Carl-Richard

Tl;dr: genes. Thinking you're innately less capable is partially genetic, but you can teach yourself to not do it, because it doesn't lead you anywhere. "But you should be realistic". Yes, about what you want, about what you feel you are a capable at. But don't feed yourself poison.

It's simply if you find one or two things of the same kind, you could expect to find more. You won't necessarily find more, but the existence of those things "could indicate" more such things exist. Alternatively, finding true vision without physical sense organs could indicate that the design is itself a result of planning (that God did not evolve vision spontaneously, step by step, bottom-up, but simply made it such top-down, through will and imagination).

It's not a silly question you brute.

When your awareness stretches farther than the next immediate impulse, you immediately feel the consequences of lying. It also creates a split in the mind between what is true and what is lie, and it creates a poisonous environment. It's like you create a cancerous tumor that starts metastatizing and spreads. The organism, the whole, is truth. When you create something separate from the organism, untruth, it competes and eventually devours it.

Lying and cheating doesn't feel good.

Death caps is exactly the "thorn" in your argument. How do you know the difference between a herbal death cap, an innocuous herb and something inbetween?

Bro Connor is actually a comedic genius 😂 Watch this 😂

@Elliott This is exactly the bullshit within-person designs I'm talking about. Consider that heavy lifting could maybe benefit more from bilateral training? Maybe limiting movement patterns to just one side of the body limits power output and therefore limits the potential effects of that modality of training? Within-person designs are better if you take a lifter who is at a stable muscle mass while lifting regularly and make them experiment with each technique whole-heartedly for separate periods (preferably matching the seasons). But that's still just N = 1 if you do as in the video and use one person, so you can't necessarily generalize to everybody.

"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.

If you are watching a show, why not enjoy it? If it's a cringe show, then cringe about how bad it is. But having an existential crisis about how the show is constructed, that is not needed.

Not exactly evidence for the personhood of God, but NDEs involving actual seeing without having eyes open or a functional brain are evidence of mental and perceptual faculties existing "before" the events proposed necessary by naturalism (according to the current evidence or paradigms; evolution and development of physical perceptual instruments), which could indicate that also other higher mental faculties (e.g. planning) could exist at the bottom of reality as a part of a "personal" God.

I have a feeling young people believe they have discovered something new because when they look at their parents or the older generations, they are not in that game, but the truth is they probably used to be in that game but they just stopped caring. Like, you could definitely trace "looksmaxing" back to some dude or gal in Ancient Greece calling it by some Greek name (Looksus Maximus). Or that's just my 0.9% Greek/South-Italian genes speaking (they are carrying all my efforts towards Looksmaxing).

My bar for speaking solipsism with you without pulling my hairs out is that you know the difference between cosmic solipsism and egoic solipsism, and you know the difference between a perception and pure consciousness.

The video format of playing a bunch of random funny clips on top of a droning monologue is so cheap and deceptive. It makes the droning monologue sound more impressive when in reality it's mostly just slop. It's the same issue with food videos that use high-speed cuts and transitions. It hijacks your dopamine system and makes what you are looking at artificially more salient than it actually is.

When I see these videos, of these young people and their limited understanding, I know that I'm getting old:

In my personal opinion, "God" is not a problem for me. People have different knacks for different words. Some are allergic to "ego". Some are allergic to "solipsism" (that would basically be me). The larger lesson of "language is not it" is a good one, but individual words, that's more personal. But I will say, "solipsism" is an absolute communicative self-immolative exercise.

There is a powerful pointer attributed to Leo which goes like "You are creating everything". It resonates strongly with the notion of "God". Besides, God-realization is often used as a description of higher states of divine love not merely reducible to the pure emptiness realization.

You could stop suffering quite easily, but you don't want to, either do what is required or drop what is required, which is very straightforward: everything you value must be dropped, everything you're doing that stands in the way of this must be deprioritized. Then meditation comes quite naturally. You're lucky to do spirituality before you have built a life, to see what is there, because that is simpler than tearing it all down. But you actually want to tear it all down before you get to see what is there. That is the conundrum. People want to mess themselves up before they put themselves back together again. As for when is enough enough, it depends on the person. Some can drop it all at 14-15 years old. Some need more time to mess around. And the messing around can get very tricky, even in the later stages. Some can have many deep spiritual experiences and still believe it's not possible to let go fully of everything. Stuck in limbo, moth and the flame.

Space and form. Consciousness is the space which everything arises in. Intelligence is the forms it takes. The reason "intelligent" people can tend to be unwise is because they are stuck on a limited set of forms, so they become prone to deception, bias, inflexibility, blindspots. Yet increasing consciousness increases the perspective, breaks the attachments to any particular form, and you start seeing between the lines, seeing details some people can't see. Increasing consciousness doesn't make you automatically wise, but across time, it will. Time is an important dimension of wisdom, but again, so is space. Space and time.

I prefer the shitty version (95% oxide/5% citrate) because I think the slight laxative effect has a better effect on my cognition than the magnesium itself (or I get enough magnesium with it).

