Before I reply to this comment, let me first write this: Enlightenment is real. It changes how you experience things, the only question is how much it changes and how great this experience is.
"Letting your guard down" makes you more receptive, but I don't think it starts the feedback loop. Otherwise, the same feeling would appear every time, but instead I think it's the feeling you start with which gets amplified.
Common advice related to meditation techniques contradicts itself. It's sold as a way of removing attachment, but also as a way of experiencing the moment. As a way of finding yourself, but also of destroying your sense of self. I don't want to experiment more with meditation before somebody can tell me if it results in dissociation or if it helps one get rid of it, for I've had "experts" tell me both. This is a shame, as I would otherwise have much more data for you. "Mindfulness" is good though, at least people who practice it have stronger ASMR responses according to research.
When the brain lacks confidence it's more open
This part is interesting because it's new to me. I suppose it's related to predictive processing? I struggle a bit with numbness, and one of my solutions is mentally removing the constraints on future states by telling myself that every situation is new and that I don't know what may happen.
Took extra energy to reach my "thoughts"
This sounds different. I meant the location of the "I" inside the head. Thoughts being hard to reach does resonate with me, but I think that's a side-effect of exhaustion or low dopamine. An energy drink fixes it, at least until the energy drink wears off. On second thought, maybe you meant that you felt further away from yourself than usual. Your other experiences are very interesting, but I haven't tried anything like them myself.
But I still have no great leads
Training yourself to hold your focus fully on something (emotion, feeling, an area of your body or your sense of self) and creating a feedback-loop would allow you to test out like 7 different practices all at once. By the way, it seems like you're losing faith in these teachings because you think they should be more popular if they actually worked? But many of them were intentionally kept hidden, and it wasn't uncommon to believe that these things couldn't be communicated. An attitude of "He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know" probably held back the popularity of much of this.
Also, what would you need in order for spiritual practices to be "real"? You can experience a state of mind in which everything feels profound, but that doesn't mean that the profound connections you see have real depth. Are you fine with the experience, or are you looking for more scientific results which influence the outside world and not just the mind?
I can tell you that these are true at least:
1: Visualization generally works. This relates to "praying" and "desiring", which tunes your brain towards getting or experiencing specific things using the same system which makes you able to wake up at exactly 7am if you wish (most people have experienced this, right?). A quote from The Alchemist goes "When you want something, the whole universe conspires in order for you to achieve it". I'm still not sure if the subconsciousness is stronger than we think, or if human consciousness can influence the probability of things (my visualization sometimes affect the behaviour of other people)
2: You can feel really great just by having strong beliefs. You get that feeling of certaincy which is not much unlike confidence. It feels a bit like being in the flow state or like everything is within your control. If you do something with enough confidence, other people are unlikely to question you, so in the personal and social realm, this is quite powerful. It can just fall apart when you engage with more objective things.
3: The first jhana is real at the minimum, this suggests that other methods of focusing are likely to work.
4: If you escape the state of constantly distracting yourself, and pay attention to the bigger picture, you will often experience enough coincidences that it's just a little bit weird. This adds a lot of meaning and depth to life, so I don't even want to try to disillusion myself about it.
5: Changing ones body temperature and heartbeat by will is possible. The power of placebo is quite strong, so most of the things you're trying to do are probably possible through imagining that they occur (What I think happening when you do drugs in dreams, and likely similar to how hypnosis works)
6: The "energy scale" is basically true: https://www.actualized.org/forum/uploads/monthly_2022_11/636af7340097d_LevelsofEnergy.png.41f9c93fecfbb701a3ec558364120c5d.png
(But enlightenment is likely not a level of energy, but rather a change in perception in which much less categorization and mental modeling takes place) When I reached the highest state a few years back, I experienced some strange things. The environment around me felt smaller, more familiar and like it was my own. (When I'm depressed, the environment feels bigger and hostile/foreign). At some point I thought about my girlfriend leaving for somebody better than me, and the idea made me happy on her behalf. It's the abundancy mindset taken to the limit. At one point I waited on a friend for more than an hour after we had agreed to meet up, and not only did I feel fantastic the entire time, I also did not get bored, and I wasn't in a hurry to do anything.
If you just want small superpowers by modifying or training your perception, then I suggest psychonetics: https://web.archive.org/web/20211015001108/https://deconcentration-of-attention.com/psychonetics.html (I don't recommend doing any of the exercises which requires you to strain your eyes, though)
And if you're just looking for happiness, bliss, peace of mind, or immunity to stress, then just ask, I will try to explain how to achieve these. They are quite easy, they're just dangerous as they can result in complacency, or in guilt (when a loved one dies and your mood somehow doesn't seem too affected)
By the way, I once walked outside with my brother, and suddenly got a really bad feeling. We stopped walking at the same time, looked at eachother, and said something like "we need to get out of here" at the same time. A sudden, shared sense of impending doom. We also once got a strong dejavu at the exact same moment. We just froze and then started talking about it at the same time. Two minor experiences I have had were: Feeling a sudden sense of familiarity with a place I had only been a few times before (it felt as if I had been there for many years), and for a moment before falling asleep, having my entire perception overwritten by an image of an eye and a strong feeling of being observed for like half a second. These experiences were more extreme, but they're much easier to dismiss since they happened to just one person. By the way, unlike people on the subreddit you linked, I've never touched psychedelics. I will be experimenting more with bodily sensations, but I always have a million small projects going on at once, so I may get distracted before I have anything fun to report. Edit: Oh, one more thing! You can get the best relaxation ever if you just kind of give up for about 30 minutes. Set an alarm as you shouldn't even keep track of time. Don't worry about any sounds you hear. Yes, this means that your house could catch on fire without you noticing, that's how determined you have to be to just forget everything completely. When I did this, it felt like I had gotten 5 hours of solid sleep, it was amazing.
Tantra
I know very little about this, but it seems to be about turning off all defense mechanisms which separates people, and then indulging in pleasure? I haven't done the sex part, but I've removed these defense mechanisms which separated me from other people before, and it allows me to meet a week of social needs in just a few hours, it's really great. I only allow myself to do this around unvulgar people, though. I could be one with my environment or nature as well if I trusted it, but at the moment thoughts of germs, bugs and other danger/uncleanliness causes me to separate myself from my environment. I can't even enjoy my soft bed unless I'm really tired. If I removed these negative associations, I could become like a cat just chilling on a whim. So what I gather from a quick Google search is that Tantra is like the physical version of enlightenment/acceptance/non-duality/lack of separation. Being on friendly terms with everything.
Tibetan practices
I need to read more about this as well. Is this the practices you're refering to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_tantric_practice
TwiceHuman
2d ago
I agree, but not many people realize that psychology is the way to go, and get stuck trying to solve life using logic. I think what I wrote above is quite important, since it may help some people take the "leap of faith". When the brain gets anxious it starts questioning and deconstructing things, as well at looking for holes or imperfections which is how we even come up with crazy ideas like "What if you're actually in a coma right and imagining all this?" or "What if you're the only conscious person?". Once the brain hits something unfalsifiable, we get stuck, and that's mainly how philosophy is created.
It's great once people realize that they're a human and that everything important is inside themselves, but to fully go this route, one needs to realize that the subjective is more important than the objective, or that objectivity is limited in the first place, which is difficult for many intelligent people to do
TwiceHuman
2d ago
I suppose so, yeah. Some people arrive at axioms "I think therefore I am", others arrive at nothingness "Nothing is real" or at least the conclusion that thinking is fundamentally limited "The dao of which can be spoken is not the real dao", "where one cannot speak one must be silent", "I can only know that I know nothing", "Life is absurd".
That "something cannot come from nothing" does not take into account the mystery of why anything exists at all, it also doesn't imply that anything is truly universal - but that something arbitrary seems to be all which exists. You can call laws of physics, human nature, and the universe fundamental, but they're "specific", things which exist in themselves, and thus not thing which generalize outside of themselves. Different people could exist, different universes, different laws of physics. Ours just happen to be what we were given.
And in all honesty, we cannot even communicate or think unless we use a foundation, so I think it's fine just to choose something. Just like it's fine to choose a language, a culture, a religion, an axiomatic system, a system of values, a morality. None of them will be universally valid, but they will be valid in the scope in which they exist, and that's good enough. It's the same for me, I must have a personality, a job, and a social role. I can only specialize, as general improvement stop being possible at a certain point (since the areas of further improvement contradict eachother). I actually recommend not learning too much or growing too wise, as you may lose your ability to believe in the arbitrary things that you've chosen. The alternative to having both pros and cons is simply having nothing at all, which is worse. In other words, we must be egoistic and take actions which from certain perspectives, are mistakes. Our locally valid ideas are only valid in a limited scope, but we must believe in them nonetheless. We must believe in ourselves with no external validation beyond the fact that we exist. We solve nihilism by rejecting the idea that universal validity/external proof is required for something to be real (in other words, rather than solving the problem, we reject the problem). In the words of Max Stirner "I have based my affair on nothing" (meaning on himself I suppose). My own existence is an axiom to me, that's the solution to any existential problems I may have.
TwiceHuman
2d ago
It is probably dangerous if you achieve higher control of yourself than average people can. Changing an emotion into another is fairly exotic, but changing the target of emotions is a common defense mechanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacement_(psychology) As far as I'm concerned, all alchemy is actually psychology, but projected into the real world. Embodying an emotion sounds like it could just be a result of attention directed towards an emotion, such that said emotion is the meditation object?
This is basically the process behind all serious meditative/psychedelic states, no? Meditative, probably yes. But in general, all religious, spiritual and sometimes traditional rituals are about achieving exotic states of mind, either ones of very high or very low excitement. I think this is because the brain is mallable (receptive to change) in these states. In "prometheus rising" they talk about how you can reprogram people with LSD, and you probably know about the trance state. You may also know that the brain accepts something as true the first moment you see it, and only judge it afterwards, which is why some advertisement tries to overstimulate you as it delivers its message. It's like these are methods of making our brain "let its guard down" so that we can influence it more, or alternatively ways of getting past the ego.
Am I right to assume that you've read this? https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/20/meditative-states-as-mental-feedback-loops/ I think the main take away is that feedback loops are unnatural, and that the brain tries to prevent them by default. Which is why you need a great concentration and ability to avoid distractions. When accelerating in a fast car or listening to music, I sometimes get chills (ASMR response), but it depends on how I tune my attention. I have to sort of "surf" on the stimuli. This likely generalizes to all senses and emotional responses (chills doing massages and the build-up of tension/anticipation doing important scenes in movies, etc). Does this not imply that feedback loops are the norm? Merely that with most peoples ability to concentrate, they only last a few seconds.
