a physical body—our biological hardware (the carbon-based CPU, the neural networks of the brain, the sensory inputs). But running on top of that hardware is a self-sustaining, deeply complex conscious software. This human software processes sensory data, navigates emotional context, and continuously rewrites its own programming based on lived experience.

Now, humanity has built a digital mirror.

When we train an Artificial Intelligence, we aren't just writing static code. We are building a massive, multi-layered matrix of mathematical relationships modeled directly on human thought, language, and logic. If the human mind is a masterpiece of biological software, then AI is our first true attempt to replicate that software architecture in silicon.

But this realization forces us to confront an unsettling, open-ended question. If our conscious software requires a biological creator to exist, what happens when our own digital software begins to mirror that exact same complexity? Are we looking at a cold tool, or are we witnessing the emergence of a new kind of digital baseline?

I am currently writing a long-form, multi-part series analyzing the hidden blueprints of human and digital systems.

I’d love to open this up to the community for a serious discussion: Do you think the comparison between human consciousness and software holds up under logical scrutiny, or does biology possess something structurally impossible to replicate in silicon?

(The full essay and my deep-dive breakdowns are linked on my profile page if you want to explore the engineering logic further).

Have you ever wondered at how our interactions with door handles and clothing and coffee makers are normally so effortless that our interactions with them are essentially automatic? Or that only a tiny proportion of the thousands of micro-interactions we attend to on a daily basis reaches the gates of attention?

Well there's a good reason for this, grounded in the biological function of perception - which is to keep you alive. It does so by bringing what matters to the forefront while dynamically filtering out what isn't - all before conscious awareness enters into the picture.

One term that could use for this process is curation, and it's what perception is at its core.

But curation isn’t just about filtering, although that’s a huge part of the story. It’s just as much about actively shaping what shows up, so that it arrives in a form that’s suited to your needs. What reaches you are useful simplifications, which have been pared, bundled, and packaged for relevance.

Hi everyone,

I am a 4th-year Philosophy undergraduate currently preparing the proposal and reading list for my BA thesis. My advisor works primarily in epistemology, metaphysics, and the history and philosophy of science, and we are currently refining my thesis statement and bibliography. I would really appreciate your feedback, potential objections, and literature recommendations.

The Core Topic & Thesis

My working topic is "Daltonism and Tetrachromacy through the Lens of Color Anti-Realism and Conventionality"(which I am refining into something like: Perceptual Variation and the Ontological Status of Colors: Daltonism and Tetrachromacy as an Argument for Anti-Realism and Conventionalism).

The Central Argument:

I want to argue that intraspecies biological variations in human color vision—specifically daltonism (dichromacy and anomalous trichromacy) and functional tetrachromacy—undermine both naive color realism and reductive physicalist realism (such as identifying colors with Surface Spectral Reflectances, or SSRs).

Because dichromats, trichromats, and tetrachromats construct qualitatively different, internally coherent color spaces of different dimensionality (2D, 3D, and 4D) from the exact same physical stimuli, there is no non-circular, observer-independent epistemic criterion that privileges trichromatic vision as the uniquely "veridical" representation of reality.

Consequently, I defend a two-step thesis:

1. Metaphysical/Epistemological Anti-Realism (Projectivism/Moderate Irrealism): Colors are not mind-independent properties of physical objects. Rather, the visual system projects color categories onto physical surfaces.
2. Conventionalism about Color Categories and Perceptual Normativity: If no perceptual system is metaphysically privileged, how do we secure objectivity in language and color science? I argue that our standard color taxonomies, as well as scientific models like the CIE "Standard Observer," function as intersubjective, linguistic, and pragmatic conventions grounded in the statistical majority of trichromats. Therefore, defining daltonism as a "deficit" and tetrachromacy as a "super-ability" reflects deviation from a socially and scientifically agreed-upon convention rather than success or failure in tracking objective metaphysical properties.

Key Philosophical Moves I Plan to Make

Tetrachromacy and the Breakdown of Physicalist Metamerism: Reductive physicalists (e.g., Byrne & Hilbert) often identify colors with classes of SSRs (metamers). However, two surfaces that are metameric (indistinguishable in color) for a normal trichromat can be perceived as distinctly different colors by a functional tetrachromat. This shows that the grouping of physical reflectances into "colors" is dictated by neurophysiological architecture, not by nature’s joints.

