Basman

Vlad Vexler's are amazing for learning about politics and authoritarianism. You can learn a lot here about Russia in particularly, how it operates as a system. His philosophy channel is also very interesting and speaks more broadly on different topics, like dealing with chronic health issues. Very academic presentation without being overly lost in the sauce of academic complexity. Whenever you click on any of his videos you know you are going to get some original high quality insight. His "chat" channel delivers regular insight on current events. Basically whenever Trump or Putin do anything that isn't going to the toilet. I found these quite insightful but at the same time the picture he paints of where the world is heading is relatively alarming. https://www.youtube.com/@VladVexler https://www.youtube.com/@VladVexlerChat https://www.youtube.com/@VladVexlerPhilosophy

Being anywhere close to checking of that entire list assumes a lot of personal drive, curiosity and ability to take massive action. Pretty rare qualities overall. I agree that it is more valuable to align with what your unique values are instead of holding yourself to some lofty standard. As long as you know what you are doing.

Training martial arts exercise is essentially preparing for violence. Military exercise is the same but differs in that you have to train for violence against a specific target. There are no neutral or general war plans on a geopolitical level. Of course, invading Taiwan wouldn't exactly be a defensive war. It would be an assault ordinarily speaking though the Chinese could genuinely believe it to be defensive somehow, like how the Ukraine war is defensive for Putin. I can genuinely see China invading Taiwan the moment they see it being more beneficial than detrimental to their agenda. Being prepared for that moment is in of itself part of maintaining the agenda.

It's time we started talking about the real use case of AI, grounded in mundane practical rubber-meets-the-road reality. Not a cooked up hyper-reality of investment hype and technology worship. Actual practical use of AI is going to be quiet mundane after all I think, but there will also be significant downsides. AI has been a boon for scams, data theft and slop and we risk dehumanizing traditionally humanizing aspects, like art and human interaction. In my experience, the people most excited about AI tend to be talentless and lazy. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. There are certain things worth doing even if you can replace them. That's all.

Of course if you use it as an additive you will avoid the pitfalls. But AI is largely used to replace certain tasks. If those tasks are worth doing then you will deprive yourself emotionally and intellectually. And it's a lot more limiting to use AI purely an additive as opposed to as a replacement for certain tasks in an unrestricted sort of way. Unrestricted use is going to trend towards replacement because in the case of the opposite you hardly need to use AI for all that much in my opinion. Your better off googling things yourself, developing your own opinions and talking to a real therapist.

Not to say that China isn't necessarily going to invade Taiwan, I haven't watched the video yet, but preparing for war isn't necessarily the same as wanting war generally speaking. Just being capable of war is a necessary part of monopolizing violence. Every functional country has war plans prepared that they can execute on. The equivalent of keeping a loaded gun under your pillow.

A rigid system is effective at upholding a minimum standard but is hard to change or adjust as a result. There's the issue of conflicting incentives as well. Between bureaucracy, money and patient needs. Patient needs are too a certain extent a net-negative cost so they are prioritized under bureaucracy and money (in the case of for-profit healthcare). This is just a system trying to survive. This is why healthcare shouldn't be for-profit at a baseline. Bureaucracy can be improved to better meet patient needs, after all what is then not the point of health care? We begin by raising our standards.

But Weo, what's the point if we don't live in a communist utopia right now? It's all shit and corrupt and my parents are divorced 😔.

I read a story once of a witch in Africa going for a walk and as she walked past a football pitch a boy accidentally farted on here. She got pissed of and cast a spell on him which caused him to bloat like balloon. After some time they had to go and apologize to the witch to undo the spell and unbloat the boy.

I've seen the threat of witchcraft, voodoo, black magic, etc. being used to control and manipulate people in a bunch of documentaries. Like sex traffickers will take a lock of hair of their victims and tell them that they'll cast black magic on them if they go to the police. Very obvious control mechanism but superstitious and scared people will feel shaken by that.

Japan has a bunch of nifty little self-improvement/health terms and concepts baked into their culture. Like "kaizen", meaning cumulative gradual improvement, or "hara hachi bu" which means to only eat till your about 80% full.

People have different values. If understanding isn't your top value it'll probably be less than worth it. You have to know what is important to you first.

You have to be convinced that you are not missing out when not engaging in an addiction in order to move on from it. Build a strong emotionally activating case for yourself for why you are not missing out when eating junk food. Imagine how gross and stuffed you feel after pigging out on junk food. How your body will feel now and long-term compared to if you ate healthy. How you'll feel at 50 on junk vs healthy. Become hyper aware of what exactly you are doing to your body when you are pigging out. Also check what it does for you as an emotional crutch. What are you getting emotionally from junk food and can you get that elsewhere in a more conscious manner? Do you even need this crutch, really? On a side note, if you eat a lot of junk food because you love specific foods like pizzas or hamburgers then I think you can still eat those but you just have to make them yourself so that they are at least relatively healthy and rich foods. Half the appeal of junk food is the convenience and 9 times out of 10 you can cook something better yourself for less cost, unless you really like the greasy taste of a fry kitchen

I'm not gay I'm integrating my feminine.

Why is that? Is sex inherently unconscious?

If the first time you hear about WW3 having started and it is from YT, it's clickbait.

They are convinced that it is more masculine to abstain, so when they "relapse" they see it as a personal and moral failure, like they are emasculating themselves. Plus religious/conservative attitudes, where they see masturbation and porn as inherently immoral and gross. Like how religious dudes look at gay men holding hands.

Political polarization is now as American as apple pie. Walking out of a dinner because of politics is both hilarious and sad. Social media has been awful for the two party system. assuming they are not too ideological, you can at at least soften their views if you can present well grounded arguments. At the root of authoritarian populism is a distrust of institutions and a sense that the technocracy doesn't have the interest of the people in mind. These are valid concerns and Trump has a willingness to say how it is and leans on economic populism at times. He however doesn't actually back any of that up with meaningful action, which is the crux of the argument against him. The issue with Trump and authoritarianism is that they are not for the people but to self-serve. Trump doesn't have a plan and his need for drama is creating chaos around the world. You can like Trump on a personal level but you can also agree that he shouldn't be anywhere near power on a factual level. It is important that you yourself are grounded in reality politically or you will just be arguing for your own polarized camp. The whole problem is that the information environment is so polluted that the discourse is effectively a dreamland of falsehoods and misrepresentations. You need to elevate yourself above the miasma of left VS right and focus on having concrete political aims. These are some of my political aims very generally as an example: Maintain checks and balances of power Effective economic regulation Effective immigration control Effective military and security Effective climate change policy Regulation of the information environment

Just don't assume context. If you are on this forum you should be able to tell. I don't see what the issue is here?

Who gives a shit about the ugly ducklings? Learn from Hitler if you can.

I remember a metaphor by Teal Swan that went something like "you entered a room to paint and now that you are sitting in front of the canvas you are working so hard to escape it." Not an exact quote.

You could volunteer for the fire department, emergency services, the military, etc. Or joining a sports/martial arts club. Organizations with regular weekly exercises will instantly add some concrete structure to your life. Writing a to-do list in the morning is a powerful but soft way to structure your day. You have the important and hard tasks earlier in the day and the easier ones later. Just writing a to-do list in of itself will help structure your mind.

There's undeniably a social game at play behind the anti-porn movement that isn't grounded in facts but in identity validation. There just isn't the concrete evidence to prove that porn is defacto bad for you or bad everyone. The critique is a caricature of porn. That is my main problem. Even the term "porn addiction" isn't an actual real diagnosis grounded in science. It's much easier to blame porn for a lack of meaning and success than complex sociopolitical factors that socially and spiritually bankrupted your life (neoliberalism, atomization, etc.).

I found this ChatGPT response interesting:

Yes.