Carl-Richard

Saying you value openmindedness is like saying you value truth. It doesn't say much. And often, people substitute it for being a softie who doesn't stand up to a counterargument or who is afraid to say what they feel or who doesn't have a opinion or a well-formed one.

Be honest with what you think is reasonable and engage fully with whatever is presented to you. Then you can present whatever view that you've been exposed to and argue in their favor, and you will also discover which view you think is more reasonable relative to which metric (and which metrics you find most appealing).

I smoked every single day, multiple times a day, for up to many months at a time. I have probably spent more money on weed than you have on cigarettes. I had just joined a cult that had slowly turned anti-drugs, I felt it was impeding my meditation practice, and my mom was kicking me out if I didn't stop. All in all, if it really matters that you quit, for you and for other people, for the things that you care about and also for your very survival, then quitting becomes easier (meditation in itself also helps, because nothing beats how it makes you aware of your thoughts and spontaneous impulses). But some people manage to quit by just quitting. They just say "fuck it" and get on with their lives. It doesn't have to be a life-changing event.

I was addicted to weed before. That is what makes me sensitive and react to rationalizations of addiction.

Is dying of an overdose worth it if you have a heroin addiction?

Try sprinting and compare sprinting for 3 seconds and then stopping for 3 seconds, and repeating that for 20 seconds, vs sprinting full throttle for 20 seconds. See which one you prefer. See which one makes you feel more energized and alive. When you put too many brakes on a movement, when you let the mind dictate too much how to execute the movement, rather than letting the body execute it within what feels best, you limit the body. And it makes you weaker (your body). Controlling movement means inhibiting it. This is how neuroscience works. Control is the interplay between inhibition and release. The more you control something, the more you inhibit it. The less you control something, the more you release it. Flow and optimal performance is at the balance of inhibition and release, and your body has a natural balance for its flow. You can only know that by listening to it, not by reading it in a book (although you can use it as a pointer). "This is how I should move my body because somebody else told me". "I have to limit my body's expression of energy so that I align with this outside source". "I have to feel immense pain, it has to be humiliating and hard, rather than feeling energized and empowered". This is the distinction between self-determination vs emprisonment/coercion/constraint, internal motivation vs external motivation, flow, joy and personal expression vs shame, guilt and insecurity. Of course, you can come to the point where you mentally identify with the constrained movements and the philosophy behind it so that you feel a kind of internal motivation to do it on a mental plane, and you might become very good at it and condition your body to respond well to it and even tap into a kind of flow state, but on a raw physical level, your body might still have another idea of what it wants (and if you were to change the technique, you might experience a great release). You can get used to walking with bad posture or holding on to some tension or energy in your body, but when you get to release it (e.g. by becoming aware of it in meditation or through consciousness-expanding substances), you will feel like you've been freed and that everything becomes lighter. I just said it was an interesting contrast. You can watch more Mike Israetel videos, particularly the cable bicep curls or lying bicep curls that he makes his guests humiliate themselves with, and then contrast that with Eric Bugenhagen blasting some incline dumbell presses. It's not hard to see which one is more inhibitory and which one is more "release".

Eye contact is a bit like physical contact. Too much is creepy.

I've trained like that for a year, by the book as Mike Israetel recommends, and now I'm back to how I've usually trained since I started but I've also added deep stretch microreps on failure for some exercises, and by looking at me, you probably wouldn't notice much difference (expect a bigger chest, which it used to be when I trained more intense, before I got shoulder and sternum issues from injuries unrelated to lifting). It's not "harder", but it's less fun, and for me, it doesn't give the effects I desire from training (which involve the mental effects). High intensity, letting go of restrants, is what gives the mental effects. You just contradicted yourself in one sentence. The eccentric is half of the movement. Punctuating every rep with restraint is not what your body wants to do; it's what your mind wants to do, and it makes you energetically constipated. If you go full set no restraint, it's like a constant surge of energy. It's like one big rep. It's intense in the same way that cutting yourself with a blade is intense. I'm after intensity which explodes out of me, not some kind of neurotic self-inflicted torture technique. It's the difference between being the one who punches someone and being punched. It's about self-determination, doing what you feel deepest inside, not submitting to some prescribed notion that you got from the outside (which is identical to shame, or again, receiving violence from an outside source). "Listen to your body" while cutting yourself with a blade. "Speaking from experience" while it's science-based. Interesting contrasts. Compare the vibe you get from that video and this video: Tell me if you see the "blade cutting" vs "face punching" distinction.

Greg Doucette is also critical of "science-based" lifting.

