Natasha Tori Maru

Did Carl step down or was he demoted?

@Monster Energy it might be something you notice when there is some distance from the immediacy of reaction. I stand by my words. I am perfectly fine expressing my opinion and that I agree with Carl ⚡ You need to seperate me from the moderator.

Especially when one does not comprehend at all what the AI has output, pastes it - and then must spend 90% of replies trying to clarify meaning. Backpedaling to a softer and easier to defend premise over and over. Because any of their original meaning and prompt has been lost in the recursive, mastebatory hyperbole of LLMs. Across not one thread, but multiple.

I love reading situations like that - you end up seeing all sorts of ripples of tension in the body, in the face. Tiny little expressions. Shoulders rounded inward just a touch. One side of the mouth twitch. Looking down all of sudden (when I ask people how they feel they often look down, not sure if there is something to that!). I resist actually making a diagnosis "this means that emotion". I can just observe sOmEtHiNg occurring that isn't being allowed. When we get new hires in the office - my Dad is like "Yeah, you will get used to that room experiencing a lot of Natasha's emotions. Soon you will miss it when she isn't blowing up in there". He's a good egg for tolerating my explosions !!!

Hello - it me This is how I experience most emotions now - after all the work I did. Short and sharp. People do react poorly often, as they perceive it as a loss of control. On the contrary, it helps me remain in control. I just make sure to never be "emotionally violent" ie directing it at someone. Sometimes (actually most times) inanimate objects cop some verbal abuse, though. Hell yeah I will lean over and abuse that bluetooth mouse that won't FUCKING sync! I'd rather be this way than the suppressed/repressed affect NPCs I see around (I explicitly say suppressed/repressed here as some people are just less emotionally expressive than others, but they feel them just as strongly). Expressing them in my voice and body just... moves em' along quicker!

I did some of that too >.< Any humans disturbed? Humans so good at expressing disgust at emotional displays. I had to say to someone at work yesterday "Can you stop trying to get me to be calm? I am just in my emotions, let me have them. You don't need to go near them!" Apparently I am emotionally "violent" when I hang up the phone and say in a heated way "My GOD, the lights are on and no one is home!" in anger. Rhetorically. Emphatically. With lots of violent hand and arm movements! People are so averse to emotions in professional environments, any sort of healthy expression is perceived as bad!

The equine therapy was quite remarkable. I have a history of extreme trauma - a larger load and narrative than one would consider usual (I require no compassion or sympathy, we all have our tale of woe. I add this because it is relevant to the therapy experience). For many years I felt I got through the early childhood difficulty relatively well. There were some lingering strange oddities about me; I had a lot of flat affect. Emotional numbing. Blunted internal interpersonal value system. I decided to drive into this, as I could recall a time when as a child when I was much more expressive, headstrong and emotive. I did talk therapy (which wasn't so effective). My therapist suggested equine therapy as I had all the cognitive tools and knowledge to address my own issues (and striking intellectual interoception and analysis ability), but wasn't showing a lot of improvement. It isn't like I was broken or non-functioning - more I was aware I was somehow blocked internally. You basically interact with horses as part of a structured therapeutic and psychological process. Approaching them, standing near them. Noticing your own reactions. Grooming and caring for the horse for trust and connection. Leading them and observing my own body language/attention and how I affected the horses response. Some groundworking also - verbal commands asking the horse the move around obstacles, stop, follow - the therapist used these exercises to explore/observe boundaries, communication and emotional regulation. After you reflect on what happened verbally. It isn't some magical healing sort of juju that horses do - but they are remarkable creatures. I did 8 sessions (I wish I could do more, but it was not cheap). I started off scanning myself (my internal state) each session, thinking I was calm, relaxed and neutral - but the horse I worked with, initially, wouldn't come near me. Like, almost RAN away skittishly. It turns out horses are remarkable at detecting fear. Their proposed therapeutic value comes partly from horses being large, sensitive and social animals. They respond strongly to human behaviour and body language. They pick up on things even another human is cannot detect in your voice, tone, body language etc. If you are fearing - they won't come near you. They are social animals - if they sense fear in you they read it as "this animal senses danger" and won't come close in case there is danger near. You ride the horses in the sessions also (backwards too!). By the end I could enter the field and have the horses come running to me! Following. Taking lead from me so easily. It was remarkable because intellectually and analytically I couldn't get through the 'block'. I needed feedback from the horse to see how I had improved and worked through my internal resistances. The more emotion I allowed, the quicker the states passed. So even if something did come up (talking to the therapist at the same time occasionally) and the horse resisted my attempts to connect, I could let the emotion go quicker and the horse would respond. My therapist observed a lot of tension in my legs and pelvis a lot. How I moved. I got a lot better at bodyscanning for emotions and identifying them. Naming them and learning the nuanced distinctions in my emotions was essential also. The horses gradually responded more positively to me. I still remember the 5th session so well - I entered the main gate to see the mares and one came straight up to me, almost demanding affection! That was a big breakthrough. I discovered I was, essentially, for around 15 years - blocking out emotions, suppressing or resisting. Creating elaborate coping mechanisms to avoid feelings and emotions. I was excellent at intellectualising and explaining everything away mechanistically - which actually caused some secondary issues with over-attachment to frames, ideas, thoughts. This lead to a lot of defensiveness of my own intellect!). The horse therapy helped me get through it. Haha! Traditional therapy didn't work so much Dogs also (and other animals) approach me a lot more now. Animals have higher sensitivity to tone, eye movement, body language, tension, sound etc due to a lack of language to verbally communicate. If they do not have any pathologies of their own (and yes, I have seen animals that have pathological coping mechanisms due to mistreatment, just like humans), they can act as a great feedback mechanism. I am also now way more drawn to animals as a result. I wouldn't say I am healed - oh no! - but I am able to find the source of the problem quicker now. And most times, the feeling, emotion or state itself, isn't even a problem. But I needed to let myself feel the hot pan properly, so I could drop it. It is that zen saying isn't it? How do you drop a hot pan? Let go. But to let go I had to identify and feel the heat. Not fight it. Pretend it wasn't hot. Thanks for asking!