He might be. That is essentially the entire tension between contemporary non-duality, analytical idealism, the mystical but still scientifically subscribing (naturalists), and Christians, Muslims, who are more open to the super-natural (and the brilliant cross-over: Christian perennialist panentheists, e.g. Rupert Sheldrake, who studies wacky shit like whether the Sun is conscious). Threading the needle is to remain agnostic: if you're a scientific andy, not that much evidence of a God that more or less literally speaks the world into existence through his divinely ordained plan (at least that I know, maybe somebody could make the case better than I can). But it's not exactly a divine impossibility either. I can't believe I'm linking this video of all videos on this topic, but Nick Fuentes (colloquially labelled neo-nazi) presented a similar tension here (not the meta-cognitive vs non-meta-cognitive God tension but the "tendency towards mystical phenomena associated with the Third Eye" tension, sort of tangential but anyway): 1:02-1:23 (when D starts talking, the clip is over).

I think @Cred is right about this forum after all considering this abominable display of context clue awareness 😆 "I confronted Vitality [...]" "Why I confronted Vitality [...]" Besides, you kinda have to think — if between the two options, when one of them is suggested to be light, you pick the one that is not light to contest the claim, not the other person — whether or not you know the difference. In other words, I thought it would be obvious I did not mean Vitaly was light, that's why I did not care to mention it. But sure, Vitality is the first guy that pops up on the screen when you play the first video, so that makes your heuristic prone brain clued to that rather than the perhaps slightly more demanding task of reading the title of the (two) video(s) beforehand (and moving your attention to the other person and comparing their energy). In other words, shame on you for being either a) TikTok brained zoomeroids, or b) merely human.

This guy is in some kind of state. Extremely light energy, piercing eyes.

Getting 2-3 eggs in the morning (I get 5, big boi) together with adequate vitamin D and co-factors should set the stage for the rest of the day. Fats and proteins seem to ground you generally (and pairing vitamin D with fats could make a big difference for absorption).

So we've recently been introduced to the frame of "neurodiversity" (thanks @Cred, and welcome), which is implicitly (or rather quite explicitly) a pathological psychological frame, concerned with describing dysfunction or things that are broken. Notions like "executive dysfunction" get intermingled with "passion", notions like achievement-oriented behavior get intermingled with "narcissistic coping". Those who are different in some way or another, or "neurodivergent", are proposed to disengage from "normal" society, behaviors, activities, people (those who are more alike each other in some way or another). And those who are different are encouraged to identify with various labels from pathological psychology (ADHD, autism, psychosis, etc.). This pathological view of psychology is quite prevalent. I recently watched a video of Dr. K describing how high-achievers are "broken in the right ways". Interesting how you can take a pathological and essentially negative view of something which is so obviously non-pathological and positive. It's of course not surprising, as Dr. K is a psychiatrist, and psychiatry is in essence, in its historical root, concerned about fixing pathology, healing the sick. And hence it frames the problem a certain way, and I believe the way you frame the problem has a lot to say for how you go about not just fixing the problem but relating to yourself and your own mind. And I believe pathological psychology can (not coincidentally) breed pathological frames of mind, of course inadvertently. Viewing yourself as broken, as something that needs to be fixed, and that is "other" than some ideal, is inherently disempowering, stifles autonomy and the feeling of being in control of your life, which as I'll get into, is one of the main drivers of health and functionality. Now, there are cases where taking a pathological view is necessary or useful, but this ideally comes second to taking alternative frames when the pathological frames don't work. And I also believe these alternative frames can address many of the same issues as those proposed by the pathological ones, also especially the concern addressed recently by @Cred in the neurodiversity frame of "are you doing the right thing?", or "are you doing what is right for you?". And what are the alternatives? Well, not coincidentally, there is something called "positive psychology". It is concerned with notions such as happiness, well-being, health, motivation, mindfulness, meaning, etc. Also notions like self-actualization and life purpose, familiar to those interested in Actualized.org, also fall under this category. You also have "salutogenic" perspectives on health, i.e. approaches towards healthcare and public health policy that are concerned about how to "increase health" rather than "fix illness" (i.e., it's about framing the problem in a positive rather than negative way). And it leads to notions such as empowerment, resilience-building, sources of social support and adaptive cognitive styles. You of course also have more Eastern psychology and religion and also Western religion with its spiritual frameworks of moving towards Enlightenment or sacred states of being, intermingled with moral and ethical philosophy on how to live a good life (Dharma, Jesus' teachings, Buddha's teachings, ancient stoicism, achieving eudaimonia). This ties back into well-being, peak states, peak performance, flow states, sources of purpose and meaning found in positive psychology (positive psychology is in large part a recapitulation and Western rebranding of ancient wisdom). And how do they address the questions of "are you doing what is right" and "what is right for you" or otherwise? If it is not self-evident in that you simply have to explore some of these perspectives (which I give my own orienting framework of here), I can give what I think is the most efficient, elegant or powerful model, and it's from positive psychology. You might've guessed it: Self-Determination Theory. You can choose to read more in-depth explanations of it (I will leave some links here; [1], [2], [3]), or you can simply take this summary of the model: do what you want to do (autonomy), do what you are good at (competence), and do it with the support of those who support these things (belonging/relatedness). The question then is of course "but how do I do this in a world that is dangerous and other to me and against what I immediately want to do; taxes, bills, people who disagree, culture, law-makers, naysayers, squares, disbelievers?". Find a way to make it work, find the golden middle way. Life is not infinitely forgiving. That is the harsh reality. But once you have staked out the correct orienting framework — do what you want, do what you're good at, and do it with the support of the right people — you will sooner or later end up in a more and more suitable position, a place where you truly feel that you belong. Even if you feel that you don't fit quite anywhere, if you keep trying, you will find something, and it might find you.