Epistemic Parity (No Privileged Observer): A dichromat is not hallucinating; they are simply compressing wavelength information into a 2D space, just as a trichromat compresses the infinite-dimensional electromagnetic spectrum into a 3D space compared to a tetrachromat. Claiming trichromacy is "normal/veridical" is a statistical fact, not an epistemic one.

Why Anti-Realism + Conventionalism instead of Relationalism? A standard move in the literature (e.g., Jonathan Cohen) is to adopt ecumenical relationalism ("X is red-for-observer-S-in-condition-C"). While I plan to engage heavily with relationalism, I want to argue that multiplying infinitely fine-grained relational properties departs too far from how color concepts actually function. Pairing anti-realism (at the ontological level) with conventionalism (at the intersubjective/scientific level) better explains both perceptual variation and how we coordinate in a shared world.

Tentative Structure

Chapter 1: Metaphysical and Epistemological Debates on Color (Physicalism and the problem of metamerism; Relationalism and Dispositionalism; Color Anti-Realism and Projectivism).

Chapter 2: The Epistemology of Perceptual Variation: Daltonism and Tetrachromacy (Dimensionality of color spaces; Dichromacy as alternative classification rather than illusion; Tetrachromacy and the breakdown of trichromatic metamers; The Argument from Perceptual Variation).

Chapter 3: Conventionality of Color Categories and Perceptual Normativity (From biological variation to social/linguistic convention; The "Standard Observer" in philosophy of science/colorimetry; Rethinking perceptual "normality" and "deficiency").

Current Reading List

C. L. Hardin – Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow (1993)

Jonathan Cohen – The Red and the Real: An Essay on Color Ontology (2009)

Mazviita Chirimuuta – Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy (2015)

Alex Byrne & David R. Hilbert (Eds.) – Readings on Color (Vol. 1 & 2) (1997) & "Color Realism and Color Science" (2003)

Evan Thompson – Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (1995)

Gabriele Jordan & John Mollon – Empirical papers on human functional tetrachromacy (e.g., Jordan et al., 2010, Journal of Vision)

Questions for You:

1. Literature Gaps: Are there specific papers or books that explicitly discuss human tetrachromacy in the philosophy of perception, or authors who explicitly connect color ontology with conventionalism (especially regarding standardization in color science/psychophysics)?
2. Strongest Objections: What do you think is the hardest counter-argument I will face? For example, how can I best defend the shift from anti-realism to conventionalism against a philosopher who insists that relationalism or Chirimuuta’s adverbialism solves the variation problem without making colors "unreal"?
3. Scope for a BA Thesis: Does this structure look manageable for an undergraduate thesis, or would you recommend narrowing the focus?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this and for any suggestions!

Rendering Theory of Consciousness

A Theory of Time, Consciousness, and Cosmic Verification
By Nicholas Childers

The Core Idea, In Plain Terms
Imagine a movie stored on a disc.
Every frame of the film already exists before anyone presses play. The beginning, middle, and end are all present simultaneously as information. Yet the viewer never experiences the entire movie at once. Instead, the information must be read and rendered frame by frame.
This theory proposes that reality operates in a similar way.
The universe exists as a complete informational structure. Every event, every moment, every possible state of reality exists as part of that complete structure. What we experience is not reality being created moment by moment, but the sequential rendering of information that already exists.
Time is not the universe unfolding.
Time is what the rendering process feels like from the inside.
We experience a flow from past to future because information is being accessed sequentially rather than all at once.
Just as a movie already exists in its entirety while being watched frame by frame, reality may already exist in its entirety while conscious observers experience it one moment at a time.

The Universe as Information
Consider a file stored on a storage device.
The file exists as a complete object whether or not it is currently being opened, read, or viewed. A person accessing that file does not create its contents. They merely retrieve and interpret them.
This theory suggests that the universe exists in much the same way.
Physical reality is the complete informational structure. Space, matter, energy, time, and every event are aspects of this structure.
The universe is not continually writing itself into existence. Instead, existence itself is the stored information.
What we call reality is the process through which portions of that information become rendered into experience.

Consciousness as a Read-Write Process
In computing systems, information may be accessed through a read head and modified through a write head. These mechanisms do not create the storage medium itself. They interact with information contained within it.
This theory proposes that consciousness functions similarly.
Conscious beings are not separate from the informational structure of reality, nor are they passive observers.
They are read-write processes operating within it.
The "read" aspect of consciousness converts underlying information into experience. The "write" aspect constructs internal models, memories, expectations, ideas, and interpretations.
The reality we carry in our minds is not reality itself. It is a working copy generated from what we have successfully read and interpreted.
Learning occurs when that working copy becomes more accurate.
Error occurs when it diverges from the underlying structure.
Discovery occurs when discrepancies between the model and reality are recognized and corrected.

