Philip

@shouldnt Excellent advice again everyone ! Now what I'd like to bring to you is a personal lesson of mine. During all my childhood, I've always been obsessed with other people's opinion of me. I always wanted to look perfect to everyone. And I didn't succeed in that. At all. I came off as a shy, weird, untalented and weak kid. One day, I decided I would solve the problem. But instead of solving my obsession directly at its root, I did what I knew best at the time : Instead of not caring about what they thought, I just obsessed about becoming charismatic, charming, confident and strong. After a few months, it gave pretty good results, but the obsession was still there... Most people would say I wasted my time by trying to make a better impression on others. But did I ? Or did I simply make good use of the only tools I had, in order to explore my problem and finally find what its real solution was ? Of course, this whole time I wasn't working on the root of the problem, but it looks like that journey gave me the wisdom to eventually find out where the root really is. And it seems like you're doing the same thing right now. You certainly don't sound as lost and desperate as last time, so that's a good step already. Now you seem to be more on the angry and nihilistic side of things. And what I'm saying is : use that ! Use the energy of anger to get moving, if it's all you have access to right now. Use the detached attitude of nihilism to stop caring so much, if it's all you have access to right now. Use our help to learn how to help yourself, if it's all you have access to right now. And if you feel like you have access to more, then do more ! If you feel like you don't, then do you.

@shouldnt So, are you done with the agony ? How are things going now ?

Those critiques I'm about to express could also come from my own blind spots. Overall, Leo's one of the most intelligent beings I ever saw, and maybe the person I have the most resemblance with. Just older and more developed. But still, here are my critiques : He seems to belittle the difficulties involved with eliminating addictions, but more precisely drugs. His attitude seems to be "Stop doing drugs already ! That's so obvious, you should already be over this by now !" I'm clearly exaggerating his opinion here, but he does seem to lack a bit of understanding of why so much people around the world are stuck with this problem, Maybe he doesn't really know anyone who takes drugs, because he didn't have so much friends in his life. He never took drugs, so he probably can't imagine how addictive it is either. He seems to have way more vision for his own life than he has vision for society. I know he talks about solving lots of problems in society, about making reforms in different institutions, or about reaching stage yellow, stage turquoise and collective enlightenment. But he doesn't seem to develop a lot on how technology and science could radically change the nature of human life within the next decades. He seems to discard the possibility of avoiding death with the help of medicine. He doesn't talk a lot about transcending the capitalist paradigm of our modern society. Ambitious revolutions like this. I'm not a fan of the whole "becoming a yogi and spending the rest of your life in a cave in the Himalayas". Sure I'd love if he went there for 10 or 20 years. But as long as he comes back to share his unbelievable insights and wisdom someday. The world would really be emptier without his input. He should do more interviews with other Youtubers. He should already start working on his first book. He should share more details about his life and his personal development. He should run for president. Just kidding. He should release more videos so advanced that the title looks like they're from a philosophy lecture. For example : "Does Will Exist", "Why Rationality Is Wrong", "Radical Open-Mindedness", "How You Lie" So there's no big disagreements here. Just details. But it seems like the only way to deeply disagree with Leo is to only watch a couple of his videos. Then to complain about the videos being too long. Then to criticize a couple of sentences that Leo said by ignoring all the nuance that comes with most of his claims. Otherwise, it would be weird to argue that Leo is totally wrong about everything. He's always questioning himself so much already...

Toxic people Junk food Drugs Porn Television Video games Facebook wall Most of internet Dogmatic beliefs Close-mindedness Self-righteousness Negative thinking Distractions Addictions Judgements Self-sabotage Childhood traumas Personality Imbalances Psychological dependence Dysfunctional relationships The illusion of free will The illusion of self

https://www.facebook.com/groups/148194371905323/ It's part french, part english. But I posted LOTS of videos on that group throughout the years. A bunch from Leo too. But mostly some philosophical and scientific stuff, as well as self-help, spirituality, and transhumanism. We asked ourselves how we could gather the most ideas that have the most potential for human growth, both individually and socially. Trying to balance openmindedness and skepticism, it's a pretty good archive for people who try to achieve the same balance themselves.

@shouldnt You're doing well, seriously. I'm actually surprised. And the moments when you're in your lower self, or when you have a panic attack, or when you feel a little depressed... How do you feel about those feelings ? What's your meta-feeling, so to speak ? Are you ashamed of those feelings ? Are you tired of having so much emotions rushing on you all the time ? Are you proud of the way you courageously handle so much pain ? Are you, in a sense, grateful for feeling this pain, because you know there's worse situations than yours in the world ? I don't want to impose standards by asking those questions. I just want to give you examples of what I mean. Try not to focus on what I might think of you. Try to focus on some of the subtle tactile sensations in your body (tension, warmth, pressure, pain, discomfort), as well as intense ones (like during a panic attack), and maybe even more importantly, the actual sound that the voice in your head creates. But all this is hard, so just do you best. No one's really judging you here (and definitely not me ), but if you want, you could witness that you're afraid of judgement sometimes. Or tired. Or whatever. Whatever comes out is good. Even the very fact that you don't find your present situation okay, is okay. Shame is okay. Hopelessness is okay. It's just happening. Listen to it. And keep up the good work ! We're proud of you !

@Epiphany_Inspired Oh yeah, oh my god ! You're right ! It's almost the opposite when you're a child. Because your parents are such a huge input, but also such an authority figure, when you're at that age. Even other siblings bring lots of input to your brain, except they're rarely taken as seriously as parents'. But approximately when you reach your teens, then a switch occurs. You start taking your friends opinions, along with your own opinion, more seriously. You also don't hang out with your parents as much. And then normally, towards 20, 21 or 22, you start considering mainly your own input, along with maybe your partner's input. That's a approximate and nuanced model, but it was pretty useful to think about. It makes me think of all the sources of what I dare to call MY personality. Which is not MINE at all, when I come to think of it. It's mostly due to my parents, siblings and high school friends. An idea that's both humbling and fascinating. I love those !

First of all, thanks for clarifying. Now back to my thought experiments. Please bear with me here. This "form of matter without consciousness" you're talking about... IF it was ever created and IF it could procreate with a normal human being, (1) would the offspring be a human being ? (2) would the offspring be "forms of matter without consciousness" ? or (3) would it be somewhere in the middle ? I think the question is clear. I think you have no excuse to dodge it this time. No excuse whatsoever. Like, none. So please. PLEASE ! Answer (1), or (2), or (3) Thank you.

I think I can point out three major improvements I personally made in finding like-minded people. Here they are : Finding more things interesting. Becoming more interesting. Expressing my passions more. The first one is about openmindedness. For example, I was really obsessed about philosophy, science and self-help. So, subconsciously, I was rejecting everyone who wasn't. But then I learned to listen to people. I started asking them questions about their passions. And I found myself becoming genuinely interested in almost everyone. Which has improved my life a lot ! The second one is about charisma, passion, or something like this, I'm not totally sure yet. Anyway, I undoubtedly became more interesting to people around me. I'm still talking about self-help and science a lot, but now I'm way better at catching people's attention. Maybe it's due to a mix of mindfulness, self-esteem, empathy and passion. The third one is about extroversion. The more I observe myself, the more I accept myself. And the more I accept myself, the more I assume people will also accept me. So I feel less and less fear in spontaneously expressing my weird personality. There's less filters now. Words come out by themselves. So I hope my story helps. It's incredible what only 1 year of listening to self-help videos did to my life. I'm so grateful for all the amazing teachers out there ! My social circle is so much more fulfilling than it used to be...

Personally, my deepest friendships with women always turned out to reveal some underlying feeling of attraction. From her and from me. And this attraction turned out to be, in a sense, a kind of fuel for chemistry. What I mean by that is that the attraction seemed to make us both enjoy each other's company a bit more. We both had a bit more fun together, because we were extra interested in having a good time with each other. Which is great. But as with any fuel, we have to be careful. Either we'll burn it out someday, or it'll simply explode prematurely. Both these cases are sad. Very sad. But even though it has good sides and bad sides right now, I know I'll be able to have totally healthy and deep friendships with women one day. I'm just not there yet. I just need to validate and appreciate myself so much that I don't need any women's validation or appreciation anymore. Or I just need to dissolve the whole issue with some spiritual work. So the answer is YES ! We can become friends, but only if we're actualized enough to avoid the traps of our own sense of lack.

@shouldnt You look like you're feeling a little better than when you started the thread So I'll take this opportunity to be a little rougher than my last comment. So here I go : This thread you created could be an excellent way of doing emotional purge. But it has to be used in the right way. And there's one major mistake that lots of people make (including me). The mistake is to focus on something else than your own emotions. Yes I read your comments. Yes you courageously expressed lots of emotion. Congratulations for that, that helps. However, it seems to me that your comments only contain a small part of emotional description. The rest is some description of the situation, of the people involved. There's some judgement towards yourself and the people involved. Some reasons why things happened the way they happened. Some hope you have on how it should turn out. And all that is fine. But if you wanted, you could increase your emotional release by focusing a bit more on what you feel. Describing your emotions in detail. Describing the physical symptoms associated with them. Describing what the voice in your head says when you're feeling bad. And I would also encourage everyone here to do so as well. If we all focus a bit more on what you feel, instead of who did what and who deserves what, this thread will be far more efficient in the purpose it was created for.

build a human being that's not alive Secondly, you seem to believe that an exact atomic replica of a human being would be somehow different than a human being. But it wouldn't. If you got replicated, your family wouldn't notice. Your dog wouldn't notice. A doctor wouldn't notice. A physicist wouldn't notice. The human replica itself wouldn't notice that he's a different person than you. He would have your memories, your personality, your behavior. You would be, in a sense, the only one to notice, because you would still be inside your original body. And this replica would be outside of you, claiming to be you. And it seems you don't have any argument whatsoever as to why that replica wouldn't be alive. In a sense, you're already a human creation. It's just that your parents didn't have to be engineers to create you, if you know what I mean And no matter how you're created (in a bed or in a lab), you still exhibit the same properties if you have the same atoms. You are the arrangement of your atoms. So this replica would simply be another you. Not more or less alive. Not more or less of anything. The only difference is that you can't see through its eyes or hear through its ears, because it has an independent stream of consciousness. I hope you find some logic in this thought. I hope you won't get distracted by a small flaw in my argumentation. I hope you will see it as a whole and make a openminded but yet skeptical attent at really understanding what I mean.

Okay, allow me to propose two thought experiments. Let's say we replicate a human sperm and a human egg cell to the exact atomic level. Will they become alive when the two fuse ? Will it create an alive human being ?; If it's yes, please tell me. And in that case, the second thought experiment is useless. But If it's no : Then let's say it grows into an adult human being, which is not alive. He can talk, walk or make friends, just like any alive human being. And nobody suspects a thing, because it's a perfect replica. But he's not alive at all. So this adult meets someone else, and they have a baby together. Is the baby alive ? Semi-alive ? Or not alive ? Please answer with one of the three choices. Please, just please.

... yet.

@shouldnt After all those great pieces of advice you just received (good job guys), I almost have nothing to add. So I'll give you some META-ADVICE instead ! hehehe As you may have noticed, some pieces of advice we're too advanced for you, and some were not advanced enough. So which one to take ? Personally, I found useful to go with the piece of advice that seems just a little too advanced for me. Why ? Because it won't be THAT hard for you to get there, but you'll still need to reshape some of your mindsets. It will probably take you a few weeks or months to really understand the advice deeply, but by doing so, you'll start to see reality in a brand new way. So my meta-advice is to go with the advice that's just a little bit too much for your current paradigm. Just a little bit too deep for you to fully understand it yet. But still, don't fool yourself : growth is difficult. Exciting, but still difficult. So, with that said, I'd like to say I admire your courage. A lot. You made yourself perfectly vulnerable by sharing your emotions like this. And I think I speak for everybody here when I say this : You're a good person. You're doing your best. You don't deserve all this suffering. You literally have more potential that you can even imagine. And whatever happens, you'll always find a reason to progress towards the incredible person you know you can become.

I don't see why we couldn't use similar technologies to fix the damage we've done to the earth. Death is the most horrible tragedy there is. Isn't it ? And why 100 years ? It's so arbitrary to me. Why not 20 years ? Why not 10 years ? I'm not inside your head, but to me, it seems like you're promoting the way life worked so far, just because it's how it worked so far. Do you value nature just because it was there before us ? I don't. I value the happiness of conscious beings, no matter how much the universe has to change in order to get there. My basic plan is to make the universe alive. Then make the universe conscious. Then make the universe happy. And every atom is welcome to the party ;D So basically, we don't agree a lot hahaha. At least now. But I'm open. Maybe you're right. I surely have a lot to think about after reading your comment. Which was really well articulated, by the way.

Haha awesome debate, guys ! Pretty epic... @WHOAMI As harsh as I may have sounded, actually I'm sure you're a pretty intelligent person. Sharing your arguments might open my mind, and also bring lots of value to this conversation. Please feel free to do so if you like. @Kelley White Great comment by the way ! No we don't... You're right. I'm getting carried away by my rants again Let me correct myself : We don't know if AI is going to solve mankind's biggest problems. I sure hope so, but hope is not evidence at all. I'm not sure I understand the question... But I'll be happy to answer if you rephrase it a little, please @Neill Bolton Thanks for correcting me there. I totally agree. For the purpose of the conversation, my definition of immortality was : Having (1) a continuous stream of consciousness, without interruption, and (2) not having parts of my brain modified in a sudden and major way, until I decide to end my own life. But as you pointed out, almost everything is wrong with this definition : 1) It means going to sleep equals dying, because it interrupts the stream of consciousness. Which is creepy as f*%k hahaha 2) What classifies as a "sudden" and "major" brain modification ? What doesn't ? Where do we draw the line ? Do brain implants equal death ? Does the normal brain evolution equal death ? As you implied, the concepts of immortality and death don't even make sense. But I'll still kind of ignore your comment, because I don't want the whole debate to "die" just yet... @Lha Bho I would. If you're forced to live forever, then the choice of dying is removed. Which sucks. And this is purely spontaneous and speculative, but I tend to think that the ultimate goal of intelligence is to increase the number of choices it has.

Don't mindlessly compare us to a nuclear explosion please. That makes your fallacious argument both an insult to logic and to astrophysics. Except if you can back it up In which case I humbly invite you to do so... @WHOAMI First of all, I'm sure you could open that mind of yours and at least play around with the possibility of immortality. Secondly, the future is built by visionary ideas, not by pessimistic one-liners. In fact, your views on biology are probably "all gonna die" way before humans do. Thirdly, life expectancy is always increasing a couple of days each year. As soon as this increase reaches 1 year per year, humans will suddenly become basically immortal. Won't they ? And please note that people don't die of old age. People die of diseases and accidents. And, in the last centuries, most diseases and sources of accidents have been solved already. We're just left with the complicated ones now. The ones that even teams of researchers can't figure out by themselves. So we're pretty lucky that AI is coming to save the day ! Soon, no human problem is going to be too complicated for those godly algorithms...

What values are the most meaningful to you ? If you could choose ten values that you would embody perfectly, which ones would create the most fulfillment in your life ? Here are mine : - Consciousness - Contribution - Peace Of Mind - Connection - Ambition - Creativity - Personal Growth - Excellence - Honesty - Independance

@Actualizer If you're refering to Leo's work though, one of his favorite affirmations was "I'm independent of the good or the bad opinion of others" So I think the important thing is the picture that comes to mind when you say the sentence. For example, it seems to me that "I'm not poor" brings to mind a picture of poorness. Of lack. "I'm unaffected" seems to evoke detachment, freedom. But the interpretations I just made are quite subjective and easily debatable. So feel free to develop your opinion, I always love it when people challenge my ideas. And thanks for trying help

In French, "Bonjour" literally means "Good Day". And when I was young, that was a problem for me. Because I wanted to say Hello to people, without necessarily wishing them a good day. What if the person's was a murderer ? What if their "Good Day" was spent abusing children, or manipulating people. Why would I wish them a good day ? Basically, I was so obsessed about honesty that it became hard for me to interact normally with people. For me, small talk wasn't a "small" problem at all. But a few years ago, I finally found a solution to it. I had to work on my personal dictionary. I had to split my definition of truth in two parts. Practical Truth and Metaphysical Truth. Practical Truths are the useful ones. The ones people use in their day to day life. The ones that are "true enough" to help you get tangible results in life. For example : My laptop is in front of me right now. This is true enough. Sure, if you gave me 30 minutes and a joint, I could find a hundred ways to make that statement philosophically debatable or scientifically inaccurate. But if you wanted to borrow my laptop, I probably wouldn't answer "I don't really know what a laptop is. Or if any of us really exist. Or what borrowing even means". I would probably say "Yeah, here it is". Which is not metaphysically accurate, but still practically accurate. Metaphysical Truths are the ones that survive any kind of questioning. They are absolutely and fundamentally true. Unfortunately, during my own pursuit of truth, I reached a point where nothing is certain enough to be classified as a Metaphysical Truth. So I can't give examples. Even statements like "Something exists" doesn't seem solid enough for me. But some religious folks might include "God exists". Some spiritual folks might include "The real self is nothingness". Some scientific folks might include "Evolution is real". No problem with that... I want to hear your thoughts on the subject ! What do you classify as Metaphysical Truth ? Do you split Practical Truths in subcategories, depending on their level of consciousness, or the level of personal development needed to access them ? Do you see totally different levels than the two I proposed ? Do you think about those things as much as I do ? And finally, I wish you a good day everyone ! Even the murderers...

OMG @Isle of View I forgot to mention this, but Metaphysical is only the best word I could find so far. I just took for granted that the field of metaphysics is interested in "What is true". So I went on with that word and I hoped people would understand what I meant. Yes ! And that's why the existence of experience as a whole is a really good candidate for a Metaphysical Truth. Because, yes, experience feels like it exists. I do see colors, I do hear sounds and I do feel touch. I mean, every possible reasoning supports the existence of experience. Trying to deny experience is totally illogical and crazy. But you know what ? I think I like crazy...

@Epiphany_Inspired I think it's because you trust your own opinion more than you trust other people's. When someone compliments you, it's easier to doubt it. The person could be dishonest, manipulative, deluded, wrong, or could simply have a different opinion than yours. But it's more believable when it comes from you. Especially when it's repeated daily. And especially over the course of months. It's like you're making sure your subconscious mind is stuck in a corner. You make sure it can't go anywhere, and then you hit it over and over until it surrenders. I bet nobody ever complimented you like this. Or you would have been creeped out by now

@vizual Interesting point. I'm not sure if I understand all of it. If an enlightened person says something like : "That laptop is not really a separate thing, but part of the whole experience", will this statement refer to a real Metaphysical Truth ? Personally, I think it might. But I'm curious, what do you think ? Don't worry, it doesn't make much sense to me either. Anyway, I now believe anyone deserves a good day. So that's another alternative solution to the issue. And I like your views on intention. You should create a topic on that. That would be great !

@Isle of View Yes, you're right. Metaphysical Truth IS ALWAYS Practically True. But Practical Truth IS NOT ALWAYS Metaphysically True. The two bars are raised at different heights. So if you jump over the highest bar, you automatically jump over the lowest one too. Scientific Truths, to me, are very Practically True, but not yet Metaphysically True. And all the rest of your comment is probably my best candidate for actual Metaphysical Truth. And well explained. Good job. All that I'm missing now, is an actual experience of it. Which I don't have because I'm far from enlightenment.