domain:tracingwoodgrains.com?page=6?page=2?q=domain:tracingwoodgrains.com?page=6?page=2
Felagund
2hr ago
What would a "relatively neutral" presentation look like to you? How positive would things be posed as?
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
2hr ago
Prioritise the safety of whoever is in more danger.
This is just slave morality.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
2hr ago
the mere fact of that objection doesn't seem to be why he was sacked
Given Google settled the lawsuit and the declarations made by both parties at the time, I think this is clearly wrong. He was sacked precisely for objecting in the way recommended internally. He didn't even leak his own memo.
You can't fire people for their opinion and claim they aren't "asked to celebrate anything". His was a political punishment.
Terracotta
3hr ago
That AMA link gives such a laughably biased summary of the actual study, though. The paper itself suggests a far more nuanced picture than your metaphor about Juan the day laborer-- and that's a study led by an MD who presumably has his own professional axe to grind. (I'd be much more interested in seeing some adversarial MD-DNP research collaborations in this area.)
Notably,
- The study focused almost entirely on costs in an ED setting; on a skim, I can't find that it examined detailed health outcomes at all beyond 30-day mortality and "preventable hospitalization," the latter of which seems difficult to define in terms of patient welfare. They say NPs and MDs had no significant differences in 30-day patient mortality.
- The study did find that treatment by NPs cost the system more than treatment by MDs, owing to NPs calling for longer hospital stays and more tests. But the difference in costs diminished with more experienced NPs.
- The cost difference also diminished to a relatively trivial level for less complex cases, and the authors themselves suggest that this means NPs could be valuable substitutes for physicians in primary care.
- They found almost as much variability in productivity from clinician to clinician *within* professions as there was *across* professions. Money sentence from the abstract: "Importantly, even larger productivity variation exists within each profession, leading to substantial overlap between the productivity distributions of the two professions; NPs perform better than physicians in 38 percent of random pairs."
Crowstep
3hr ago
My only experience with a NP was getting misdiagnosed with asthma when I had whooping cough. The actual doctor (which I did see her) diagnosed me correctly in about a second. Prior to that I didn't really know what a nurse practitioner was.
I certainly agree that the doctors' cartel (the British Medical Association) are a gang of scoundrels though. The UK has a chronic shortage of doctors and a chronic oversupply of students who want to be, and are smart enough to be doctors. But the BMA artificially limits places at medical schools to keep their wages up, leaving the UK reliant on imported doctors who are objectively worse (with no disrespect to @selfmadehuman, I'm sure you're great).
jimm
3hr ago
He works on training a chatgpt instance to provide gender affirming care
Yeah, he's already gone wrong there. That's not a problem with therapy though so much as this person's attempt to blow smoke up his own ass and call it therapy.
The opposite doesn't really work either though. If a human therapist says "Tim, I think you're delusional", the most likely result is broken rapport and Tim shopping for a new more gender affirming therapist. Even if the therapist managed to get enough buy in that Tim doesn't walk, he's still left with "Okay, I'm delusional. Now what? I still feel like shit." rather than "Okay thanks, all better!".
You really have to come at things without a pre-prescribed ending point in mind. Like, "I feel really shitty every time I look in the mirror and see a man. I feel like I am a woman, and that doesn't match what I see. What do we do about this?", and finding out what to do about it as you seek to understand the issue together. I guess it's pretty non-obvious how to do this effectively, now that I write it out.
roche
3hr ago
This part is interesting because it's new to me. I suppose it's related to predictive processing?
Yep. Here's the initiation ceremony for Saiva Tantrikas, for example.
I struggle a bit with numbness
Try holotropic breathing. Like meditation or psychedelics it gets stronger across consecutive days.
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?
Non-dual perspectives are fine, but we need to draw a distinction between metaphysical truths on the one hand, and perceptive shifts on the other. You can make yourself believe in any religion you'd like, it's easy, happens all the time.
