Carl-Richard

You could've also learned about Jesus and had a similar conversion. Any framework that puts degenerate behavior lower than an alternative could suffice.

As long as you acknowledge that the evidence is exclusively based on Western cultures (and 9SEDT, Piaget, etc., are not exempt from this), then you're alright.

Oh wow, it's almost like we're in a human body right now and we can't talk about the human body without being in a human body, so it shapes how we talk about it. Or like how we're in a community right now so it shapes how we talk about the community. Or we're conforming so it shapes how we talk about conformism. Self-reference is not deep.

This statement you made is ironically the most conformist statement I've ever seen.

Staph. Conformity does not equal bad.

Yuuuuge. But for real doe, getting an understanding for what language is is not that deep. But you can develop a deep understanding of language on top of that. As with anything.

Breh language is not that deep. It's symbols in a coherent framework. Vocabulary is the "what" of the symbols (the words, the gestures), and the grammar is the "how" (how do the symbols relate to each other). Symbols point to things. So using language means using a coherent framework for pointing to things. Coherent means the words/gestures (symbols) point to things in a consistent way, and that the rules of grammar are consistent. If somebody uses any of these inconsistently, you have a problem of communication.

Ok slow down

A couple of years ago, I found out Spiral Dynamics has a problem: sampling bias. Specifically, Clare Graves' essay samples consisted of only North Americans (primarily white, affluent college kids), and Don Beck's "samples" (I can't find anything on the methods he used) consisted of only North Americans and South Africans. Generally, the sample is biased towards Western cultures (and more importantly, it completely lacks Eastern cultures). When I first learned about this, I thought maybe it's not a big problem, because dozens of other models (although with similar sampling bias) have come to similar conclusions (Piaget, Holberg, Loevinger, etc.). However, these models generally do not include the equivalent of Turquoise. And this is exactly what turns out to be the problem: Turquoise itself seems to be the result of sampling bias. When Western people reach Green-Yellow, they get statistically more familiar with New Age ideas, particularly Eastern-inspired non-dual mysticism. This is because the West significantly repressed its mysticism for the last millennia, so you generally need to import it from other cultures to discover it (which obviously happens more often at Green-Yellow). You would expect these people to describe it as their highest value, which according to Graves' methodology would be their highest stage, in this case Turquoise. However, non-dual mysticism has of course existed all throughout history and at all stages of development. This is self-evident as you're importing these ideas from ancient religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. Now, if the creators of SD had used samples from the cultures you're importing the ideas from, mainly Eastern cultures, then they could've easily ruled out mysticism as being its own stage, because again, it's essentially present at all stages in these cultures and not just at later stages. Had they done that, Turquoise would clearly be seen as an artefact of sampling bias. You can make the same case from a theoretical perspective, without relying on empirical data. For example, Hanzi Freinacht in The Listening Society, has pointed out that Turquoise fails to provide any critique towards Yellow (which I agree with). More specifically, it doesn't provide a higher level that "transcends and includes" the previous stage. It doesn't address any of the problems of the previous stage. It only sidesteps them, as I've pointed out, through mysticism. And maybe not coincidentally, Hanzi refers to Turquoise as New-Agey "holistic" or "integral" people. So to summarize, "Turquoise" is essentially what you get when you build SD based on data from Western educated youth and not much else. Its purported contributions to Yellow is not substantially different from New Age mysticism, and it does not critique or solve any of the problems of the previous stage.

This topic essentially claims Stage Turquoise is a product of a culturally-dependent sampling bias (i.e. had the sample included other cultures, the stage would not exist): This post in particular says there is also a problem with the sample size (it cannot be expected to capture Turquoise to the claimed extent): And this post says Susanne Cook-Greuter's 9SEDT does not fix these flaws: And here is an earlier topic going more into the problems with sampling bias as well as the cultural theoretical assumptions: And here is a long debate on 9SEDT that puts the above observations to the test and elaborates on some of them:

(God damnit I clicked "Bump topic" on accident. Nevermind me).

There's like a spectrum of fakeness all the way from the most mundane shit to the most synchronous things your mind can produce, but that's also essentially fake or an act you're putting on as an ego, as a self speaking and talking about stuff. Learn to accept the act in all its forms.

The last three or so New Years eve was alone but today I was with basically all my friends from high school. And I was the least sober one even while completely sober (kind of a joke but you know 😉). It's funny how much you pick up state from others in a let's say not so sober mood 😆

I'm a bit thirsty myself.

See number 9: http://youtube.com/post/UgkxJVSU0F03amtu3bEitwxh4GrStjiAz9j5?si=22XKp9KR69F6q-v7

Where were you before you were born, and where will you go after you die?

Yellow would ask: What does Pyrrhonism serve? What goals and values do you have and is it compatible with those goals and values?

