Carl-Richard

Care to elaborate?

I can agree with that unless you hold those things as a proxy for spirituality (because it can be highly counterproductive for that).

Psychopaths tend to have limited affective empathy but normal cognitive empathy. People on the autism spectrum tend to have it the other way around. I think if you have problems with either, but especially cognitive empathy, then you're less likely to be openminded. Besides, whether a psychopath can or cannot be openminded is not really the question. Of course they can. We're talking about statistical correlations.

😂 I appreciate the reassurance. I think I'll go just a little more with my gut in the future, only if I'm not hopelessly sleep deprived 😝

The term you guys are looking for is "computationally intractable" 😉

You have dyslexia 😂

His description of diving is pretty nice though. Sounds like mindfulness.

This happened with my mom. She literally asked me "what did you do?" . We went to this debate together before Christmas (damn, it has over 500k views now):

The guy who asked the question about OBEs has said (in class while introducing himself to our seminar leader) that he describes himself as a physicalist, and when it was my turn to introduce myself, I said "and opposite to him, I'm maybe a little more skeptical of physicalism, but that's of course not that important ". And while walking home after class, we had a little talk about what I meant by that, and we touched a little bit on the difference between physicalism and idealism, intelligence vs. consciousness vs. meta-consciousness, the Hard problem and some kind of thought experiment he brought up that tries to illustrate the distinction between phenomenal consciousness and conceptual understanding. But other than that, he sort of ended up expressing in a chill and non-polemic way that he views these kinds of philosophical questions as kind of meaningless ("svada" in Norwegian) and that he didn't seem that interested in it after all. He strikes me as generally very openminded and grounded, but he is a bit different than me temperamentally and in terms of background. Interestingly, he has said he always struggled with science in school, yet he wanted to study neuroscience exactly because he thinks "it's the shit" (hence physicalism). He also has a background in politics (he is the former leader of one of the main youth parties in one of the counties and recently ran for office at a muncipality level). I've yet to ask him if he knows one of my childhood friends who used to be the deputy chairman of the same youth party at a city level (which would be a very fun conversation). But yeah, I'm not really interested in convincing anyone, although the point about choosing premises that land close to home could be something to have in mind for conversations in general, even without having a strong agenda (it could be a fun way to bounce arguments around).

I have been probing them a bit outside of this one situation, but they don't seem to take the bait

It would just be nice if I could share relevant things that spring to mind while talking with people. It's not like I'll try to convince them that non-duality is true and that enlightenment is the highest thing you can pursue. It's just like "ah yes, since you were asking, I've had an OBE, but it was when I was meditating, not when I was being hit by a car". I think I could say that in a way without even making it about metaphysics, but of course, it would be nice if I could share my metaphysical views as well I'm perfectly aware that if I'm talking to somebody who has basically zero chance of understanding something, it makes little sense to bring it up. My question is really only about how they will view me as a person if they find out that I have these views and these experiences. Like, if I were to ask myself back when I was an atheist if I met somebody at my school who talked about OBEs, would I think they were a little cuckoo? Maybe, but if I thought they were smart or sociable in other ways, maybe that would that make up for it? Isn't that how cults are made? Anyways, I'm rambling now.

That's the thing. The guy was asking for our experiences with OBEs, but it was in the context of colloquially "stressful" situations. I don't count my OBE as that (although you could probably classify it as a stress response in a more dry theoretical sense), so I would be changing the subject in a way and pulling it into truly woo-woo territory. Well, they're comparatively open-minded within the physicalist paradigm, although psychology has its own skeptical slant on it (although it's not quite where we're at here to put it that way). My bachelor's degree did touch on psychology of religion and mystical experiences, but I think that's rare for most degrees in my country, so I wouldn't expect many people in the field to be familiar with that outside of personal interest (which is also rare, although it's growing). I know of one other guy who is into meditation and spirituality in my university (he studies a different branch of psychology), but that's it.

If I wasn't so sleep deprived, I think I could've ended up saying it in a nice way without coming off like an absolute wizard at first, and then taken it from there. It's just that: I need to come to lectures less sleep deprived so I know how to function like a human being and not say stupid things like "not in a stressful situation" and without elaborating . Anyways, that's the real lesson here: never compromise on your mental clarity

