Scholar

One of the problems with the way these conversation goes is that they basically are just about fighting for labels, We aren't discussing what something means, we are discussing what we can use the word "woman" for. In the end, everyone understands the differences between a trans woman and a woman. We can both label them the same thing, but we will still understand the difference. It seems to me that a lot of the fight about the label is an attempt to delude away the differences. If we call them the same thing, it must mean they are the same thing! But that's not the case. Trans people will still have a certain set of genitalia, that maybe they made a surgeon change into something that resembles another genitalia. Whether or not we call that being a woman does not change that underlying reality. So really, the game is about the label, and the label is so powerful because we have revolved entire identities around them. Instead of moving society away from the attachment to these labels and constructs, we give them more power, we attach ourselves more, and revolve our entire identity around a simple label.

My memory is suffering due to health issues so I don't remember what my take was, but I think it was something profound.

There is an interesting dynamic that can occur when one is suicidal. Ordinarily the suicidal ego structure is intensely contracted. This sort of contraction is caused by suffering in one form or another. The type of suffering can be manifold, I think often it is related to shame, hopelessness or loneliness. The ego structure is resisting reality because it desperately wants reality to be another way, causing friction that becomes intolerable to the structure. Through suicide the ego seeks to resolve that tension and resistance, in other words, the ego seeks freedom from itself. Freedom from the rigid, constricting and suffocating texture of the structure of the ego. The interesting dynamic I was referring to is that, the ego can realize that it's own death means freedom. I am not talking about some sort of thought, but a direct realization of the solution to this problem. "If I am dissolved, all my shame will be gone, because I will no longer care about being ashamed anymore. It will not matter!" "If I am dissolved, all my hopelessness will be gone, because I will no longer care about hoping for something. It will not matter!" "If I am dissolved, all my loneliness will be gone, because I will no longer care about being alone. It will not matter!" If I died now, everything would be meaningless. Everything I am right now resisting so much against, it will not matter. And then the ego realizes: Why then, do I need to take it seriously at all? What if I let go? What if I let go of wanting to not be alone? What if I let go of wanting to be something I am not? What if I let go of wanting something that is not? If I was dead, none of that will have mattered anyways, so why does it need to matter while I am alive? What do I have to lose? I have nothing to lose if I let go of everything. This is how Eckhart Tolle achieved ego-death. When the ego is inflicting so much suffering to itself, it builds up a tremendous momentum, a tremendous force. If the ego realizes that it's own contraction, it's own nature, it's own structure, is the cause of it's suffering, then it will turn around. It will look at itself, and realize the opportunity of that energy. It will shatter itself and what will remain is freedom. Freedom from shame, freedom from hopelessness, freedom from suffering. There is nothing to hope for and nothing to be lonely about, because it will not matter anymore. There is nothing to lose if you let go of it all, and that's what you want to do anyways. Get in touch with your own suffering, with your own contraction. With everything you want the world to be. If you were dead, none of that would matter. This means that all you need to do is live as if you were already dead. Then you will see the beauty and perfection of existence, because it will not matter anymore where it is beautiful and perfect. Your suffering will have served it's purpose. You must turn the resistance against itself. Make your ego realize that it is the source of all it's suffering, and that there is nothing to lose if it will simply let go. Let it go, and live your life freely. Look at this thread. Terror of letting go. If you are truly suicidal, why do you need to be afraid of letting go? See, you are not afraid of letting go. You want to let go. So, let go. You are one step ahead of most people, because you are willing to dissolve yourself. You just need to dissolve the right thing, the thing that is causing your suffering.

To establish the fact that they are incentivised to do so, or that independent participants even exists, requires institutions. And it will require faith in those institutions to have faith in the process. You'll end up just moving the epistemic problem one layer down, and the skeptic can still point to that and say "But this is corrupt, I don't trust this! How can I know these participants even are independent? What if it's all a lie?".

I do wonder how you would solve the epistemic problems from a layman's perspective. You seem to say "blind" trust in institutions is unfounded, my position is that trust in institutions is really all we have as laymen. There is no way I can verify in any meaningful way even the most trivial inormation about health out there, I must assume certain things to be true on the basis of me trusting the process or the institution. Once the public loses trust in institutions, there is really nothing you can do, because the institutions are the foundation for knowledge making. No single individual could possibly verify all information, and even if they could, it would be a life's work. So we cannot expect laymen to just do the research themselves and come to conclusions. In the end, all we can do is advocate for trust in institutions, almost blind trust. What else can the layman do in an information landscape as ours? If we undermine trust, we can undermine everything, because institutional trust is the basis of civilization. Laymen are not even equipped to "do their own research". I have not yet found a really good resolution for this issue, it seems like either the system collapses due to lack of trust, or we open the door for corruption due to blind trust. But what else is there? People simply do not have the time and competency, nor self-consciousness, to be attempting to understand what is actually going on within the information landscape. I have said it before, but one of the greatest challenges we are facing the 21st century is this epistemic problem of how to navigate modern information landscapes, because everything else depends on it. Just think about how much time and effort it takes to educate a single person on this forum who is convinced otherwise. Even if you are completely rational it might not work. We cannot even think about progressing mankind because we are so busy trying to shovel out the endless garbage everyone is throwing our way. I am curious to hear your thoughts on this.

You could posit the precise opposite. Bobby Fischer and Kasparov continued to play chess because they loved chess, even though they have already conquered the field they continued with the risk of eventually being beatne. Magnus Carlson does not love in and of itself, but only winning and being the best. If he stops playing now, his title will never be able to be challenged, and because he doesn't care about chess that much, he can move on from it.

I feel like there is a systemic problem where we keep discussing this nonsense. It's a waste of everyones time, we need to have some sort of resource that can immediately refer people to all this reasoning, otherwise we just have to keep educating the garbage out of people's minds. It's a sisyphean task. And most of the time reasonable people aren't around here to point out all the misinformation people spread. Maybe time would be better spent working with Leo on some solution here, educating him and then simply referring people to the proper ressources when they spread misinformation. We have been going in circles and circles for years on this topic now.

You can't just assert this to be the truth, you have to give reason for why it follows. So why is it the case that using one step instead of two steps to explain something makes a thing correct? You could easily imagine that something works in two steps in reality, but we could still maybe have an explanation that only uses one step, yet missing the mark on what is actually happening. Right, but that was never established, how do we know the most simple solution is more likely to be correct than a more complex one? Just because something is less probable doesn't mean it isn't the case, that's the problem here. You are assuming that reality will perfectly coincide with what you deem most probable. Then you also have the reference class problem and so forth. It's really all just a chimp game in the end. But even if you do play this game and confuse it for reality, you still have to have explanatory power, not merely simplicity of cause. To what degree does what you say explain reality, and what predictive power does it offer to us? To say things are the way they are because they are the way they are does not really explain anything to us, nor does it give us the ability to predict or explain particular phenomena.

Remember that occam's razor is not really valid. There is no reason why the simplest explanation of reality is actually the true explanation of reality. That's just what some chimp came up with, it's completely arbitrary. And you have also consider, in regards to scientific theories, how much explanatory power a given theory gives you. You can say reality is just the way it is, but does that help you predict anything? Not really, I can't really understand why the earth revolves around the sun with that explanation. "Because it is so!", well, that doesn't tell us anything really. A theory of physics and motion can give us a reason for why the Earth revolves around the sun, and we can extrapolate from that what the earth will do in the future. That's explanatory power, and therefore we ought to prefer that theory in regards to science.

Nice try, lol.

The thing is, people who are conscious already do the work. There are just not many people who are conscious enough, this is why we have to understand self bias like this, to increase our own consciousness and find all the self bias within ourselves.

This is not my position, but the position of Leo as well as people who seem to follow him. I'm not interested in a philosophical discussion, this is not the topic of the thread. True, which is why consciousness is so important. If you had been conscious during the time of slavery, and your livelihood depended on slavery, you would have predicted that the way you have constructed your life was unsustainable. You would have transitioned long before governments were pushed to enforce these policies the way they do. In fact, your very self bias has lead to this situation, because you have been denying reality for decades, and even lobbied against it, coming up with reasons why slavery is good, why slavery is moral, and why those who are trying to enforce laws against your interests are just doing so out of some sort of conspiracy to gain control over the population. You could have used that time and effort to work on solving the problems you would face, and go with the flow of evolution, instead of trying to stop it. This is blatant self-bias, and this is why self-bias does not survive. It's the very reason why progress exists in the first place, precisely because that's how evolution is structured. I support governments helping farmers transition, subsidizing them and so forth if they choose to go plant based. But the farmers have advocated for the opposite. Instead of advocating for subsidies to transition, they advocated for subsidies for their dairy farms, which simply are not economically viable. Instead of having focused on how the government could help them transition, they dug their heels into the sand, denying environmental science in favor of their own self interest. I am not trying to moralize, I am trying to show you the problem with self bias, and this is the perfect illustration of it. You will see much more of this in the future, as the consequences of environmental destruction will become more severe. At that point, there will be no negotating, it will be too late for that. The nightmare of the authoritarian government will become true to the degree to which people continue to be selfish.

You are using Spiral Dynamics in the precise way it ought not to be used, which ironically showcases your lack of sophistication in regards to understanding the model and your own development. If you want to give a critique, give the critique. Stop being a child and throwing words around as if they were arguments. I can just assert the opposite you claimed, without evidence, as you did. And then what? You will give me a speech about how the world government is creating studies after studies showing a vegan diet is appropriate for everyone? I have no interest in these discussions.

We're all one and our sovereignty ought to be respected... unless you're an animal, or insect, or really anything that isn't a human! The good thing about lack of compassion is that it will bite you in the ass, as we can already see on a global scale. The very reason why people are starving is because of selective compassion.

It doesn't concern me much, they can't even get 100 people to sign up. Haters gonna hate.

If that's the way you approach understanding the world, I don't think we will be able to have a fruitful discussion about this.

Right, people are starving while we are feeding cows and pigs with grain, soy and corn.

They made a petition to get actualized banned https://www.change.org/p/google-inc-delete-actualized-org-youtube-channel-for-very-dangerous-manipulative-teachings?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_27679965_en-US%3A7&recruiter=21894495&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=ed46912b96124836b5c9096e84fc19ab

Well, I suffered from aphantasia, or a weak mind's eye, and because one of the aspects of visualization/mind's eye activity is the conviction that one is seeing things when one actually is not, I greatly benefitted from practices that changed my beliefs about what I can and cannot do. It's quite astounding how much confidence and conviction influences what you end up being capable of doing. Conversly, when I have doubts in my ability or stop believing in them, they disappear. It made me realize how mastery of anything is necessarily linked to confidence.

If you are struggling with this idea so much, I think you might lack in social understanding and empathy, so that's what will need addressing if your goal is to improve your social skills. It should be obvious to anyone with any kind of social understand why that would weird people out or turn them off, even if they can't articulate it well. But maybe you are seeking an articulation of why exactly this dynamic exists, because I'm not sure if you are genuinely confused about this or are just moralizing about why this should be the case. Either way, it doesn't follow that, just because a culture is very sexual in one dimension, that it would necessarily translate into how people interact with each other. Look at japan, they have hentai shops you can walk right into from the street, sometimes there is a hentai section in a normal shop for anime or manga goodies. Yet, Japan is extermely sexually repressed in regards to how people interact with each other, so it's obvious that these things don't translate, and can even have an inverse effect. I'm not puzzled by that at all, it makes sense to me. Now, most of the reason for why this will be considered creepy is because of the contemporary culture. That's basically it. Our culture is a certain way, and people are expected to behave a certain way, and if something falls outside the norm, people will try to find explanations for that. "He is talking about porn... nobody just does this with a stranger, so what's wrong with him? Why is he doing this?" This is the natural response for most people, and then the question for why the culture hasn't yet changed, or why it isn't changing the way you would personally expect it to, is a different discussion. And I think you also underestimate how sexually repressed our culture still is. Just because we have some softcore sex scenes in movies doesn't really tell you much. If there were full blown pornographic style scenes in hollywood movies, with people casually watching them together in the cinema, then you could expect people to react differently when addressing these topics. But as we speak, the scale on sexual openness is more around eroticism and romanticism still, but even if you do bring that up in a conversation, it will still be perceived a certain way because of how everyone interacts with each other as a whole. So, you can boil it down to: People don't casually talk about pornographic topics, therefore, casually talking about pornographic topics is taboo and will provoke a certain reaction from people. And even aside from all that, talking to women about porn would be a bit like talking about erotic literature with men. If you are going to pick a topic like that, atleast make it one women are more likely to be interested in. Most women don't work the same way men function sexually, they might not care that much about a certain position. You might enjoy it because it looks hot, a woman will enjoy it because of the emotional context it exists in and so forth.

This song always gets me. Some series are not good simply because of what is happening in them, but because of the state of mind they put you in. I definitely remember a whole spectrum of unique feelings and thoughts that occured as I watched it, I don't know if there are many other series that were able to pull that off.

The Leftovers must be watched, but I feel like 90% of what makes it so deep is Max Richter's score.

Oh god, now I'm imagining you, with a silken robe barely clinging to your othterwise nude body, flailing your gun around as people invade your home, going John Wick Guru Style.

To me it seems that the human brain is using a very similar system to visualize things, just more sophisticated. One of the reason for greater sophistication in the human mind is because we are using inputs beyond mere words, like for example many non-descript emotions and feelings, as well as using actual understanding of objects to create more accurate impressions. We don't merely learn what something looks like by having bazillion images of them perfectly saved in our brain visual library, we can look at one image, truly understand it's components and what makes it that objects, visually speaking, and then visualize it. So, we abstract from a singular image the relationships that makes a thing a thing, whereas the AI is kind of stumbling upon what makes a thing a thing by having millions of images and finding patterns in the geometric/visual relationships. I am curious to see how far these AIs will go, because I suspect that there will be a hard limitation at some point in regards to the hardware that is being used, as it cannot generate the same kind of unified experience bubble as the brain can. My theory why these images look trippy and dreamlike, is because during tripping, the systems that visualize are altered and some even disconnected, connected to new things within the brain etc. which leads to the phenomena we are aware of, just that of course, the brain not only is capable of visualizing "images", but emotions, sense of space and time, sounds, and pretty much every other substance of consciousness. So, these AIs are simulating one aspect of the same approach to visualization the brain is using .