Then yoga must build hella muscles. And the groin should be 13.2 cm above the waist when benching. Ok. Slow training has its benefits, but it has its downsides. Look at the benefits of sprint training on a systemic level. Imagine if somebody said "nah, you can get that by jogging at 140-160 bpm for 40 minutes". That's the same kind of dynamic we're dealing with. And I'm of course stretching this way beyond pure "hypertrophy", but even there, the so-called "science" is not at all conclusive either way. The type of studies Mike references are CRAP. Sorry, it is just the truth. Look at the methodology of how they make the study subjects train during the so-called "high quality" studies. It's ridiculous. It's things like training only one arm with one technique and training the other arm with the other technique and then comparing, or having some scientist breathe down your neck while doing your sets. Where is the ecological validity? Where is the knowledge that context matters, certainly for performance in high energy environments/situations? Do you think any of this flies for somebody trying to win the Mr. Olympia? No, so why do we use it as the blueprint for "optimal training for hypertrophy"? B-S.

All I read is that you like to take a phallus up the ass More seriously: every expression is an excrement. Presenting a stance, taking a position, requires shitting on something. If you don't want to shit, then hold it in. You don't have to project this macho frame onto, about having the phallus or feeling superficially superior or powerful, or whatever Freudian "everything is fundamentally bad, painful and conflict-filled" frame. It's about expression. That's where your "dysthymic" self-identity comes from: from anally receiving Freud, shitting his turds in reverse (man, this is going places).

Nobody is obsessing about IQ here, no more than you're obsessing about hard work. Try getting into Harvard with 85 IQ. People say obsessing about IQ is a lack of holism. But completely disregarding IQ, or underestimating it, that's the true lack of holism.

I don't like Quad, I feel like it gives me ADHD.

No problem. Bernardo Kastrup has said some interesting things about psychedelics, and his opinions are naturally touching on academic sources, so I would maybe look into that. He talks about how psychedelics actually lead to a reduction in brain activity, which challenges the idea that brain activity can explain experiences. On a more personal level, he is skeptical of "psychedelic gnosis" (the knowledge you gain during a psychedelic trip), emphasizing the tendency towards fantasy (but his actual stance is more nuanced).

Eric Weinstein is a Harvard alumni.

In other words, let go.

I might test it officially after I start Dual 8-Back 😆 But for now, I would go by the thread I referenced.

23 year old ones?

At no point did he say brain wave programs should make us forget about meditation, nor did he reference any scientists who said that. So what made you say that?

You give very little specifics in terms of evidence though.

Anything can be a distraction from spirituality. But social games tend to drag you in in a particular way. If your friends go out to drink, they will say "hey, you joining drinking tonight?" and if you say "no" they'll say "cmon man, everybody needs to relax some time, am I right?". And if you say "no" enough times, they will think a certain way about you. But to be honest, if we're being realistic, you probably won't spend all of your available time doing spirituality anyway (which might be a good thing) and you will spend your time doing other things, and some of it will likely be mindless entertainment. Then you might as well socialize for a chunk of that time, and it will probably be healthier and more fulfilling than the alternative (depending on the circumstances of course).

Let's put it this way: do you want to listen to the couple of brain cells in the front of your brain (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the frontopolar cortex, all that good stuff) that tells you " tHiS iS tHe sCiEnTificALly oPtiMaL wAy tO liFt", or do you want to listen to literally every cell in your body? That rush you feel to move that weight super fast and super forcefully, that's billions of years of genetic memory at work pushing you to do that. Forget the memory in your little tiny monkey brain. Let the memory of the entire universe flow through you. Let the spirit of God move through you (literally; lifting at your peak is a mystical experience, it's a Jesus take the wheel type experience). Remember back to grade school when the class went for a bike trip and how all the boys were like rushing and blasting full cylinders from the very start and how all the girls (some of them) were like "you know you shouldn't spend all your juices at the very start, right >:(?" Why would you hold back that natural forceful energy, that primal energy, that natural adaptive force, like some giiiirl (just joking), when you can use it exactly the way it was intended? Evolution pushes you to act within your adaptive capacities and pushing it to the limit. That's how you survive and that's how you grow. (But of course, weaksauce training with immense volume might be better for hypertrophy in some cases, but as a general catch-all approach to training, when looking at all the benefits of training, without a doubt, you should go full intensity, or else you're just wasting your potential).

Wtf And wtf is a "brian (brain) frequency program"?

By aliens? 🫨

Get high enough and you stop seeing your own IQ as a limitation and you care about it less. That's pretty high yeah. There is like one dude on the forum who scored over 150 on some non-official test in an older forum thread, and you can notice.