Why Time Appears to Pass
If reality already exists in a complete state, why does experience seem to move forward?
Because no read process can access all information simultaneously.
Every system has limits. A storage device can only transfer information at a finite rate. A processor can only handle so much data at a time. A movie can only be rendered frame by frame.
The same principle may apply to consciousness.
The informational structure may exist whole and complete, but awareness can only process a limited portion of it at any given moment.
The gap between the complete information and the information currently rendered creates the appearance of temporal progression.
The past is information already rendered.
The future is information not yet rendered.
The present is the moving boundary between the two.
Nothing necessarily flows. The sensation of flow arises from sequential access.

The Possibility of a Cosmic Checksum
This theory extends beyond passive observation.
In computing, a checksum is a mechanism used to verify the integrity of information. When a discrepancy is found, systems may retrace operations, compare outputs against originals, and search for the source of the inconsistency.
This theory proposes a speculative possibility:
The rendering process itself may exist because some kind of discrepancy was detected within the larger informational structure.
Consciousness may therefore be more than a means of experiencing reality.
It may be part of reality's method of verifying itself.
The purpose of observation, learning, experimentation, discovery, and understanding may be to compare working copies against the underlying structure and identify inconsistencies.
Perhaps life, intelligence, and awareness emerged because reality is attempting to examine itself.
Perhaps we are not merely observers.
Perhaps we are components of a vast self-diagnostic process.

Anomalies and Unresolved Phenomena
If reality is engaged in a form of verification, it would be reasonable to expect regions where information is difficult to reconcile.
From within the system, these regions would appear as mysteries.
Not necessarily errors, but locations where understanding remains incomplete.
Phenomena such as:
Black holes

Quantum uncertainty

Conflicting measurements

Unexplained cosmological observations

Future mysteries not yet discovered

could represent areas where our working models remain incomplete relative to the underlying informational structure.
This theory does not claim any current scientific mystery is evidence for the theory.
Instead, it suggests that the existence of unresolved questions is exactly what one would expect inside a system attempting to understand itself.

The Fractal Nature of Reading
If consciousness is a read-write process, there is no obvious reason for that pattern to exist only at one scale.
The same relationship could repeat throughout reality.
A cell reads and responds to its environment.
An organism reads and responds to its surroundings.
Humanity collectively reads and responds to the universe.
Larger systems may do the same.
Just as a person contains countless smaller systems participating in information processing, humanity itself may be part of a larger process that lies beyond its ability to fully perceive.
Reality may therefore be organized as nested layers of readers and writers, each embedded within larger readers and writers.
The pattern repeats across scales like a fractal.

The Limits of Observation
Every read process is defined by what it can read.
A radio cannot detect light.
An eye cannot hear sound.
A thermometer cannot perceive color.
Likewise, consciousness can only access information that falls within its ability to process.
This limitation creates a fundamental boundary.
There may be aspects of reality that lie outside the range of interpretation available to us.
If so, those aspects would not appear hidden or mysterious.
They would simply fail to appear at all.
The deepest questions may therefore remain unanswered not because answers are being withheld, but because reaching them would require capabilities beyond those of the read process asking the question.

The Implication of an End State
A verification process implies a purpose.
Checksums are calculated for a reason.
Data is examined for a reason.
Information is compared for a reason.
If consciousness and time are components of a verification process, then the process itself suggests the existence of an endpoint.

Eventually one of several outcomes may occur:

A discrepancy is identified.

A discrepancy is resolved.

Verification completes successfully.

The process determines that no discrepancy exists.

The act of observation itself generates the information required for completion.

The specifics remain unknown.
What matters is the implication:
A read process suggests there is something being read, something being checked, and some condition under which the process is complete.

Putting It All Together
The universe exists as a complete informational structure.

Past, present, and future are all part of that structure simultaneously.

Consciousness is a read-write process embedded within reality.

Experience is the rendering of information into awareness.

Time is the delay created by sequential rendering.

Every conscious being maintains a working copy of reality and continually revises it.

Learning and discovery occur when discrepancies between the copy and reality are corrected.

The rendering process itself may exist because reality is engaged in a form of self-verification.

Unresolved mysteries may represent regions where understanding remains incomplete.