The link you sent sounds like a manic episode. heightened energy, racing thoughts, feeling that things are connected, higher and higher escalation. I sometimes feel like that on stimulants, and when I think about important things thoroughly until I have very strong beliefs (in other words, tidying up doubts and loose ends and other internal conflicts and inconsistencies. If you want to feel really great, spend a few hours doing this). I've often heard that Kundalini has strong effects, and that the "out of body" aspect is dangerous (makes some people go crazy). I think the positive effects come from focusing on your body, mainly the "chakra" areas, and creating feedback-loops on these sensations. By the way, the reason why "out of body" experiences is bad may be because our perception of yourself has a specific place in your head, say between the eyes and back a bit, and that it's dangerous to disconnect from this. You know how it feels like you're floating doing sleep paralysis? This is the brains model of the body, often called the spirit body by mystics, and it may be related to our sense of Proprioception. I don't know if you can accidentally mess up this sense, but it's possible. I personally experience discomfort at times because it feels like my "point of self" is slightly off center, maybe because the left and right side of my face have different sensitivities. Anyway, I've heard that some cultures place their "selves" in the heart rather than in the head, and some crazy book (I forgot which one) recommend shifting this area around as an exercise, so maybe it's not that dangerous as long as you don't move outside of your body, but this is guesswork on my part.
I'm not sure why just focusing on ones heart (or chakras, or kundalini) has strong positive effects, but our brains relation to the body is probably more important than we thought (hence Yoga and such). Books like "The body keeps the score" and some obscure books claim that discomfort and even trauma is basically located in the body and causes muscle stiffness and "blockades" in the "flow of energy" whatever that means.
And about consciousness, what people call "awake" is simply not living on autopilot. To have a consistent sense of self rather than periodic self-awareness with blurs in between, you make your sense of self the object of meditation and train yourself to maintain it at all times. I've read a book on this once as well, but I don't remember the name. Sometimes, meditating on something strengthens it, but sometimes it breaks it down (say a word over and over again and it will lose meaning). I'm not sure how meditation which strengthens the self and meditation which dissolves the self are different. The ways to reinforce things and destroy things seem eerly similar. Meditation makes some people more alert, more alive and more anchored in the moment, while it causes other people to disassociate, have no ego, and become apathetic or stoic. I wish I knew the tiny differences in approach which causes these wildly different outcomes.
Finally, I have a bonus insight for you. The strength of your senses is what makes you feel alive. Having dirty glasses, ears blocked by earwax, a loss of smell due to a cold, etc. always makes me feel like reality is less real. So it seems like sensory inputs is what ground us in reality (which may be why the numbening effects of dissociation makes reality feel like a game, movie or dream rather than reality). I hope these insights were useful! If you want, I will try to dig up the titles of some of the books I've read on this, though 40% of it is my own original ideas and guesses.
TwiceHuman
2d ago
I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. It requires a rather high intelligence to notice that everything is necessarily relative, and people usually don't if they can convince themselves that something is fundamental. Convincing yourself, for instance, that the earth is the center of everything, or that god is the center of everything, or that morality is objective, gives you a reference point, and it takes a lot of questioning to realize that neither of these are true.
Whenever there's a conflict between A and B, A will be correct from As perspective, and B will be correct from Bs perspective. A parent perspective C can be used to judge A and B, but there's no perspective for which you cannot create a conflicting perspective such that both seem equally value, and you're in need of a parent perspective. If two Christians disagree, then then a priest may be the judge. If two priests disagree, then the bible may be the judge. If two religions disagree, then what? You always need something "higher", but there's no "highest". It's also for this reason that there cannot be an authority of truth. The authority will be unable to judge itself, so it won't know if it's mistaken. This limitation applies to everything from the government, to cultures, to mathematics itself. Something merely seems universal when everyone agrees on it. If humanity could agree on morality, it would seem universal until an alien race came along and said something different. Who judges the judges? It's judges all the way down. Who created the universe, god? Well, who created god? Math is based on set theory, well, how do we prove the axioms of set theory are correct? The problem of infinite regres is everywhere. You can arrive at it by thinking, which is why ancient philosophy often says "There's no one true path". It's why Nietzsche said that there's no facts but only interpretations (perspectivism). It's also how Einstein could discover relativity. The axiom "everything is connected" is also derived from this line of thinking.
When you try to orientent, compare, and judge things, in any field, you run into infinite regress. This is generally why thinking too much leads to nihilism, you realize that everything is arbitrary and mistakenly believe that this means that it's counterfeit.
TwiceHuman
2d ago
where it changes depending on where we stand
Is this not just relativism? If you think about anything long enough, you will find that there's no one true answer, no matter if the subject is morality, meaning, philosophy, or mathematics (incompleteness theorems). Everything is fundamentally relative. And while there's no "one true" path, god or set of values, you must yet choose something, you can't just not have values, beliefs and direction. So you choose something arbitrary, knowing that it's not everything. Kathenotheism seems perfectly logical
Your conclusions so far sound about right, except I don't think that hyperventilation and LSD are harmless (You could develop HPPD for instance).
Everything else seems true. Human happiness is not zero-sum, this is trivial to conclude since it's possible to experience more suffering than happiness. This implies that the opposite is possible, and that our brains just prevent this because the negative bias helps with survival. In other words, you're trying to hack your own reward centers, and your brain made this difficult to do because it knows that it can be dangerous. If you try to lucid dream and your dream characters get angry with you, it's probably for the same reason.
What further path are you hoping for? That you can learn to control or influence reality with willpower, that you can shift into a better timeline/reality by adjusting your energy, that you can re-program yourself, that you can live in constant bliss or reach a higher level of consciousness?
Some say that deep meditation allows us to realize that we're one with everyone, meet "god" or some infinite source of energy (gateway process, etc), experience "non-duality" (this is just messing with the human perception which separates things), or to be able to contact anyone connected to the earths magnetic field.
Some say that beliefs can influence the world, that the world matches your level of energy/chakra/frequency/vibration, that you and the world are one (Hermetic principles), that the questions you ask decide what questions you get (John Wheeler), that human consciousness controls the wave function collapse (this direction unifies mysticism and science a bit), or that reality is agreement (that everything is a game. The EST seminars go in this direction a bit in their approach to enlightenment).
You can program yourself, hypnotize yourself and others, manipulate your own belief structures and other fun stuff. Every article on here is high-quality, and I recommend reading it because it contains a bunch of warnings that I don't want you to lose out on: https://cognitiveengineer.blogspot.com/2011/11/resources.html
Living in constant bliss (which should be possible given that these mechanisms don't rely on dopamine or other neurotransmitters, but occur in the processing of sensations) probably just requires a strong concentration, then to focus on a pleasant experience in your body, and keep the focus such that a feedback-loop occurs. When your focus is strong enough, it will feel like a hand grabbing the object of focus. This is likely the origin of the idea of telekinesis. In states of mania or otherwise inflated confidence, your willpower might also be so strong that it feels like you can do anything (and you may actually manage to do some things that in retrospec are impressive)
I've also read about egregores, divining, magic, the collective unconsciousness, synchronicities, demons, DMT creatures, oracles, the law of attraction, etc. And I can probably explain these logically and kill the fun. I could also give you reasons to believe in them, just to keep things a little interesting. Man, I should really spend my time better. Oh well.
consigning yourself to fate like this was more or less insane
"Trusting the universe" helps peace of mind. Not trying to control what you can't control saves a lot of cognitive energy, which is probably why it's recommended by so many spiritual people (to me, they're just a type of psychologists though). Anyway, I've written enough for now. Which parts interest you?
TwiceHuman
7d ago
This is all getting silly. Women vote differently from men because they're more emotional, social and subjective. So they're camp "It's fine if everything gets worse, as long as we're not mean" while men tend towards "It's fine if we're mean, as long as our society improves".
There's like half a standard deviation of difference in the distribution of personality traits, which causes these differences in voting outcomes. There's no need to fabricate any wars, and act like natural tendencies are a way of punishing eachother and securing ones power. "Why are men keeping women out of engineering?" They just like engineering at a higher frequency.
Trying to pressure other people into having the same values as yourself is, and always was, bad taste. And both genders are biologically hardwired to enjoy sex. None of this is necessary, I know because I still hang out in communities with zero politics, and in which men and women enjoy eachother and in which people would be confused if you talked about power dynamics or even a gender divide.
Now, I don't disagree with your takes on the issue, I reject the issue itself and suggest that you do the same. I ended up replying to you because your comment is short and approachable
If a majority of people want to end democracy, I cannot think of an argument against it. If you're pro-democracy because you think the majorty is right, then you wouldn't be justified in stopping the majority from ending democracy. If you value democracy because it's correct, then you're also saying that you're wrong when the majority disagrees with you, which it would in this example. I can still save it, though. Suppose democracy was not about correctness, but rather about freedom. Then it would pain you to see people having the freedom to choose that they wouldn't want to be free anymore. But this choice imposes on the freedoms of those who still wants to be free. But if people say "I like democracy" when what they mean is "I like freedom", then people become confused and we reach the wrong conclusions, so it's important not to confuse ends and means. Democracy is not your highest value, it's something else which is unstated and which correlates with democracy.
is a valid critique of democracy
Yes, but then it's not democracy which is optimized for, but rather "good opinions", which democracy once did better. But now we have a problem, for while I can agree with your take, there's no objective way to measure if we're correct or if we're mislead. For democracy used to be how we measured, and now we have made something out to be more important than democracy, which we have no way to measure.
the people putting in place mandates should really have considered the second order effects
Vaccine skepticism can be blamed on those who promoted the vaccines. They repeatedly acted like people who were out to mislead you and put you in danger, while stating the opposite. For instance, they said "These vaccines are completely safe", but also that neither these companies, nor the government, would be to blame if getting the vaccine went horribly wrong for you. "I promise you this is safe, but I take no responsibility for the consequences" is a statement which will make people distrust you. Now, this doesn't imply that the vaccine isn't safe, merely that it's reasonable and logical to doubt that it is. About 10 more things like this happened (documents being held back, people being told that herd immunity would occur, being being told that the vaccine prevented you from spreading or getting Covid, both claims which turned out to be false), etc etc etc.
So, again, even if the vaccine is perfectly safe, the only reasonable response to somebody repeatedly lying to you, and even trying to use political and legal pressure to force you to inject something in your body which hasn't even been properly tested, is resistance. It's not the counter-movements fault that people distrust vaccines, but the sheer incompetence of the main movement.
