Carl-Richard

You are acting like you don't care about probabilistic epistemology at all. But is this really true? Say if you want to quit smoking, do you need to absolutely prove that the method will absolutely help you quit smoking, or do you simply pick the one you think is most likely going to help? Do you know for an absolute fact that you will quit smoking when trying to quit, or do you simply place your bets? So I think you do care about probabilistic epistemology. So why not engage with me when I ask what you think is the most likely explanation for the boy's claimed memories?

I tried blasting it while doing my sprints and I got scared, wasn't in the mood to get my face bashed in. I'll try again another time 😆 I saw an interview with the lead guitarist and I really like his philosophy behind writing riffs: essentially try to make the most ridiculous sounds possible to the point that it becomes straight out funny and makes you laugh. It's probably something every metal guitarist has done at some point. Probably the Grammy nomination. I just love when the most transgressive forms of music of a given era blast people's faces off on a mainstream stage.

I thought you were done talking about trying to prove things for absolute certainty as if that is the only thing you can do when validating a claim. It's like I ask you how you think your car got stolen, and instead of saying that a thief likely stole it, you're like "but you can't know if a ghost actually zapped a memory into your brain about the car being stolen while actually it was never stolen, it was actually teleported out of existence by a second ghost and put on a different planet with dinosaurs that look like cocks, you never know!" It's really only interesting to think like that the first few times, but then you kinda grow out of it.

You ok?

One set per exercise, interesting. I've heard about Mike Mentzer's training approach but never tried it. There is a reason why Buges calls it "horsecocking some heavy ass loads"

Do you know of any athletes who train "slow and controlled"? Here are two who don't: You can lower your injury rate by not walking outside too. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a smart thing to do. *assumed same gains. Let's also not forget the myriad of methodological constraints of the actual studies that Mike Isratael cites for stitching together his training philosophy (e.g. using primarily inexperienced lifters, doing straight out dumb shit like training only one arm with one technique and then other arm with another technique, having a scientist stand over you and control every rep you do, etc.). It's also funny because I've heard critiques of Mike that his training philosophy is actually outside of his wheelhouse. He is a PhD in sports science, which when you are an undergrad, you learn a bit of everything, but when you go for a PhD, you have to specialize yourself in something, and allegedly, he decided to go the exercise physiology route rather than the kinesiology route. So him trying to teach the world about how to move during a lift while waving his scientific credentials around is misleading at best and problematic at worst. And ironically, someone who has a degree in kinesiology is Eric Bugenhagen. He might actually be more formally qualified than Mike in this area. But not higher than most other sports, so how high is it really? It's not easier, because it sucks. It's like role-playing an 80 year old grandma in the gym.

Not sure about the "language is just social science applied" one, but I can appreciate the reductionist snake ☺️

In this case, that seems unlikely, because then when verifying the boys claims with the forensic veracity they did, digging back in old library archives to find information about the guy, they would have probably discovered he was in fact his grandfather (unless his grandmother secretely slept with the guy, who most likely lived in a different state, and the official grandfather raised a child that was not his).

That which exists beyond space and time has existed forever and will always exist 🙂 Less often currently.

You identify as that which exists beyond all form, beyond all space and time.

There have been many times where I have gotten the feeling that something happened and it was only the girls in the room that perceived what happened. They have such a strong ability to tune in to subtle emotional and social phenomena and read people. That's often why talking to girls can be intimidating because they can see things about you that you don't even see, and also if you are e.g. nervous, they will often mirror and amplify that feeling.

This forum is a social game, and you are playing it well.

When you look at any behavior that might trigger you or somebody else, where you would ask "why are you doing this?", "why are you like this?", "why can't you stop doing it?", one perspective to have and that increases emotional intelligence is: it should be expected, it should come as no surprise. Why are you expecting anything else? Of course people are arrogant, selfish, "stupid", etc. This is how people are, and also how you are. If you get triggered by something, it's because they are failing to meet some standard you impose on them. But if you don't expect them to meet that standard, you getting triggered might happen initially as a small impulse, but then you remember the fact that yes this is all to be expected, and it's no longer a big deal. Also, if you get particularly triggered by something, it's likely because it's something in yourself that you don't like. If you tend to squirm at your own arrogance when it happens, which you also should allow yourself to do, but if you squirm at it so much that you can't accept that you are in fact sometimes arrogant, if it's just too unacceptable to even bring to the surface, you will have a very strong reaction to it when you see it in somebody else. So if you expect that people will be arrogant, it will come as no surprise when they are. And if you expect that you will sometimes be arrogant, you will not react so strongly when other people are. Now, this is not a suggestion to become a doormat or not dealing with people or not standing up for yourself. I'm talking about the cases of being triggered about things that are really not affecting you that much but for the fact that you are triggered (e.g. reading a forum post). Tl;dr: Come to expect people's behavior. Don't be surprised every time it happens. You should know how people tend to act by now. And you are not that different.

This is actually such a beautiful moment it moved me a little 🥹

It's probably mostly because LSD lasts for a crazy amount of time. It literally gets stuck in the receptor in a way you wouldn't expect based on its purely chemical properties. And it gets stuck specifically in the serotonin 2a receptor, which would lead to effects like elevated cortisol for longer than the other effects. I wrote more about this here if you are especially interested:

Yes, again, that's true, but then why shrug it off? Is it not the best alternative we have at present, that we know about? And if it's not a good alternative, why? What makes you inclined to doubt it? The moon is falling to the ground, it's just falling in a trajectory which we call "in orbit". But I don't see how this connects to what we're talking about. If the memories were snuck in by an invisible ghost and the memories are not reflective of reality, how did they manage to verify his memories fifty times?

