LastThursday

In my experience this can be subtle at times. It can be as simple as making a decision, and having prior knowledge changes what you decide to do - even if you thought you'd never use an idea or concept you'd picked up. Sometimes ideas from one area transfer over to a different area.

We are not just our thoughts, we are far far bigger than our thoughts. You may have heard that thoughts are like the weather, always changing, coming and going. Like the weather we don't really control our thoughts, thoughts just arise from nothing and disappear back into nothing. Sometimes it rains and we get our umbrellas out to stay dry - we should treat our thoughts in the same way. Instead of trying to control our thoughts, we should find better ways to react to them, take care of that. In the end the ego is also just a thought.

Even the nunchuck table tennis being fake doesn't lessen his mastery.

This is absolute insanity. I especially like the nunchuck table tennis. Are there another people with this level of mastery in any discipline?

There's a kind of presupposion here that it's a problem, it's a sort of odd question. I have multiple interests so: I follow them(?). But. As mentioned in the video I do find employment a problem, mostly because I spend a great deal of time being corralled into specific areas, and I'm not always "up" for churning out or thinking about software on any given day - in fact I'm mostly not. The edge is taken off a bit because creating software is varied and is largely problem solving, two things which I thankfully enjoy. Of course software is also one of my interests. The only other "problem" I see is in sharing my interests, I basically don't - because most people are not like me. Although there is the occasional overlapping interest from friends in one subject or other. I think the tone of this is wrong. You can learn as well as do and be - probably all at the same time. I find great joy in learning and that sensation when I finally understand something. And I would say a lot of what I've learnt has had real life use and given me deep understanding of how the world works. That's something to cherish. @Rafael Thundercat do you find it a problem?

I feel as though I should not let myself off the hook. That is I feel a compulsion to get my life fixed. I don't really know what this fixing entails, but there is a definite constant nagging anxiety that isn't going away. However, the sensation is complex. I've always been a "fixer". As a kid I loved to take things apart and sometimes put them back together again. I was curious about the mysterious stuff inside mundane objects: TVs, alarm clocks, computers, washing machines and on and on. And of course when stuff broke, I could sometimes fix it, because I wasn't afraid of that complexity inside stuff. What's inside me? Well, it's definitely not cogs and levers and wires and components. The last ten or more years I've had an insatiable appetite to understand people in the same sort of way as I understand a toaster say. Naturally, understanding people is really nothing at all like understanding a toaster. In a way understanding people is completely alien to my way of thinking, and yet I have an itch to scratch. Some of it is the fault of my Dad who has been into the people thing a long time. Early on in my teenage years I started to absorb this stuff by osmosis - NLP and models of behaviour and improving communication and personal development - but I never really cared much for it. Anyway. My modus operandi has always been that if I have a problem, I fix it. Until that problem is fixed I feel a constant nagging anxiety. This is one of the traits that makes me think I'm on the spectrum. It's both a blessing and a curse. When it comes to myself however, it's quite possible that I'm working from the wrong paradigm. It's possible that in fact I don't need to or can't really "fix" my life as I would fix a toaster. No doubt there are low hanging fruit and if I paid enough attention those things, it would be easy enough to resolve in my life: girlfriend, buy a house, live somewhere I want to. Those things are "fixable" even if they're not particularly minor. When it comes to fixing ordinary objects it's really a matter of assessing the problem and then reducing the problem to its components. It's then a matter of identifying which components are faulty and fixing those one-by-one. There are components to my life but the difference is that they're all intimately connected to each other and bleed into each other; changing one thing here affects everything else. So I get this sensation of overwhelm whenever I think about fixing or changing any part of my life, there's too many variables and subtlety going on. One thing I feel strongly about myself is a dissonance between the parts of my life. For example if I were to stop doing the job I do tomorrow, I would not miss it all or the people I work with. That lack of emotion tells me that I am in fact doing the wrong thing. I spend an inordinate amount of time pandering to something I couldn't care less about - and yet it is keeping me alive. I spend a lot of time following my interests which are hugely varied. One reason I'm attracted to this forum and to Leo's stuff in general is because of the polymathic nature of it. I've been the same since I was small. Again my Dad is a bit of a polymath, but I've definitely surpassed him in that department! My sister too. Being this way excites me, there's so much stuff to learn and get to know about. I find very few other people are this way, it's kind of a sad and so I tend to not share my interests, people honestly just don't care. I try on occasion but soon give up. Sometimes people are even suprised by my depth of knowledge on a subject, people that know me well. Another component is precisely the people in my life. I half heartedly maintain a set of friendships. I find inserting myself into their lives difficult, that is to say that they are less flexible than I am. If I give it any thought it's a strange dynamic I have with my friends and my family. I think the source of that strangeness is me (this is another trait which makes me think I'm on the spectrum). I can find people exhausting and difficult to handle, my introvert nature shining through there. And yet a lot of the time I feel most relaxed, happy and connected when I'm with people. I also spend a lot of my idle time watching people via YouTube for example. In that sense I'm fairly extroverted. So there is a constant tension I have to navigate between these two poles. (It's not lost on me that I should do an NLP parts integration process here, as I've suggested to someone else on this forum.) That self imposed lack of connection to people is causing me sadness and it's ridiculous. When I went travelling all I did was spend time with other people, albeit with the odd bit of me time, and I was happy on the whole. I love my friends, but they are super conventional and normal. I've ended up being super conventional, and yet I'm 51 not married, no kids, no pets etc. Again I feel a very strong tension between wanting to be super conventional and not being conventional at all. I blame my parents (why not?). My Mum married a foreigner and moved to another country, my Dad is 78 doesn't want to retire and wants to go live in China (FFS). Anyway, these shenanigans by my parents have rubbed off on to my way of being. In some way, I'm playing pretend at being conventional when my very being is rebelling against this. Some of the reasons I'm standoffish with my family is that their unconventionality irks me (very big LOL here). My sister married an American and lives in Delaware and left her three kids in the UK with their father (grrrr). Another polarity in my life is that between my mental and physical self. I'm very much thought heavy in my being and this is strongly connected to my introversion. I get a lot of enjoyment out of thinking and learning, by myself. But I do also like to use my body, I hike, I play some sports, I play musical instruments - and it gives me a lot of joy too. I feel a strong imbalance however, I'm very much in a sedentary mental space most of the time. The balance needs to be redressed. In an odd way I also associate being physical with my more extroverted side. So. Some of the things I need to fix are all these bloody opposing tensions in my life, they're exhausting and keeping me in limbo. Some of things are to do with purely re-aligning things: the way I earn money should be connected to the things that make me happy: people and polymathy and physicality. But I feel I also need to live somewhere that allows me to express those things more easily, a rainy cold country such as the UK is not conducive to going out and being physical or wanting to go outside the home; it doesn't fit my more extroverted nature. I need to escape this conventionality, lack of alignment and disconnectedness it's killing me slowly inside.

I'm arguing for either/both. I don't in fact know if spontaneity of a particular type is inscrutable or uncaused. Conceivably, given enough information the causes of a spontaneous event could be elicited (scientifically or otherwise). But the nature of spontaneity makes this difficult. In general it is unknowable which it is. The above is just my opinion as to which of your points is which type of spontaneity. Except there is no particular reason why gravity is associated with matter. You either treat the system as a unity (as you have or Einstein did), or treat them separately and say that gravity is the spontaneous effect of matter on space itself (even possibly vice versa). Spontaneity here not meaning novelty as much as an effect that tracks the change in matter causing it (i.e. movement etc) in an immediate kind of way. This still doesn't explain why gravity happens, just what happens. Side note: gravitational waves are caused by a lag in this spontaneity - because the effect of spontaneity itself cannot be faster than the speed of light. There is an "active" kind of process happening between matter and gravity. Because you mention "sufficient similarity/proximity between experience and memory", suggesting that memory and experience are two different things albeit similar. I'm saying that they are the same, and if the essence of the mechanism is to be spontaneous then potentially it could be the source of all spontaneity.

Nah. You can walk from one end of London to other with your phone in hand and not see a single police person or get mugged. It does rain plenty though. Come visit, we'll only mug you for cash, a sandwich and a coffee? £10 sir.

@Jannes yes that's more of a classic technique, but there are other related ones. One I like is to have the parts be in different physical locations in a room for example, and you would stand and slowly walk between locations to "integrate" the parts (if I find a video I'll post it here). The main issue with the other techniques is that doing them yourself is tricky, they're often more effective if someone is guiding you through the process. I wouldn't worry too much about the intensity of feeling being related to the effectiveness. In my experience you'll notice changes or differences over the space of days or weeks, sometimes longer. Sometimes it will seem suprising, like "hey I realise I no longer do X" or "I haven't felt or thought about X for a while". There's always a period of subsconscious re-adjustment or re-alignment. Anyway, it's all good stuff, I'm glad you tried the exercise.

I'd argue that 2 and 4 are actually the same thing: that life is matter with an identity (and so has to be self-correcting to maintain that identity). What is the source of spontaneity? Spontaneity - as you've outlined - has the notion of "something uncaused", as opposed to "something inscrutable". Something uncaused then is pure randomness without reason or prior history and therefore not foreseeable or constructable. But it could actually be something inscrutable: there are reasons and prior causation, but there is no way to get at those. I'd say point 1 falls into the something uncaused camp. Points 2 and 4 fall into the something inscrutable camp, in other words life (and identity) can be accidentally bootstrapped from other processes - self-correction is actually a loop of information flow, these loops can spontaneously form but are not necessarily mysterious. Information does leak out of and into these loops, so identity is not fixed (a.k.a evolution). Every identity interacts with everything that is not itself, it's never completely isolated. As for point 3 I'd say the mechanism which creates an impression of the present (moment) is the same which creates memories of the past. The apparent separation of the two is only that of categorisation - memories of the past are in fact still the present moment - the difference is only in quality in some way. You could argue that this mechanism is the source of all spontaneity, and that the whole of reality is actually "something uncaused" every single moment.

@Jannes there are ways to resolve the inner conflict. NLP has various techniques under the name "Parts Integration". There's many videos on YouTube if you're interested. Here's a simple version to start with (the actual technique is explained from 2:54 onwards):

@Ramanujan looks like you're suffereing from not being focused enough. Ask yourself specifically "what do I want to win at?" (then go do it). None of us are winners or losers in generality. We're much more nuanced than that as humans and you're doing yourself a disservice by calling yourself a loser. You don't win at mastery, it's always an ongoing process of improvement.

Hey @gettoefl I appreciate you for saying that. It makes me feel happy that someone gets something from what I write, whatever that may be. As well as being more informed, I forgot to include that also saying "yes" to more things will open up unique experiences. I think many of us hold ourselves back out of fear of the unknown, inexperience or going against conformity. Get out there!

I missed the aurora borealis here in the UK the other night. I'm up on the second floor and I have a decent view of the sky from my windows. I also normally sleep by midnight, so the the thing would have been in full swing before I went to bed. A friend of mine was ill with a bad cold and he couldn't sleep that night. He chose to while away the hours playing chess on his mobile (he's addicted). He too missed the aurora happening outside his bedroom window. A few friends posted pictures that they'd taken and it looked breathtaking. I feel kind of gutted to not have seen it, it was probably a once-in-a-lifetime event for where I live. Amazing things are happening all around us all the time. Many times I've been with people and noticed things myself that the people around me have been oblivious to. But it seems obvious to me that I've also missed many things other have noticed too. How is it possible to be me more aware of what's going on around us? How can we not miss out on life? One way it to be informed. Simply knowing where to look and when to look can open up amazing experiences for us. Being informed does require a constant curiosity and active research - it can be done passively, but then you are at the whims and biases of others; I don't follow the news actively for example. Instead I follow my nose and read up and investigate stuff that interests me. Not everyone is like me, but a stronger sense of curiosity can be cultivated. Another is simply to be more present. By this I mean being less distracted and having your focus pulled tightly. We seem to live in a society that constantly wants to pull our focus this way and that, but more perniciously it wants to constantly narrow our focus on to this way of thinking or that particular product. Instead we should actively fight against this narrowing of focus and regularly do things that open up our focus. This can be from doing things which are out of our normal routine, to actively paying attention to things we don't normally. Meditation can help, even if just to quieten our minds and bring us back to the here and now more often. But it also helps to train our attention so that we're in control of it. Lastly is to see the bigger picture. We sit at the centre of an immense infinitude of stuff constantly happening to us and around us. It is possible to become more aware of the interconnectedness and magic quality of everything; that you are part of it. When we are more integrated and aligned with that immensity and we expand our focus outwards we'll notice a lot more once-in-a-lifetime events.

@stephenkettley one thing that materialism has going for it is that if you drop a brick on your foot, it will hurt. In other words the brick and the pain are real. The brick is made of stuff and pain is transmitted by nerve impulses. You could then say the sensation of pain is not material even if it has a material cause, and argue that the sensation of pain is made of dream-stuff and then eventually conclude that everything is actually dream-stuff. But even subjective idealism isn't the whole story, because it doesn't explain why bricks exist and why they should hurt. If mind and body were separate then one could be detached from the other and be free to go where it wants. Can your body go shopping whilst your mind stays at home? Maybe.

Go and have a relationship first, forget the worry about being hurt by girls - you'll deal with it just fine if and when it happens.

You have to be clear about what you mean by "success". Capitalism is a form of gambling. You put in capital upfront - money, work, effort, hours, infrastructure, stuff, investment - in the hope that you are rewarded with excess money in the long run (profit). That is primarily what running a business is about. You are successful if you are profitable. So in this model the profits come first. It's unsustainable if you keep putting in capital without any reward and so the business will collapse eventually. There are a million different ways to increase your likelihood of making profit and that's what makes business so complex. One of those ways is to provide great value to other people. In other words if your business provides something that other people need or that improves their lives, then they will buy your products and services. Not only that, they will pay more than it cost you to create the product, and you will make profit. Therefore making profit and providing value to other people are two sides of the same coin. But you aren't serving the collective necessarily, you are only convincing people to buy your products or services to make profit.

@blessedlion1993 she could have been intersex. More information below. But honestly if it didn't work for you, then just move on and don't worry about it. Or she could have just had big hands 🤷

These are good guidelines for being a decent person. It seems like it's causing you some amount of confusion or trouble socially though. In practice these guidelines take work to maintain, it's easy to slip into behaviour that goes against them. The reason for having these guidelines in the first place, is that they are needed, it doesn't come naturally to many people. It all comes down to intention. If you intend to discriminate or to objectify or treat others in a way you wouldn't like yourself, then you're probably causing someone else suffering. So the more important guidline to follow is to keep asking yourself: am I causing suffering? The thing is, is that you will cause suffering to others at some point, we all do - and we may not even mean to. The best we can do is to apologise, help fix the suffering and not repeat our bad behaviour in future. The point is not to rigidly follow a set of rules as if they were absolutes, and make our social interactions rigid and inflexible. Instead work to raise your awareness of when others are suffering, and improve your social skills in not causing suffering in the first place or at least help in reducing suffering when you do cause it. This is what the term EQ is all about.

There is no forum, only This.

