AtmanIsBrahman

I see your point-- I am mostly just theorizing. But it's also disingenuous to say pickup artists were doing genuine science. If they neglect a huge variable (looks), that's not good science in my book. He has a point. The looksmaxxing space is very ideological and gross. But there is a lot of truth behind it too. I think Leo's position is that looks do matter quite a lot, but they aren't changeable. I would disagree with the latter part-- they can be meaningfully changed by just about everyone, and of course some more than others.

I asked claude about the looksmaxxing/attractiveness science timeline. Here's an excerpt of what it said: Anyways, looks are objective not subjective, they are cross-cultural, and recent advancements are actually... well, recent.

I can give a more detailed response later. Essentially, noticing these principles is a recent phenomenon. You didn’t see people analyzing each part of a face scientifically 40 years ago. It’s in part due to gender roles changing, plus survival being easier, contributing to men caring about appearance being actually feasible sociologically. It’s quite easy to see how looks could be objectively studied. What makes men see a woman as hot? (They generally agree). Well, obviously it’s something about the facial features. Same thing with male celebrities. Take an attractive male celebrity and mess around with his face in photoshop. What makes him look worse if you change it? That is a factor in looks. You get the idea.

@Natasha Tori Maru It’s not true that women have been looksmaxxing for ages. Yes, they have done makeup, but looksmaxxing is much more detailed, broad, and extensive than just that. For example: Do you know what the FWHR is? Facial width to height ratio. In males, the ideal is close to two. It signals dominance and untrustworthiness. People with a high FWHR are considered more likely to cheat. This is based on science by the way, not just stuff made up by looksmaxxers? Do you know what the three facial thirds are, and how they should be proportioned and men and women? Looksmaxxers have this down to a science. Do you know what makes a good eye area? Most people think it’s eye color. Really, it’s a combination of features in the eye region— in males, dense and lowset eyebrows, minimal upper eyelid exposure, deep set eyes, narrower rather than round eyes, lack of scleral show (white of the eye underneath the iris), a clear sclera with minimal red, etc. See? This is very detailed, and it 100% is new. People were not talking about these things in 1980.

Not sure what you mean. If you’re saying it’s better to stay in not knowing about whether looks or game is better, that’s fair, but my point is more about taking the looks part seriously as they aren’t mutually exclusive. The balance could be 65% game and 35% looks and it would still be worth paying attention to looks.

Colored contacts are good. Blue often works well, though you have to make sure it looks natural. Gym is good for sex appeal.

Pickup is a good skill to have, but looks are at least as important. It’s honestly a huge gap in understanding on this forum (which is fine because spirituality is the focus) that getting girls is just about doing the correct psychological things. We judge other people’s attractiveness practically instantly. It’s a biologically ingrained mechanism. Pickup will not work well if you’re below average looking. It’s not that hard to do some amount of looksmaxxing, and it has clear benefits.

I think most of you guys hugely underestimate the role of looks. Here’s an excerpt from a looksmax.org post (full post here: https://looksmax.org/threads/why-even-looksmax-guests-and-new-users-please-read.18461/) Pretend you’re a girl (if you aren’t). 1. This guy approaches you and says “Hey, you put that cute outfit on for me tonight?” Now how did that make you FEEL? Probably laugh at his cockiness and reject his pathetic ass right away. “Hey, you put on that cute outfit for me tonight?” Now how did that make you FEEL? A little different hm?

I want to address a simple problem with this post, having to do with the language we use on this forum and Leo uses in his work. The word I want to focus on is “belief.” There are two ways in which the word is used, and conflating them becomes problematic. 1. Layman’s definition- trusting that something is true without evidence/justification/direct experience (substitute in whatever fits your epistemology) 2. Philosophical definition- to think/hold that something is true The problem is that we use the word belief to refer to the layman’s definition exclusively, leaving no room for the philosophical definition. Using the word “belief” is treated as a revelation that the person using it has a poor epistemology. The layman’s definition is fine when we’re talking about religion or limiting beliefs, but for more serious intellectual topics there ends up being no proper word. If we want to say “Leo thinks X is true about politics,” we are forced to say “Leo has X political awakening” or “X political insights.” The problem is those terms come loaded with a lot of baggage—such as that what Leo is saying is true. We could use other words like “think” or “hold-to-be-true,” but they would be clunky or imprecise. I suggest we bite the bullet and use the word “belief.” I know that part of the reason for using the word “belief” in the standard way is the distinction between direct experience and concept. But consider this example— when someone awakens, before they didn’t hold-to-be-true that God exists, but now they do. We can just call this belief. Yes, what they hold to be true exists in an entirely different context than before, but they still hold it to be true. This all comes down to the inability of language to grasp ultimate reality, but we can still be careful with how we use language. Using the word "belief" correctly is one attempt to do so.

Are philosophers who existed before science also science-brained then? Take Aristotle as an example. He existed before science (I guess you could argue he kind of invented it). The correct label for him is rationalist. I think what you're really critiquing is rationalism, not science.

