Carl-Richard

Anneke has such energy, pure, majesty.

I agree it's very wide. If I were to give it the widest definition: an intentional form of attention. So involuntarily having your attention drawn to something, e.g. as a reflex or impulse, would not be a meditation on its own. If it's also a non-judgemental (non-critical or non-analytical) form of attention to the "present moment" (i.e. not thoughts about past and future), it would be mindfulness meditation. But the word meditation is sometimes used for more "judgemental" and thought-oriented forms of intentional attention as well (sometimes referred to as "contemplation"). Meditation may involve focused attention to a concrete object, sensation, thought or experience ("focused attention meditation", e.g. focusing on the breath), or a cultivation of awareness towards more abstract or subtle qualities like emptiness, "being", being lost in thought (e.g. "open-monitoring meditation"). Self-inquiry, devotional techniques, "letting go", are sort of in-between all of these, involving a combination of "judgemental thought" but also a non-judgemental direction towards aspects of the present moment, involving both concrete objects and subtle qualities.

I guess one clarification can be that the fatigue has to be generalized to be indicative of the general load-bearing capacities being trained. For example, you can practice playing guitar very intensely and experience strong fatigue in your hands, but you might not be as fatigued in the rest of the body. Likewise, if the fatigue from a mental activity is very localized to that specific activity, then it's harder to say whether it trains your mental general load-bearing functions or not. But even within that, one would expect a sliding scale or gradient of effects going from more specialized to generalized. For example, playing guitar intensely might train your fingers the most, then your forearm muscles and wrist the second most, then your overarm muscles, then your shoulders and torso, then your neck and leg muscles, etc. So for some exercises, the gradient can be more skewed to generalized or specific. And to determine what this gradient is, you simply determine how much fatigue you experience across different faculties. Personally, if I do very intense brain training, it takes a little while before I'm able to do things like reading and writing at an optimal level of performance, which suggests that a generalized training is happening.

Sure, but the point is to see people as being in different stages of growth or development and that pushing standards on them that they might not be ready for can be counterproductive. When you see that somebody isn't being "stupid" but just need to grow, then that puts a lot of pressure off trying to change them or convert them to your point of view. Let people grow at their own pace. But of course, it's up to you how much you want to surround yourself with kids.

If a kid is being stupid, do you call them out on it, or do you laugh with your belly and say "oh you"?

If you're the grown-up, act like one. Literally treat them like kids who don't know any better.

Arguing about solipsism of course 😋

You just have to understand what working memory is. It's the basis of all active/intentional/voluntary mental activity, of all active thinking, visualization and imagery. It's the general workspace of your mind, and it has general load-bearing constraints, such as the 7 ± 2 rule, speed of processing, limits on detail resolution. These are analogous to how much weight you can lift off the ground or how fast you can run; very general measures of load-bearing capacity. Anything that loads your working memory, which is virtually anything, "trains" your working memory. It's just that if you load it with a bigger load (and in the right way), you will train it better (or in the direction of higher load-bearing capacity). How big the load is (and whether you load it in the right way), is related to how quickly you experience fatigue or loss in performance. And why do you develop fatigue? Say if you are chopping wood all day and you experience fatigue, what is happening to your body? What is happening to your muscles, your glucose stores, your lungs and oxygen levels? Well, everything points to that your general load-bearing systems, e.g. the musculoskeletal system or cardiovascular system, have been working hard. And just like a full-intensity sprint develops fatigue much quicker than e.g. going for a jog, some brain training develops fatigue much quicker than other forms of mental activity. So if you do something intense with your mind that you can only do for a short time before you experience fatigue or loss of performance, then those are signs that the general load-bearing functions of your mind are being efficiently trained. And of course, working memory has physical correlates which has metabolic constraints just like your lungs and muscles (particularly parts of the "Extrinsic Mode Network" in the brain, certain patterns of activity in frontoparietal areas). And also of course, there is some data on the benefits of brain training. Some do show increases in working memory capacity. The most controversial findings are more specifically related to IQ, but even there, you have some mixed findings with albeit small effect sizes. Despite that, I think the studies only show a fraction of what is possible, because getting a good study design that would truly test these things is extremely difficult, if not practically impossible, and is something you would never expect to find in any normal research setting. Yes. Literally stare at a point on your desk right now and try to focus in on finer and finer details (grainy and well-lit desk surfaces are better). Try to literally find the smallest detail you can possibly find and then try to find an even smaller detail, and then an even smaller detail, then an even smaller detail, etc. Do this for 5-10 minutes and see what happens.

Resistance to emotions and experiences is a part of the problem. Keep meditating and allow yourself to express these energies, give them some space, don't instinctively see them as something to get rid of. Now, you don't have to necessarily start lashing out at people or making rash decisions based on every emotional impulse, but simply allow emotions the benefit of the doubt and the starting assumption of openness. Meditating a lot like you do makes you very aware of your emotions. You see more of them, their causes and consequences, and you might have a strong desire to get rid of them because of that, but you might be setting your sights a bit too high and being a bit too harsh on yourself, at least for now. So allow yourself some emotions, allow yourself some emotional control, and keep meditating, and you might see things get a lot better quite quickly.

There is an interesting dynamic that I see when people talk about brain training vs e.g. general self-development or spirituality. When they see claims about brain training causing some improvement, they are generally very skeptical and questions like "is it repeatable though?", "placebo effect?", "is there even an effect?", while with self-development and spirituality, any perceived change or benefit is much more readily taken as proof of concept. It could be because brain training is associated with quantifiable things like IQ which primes a kind of scientific skepticism, while personal development is accepted to be more experience-based and subjective. The effects are also more "enhancements" of what is already there, while the results of personal development are often more tangible and clear cut.

