Carl-Richard

God is everything.

New Age psych prog hello

They say that good music keeps you at the edge between familiarity and surprise. Too familiar becomes boring, and too surprising becomes hard to follow. Musical improvisation is the manifestation of this in real time, and you can usually notice when the player is engaging in well-established/familiar patterns ("licks") and when the player is creating something completely original. I'm used to improvising a lot on guitar, and I've noticed that I'm able to imagine impossibly intricate and original lines of improvisation in my head, but I'm in no way technically advanced enough to manifest that through my instrument. When I listen to the most complete virtuostic improvisational players out there, even though they can come very close many times, I always feel a tension between boredom and impenetrability. Of course, this desire I have of hearing the most hyper-creative lines of notes that I can possibly imagine is impossible to fulfill. It's completely relative to my unique conception of music, and I would probably never in a million years get to hear somebody produce even 10 seconds of those exact notes (which would be absolutely transcendentally orgasmic if it happened). Nevertheless, I know two players who come extremely close, and I'll try to weigh to which extent they're too "boring" ("musically conventional" is a better word) or too impenetrable (too melodically or harmonically complex) relative to my impossible standard of imaginative perfection. Guthrie Govan (obviously). It's tricky, because he is so versatile that he often fluctuates between too conventional (like bluesy bendy stuff) and too complex (like jazzy shredding stuff). I'll give an example for each player: Allan Holdsworth is notoriously known for being impossible to imitate by other players. For reference, Guthrie Govan can imitate virtually anyone but him. He often becomes too complex. I sometimes have to listen to his songs 30 times to understand what he is doing (like the run at 1:28 in the video below). (Btw things become more interesting around 0:40).

"Science-based lifting" is to use scientific studies to conclude which ways to train are the most optimal. It's a term primarily used in a setting of hypertrophy/bodybuilding training, and it's here it is often the most problematic. Why it is problematic can be boiled down to essentially one phrase: "moving your body is not like swallowing a pill". People tend to point to the scientific rigor of so called "high quality research designs" like randomized controlled trials by saying that is how we develop drugs and medical treatments, and these have been shown to demonstrate real effects that map on to the world accurately. Well, firstly, let's explore even that for a minute: SSRIs have been shown to be only 2% more effective than placebo. And that's assuming that the study design is accurate and can tell us something true about those effects, which can also be questioned. After all, who are the studies conducted on? Are those people's characteristics always applicable to any given scenario? Are they always relevant for you and your bodily functioning? Maybe not. That aside, you also have the problem of the replication crisis which affects all of behavioral science, not just psychology or the "softer" social science disciplines like it is often portrayed as, but it affects medicine, biology, biotechnology, pharmacology. And why that is the case could boil down to simply "humans are complicated". And what is even more complicated than humans popping a pill? That is humans moving their bodies, and maybe especially lifting weights for hypertrophy. Lifting weights is not just lifting weights. It's every cell in your body coordinating to produce complex movement patterns. To even conceive of this theoretically, forget about the empirical problems for a moment, is a wild assertion of confidence. You would essentially be claiming omniscience like a God. And that's what science-based lifters have essentially done to their analytical mind and by an even more painfully wild and confident extension their empirical capability, not just in interpreting science but in claiming to have produced valuable and truth-uncovering research designs. And this ties into the second but related problem of ecological validity and external validity. Lifting weights is not just lifting weights yes in this sense that that phrase belies an immense world of complexity that is generally not appreciated for what it is, but it's also in the sense that the weights and the movement patterns are not the only thing that is part of your training. It's the gym, the surroundings, the people, the knowledge of the person lifting the weights, the motivation and rigor of the person lifting the weights, the shape and size of the body of the person lifting the weights, the length and width of the limbs; any characteristic that you could describe as merely tangentially related, is deeply intertwined in the outcomes of training. And this is where the "soccer moms in an 8-week study" critique comes in, and it's not a trivial or merely funny or facetious critique. Do you honestly think it is a good idea to base your idea of what is "optimal lifting" on people who are on average and certainly compared to the average hyper-obsessed gym bro 1. not at all knowledgeable in lifting, 2. not at all motivated to lift (at any considerable level of intensity or rigor), 3. not the same size or shape as you, and 4. maybe most importantly generally lifting in a controlled and alien setting where a scientist is standing behind you shouting "start", "stop", "start", "stop", at every rep, where some designs use absolutely unheard of training setups like using one technique with one arm and another technique with the other arm for those 8 weeks, where even quantifying states like "true failure" vs "3 reps in reserve" is mere hocus-pocus philosophical conjecture? And you then compile various of different kinds of studies like this that mostly contradict each other in terms of the overall conclusions and you end up with a marginal number of "51% in favor of this training method over this". And this is what is "most optimal". It is an absolute charade, a circus, pure pseudo-intellectual masturbatory, below AI-slop levels of investigation and conclusion. It's not to say that all of exercise science is pseudoscience. There are valueable studies on e.g. best ways to improve VO2 max which are much more similar to a physiological "pill-taking" mechanism where dose and response are much more simply controlled. But movement patterns, hypertrophy training, based on female mid-40s RCTs, compiled into a sludge of marginally favored conclusions, and then presented as "the most optimal way to train", is not as much a pseudoscience as it is a failure of analytical thinking and logical inference. Science-based lifting is not really as much a science as it is a kind of metaphysics, a theological doctrine, that more interprets and concludes based on a set of assumptions rather than based on the actual observations. That is why "The Church of Science-Based Lifting" is a fitting and ironic name. Because that is also the kind of thinking that is associated with it: "what does the science say?" "what does the book say?" "what is the most optimal way?" "what is the answer?" "what is the thing we should follow, the one true way, the path, the one espoused by the Churchmen with the P and the H and the Ds?" It's ironic that the more "science-based", the less thinking you seem to have to do, the more you just have to listen, deny criticism, bow to authority. What is the true and honest way to train, is philosophy-based lifting; being aware of the assumptions underlying your thinking, not making poorly justified conclusions based on observation, and simply working with what you have, which in the case of hypertrophy is mainly yourself and your own experience, your sense, your own body and mind.

