Carl-Richard

Confusion is a state of (often conscious) mental conflict brought on by uncertainty, ignorance, lack of control, etc. Getting rid of confusion may involve accepting uncertainty, ignorance, lack of control, etc.

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Nothing is happening.

Imagination is imaginary.

I actually don't believe you. No university has a "completely dead" social scene or no parties, just varying quantities of it. And that quantity doesn't actually mean anything, unless you plan on going to multiple parties at the same time (which is just not a thing). There are social people at every university, and they will find a way to party, and there is no way you can stop them. You just need to find them. You need to stop comparing yourself to some Nirvanic standard of what you think college should be and actually have the college experience. You're going to waste your college experience, but it's not because of your university: it's because of your attitude. Change your attitude.

Are you currently experiencing writing this post ("Are there conscious bubbles independent of mine?")? Nope, you're not currently experiencing writing this post. Then did you not experience writing it? Well, yes you did? You certainly did experience writing this post. Ok, then how could God create an experiential bubble that is separate from your current experiential bubble? Well duh, that is what God is doing all the time. Every single nanosecond of your existence, your experience is being dissociated from another experience. So is God capable of it? Of course. The evidence is abundant.

Is that true; that 140 bpm for 30 min leads to less fatigue than sprinting 20 secs x 4 with 4 minutes rest in-between? And are the cardiovascular effects comparable?

But it goes to show that choosing sprint as your choice of cardio at least wouldn't counteract getting jacked, meanwhile choosing a form of training where the top atheletes associated with that training look like twigs would, no? I'm not thinking about using sprinting as a sole method for getting jacked. I just want my cardio to go well with my already well-established weight training habit.

Maybe that is why sprinters are so jacked? I'm not sedentary btw 😆

Drink some milk.

@The0Self Ok, now let's say I also want to optimize testosterone levels. Does that lean more in favor of incline treadmill walking or sprints?

If there was a best way to train, would you not choose that way? Let's say I want to optimize blood flow to the brain at rest. How should I train?

This is one of the ways that (some) dopamine neurons work: unexpected rewards are much more rewarding than expected rewards. In other words, if the “reward prediction error” is positive (the outcome of the reward minus the expected reward is positive), then you’ll experience an increase in dopamine. Therefore, if you expect the worst outcome for something (e.g. if you’re extremely anxious about talking to a girl), then there is an even greater reason to do the thing, because the odds are that, at some point, given enough tries, you’ll experience some positive outcome that you didn’t expect, and you’ll experience that outcome as extremely positive, and thus you’ll be more likely to seek out that experience again (because that is how reinforcement works). This doesn’t just apply to talking to girls. It generally makes the case for the virtue of courage. If you do things that you expect to be extremely hard or expect to certainly contain bad outcomes (and we know that such extreme expectations are generally exaggerated), when you get on the other side, the odds are that your perspective will change for the better. So get out there and do the hard thing! :>

@Loveeee That was just a bit of a fun coincidence, but regardless of that, I still don't believe that the fact of reality being a dream eliminates any suffering. We seem to be talking about different kinds of dreams.

That's funny, because I seriously entertain the idea that people in your nightly dreams are just as real as people in real life.

I used to be extremely afraid of public speaking all since high school, then I practiced like a madman for one of my presentations in university, and it went unexpectedly really well. That single experience transformed my view of public speaking. I was actually excited for when I could do it again.

Why are you glad it's all relative?

What does that have to do with Gaza?

Yes. I think if you expect your first cold approach to go super smooth, that would certainly make you less likely to do cold approaches again, because as you say, it's more likely for a cold approach to go poorly than go well. On the other hand, as I pointed out in the thread, if you keep doing cold approaches despite your negative expectation, the times it does end up going kind of well, that will be immensely reinforcing. And I think for most people, in the context of cold approaches, unexpected negative outcomes is not really a problem, as people are generally more overly anxious than overly confident. And if you are overly confident; 1. why are you doing cold approaches?; and 2. you would probably handle rejections better just in general. This negative reinforcement mechanism you're pointing to is thought to be why for example naltrexone therapy seems to work for quitting certain addictive substances (e.g. alcohol or opioids). The therapy consists of pairing the intake of the addictive drug with the intake of naltrexone, which is an opioid receptor antagonist, meaning it inhibits and produces the opposite effect of the desired response associated with the addictive drug. When your brain realizes that the familiar stimulus (the act of taking the drug) is not just no longer paired with the desired response, but with a response of opposite valence (an aversive response), your dopamine system updates its responses to the stimulus, meaning it will no longer associate it with the desired response and trigger cravings in the same way.

Let's get to the bottom of this: why are you glad that it's all a dream? To me, the fact that it's a dream is completely neutral to whether or not me as a human being should be glad or sad about a certain event in the human realm (e.g. Gaza getting obliterated). So to me, the fact that you seem to take some kind of solace that it's just a dream, means that you completely misunderstand what is meant by it all being a dream. In other words, you seem to conflate personal solipsism (the "dumb" kind) with transpersonal solipsism (the "cool" kind).

I do strength training too. It's the main thing I do. I asked about which type of cardio is best. Certainly, doing the type of cardio that makes you look like a twig (e.g. long-distance running) wouldn't go well with strength training (but apparently sprinting does; just look at sprinters and how buff they are)... or could anybody provide a counterargument?

@UnbornTao Another insight about recontextualizing one's insecurities: It is possible that your insecurities could be based in essentially nothing of substance. For example, imagine the go-to example of an intelligent person (Albert Einstein). Now, despite all the achievements, all the contributions to science, all the praise (generally the substantive evidence of this person's intelligence), you could still imagine a scenario where Einstein in his childhood was for example called stupid by somebody he respects, and ever since then, he carried an insecurity about not being smart enough. Of course, not all your insecurities are based in nothing substantial, but just recognizing the possibility that some of them could be, you could potentially identify such insecurities in your life, or you can put yourself in the mind state as if that was the case for a specific insecurity and see how you would act. This insight and the one above are just ways of peeking behind the curtain of your habitual mind and maybe see things from a different perspective.

There is no dream.

Very few individuals in modern society have zero problems with concentration.

What the heck does this solipsistic bullshit change about Gaza? Nothing! We're all lucky we're not in Gaza. In Gaza, solipsism becomes the last thing your mind could ever think about.