In your mind. A paradox is when you try to superimpose a duality on reality and the duality doesn't seem to work. And often, paradoxes seem like paradoxes from one perspective but not another. Some people may think quantum superposition is a paradox (the particle is in different states at the same time), or the particle-wave duality ("is it a wave or a particle?"), when in reality, they just break with everyday notions of reality and the associated dualities we tend to superimpose on it.

I just wrote it above: Chris Langan 😂 (more in substance than in process I guess). More seriously, the InfiniteIQ guy on YouTube is the guy you're looking for. I guess it's hard to find a suitable generalized concept that already exists other than "somebody who sculpts their brain" ("brainbuilder"). (It's funny, but that distinction, substance vs process, was recently made by my prime minister on TV multiple times and I was like "hey that's my kind of philosophy" and it sounded like it was his favorite way to sound deep without necessarily saying much of substance 😆).

🫠🫠🫠

But it does make it a bit weird though, because now her BF should sue her too 😆

Go to high school. That's of course partially a joke, but find something that follows the same patterns: a place where you go to almost every day where people meet people and make friends, not because that is the main goal, but simply because it's bound to happen. Team sports, hobby groups (e.g. I was invited to join a local Facebook group that hosts small events and discussions on psychedelics), even Discord groups are other good alternatives. Notice again that the goal with these groups is not as much to socialize for its own sake but to share something you have in common, something you like, and creating an environment for each other where you fit to and amplify each other. Socializing comes naturally in those environments; it's not something you have to think about. To separate "socializing" from building actual long-term relationships, engaging with a community and congregating around shared values, is to put it mildly, really such an ugly part of American culture especially but also just modern Western culture in general (nightlife, pickup, hookup culture, party culture). Socializing is about connecting your soul to another, and not just many souls, but a larger soul created by those souls.

This guy made a song based on a virtuosic drum solo by Marco Minneman. The songwriting becomes really interesting when you use drums as a starting point, also when you base it on a largely improvised solo. It has a kind of freshness to it and gives a different angle on music than most normal songs, besides that it's a good song and that you're dealing with a genius drummer:

"Proof" is so hijacked by the narrow intellectual notions of black-and-white logical propositions. You have to expand your notion of proof to perception and reason. When you experience another person crying, you can cry and understand what they are feeling by virtue of that you're crying (whether it's about the same thing or simply crying). You don't see that by some logical deduction. You literally see it. Like get seriously out of your own head and experience things. The fear that drives so many questions about solipsism (fear of detachment from other people) is created from the same thing: detachment from other people. It's like how people who are crippled by indecision and inaction simply aren't used to making decisions and actions and need to start making them more so they get more used to it. So get out of your head and experience things and solipsism will seem like a deranged fantasy. If you're stuck in your own head all the time, no wonder you go around worrying about whether the world is just inside your head.

WTFFF I thought Norwegian black metal had cornered the market on obscenity

Man o man the world is turning to shit pretty fast, time to call your friend from high school that prepared for the zombie apocalypse and ask him to spare you a few hunting rifles and cans of beans

It's a good bonus.

All of Cynic's full-length album covers are like this:

Yes, I could imagine really going in for it and treating it like a high-end project, getting real professionals onboard. And that's really the effort and investment it would take to properly execute the vision I have in mind. Damn when I think about it, my dad is actually a professional photographer as well; he used to film for national television 🤔

Art project Filming a person meditating seated and silently with extreme close-ups and pristine HD quality. Make it into a short film that is trying to capture the extreme levels of stillness and calm that are possible in deep, seated, silent meditation. Multiple cameras are set up in multiple places, every shot is preset and ready to film all at once, no other people in the room, no movement of equipment, no camera zooms. The film is edited in a quiet and etheric cinematic style. Styles that come to mind is morning routine scene in American Psycho, and shampoo and cosmetics commericals. These are merely analogous, I have a vision of the style, and it's something entirely of its own if executed properly. The film can serve as an inspiration for what is possible during meditation, and if executed properly, could popularize not just meditation as a practice but the kinds of deep meditation that are associated with deep transformation. Research project Filming a person meditating seated and silently with extreme close-ups and pristine HD quality, but with focus on capturing any subtle movements or phenomena that the meditator would report as movements of energy. Physical measurement instruments like body temperature cameras and perhaps microscope technology can also be used. The aim is to provide insight into subtle energy phenomena often experienced during meditation, e.g. feelings of pressure and tension building up and releasing in the face, neck, forehead, etc. It would involve correlating footage and timestamps with the meditator giving retrospective accounts of the experiences. The findings can uncover potential subtle physical mechanisms of these phenomena or support the hypothesis that these are non-physical phenomena (not capturable by physical measurement). If anyone is interested in trying any of this out (especially the art project), I'm open to give advice so that it meets the vision I have mind. I think if especially the art project is given a serious attempt (which I might do some time, I have a friend who is a photographer) and perhaps some financial investment, you could create something unique, beautiful and powerful.

Ironically, the conundrum of "does free will exist?" falls into the same trap of forcing an either/or answer. You experience yourself analyzing, judging, weighing and making choices based on what you want, thus in this sense, you have free will, but you can't will what you want, thus in this other sense, you don't have free will. Likewise, you tried to fail but you succeeded, so in one sense, you succeeded, but in another sense, you failed.