Your first category should also probably include those of us know have loved ones that you remind us of.

Aaaand that comment made no sense. Insert who for know. I'm not quite sure what happened with that sentence.

More about Dr. Schwartz here:

http://www.jeffreymschwartz.com

Thank you for writing that. It all seems crazy real to me right now, I appreciate it.

ps - I feel like I'm a 1.5 :(

This strayed dangerously close to the Heidigger/Hegel/Kant phenomenology course I took from a Belgian dude named Taminiaux.

My interpreters had such a hard time with him, not because of his accent, but because he had this interstitial pauses manner of talking that really forced them to slow down and listen.

And they were listening to something a lot like this: "Does the judgment... 'I'm visually experiencing redness'... (for example)... contain a visual experience of redness? Does it itself... contain the phenomenology... of red... not merely assert the existence... of red phenomenology... but actually include that phenomenology?"

The professor left halfway through the course, stranding all the graduate students, and I, the lone undergrad, got a B.

WOW! Bunny, your writing is aweseome. I don't know if I'm a 1, 2, or a 7 (probably a 2), but whatever...good stuff.

I wish I could be as open as you! And write like you!

Thanks, keep up the good work.

Heh annoyingly enough i'm a philosophy student and I have an exam on this stuff today, and here was me coming here to get a break from that, darn you bunny!

You make me happy.

It figures that you would forget the #4s: people who enjoy your writing and appreciate you for what you are.

PS: I have been on Adderall for about 3 years now. Eventually I figured out that I am not alone and neither are you. It took me 30 years to find out that I am not the only one who is like this.

Oh yeah - and I love to read now as well - not that I always didn't, but now I CAN.

This reminds me of a simple thought that I get over and over. I am more powerful than I can possibly imagine. It seems that most of our focus as humans has always been on physical power. There is so much more to us though, I feel like we (as a generation) can bridge some of the gaps in understanding human capability.

Let me put it like that - never, ever, waste some of your precious ability to read on Dawkins. It'll just make you want to kick something. Hard.
Instead, Descartes might be nice.

The best thing about your writing is the honesty of it. I'm willing to bet that draws a lot of the twos here.

Call me crazy, but I don't really fit any of those.

I'm closer to a 1.5 than a 1,2, or 3.

I also think you should make a clearer distinction between materialism and consumerism.

Just because I think that there is no soul, that the mind is the brain and vice versa doesn't mean that I value every little yuppie widget there is.

Nor would I say that because there is no such thing as a soul or an afterlife or anything that life is any less meaningful.

Life has as much meaning as its participants are willing to give it.

Feel free to disagree, of course. It's philosophy, after all, not science.

Why get so down on science anyway? It only deals with the material, it simply cannot make heads or tails of claims regarding the immaterial. I may not believe in the immaterial, but that's not because science proves that it doesn't exist (because science proves nothing of the sort).

Honestly, I just think you have a knack for writing, and I have a thing for understanding everybody I meet/hear about/whatthehellever else you have. So I'm a #5 extra value meal, with a coke please. But seriously, first time commenter but I've read for a long time. Keep it up, I for one think this stuff kicks ass.

Of course, things like mind, consciousness, time, and above all existence are hard to explain in purely material terms (the fact that things exist is hard to explain in any terms). However, since such an overwhelming number of things that were previously thought to have immaterial causes have since been shown to have material ones, it seems reasonable to expect, or at least to look for, material causes for things we still haven't explained. At least, that's my perception of the current scientific consensus (not to hide behind the defense of "I'm only quoting someone else..." because I tend to agree).
I also agree pretty wholeheartedly with matt. Just because you think a certain way doesn't mean the world works that way, or that you have to believe things that fit with how you would prefer the world to work. And, of course, vice-versa - just because the world works a certain way doesn't mean your thinking has to reflect that either. After all, if you buy materialism, the human species is really programmed to think in ways that don't mirror reality at all - in terms of purpose, for example - and we're much happier deluded. Some of the best writing about this dynamic (and some of my favorite writing, period) is from the early twentieth century when the existentialists and some modernists began to reject meaning and purpose in life, and wrote about finding meaning even when they knew (or believed) it didn't exist. If you haven't read the poetry of Robinson Jeffers, I recommend it. If you read Spanish, the book "San Manuel Bueno, Martir" by Miguel de Unamuno is good too.
On a side note, I find the rough categorization of people into "ones" and "twos" and whatnot somewhat annoying. I understand you're really just trying to identify different ways of thinking, and that it's not meant to be a universal absolute (if that was your intention, we've got a whole other disagreement to deal with), but when people start separating each other into categories it's not long before they do think in absolute terms, and not long at all before they get hostile and self-righteous.
I suppose I'm being fairly critical and probably coming across as condescending. I have to say that I enjoy your writing, and particularly your candor. It's an interesting worldview and set of experiences you have - one that couldn't be much further from mine (the experiences, I mean. Although the worldviews differ as well). Thank you for being so open, because that's almost always what makes the best writing, and certainly what makes the best thinking.

Just to fill you in on where I'm coming from, I'm a neuroscientist with a solid belief that mind is an emergent property of the brain....this would be a highly materialist position I suppose, but I nonetheless would brand myself a 1.5. I'm sure I'm not the only one to do this. I don't think it's a wishy-washy position to take though, and there's a video I saw recently that supports this.