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
The brain is trying to maintain homeostasis at all times, and part of that homeostasis is a consistent world-view, which is why a huge fraction of the pain when something horrific happens isn't just the pain, but the fact it wasn't supposed to be this way! yet it is. There's basically a high floor of cognitive dissonance that you, I, and everyone else are operating on at all times where we assume that certain very bad things in this world simply won't happen to us. Other people get ball cancer, but me...? Nah. You rejoinder Oh that would be a waste of mental energy, duh, we're just being practical! but the point is we don't have a plan for when things go really south, which is why most cases of psychosis happen precisely because our mental models are exploded, and it's why the zenith of LSD experience is the whole universe aligning to a single purpose, while the nadir of LSD is a total fracture of your world view, like "Oh shit I was a chair rotting in an abandoned factory for 20 years and my previous life was a lie!". We're the only species that has psychosis, and the only one that has "world views". Your body will do some truly impressive shit to maintain homeostasis, which is the premise behind meditation, and this thread. Including the placebo effect. This is an area that's not being explored.
The "energy scale" is basically true
Wanna try an experiment? Do some heavy thinking during sex, and pay attention to your thoughts during orgasm. There should be a brief, brief period of ecstasy where your thoughts connect and everything naturally clicks into place. It's very neat.
If you just want small superpowers by modifying or training your perception, then I suggest psychonetics
Curious, I'll look it over.
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.
I mentioned Krishnamurti downthread; this is probably how he achieved his "calamity". For any worries about going insane, I'd like to suggest the likelihood of going insane from any altered state of consciousness correlates with the amount of thinking you do during the state. Doing heavy thinking while deep in meditation is essentially screwing with the wiring of your perception, you are almost definitely in over your head, while Zen-style "no-thoughts-head-empty" is harmless if you have the discipline to do it properly.
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?
Tantra and Tibetan practices are the most confusing side of Buddhism, and I've yet to find a good resource on it. So yeah, sorry. I really need to get back into looking around.
roche
4hr ago
Thanks! Glad to hear you stayed safe. That quote seems to ring a bell, but I can't find the original post/thread now so the context is lost. I'll try to respond regardless.
See my conclusion was that enlightenment is functionally identical to insanity. You can not attain it until you let go of everything - including the ability to understand and be understood.
You may be interested in Schopenhauer's definition of insanity: The thread of memory is severed. In our scientific epoch, knowing the material and efficient causes of any phenomenon is considered absolute knowledge, in other words, "There are those who think they know the bird having seen the egg it crawled out of". So for the insane man who has lost access to this mode of knowledge, he must instead observe the phenomenon directly and consider its qualities per se for knowledge. For Schopenhauer, this was the only way to obtain true knowledge of anything, and there's a good chance Plato held a similar view; both lend to the shamanistic/mystic side of philosophy, and shamanism itself is nothing other than reading into the forms, which is why an insane person could do it.
Personally, I'm skeptical of it. You should look into P.G. Krishnamurti's view. It's fascinating, and it would be healthier than idolizing literal schizophrenia too, lol.
Where did Kavanaugh leave written receipts of any wrongdoing exactly? Afaik there is no evidence for him doing anything untoward, only hearsay.
Our man would still be AG in waiting if all there was was hearsay.
I understand closing the ranks is a sound tactic, but if you can't recognize picking competent leaders is too I can't do anything for you.
Throwaway05
4hr ago
I mean a physical therapist is the appropriate medical professional for the issue you had. You went to the "am I dying" doctor and they said "shit I don't know, you aren't dying," if you were dying they would be able to help you. They have limited training in diagnosing MSK issues because that's not what they are for.
Routine issues and urgent care level emergencies are supposed to be managed through your primary care doctor who would say "this seems like an MSK problem, here's as prescription to go see a PT for that, as they are the experts in this area and can spend an hour with you twice a week and I can't do that without it being cost prohibitive."
We see this all the time, people go to the ED for non-emergent issues and get frustrated when they get what seems like poor quality care and it takes forever.
Furthermore patients don't like hearing this so you get some half-assed attempts at managing these issues in those settings instead of the correct response which is "no go see your PCP."
Ultimately if you say, go to your lawyer and ask for accounting help, they may charge you for it and try and help but they aren't an accountant.
I think this is true for many professions with a deep moat around them, regardless of that is educational credentials or some level of career success. This doesn't have to be very highly compensated professions mind you.
In situations where you're "safe" once you're in many people check out mentally and this affects not only job performance.
