Giles

Good Luck with your search my friend. I think (IME) you'll find the answer to your question when you step in for the first time and the bell rings.

Thanks Steve. 🙏🏻 I'm really glad to hear that it was a simple misunderstanding.

His written English certainly appeared to me to be fluent enough to understand the meaning of being led by one's emotions. However, being able to express oneself fluently in a foreign language is not the equivalent of being able to comprehend a foreign language fluently, as any competent linguist would confirm. Incidentally, I never contended that his request to explain what I meant by being led by one's emotions wasn't "fair".

That's certainly true.

Although, I guess that a hypothetical Taoist sage would probably out a contrarian fairly easily?

Or perhaps all the who read that thread saw that you were entirely correct about your own assessment of your rudimentary grasp of English in 2018 but they were kind enough not to knock your confidence even further? That's actually very helpful. Let's wait and see if members believe that you're now able to understand a standard use of the simple English phrase "to be led by <something/someone>" because that will certainly help to illuminate the problem.

Thank you. 🙏🏻 So, in fact, during the entire course of that thread you never asked "whether [your] English [was] OK". Furthermore, in fact, you stated clearly that your English was "improvised" and that you "hoped" that it was "readable".

OK. In that case let's break the problem down into easily manageable chunks in the expectation it will lead to a path out of this apparent quagmire. Firstly: Is this the conversation to which you're referring?

That already seems reasonably clear to me, which leads me to ask what's your level of English proficiency?

Certainly. Perhaps in such cases a hypothetical contemporary "Taoist sage" would view such programmed individuals in much the same way that she would view chatbots and NPCs in video games (as Lao Tzu referred to straw dogs in verse 5 of the Tao Te Ching)? Again, certainly... However, perhaps you can see that there's a substantial difference between someone for whom "emotions play no role whatever" and someone "who isn't led by their emotions"?

That's very interesting. Thank you. 🙏🏻 I'll certainly follow-up your references. So, you've never encountered anyone who isn't led by their emotions and you're not prepared to entertain the possibility that people like that exist? 😮

That's quite surprising, unless you consider that equanimity isn't one of the defining characteristics of Taoist sages (or you consider that Lao Tzu wasn't a Taoist sage)? 😯

One of the most commonly deployed arguments against those who assert that consciousness is universal, rather than individual, is that we're unaware of other individuals' thoughts. An irrefutable counter-argument that I've heard deployed in this case is that most of the time we simply forget or fail to notice others' thoughts in much the same way that we forget or fail to notice most of own thoughts.

Namaste helgaferae.

Indeed... Source: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/ Which perhaps begs the question that might deserve its own thread, "Is there currently any source of truth?" 🤔

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/technology/ai-chatbots-disinformation.html

I'm unclear about your point but... if someone's unable to seet that SotG was a dead-end...

FWIW (IMO/IME) you're on the right track Barnaby.

I appear only to have permission to edit or to hide my redundant PPF threads. Is it possible to obtain permission to delete an entirely redundant thread?

Peace to you too @natural and Peace to the entire membership of this forum, past present and future. Happy New Year to all the Bums! Namaste. _/\_

Welcome Christopher. Namaste. _/\_

Thanks. 🙏🏻