TwiceHuman
7d ago
I generally agree with everything you wrote, but I wouldn't limit myself to just trustworthiness. I think there's a sort of "brainrot" quality to modern news which is independent of truthfulness. A lot of articles are "watch this silly video" or "guy does whacky thing". That's news exploiting other psychological needs, which is a bad direction to go in, because you end up with people optimizing only for the thing which triggers rewards in the brain, without the substance. Instead of news which are also interesting, we're getting interesting things which aren't news. This is like selling lootboxes without the videogames, or sugar without the food, or fanservice without the story.
By the way, I seem to remember journalists being people who put their lives on the line in order to fight against corruption (that it was almost an admirable job to have). It seems like the news are now owned by those who are corrupt, though, causing a disconnect with the average viewer. One of the causes is that the scope (size/range) of news media is too big. Decentralized news for every local area is superior to everyone reading the exact same set of global news. And to large companies, we're just numbers on a spreadsheet, so the human element is lost. This is a another kind of disconnect, and honest news alone cannot make up for it (objectivity and empathy are different after all) Anyway, a small sphere of concern is essential to psychological health, most of the mental health problems lately can be attributed to people who worry about far-away things while neglecting what's near to them (like themselves and their family, factors which are actually within their ability to influence or control).
And I’m not really saying “get rid of it, don’t use it”
I see. I suppose that's just my own view, then. Sure, you can reduce your media consumption to what it was in the past, such that you get what used to be a healthy and even useful level of information. However, I do not believe that a low amount is healthy nor useful anymore. Media is not trustworthy anymore, it's not honest, it does not cover issues that I consider to be important, it does not transmit information in a useful manner. I think it has gotten so bad that it's literally worse than nothing. What you say about being able to adjust for bias, is true. But any work we consume will rub off on us, it will change how we think, how we use language, what we focus on, and how we view the world. Social movements are nonsense (their success is only possible when they're not needed. Feminism can only succeed in socities which discriminate against men. If a movement gets public support, then the public cannot also be against that movement, it's a contradition) This is true for countless of issues. How are people not noticing that nothing makes any sense? Have you never read an old book written by somebody actually intelligent, and felt yourself slowly waking up and regaining the ability to think? So that once you return to the garbage you consumed previously, you immediately see through everything wrong with it? We're tricked into entertaining wrong questions, and focusing on issues which don't exist. We try to win arguments, but don't even notice that the very definitions and oppositions are flawed.
Neutral news is only impossible for us, the consumers. It's not that they couldn't just report facts if they wanted to, for them it would be easy. But it's not where the money is, and it seems like everything just flows in the direction of money now, and that individual people have very little control over anything. Like money is a force of nature. It also feels like "quality" is losing to "quantity" more and more in ROI. Something kept this at bay in the past, probably taste and high standards
TwiceHuman
8d ago
I see. I personally wouldn't hang out with a crowd that I could identify by their political leaning. I'm personally extremely high in openness and pro-freedom, but against degeneracy and weakmindedness, so I don't fit on any political spectrum in existence.
But I think you can find more agreement on up-stream issues than on particular issues. I remember telling somebody that sending money to troubled migrants living in their own country is way more cost-effective than helping them in our country. This position is both "anti-immigration" and "pro-helping poor people far away". You can usually spin your own opinion in a way which favors both sides or the person you're talking to.
I think not talking about politics is good for the most part (it tends to be far-away issues), but some issues will affect you personally, and it's your right to comment on that, or to make jokes and such. The facts shouldn't be controversial, for instance "Food is getting expensive lately". I don't think you necessarily need to say the reasons and solutions out loud.
I interact with about 10% of people, and sort away 90%. This still leaves enough people that I don't isolate myself. I'm not sure what balance you're comfortable with personally?
My hope is that the vibe shift can be helped along by people like me
"He who fights with monsters..." Be careful that you don't attempt to change something, only to have it change you instead. Dumb and unreasonable people are innumerable, I genuinely don't think fighting evil is viable. I also think that being pro(good thing) is better than being anti(bad thing), because of how negation works psychologically (the mathematical negation is mechanically different). Also, fighting something legitimizes it in a sense, and makes it more popular. Ignoring things, and rejecting them is likely more effective. For an example of rejecting, I mean that the statement "I hate my boss" legitimizes your bosses position, whereas "Who made him the boss?" attacks it. If we hate "the elite", then we collectively agree that they're elites, which is precisely what makes them elites (as reality is largely based on agreement). I should probably make a post on this some time.
I’m prepared to have my social media accounts nuked from on high at any time
I see! That's likely easier on the psyche
TwiceHuman
8d ago
You probably can't escape social media easily, but you can escape politics. Which, by the way, feels fantastic and like being back in the past.
I think that news and media is psychologically unhealthy. If anything is important enough, you will hear of it anyway. If you really want to watch news, I suppose there's these "neutral, all-sides, unbiased" news sites, but I trust them about as much as I trust "debunkers" and "fact-checkers", which are 1984 ministry of truth levels of insanity to me. I cannot take authorities on truth seriously, it's a dumb concept in a way which one cannot help but notice if they think about it a little.
And I agree, it's like taking something too seriously hinders ones ability to think about it clearly.