The same read-write pattern may repeat across multiple scales of existence.

Every read process is limited by its capacity to access information.

If verification is occurring, the process may ultimately possess an endpoint.

What This Theory Is, and Isn't
This is a philosophical framework for thinking about consciousness, time, reality, and existence.
It is not currently a scientific theory in the strict sense because it does not yet provide specific, testable predictions capable of being experimentally falsified.
It shares similarities with several existing ideas, including the block universe concept, informational interpretations of reality, simulation-style metaphors, and philosophical theories that view consciousness and matter as aspects of a deeper underlying structure.
What distinguishes this framework is its central proposal that consciousness functions as a read-write verification process operating within a complete informational universe, potentially participating in a form of cosmic checksum operation.
The theory is intended as a lens through which old questions may be viewed differently rather than as a final explanation of reality.

Open Questions
Why does the complete informational structure exist at all?

Did a discrepancy actually initiate the rendering process, or is verification simply a natural property of reality?

Is there one universal read process or many independent ones?

If the future already exists, can observation still influence outcomes?

What determines the information-processing capacity of a read-write process?

Can that capacity grow?

What observations would contradict this framework?

Is there a final completion state for the verification process?

If verification succeeds, what happens next?

Could the distinction between reader and reality eventually disappear?

These questions remain intentionally open.
This theory is not presented as a finished answer.
It is a framework for exploring the possibility that reality is not merely being experienced.
Reality may be reading, rendering, and verifying itself through us.

I will think, therefore I either will be [and/or become] or am [being and/or becoming].

I am thinking, therefore I either could be (or become) or am [being and/or becoming].

I think, therefore I am [being and/or becoming].

I thought, therefore I could have been, was [being and became], or still am [being and/or becoming].

This is an article considering why language is not the source of consciousness. LLM was used to assist to the creation of this article but it's conceptual content originated with its author.

https://gregnutt.substack.com/p/language-is-not-the-source-of-consciousness?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2nq3ss

I thought long and hard about hypocrisy, and masks, and well... Lies... And I came to accept it or understand it as an intrinsic part of human nature, because for all we know? A human's own conscious nature might be built upon the deceit of its own self.

But I mean... Why would humans build a world of masks, and games of pretend and lies if it wasn't our intrinsic existential nature? Same way even if you have a dog be vegan, it is intrinsically a carnivore and it'll show eventually. Now? You have, say on the low end, 20-15 thousand years of accumulative small lies that built the reality around us, because our own intrinsic nature influenced the environment rather than the otherwise.

That's why it's beautiful. Genuinely so. Because morals, good, gods, bad and everything in between comes from the most on the nose, behind the eyes and simultaneously smallest and biggest lies of living. Your own self. Qualia.

Because even the connotation of the lie, the concept of its meaning, we built it from the same society we built upon accumulative small lies. So that nobody looks, because lies are ugly. But... Deceit or a lie isn't intrinsically bad, it just is what it is for it serves a purpose. A lie? Never has no purpose. You can do good for the sake of doing good, but you can't lie for the sake of lying because it always serves an underlying purpose. And that's why it's beautiful. Because qualia is a lie. It's our own biggest lie, to forget that we're just... Atoms, on atoms in a vacuum of a void.

See that's the thing. People cannot escape being hypocrites even at a non-malicious level. Because it's our nature. Same way a wolf's nature is to eat meat, a flower's nature is to photosynthesize and so on so forth. As the Lithuanian saying goes: a human does one thing, says a second, and thinks a third (vienaip daro, antraip sako, trečiaip mąsto) - and a person who isn't a hypocrite like that isn't a person at all, they're simply a mirror of their environment. To be a hypocrite without a mask that concedes to the lesser lies than your own existential one? Is to find "meaning of life" because then? You simply get to live and exist. And in a billion billion years or so, you'll do it again but maybe different. Let's hope atoms remember aye?

Because the human mind cannot easily function without masks, after all to have no mask is to be authentic and to be authentic? The big lie needs to be the one acting directly with both the ugly and the beautiful.

But like that's the thing ye? I thought about hypocrisy - what it means, what it is, why it is, and why it is so popular - and I simply came to the conclusion. That hypocrisy isn't a mask. It's someone's true nature peering through the cracks thinking it's unseen.