Being a "midwit" is only partially an effect of intelligence but also of practiced intellectual rigour, often requiring a competitive environment, which typically means work. It's like if people who were professional athletes when they were young thought they're still competitive when they haven't really exercised in over a decade. Disconnect from competition and practice allows for personal preference rule uninhibited by reality.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
4hr ago
From an economic perspective, low doctor productivity is a huge issue. The Baumol effect means an ever growing amount of money needs to be devoted to medicine to make up for the shortfall. It really doesn't have to be like this, but nobody in the field wants to disrupt the gravy train, and/or regulations make it too difficult to change anyways.
I feel like a lot of what doctors do could be done algorithmically by chatbots. From what I've seen, most doctors just respond to simple cues as to what the problem is. Testing could be done at outpatient facilities, then the meatspace doctors would only need to come in as a last resort.
JarJarJedi
5hr ago
Lack of spaces makes it harder to read for me, but otherwise for work code, it's coded into the IDE and whatever it is it is, I usually don't spend any mental energy dwelling on that. For my own code, I usually have everything set up for K&R.
SlowBoy
5hr ago
then pulling the plug when people inevitably started talking about said scandal. How did he not see that coming?
Gaetz withdrew himself.
Trump continues to act as if in victory people will come together to enjoy the spoils. It's loser establishment Republicans who continue to defect!
How does this square with Rubio, Burgum, Turner, Chavez-DeRemer and any number of other picks which seem basically ordinary Republican picks - Chavez-DeRemer even has decent/sympathetic relations with trade unions, especially by Republican standards!
Hegseth, Gaetz, RFK, Tulsi. There's an obvious pattern here, I can hear it discussed on NPR. Yeah, it's a big cabinet, there are lots of things going on, coalitions need to be managed. But OP's analysis is that Trump is essentially a random actor and nothing he does make sense and this is all totally stupid: that's nonsense, that's TDS, that is an anti-explanation.
SlowBoy
5hr ago
This translates to something like: "I like my political operators to not get lied about. If they were smart their enemies wouldn't be lying about them." E Carrol Jean. Tulsi Gabbard. Kavanaugh.
TequilaMockingbird
5hr ago
And a cynic might suggest that this is why the parasite class is so gung ho about socialized medicine.
While I think this is true to an extent, I have also noticed the people just seem to be defensive when they meet someone who doesn't engage in the same "vices" as them. I don't drink alcohol, and I'm not pushy about it. But I've had several encounters where someone offers me a drink, I politely decline, and then the tone of the interaction completely changes. I think there's something about seeing someone who is "pure" that makes some people act a little crazy in the moment, though I've never understood it - especially since I try very hard not to be santimonious about my temperance.
It has happend to me often enough that I've always wondered if half of the "pushy vegan" stories aren't just ordinary vegans who get read as "pushy" because of the emotions a person goes through meeting such a person. (My theory for the other half is that I think highly scrupulous people are probably neurodivergant in some way, and are more likely to be vegan/etc. Neurodivergant people aren't always known for their social graces, so I think those people might be clumsily pushy vegans as a result.)
TequilaMockingbird
5hr ago
My alternate formulation would be that while a surgeon might be a man (or woman) of import, a doctor is almost certainly trash.
campfireSmoresEaten
5hr ago
"300 Colombian mercenaries killed in Ukraine, out of 500 that went there"
This is according to Russia, btw.
" “We have some records, but what the Russian government informed us—and this requires verification—is that about 500 Colombians participated on the Ukrainian side. Of these, around 100 have returned to Colombia, 100 have deserted, and roughly 300 to 310 have been killed,” Murillo said."
ThisIsSin
The boob tube emits harmful XXX-rays
5hr ago
both wokies and self-righteous moral majority types
In case you were wondering what the difference between wokies and temporally-embarrassed wokies self-righteous moral majority types is:
Traditionalists (popularly, "conservatives") are butthurt that a 42 year old man fucked a 17 year old woman, without having to pay with his life for the sex.
Progressives (popularly, "wokes") are butthurt that a 17 year old woman fucked a 42 year old man, without demanding he first pay with his life for the sex.
By contrast, liberals are the men and women who don't think sex is worth that much.
faceh
5hr ago
Somehow they don't even have to test the drop these days. They get the iron level some other way.
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
I guess I don't really see a problem with informing parents of that either.
I imagine the relevant component to you isn't the government's education department? That is, if they decided that the guideline was that parents should be informed, it seems like you'd be disappointed, not happy that they're catering to the will of the general public.
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