No you absolute donkey It's just interesting that you would shrug off something when you have no alternative explanation. Yeah, and how likely is that? Just give me one explanation that you think is more likely than him having true memories of the events. This is donkey epistemology, because virtually no claim can be proven. It's not an interesting proposition in virtually all cases. It's about whether something is likely or not. How likely is it that an apparently authentic documentation of a boy who claims to have memories of certain events and that made 50 statements that were verified to be accurate, has actual memories of these events? And how likely are the alternative explanations?

You can't claim that before it has been studied. Flow might be the optimal way to provide stimulus to your muscles, just like it provides optimal athletic performance. Generally, flow produces optimal results in everything, be it physical or mental endeavors. I trained the Mike Isratael way for maybe two years after an injury I got from playing volleyball, which is also when I decided to correct my muscle imbalances. It's helpful for that and for some niche exercises (e.g. light isolation exercises), but for the big compound movements, I think going all out and getting into that flow state will be the best thing you can do for hypertrophy, just like it is for strength gains (but within the 3-20ish rep range and generally full range of motion). I'm back to training that way on at least a few of my big exercises in each of my workout routines (I rotate between 4 different routines). I have become more aware of the risk of injury over time and that there are certain places I'm careful to enter, but even while being careful, there is a stark difference between training while optimizing for flow and training while optimizing for slow and controlled eccentric. And the times I optimize for flow, in my personal experience, I get much more out of the exercise every time (pump, soreness, the feeling of the muscle, etc.). That said, I do incorporate deep stretch and "myoreps" (microreps) at the end of some of my exercises. But the bulk of the exercise I try to do at high intensity (within the conditions of flow), because again, theoretically, flow is about optimal performance, and performance in bodybuilding is performance after all (but again, this should be studied empirically and put one-to-one with slow and controlled eccentric). Surely, you do know I said "weaker", not "weak"? Mike Isratael and Jeff Nippard are both weaker than Eric Bugenhagen. That is of course what most people like to talk about with working out, but it should actually not be assumed that this is the number one goal for everyone who lifts (to build muscle). Why should it? For me, it was when I started, and it still is one of my goals, but honestly, my number one goal now is how it makes me feel on a bodily and mental level and also the cognitive benefits. And there, aiming for flow and intensity is without a doubt way above aiming for slow and controlled eccentric. Just like Mike Isratael writes off the injury risk of doing things like deep-stretch dips or curved-back deadlifts, I think the injury risk for lifting the "meathead way"/Bugenhagen way, or my way ("carefully with flow in mind"), excluding obvious recklessness, is overblown. You are much more likely to get injured playing sports, like, heh, volleyball, but there too, it depends on things like being familiar with the activity and the intensity levels (which I was not). It is a valid fear to have when starting out and when not being familiar with certain exercises that you can hurt yourself, but once you build yourself up gradually, carefully, and you get very familiar with the movement and the weight, it takes quite a lot to suddenly hurt yourself, even when lifting at higher intensities. Even strongman, probably the most unhinged strength sport, has fewer injuries than soccer and baseball; basketball has more than twice as many. The level of control you have in a gym with carefully measured weights and strictly defined movements that are repeated identically every single rep is in a different league than contact/limited-contact sports. When you see those videos of people getting hurt lifting, it's very often because they are doing something they are not familiar with. If you have never lifted deadlifts before and suddenly rip 225 lbs with no warm-up, you will definitely pull your back (a friend of mine did that). But if you lift deadlifts in a high rep range the same way every week and gradually increase the weight by 0.5% every week until you can only do one rep, given the same form (no breakdown of form at the end of a set), the risk for injury is low. It's quite funny, because the Bugenhagen way is actually the way most people train, even bodybuilders. It's a whole shtick with Mike Isratael and Jeff Nippard that they sometimes try to "coach" established bodybuilders and lifters with their "science-based lifting" approach. It's such a counterintuitive way to train, and maybe for a good reason. Slow controlled eccentric, deep stretch, pause at the bottom, take your time with each rep, is such a testosterone-draining way to train, you might as well get out the pegging equipment and get some reps in that way.

Are you shaming my OCD? Yes, you can answer now.

LSD has direct dopamine agonist activity, which makes it stimulating and wakefulness-promoting. Serotonin 2a activity is coupled to cortisol activity, one of the hormones that spike in the morning, and is one of the main targets for classical psychedelics like LSD and shrooms. Serotonin in general is the "wakefulness" chemical. So yes, it's not surprising that they are more like stimulants than anything else.

Meh. Bryan Johnson tries to beat death himself, and he doesn't tell you to sleep less and ruin your health

But Eternity is where Enlightenment is 😊

We all fear eternity, we just forget, like our past lives.

Sure. But it would make sense that you would tend to reincarnate as something similar or in a similar place from lifetime to lifetime. Maybe we have all reincarnated as plants at some point, but now we are testing the human experience. This is especially likely if you consider that there are people who report "choosing" their incarnation because it felt like the right one (and also others being quite deliberate about which womb they wanted to be born in). And their choice would be based on their previous lessons and experiences. But just purely naturalistically as well, irrespective of individual desires, if reincarnation does follow some pattern and is not purely random (which if you believe randomness is just an epistemic concept like me, nothing is), you could expect a similar trend (nature/reality has a habit of building on existing themes: e.g. phylogenetic evolution, ontogenetic development, fractals). I'm actually fascinated by the life cycles of leaves on trees. Right now, in the end of April in my country, the leaves on some of the trees make me think of (and bare with me for being creepy) fourteen year olds, i.e. silky smooth skin, like that of a young child, sort of small but definitely growing, and barely showing signs of maturity. I think you could map the life cycles of leaves onto the life cycle of humans and you could find interesting overlaps.

Hehe naww But I was talking as God of course He is a bit more controversial (or is he? )