Carl-Richard

"Is Exercise Science a Joke?": I haven't watched it yet but I bet it will be good.

I will. It could have happened before Christmas if I wasn't so busy with the actual thesis and getting sick with the flu a week before deadline 😂 (the universe is such a joke sometimes). That flu stuck with me for a while after too. It will have to be sometime after Christmas as my advisor took vacation recently.

I wrote a MSc on using mindfulness (with music) to treat rumination (persistent, repetitive, self-focused, negative thoughts). I had this belief before I started writing, and it was only strengthened, that 90% of cases where rumination is a serious issue have to be solved through changes in life choices or life situation. If you hate your job, quit your job. If you don't want to be in a relationship, change your relationship. That's actually where your rumination comes from. That's the root of the problem. Of course your mind will tell you something is wrong if you're doing something wrong. That's its job. Using mindfulness techniques to distract you from the symptoms will only provide that; fleeting and moderate symptom relief. Which can be useful for eventually dealing with the root and getting to a place where your mind no longer has a reason to throw up two middle fingers, but you have to indeed deal with the root for that to become the case. The only exception is when you use mindfulness to wildy transform your psychology, which means intense devotion and practice, meditating a minimum 1 hour a day with the goal of literally cracking your mind. Such intense devotion and practice will itself be such an expression of being integrated with your own wants and desires that rumination does not happen; what happens instead is intense obsession or even manic states (which is just the opposite side of rumination: rumination with positive instead of negative thinking just means obsessive, manic thinking). If your actions are aligned with your desires and wants, obsession happens. If your actions are not aligned with your desires and wants, rumination happens. And your desires and wants can be highly complex, layered, flexible, as is the case when you're at higher stages of cognitive and spiritual development, but it is nevertheless the case that if you don't act in line with your desires and wants, you are at conflict with your very being, and that manifests as mental suffering. I'll make sure to bring this understanding to where I'll be doing my work; that there is a difference between "clinical" meditation/mindfulness which is what you do for 5 minutes where you want to forget that your life sucks and you're too scared to do anything about it, vs "religious" meditation/mindfulness which is about essentially transcending your human mind and ceasing the identification with the very thing that thinks those thoughts (the personal self or ego). That said, the study had positive results and we will be publishing it soon.

No.

Let's see how we can best conform to this thread. Meh, actually, neh. Well, actually: My mom has throughout the years talked about the negative health effects of fried or grilled food (how the browning process or charring creates aromatic compounds that are carcinogenic etc.) and that we should try to avoid eating too much of it. Then, in the later years when I eat my bread in the morning, I cut off the crusts (which are of course charred bits of bread). And the times she has seen this, she is like "ah cmon, why you do dis", insinuating it's weird and obsessive because that is not how people usually eat bread (in my country). So choosing to not eat charred food is ok when it comes to things like meat and vegetables, but when it comes to bread, that is suddenly too much. Also, the sheer amount of charred bits in a loaf of bread is probably 10-100x more than in a grilled or fried piece of meat or vegetable.

You're focusing on a particular aspect of life, mostly due to your life situation; the lower part of the stack which we all have but which becomes more visible in some people and some situations. There are remarkable humans out there that you would consider "everyday" humans. The passengers decided to wait to attack the hijackers until they were over a rural area. Why? To save the lives of people they did not know if they were to crash. You know another thing? They decided to cast a vote on whether to attack them or sit and wait for the odd chance that they would come out of there alive. Even in such an extreme situation, the five men who lead the charge cared about what the other passengers thought was the best idea. And those men were also willing to risk their lives confronting the hijackers to save themselves and the plane. They were not cowards. And they were thinking clearly in a state where they were almost certain they were going to die if they did not do something. And they were so close to succeeding.