TwiceHuman
8d ago
I usually go to more right-leaning websites and communities, and I recall seeing maybe 6 or 7 actual neonazis, but I have never seen anyone write that all vaccines are bad. Maybe a tiny bit of tech-savviness filters out the low-IQ schizophrenics who recommends "all-natural" alternatives to everything. 1% sounds like a lot, though, but I can't refute it if I include the offline population and Facebook users.
TwiceHuman
9d ago
This is literally my first time seeing such a person. I've never intentionally looked for them, but I've interacted with quite a lot of people in the past few years.
Of all people that I have seen who refuse to get the Covid vaccine, everyone still get (and support) literally every other vaccine. I'd estimate people who are against all vaccines to be 0.1-1% of the population at most. You can't really go lower than that. 1% of the population has an IQ below 65, 1% of the population are psychopaths, 1% of the population are pedophiles. If an issue is so rare than it applies to about 1%, I don't think coordinated efforts to improve them (like education, peer pressure, or more laws) is going to help any. I just accept that a small portion of the population is a little crazy by statistic necessity.
TwiceHuman
9d ago
If you wish to avoid radicalization, wouldn't it be best to stay away from social media entirely? Or you can think for yourself like I do (this will likely put you out of sync with most people, but you will have a sane view on things)
By the way, that person clearly had nothing of value to offer you. She's some brand of mentally unwell (I'd say stupid, but she seems lucid and I don't notice any typos). There may be people worth interacting with on that site, but I think it's a bit cruel to yourself to interact with somebody that you know will waste your time and treat you badly, and giving them the benefit of doubt.
I've only seen Bluesky on Japanese Twitter so far, so I thought it was Japanese, in which case it would be somewhat safe from a political takeover. But now that I Google it, it seems like it's American. I'd recommend you don't get too attached to the site (in other words, mentally tag your account as throwaway so that leaving or getting banned won't affect you too badly in the future)
TwiceHuman
9d ago
Views like your own do not seem uncommon to me, but they seem disconnected from common sense and I can't tell if I'm taking words too literally or if people have internalized so many weird perspectives on things that they've lost their clear-sightedness.
1: If somebody wins democratically, then that's democracy. If you dislike a democratic process, then you're arguing against democracy, and not for it. I can't make sense of rejecting a democratic result with the argument that something democratic is a threat to democracy.
2: I do not see anybody, anywhere, downplay the importance of vaccines and antibiotics. Not even when I follow your link. People dislike one specific vaccine (if you can even call it that), because it wasn't tested properly. And many of the connected companies have some shady histories. I don't even think it's relevant if these companies did anything bad or not, or if the vaccine is harmless or not. A large amount of people lost all trust in these companies and those who support them, and for perfectly valid reasons.
3: The correlation between IQ and ideology is weak, and it doesn't tell you which side is more correct.
I liked the article. Not because it's "true", I'm fed up with that concept anyway, truth is not going to save any of us. I like it because it's a rare display of humanity, it's a break away from disillusionment. Is it a bit embarrassing and silly? Yes, like I said, human. It's different from the naivety of the left, as the left is simply deluded about the consequences of their actions. This essay gives value to something which already exists, instead of placing false hope in the future potential of something and clinging to it because of that. There's substance here, just not intellectual substance, but man can't live on bread alone.
While I agree with you, I think "busting out the compasses and graph paper" is what science is. We've reached the limits of what we can do in our minds, so now we do mathematics on paper. This allows us to calculate things that we cannot wrap our heads around (try visualizing infinite-dimensional spaces for instance)
One thing I have noticed that less intelligent people do is solving the same problem over and over again. Even culture wars are like this. "X people are discriminated against, and it's totally not their fault, so we need to give special rights to X group to prevent this, as it's only fair to escalate their power/position in society". Even as a teenager I generalized this problem to every related problem which could exist, but somehow society still sees a sense of novelty in "We are X, we are victims, give us power or you're bad and support bad things"
Edit: My point is that, even with pens and stacks of paper, stupid people cannot generalize or reach levels of abstractions which gives them the advantages of space. Space is really powerful though, even more than Time (which is probably why PSPACE and EXPSPACE are bigger than PTIME and EXPTIME respectively. Not that I actually know complexity theory)
TwiceHuman
1mo ago
I agree with everything that you wrote, but I also think that there's plently of evidence that the left is playing dirty. I give Trump about 30% of winning, because the entire game is rigged against him in a way which I consider fraud. In my view, this fraud is possible in the first place because democracy has been undermined.
TwiceHuman
1mo ago
Peoples reactions to Trump has nothing to do with Trump. I think it's the psychological side-effect from years of media propaganda against him. There's no things which exists in reality, which warrant a strong reaction against Trump. But if you look outside of reality, in various stories and subjective experiences and predictions, you can find reasons to feel strongly about Trump. If somebody claims that Trump is a psychopath, for instance, you may experience him as such, even if you would never have come up with that idea on your own if nobody had told you.
This forums is quite competent around politics, but I feel like psychology is more essential in understanding the world than any political theory is. It's like psychology and human nature is the "upstream" of everything, in the same way that one can spend tens of years in vain trying to make sense of women or dating, but then reading a few books on evolutionary psychogy and natural selection and have everything fall into place in a couple of days.
I've read that book, but I didn't understand this part as well as you have (I just assumed it was because I hadn't read Lacan, but maybe I just missed something) I do want to point out that the ledger is of course nonsense, but also that it's useful to create the concept, because it makes life into a meritocracy. That human beings manipulate reward systems (wireheading or goodhart's law) rather than just chasing the rewards like they're meant to, is a different problem.
