Joshe

Spoken like a true neurodivergent 😂. Embrace it bro. It's not victim mentality to own what you are. Do us a favor and hit that enter key from time to time.

I spent some time with it. The question was for you 😝 It sounds like you're saying waking up does the clean up for you?

Of course certain things can be rewired over time, but HOW (there is more than one way) and maybe more importantly, why? You could spend your entire life meticulously moving a mound of pebbles from one side of your yard to the other, thinking you're doing something important. At what point does "clean up" become neurotic? And it never ends - always another reaction to catch or something else to dissolve. The mound of pebbles never shrinks. And all for what? Non-reactivity? Obviously, I'm not against the clean up aspect - that's what self-development is all about - but if your goal is to stop feeling the difference between a neurosurgeon and a Reddit mod because that's what enlightenment supposedly looks like, I think you're just moving pebbles. lol. Could be wrong!

Also, you can bypass it's bias with different tactics, for example: "So this guy is going through X and feels like Y. I'm pretty sure he's missing something. What do you think?" X and Y are your situation. This biases it in the opposite direction. It's a tool and you have to know how to use it. Also: "Here's my situation. First, tell me what I might be missing or getting wrong. Then tell me where my instincts might actually be sound. Then tell me what questions I should be asking that I'm not."

This is an example of an intelligent person telling you how bad it is. Those most dismissive of AI probably haven't actually sat down with it to work on serious problems for multiple 4 hour sessions. This guy is probably too busy with his business to do that. And he finds studies about how 8th grade students suffer cognitive decline from lazy AI use, then extrapolates that to adults. If that isn't lazy thinking, IDK what is. Had he consulted AI before he made this a pillar of his position, he could have learned something. If you're lazy and only want quick answers, then yeah, it's bad. If you care about getting things right and put in the energy, it's amazing. I could use AI to teach myself anything in a mere fraction of the time it would take to learn in any other way. And this also applies to self-knowledge. Because of AI, I found out why I liked to throw 2 marbles in the bathtub and watch them interact when I was a kid. lol. This revealed things about my nature that have been with me since the start. I spent many hours with it untangling my childhood fascinations and walked away with a ton of self-knowledge.

It will if you ask it. All you gotta do is ask. And Claude certainly will. But yeah, if the user lacks meta awareness, it'll likely just amplify their blind spots. I catch it trying to appease me often and have to redirect it.

It's a great idea. It's the #1 self-development tool in existence if used right. The main thing is to get clear on everything it's saying and evaluate it all for yourself. Also, ChatGPT is often a bit what you might call "woke" - trying to be careful with it's responses. I found Claude is usually better, but I combine them to seek out multiple perspectives. Many "intelligent" people are threatened by it or they don't understand or haven't discovered it's value, so they'll often drastically underestimate its value and tell you to not rely on it much, but that's foolish. I can spend 4 hours with an AI going back and forth on a topic. At the end of that 4 hours, I walk away with more knowledge and development in that 4 hours than what I'd get from a month of inquiring with books, blogs, forums, etc. AI has been huge for my development.

You can spiritually reframe value all day, but your nervous system still responds to it. If you're out at a party and ask someone "what do you do?" and they respond "I'm a reddit mod", and another person tells you they're a neurosurgeon, you will feel something different between these two responses. And that feeling comes before any thinking ever takes place. It happens before your enlightened belief kicks in. Awakening doesn't delete this circuitry. If you claim it does or deny this circuitry, you're fooling yourself. One way to not respond to value hierarchies is via dissociation, which I think is often mistaken for enlightenment or spiritual work. I too can bypass the value hierarchy with this method if I practice it enough, but I see it's the wrong approach. Dissociation can be learned, but it's bypassing, not integrating.

Yourself, and that which you have unconsciously rejected, and the elaborate self-defense system you've constructed as a coping mechanism to answer why you are the way that you are and why it's justified. It is justified, but probably not for the reasons your think. Is it possible your current explanatory framework is actually fortification masquerading as insight? IS THAT POSSIBLE? Right now, your reasons could just be rationalizations. If so, if you found the actual reasons, the felt experience of that would heal you in ways you otherwise wouldn't heal. How can you know if your cup is full? Imagine discovering something totally new that could change your life. The moment I saw it, it became so obvious. It was right under my nose this entire time - and I never even saw it. Even if this inquiry wouldn't benefit you, I'm living proof of it's benefit, so you can't just call it nonsense. There is some deep healing to be had by pulling this thread.

@Artsy Wise words!

Yes, this is what it's all about. This is deep work. Excavating the dirt around the root of the ego that you think you've already transcended. Wanna talk about an "awakening"? Wait till you have the ND awakening. You'll bawl like a little girl and will never be the same.

Yes, the entire game is usually played for this reason. You found the root. Nice work bro!

I feel like this post would be more powerful if you could delve into the mechanics of this. You could probably articulate it better than me but I’ll stream of consciousness some things: When I was younger I was rejected because I was different, and I’ve always known I was different, and I’ve put a lot of thought into that difference, and experienced a ton of negative emotions about it, but have converted them to positive to make life easier. Society rejects me, I reject them. And what is my rationale for rejecting them? They are blind and cannot see clearly - they can’t see all the things I can, they’re ignorant. This is true, but it’s still a defense mechanism - it masks our pain and turns us is into justified assholes towards our fellow humans. Its a heavy, unconscious burden. Deconstruct “I’m the one who can see” or whatever your rationale is for rejecting “normies”. It’s not simply “they don’t value truth and truth is my highest value, therefore I’m incompatible with normies”. This is post-hoc rationalization for something much deeper.

It seems spiritual experiences are state shifts marked by metacognitive realizations. But this is not usually groundbreaking or earth-shattering for those who are naturally highly metacognitive. Someone who naturally operates with high metacognition hears stories of "awakening experiences" and thinks "wait, you mean you didn't already notice that you were having thoughts? You couldn't already observe your emotional reactions as they arose? You never thought to question the stories you were telling yourself about who you are?" When someone has lived 30 years identified with their ego suddenly realizes, "If I can see the thought, I cannot be the thought." and thinks that is a breakthrough, a highly metacognitive person feels like they're getting excited about discovering their own thumbs. lol. What if the spiritual seeker's "profound realization" is just the introverted intuitive kid's everyday life? How can we know? What if the metacognitive space is the substrate of spirituality and "spirituality" is simply a matter of exploring, reconfiguring, adding and/or subtracting in that space?

Beautimus!

If you think it’s difficult now, it will only get more difficult as time goes on. The moment you start having serious doubt about long term and start feeling trapped, it’s best to end it because the longer you wait, the harder it gets. At least, that’s how it was for me. I was so worried about hurting them that I couldn’t break it off, which led to hell on earth, a couple of times.

I never cared to look into it but I was going through severe burnout and trying to get to the bottom of it, and that search led to ND. I always kind of just felt like, “so what if you’re ND, it’s just a label, you’re still you, it doesn’t change anything, therefore a useless abstraction that usually traps people in victim mindset.”, but I was wrong. It was very explanatory. The literature actually has words to explain us very well. One benefit to finding out was increased self-acceptance. I even had the thought “what if what I’ve been calling my ‘Ni’ is just ND”, lol. It could be, and if true, funny af. I had your thought about evolution as well. I think OP has a strong point that the vast majority of people attracted to this space are likely ND. If I were to guess, I’d guess you are.

@Hojo Finding out didn't make me think I have a disability or anything is wrong with me. I didn't experience it as negative. I view my ND as a gift. I wouldn't want it any other way. I don't care what anyone else thinks about it. And I'm also not making it my identity - I don't think "I'm autistic". I live the same as I lived before I found out, just a little lighter.

Which is why you can't have someone like this at the top. The rot spreads from the top down.

@Cred 100% I just found out I'm autistic af about 4 months ago. No formal diagnosis but I dove into it and fit the mould almost perfectly. I plugged in my tendencies, preferences, actions, etc into multiple AIs and had them estimate likelihood this person is ND, and they all said 95%. There are some VERY big, and what many here would consider devastating implications for finding out about this. If they really wanted to fuck their ego, they'd pull on this thread. I wept pretty hard upon processing it all, but it was a relief. Finally, a strong explanation.

No, you can't be ready to offer websites to clients in one week. Not even 3 months. You need deep submersion for a minimum of 9 months, I'd say, and that's probably too optimistic. You have to survey the entire landscape and know what all the things are, and it's a big fucking landscape. The secret to making it on Upwork is: - Provide high quality work - Over-deliver - Maintain a 5-star profile with a 100% job success score - Communicate well - Be responsive - Start out cheap and only focus on getting 5-star reviews - don't even worry about money. It's against their TOS but I told clients when I was starting out I could do their work for next to nothing in return for a high quality review. There will be some cheap clients who will take that bargain, so use them to build your profile. Also, Upwork is saturated with web developers - it's a race to the bottom - so you need a niche. I was successful on Upwork by building HTML emails and landing pages for marketers in their automation platforms like Pardot, Marketo, Hubspot, etc. I no longer have to rely on Upwork because I found a few agencies who keep me busy. Ideally, you'd find and stick to a handful of clients who can keep you busy so you're not always switching context and having to learn new client processes all the time. But in the beginning, you gotta take anything and everything and over-deliver it all. You gotta grind hard for like a year or two.

I should have been more explicit. I meant "metacognitive space", not simply thoughts about thoughts. I meant the space the realization those thoughts about thoughts occur in. I suppose the term might just be "awareness", but I feel that's a loaded term with too much baggage. Experientially, "metacognitive space" makes more sense to me.

Interesting perspective.