Harry Mack is probably the best freestyle rapper alive. He practiced the skill from a young age and eventually monetized through YouTube. You can tell that he actually loves what he’s doing, and he brings joy to audiences whenever he freestyles. A couple lessons stand out to me. First, pick a unique skill to master so that your competition is smaller. Harry Mack’s chosen skill, freestyling, is pretty unique because few people do it and even fewer actually train it. The people who freestyle generally do it for fun because they like rap and don’t methodically practice it like he does. This makes it easier for Harry Mack to be one of, if not the, best at his skill. You also have to find a skill that people care about. Freestyle rapping is almost universally liked as it’s great showmanship. The low competition and universal appeal of Harry Mack’s skill is a recipe for success. Second, develop mastery. This is pretty obvious, but it’s clear that he wouldn’t have become so great at freestyling if not for his many years of deliberate practice. Once you pick your skill, you have to actually work on it. If you care about it enough, it becomes a labor of love.

What is your experience like? I know you claim to have realized everything Leo talks about. I’m earlier on in my path.

@Leo Gura I’m curious why you direct criticism at scientists and not academic philosophers. It’s pretty easy to see the limitations of scientists when debating philosophical issues, and I think most academic philosophers can see this too (although obviously they aren’t God-realized). Why not criticize academic philosophy, which actually attempts to solve philosophical issues? Criticizing scientists is like boxing against a toddler—at least box against a teenager if you have to box below your weight class.

Why do you choose to use the word God instead of Absolute? Both words seem accurate to me. The downside is that “absolute” is more syllables and sounds presumptuous and intellectual. Aside from that though, it does avoid the religious connotations of the word God.

The old style feels more weighty. The new ones feel like a novel.

I’m also contemplating this. The complication is that it’s simultaneously a language issue and something having to do with the actual substance of “belief.” I might come back to the thread if I think of something.

Sorry, don’t buy it. Godliness could easily mean a state of consciousness, way of life, no self realization… who knows. Why assume it’s the same thing as God?

The video only confirms that Osho is attacking a strawman. He tries to differentiate his view from atheism by claiming he’s not a materialist. That differentiates his overall worldview from other atheists, but doesn’t really change his position on God. Then he says that God is not a person, which is a strawman of God. Only uneducated people and evangelical Christians think God is a person. I think the takeaway is that most gurus just aren’t profound philosophers. That’s why there’s more to this work than just pursuing mystical states—understanding self-deception and bias, burning through karma, deconstructing rationality and science, and learning spiral dynamics, to name a few.

Are you going to cover this topic? It seems like your thoughts on morality have changed from a few years ago. Because if absolute Good does affect your behavior, doesn’t that mean morality isn’t actually a complete construct?

It seems like you guys are misinterpreting me. I’m aware of the whole belief vs direct experience thing. But I don’t think it’s as much of a hard-and-fast distinction as many of you think. Keep in mind, by belief I just mean what you consider true about the world. Regardless of how spiritually advanced you are, you have beliefs about politics, predictions of the future, etc. We need to have the vocabulary to talk about these things, rather than considering anything that’s not direct experience a definition (1) belief.

It seems like you’re implying that truly knowing something is different from having to “think” or “hold” it. I get what you mean when it comes to mystical experience. But still—you can self-deceive with mystical experiences. And for more everyday topics like personal development or politics, you do have to believe (keep in mind I’m using definition 2). I’m just making the simple point that you should have a word to say that you think (believe) something is true.

This video would be a follow-up to the video An Intro to Serious Philosophy - Top Advice for Philosophers. It could even become a video series. The idea is to deconstruct academic philosophy—the history, the methods, and everything. This would close the loop of the Deconstructing Rationalism series, which was more focused on science, but doesn’t touch on the limitations of academic philosophy as much. Of course, the two disciplines are related, especially in modern times where analytic philosophy is prevalent, but they aren’t identical. This video would be important because there are basically three knowledge sources humans flock to: religion, science, and philosophy. There is already a lot of content explaining what is wrong with religion. The series Deconstructing the Myth of Science and Deconstructing Rationality do the job of showing the limitations of science. But philosophy gets little coverage on the channel, which is surprising because it’s probably considered the most legitimate source of knowledge by serious intellectually-minded people. A new philosophy video or series would fix that gap in actualized.org content. The goal would be to show that actualized.org is a better body of “knowledge” (whatever that means) than academic philosophy. This could include going through the most famous philosophers of all time (such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hume, Camus, Nietzsche, etc.) and explaining what they get right and where they go wrong. Then there could also be a portion explaining the different philosophical schools of thought that exist in the modern day and where they each go wrong. This could include going over the continental/analytic divide or delving into certain problems in the philosophical literature and explaining what the answer to the problem is or how it is misguided in some way. This video would be perfect for someone who is intellectual and deeply cares about truth, and doesn’t care about practical stuff, but wonders: “Why should I listen to actualized.org when there is a whole body of philosophical work I can draw from? Why should actualized.org be better?” @Leo Gura

These are some of the most underrated in my opinion I also made a thread related to this, if you’re interested

Let’s not give that video views. The logic is childish: Leo has a lot of posts, so he dominates the conversation. Meanwhile many other members have 10k+ posts. There are reasons to consider this forum an echo chamber, but that’s not one of them.

@Leo Gura in many of the clips, you seem to be speaking as if morality is objective (e.g. #355 and #356). How do you reconcile this with morality being relative? This viewpoint seems to buy into human concepts of good and distract from awakening. Is it just a dichotomy where morality is illusory on the absolute level but real on the human level? I know that you think Good exists as an absolute too, so that complicates the picture even more. It’s just strange to me how the same person can say “when I die, the universe dies with me” and talk about doing good for people in a common-sense way.