If you take the content of this video as more than just an anecdotal example of one person's experience, it could mean that 1-ness and 2-ness are correlated with being right- versus left-brained. Continuing that thought, 1 and 2 are no longer dichotomous, but lie on a continuum with extreme 1-ness and extreme 2-ness anchoring the ends. To drag it out further, there's no reason why one shouldn't oscillate between these poles over time, meaning that at some point we've all been ones and we've all been twos.

Anyway, worth it if you've got 20 minutes and nothing to do.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/229

Oh, and I think a 3 is just a 2 with a chip on his shoulder.

One more thing you might find interesting is some work on how happiness (I suppose this could be considered a measure of how well one fits in with society, and thus an indicator of 2-ness) is linked with self-deception. This idea is expressed in a show from Radio Lab (a New York public radio show):

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/02/29

The section on self-deception is in the last 12 minutes of the show. I found it extremely interesting....it left the 1 in me feeling quite vindicated, though still depressed.

I am most certainly a number one, and also a scientist. (Biologist turned nursing student.) It's a strange way to live, but I've always been made of conflict. Some days, the kookiness overcomes my reason. Other days I just want to put my head in the oven. But I'm getting better at this shit.

This is like a Ryan Holiday post with quirky emotion rather than disciplined perspective.

i'm a 1. just lost my grandmother after 27 years of having her, and i can't cope. but, through 15 years or so of therapy i am finaly realizing that i have to make myself happy -- that noone or nothing else is going to do it.

is that me or the booze talking? either way, i made the realization. so there, life. take THAT!!

there is an interesting conversation between richard davidson (wisconsin neuroscientist who has done brain scans on monks to see the neuroplastic effects of meditation) and daniel goleman (author of emotional intelligence). it deals with the possibilities of neuroplasticity, there are free samples to listen to on www.morethansound.net but it costs to download the whole thing.

Bunny Edit: The next three books in my queue are Daniel Goleman books. Thanks for the link.

something else for a bunny brain to nibble on:
a girl in my department did a poster last year about the effects of child neglect/abuse on DNA regulation in the brain. Not only did she find that abuse/neglect affected DNA regulation, but that those changes can be inherited (to some degree). It was all very preliminary stuff, but if she's right, it makes a big mark against Darwinism by indicating our actions and experiences might dictate our own evolution.
science as a whole has a gigantic blind spot, but you can still find all sorts of nifty things within it.

That stuff about passing on acquired traits is really interesting. Apparently if you train a group of rats to run mazes, their offspring are much better at running mazes than other rats. Also, and this is just anecdotal stuff right now (but amazingly cool) there are stories of organ donation recipients developing new mental capacities from their donors (say hearing music differently if you get a liver from a violinist). So if that's true then there's a strong psychosomatic component to DNA regulation. I wouldn't say that's a mark against Darwinism though, because it does involve variations in DNA being passed on - doesn't have to be random mutation. I think it probably represents a modification of the theory though. I mean, at base modern Darwinism is just the truism that stable things persist. The complicated part is tracing all of the specific steps the various species take.
Also, I'd be curious to know - what is this giant blind spot science has? Not being sarcastic or anything, I think I know what you're talking about but I'd like to make sure.

I'd have to say I'm a number four as well. I'm just here, and appreciate what you do, and you as well for who you are.

One of the things I've reasoned is that number ones -seem- to be happier than twos, because ones elicit the most attention and adoration. Twos on the other hand, are ordinary and feel uninteresting. Ones envy the twos' abilities to live life in seeming fulfillment, but the kicker is that very few people actually achieve fulfillment. My role, as a four is to ignore the ways of both ones and twos. I, however, envy both. The ones for being charismatic, likable, and interesting, and the twos for having stability and a decent life.

As for the whole philosophic banter, I've read the comments, and it's come to remind me of what Master Sun, Miyamoto Musashi, and Bruce Lee taught. E.g. "Having no style is a style." Our universe seems to be run by paradox, and I suppose only by accepting them can you live in harmony.

Everyone else seemed to turn into a writer after reading this. Interesting. Much love.

so, in my mind the main thing about darwinism is its implication that there is no order behind the generation of living organisms. basically, that all of the organisms alive today are a result of the collective genetic pool trying out a bunch of random shit and going with whatever happened to work best. this allowed scientists to thumb their noses at the church and the idea of an order, or universal force, or god behind all existence.
but if you take away or start to question the idea of genetic evolution based on random mutation you have to figure out where, then, the change is originating from.
this puts the idea of universal order, or god or whatever, back on the table. scientists (as scientists of course, not as individuals) resist this notion because currently there is no way to measure or test the idea of god or universal order. also, it would mean all modern biology is based on a false premise (and the church was closer to the truth all along).
the problem, or blind spot, i was referring to is that all modern biology is based on the idea that everything can be explained by looking at it closely enough. it is, as bunny defined, a completely materialistic view of the world: if you see a protein and crystallize its structure then thats all there is to it, what you can see. the more we learn, the less this seems to be true.
(as a side note, the dogma of random mutation being the source for all genetic diversity is unfalsifiable, therefore unscientific, but nobody likes to talk about that. :))
i hope i was clear...im a shitty writer and originally posted just to impress the bunny in hopes it might one day get me into her pants.

I seem to remember someone posting something about this on RMMB a long time ago...

"Come on now, sweetie. Three categories? There are infinite categories."

Who would say something like that? And why can't there be a category for well adjusted people who think you're funny?

Read read read Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh.