undeather

After watching this podcast with Lex, Harris lost a lot of intellectual respect in my book. I mean, he holds a bachelor degree in philosophy from Stanford but doesnt understand the position and implications of idealism at ALL. Its a complete strawman. I mean come on - Schopenhauer, Hegel, Kant, Spinoza.. Iam sure he at least read some of them. On the other side, he and his wife have strongly promoted the possibility of panpsychism, which of course is utter nonsense because there is no way of ever reconciling the combination problem without making HUGE loops and assumptions. I still enjoy the making sense podcast and especially his political/societal commentary - but on a metaphysical level, he is just wrong in my opinion. You also have to take into account that a massive part of his audience is deep into the stage orange framework of seeing the world. He is a skeptic and hardcore atheist after all, so thats exactly the audience you would expect - any step towards acknowliding mysticism would be career suicide.

@MovForward I once had the opportunity to talk with Daniel Schmachtenberger about this. I dont know if you know him, but he is - for me at least - the clearest communicator I personally know. The way he presents his arguments and answers is just one beautifully strung together thread that makes perfect sense and keeps listeners interested. Here is what he told me: "Practice writing your ideas on things. Take the time to refine your writing to be as clear and precise as possible. Then have conversations with people about the topics after you have clarified good ways of expressing them. The writing will also make sure your understanding is clear. Clear communication arises from clear thinking. It is the process of transferring your clarity to another."

Books that had the biggest influence on me & why: Viktor Frankl - Man's serach for meaning - Incredible story about finding meaning in difficult situations, just an awesome read in general The art of loving - Erich Fromm - Beautiful short book about learning to love Nassim Taleb - Antifragility - Understanding complex systems & antifragility, which are fundamental concepts in any integral worldview Your Unique self - Marc Gafni - Understanding the role of individuality in a nondual world More than allegory - Bernardo Kastrup - Chapter 3 is the most insane and interesting trip report I have ever read Bernardo Kastrup - All his books! - Best rational arguments for idealism(nonduality)/against physicalism available right now The war of art - Steven Pressfield - Overcoming resistance Passion of the western mind - Richard Tarnas - Intellectual-cultural development of the modern world view - super important to understand why we think what we think Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig - One of my alltime favorite books Siddharta - Herman Hesse - Beautiful little story about finding his own path to enlightenment Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas R. Hofstadter - Difficult to get through masterpiece about reality as a strange loop. Meditations on Moloch: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch - Must read blog post about the functionalities of society Bhagavad Gita - I dont think I need to explain this one Tao Te Ching - Lao tze (Laotsi) - Ancient book, full of wisdom! Difficult to understand without explanations The master and his emissary - Ian McGilchrist - Masterpiece about how left/right brain dynamics shape our worldview Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century - Edward Kelly - The best, no bullshit summary of psy/parapsychology/mind-research I have read so far. Its a huge book and super expensive. I got the PDF - if you want it, just PM me. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Grat book for money/happyness mindset Osho - Courage - little book about courage and fear, really enjoyed it! Kapil Gupta - Direct Truth: Uncompromising, non-prescriptive Truths to the enduring questions of life - Interesting book about all sorts of stuff, really apprechiate his perspective Ending medical reversal - Dr Vinay Prasad - If you are working in the medical field, this one is a must read in my opinion. Ken Wilber - A brief history of everyhting - Integral worldview must read Ken Wilber - Kosmic conciousness (audiobook) - Incredibly deep and enjoyable interview with Ken Wilber. Available on audible! Why most published reserach is wrong - John Ionnidis: https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 - Ground breaking paper about certain biases in the academic literature After - Dr. Bruce Geryson - Awesome, no bullshit summary of NDE reserach Daniel Kaneman - Thinking fast and slow - Super important framework for improvement in sensemaking Helgoland - Carlo Rovelli - Enjoyable beginner level book to quantum mechanics and the propably most substantiated interpretation we have of it: Quantum loop gravity! Its the one theory that fits like a glove with spiritual insights and is therefore an awesome framework to understand QM in a non-BS way. Models - Mark Manson - IMO the most important book you can read to get good with women Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramahansa Yogananda - Classic one! - bit weird and magical, but I really enjoyed it! Breath - James Nestor - Really cool and important book about the importance of proper breathing The Art of learning - Josh Waitzkin - Amazing book about someone who goes into into the nature of learning and backs it up with real results! Just to name a few

Yes, and like every other drug - SSRI's have their place in modern medicine. See, this is exactly what I was talking about - your previous comment implies that perscribing antidepressives is some sort of terrible thing to do. It implies that a system thinker would never do this - which is of course utter nonsense. Most people here who talk about medicine with this annoying "do/dont do"-tone never spend a day in their life treating patients. If a 53 year old women with a metastasized bile duct tumor suffers from the worst end of life anxiety/depression that you can potentially experiece - the humane thing to do is to pump her full of antidepressives/benzos as fast as possible. Anything other than than that is inhumane. Maybe in the future, this will change and we are allowed to give them psilocybin or similar substances - but its literally not possible in the moment. In such terminal cases you are also not aiming for some other form of long term therpy - she is is going to die soon, so the "quick fix" is the therapy of choice. The issue is the following: You dont have to deal wtih the suffering of patients on a daily basis - you never had to tell relatives, including young children, that we doctors are going to make it "as pleasent as possible for her/him". That lack of experience is the root fo your ignorance. This is just one example.... I get annoyed/angry pretty fast with such comments because it cuts REALLY close to my heart. This is not a personal attack against you - I hope you understand this. A good doctor will take as many variables a possible and find the perfect therapy for each individual patient.

I didnt bash any forum members, its just an ongoing observation that has been going on for almost 6 years now. You would not believe the private messages I get from somer users here, its outright ridicolous. People dont CARE about this kind of topics. A big part of the sensemaking happening on this forum is extremely juvenile and without any trace of humility. Thank god the moderators are for the most part really far in their developement and give decent responses. In fact...here we go again. Total nonsense:

Great, high quality post! Kudos to you! Sadly too sophisticated for this forum, since most people here dont care about developing their thinking in any fundamental way. I (personally) wouldnt include Bret Weinstein anymore since he hasnt shown any sign of system thinking in the last 12 months.

Science communicators are usually not very accomplished scientists ;D

Good luck! I sincerely hope you reach your dreams!

You are talking about potentially being hundreds of years ahead of our current scientific understanding, which is an inherently nonsensical statement. The ideas behing Yoga, Qigong or Reiki have in some cases been practiced for thousands of years - they are great teachings, but you are not doing anything "new" or particular scientific if you make a career out of them. Some ideas in those system stem from magical thinking paradigms that are well below stage orange from a sprial dynamic perspective. If you want to be more advanced than anyone else, than you need to pour your life into it. Otherwise, no chance. If you want to change society or the world for better - then you need decades of expertise in most cases. Reductionism is not a bad thing - in fact, the most respected theories in almost any field of inquiry are highly reductionistic. Neo adveita vedanta teachers like Jed McKenna or Rupert Spira are HIGHLY reductionistic in their spiritual approaches. What comes with a high level of reductionism is a high level of specificity. Its true that this can hinder progress, as we can see for example in modern medicine, but its also extremely usefull in a different regard.

@Tim R put it really well. As a scientist myself, let me tell you some words of caution: Doing actual science is extremely difficult, boring, repetitive, highly statistical and has for the most part nothing to do with the grandiose ideas you put forwards in your post. In fact, any reasearch faculty around the world will laugh at you if you come forward with such propositions. Can you do it without them? Propably not. Even if you could come up with the necessary financial support, your ideas just wont be taken seriously at all. So, either you are going to play after their rules, or you are not going to play at all. Also, what exactly do you want to work on? Science is an extremely broad term - like sports. Also, do you realize that futuristic science/conciousness science already exists? Psi-reaserach has experiments which are methodically immaculate, highly statistically signicant, repeatable ad infinitum - and are still, mostly ignored by the mainstream. Thats the behemoth you are up against. If you really, really want to double down on this (which is a great life purpose by the way) - then you just WONT get around recieving a degree from a decent university in that chosen field. By the way, with degree I mean that your name has to be followed by the suffix "PhD". Without that, no chance. I also wanted to change the medical field after realizing nonduality a couple of years ago. Let me tell you that it took a lot of sweat and blood to get where I am now and it will cost even more to actually change stuff. After years of doing slave-like work, starting in university, I slowly start be taken seriously by peers and financial supporters. I am nowhere near at enough reputition where I could put out ideas and concepts that really could change the medical system for the better. In fact any "woo" I put out now will come back to bite my ass in my later years. Still, the fight is worth it and lets see where it goes!

I have personally prescribed Venlafaxine (=Effexor) dozens of times in the last years. Not my go-to antidepressive, but definitely a good choice if SSRIs dont cut it. Tolerance is pretty high, I would say that around 10% get gastrointestinal issues - some men suffer from erectile dysfunction when actively medicated. Side effects disappear when you stop taking it of course. Look, there is only one to find out if its the right drug for you! Let me motivate you by saying that I have witnessed "miracle healings" after psychiatric patients found the one drug that helped them to turn their life around. Maybe Effexor can do that for you - maybe not! Its not at all a dangerous drug per sé - might cause some discomfort in the worst of cases. If thats the case, than you always have the choice to get off it.

1) An atom is a helpful abstraction we use to describe material phenomena 2) Any concept wording like "empty" or "field" will misslead you - they are concepts based on interactions 3) Mathematics is the language to understand what an atom "looks" like 4) Atoms aren't "mostly empty space," they are mostly the wave function of the electron 5) The best descriptions are based on quatum mechanics 6) Quantum mechancis is poorly understood at an ontological level and our best theories include the creation of a universe every single moment (many worlds) or relational turtles all the way to "nothingness" (Caro Rovellis Loop Qunatum gravity) If you talk about relative truth topics, keep yourself to the scientists who actually study the phenomena itself

Well it depends what you mean with "effectiveness". What disappears after roughly 6 months are primarly the so called neutralizing antibodies. Thats the first line of defense and the reason why a vaccinated person is less likely to transmit the virus to other people. The immune system is way more complex than that. B und T-cell immunity from 2 shots propably lasts way longer and could even persist up to decades. What comes with that is a pretty decent reduction in severe disease propability, even years after taking the vaccine - and thats what the developement was all about. The idea behind the booster is decreasing the likelihood of spread, plus a further decrease in severe disease propability. In my opinion, the vaccine is safe enough to make this a rational guideline. However, especially Omicron seems to be much milder (up to 90% less lower pulmonary tract infections/lung inflammation), so the risk/reward calculation changes drastically and we definitely need to take this into account. I would advice anyone to get the booster, but if you are unsure about the decision - below the age of 30 with no comorbidites, you could argue that the vaccinaton wont bring any personal benefits to you. HOWever, we live in a society and need to take care about the people around you. Thats a fact as well. Make of it what you wish.

Most bottled water ist severely contaminated with synthetic polymers (microplastic). Glass is an alternative. I always forget how bad tap water quality is all around the world. Where I live, the water that comes out the tap is literally filled into bottles and sold as "healing water" in other parts of Europe.

135mg/dL AFTER eating is NORMAL for a HEALTHY person. It highly depends when you take the measurement though. It should come back to normal (thats below 100) in approx. 2-3 hours. Real diabetics have blood glucose levels of ≥126 (≥7,0 mmol/L) in fasting blood samples and sometimes over 200-300mg/dL even hours after eating a normal meal. HbA1c is by far the best way to determine your blood sugar metabolism because it will tell you the glycaemic impact over a long period of time. If your HbA1c is normal, you are fine. It should be in the low-normal range for opitmal health. A diagnosed diabetic should go both paths if necessary. Some patients can reverse their diabetes with diet & exercise, other cases are more complex. The perfect diabetes diet is a huge field of science on its own, highly individual and a good dietician can really work miracles there. In general: Eat real food (no processed junk, no added sugars, low sat. fat), not too much, mostly plants (Veg>fruit) If necessary, you can start a patient on metformin - which is a great, great, great drug (except you are one of to unlucky ones who gets a very rare side effect). Continuous glucose monitors are great, especially with younger patients who have the technical know-how. Its usually more common in patients with Diabetes Type 1 because they need to dose their insulin and its just really convenient.

I would argue that the typical underachiever suffers from the same issues - it just acts out in a different way. Also, its pretty stupid to generalize a specific psychological dynamic over a rough descriptor like "overachievers". Over the last decade, I have got to know a lot of individuals who "made it" - some of them are incredibly happy, others are miserable. The obvious answer is yes but irrelevant due to oversimplification. I strongly disagree with the stage yellow aspect of School of life. Its not at all an integral point of view in most of their videos.

@Yali My friend, judging from all the stuff you posted here and messages you sent me, I can sense a deep interest in the topic of food contamination. This is an incredibly important issue and as you have already noticed, there is work to do and teachings to share. So how about this: Lets stop arguing about this topic altogether and you aim to go deep into the nature of these questions. It will take you months to read the relevant literature and it will not be easy, but at the end of the day - you will know exactly what its really about. Hell, there is even a business/coaching possibility at the end of this, so maybe thats something you should really look into. Discussing highly complex topics and telling people to "prove you wrong" will do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Its ego bullshit, nothing more. Also, citing one statistic from one source is also not very scientific. Its a good find, but I can tell you from my knowledge that there is more to this than you think. Cherrypicking and lack of complexity is always a red flag when it comes to reality. Maybe even Leo can learn from you, but at the moment you are doing everyone a disfavor with the way you present.

Rovelli is a genius when it comes to his physics. When it comes to idealism or the hard problem of conciousness, he obviously missed the mark by a lot. So far, the only conclusion I can come up with is that he either doesnt understand idealism or didnt contemplate it at all. The arguments he comes up with are just inconsistent with what this ontology implies. Even more shocking was his discussion about the hard problem of conciousness ....which was absurd in my opinion. His ideas have nothing to do with the core of this issue, namely explaining qualia. Kastrup must have shaken his head in disbelieve...

Here is another stage yellow reading list you might enjoy: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/62742912-daniel-schmachtenberger?shelf=read

Look, we dont really know anything if you take "arbitrary" as your standard. The risk of smoking, eating shitty food all the time or being stressed out of your mind is entirely arbitrary on an invidual level. I cant tell how one of these risk factors will eventually affect your life in particular, but I can do an approximation that will lead to a certain propability. You are talking in absolutes when realtiy if full of relativities, Yes, Leo is of course wrong when he says that any amount of heavy metal will lead to net-negative consequences. Its also wrong to say "salmon is poison". Salmon is not one thing and there are immense differences in that subgroup. Simpleton thinking is happening here on both sides, and neither is willing to give a finger.

First, lets define what me mean by "safe". As Paracelsus said 500 yers ago, "dosis sola facit venenum - only the dose makes the poison", its a matter of fact that there are certain dosages where ANY available substance in this universe would cause harm to metabolically active organisms. Conversely, this is also true for the other side of the spectrum. If I would inhale one atom of mercury every day (usual air contamination excluded) and for the rest of my life, chances are high that this wouldnt do anything bad at all. The body is a complex system, which means that even paradoxic patterns will emerge in the long run. There is a decent amount of evidence that certain kinds of well known "poisons", if chronically ingested at a low enoguh dose, activiate the so called "sirtuin gene sequences", which are casually linked to longevity and survival benefits. Now, these data points should be interpreted with caution because "longevity" is not the only proxy you want to look at. It could well be that this benefit will come at the cost of other important outcomes like neurological health or general wellbeing. There is almost an infinite amount of cofactors that you need to look which is dumb because there are other methods out there that will do the same without the dubious substance. So lets sum it up and dicuss why there is and isn't a healthy level of contamination: - In principle, there is a neutral amount of any available substance that wouldnt cause negative consequences in the long run - The amount differs from person to person and from substance to substance due to genotypic differences in complex systems - There is no way to find out where your subjective margin lies - Official regulatory limits are of practical nature. If we would say that no contamination is allowed, 99% of our products would disappear over night - Its highly likely that regulatory limits grossly underestimate/undervalue the potential dangers of all kinds of contamination - Studying the effects on a collective is prone to a huge amount of bias - Therefore, the real life, practical, smart way of looking at it is: There is no safe level of contamination. I hope this clarifies the issue

When my hair started falling out couple of years ago I panicked and researched every avilable hair loss product, including saw palmetto. Back then, I couldnt find a lot of decent data, but the mechanism of action (5-alpha-reductase inhibition through fatty acids/sterols) made sense, so I tried it for 12 months. In my case it didnt do anything, even at very high doses (up to 1g daily). The more decent trials showed about 1/2 the effect size of finasteride while only affecting the crown area and not the front. (where I was thinning at) The reasons why I hesitate recommending SP: 1) As you know, there is a huge issue with different kind of contaminations in supplements. The supplements you get on the internet are usually not very well tested and the propabiltiy of chronically poisoning yourself is pretty high. Maybe there is a good brand out there that does all the necessary tests (like neurohacker does with its nootropic stacks), but I dont know one personally! 2) You are artificially lowering your DHT levels - that thats not a good thing for your health in general should be pretty clear. I recommend Finasteride as the last resort and with an even lower dose as recommended (0.2-0.75g). 3) I am a big fan of Minoxodil + Microneedling + Keto-shampoo since you dont act systemically. Personally, I got great, great results with this kind of combo and I never had any side effects. If you can prevent system-therapy with similar results than this is always the preferable treamtment option.

There is not one legitimate reason that says you cant be an enlightened millionaire throwing 1$ bills at the local strip club, while ordering your 6th beer ,indulding in fast food, patiently waiting for the UFC fight to begin because you bet half your net-worth on a fighter just for fun. If you think otherwise, you didnt get the joke yet. Your ideas about spirituality are rooted in conditioning. Your assumptions are rooted in ignorance. Your ignorance is rooted in ego.

The vast majority of hair loss cases in young men is due to androgenic male pattern baldness. Its a genetic thing that makes your hair follicles susceptible to the hormone DHT (Dihydrotestosterone), permanently shrinking and finally destroying the hair root in the process. DHT is a more potent form of testosterone, plays a part in many bodily systems from libido to psychoneurology/immune function and is formed from testosterone trough an enzyme called 5α-Reductase. There are 3 well known products that can help you fight/delay the hair loss. 1. Minoxidil (Rogaine (C) - twice every day, applied locally at the affected area) + (Microneedling (1,5mm) for better results) 2. Ketoconazole-shampoo (2 times a week) 3. 5α-Reductase-inhibitors (Finasteride) - which is pretty extreme since you basically interfere with hormon-synthesis There are more out there products like topical anti-androgens or local dutasteride but I am not convinced by the effect or safety. 95% of hair loss in young men is caused by genetic predisposition- the rest could be due to stress, lack of micro-nutrients (B-vitamins, trace minerals..), thyroid-issues, infectious-diseases, side effects from drugs.....

BNT162b2 = Pfizer vaccine mRNA-1273 = Moderna vaccine New study out regarding myocarditis/pericarditis - seems like the worst you can do is getting a Pfizer followed by a Moderna (777 cases out of a million doses). Best thing you can do is double Pfizer or Moderna followed by Pfizer. Might help someone to make an informed decision.