Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights

This is very accurate and explains a lot:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcAi9p6tEVc

"Cognitive phenotype" is a good phrase. Saving that for future use.

Summary:

• High curiosity: need to close information gaps.
• Strong cognitive control: holding multiple views at once, resisting easy answers.
• Meta-cognition: ability to think about your own thinking.
• Theory of mind: ability to get inside of another's state of mind.
• Tolerance to uncertainty: low reactivity to not-knowing.
• Low automatic conformity: obviously.
• High openness: of course!
• Enjoyment of abstraction

In other words: mental depth.

Note: No, philosophy is not dumb, it just has to be done properly. She didn't do it properly. How do you know if you did it properly? God. You realize God.

This is what happens when you become too famous in life:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZAUnxmSqq7

This isn't coincidental. Fame itself is corrupting.

I posted a reel on Instagram a few weeks ago explaining how I despise the corruption prevalent in the self-help industry. This is exactly what I meant:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcWVXDcivvS

These kind of self-help grifters are the norm in the industry. In fact, their grift is to teach others how to do the grift. So the grift spreads like a cancer. If you truly love self-help, this should infuriate you. But this is the Orange norm. Together these grifters invented a whole set of rationalizations for why it is good for you. The rationalizations come for free once you buy their overpriced, rehashed product. Lol

Approaching life like an academic is a very unusual way of approaching life. Most people do not approach life like academics because they are entangled in the survival of it. For example, an academic approaches the study of religion as an abstract, intellectual, philosophical exercise, but most people LIVE their religion. That’s totally different. For an academic, religion is not survival, it’s a curiosity, which completely misses the point of religion. Likewise with politics and many other things. The academic point of view on any issue is itself already biased, biased with aloofness and detachment. It is like the difference between studying dead animals vs live animals. Most people are busy wrangling live animals, not autopsying dead ones. Academics have made careers out of telling you how to tame dead lions.

Of course, non-academics are even more biased, lost in the struggle of wrangling lions. But at least they are closer to the reality of wrangling a lion. The academic does not understand how REAL wrangling a lion is. Although, survival within academia is its own form of lion wrangling, which the successful academic has mastered. Survival within academia is a microcosm of survival in general, and that microcosmic survival game also biases the academic mind. The academic mind is biased both by too little survival and too much survival within an artificial microcosm.

But there's a further wrinkle. Some social justice activist academic will read this post and retort: "But Leo! That's why I'm not one of those detached academics. That's why I'm such a passionate activist for social justice and against oppression!" But this means that your view and understanding is profoundly biased and corrupt. You cannot solve epistemology with social justice warriorism. The more politically activist the academic is, the more biased and corrupt their understanding of reality is. Because survival IS the bias/corruption. But also, not understanding the realities of survival makes the mind ungrounded and quixotic.

The solution is: you have to understand the realities of survival without being lost in survival. That's a fine needle to thread, which is why objective understanding is so rare.

Why elites always rule. Fundamental for understanding politics:

Populism, whether right or left, is a delusion. