LastThursday

I carry on working on The Process daily. I entered the Death phase on Friday and there was a certain intensity to it. The weekend I kind of felt deflated and hollow, like all that energy had got to head and then vanished. The character of the work changed completely on the Saturday too. This phase is more about protecting and clearing a path for myself. I'm feeling a mix of emotions, excitement, sadness, scepticism. Something has definitely shifted but I'm going to let it sit until it resolves itself.

I think it'll be good to get out things that arise and put them down in written form. I have so many lost thoughts and ideas, and some of them were very good.

I'd use the word "beautiful" in all its aspects. Who doesn't want beauty in their lives? Variety is also good, platonic as well as romantic. Don't regret anything you put out, it was your energy at the time. Just because you're different later doesn't negate your earlier self even if it makes you cringe now. Good luck.

@Someone here everyone's different, why not just accept who they are? To me I see it as a matter of personal style, neither here nor there, if Leo doesn't want to engage in person so what? - he provides value in other ways. I suspect there are many members here having parasocial relationships with Leo and there's a strong need or want for that personal touch to make that relationship "real", I personally would be naturally be very wary of that sort of thing. But as @Joseph Maynor says there is nothing stopping the more extrovert gregarious members getting together. You'd still get value from it.

@Zenterus just set boundaries with yourself. Friends are friends and lovers are lovers. I've had many instances where I could have escalated with female friends, but consciously chose not to. Sometimes keeping a certain platonic dynamic in a group is preferable. You or they may continue to have chemistry, maybe you even flirt, but you both understand the situation and don't escalate.

@Someone here I understood you full well. I don't profess to know Leo's feelings in the slightest, he can correct me if I'm off base. By "conflicted" I meant he himself setting up and participating in Zoom calls and nothing to do with ex member Nahm. He's been at it a long time, and not once has he seriously entertained the idea of meeting folks in person, I just don't see the impetus there, in fact I sense a reluctance. Maybe it's his temperament or maybe he's concerned about other things. I would say Zoom calls are a limited means of gaining improved knowledge if that's what you're after. Pragmatically you could only get about ten people on a call at a time, before it becomes unmanageable. And if it's not going to degenerate into just chit chat, then it needs to be structured, which requires some prior organisation; maybe a topic to talk about, or for callers to line up questions beforehand. It could work if done well, but it would be limited. On the plus side it would improve the forum (if that's the goal) if at least a few of the more regular members got to know each other in person (so to speak). It would reduce the more dick-waving style in the forum, and maybe make people think more clearly before posting - it's harder to behave badly when you've met the person you're trolling or being angry at. I too would like to see the forum improved - I've been here a while - but it's the same with anything, anything could be improved. If you're serious go join a monastery or go study with a master or whatever, a forum isn't going to get you what you want, there's too much member churn and rookie energy to make quality stick.

@Etherial Cat I instantly recognised the map on the iPad in the video as the 1746 John Rocque map of London - showing the Whitechapel Road area. I then realised I need to get a life. Free the birds!

@oOo if we ever decode meaningful language abilities in other animals, dolphins are where it's at. Although, possibly whales too but they're harder to work with. Bottlenose dolphins have names for each other. Saying that songbirds also share the same FOXP2 gene as humans, so there's potential there too. I'm secretly hoping we'll talk to crows one day, but I'm not holding my breath - we can have our favourites though. God has spoken and I have listened. Dolphins.

This is a profound insight. Not so much the positive/negative energy thing, but that symmetry can be broken, and the pieces of the breakage come together to make a whole - a balance if you like. In fact here is a proof of Pythagoras' Theorem by exactly the same principle. The diagram speaks for itself (eventually): It's the same principle behind consciousness itself. There are no gaps in consciousness precisely because the parts fits together exactly to make the whole - consciousness is perfectly balanced. It's the same metaphor for the Yin Yang symbol (太極圖).

@Someone here my tea leaves tell me that @Leo Gura is conflicted on the issue. Some are gregarious types, some are not. It doesn't stop you though from getting the ball rolling with members and then inviting Leo along once things are established. Just a thought.

¡Dios mío, habla!

Yeah. It's like a buzzy mosquito that doesn't leave you alone. If you ever learn how to squash it, let me know!

That made me laugh I don't have children no. I think my mindset and approach changed over time. My take on it is that neuroticism is either fear based or lack-of-control based. I had a lot of (social) anxiety, basically fear, because I believed I could not control situations I would find myself in. The penny dropped eventually that actually, I was ok in nearly all situations. I also practised shutting my inner dialogue off for many years, which also helped with rumination. I still often ruminate about things I have said or done which might be misinterpreted, but it doesn't stop me acting so much as before - I'm still working on it. That's pretty normal in my opinion. A heavier weight needs a harder or longer push. And often lasting change is more staccato than smooth.

I'd see it slightly differently. The real evil here is comparison not selfishness as such. We naturally compare ourselves to our peers, because that's the group we have most in common with, and how we measure our success. But it's not reasonable for a group of people to be identical, some will always be more advanced and some less so. This is what creates the friction. And from comparison comes judgement about ourselves and others and where we stand within the group. Some will take the comparison and judgement and push themselves to improve their standing, some will moan and feel dejected and may even give up.

@Judy2 I'll take the question literally. My level of openness (to experience) I'd say has gradually increased over time. Mostly out of greater discernment with age: people can be put off by too much openness, knowing how to be open is important. And, confidence: I allow myself to be open without fear now. I'd say I've become more evenly balanced in my introversion/extroversion, I was a super introverted teenager for example. Now I can tolerate and actually enjoy long periods with people. I have become far less neurotic with time. I was an anxious and ruminating wreck for most of my life. Although, this is something I actively worked on, and I cracked it in my late 30s. I'm still a little neurotic, but continue working on it. I have become slightly less agreeable with time. I don't try and please people so much. I'm much more likely to be spiky or grumpy at times than I was say in my 20's. Sometimes being disagreeable actually makes things simpler. I think I've become slightly less conscientious over time. I've always wanted to be "good" and to be seen to be doing my bit and doing it properly. I'm still largely one for not doing others over, but more lately I put less energy into being conscientious. It's more of a change of emphasis away from it. I seem to have acquired a Machiavellian streak in my 20's and reached a peak in 40's, but this is decreasing again. I'm actively working on getting rid of it in my 50's. It doesn't serve me and makes me neurotic. TLDR - I see these changes in my personality as very gradual over decades, and some of them caused by me actively changing them.

I say innocent until proven guilty. I would give a god the benefit of the doubt. Although I'm a pluralist, there is more than one meaning simultaneously.

@pablo_aka_god this is a good example. I always read @eos_nyxia's lovely comments even though they're so damn long...

@Nercohype I watched the second half. That's some terrifying shit she went through. I'm never touching a jar full of dirt ever. Ever.

God (or whatever) doesn't care about time, one second or a million years are the same. How is it the whole universe existed when I was born, without my knowledge of it? Because 15 billion years got collapsed to nothing. The persistence is only seen from the character's perspective. Indeed, here you are and you're X years old, how did that happen, what happened to all that persistence?

I'll be in London in the next few weekends (31 October). DM me if in the area and interested in a friendly meet up and talking about anything and everything. It'll be somewhere central.

I'm not sure why you would want to invoke the paranormal to prove consciousness, seems like a non-sequitur to me. Like, my lack of paranormal abilities would not make me any more or less conscious. What's your reasoning here?

Watch out. Next time you sleep we might all ascend into the Singularity and you will wake up all alone. Terrifying. I'm never sleeping again.

Woah... what happened to this thread? A man sleeps for eight hours... @LastThursday Here is your scientific experiment: put an AI in a magnetically shielded sound proof room at Monroe Institute and make it remote view and read people's minds from the outside. Isn't scientific/Monroe an oxymoron? Science isn't about explaining one unexplainable thing with another unexplainable thing. Anyway I'm going to ask because I'm an imp: @Carl-Richard are you conscious? My thought experiment was more along the lines of the following: There are two black boxes. One you suspect is non-conscious, the other conscious. They have identical inputs and a potentially unbounded range of output. You keep sending the same signals into the two boxes and watch the outputs. You work out that box A seems to be deterministic and have a limited range of output. Box B is highly random, but patterned, it draws you little pictures of flowers and tells you that it loves you. Now, it could be that Box B is just such a complicated machine that it mimics other things you deem to be conscious. But maybe there is something you can "ask" it by sending particular signals and it responds in a way that only a conscious entity could respond in - a question that a non-conscious thing wouldn't be able to answer. The Turing test was weak sauce, but it's definitely on the right track. But my experiment effectively assumes that consciousness is effectively a computation, i.e. it has utility and affects the organism's processes.

@pablo_aka_god there's definitely a lot of noise in threads. Normally I read or partially read the longer comments, and see if anything gets my interest. Learn to discern who is interesting and who just creates noise and mischief. One line answers or toing and froing between users is usually noise. Also, I just read threads with more interesting titles. If it reads something like "I have become god" or "I opened a set of 1000 women" I roll my eyes and move on to something else. Be ruthless, your time and attention is precious.

@Carl-Richard the YouTube algorithm is conscious, this dropped today, could be of interest to this thread: Ask it? In my opinion it boils down to whether consciousness is just an epiphenomenon, in which case it has no utility. So, it wouldn't have been biologically evolved for (assuming consciousness is only for biology). If consciousness does have utility, then by definition it must affect the system it inhabits - even if subtly - and this could be probed for scientifically. You set up an experiment such that the only way it could pass, is if it had consciousness. In short, what difference does having a useful consciousness make to a system?