Yes. The best way is by interruption. When we have an emotional reaction, it's like our bodies are running an automatic program. Something external triggers our emotion and then a whole cascade of things happen. We have thoughts and feelings and behave in certain ways. Imagine someone had upset you, and you begin to have a strong emotional reaction. Suddenly, your smoke alarm goes off and you can smell something burning. Do you continue to have the upset emotional reaction, or do you panic and check if your house is on fire? The idea then, is to build up enough awareness that you're being triggered, and then interrupt the program yourself. There are many many ways you could do it. Maybe you get triggered and instead of sitting there and being upset, you go out for a run instead, or you watch an engaging film or whatever. Get creative. Basically, do something else that grabs your attention strongly. If you do this kind of thing enough, then your brain learns to re-program itself. Yes, it's a bit like being on holiday and trying to talk to someone in a foreign language by using a phrase book. It's very possible to observe without "using a phrase book" but it takes practice. Practice by observing, but let the sensations just wash over you without analysis. Observing happens "out there" not "in here". Constantly push your attention outwards away from yourself.

Here's some that immediately come to mind: When I use the word "consciousness" is it the same as your word "consciousness"? Is consciousness one thing or many things? If many things, are those things completely separate? If everything is consciousness how can consciousness explain itself? How do "things" in consciousness persist? What is the relationship between materialism and idealism? Why does altering matter (i.e. drugs, lobotomies) change consciousness? Is what "exists" only that which I'm aware of? Do things outside of my awareness stop existing? Is awareness consciousness or is consciousness more than awareness? There's plenty more lol.

You have ask yourself what you mean by "smart enough" or "incorrect". According to whose standard? If you really examine it it's always according to your own standard. It seems like disapproval comes externally from others, but the emotional reaction is always internal. To a large degree it's possible to control or regulate your emotional reaction. But it takes an awareness and lots of practice to do this. You can break those thought loops that keep prolonging the negative emotions. For the forum specifically, just step away for a day or two and let the emotion subside. Or, if you feel like stand your ground and fight back and give the emotions an outlet - do what comes naturally though don't force it. Realistically, it doesn't matter how smart you are, there will always be someone smarter than you. That's life, give yourself a chance. ASD is about dysfunction of theory of mind. Normies very quickly build up mental models about the potential thought processes and emotions of others - theory of mind - and they do this in real time. They even believe this mental model is "truth" and you hear a lot of "I know what he's thinking" as if mind reading were real. It's a spectrum, some people are better than others at reading people. In my own life I have noticed a marked improvement in my ability to do this, but it's taken a lot of work and observation and focus. This theory of mind is also reflexive, so you would have a mental model about what your own emotions and thoughts and actions mean. In other words, theory of mind is what gives you an identity and a strong sense of "self". It is ironic that many on this forum would like to achieve a state of "no self".

Don't worry, we all mask to some extent. There's countless threads about how to be more authentic, i.e. mask less. We only show the parts of ourselves that we think others want to see. I think as long as you're not being or saying offensive things, most people will just accept you as you are, especially once they get to know you more. If you get rejected by people then f*ck them, life's too short, find more interesting people! Ironically, being worried and sensitive and censoring yourself will make you appear less fluid in your interactions. That's because it takes mental effort to censor yourself when the mental effort should be going into the social interaction instead. It seems like you're very observant of others and this is a real plus for social situations. The best results for social interaction is to put all your attention into who you are talking to, and away from yourself - the more you try and control yourself the more people will notice.

It does take great maturity to be devoted to others' needs above your own. Most parents know this for example. The maturity comes because we are naturally selfish and to overcome this takes effort and learning. Maturity is seeing the bigger picture and supressing your own desires in support of that. But, you are a person too and so to exclude yourself and not serve yourself as well as others is imbalanced. Ideally, we would all serve each other, that would be real maturity. Realistically, you can only ever serve a limited number of people, so you still only serve the self-interest of the group, the selfishness isn't ever completely gone.