The way they double the arpeggioed tritone chord with just a halfstep is so evil and brilliantly executed in this shot (and the rest of the song is just masterfully done): 17:10 (the video starts a little earlier for context)

"Science-based lifting" is to use scientific studies to conclude which ways to train are the most optimal. It's a term primarily used in a setting of hypertrophy/bodybuilding training, and it's here it is often the most problematic. Why it is problematic can be boiled down to essentially one phrase: "moving your body is not like swallowing a pill". People tend to point to the scientific rigor of so called "high quality research designs" like randomized controlled trials by saying that is how we develop drugs and medical treatments, and these have been shown to demonstrate real effects that map on to the world accurately. Well, firstly, let's explore even that for a minute: SSRIs have been shown to be only 2% more effective than placebo. And that's assuming that the study design is accurate and can tell us something true about those effects, which can also be questioned. After all, who are the studies conducted on? Are those people's characteristics always applicable to any given scenario? Are they always relevant for you and your bodily functioning? Maybe not. That aside, you also have the problem of the replication crisis which affects all of behavioral science, not just psychology or the "softer" social science disciplines like it is often portrayed as, but it affects medicine, biology, biotechnology, pharmacology. And why that is the case could boil down to simply "humans are complicated". And what is even more complicated than humans popping a pill? That is humans moving their bodies, and maybe especially lifting weights for hypertrophy. Lifting weights is not just lifting weights. It's every cell in your body coordinating to produce complex movement patterns. To even conceive of this theoretically, forget about the empirical problems for a moment, is a wild assertion of confidence. You would essentially be claiming omniscience like a God. And that's what science-based lifters have essentially done to their analytical mind and by an even more painfully wild and confident extension their empirical capability, not just in interpreting science but in claiming to have produced valuable and truth-uncovering research designs. And this ties into the second but related problem of ecological validity and external validity. Lifting weights is not just lifting weights yes in this sense that that phrase belies an immense world of complexity that is generally not appreciated for what it is, but it's also in the sense that the weights and the movement patterns are not the only thing that is part of your training. It's the gym, the surroundings, the people, the knowledge of the person lifting the weights, the motivation and rigor of the person lifting the weights, the shape and size of the body of the person lifting the weights, the length and width of the limbs; any characteristic that you could describe as merely tangentially related, is deeply intertwined in the outcomes of training. And this is where the "soccer moms in an 8-week study" critique comes in, and it's not a trivial or merely funny or facetious critique. Do you honestly think it is a good idea to base your idea of what is "optimal lifting" on people who are on average and certainly compared to the average hyper-obsessed gym bro 1. not at all knowledgeable in lifting, 2. not at all motivated to lift (at any considerable level of intensity or rigor), 3. not the same size or shape as you, and 4. maybe most importantly generally lifting in a controlled and alien setting where a scientist is standing behind you shouting "start", "stop", "start", "stop", at every rep, where some designs use absolutely unheard of training setups like using one technique with one arm and another technique with the other arm for those 8 weeks, where even quantifying states like "true failure" vs "3 reps in reserve" is mere hocus-pocus philosophical conjecture? And you then compile various of different kinds of studies like this that mostly contradict each other in terms of the overall conclusions and you end up with a marginal number of "51% in favor of this training method over this". And this is what is "most optimal". It is an absolute charade, a circus, pure pseudo-intellectual masturbatory, below AI-slop levels of investigation and conclusion. It's not to say that all of exercise science is pseudoscience. There are valueable studies on e.g. best ways to improve VO2 max which are much more similar to a physiological "pill-taking" mechanism where dose and response are much more simply controlled. But movement patterns, hypertrophy training, based on female mid-40s RCTs, compiled into a sludge of marginally favored conclusions, and then presented as "the most optimal way to train", is not as much a pseudoscience as it is a failure of analytical thinking and logical inference. Science-based lifting is not really as much a science as it is a kind of metaphysics, a theological doctrine, that more interprets and concludes based on a set of assumptions rather than based on the actual observations. That is why "The Church of Science-Based Lifting" is a fitting and ironic name. Because that is also the kind of thinking that is associated with it: "what does the science say?" "what does the book say?" "what is the most optimal way?" "what is the answer?" "what is the thing we should follow, the one true way, the path, the one espoused by the Churchmen with the P and the H and the Ds?" It's ironic that the more "science-based", the less thinking you seem to have to do, the more you just have to listen, deny criticism, bow to authority. What is the true and honest way to train, is philosophy-based lifting; being aware of the assumptions underlying your thinking, not making poorly justified conclusions based on observation, and simply working with what you have, which in the case of hypertrophy is mainly yourself and your own experience, your sense, your own body and mind.