I've never trusted these stupid bots. People should be educated to not trust them if they aren't capable of doing it themselves.

If you meditate regularly and really prepare yourself for the trip and do everything right, you won't even need a big dose.

Not more than working a 9-5.

Here is an insight I've rescued after deconstructing "science-based lifting" and the training style I had since I started training over 14 years ago: When you do a set, the entire set is like one rep. In other words, each rep you do is in a continuous flow with the next, such that your muscles are under a constant tension that builds throughout the set and then peaks when you hit failure and can't do anymore. This is really what I believe is intended with the cue of "controlling the weight". It's not about slowing down, not about limiting intensity, but about maximizing flow. The main pitfall of science-based lifting is the tendency to make divisions, e.g. between eccentric and concentric, and consequentially making prescriptions like "slow the eccentric, explode on the concentric". This limits flow, because in flow, only the body decides what the movement is, and it's one movement. There is no eccentric or concentric, and there are no reps. There is the set - the exercise - and rest. If the goal is truly just "stimulus", then letting the body perform the movement it knows best to reach muscular failure, that is the only job. Techniques like "deep stretch" or "pause at the bottom of the rep" are tools that can come in handy in some situations, but the main exercise, the main part of the workout, is in my opinion to maximize the smoothness of the curve to muscular failure. Whether you prefer fantasies like "2-3 reps in reserve" or taking on endless amounts of volume, the same goal still applies: approaching muscular failure. My claim is simply that maximizing flow is generally the best path towards this end. Why? Because we see this in professional athletes: flow is the best measure for performance. So if you're an athlete of hypertrophy, why would it not be the same? Flow is a synonym for doing something right, as right as possible. If you perform the movement as right as possible, focusing all resources on exactly what you need to perform the movement, then you will be more efficient, you will have more resources to use on exactly that movement, which gives more resources for hypertrophy. We know things like stress, doing cardio instead of resting, impact hypertrophy, because they require resources that could be used for hypertrophy. Flow limits the loss of resources to factors external to hypertrophy. It could be something as simple as flailing your arms a little too much, or indeed not controlling the weight in a way that targets the muscle. Maximizing flow streamlines the targeting of the muscles during the exercise, and it also maximizes rest during rest periods. If you spend your time during rest moving in a less efficient way, there will be less resources for the set. These may seem like inconsequential things that a scientific reductionist who is numb to anything slightly subtle will brush away as indeed inconsequential. But consider that the line between the mediocre and the best, is subtle. And it's rooted in a personal relationship to oneself as the best, which cannot be replaced by a scientific formula written in a book or spoken about in a podcast.

"It's not a drug, it's a natural plant". Level 1 stoner ego defense mechanism.

There is also an underappreciation in "pure bodybuilding" culture of the aesthetics of athletic movement. A sprinter moves, walks and even talks in a specific way that is much more attractive than a bodybuilder who can't walk up a set of stairs without losing their breath or can't reach halfway down to their toes or lift their hip without tearing a muscle. When your steps are light, when your legs are nimble but strong, that just looks much better than if you're a walking brick house.

I'm sorry I couldn't help.

@Ramasta9 I came to this forum to distract myself and seek guidance while dealing with a spiritual emergency. My academia was like your van. It's a way to drive around, explore, karma. Eventually I'll settle.

I think after my awakening, I understood nobody could actually give me advice about anything, because I knew what I wanted, so their misunderstanding doesn't matter. Of course they will misunderstand, they haven't had the same experience. So just getting really firm and connected with the feeling of what you truly want, that will make anybody else's input simply indeed useful suggestions, which do not perturb you existentially.

Why did you actually return to the forum?

The frame is undeniably Neo-Advaita based on context (you do talk about the non-existence of self a lot), but we can reduce it to apophatic theology (speaking about God using negations) if you like, but that assumes you're indeed talking about God or something divine beyond intellectual comprehension. But if you also want to object to even that, then maybe it's just absolute/radical skepticism. Regardless of the particular frame, my frame is challenging the need to stick to just one frame. There are also other forms of Advaita, or Westernized academic forms of idealism; there is cataphatic theology; there is realism, pragmatism, meta-theorism. You can say very similar things with these different frames. Hence also in some cases, disagreements may not be actual disagreements, just disagreements in how to state the same things. And that is very often what I see, where disagreements are simply at level of frame, not at the level of substance, and where there is no desire to connect beyond frame, being open, honest, seeking and generous, instead closing down and defending, asking "questions" performatively, feigning incredulousness, ironically placing so much importance on your exact words, wording, phrasing, choices of framework, when in fact your substantial point, is beyond that.

Performative incredulousness to protect frame.

More "I only use one frame" non-duality preaching and endless argumentation to uphold that frame. Non-duality is not cognitive development.

This is consistent with how administering dopaminergic drugs strengthens the pathways that were active prior to administering. It could be as simple as the fact that when you experience something during the trip, or you have an insight or breakthrough or drastic change in perspective, that is what was active during the trip, and given the lasting changes that such deep experiences can bring, that is what was changed. With dopamine, it reflects experiences of significance, so you will remember such events better and be more likely to think about them in the future (and hence addictions can occur), hence your brain rewires to be more likely to fire those particular neural circuits in the future. The brain and experience (or "mind" more generally, which might involve unconscious, sub-, pre- or periconscious processes) are just mirrors; you will always find a cause explaining one of the coin from the other side of the coin, but the cause is both ways, not just brain to experience (in fact, there is only correlation, but we can speak of causation in a certain sense).

Two of the 9/11 hijackers who flew the planes, when asked why they did not laugh ever, responded "how can you laugh with what is happening in Palestine?". Then they practiced for a year to get pilot licenses. Belief in oneself comes in many shapes and sizes.

@Ramasta9 U tryna spiritually one up me bruh?

See the beauty in depressed people 🙏🙏🕉️☯️🌙🧘🌟

Yeah. Anyway great place to meet chill people. My "chill" is probably largely genetic, because my dad is extremely chill, my mom is decently chill if relaxed, but my stepfather is like almost a different species (there is no such thing as rest). Like I was just helping my stepfather with moving some stuff and fixing some doors and when he became hungry for lunch (I was not) he suggested I could keep going while he went to eat, meanwhile I was like "just resting could be smart, to regain some energy, we know it can be good for productivity", and he was like "I didn't go to that school, but sure, do whatever you want". So I rested like 5 minutes and then I continued while he finished eating just so he didn't have an internal neurotic breakdown watching me just sit and rest 😂

There are reasons for thinking they are invented and reasons for thinking they are discovered. You can heed both of those while also choosing which ever frame you prefer the most for your everyday epistemology.

My house (jk jk jk holy). I was going to say just hang out with chill person(s) and watch them and learn. A yoga retreat is essentially the same thing just more focused and generally more transformative.