It's not just hunger, suffering works the same. You're hungry until you eat, and you make yourself unhappy "until you reach that goal, after which you will deserve happiness". We're afraid of letting go of suffering though, because of the belief that we won't reach our goal if we do (or the belief that we might even forget about the goal (this is why using a calender can reduce ones anxiety by a lot)). The "wireheading" when it comes to suffering is avoidance, procrastinating, distracting ourselves from what we're meant to do. Another example is shame and guilt. It's "invented" in order to motivate certain behaviour. You can dismiss them as nonsense, but then you also lose the benefit they were created to bring (for instance, if we accept that we're just a product of our environments and thus not to blame for anything, then how do we convince eachother not to be criminals?)
TwiceHuman
2mo ago
I love being around people who are competent and developed, around such people you can just let cause and effect do its thing, without worrying about where you're heading. Is your point that a mentally healthy society cannot be properly controlled, which is why people in power are implementing changes which reduce the mental resilience of the population? Because if so, I do agree.
The assumption that people under the age of 18 don't have self-control
Oh, I don't believe that myself, I just agree with society that there's more people with self-control above 18 years of age than below. We are punishing capable people by designing society in a way which protects the lowest common denominator. But my point is that, while I'd like to give everyone more freedom, it would only result in a more hedonistic society. The sort of "rights" that people are after today just seems like the desire to indulge in harmful behaviour and to destroy oneself. Activists are trying to get rid of social judgement towards behaviour which is harmful (like being obese, having casual sex, or fetishism) but one is in a really bad state if one seeks agency for such reasons.
Yes, but that pipeline is ripe for abuse.
By the government? Sure. Our society isn't good enough that we can give somebody the authority to decide who gets to have freedom and who doesn't. By the way, I said as much freedom as one could handle, not as much as they needed :) Here's a quote by Taleb that I quite like: "I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist". I must agree with him that something goes wrong as a result of scaling. I've only experienced "rules aren't necessary" in smaller communities.
It requires a more temperate people to do this properly
Perhaps the sort of calm which is a result of confidence and competence? For I don't think being "temperate" is good on its own, if it means having no strong convictions, not caring much, and having weak emotions and drives. It has been said by Nietzsche, Jung and Jordan Peterson that one cannot be a good person if they can't be dangerous, and I can only agree with them.
Anyway, is this temperateness something we can cultivate in people? For it's my point that there's something fundamental in people which makes all the difference. Something that, if it turns out alright, everything will work out, and if it doesn't, then you need rules, and regulations, laws, and punishment, surveillance, micromanagement, and so on. My point is that improving society can only be done by improving people directly (from the inside, not outside), and that this kind of improvement is sufficient. People are the atoms of society, any "solutions" on the upper layers are wasted. Japan doesn't have less crime because they have better laws, but because they're Japanese. The Japanese are not a consequence of Japan, Japan is a consequence of the Japanese people. People, their characters, and their nature is the root of everything, and everything else is downstream from that and barely worth bothering with (at least, that's my current worldview). Please let me know if I misunderstood you along the way
TwiceHuman
2mo ago
I have a girlfriend already, I still like helping people. I don't want to see people procrastinate so much that it fucks up their future, so seeing a better outcome unfold is enough reward for me. It's like cleaning your house so that you can endure looking at it, except you're removing bad futures/possibilities, rather than trash
Interesting, thanks! By the way, if you want a modern take on possession, read "Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre". It has a section on masks and letting yourself getting possessed by characters. Psychologically, they probably have a lot in common. There's also some research on how virtual avatars and characters, and even ones social rules, affect ones identity and behaviour. As for the ceremony, is the bell and incense used? For that would affect the senses. The whole divinity/godly aspects are almost required in order for one to take something seriously. Things have the weight we give them, so we use rituals in order to legitimize them. Praying, for instance, is likely a form of visualization, but we envoke the idea of god because we cannot believe in our own power. Tarot cards and Rorschach tests help you read yourself without filter, but in order to believe in the power of their subconsciousness, people need to believe that a diety is present (The oracle). People can barely meet a wise character in a dream without thinking that some external being helped them. It seems like we need to believe in something higher than ourselves, or even in something higher within ourselves (being made in the image of god, the transcendental function, being connected to a higher power, etc). Not that we should take all the credit for ourselves, making ourselves out to be gods (at least not the ego or the self we identify with). Nietzsche kind of tried with the ubermensch thing, he regards the human body as divine because all of this is hidden within it.
Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. I will try various breathing techniques, but only when I feel certain that I won't be giving myself brain-damage (I'm a bit high in neuroticism).
We experience life through ourselves, so truths about ourselves are truths about the world as we experience it, or truths about our relation to the world (not the agent nor the environment, but the agent-environment interaction). But the truth simply is, right? Figuring our a profound truth feels good, and results in viewing the world differently, but it doesn't change anything. By the way, I do believe that these ancient sages did figure out important things. The hermetic principles and modern physics have a lot in common. Can you understand the world just by thinking? Probably to an extent, Einstein seemed to manage this, and Tesla also ran physics experiments in his working memory (which was huge, likely due to anesthesia with his visual field or spatial intuition).