Certain experiences seem to correlate with certain brain states. That is an uncontroversial statement. However, to say that experiences are caused by brain states is an entirely different statement, and it's usually based on metaphysical assumptions rather than empirical observations. As for empirical observations, there are many problems that should make you doubt such a claim, and there is no conclusive evidence that confirms it. For example, psychedelics lead to an overall decrease in brain activity, measured by correlates of glucose metabolism (e.g. blood flow in fMRI). Those images you see on Google where psychedelics make the brain light up like a Christmas tree are most likely showing functional connectivity, which is when different parts of the brain fire together. It's not the same as increased "brain activity", which again is measured in terms of correlates of metabolism. Now, if psychedelics decrease brain activity and we know that psychedelics are typically associated with an enhanced experience of reality, that is a problem for the claim that brain states cause experiences. Similarly, in near-death experiences (NDEs), particularly in cases of cardiac arrest where the heart stops pumping blood to the brain and brain activity ceases; according to a set of prospective studies involving 334 survivors of cardiac arrest, during the moments when the patient's brain showed no signs of functioning, 18% of patients reliably report having experienced an enhanced state of consciousness (NDEs). Again, if brain activity purportedly causes experience, it's weird that a complete lack of brain activity is associated with an enhanced experience, often life-changing experiences. Other examples include terminal lucidity, where dementia patients show a surprising return to normal functioning right before their death, despite their brain having been reduced to something you can hardly call a brain. Other than that, some of the experiences that the survivors of cardiac arrest report are especially puzzling if you believe the brain and sensory organs cause experience. There is no conclusive evidence that your personal dreams are caused by brain states either. Here is how: the world really exists out there, and our sensory apparatuses and perceptual machinery are like goggles that color our experience and limit it. When you take off those goggles, you go outside of those limits. Sadhguru describes spirituality as "creating a little distance between you and your physicality". In a very real sense, that is what is happening in certain states of meditation where all your sensory experiences and your sense of self and time disappears (which I've also experienced), and also in OBEs where your experience is decoupled from your "goggled" sensory experiences. That is also why some psychic phenomena are called "extra-sensory perception" (ESP). You go beyond your mere physicality, your mere goggled sensory experience of the world. Behold my tripartite precognitive dream bonanza: If you grant that I've described everything accurately (which you could doubt, but I sincerely tried my best) and you're doing your very best to be metaphysically impartial, I think it's pretty hard to honestly conclude that I did not gain information about the world extra-sensorily. And also one that is not that. I think it's mostly a metaphysical conviction you have rather than conclusive evidence. Why would you assume it hasn't?

Why tell anyone anything at all?

Some altered states of consciousness seem to throw you out of body. There doesn't seem to be any obvious mechanism you can point to, maybe other than how self-referential processing (DMN activity) is probably decreased, essentially decoupling your experience from the personal and dipping it into the transpersonal, gradually eroding the "center" of your experience. What is curious about this is that it seems to break with the idea that you necessarily have to experience the world through your senses, because you can start seeing yourself from where your eyes aren't looking. This goes well with the idea that your personalized experience (and the apparent sensory correlates) is a kind of dissociation, and that when you undo some of it, your experience simply expands.

I wonder what the insides of an average high school classroom looks like today in my country (Norway). Like, how many people have dyed their hair? How many teachers wear those obviously queer glasses?

Has anybody tried "image streaming"? https://sourcesofinsight.com/image-streaming/ I'm curious if it has any side effects (like the ones I noticed with Quad-N-Back).

That's really interesting. I wish I was taught the Circle of Fifths using colors. It's so much more intuitive. Generally visualizing music is very effective for understanding it.

Heading the ball in soccer is known to cause brain damage. I would like to see which numbers he is referring to though.

Your story doesn't make sense.

There are side effects to nofap that you might not want. I believe once every 5-7 days is good for a guy in his mid-late twenties. You get the best of both worlds: mental clarity and a functioning ballsack (and generally a balanced physiology). Your testosterone starts decreasing after one week anyway. Your body adapts to these things. Maybe if you're aiming for something like spiritual awakening, then you maybe should aim for once a month, but if you're aiming for a healthy body (and you want good sleep, calm mood and being socially calibrated), go for once every 5-7 days.

@Jrix Is this @Reciprocality's weird uncle?

Do you see that your phone's screen is ultimately illusory, and that all the "things" you see right now are also ultimately illusory? So how can your particular illusion be all that exists? You seeing yourself typing these forum posts from your perspective is just as much an illusion as me typing my forum posts from my perspective. Neither perspective is all that is. It's all illusion. All that is is God.

Hmm... "The Effects of Sprint Interval vs. Continuous Endurance Training on Physiological And Metabolic Adaptations in Young Healthy Adults": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4327385/ HMMM... the endurance runners had a 12.6% increase in in VO2 max while the sprinters had a 18.8% increase. So I guess that answers my question (yeah yeah, it's one study with limited generalizability, blah blah blah, I just wanted to bring it up ). Also, a Quora submission: https://www.quora.com/Do-sprinters-or-marathon-runners-have-stronger-hearts So I guess I was onto something with that as well Other than that, I've been sprinting for about two months now and I love it. I only do it 1.75 times a week though (I already lift weights every other day, i.e. 3.5 days a week, and I run on every second off-day, i.e. 3.5/2 = 1.75). That means I can say I work out 3.5+1.75 = 5.25 times a week, which sounds like a lot to be honest (which is on top of my 3 daily 10-minute walks after each meal). At the same time, I deliberately reduced my resting times in the gym (for most of my lifts) down to 90 seconds (down from who the fuck knows; 3-5 minutes?), mostly for time efficiency reasons, but I also think it adds a bit of cardio, which is nice (and it certainly goes more naturally with my newfound cardiovascular health).