Because do you think an enlightened person spends 24 hours a day obsessing about spiritual practice and "staying present" and trying to not be caught by thoughts? No. They are relaxed, living their life. If you want the rest of your life to be filled with obsessive thinking about a state you're wishing was the case, clinging to it, rather than trusting it, letting go and giving yourself time for the state to flower naturally in a state of rest, by all means, do that. But that won't be enlightenment. Enlightenment is when your baseline state, your default state, the state where you do not aim to achieve anything or wish to change anything, is presence. So giving yourself time to rest allows the enlightened state to flower. That said, moments of intense obsession can be useful for breaking through plateaus and cultivating the state that you want to flower in your baseline, but at the end of the day, you want the baseline to become that state, so sometimes let the baseline be the baseline. Or just drive the obsession to the maximum extent and see how it eventually leads to a glass ceiling that can only be broken by letting go of the practice. That said, there is nothing in it for you in enlightenment anyway (and that's not just a funny joke; it's literally the case). So if you just want an intermediate thing of less thoughts, more meaningful thoughts, a relatively more profound level of existence, then just meditate and do whatever you want (which is not that dissimilar from proper spiritual practice anyway). And even then, give yourself time to rest, because a mind that doesn't rest or constantly tries to suppress its own activity becomes a constipated and stunted mind.

There is no clear undisputed consensus on how much volume is "optimal" for hypertrophy. The problem is two-fold: 1. "Science-based lifting" is mostly not serious people in the field. It's YouTubers either without scientific credentials or with dubious ones making ideological proclaimations, selling programs, apps and coaching services, making "educational videos", trying to make a buck, and their minions slurping it up. 2. Serious people in the field disagree on what "the science" says. And me pointing to the pseudoscientific levels of methodological design and conclusions is simply a way to explain that. Idk, only trained for 14 years, tried both Mike Israetel gimpsuit technique and high intensity training technique for years each. You're free to have an intellectual passion. But that might be all it is.

Yas. Jas.

Bryaning his Johnson 🤡

👋

Thank you

One time I explained how to visualize 4D to my classmates in university during a chemistry class (biology degree). I told them to think of a one dimensional line (or I might've just started at two dimensions when I think about it; anyways). To get to two dimensions, you stack the lines on top of each other so you get a plane (I was showing the stacking motion with my hands). To get to three dimensions, you stack the planes on top of each other so you get a cube. To get to four dimensions, you stack the cubes on top of each other (still showing the stacking motion with my hands). And some were like "🤨 but that doesn't work" and some were like "woow 😲". And then I was like talking about thinking of the fourth dimension as the dimension of time, like in a movie that has frames of "3D" images stacked next to each other, and travelling through the fourth dimension looks like a movie playing (maybe I should've added "from our perspective"). Of course that's not necessarily the case, but it's nevertheless fun to think of it that way.

Started with doobies and quickly graduated to the most MacGyver-looking homemade pipes you could ever imagine and then later bongs, when I realized efficiency was key (with doobs I would frantically vacuum clean them as I could not stand seeing them go up in smoke on the wrong end ). It was a weird cultural thing that my closest friend group were doobie heads while a more peripheral one were bong heads / flutists (pipe boys), and there was like some subtle elitism in the doobie group connected to the process of "rolling" and it being like a badge of honor to be able to do it well. It is also a bit more stealth, stylish and less crackhead-looking (so much so I one time thought it was a good idea to roll it into a cigarette and spark one with one of my friends after a concert while causally sitting on a bench right in the middle of a pretty central city park at night, and we heard somebody walking by who said "holy shit it smells like fucking weed in here". And then when they left, I was like "yeah we should probably leave" 🙈). 🥹

Please elaborate. Your other points did not.

I don't remember having had straight out painful lungs after stopping but I definitely thought that something must have been up with my lungs considering the absolutely infernal fire breathing inhaling-and-holding I had been doing. But I think I largely healed that from being just 20 years old at that time.

Shitting.