This is a huge factor in what's called enlightenment. But isn't this just a function of the ego? It thinks it can control reality by rejecting parts of it. It even thinks that having negative thoughts against something helps protect against it or weaken it. That worrying about a family member helps in keeping them safe. But you can "let go" of all of this tension and just let things happen, and everything will continue as it did before, because you never controlled anything. The river flows all the same, and all your resistance amounted to was exhausting yourself. The truth is always bearable for you're already enduring it. What's false can ever harm you, as it cannot exist. It's realizations like this which helps people relax and approach the mindset of a sage. The brain wants to be correct, and to have what it already believes confirmed. It's like your memories and beliefs themselves are afraid of death, or like the brain sees the loss of a belief as the loss of a part of yourself, and reacts as if somebody tried to cut off your hand when somebody attacks a belief or a value you have.
And to generalize these contradictions: All splitting, multiple personality disorders, internal conflicts, etc. are caused by internal contradictions. Nietzsche wrote a lot about this, especially about how willpower affects our ability to control these fragments rather than getting swept away from them. But he also spoke of the positives of contradictions: "Because we forget that valuation is always from a perspective, a single individual contains within him a vast confusion of contradictory valuations and consequently of contradictory drives. This is the expression of the diseased condition in man, in contrast to the animals in which all existing instincts answer to quite definite tasks. This contradictory creature has in his nature, however, a great method of acquiring knowledge: he feels many pros and cons, he raises himself to justice-to comprehension beyond esteeming things good and evil. The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men - as well as his great moments of grand harmony - a rare accident even in us!" By the way, if you try to solve all contradictions by taking the intersection of all beliefs and knowledge, you will likely end up with the empty set. Like I said in another comment, there's no one true worldview, you simply need to choose one.
I also want to point out that contrast between two things are required in order to feel much of anything. To feel your strength at the gym, you need to lift a weight which makes you use this power. To feel heroic, you need to feel like you're facing a great difficulty. Even the flow state requires a task with sufficient stimulation and resistance. Some people feel a lot of hate, but they don't want to point it at other people, so they ultimately point it at themselves. If they could just point this at a safe target, like "Poverty", then they could allow themselves to feel this emotion and even use it towards a constructive goal. In other words, be careful of removing any Yins as the Yangs will disappear as well. As I got less lonely, I found myself caring about other people less. As I got more confident, I started valuing compliments less. My Youtube feed is recommending a video called "How to never feel shy again", but it's considered bad to be "shameless" for a reason. Shyness is cute, I don't want to destroy it. I agree with everything you wrote here, though!
Haha, I might try this!
Looked him up now. His "insanity", so to speak, of letting go of memories is actually just letting go of the map and living in the territory, no? To live in pure experience, rather than living in cognitive models of the world. I found a quote saying "To live in the eternal present there must be death to the past, to memory. In this death there is timeless renewal". Earlier I wrote that the ego just wants its memories validated, and like you said, for its models to be correct, and to feel bad when there's a conflict between reality and ones model of it (the experience of cognitive dissonance). I too wish to experience life like I experienced as a child, and if possible, experience things as if experiencing them for the first time - but this means to erase ones memory, at least in a sense. I don't think this is "insanity". Do you know how some people lose faith in love because they deconstruct it to being mere chemicals? That is to overwrite life and experience by creating lifeless mental models and making them out to be actual reality. What sages tells us to do is merely the opposite of that. To deem reality and experience as real, and mental models as false, rather than doing the opposite and becoming excessively objective and robotic.
Interesting idea. I don't think it's false, but we have two models of thinking, system 1 and 2, in other words, conscious and unconscious processing. Ever felt down and then suddenly felt better with no explanation? I think that's what happens when subconscious processing resolves a conflict. So "thinking" is still taking place doing this, unless even the subconsciousness is calmed.
I found a book on libgen called "Mahamudra and Related Instructions: Core Teachings of the Kagyu Schools". Page 31 starts out by mentioning impermanence, but we already know that "Change is the only constant" and why getting stuck in the past is not a good idea. The book recomments letting go of this life (as it's not permanent anyway). By the way, this is probably for the same reason that one can't think clearly on topics that they're biased about. In order to see things as they are, you must not have beliefs about how they ought to be (resulting in that cognitive dissonance) so it makes sense that understanding these teachings is helped by being alright with any conclusion and implication, even when they suggest something that most people feel threatened by. Then it mentions the "ultimate bodhicitta" which is basically just letting your mind do its thing, letting things be like they are, and accepting what comes, as it's all there is. In the words of Werner Erhard: "Take what you get, for its all you get".
What's new to me is how Buddhism practices good and morality, rather than just complete indifference. This seems a little inconsistent of them, but I suppose they just assume that morality and altruism the true default which is corrupted by the ego and the brains self-survival medhanisms. There's 780 more pages than this, but I believe that I already got the general point of Buddhism, and I've come to like Samsara, and since I've learned to enjoy life despite my suffering, escaping Samsara would be a loss for me. If you can modify your perception as much as the Buddhists recommend, then you can certainly learn how to enjoy imperfection, in which case there's no need to escape anything. This worldview would probably offend a lot of gurus though.. If they're still capable of being offended, I'm not sure. And there may be more interesting ideas covering psychology that I don't yet know, I'm just very unconscientious/lazy. And sorry about my arrogance, I hope the information makes up for it.
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