Carl-Richard

Let's actually take Mike's PhD conclusions that more muscle leads to more strength. What about the other way around, more strength leads to more muscle? Surely the relationship is reasonably two-way. So then, shouldn't one try to become as strong as possible, lift as intensely as possible, such that one builds as most muscle as possible, not lift with this punctuated movement deep stretch bullshit? Or do we pick and choose which studies to trust, i.e. the ones with bad ecological validity where people lift in awkward ways that you would never lift in an actual gym session (one arm with one technique, other arm with another, researcher breathing down your neck and controlling every rep) vs those where the people actually try to lift at highest intensity and thus as close to their usual training as possible? Hmmmm.

@Xonas Pitfall This is what that "does your mom know you're gay" dude calls an exponible statement by the way (unless it only applies to propositions 🤓).

Nanananana. Na. 😂

🤔🧐🤔🧐🤔🧐 I used those words lately. Now it's when you tell us you did not read that comment prior and only picked it up associatively from the collective mindspace 🙂🙂👍👍

@Scholar @zurew When I think about veganism (or environmentalism for that matter), I think like if you want to make a big change, be an activist, otherwise the impact you can make relative to the rest of the world is relatively infinitesimal. And then the question also becomes in what other ways can you make a change, in what other ways can you spend your limited time? What is the moral calculation there? Then there is also the thought that any act of wrongdoing (especially with respect to animal suffering) should be minimalized, irrespective of any global comparison, just like you don't kill people on the street just because so many people die anyway on a global scale and it's a drop in the ocean (maybe a relatively bad example because killing someone in your community will not be a drop in the ocean, but anyways, you get the idea). I would like to hear Alex O'Connor try to reconcile these two positions (I've heard him endorse a version of the first one; that veganism must be fought on an activist and collective level, not an individual everyday level). There is also of course a problem of what qualifies as fighting it on a collective level, at what point is your contribution big, and also, at what point is your contribution to animal suffering small enough? Is it simply the intention that matters, not the execution? If you simply intend not to kill people on the street, is that good enough?

Not everybody wants to be just an effective gym rat. Some people want to be the best gym rat, the gym rat most aligned with "truth"

Wars happen because wars are built on wars. History didn't start yesterday. It's a through line of conquest, suppression, domination. Wars don't stop until someone breaks the cycle of violence, usually the ones with power and will. That's essentially what the critiques are about. When will the ones with the power stop the violence? Not that violence will stop after that, not that one must not respond to attacks, but will violence be kept to a minimum, will one fight to de-escalate tensions rather than build them, will one express temperance and tact, and seek diplomatic solutions, compromises. Israel has lately chosen the path of extermination, of utter domination, the same path that Hitler took, although debatable in scale. And we see the cycle of violence. Even if Palestinians get a win at some point like the Jews did after WW2, will they not return the same? Will they not perpetuate the cycle of violence? Or will they choose not to?

They do actually claim it says new things, but yes, it's very "autistic" or concerned with minutia and going way and beyond reasonable doubt and using rigorous methods, but so is science. If somebody claims hitting yourself with a hammer can lead to tissue damage, it's one thing to say that and say "yes, that makes sense" and it's another thing to measure that damage (how much, how hard, etc.), define the different types of damage and standardizing them, control the use of different hammers and different forces, and of course doing controlled experiments, actually putting it to the test. Whether increased muscle actually leads to increased strength was actually a debate going on in sports science at the time, and Mike contributed to that debate with his PhD. I'll stay with my earlier critiques of Mike Israetel and his ilk and say that the hard-hitting critiques of current sports science, and especially when trying to use it to claim "this is the optimal way to train", is not that it's substanceless bullshit, but that there is a severe lack of ecological validity in the research designs. Working out with one arm using one technique and the other arm using another technique, is absolutely a ridiculous basis for making claims for what is optimal training, because none of that is optimal. That's just one example. I could speak about it for days, faster and with more fervor than Mike talks about his totally non-ironic ironic homoerotic intrusive thoughts.

Mike should make sure the real thesis is publically available (for those with access of course) through the same university library systems. If he doesn't, that's highly suspect. But we're still only a few days in and we'll probably see more on that soon (or it has already been addressed in the video I linked).

Let me caveat that I haven't watched the review in full, but the guy who reviewed his PhD does not have a good non-ad hoc grasp of what PhD theses are like in general. The fact that he felt comfortable reviewing what to me is highly likely a draft (I haven't watched much of that video either, just a few seconds from some parts), as if it was a finished version, is indicative of that, but he is also of course just a university (graduate?) student. Now that his formatting error and statistical slip-up arguments have most likely all collapsed, all that is left is whether or not the findings are novel (as far as I know about his review). And judging that requires in-depth knowledge of the literature. Scientific research is very autistic in what it considers novel: sometimes you only need to look at one slightly different variable than other papers to be considered novel. And PhD programs will push students to fill in those gaps if they exist. Very rarely do you get an Einstein level PhD thesis that revolutionizes the field, even in a sub-section of the field. And a PhD is also just the beginning step of your research career. So I don't think the review says much about the value of his PhD now that it's highly likely he reviewed a draft. I would say wait this one out until he actually responds publicly in more depth (which he actually seems to have done in the video I linked but which I again haven't watched much of ).

Allegedly, the university uploaded an unfinished draft of his PhD, not the final version. That's the one Solomon reviewed. Firstly, IQ is not all of intelligence, it's more like the speed and capacity of your "cognitive CPU" (mostly; you can throw some other concepts in there as well like pattern recognition). Secondly, yes. IQ doesn't mean you necessarily bullshit less, just faster and "more" (which adds up to clever). Top politicans tend to have pretty massive IQs (maybe Trump is an exception, and I've said before he is certainly above average, but I would caveat it's hard to know how much because his level of bullshitting is just too much so he comes off as more fluent than somebody who actually says substantive things).

Mhm. The reason it's looping so much is it's primarily about fear, and your ideas about it, rather than one's experience, as @theleelajoker pointed out. "I don't want to be alone, that's scary, that's isolating, that's lonely". Had the discourse around solipsism been about accepting reality as it is, approaching reality with love, rather than fearing what it might mean for you and your ideas and notions about reality, then it would be less loopy, it would instead be people writing about their waking up experiences, not the fear of what waking up might entail.

Why not become a materialist?

What's my perspective? 😆 It's mostly made clear in this thread, which people (not me) abandoned. This comment probably sums it up:

Sick man. Get Animals As Leaders and Meshuggah vibes :,) I wrote something at 17 which is the main thing that stands out in memory. It's on the forum somewhere. Found it: it's actually in your thread lol. Holy shit the sound quality is shit 😂 Also, this one was kinda sick ngl (granted the utter lack of tone and the final chord of the progression containing an unintentional note lol): https://voca.ro/11DYAHJLi7wM Anyways, sorry for derailing thread 👉👈🥺

You're a musician so you're halfway there 😜

I think I've experienced telepathy, many times.

What? I can't rule out anything.

I saw what I thought was a spider outside the window yesterday (and the day before that), but it could've been some ball of dust dangling in the wind. I didn't make much of it though Other than that, three weeks ago, I filmed a spider in my room which looked just like the spider I caught when we were collecting insects back when I studied biology in university. The one I caught then was absolutely huge, the biggest one we caught in my group. When I caught it and put it in my jar and in my backpack, it felt like my backpack was emanating a dark presence (that's what I said to my friend). Ever since then, I've had them visit me multiple times (other individuals of the same species, as far as I can tell, big ones), like they were reminding me what I did to their friend. It's been a while since last time. Titanium, that's because I've been constantly thinking about changing out my toothpaste which has titanium dioxide in it (jking). You were in my dream once and it was weird, like I was experiencing some kind of psychological complex, I would feel weird talking about it No spiders though. Wtf

An advocate? What does that mean? Maybe ask @Natasha Tori Maru what I am, I'm not quite sure 😛

If you want to be a nerd about it, there is no "proof" in science, only corroboration of hypotheses (often based on statistical inference). But this looks pretty solid on the surface (although I would have to review the limitations to say more about it): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252380718_Experimental_Tests_for_Telephone_Telepathy Statistical significance of p = 4 x 10^-16 is way beyond the threshold of what essentially all behavioral scientists are comfortable with publishing (p = 5 x 10^-2).

It's physicalistic with regard to the behavior of reality; that the scientific laws operate as if the world is bound by physicalism. But it's idealistic with regards to what reality actually "is" most fundamentally (ontologically idealist).

If you say "reality is fundamentally made out of consciousness, everything springs out if it" but you also say "you cannot communicate telepathically, precognition is not a real phenomena, remote viewing, spirits, ghosts, all of it is hocus-pocus make-believe" — be it because you haven't looked into the data, or haven't had those experiences, or because you don't believe they're real in principle (they break the "laws" of reality) — I call that "crypto-materialism".

And it's quite ironic because Leo has probably read more books than 99% of people on here. It's a bit like when neo-advaita teachers tell you "you don't need practice, just be, just realize you're already it", when virtually all of them spent many decades practicing their asses off to get to where they're at. We can coin it "teacher's amnesia"; you disregard or even forget what you have learned in the past and it tends to detrimentally impact the way you teach. I actually had this insight when I was around 7-8 years old in school, that me who is a child could teach some things better to another child than the teacher because I understand how it's like being a child (by virtue of currently living through it).

By the way, "panpsychism" (or its popular version "constitutive micropsychism") is a Looney Tunes version of idealism where you can hand-hold materialists and make them keep the illusion of Newtonian atomism as a fundamental substrate of reality while simultaneously inching towards the reality that consciousness has to simply be a given. It suffers the same kind of intermediary step as my notion of "crypto-materialism" (being an idealist while disregarding psychic phenomena). You just simply can't completely let go of your trusty friend materialism. @Hojo Do you think "crypto-materialism" is an original idea?