The Mystical Man

One spiritual teacher had her awakening while she was getting raped. When I first read that, I thought it weird, but now it makes sense, because she had to give up all resistance to what is.

A certain degree of negativity is normal on this journey, but excessive negativity is an indication that you're stuck in a perspective from which you want to free yourself. Consider getting a good (!) therapist. If you cannot find a good therapist, find a spiritual teacher that you trust and respect. Express your negative ideas to him. If the teacher is clear and wise, he'll cut off your head (metaphorically), and you'll be free.

Hogwarts Legacy? Can't wait.

George Lucas talks about the importance of story, emotion, and vision: What's happening here is nothing new. Whenever a new technology comes out, people glorify the technology itself, and they forget about the importance of story, emotion, and vision. AI will not create beautiful works of art by itself in the same way that 3D isn't necessarily art by itself. Toy Story worked because of the director's vision (John Lasseter). Lasseter also gave an interesting talk on this subject: "The technology was used in the right way, telling the right story." The explosion of the Death Star might be outdated, but that scene will never lose its emotional impact. If you had to create that scene today, you wouldn't use the technology that ILM used back then. You'd use CG, but if you don't understand where that scene derives its emotional power from, then CG will not help you one iota. Same thing with AI generated images. You can generate as many images as you want, but if you don't have a compelling vision, these images are meaningless.

It's actually high EQ: "Emotional intelligence is more important in the success of a person than their intellectual intelligence. You have to get along with people, and know how to get them to do things. You can be brilliant, and not know how to communicate with anybody, and not know how to get your ideas across, and not have anybody like you, and it's not going to work, no matter how brilliant you are." - George Lucas

Another great director is Neil Druckmann: The difficulty of the work that Druckmann had to do to nail the emotion of that scene is very easy to underestimate. No AI can do that kind of a work, because what's required is understanding, vision, taste, and empathy, or, simply, humanity. No scene exists in a vacuum. That scene, and every subsequent scene, sets up the emotional climax. Only a visionary director/writer can craft an experience like that.

Another visionary director is Hayao Miyazaki. He also conveyed human emotions with his work: In the future, AI might create the animations, but without genius minds like that of Miyazaki, the animations will be completely meaningless. There is nothing artistic about drawing every single frame of a movie like Spirited Away; it's a technical task, and if AI can help with tasks like that, that's great, because Studio Ghibli struggled a lot to finish the movie in time. Nobody watches a Ghibli movie as a kid and thinks, "I hope I can painstakingly draw frames for Ghibli when I grow up." What you really want to do is to tell stories; you want to convey emotions.

Art is about conveying human emotions. For example, a work of art like Star Wars can originate only from a human mind; in this case, from the mind of George Lucas. Look at a short and seemingly simple scene like this: Will AI ever be empathetic enough to orchestrate something like that? I doubt it. Read the comments under that video, and you will understand why that piece of art is so meaningful to people.

Perhaps some of you are underestimating what it takes to create a staggering work of art. AI might replace certain roles, but the role of the visionary director can never be replaced. AI can be in service of the vision, but it will not become the source of the vision, for AI will never be empathetic and coherent enough to create by itself a complete entertainment experience that is meaningful and satisfying.

This video helped me:

Generated with Midjourney:

Some of the results are amazing: https://www.midjourney.com/showcase/

His last interview: "Following your own curiosity is a better method for exploring the world than any of the methods offered. Sheer curiosity is the thing that I've always let me carrying along." - Terence McKenna

What a story. We will never experience anything like this again. It is a unique phenomenon.

Interesting talk about how and why things go viral:

It's possible that AI will replace editorial illustration jobs, but not any time soon. To create a polished illustration we still need human beings who know what they're doing. Midjourney results look like photobashing; the results are not clean enough. If you're successful with what you're doing, I suggest you keep doing it. But also start brainstorming ideas for how you could become indispensable even when AI starts replacing jobs: become an art director, consider getting into 3D art, or consider joining a company.

I want to improve my social skills, because I'm socially awkward, and I don't have any friends. My lack of a social life never bothered me, because I've been focused on consciousness work and creative work, but I feel like I can't make more progress in those areas until I start paying attention to my social skills. I started out by reading The Mystery Method, which is a good book. The theory is fun, but I have no idea how to put it into practice. I'd appreciate tips and resources. I especially struggle with being talkative. I have no idea what to say.

Creative companies like Naughty Dog and Pixar need exponentially more human minds, more money, and more time to produce their amazing movies and games. I don't see how consumers could create satisfying experiences with AI. What AI lacks is consciousness, and consciousness is the true source of creativity and genius. Therefore: the brilliance of the human mind cannot be replaced.

I don't see how AI can work within the realities of a production. When you're producing a specific title like The Last of Us Part II, you need a director with a vision. The director needs to communicate his vision to his art director who has concept artists that work under him. You need human minds that can understand the specific needs of a production. If a director can go directly to an AI and get exactly what he needs, then concepts artists will indeed become obsolete, but AI is not that good yet, and I doubt it ever will be, for you cannot replace human touch, taste, vision, and understanding.

I've used Midjourney, and it's just a fun toy. It will never replace the human artist. Midjourney is at best a source of inspiration. A director will always need a human concept artist to realize his specific vision. AI can't replace human talent like Aaron Limonick. Look at the amazing work that concept artists do at companies like Naughty Dog: https://magazine.artstation.com/2020/06/naughty-dog-the-last-of-us-part-ii-art-blast/ Do you think ND is just going to fire their incredible talent and use AI one day? I highly doubt it.

I second that. Without the Tony/Melfi scenes, I probably wouldn't like this show as much. The writers that worked on this show are smart, and every episode that was written by David Chase is chef's kiss.

It's not easy to write a story that thematically deals with life and death. A deeper degree of insight is required to do it well. Six Feet Under and Lost are the only two shows that I know that do it well. Although Lost focuses more on meaning and purpose, but that's not easy to do, either. Lost's soundtrack is probably the best soundtrack that was ever created for any TV show, and it's aptly named:

What do you suggest God should do? Should God just bask in its eternal peace? That'd be truly boring. What God is doing is actually commendable. God is sacrificing the peace of its own pure being to experience everything. Absolutely everything. That's the most intelligent way to design reality, for God keeps coming back home. After the worst imaginable nightmare, God comes back home. Any other design would feel sad, boring, or simply worse. It's more accurate to say that God never leaves home. It only appears as though it does, and that makes it even more amazing. It's like watching TV. You never leave the comfort of your couch, but when the TV becomes immersive enough, you might start to think that you're lost in the world that's depicted on the TV screen. Once you're lost in a scripted TV show, you're at the mercy of the script. You feel powerless. You rely on force, rather than power, to navigate the show, and that leads to more problems, more entanglement, and more suffering.

This is insane: