Forestluv

Can you tell me one thing in your life right now that is not hell?

I’ve experience many different senses of an observer. It can be comforting, grounding, liberating. Yet also destabilizing, uncomfortable and anxious. I know the anxiety of being afraid of being stuck in a certain state. Whether it is a mental or physical state. The sense that I want out, I can’t get out and it’s never going to end. At the physical level, it’s the body’s fight-or-flight system that gets activated. Sometimes, I can relax and let it do it’s thing, yet “fighting” it often generally amplifies. I found it can be helpful to surrender into it, yet I also try to be open if there is body wisdom trying to communicate something. Sometimes there is not much to it, like with the anxiety I feel standing on the edge of a cliff. Sometimes there is something deeper and I go visit with that “person” activating the anxiety and fear and sit down with him lovingly.

Yep. John Lennon is deep green. I was in Central Park a couple years ago and he still has a presence there. Both in physical memoirs and visitors as well as in spirit.

From the perspective of the human mind, the dream can transform. We imagine, give meaning, and construct memories. It can feel like leaving the dream, then realization may arise that we left one dream and entered another dream within a larger dream. It’s like saying “there must be a way out of ISness”. From a human mind that contextualizes what is, it sure does seem like what is is continually changing. Look around, what is now is different than what was yesterday. Yet there is also an unchanging IS in which there is no way out. Try to exit IS right now. Whatever you do IS. You can mediate, jump in a lake, hide, do drugs, feel great, feel awful, create thought stories of an ego, create thought stories of destroying those thought stories of an ego. . . and on and on. . . all IS.

@Rob_91 It gets contextualized as an experience by the human mind, yet at the human level this can be deeply profound, insightful opening up space for expansion and growth. So in one context, it’s just another state of consciousness/experience. Yet in other context, it’s definitely not just another state of consciousness/experience. I’m glad it worked out well for you ? ?

@Kushu2000 Yes. A few. It has recently been discussed in the below mega thread.

@Goodpeace It depends on the individual’s experience, physiology, sensitivity and baseline consciousness level. I did daily 5-Meo for several weeks and it was a lot to handle for the mind and body. I would be careful with extended daily doses.

If you want to test environmental effects on performance on a test, the most important experiment is to change environment. These studies did not do that. These studies look at environmental impact in healthy environments from childhood into adulthood. The environments are not “different”. The authors conclusions you state are based on SHARED environments and the authors stress this point and even ask the reader not to misrepresent the data by considering it to be different environments. Have you read the paper and put the conclusion you quote into context? Or did you simply cut and paste a statement from the abstract, assuming you know what it means without reading what the data and authors actually say about it in the paper? The conversation is not about wether IQ tests are biased toward one person with lots of resources over another person with lots of resources. The conversation is about whether IQ tests are biased toward a person with lots of resources over a person with few resources. The studies did not address that at all and these studies are not applicable to this domain. Regarding the studies you link: Neurological maturation follows an internal developmental genetic program that is influenced by the external environment. Different genes are involved at different stages of development. Genetics will interact with the environment to different extents during different stages of development. The article you cite includes studies in which twins were in shared or similar environments. It is saying that within shared or similar environments the genetic program is influenced by the environment to different degrees at different stages of development. This is somewhat interesting, yet not at all surprising. Importantly, the data cannot be extrapolated to more general conclusions that environment does not have considerable influence because these studies were done in a very narrow set of environmental conditions. The authors state: ” It is important to specify the populations to which any results can be generalized and not misinterpret what they mean. The samples were drawn almost exclusively from Western industrial democracies. These settings have characteristic environments. Only a few of the participants were raised in real poverty or by illiterate parents, and all study participants had access to the contemporary educational programs typical of those societies. This is the domain to which we can generalize.” The data in these studies cannot be extrapolated outside of this narrow domain. Generally, when people discuss the environmental impact on IQ, they are not talking about environmental impact of two people in essentially the same environment. The criticism is to those that are over-stating the genetic basis of IQ because the tests are biased toward individuals in healthy environments with resources. The discussion isn’t about environmental impact between two people with with lots of resources. It’s about the environmental impact on a person with lots of resources and a person that lacks resources. A person that is in a good environment and a person in a bad environment. The studies you linked do not address this and one cannot make any conclusions within this domain. Doing so is a misrepresentation of the data. The authors themselves ask the reader not to do this. This was your original statement to which you linked the article: ”Identical twins growing up in different environments (one good, one bad) will score the different scores when they are young. However, by age 60, their IQs will be identical again” You are misrepresenting the data of the studies you link in a way the authors themselves specifically asked you not to do. They specifically said the studies did NOT involve different environments of “one good, one bad” and specifically said the studies do not apply to that domain. The authors themselves say that doing so is a misrepresentation of the data. This is directly from the authors of the article you cite!

@possibilities Good luck!

If one designs a test that is dependent on development, the correlation will get stronger with development. For example, if a test involves abstract thinking, the correlation will be stronger when the twins are 20 than when they were 12, because the prefrontal cortex involved in abstract thinking begins to develop during teenage years. If the researchers used multiple tests for different ages and tried to normalize the tests as one set of IQ comparisons, it is comparing apples to oranges and loses relevance since each age-related test is assaying an age-dependent trait. It’s possible that researchers have designed methodology to address these concerns, yet I didn’t see it in the paper you linked and unaware if others have done so. As I’ve already stated, environment didn’t have a big impact because the environments were too similar. Even the authors state this in the discussion. If you want to test environmental impacts you don’t use similar environments. The researchers have designed tests that are able to detect a genetic input. Yet how strong the genetic input is was not established in the study due to the environments being similar. Environment has an input, these studies could not pick up the degree of environmental input. Yet the data does suggest that their tests are not highly sensitive to environmental input because slightly different environments did not show a large effect. Imagine testing the impact of temperature on iPhone performance. You test one iPhone at 72 degrees and another iPhone at 80 degrees. The phones perform about the same. We can state that minor differences in temperature did not have an effect, yet we cannot say that temperature does not have an effect. We would need to test a wider range of temperatures - for example temperatures ranging from 0 degrees to 110 degrees. The researchers in the article did not do this and it weakens the research. The reason they didn’t do it is because they are not allowed to intentionally place adopted kids into harsh environments. For determining ratios of genetic vs environmental input, twin studies are relatively weak and outdated. It’s like using a microscope from the 1950s. We have much more powerful technology today such as genome-wide association screens. I would recommend doing a search for “intelligence gwas”. I’m sure there have been dozens of studies conducted.

I’m heading to sleep now and can’t unsee that image. . .

@cetus56 I’ve woken up and been unable to “catch” the dream. I hadn’t considered that one reason is it doesn’t relate to waking reality. Almost like dream tripping. I’m going to keep that in mind in the future as I try to catch dreams.

@cetus56 Last week my first reality check (blowing through the nose) worked and I became dream conscious. The dream involved military invading the town I lived in. I was like “If this is a dream, I can play along and then go all super hero , kick their asses and save the town.” But the stakes seemed so high. What if I’m wrong and it’s not a dream? It wouldn’t work out well. I didn’t take the chance . . . I woke up and was like “really?? My first lucid dream is about confronting a hostile militia on my own and unarmed? What kind of twisted joke is that?”. How about something with a super model and a beach on Belize?

@Uncover The love and kindness of buying your gf a chocolate bar is a wonderful trait. Forgetting to actually give it to her is secondary. And there are two ways of looking at it. . . Perhaps you forgot to give it to her because you were present with her in the moment, sharing time together. On the other hand, forgetfulness can cause practical problems - stuff like forgetting her birthday or forgetting to feed the dog is more problematic. You could use a notepad. One thing I do is occasionally pause through the day and ask “Am I forgetting something?”. Sometimes, this jogs my memory.

@possibilities One key for me is to have a dream journal near my bedside and set an intention to write down every dream. As well, to set an intention to remember the dreams as I fall asleep. I write down every fragment of dreams I remember and if I can’t remember I write about that too. This signals to the subconscious that conscious awareness of dreams is important.

Two similar threads have been merged

@possibilities Pre-trans fallacy.

@GenuinePerspectiveXC I didn’t say genetics did not play a role. First, if one constructs a test that is dependent on development, of course the correlation will strengthen with development. Second, the twins in that study were raised in similar environments. Of course their traits will have a positive correlation. Even the authors discuss this in the discussion section. Third, twin studies were cutting edge like 70 years ago ? . We have much more advanced technology to study this: such as micro arrays and genome-wide association screens. These would have much stronger statistical power than twin studies. In terms of twin studies, here is what a genetically-determined trait looks like: Huntington disease is a neurological disease which manifests in an individual in their 30s. It is a genetic trait, not influenced by environment. You could put one twin in a wonderful environment. And the other twin in an awful environment. They will both always heave Huntington disease. Other traits have a mixture of genetic and environmental (such as schizophrenia). For twin studies, the key is to put each twin in a DIFFERENT environment, not a similar environment. In this case, one twin would go to a wealthy, loving, nurturing home with a healthy diet, community and school system. The other twin goes into poverty and undergoes, abuse, trauma, malnutrition, poor education, gangs in the community etc. Then do the test and compare how each twin did. This would be a key experiment in twin studies, yet it is difficult to get a large enough sample size with statistical power. It is unethical to design the experiment by intentionally placing a child into abusive poverty. And this rarely occurs naturally since adoption protocols screen against this.

@possibilities I use the term “you” because that is the level of this conversation. There is no “you” that has consciousness. This has not revealed itself yet.

Unless you used mini-doses, that would be an immense amount for the mind and body to handle and would require a type of fitness and expertise. It’s like asking if it’s safe to climb Mt. Everest.

At times, the frequency was difficult for the mind and body - other times it was a non-issue. Anxiety has arisen at times to various degrees.

@possibilities You are becoming conscious that there is something more. The thought stories are not helping this evolution.

This isn’t accurate. Even if we assume IQ tests are an objective measure of a measureable trait - it’s still inaccurate. There are two main inaccuracies; First, it assumes that environment influences a trait early in life such that genetically identical individuals in two different environments can show different manifestations of a complex trait. This part is true. The part that is false is saying that these same individuals will then show an identical manifestation of a complex trait in a purely genetic mechanism. Thats not how it works. Secondly, the statement fails to consider epigenetics. Even if we assume the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences are identical through the life of the twins, the neurological gene expression profiles of the two twins will be different due to environmental impacts on epigenetics (even without environmental insults to the brain). There will of course be similarities between their gene expression profiles and structure of their neural networks, likely more similarities than non-twins. Yet there will be considerable differences such that it would be inaccurate and misleading to claim they would show an identical manifestation of a complex genetic trait. As a general comment: I’ve noticed a lot of users in this thread using terms like same/different/identical. These terms can have nuances, for example there can be degrees along continuums as well as relative meaning on context. Saying two things are “the same” can be true in one context and false in another context. A lack of of understanding of this will allow unconscious assumptions and miscommunication. Leo made a video on this titled “sameness vs difference”.

I didn’t say “can’t”, I said it makes it harder.

Yes indeed. Orange sees Yellow.