LastThursday

Definitely the emphasis in education is a bad fit for most people. It's all about educating the masses for the workforce. Since employers are about optimising for profits and efficiency, they naturally want the most bang for their buck and so want to hire the "brightest" candidates. To know who's brightest you have to measure it somehow, and hence the heavy emphasis on exams and grades. Since most exams are fixed to a curriculum, there's a natural presssure to want to just "pass the exams" to get on in life. I don't know what the answer is here. Should young kids even go to school? Finland starts at age six or seven I think. Schools should definitely be teaching meta skills. Like, life skills and how to accelerate your own learning, how to collaborate and how to be creative, how to meditate and introspect etc. Also the breadth of subjects needs to expand hugely and to have a lot more overlap between them. And, if Johnny likes making pottery, and Jane likes coding, they should be able to explore that fully and with professional guidance. I've known teacher friends teaching subjects they know hardly anything about (e.g. languages). There's also no reason directed learning should stop at 18 or adulthood. Perhaps, the school system should taper off rather than stop dead at a certain age.

Some classical. Good old Grieg:

There's no definite answer. You're not losing social skills just because of a break of a few weeks, so it's not that. If you're anything like me, sometimes you're just not in the mood to be social. In other words you have to be mentally prepared to be social and it takes effort. Such is the life of an introvert. As for feeling awkward and boring, just let it happen and don't fight it, even if it's uncomfortable feeling. Socialising is not about performing well, it's about communication and connection and having a shared experience and expressing yourself. From experience, socialising is about directing all your attention to the other person and being delighted with them. The flow (of love) should be from you to the other person, not the other way around. You feel awkward and boring because the flow is the wrong way, you're basing your experience on your performance and your expectation, instead of just directing your attention outwards away from yourself.

How would you go about distinguishing a 2nd-order truth from a 1st-order truth? Is that a worthwhile activity?

Agreed, that's a very good description. It's a grieving process and it takes it's own path and time to resolve. You can't switch your feelings off like a switch and to be honest you shouldn't even try.

I'm sorry you're feeling pain. Be easy on yourself, there's no pressure to pretend he never existed. And there's no shame in heartbreak, just allow yourself to feel into it for a while. Some relationships just take a lot longer to get over than others. Unless you're very lucky, there's always some unresolved emotions around a breakup and that's why it's difficult to let go. Give it time don't rush.

The meaning of life is to discover it has no meaning, and you are as free as a bird.

One cure for anxiety is to have confidence and trust in your own abilities. You have anxiety because you're constantly looking for problems that may or may not happen - and this triggers a fear response in your body. The fear response is because you don't think you'll be able to deal with a bad situation when it arises. You need to look back at all the times you were in a difficult situation. Ask yourself these questions: 1. Did I survive the situation? 2. Did I manage to deal ok with the situation? 3. if I didn't manage to deal with the situation right away, was it resolved eventually? The other thing to realise is that you will still encounter problems in the future, whether you think about them or not. It's much less emotionally draining not to think about them beforehand - trust the future version of yourself. Stopping the rumination can be done, but it takes lots of practice. Start now.

William Sidis had some ideas about life: My own take, is that life is any bit of matter that actively works to keep itself intact over time. All life has an identity it maintains against chaos (entropy). This is what Sidis says above. Most life does this by reproducing itself (and so includes viruses). Identity itself can be diffuse and not necessarily concentrated in one individual.

Have a women only section to the forum. More detail in my journal:

Should there be a women only section to the forum? And how would it work? From a detached viewpoint I can see there's an imbalance to this forum. Imbalances always cause problems of majority groupthink, suppression of the minorities (even if not intended), and implicit bias towards the concerns of the majority. I know for a certain fact that women are no more or less able to take on the task of self actualisation and spirituality than men. This should be reflected on the forum and on Actualized in general. Women are just as numerous as men in the population and this should be represented here too. A women only section to the forum could be set up. It would just be a general section where anything can be posted. Everyone would be able to see all the posts and replies, but only women would be able to post and reply. This can be controlled through the gender option on a member's profile. There would have to be some nuance to using the gender option. All members can choose to have a gender or not disclose this at all. On top of that a member can disclose their gender, but not have it displayed on their profile. However, only members who identify as "female" can post in the new forum (whether shown on their profile or not). To stop abuse, all new or existing members have one chance to change their gender after which it is locked. After that only a mod can change your gender for you. And as a further safeguard only a female mod can change your gender to "female". Only female moderators would be allowed to moderate the new sub-forum. Only female moderators can post in the sub-forum. This would exclude Leo himself (he is male), and he would have to comment only indirectly through a female moderator. Having a women only sub-forum will have several benefits. It will give women a "safe space" away from male trolling, gaslighting, adversarial style interaction and sexism. But it will also allow discussion of more female centric subjects and concerns. It will start off slowly but I think it would gather momentum over time and have a virtuous effect on the rest of the forum - by redressing the imbalance. With my programmer's head on, the changes required to set this up would be minor (an extra column in the member's table in the database to indicate the gender is locked). And then a few "if" statements to control who can post in the new sub-forum based on the gender field. And a couple of changes to the UI to accommodate all this. Of course, I wouldn't be allowed on there either, but that's a small price to pay.

