AtmanIsBrahman

I'm posting this because I think it would be useful and this forum is likely to be open-minded about it. The bottom line is this: you can find your personality type and use it for personal development. Your type will give you insight into your human nature-- that is, your strengths and weaknesses, and unique traits. The best personality typing system is the 16 type system which is commonly known as mbti (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). You may have heard of it and know that it gets a bad rap for being "unscientific" or something like that. Hopefully if you guys follow Leo's work you'll be able to tell that this is close-minded skepticism coming from the materialist/scientific paradigm. The system is scientific in that it is based on observation; the 16 personality archetypes were first developed by Carl Jung by observing his patients and having insights into human nature. He theorized that there are certain cognitive functions that people may use and prioritize in different proportions. Before I continue, let me clarify that I am aware that this is a model and the map is not the territory. However: this is the best model for human personality type (based on nature) that exists to this date. If you study it well, it will be shocking how much it reveals about your own personality and that of others. Here are the 16 psychological types: INTP, INTJ, ENTP, ENTJ ESTP, ISTP, ESFP, ISFP ENFP, INFP, ENFJ, INFJ ISTJ, ESTJ, ESFJ, ISFJ There are the perception functions (for how we see the world): Intuition and Sensing For abbreviation, Sensing gets S and Intuition gets N They come in introverted and extroverted versions, so you get Se (extroverted sensing), Si (introverted sensing), Ni (introverted intuiton), Ne (extroverted intuition) Then the judgment functions (for making decisions) Thinking (T) and Feeling (F) Which also come in introverted and extroverted versions Te (extroverted thinking), Ti (introverted thinking), Fe (extroverted feeling), Fi (introverted feeling) A person's ego is made up of four of these functions in order of priority For example, the INTJ has: Ni, Te, Fi, Se What does this mean? To put it simply, the person leads with intuition that is inward-focused and convergent. They are great at it and it's what they prefer to use. As a helpful secondary tool, they have extroverted thinking that helps them get by in the world. Their way of thinking is based on data and the opinions of others. The third function, introverted feeling is kind of like a little kid: they have morals that they live by, but it's not their strong suit. Finally, the person will struggle with physical reality, living in the moment, and performance anxiety as a result of extroverted sensing inferior. How to find out which type you are: The standard way is to take an mbti test. There's nothing wrong with doing that, but it tends to be inaccurate. Instead, first get a better understanding of what the 16 types are like. You may get a sense of which one seems like you. Through doing research about the types and using some introspection, you should be able to correctly type yourself. This post is getting long, and I couldn't cover nearly everything to this system. If you know some things about the 16 personalities/ mbti or you're hearing about this for the first time, please comment with your thoughts. I'll answer any questions since I'm very knowledgeable about this subject. TL;DR: The mbti/ 16 types personality system is a great tool for understanding yourself and others, and you should learn about it and use it.

INTP?

That’s actually exactly the kind of “mbti” I use! I was trying to explain it in a basic way for people who don’t know much about it

That’s true, he does that for “guess the elo.” You could submit a game, but the chance of it being featured would realistically be low. I’m sure he gets hundreds of submissions.

You would have to be more famous, or more good In all seriousness though, one exception Levy made was covering Tyler1’s chess journey where he got to almost 2000 elo from scratch in less than a year. It was of course helped by Tyler being a somewhat famous LoL streamer.

A lot of people have made an account on chess.com and played a few games. The percentile isn’t that accurate, and that rating is more or less average for people who play chess a decent amount. But then again, chess skill is relative. There will always be people who are better and worse for 99.9% of us.

An issue I've been grappling with for a long time is the bliss vs truth dilemma in spirituality. A lot of people who practice spirituality do it to achieve a happier state, whether they frame it as escaping suffering, having peace of mind, or experiencing divine bliss. But spirituality should be truth-seeking, and when truth is your goal it doesn't matter if you feel blissful, sad, energetic, or slightly despondent. You are searching for what is actually the case, asking what is reality really. When spiritual teachers like Sadhguru say, "Would you rather be blissful or sad? Blissful, yes... isn't it?" and then people inevitably say yes, I can't help but see this as a spiritual deception. To an actual truth seeker, it isn't enough to just pick blissfulness over negativity. Blissfulness, based on our typical drive for experiencing positive emotions, seems better, but does it actually lead to truth? Maybe, maybe not. You can't make that assumption! And I see spiritual people doing this all the time. Then there's an even deeper issue, which is what truth seeking really is. It only takes a little consciousness to see that everything we do is motivated by desire for one thing or another that always circles back to the self, sometimes directly and sometimes more indirectly. If you haven't grasped this notion, contemplate it, and you will see that it's true, similar to how everything in the universe can always be traced back to oneness- nonduality 101. So even searching for truth is just a desire that's ultimately arbitrary and only for the purpose of your own fulfilment. The problem with just going for bliss is that in choosing that path and not knowing whether it leads to truth or not, you're essentially giving into the relativity of your experience and just going with what feels right thinking that everything is relative. And if you are going for bliss, you don't have a guarantee that it will lead to truth- it may be the opposite. So then the spiritual seeker (which is my situation right now) is in a dilemma of wanting to pursue truth but not knowing whether it exists or is just based on desire. Hopefully it was clear what I'm trying to get at. This is an existential quagmire about truth, bliss. and relativity. I'd appreciate any insights people have, especially @Leo Gura as a truth-seeker.

Thanks for responding. It seems like doing the spiritual work is the only way to find out

Interesting, what do you mean by that? Can you expand on it?

Both America and Russia are fighting for influence in the region, but Russia is more cutthroat and brutal about it. Even understanding both sides, don't we have to pick one or the other at a certain point? Especially given that most Ukrainians want to keep their independent state (except for some regions on the border with Russia), isn't the Ukraine/America side in the right here? It's the triumph of stage orange over stage blue.

@Leo Gura Some advice from a 2200 player: focus on piece activity first! This guy's channel is a gold mine for instructional chess content (aside from his opening videos which are mostly cheap tricks). He explains a thinking system that works really well for getting to a high level at chess (2000+). You can apply the rules he shares in Fischer random too.

True, but you can recognize the good in something extremely biased as well. Hinduism is also biased. This is the point I was trying to make. Science is great at discovering relative truths. To say that Hinduism has done all this thousands of years ago is to swallow up a new age narrative. For absolute truths, maybe, but that's not what we're talking about. Do you really think someone will get a good understanding of relative truths such as science, history, society, etc. just by looking within during meditation or some other spiritual practice?

These videos are all from the same channel and are curated to convince you that Hinduism is more advanced than modern science. I'd be doubtful that it gives a good picture of what modern scientists believe. Plus, it's laughable to say Hinduism is more advanced than modern science. Spiritually? Yes. Technologically? No. Let's not forget about the good things stage orange/materialist science has done. Hinduism is full of dogma just like materialist science- don't be fooled.

@Leo Gura Although it's stupid, couldn't this be part of a movement of American politics to the left long term? It's like how the movement through the spiral stages has many hiccups and tends to be non-linear. People get sick of the establishment, they vote for Trump, then they get sick of him, and eventually the country moves up the spiral. So Trump is in a certain sense the medicine the country needs, right? You said this in an old blog video if I remember correctly.

Interesting, I got the North Pole part but not the other one. I’m guessing it would take a lot of math to get that answer. Any thoughts on the nature of insight?

Quick Question: If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 donuts, how long does it take 100 machines to make 100 donuts? Please take a moment to answer this before reading further. You may have seen this before or it may just seem very easy, but the truth is that most people can't get this right. The first reason for this is that as humans we like to see patterns and make connections that way. So we think: okay, I'm given 5, 5, 5 in the first situation and in the second situation I have 100, ?, 100. So obviously 100 should go in the blank, right? Let's think about a different pattern. 5 machines in the first scenario is becoming 100 machines, and 5 donuts is becoming 100 donuts. So the production speed and the amount of stuff that needs to be produced is 20x in both cases. Therefore, it will take the same amount of time as before, 5 minutes. If you're reasonably intelligent, you might wonder why someone would post something like this. Does the poster just have low intelligence? Well, the point is that no matter how quickly or slowly you understand what the answer is, there is a moment when that insight happens. That moment is pure understanding of Truth; it is the present moment, the eternal now. I'm not just talking about a math problem now- this is God, this is consciousness, this is Truth. What you'll notice is that if you ask this to people, sometimes they will just not get it even after you explain it, which you might say is because they're stupid. What is really happening is that they're locked into a certain state of consciousness where that insight isn't possible- just like a donkey will not recognize itself in a mirror. When you grasp the answer, you wonder how you could have been foolish enough to get it wrong. That's because consciousness is deceptive and you have fallen into the crocodile's mouth (to use Leo's metaphor), but when the crocodile looks itself in the mirror it loses its menacing teeth. Reality is constantly involved in this business. To see the illusion for what it is and be purified in the light of consciousness is to awaken.

It would take 5 minutes. Look at my explanation again.

This was mentioned in How Socialization Makes You Stupid. All we know from what you've said is that it's a loose, indirect way of thinking. It would be hard to talk about because it's so indirect, but you could give some pointers. If not oblique thinking, consider making a video on trans-rationalism (I'm guessing they are connected). It would make sense because you said in one of the recent videos that the updated goal of actualized.org is to get people to higher cognitive development. This would be a good supplement to spiral dynamics/ stages of ego development.

Chris Langan is on board with Leo in terms of reality being mental, but there are important differences. Langan's view of reality includes good and evil and he even believes in heaven and hell based on his CTMU.

It stands for "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe"

To add to what people have said, Quote 78 does seem poorly thought out. It's surprising to see this of Leo. The most obvious problem is what would be considered a lie and who would decide. Lies aren't always obvious factual lies, they can come in many subtler forms. Even if the lies are factual it's hard to prove that the person wasn't just misinformed. A department of lying in practice would lead to totalitarianism.

Like I said, I don't think there's a solution (aside from possibly enlightenment). My best advice is to fall in love with the mystery of reality.

@Ayham we're in the same boat. Its the dark night of the soul, I guess. There's no easy solution

Schopenhauer's idea of will is more about referring to the universe as one giant will, or consciousness (to connect it with Leo's teachings) Leo's point in the philosophy video is that you need to find out what is true yourself. If you think Sartre was a really cool guy, that doesn't have anything to do with finding out what is true. It just makes you more likely to believe his ideas without any real reason. Look up "spiral dynamics turquoise" on youtube. The inventors of spiral dynamics had him take it down, but it's still there on another channel.

How can we go about our lives when no one knows what reality is? We all just go about our days doing the most meaningless of things, caught up in our illusions, self-deceptions, identity, and utter ignorance. We privilege one part of reality over another: some of us like socializing over being alone, or the reverse, all of us have hobbies that we consider better than others, and our worldviews are of course always correct. In this forum there is a small island of 'spiritual' (for lack of a better word) people who want to go beyond this shallow ordinary existence. But even so, the most enlightened of us still go about day-to-day activities like everyone else, since the psychedelic peak only lasts so long. As the adage goes, 'chop wood, carry water'. If feels so random, like a joke the universe has played on us. We have been generated from a pool of absolute infinity and thrown into a limited human form. Yet few of us have ever even conceived of the possibility. As an exercise, try closing your eyes, then opening them and looking at your body? If you're able to think, WTF?!, then you get the insight I am trying to describe here.