Carl-Richard

Give me your best explanation. Best explanation gets a cookie (laced with meth).

When I first watched Breaking Bad, I was around 18-19 years old, and I used to identify much more with Walt than I did when I re-watched the show at an older age. Then I noticed that Walt was kinda an asshole right from the start. And if you dig into the vague story around his time with Grey Matter and his relationship with Gretchen, it becomes a possibility that this was an ingrained thing. Whatever happened that made him break up with Gretchen and exit Grey Matter for 5k USD (the cause seems very vague but was at least somewhat interpersonal in nature), it could have been due to some dark traits in Walter already, but it definitely left him with great resentment and insecurity when the company later skyrocketed to billionaire status (allegedly mostly based on his work, his ideas). This darkness, irrespective of how ingrained it was, seemed to be the core fuel behind his increasingly outrageous decisions. But if you are willing to overlook those small details and identify with him as the seemingly good guy he appears to be at the start, you can identify with him all throughout the show, and that's a masterful display and lesson of how ego works. Whatever outrageous decision is made, seems understandable, because you identified with him from the start, and you are gradually taken through all the justifications, all the defenses Walter makes for why he does it. And it even makes you actively dislike the characters that are actually good: it's a huge phenomena that people hate Skyler or Marie in the show. They are seen as obstacles, they try to put a stop to Walt, and it causes anger and resentment when you identify with Walt. All in all, it's a genius display of how ego works, made possible by the formula of taking a seemingly good guy and turning him gradually bad, and you again have to work through all the same justifications and ego defense mechanisms as he does, as it's happening, and that's as exciting as it's disconcerting. It makes you question whether you could be bad (which you are of course, by virtue of identifying with yourself to begin with, but specifically in the criminal sense).

AI - disqualified

@enchanted Ah, just two gay people talking about how porn turns you gay. You know what, Nick has a gift for orating and producing easy-to-follow thoughts (even if they're right-wing slop). He will go far if he doesn't get *political environment in US*-ed.

Have you tried meaning? It's my understanding that in nature, we didn't just walk around alone and doing nothing. We did useful stuff, with other people, for other people. Just like a monk can endure isolation in a grey prison cell or cave through meditation, a normal person can endure the grey life of the concrete jungle through meaning.

Eat tons of veggies and fibrous foods. Make at least 50% of your meal in weight be veggies or fruits. And that means every meal, no "snacks" allowed (unless it's veggies or fruits). If that alone doesn't work, up the percentage of fruits and veggies and/or protein intake. If that doesn't work (which if you do it right, should basically be impossible), eat the same amounts of food every day, and if you don't lose weight, reduce some amount of food.

Closing your eyes in silence for 50-60 minutes works too. But of course living in an environment for the next 23 hours of the day has an impact. I want to go out in nature more too a lot of the time. Sometimes I get stuck merely scrolling through Google Images of natural environments often near me.

You have natural on your mind a lot.

It's a CUP OF JOE (and testosterone). The guy has always been like that though, he's just an explosive individual, pro wrestler, powerlifter. Actually ADHD. Btw, this is the guy I recommend watching for lifting advice. Take advice from somebody who actually loves lifting and does it for fun and has an intuitive understanding for what works and doesn't fill his head with a bunch of crap (and he's not exactly a dumbass either, he has a degree in kinesiology, which is about as relevant of a degree you can have, unlike more physiology-focused exercise science degrees a la Mr. Mike Israetel and the loads upon loads of academic delusional rabbit holes those guys dig themselves down in). All the "science-based lifters" are the Looksmaxxing of lifting. Completely soulless, lifeless, body dysmorphia-driven and skewed priorities and probably even wrong most of the time. Any lifting "coach" that makes lifting into something depression-inducing and life-draining should be fired immediately.

I saw them live last year. I could not stop nodding my head to the music. I never thought I would end up enjoying that kind of music. My signature is like a Meshuggah lyric. It's un-non-noddable once you get the song. And of course that can be a challenge because the way they write the songs is more like deriving a mathematical formula than "playing from the soul" as they say (which has pros and cons, but damn, sometimes it's just beautiful). They essentially write their music as if it's electronic music and then they play it on their instruments (they use a drum machine and try to find an odd-time rhytmical pattern that they repeat in a certain way over a straight time signature, and that's their creative process most of the time; so much for "nobody buys a song for its rhythm" 🤪). And can I just say the massive cojones it takes to perform that particular song live with the whole band playing at the same time in the studio and that being used for the album (of course while splicing together the best parts from multiple performances, but still)? These guys are tighter than a box of sardines. Let me re-iterate: the sounds you are hearing in this particular YouTube video is the entire band playing live.

Holy BUCKETS!

10:54

I'm not so sure he is drawing the inference "the void is x therefore I must live better". It was rather a thought he had in the void. This is more of the issue of (Leo) declaring thoughts in the void and without as "Absolute x". It did not occur to me that Bryan was declaring he is now delivering the gospel of Truth as he experienced it in the void. He was sharing a thought from the void. When he said "it is impossible to explain with words. Whatever you imagine, multiply it by 1,000 and then add infinite width and depth and dimensions", that seemed more like he was trying to convey the actual experience of the void itself. You know, not everyone is a "epistemic pervert" as they say.

I have a theory (not a conspiracy theory): the people who get strongly drawn to conspiracy theories are the same people who get drawn to supernatural ideas, like God creating the universe from their own predetermined plan (not simply evolving spontaneously through "natural law"). They are fine with explaining reality top down through an elaborate narrative. There is a seeming plan behind everything, behind world politics, behind alien invasions, behind wars, behind ancient history, and they all connect to a grand meta-narrative of control, of manufacturing, of conscious creating, rather than natural systems acting spontaneously. Those who criticize conspiracy theories point out how that level of organization, of top-down control, is unlikely if not impossible, because of the natural tendency towards spontaneous order and the infeasibility of controlling complex systems. In the "naturalist critique", everybody is a victim of systems, even the supposed people in power, while in the conspiracist's mind, the people in power are the controllers of the systems and the powerless are the victims. Whether one is more correct than the other is actually hard to say, and a naturalist that claims otherwise would then become a conspiracy theorist in their own right, thinking they have the level of insight and knowledge to be able to predict complex systems. As for myself, as a general predisposition, I've noticed I'm fine with either (naturalism or supernaturalism). While for example Bernardo Kastrup says he is strongly opposed to supernaturalism simply as a personal predisposition (which is why he says he sees no point in doing philosophy if nature is not simply naturalistic; no "God" at the top planning it all, intervening into nature and changing the natural course of things). But I would also challenge this idea of naturalism, that you could still try to deduce the "laws" behind God's planning so to speak, and it won't be a completely pointless endeavour, simply a more interesting one. Like trying to understand the psychology of God rather than the "physics" of God.

It's exactly if you think "grasping the Absolute" implies it necessarily is not that way, you haven't actually grasped the message, only made faulty implications about it. It's to overstep and make it complicated (which has more or less become the entire shtick with this place), and then view those who don't do that with condescension, that's to not grasp the message.

"Save Soil" too I guess. I think you're wrong. It matters in a relative sense. If no effort to survive mattered at all, you would curl up in a ball and die right now. But you don't. You still keep on surviving, in the limited way you desire. Some prefer surviving in a different way.

Meaning (in life) can be described by significance, purpose, coherence, mattering. But I think it extends metaphysically as well. They all boil down to how our cognition is structured and how our survival occurs at even a biological level. Without significance, nothing has innate value (nothing has true quality or qualia, it's only just means to an end, an end which has no ground but another mean, which feels empty in itself; any endevor must inevitably point to something truly valueable, something truly real, to feel meaningful). Purpose is means to an end, and it creates impetus, telos, movement. Organisms that move are very clear expressions of this form of meaning. If you're an organism that moves but with no purpose, you will struggle to know where to move and your movement will be inhibited and you will feel like you're not "going anywhere"; the moving organism needs to move to be truly alive. Coherence means that the "movement" (be it abstract in the realm of mind or concretely in the realm of physical movement) makes sense, it coheres to an environment, it coheres to a set of conditions, it follows logically. Mattering is simply do all of these things transcend merely my own self in their value, do they matter to something bigger than myself (e.g. my species in terms of biological reproduction or simply more abstractly in terms of the collective survival of the species or somebody or something I love or care about)?

Attracted? It just happens. Look: 🙂 It's not about the frame though. It's about the music. It's not like "how do I want to feel today; ah I'll pick this song". It's more like "music - ah, this song". Maybe there is a "I want to feel this way" in the middle there between "music" and "this song", but it's "music" that comes first. Very often I want to just listen to a guitar solo in a particular song because it's that cool, and a guitar solo is sometimes less "vibe" and more "notes, harmony, melody, structure, surprise, angularity, beauty", i.e. music.

(Damn what a nice t-shirt referring to Enlightenment). More seriously, I don't think I think of music in this way (I don't "think" much of music, other than the music itself). I just listen to the music while looking like in the picture. What I think of music is mostly found in my journal: Sometimes the song title matches a lot with the song: It makes me think of a monstrous massive thing (turns out the lyrics is actually about a city, I didn't know that before now 🙂).

I think "ADHD is insensitive to meaning" is an unfortunate and "insensitive" way to frame it. I would instead frame it as ADHD jumps between meaning frameworks quickly (and therefore might spend less time "deepening" or expanding on any single framework). It's a difference in dynamics, not "ontology". Every mind is driven by meaning. It's just some are less "sequential" about it than others (did I just deconstruct your paradigm by saying that?). For example, The Mars Volta, or any band that goes from low intensity to high intensity or switches textures or modes or ideas many times throughout a song (e.g. King Crimson, Opeth), are very ADHD-like, but they are also extremely structured and cohesive (i.e. meaningful). Any song ever made has structure and cohesion. It just happens at many levels simultaneously, and you can tweak each level more in the direction of ADHD or "autism". I think you might define meaning differently than I do. How do you define it?

The history of metal has essentially been the purest form of expression of testosterone. "How can we make this sound even heavier, even faster, even uglier, even more evil, even more monstrous and terrifying?" Rock -> hard rock -> heavy metal -> speed metal / power metal -> thrash metal -> technical thrash metal -> death metal -> technical death metal / brutal death metal / black metal / grindcore / djent -> goregrind / pornogrind (🤣)

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).