If your meditation technique involves for example focusing on a sensation (e.g. the breath), then you should do that during the meditation. Then during the day you should use your mind as it is required. If it happens to be silent, then let it be silent. If it happens to be creative and thinking thoughts, let it do that. I did the mistake back in the day of trying to remain without thoughts 24/7 every waking moment. It made me into a dissociated, dissociable rock-like person. There may be times where it can be useful to bring your practice of thoughtlessness into various daily activities, for example doing active mindfulness practice (e.g. really immersing yourself in the sensations while for example cooking or working out or just lifting objects). But I would then be wary of giving yourself at least some breaks, if not most of the time. Don't make the mistake of turning yourself into a rock and chopping off every train of thought as it occurs as some form of compulsion. Let your mind grow like a tree most of the day. It's more beautiful and natural that way. When identification lessens as your practice deepens, you won't necessarily think less thoughts, but less negative, spiraling, counterproductive thoughts. Your thoughts will become more meaningful, and more subtle, and more bullet-like in their speed and precision, almost to where you don't even register them as thoughts anymore, but your mind is still producing immense intelligence and beauty. That is what enlightenment is about; not amputating your faculties but letting them spring into full fruition. And in-between those moments of beauty, deep silence may arise. So I suggest keep on meditating, keep on inquiring into thoughtlessness, but give yourself space to just be, without compulsion, without needing things to be one way or another.

Coach Greg is unironically based, echoing many of my points above:

Maybe adding to that: science as purely inductive would be an outdated 20th century logical positivist conception of science called "verificationism". It says hypotheses are verified by confirming evidence. However, Karl Popper came along and said that no hypothesis is actually ever verified, and rather you can only provide "corroborating evidence" for it (supporting evidence that strengthens or weakens the hypothesis), which would be more abductive. Rather hypotheses should be aimed to be falsified (which is actually deductive). But even falsification could be subject to change, for example in a change of paradigm, which Thomas Kuhn proposed. So any formal method can be superceded by a meta-formal change. And that's largely where breatharianism is a bit stuck, because even if we found possible methodologies for testing it (like the esophagal sensor), the current paradigms in science are not conducive to even considering it as a possibility, so it won't even be considered worthy of investigation.

I just see it as coming from a strategic standpoint of "you look frail and old -> negatively impact project", and when you first are on that train, why not do it well? I haven't made much out of that, but maybe my gaydar is off again. I think "Don't Die" is a wack ass name for a philosophy that is essentially ancient eudaimonia dressed in transhumanist Ray Kurzweilism. My "like" for Bryan is mostly me arguing back against people's kneejerk reaction to spending more-than-usual time on your health and why it's not as irrationally obsessive as they portray it to be.

I mean obviously, he doesn't get the android meme for no reason. But my gaydar didn't go off. Maybe I need a different one.

Ok 😆

It's exactly when your mind takes a break from the usual slop of self-absorbed worries and cultural indoctrination that creative thoughts have the space to arise. So no, on the contrary. Of course during the meditation you might shift your focus away from creative thoughts that may arise, but in the moments after the meditation and just in general, your creativity will be elevated. Generally switching your activities up, especially just taking a break and for example going for a walk and letting your mind wander in between work, brings creativity. Your frames are broken and your mind is opened to a new set of possibilities. When you're doing a task and focusing on something, you construct a limited a number of frames that you find relevant to work with, but they're limited. When you switch focus, you break frame, and new perspectives, new thoughts may arise.

I'm not a "nay-sayer", nor am I a person that is "not interested". I did not say breatharianism is impossible (in fact, I think it very well might be possible; see my earlier comments). I'm saying it is not a harmless practice that should be taken lightly. You should be honest about what it is you're practicing, and saying you "don't care" and claiming that people who disagree with one aspect of what you're saying are "not interested" or "nay-sayers" gives a picture of a starry-eyed fanaticism that frankly is not welcome on this forum. I have meditated for more than 1000 hours. I don't think meditation is harmless. I think it can cause a lot of harm if you're not careful and you're not in the right situation and you lack the right prerequisite knowledge. Ideally, meditation should be taught by a teacher who is fully aware of the potential harms of meditation and knows how to mitigate them and will withdraw the teachings if they don't seem suitable for the person. Similarly (and prefacing this as "in theory" and not a recommendation), if somebody wants to learn about breatharianism, I think they should go to somebody who knows about the potential harms of breatharianism and will withdraw the teachings if they seem unsuitable for the person (and in actuality, I would be seriously cautious about even that considering the apparent level of delusional thinking that exists in that domain). Take a look at the guidelines: https://www.actualized.org/forum/guidelines/ If you can't admit that the practice of ceasing the consumption of food and water deserves at least a similar level of precaution, I think that's delusional.