Do you sleep face down on it? ??? Sleep on it? Why not frame it and put it up on the wall? (I can't believe I just said that)

Sort of, but it's weirder than you say. There is only consciousness and that's it. Perspectives, universes, source code, NPCs, infinity, "you" are just appearances within consciousness. Some appearances give the impression of being stable and permanent (like your sense of yourself), but those impressions are also just appearances. There is no story or explanation for consciousness or what it's doing, because an explanation is just another appearance within consciousness. Even calling it consciousness is just an appearance. My head hurts. I think I need a lie down.

And therein lies the answer you're looking for. It's not your consciousness. You are inside it, not it inside you. In other words you're as much a construct as the person whose eyes you're looking into. They might not have consciousness, but neither do you. Solipsism is not true.

Just playing devil's advocate: There's circularity in this way of thinking. In order to say A is not B you have to know what A and B are to start with. Your claim is that intellectual pursuit IS NOT infinity. This means you know what infinity is already. Maybe you do, maybe you don't, I have no idea. However, I can say that the concept of infinity is itself just that: a concept (a.k.a. coming from intellect). I don't know what infinity means to you. But to me it might mean: never ending process (which you allude to), or unbounded thing with no end. Again, this is just my intellect and conceptual thinking. I can slap on the label of "infinity" onto anything in my experience. But the label is never the thing itself. When it comes to communication, everything is words, models and intellectualising. I don't know if I've explained myself well here, but maybe you see the problem?

The irony of this statement. @Tyler Robinson don't worry, you have more brain cells and eloquence than most of the knuckle dragging gobshi**s on here.

Of course! You are the porn actress (said with Leo's voice).

Because they have a desire to be "seen" and express themselves in a public space for their own satisfaction, but they just don't want the interaction. Imagine going to a park because you like open spaces and fresh air, but you don't want strangers coming up to you all the time asking who you are. As for features maybe certain folks don't want a theme park, just basic grass.

@soos_mite_ah either just ask him straight what he would like or... give him something unique or unusual that represents you in some way.

Recently rediscovered Very cheesy but it's like meeting an old friend from years ago. I like the syncopation.

Keep away from people who smoke! The only way I quit was when I changed jobs (and city) and nobody around me smoked. Keep away from activities where people might be smoking around you. Distracting yourself when you get cravings is critical, but after a few weeks it's a lot easier. Maybe chew gum instead. If you "accidentally" buy cigarettes, then throw them away at the first opportunity (a public bin is best). Personally I found chewing nicotine gum helped a great deal with cravings, and it was way less addictive. But obviously it's not cold turkey. I've been smoke free for seven years. I spent the previous 28 years smoking on and off, the longest break being a year or so. It's hard.

The selfishness angle is hard to get a handle on I would say. Is a cheetah that kills a gazelle for food acting selfishly? Or is it just that it has no other choice than to be a cheetah? Does that same logic apply to a human? It seems to be a human's innate flexibility - via copying each other and using imagination (a.k.a culture) - that is the source of its disruptive power over nature. So for example if a cheetah can't find gazelles to eat it will die because it has no problem solving ability, other than what nature gave it. Whereas humans can build on experience and share and record those experiences with each other over time. Evolutionarily that's a huge advantage over other animals. But, the ultimate source of that experience is still nature itself, our "problems" came from that source. There's this ratchet effect with culture and it builds up (exponentially) over huge timespans. At some point human population densities and numbers get high enough that they start disrupting the dynamic equilibrium of the local environment. Once that happens every "problem" that is solved creates further problems down the line. Instead of being unconscious animals evolved by millions of years of adaptation, we have to start being conscious custodians of the Earth and masters of our own fate. But a human is no different from a cheetah in that a human has no choice than to be a human. In that sense we aren't selfish. The most nuturing state is that where nature is left to its own devices. So it comes down to really understanding deeply how our imaginations and actions are affecting the dynamic equilibrium of the Earth. Or basically understanding how even good intentions can create bad outcomes in hugely interconnected non-linear systems. After all a farmer will nuture their crop and feed their communities, but at the expense of biodiversity and ecology. The reward here is knowing that every problem solved has a cost (or negative consequence) and being aware of that.

And... immediately locking all threads talking about, dissecting, gossiping or analysing over specific forum members. Especially if the members are not active and can't defend themselves. Or even giving warning points if anyone starts this sort of thing.

For the forum at least by balancing out the demographic (I know, easier said than done). Of course the ideal being a one to one female to male ratio, and a wider spread of ages. More female mods maybe? Banning the use of the word "Leo" in forum topic titles. Banning the use of the phrase "I became enlightened" or the like in titles (boo! hiss! I know yeah yeah). And for the love of god being able to control who can post in your journal or even blocking everyone from posting in your journal. Personally I don't care about this, but others do very much.