You're making it seem like the fatigue is for nothing. But even if it was the case that the 1 RM set itself was sub-optimally hypertrophic, you could imagine that becoming adapted to the immense fatigue could convert to hypertrophic work in other sets. You have to look at the bigger picture. It's like how in nutrition, it's not only the three standard macronutrients and essential micronutrients that affect nutrition and how these nutrients work. Other things you consume also effect it, but not just things you consume. The body is after all an interconnected whole. I don't believe "slow and controlled" as distinct from "flow in control" (another word for the "entire set is one rep" cue) is intuitive. I've seen how Mike trains, how he makes people train, and I've trained that way myself for about a year. It does have a kind of intellectual appeal, and it seems "smart" in kind of an engineering sense and it might even feel kind of satisfying, but then I have to return to the example of teenage noobs who have to be literally held back from instantly injurying themselves just from the sheer power that exists there intuitively. The fact of the matter is that intuitive is intense, but of course that is not to say inexperienced teen lifters embody what is a reasonable, cultivated lifting style. The answer lies somewhere in the middle.

The effective reps are condensed into one rep. And if the worry is that it's hard to know if you could have gone harder for that one rep, if you progressively creep up towards a 1 RM through progressive overload with more than one rep, or you always attempt more than one rep even if you'll most likely fail, that problem doesn't arise. I've done 1 RM maxes like this and it made me sore as hell the next day: If you intuitively aim at your goal, I believe so. You can lift in a "hypertrophic maximizing way" that is in flow and has high intensity and it could look different from merely throwing the weight up. For example, when I do tricep pulldowns, I don't usually try to yank the rope down like I'm trying to destroy the machine. I rather try to make the burn as severe as possible. Triceps pulldowns is actually one exercise that is particularly good for the "your entire set is one rep" cue, and it is generally not a "move weight" kind of movement but rather a quite constricted and firm movement pattern.

Have you tried working in a windowless room full of mirrors? That's what Mike Israetel does and he used to struggle with ADHD.

When you're stuck making Blue comments.

Well yeah. It's interesting that when cutting like 10-20% of your calories but you keep training the same, suddenly you're in danger of losing muscle, meanwhile cutting 88% of your training volume putatively leads to zero muscle loss. In WSM 2025, 40% of the final events were max weight events. They usually sit at around 15% though in the last 20 years. But you generally have to be well-rounded to be the very best. Mariusz Pudzianowski was an anomaly. Yep. Bodybuilders are sometimes told by their coaches to cut mass to fit into a weight class that is the most aesthetically appealing for their frame. Yeah, well, that's not on me, but on the "science-based" lifters. They are the ones doing the unusual thing. Very rarely if ever in a scientific study do you see a claim at the end that says "this is the most optimal method that exists". What you usually get is just "here are the results, here are the limitations, here are some careful conclusions and future directions". For example, you might have a study that suggests that a treatment method is efficacious for treating a certain illness. Or that a drug showed an effect on x variable. But the claim "most optimal compared to everything else", is scientifically radioactive. It's ironically pre-rational. The rational position is to present the results that were actually discovered. To then later gather a bunch of studies with generally entirely different methodologies, with statistically patchy results, and then creating a combined summary that modestly hints in one direction, and then claim "this is the most optimal method", that is also scientifically radioactive. Meta-analyses and systematic reviews also have Limitations sections. Rarely do they ever make sweeping claims across entire fields. That's what expert talking heads do based on their feel. And even if they are very humble and transparent in the way they do it, if the entire field is essentially in a crisis (which is basically my claim), that humility and transparency doesn't mean much. It only reveals exactly the flaws of the field. It will lead to whatever you feel like doing. But it will generally lead you away from "slow and controlled" and more towards "flow and intensity". Whether that means high weight low reps or low weight high reps is probably neither here nor there. You could definitely train in a way that is relatively more characterized by flow and intensity with both high reps and low reps. But I personally find myself drawn to not necessarily 1 RM (I've actually never trained in a way to specifically maximize 1 RM) but lower rep ranges (12-15), which some may not consider low, but it is lower than doing for example 30 pushups. I had an argument with a friend around 6 years ago about whether a gym membership is worth it and if bodyweight exercises are all you need. Even then, I pointed to "there is just something special about doing really heavy squats, the rush you feel, the feeling of intensity".

GPT that too. My impression is that the top bodybuilders and top strongmen share FFM both in hypothetical on and off season, I don't see why the strongmen would have a harder time in principle keeping muscle were they to slim down. Interestingly, sumo wrestlers have been measured at a similar FFM. That further underscores my point: being the top in anything mass-related, tends to produce same levels of mass. And they also do 1 RM yet same mass. I'll say my spiel again for SBL: if you want to conclude what is "optimal" for hypertrophy, basically all studies that exist are bullshit.