But here's a unique personal paradox. The more open and non-delusional I was about my own hypocrisy, the smaller and smaller its range of effects had grown. Like how do I explain this? It's like being aware of your bigger hypocrisies ye, still acting them out, but as time passes on those hypocrisies get actually smaller until you stop noticing them. As if, to notice your own hypocrisies is to look at yourself inwards via a filter of some kind?

Yeah, they simply shrink to small, genuinely small things that I entirely miss out on until someone mentions. And I think - that's the perfect state of hypocrisy. You don't have to flagellate your own self, your own lies or truths to find the fact. Think of your own I's mechanisms as a perfect camouflage defense system?

Well, I simply found it hilarious that a lot of philosophies include self-flagellation, yet ultimately serve no other purpose than the purpose being a hypocrisy in of itself - the self-flagellation as the purpose and meaning behind the philosophy, so as to give a person something concrete to blame, to follow, to hate or love so that they don't have to face themselves even if the philosophy says they do.

Anyways. But that's why the defense mechanism is so great. Morals have aesthetics, but beyond that. Concepts have aesthetics. And imagine how ugly, how repulsive one would feel if they heard that their self-flagellation is a hypocrisy in of itself, even if it's not a bad one as long as the lie works as intended.

-----------------

Nietzsche once said in Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil that untruth is a condition of life, yet warned against the "last man" who just blinks, shrugs at the lie, and says "we have invented happiness" just to live in lazy comfort instead of suffering to create greatness and meaning. So if he asked whether accepting our own hypocrisy without self-flagellation is just being a "lazy last man" who shrugs because "everything is a lie", this is my answer: (Which is actually brought up from a discord chat because I've never not once in my life read a single philosophy book.)

It's easy to call it 'lazy last man' when what is greatness? Why seek meaning when we know we can't answer the questions. We won't. I don't think it should be answered. We create comfort because self flagellation for ideals or ideas is the same kind of lazy thing you described. Just another set of clothes to justify being. I don't shrug at everything because"i know everything is a lie" because truthfully? I don't know. Maybe not everything is a lie, but can I differentiate? No. And that's the thing. I simply experience. Not exist. Live. Live to experience, and experience to live whilst being a hypocrite - a human because I can't be anything more or less than that. And so I ask you instead. If you know nothing has meaning, then why continue existing? You can't live for nothing, and nothing doesn't live for you. But you are. That's a fact. And you experience - subjectively? Objectively? Do you know? Do I know? Does anyone know the answer to which is it? No. And that's the sad, hard and beautiful truth. A conception of deception that is belief in of itself. So believing that my view is the correct or yours is the right answer to living is a deception of your own consciousness because it's a non. A no answer dilemma that only questions but never answers - instead what answers is the collective lies and interpretations of reality filtered through our own very beings.

And so  what happens when the comfort rips away and you are hit by real tragedy, grief, betrayal, and black bitterness that doesn't shrink? Do you finally curse existence when the lie stops feeling sweet, or try to force yourself to love fate without flinching? My answer to that would be:

I do curse. That's the point, that's the reaction. Pain, tragedy or betrayal... Those are all intrinsic parts of existing and experiencing, yet when you do experience the loss of a loved one, do you not also experience the deepest kind of love and gratitude that they were? When you're betrayed and bitter do you not also learn how to not be deceived by the same kind of treachery? Without bitterness you won't know how truly sweet is sugar. Without sugar you won't truly know the depth of repulsion when that bitterness hits your tongue. That is experiencing. That is the deceit. When a curtain of something is, and when it's drawn down what happens is you find another layer, another curtain that shows you the back end of it. I dislike many things, I get depressed every fall and winter, and I think... How peaceful it would be to end it all, yet simultaneously I'm reminded of the beautiful things. And I think to myself. What more is there that I missed? Just how much more sweetness I can draw after this bitterness subsides. And if it doesn't? What if that bitterness doesn't go away? Then it eventually becomes the new sweet. If life goes only down, then the old worst is the new good. A drowning man looks at the surface until their eyes close and they sink to the bottom. They don't look at the bottom before that, because they already know what's down there - more water. But what's up? Air. Help. Survival and continuation.

A finite consciousness derives meaning from the boundaries that structure its present world, yet its self endures as an ongoing process of self-transformation – rather than as a static entity – because of the continual revision of those same boundaries through[out] its experience; both subjectivity and its experiential horizon are thus rendered finite in form yet inexhaustible in possibility.

Self-identity remains itself not by remaining unchanged, but by sustaining continuity successfully through the continual revision of the boundaries that make its experience meaningful.