Carl-Richard

I go for Bernardo Kastrup.

It has zero, nothing, to do with Christianity. It's the "Leo, why don't you focus more on [insert ONE THING, virtually zero elaboration]?", and "this is the ONE MAIN GOAL of x very general endevor", and also "should we focus on this thing OR should we focus on this other thing? [i.e. dichotomous/either-or question]". It happens so often.

If you have to force yourself to do it, is it really entertainment? You can create new habits, but if you are working towards a goal, you should give yourself at least some time for "proper" entertainment where you don't care what you do. There is no work without rest. How (and how much) you decide to do that is up to you.

I swear to God this forum is 90% Stage Blue.

Try 60-90 minutes a day, in one sitting.

What does "could this become a trap?" even mean? Could it be bad? Anything can be bad. It depends on how it's done. The biggest trap that has probably ever existed is "it's either this or that, no in-between", or being unaware of things like scale and context. If you spend 99.9% of your time thinking and nothing else, of course that is bad, of course that will be a waste of time. The question should be about what you think about, how much you think, and when you think.

If the White House tells us any thing, you shouldn't worry about being an impostor the least bit.

The way I like to conceptualize meditation is being completely fine with just sitting here or being here. If you are able to simply accept what is here, to just exist without needing anything, that's what it is. What you're describing as "do nothing", I do a lot when I'm walking or sitting in the sauna. I just let my mind wander and give myself time to think about something without distractions. It's really beneficial for your emotions and general problem-solving. There is this psychologist who talks about the benefits of this in particular and interestingly uses the character of Sherlock Holmes as a device for communication:

This weirdly reminded me of awakening/enlightenment 😂:

Only going to retreats and never doing daily meditation is also a trap. Consistency is key, but going really deep a few times in a while is also key. Either/or-thinking is generally speaking definitely a trap regardless of the subject.

It's interesting how that fusion has essentially happened twice (or who knows how many times?). Thrash metal was the first time in the early 80s (combining NWOBHM with hardcore). Then thrash metal evolved into more extreme metal in the early 90s (particularly death metal), and then this extreme metal (or rather the At The Gates riffing style 😂) fused with hardcore/post-hardcore again to essentially form metalcore. But then you also have genres like deathcore that emphasize the more extreme aspects again. I essentially grew up with Bullet For My Valentine and such bands (and later also Trivium), which is true At The Gates metalcore. As a guitar player, that way of playing riffs is burned into my bones. When I first heard Slaughter Of The Soul which is the At The Gates song the video guy referenced, only a few years ago, I was like "wot? That's where all that is from?". It's such an effective way of writing riffs. It's almost like the invention of palm muted chugging itself (which Thrash metal picked up and went crazy with). It gives a blueprint and spawns an entire universe of creative expression.

@Nilsi What do you think about metalcore?

Is eating food also an artistic pursuit for you? 😆 Do you have a need to be productive and creative? 🤔🧐 You can of course be "productive and creative" and create problems where there are none, like creating a distinction between productivity/creativity vs getting your needs met, or you can say "yes — both", which has really become my default position to most things nowadays 😊 The beauty of what I call "the statistical worldview": things are rarely one thing, often many, at least two (but not either/or).

The value of not removing your taste buds or sense of smell (maybe slightly hyperbolic). On the other hand, humans are the niche-shifting animal (and by extension capable of a wide range of specialized ways of living), so you can focus on some things more than others and "get along", but starting a family is certainly a safe bet for getting needs met.

Maybe a big asteroid hitting the Earth is "healthy at the end" for the world too.

I ordered one from MyHeritage (the best one for those with European ancestry if you mainly care about finding out your ancestry), and I got 97.3% Scandinavian, 1.8% Finnish, and 0.9% Greek/South-Italian. I'm Norwegian by the way ? What is really funny is that I predicted basically all of those three (I predicted Finnish from my father's side and South-European from my mother's side). My mom comes from West in the country and my father is from the East. The West of Norway has been a highly trafficked place for sea trade since the Viking Age, and there are many stories of Portuguese ships capsizing and the survivors washing up at the coast and settling among the native population. My father has always said that my great-grandfather looked like Nikola Tesla (a Greek inventor), and if my estimations are correct, he could've been up to 7.2% Greek (if we assume that he had an ancestor who was 100% greek and that this person and their descendants only had children with 100% Scandinavian people). Given these assumptions, this person could've lived as close as 7-8 generations ago in the 1700s-1800s. However, my mom told me that her grandmother on her dad's side (not the same side as Nikola Tesla lookalike) had brown eyes and a darker complexion than average, so for all I know, the Greek genes might be all from her ? The reason I predicted my dad's side to have Finnish genes is because my grandmother on that side had particularly distinct hooded eyes, which is more prevalent in the Finnish population due to more East-Asian influence (e.g. the Sámi people). The East of Norway is also next to Sweden, which is next to Finland, and we know that Finnish people have settled in those parts of Norway. Besides, my cousin from my dad's side also took the same DNA test, and he got 2.5% Finnish ancestry (and no South-European ancestry), which makes sense. I ordered the DNA test mostly because people in school always thought I was Spanish (lol), and my skin tans really easily (and Norway is very white). Anyways, curious to hear if any of you guys have taken a DNA test and why you chose to take it. Did you have any unexpected results, or did you predict everything like I did? ?

Necrophagist is the German engineering of technical death metal. It's precise and blunt as fuk and the frontman Muhammed Suiçmez is German and an engineer 😂

Phantasmagoria

I think it could make you less gullible, but again, I'm unsure about the openmindedness. What I will say though is that a more general gist of what you're hinting at can be helpful, namely being aware of standards of evidence or reason and being aware of assigning a status (e.g. true, false, probable, reasonable) to things. I notice in myself that I treat most things like an onion: I can entertain some evidence or suggest some position at one level of analysis, but when I peel back some of the layers, it gets clear that the evidence or those suggestions are not the whole story. Like, I might in one scenario talk about the importance of having a strong feeling of your own values and sense of what you think is reasonable, but in another, I might talk about how those things are highly confined to your limited window out on the world, and that in some sense, it's highly probable that you are missing something, could be called out on something, or that you can often probably argue the opposite position from just as seemingly convincing and strong position. So at one level, you assume the lens of the "lone" individual and its innate tendency towards bias, while at another, you question those assumptions. You can go back and forth between them, up and down the layers, but we tend to stick with a few layers at a time, and then it's more likely to do something which comes off as closemindedness, even if you have contact with some deeper layers. So being able to operate across different layers and essentially being cognitively complex, is one defining feature of "mature", "wise" (less gullible) openmindedness.

"Wrong" and "proof" are actually quite specific, especially in combination. Ironically, I think the answer for how to be openminded but not gullible is simply wisdom. Wisdom is about striking the right balance, of hitting the mark, of clear seeing and seeing the whole picture, which is again hard to make specific. As for examples of general things that would make you openminded but not gullible: being driven by what you think is true rather than expedient, by curiosity rather than necessity, holism rather than reductionism, being thoroughly integrated as a person (emotionally, interpersonally, spiritually, etc.), having experienced traps, pitfalls and dangers and not being naive to them, etc. When you think of somebody who is openminded but not gullible, what kind of person pops into your mind?

Trying to pinpoint openmindedness is a bit like trying to pinpoint wisdom. You can give some very general rules, but giving an exact formula that applies in all situations is often ironically the opposite of what you're trying to achieve.

I read your entire post from start to finish. Are you open to that being true? 🤭

What's the proof of that? 🤔

What is wrong and what is proof?

Anneke has such energy, pure, majesty.