Girzo

Social status, probably. The approval from the social environment. Not everything is a result of individual dynamics, not everything is psychological. Yeah, and when I think about it, maybe OP's problem is not lacking physical attractiveness but not having enough social status? Aiming for the guys with a much higher status creates the frustration.

I love my girlfriend with all of my heart and she walks in leggings all the time and doesn't wear makeup. She's hot with who she is, not with how she looks. You just have to be hot enough to feel sexual attraction, any improvements to your looks and style after that is your personal preference. And if you think it's a high bar to clear for a woman to be attractive in a sexual manner, then why there's so many jokes about men being so indiscriminate and willing to have sex even with goats. It's easy to find a cool partner if you yourself are cool. Yeah, you might not be able to get anyone you like, but you are for sure able to find someone who you really, really like.

But you are not, because you don't exist in that case. Your presented evidence is not warranting a claim to know something. It only opens a question, is a point to start thinking about the topic. I think I can shutdown this questioning. This is only evidence if you assume a priori that consciousness is required for understanding and replying to a forum post. Against, only true after assuming there is indeed such independent being as Leo and responding to your posts by this being requires consciousness. Those are assumptions. It's only under assumption that you are a limited being doing something and experiencing something. This is what you assume, so this is not an evidence of anything. I can assume on equal grounds that consciousness just is and experiences itself, in whatever form it is, for example typing. I can propose many other alternative models of interpreting this situation. So as you can see your line of reasoning can't even beat post-modern, relativistic arguments. That means it doesn't constitute knowledge. The way you reason would fly if we were discussing some practical matter and tried to be pragmatic. But pragmatists don't care about what is ultimately true, and here we are discussing ultimate nature of reality. Pragmatic knowledge =/= metaphysical knowledge.

I have capped out at 85 audiobooks in a year. It starts to get crazy after crossing that border and reading/listening more. 100 plus I would need to be reading while eating a breakfast and listening to audiobooks while showering. No time to take notes, for sure. Also now, with AI voices from Microsoft Azure or Elevenlabs every ebook can be made into high-quality audiobook. I don't really need anything better than these AIs. Back to the topic, this Thornton guy seems very cool, also good recommendations in the video.

Psychology gets insufferably boring after ten books, unless you divert into some really niche issue that interests you, like types of brain damage and corresponding changes in psyche, but it could be said that in my example it's no longer psychology, so maybe psychology is just boring, the end.

There can be a widespread protest for raising minimum wage on the national level, or capping CEOs income to 50x the lowest paid worker or something in that effect. I see it as a semi-realistic scenario in the next few decades. You need the government, it's hard to achieve anything through grass-roots ways nowadays.

Dave, you are wrong in this. You in fact don't know this. Knowledge is something certain. You not only don't know if Leo is a conscious separate being, you also have no way of knowing it. Scientists sometimes use the word knowledge in a more relativistic manner, not meaning something that is certain, but something as to which you have very good reasons to assume it is so, you have done your homework diligently so to speak. But it only makes sense when discussing practical questions. Otherwise you should hold a more strict notion of knowledge. If you insist to disagree, then define what you mean by "knowing". It must be clearly that you hold this concept in a different manner than either me or Leo.

But that's how a lot of people unironically treat this concept, radical honesty even more so. In the past, I had spent 2 hours on telling my friend that "no, Logan Paul doesn't deserve to be called a genius, just because he is popular and managed to scam his viewers twice with NFT scams". Such approach dilutes the category of genius, but people get hung up on that kind of relativism.

@Danioover9000 you are missusing the concept of “good faith, bad faith”. I am acting I good faith sharing accurate, latest scientific knowledge on alcohol. That is: it is in no way healthy and drinking wine instead of beer is not harm reduction. You are the one causing harm by mudding a question to which there is already an established answer. Alcohol = not healthy. It’s well accepted in the health research community, but it’s not yet culturally accepted. Such cultural changes take a lot of time because people get attached to their glass of wine or a can of dumb Bud Light beer. People get so attached they have a problem with a stupid ad, as the whole drama this thread is about exemplifies.

The heck yes, there are serious scientists doing serious science. Princess Arabia: “I'm getting all this shit about drinking red wine and a shot of liquor from time to time.” Girl, no-one’s giving you shit. For me you can drink chloroform all day and I am completely okay with that. You have made it into discussion about your life, and continue to do so, by talking about personal stuff that has zero to do with alcohol and it’s advertising. It would be more productive to the discussion if you have shared stories of you seeing alcohol ads, or some remarks on how culture and your environment affect what and how often you drink.

@Danioover9000 This isn't facts over feelings scenario. There's proper science on the topic of consuming alcohol. "Facts over feelings" is when your facts are not facts but feelings. BUT THIS IS MERELY AN ANECDOTE. I can say that I don't experience any brain fog from having 10 amalgam tooth fillings removed last month. Does that have anything to do with safety of amalgam fillings? No. Zero. Nada. Responsible use of alcohol from the perspective of maximizing your health is zero. You can discount your health for the sake of something else you value and still drink alcohol, but be aware that you are taking a risk, even if you're drinking only as often as once a month.

@Princess Arabia I don't care about your health nor your reasons for drinking, I am stating facts. As factual as they can be. The scientific consensus is that ethanol is not healthy at any dosage. This is a very unsound reasoning for making a lifestyle choice. You could justify anything this way. You can go make friends with Andrew Tate, that's similar to how he justifies everything he says.

@Princess Arabia It's all cool. It has nothing to do with the question whether someone should drink alcohol or not. There had been some discussion of the possibility that alcohol may be healthy in some situations, but a long-term (20+ years) study released a few years ago cleared everything up. No amount of alcohol is healthy. I don't really care about you or your lifestyle. The discussion is about alcohol and it's advertising. I believe alcohol advertising should be heavily cut. I am happy with alcohol drinking numbers going down. Alcohol industry marketing jerks advertise their products illegally on Instagram and sometimes they even advertise their products to kids on purpose. Because it's harder to get proof of such action on the internet.

@Princess Arabia You are not defying any odds. You are healthy with drinking, you would be "even more healthy" without drinking.

@Princess Arabia every type of alcohol is a poison with no health benefits. The brain damage after drinking a single dose of alcohol takes up to three months to heal. Yes, from a single drink.

On low to medium dose - watch music videos or movies.

@Davino Yes, but this is not science, this is an reinforced urban myth. It would be a little bit accurate for LSD, but then... Who the hell knows how much LSD they are getting on their blotter. LSD blotters are commonly misadvertised, like 90% of it. Basically, only synthetic analogues like 1P-LSD straight from Lizard Labs can be trusted to really be 100 mcg per tab. The same applies to mushrooms, you don't know the potency of your mushrooms, some are weak, some are strong. Such tests should be done on a standardized extract or a close synthetic analogue of psilocybin.

I still do think that, you, Benton and this kconsciousness guy give off a weird MLM-vibe. Disclaimer: this one is purely my opinion, not based on evidence. On the issue of psilomethoxin, there's enough evidence in this thread for anyone to make up their mind.

@Enlightement Yeah, it's better to stop talking because the issue is plus-minus settled and your proposed experiment design is not so good. We can say that the mushrooms are probably bunk and wait until something new happens. Maybe someone will synth this compound, or the church will release their tek of growing mushrooms, or maybe they will get put in jail for distributing controlled substance in the US. Till then, no talk. Reply to the post below: Chillout man, you are making yourself look funny. I am saying probably, not to aggravate you folks anymore and finish this pointless discussion. I don't want to hear the "but it doesn't have tolerance, bro, it's different, trust me" anymore, not even once.

This is not a speculation. All the church's in-house tests failed. All the independent researchers' tests have failed. I know of at least three, done using different methods. Everything is pointing to the fact it's bunk. Here's David Nichols chiming in on this topic, the OG psychedelics chemist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._Nichols), more important figure than Shulgin in my opinion: Source: https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/the-church-of-psilomethoxin-part-2-unraveling-the-chemistry-of-canned-peas-with-david-nichols/ Obviously I don't really care about those silly mushrooms and silly drama. I am genuinely interested in chemistry and mycology, though. And I don't think there's a lack of substance in my posts in this topic, it's almost only substance, from day one. I don't need to be buying a scam product to tell you it's a scam. I might do a serious psilocybin tolerance study in the future. I think it's an important topic. Too much bullshit around it. Around dosing, too.

The burden of proof is on the hecking church and that's the whole point of this topic. You can totally say something is a placebo. For example give people the same thing in a pill, and say one is psilomethoxin and one is psilocybin. Then analyze their reports. That's one way of doing it. There are many other methods. Scientist routinely test for placebo. Wishful thinking, delusion, whatever, that's just how the mind works. We often have to try to get around it, even though it's difficult.

What we are talking about here is qualitative research. For that we need to collect data. For example write-ups of the trip with all the set&setting and other important info. Sizeable amount of such reports. And then do a proper analysis of them. Code them, look for patterns, look for differences. Erowid reports, or random comments like yours are of little value. They are of too poor quality to be studied qualitatively, and there's too few of them to be studied quantitatively. Research based on such data would be inconclusive. Back to ground zero. If you want to be willy-nilly with methodology, then we can already say there's no psilomethoxin in the mushrooms based on the tests already done on the church's merchandise. I am not saying that's 100% sure because I want to be diligent. Your personal reports are not diligent research. They are obviously cool and good enough for you, but don't expect them to be a sufficient proof for others.

@Enlightement What are you talking about? Obviously everything can have a placebo effect. But if those mushrooms are normal mushrooms and the differences are due to placebo, then they are overpriced junk. You can have an infinite supply of normal shrooms basically for free if you grow them in a shoebox yourself.

Because in this case "experience" is easily twisted by placebo and methodological inaccuracies. Science is experimental, but random experiences don't constitute science.

@Benton Can you give a short write-up of your tolerance tests? It's an immensely interesting topic. Dosage and time in-between dosing for both tests of psilocybin and church mushrooms will do. Edit: Hah, I have just noticed, they aren't the psilomethoxin church anymore, they are the "church of sacred synthesis" now. https://thesacredsynthesis.com/