Yes I was thinking along these lines also. It isn't so simple as more users. I wish there was some way to transparently signal when a post is critically viewed as higher quality.

Indeed. There are patterns in users though. Some show active improvement. Others habitually post controversial or crude input that serves no purpose in terms of adding to the discussion or increasing quality. I can see how we can make one or two tweaks. But the impact would not be substantial in my estimation. If the objective is higher quality posts, over simply more activity, the key here would be to separate inputs we can control from background conditions we cannot. I lean more toward positive feedback methods - rewarding high quality posts somehow. Good reasoning > strong engagement > status/reputation > more motivation to reason well. But I also understand Leo does not want hierarchical structures here too much. The old reputation system was removed, after all. Maybe we could moderate epistemic behaviour, not just interpersonal? Repeated dishonest framing, deliberate strawmanning, moving goalposts, presenting speculation as fact, argument by authority. Endless assertion with no engagement. But this in itself is difficult. There are only vague rules around this currently - it mostly all falls under 'low quality post'. And many users are very, very offended at this type of a warning. Spitballing here

One way we would encourage higher quality posting is to tighten moderation around low quality posts.

So the verdict is - we do not need to do anything but wait? Let the virtual slop erode everything around us, so the diluted simulacrum of creativity (that is the internet currently) washes away. A great cleansing. Revealing the remaining fun and intellectual brain rubbing realms of little indie spiritual communities? This just makes me want to stamp down even harder on the users here who paste AI and use it to ghost write their posts!

Topic adjacent? It doesn't answer your question directly 🪺

Fucking sweet, please announce when it's released 🥰

@Monster Energy either your initial point is convoluted and unrefined - and you are now clarifying. Or you are doing what you appear to do all over the forum and engaging in the scripted motte-and-bailey fallacy. This is your standard script. If I were to really try to dig into this disingenuous feeling conversation, I would simply claim you haven't established any link between a trait having an evolutionary function to that trait being, therefore, deceptive. You can claim that you're “observing” rather than making a moral judgment, but that doesn't resolve the problem. Calling something “nature's disguise,” describing love as a “lie,” and saying that deception is “baked into the code” are not neutral observations. They are interpretations that require sound argument if you want to paddle them as truth. How about you try this on Hardmode - don't use AI to answer and do the standard paste remixed slop in reply

@aurum have your observations and interactions on the forum contributed material for your work ( book ). I am quite interested 🙂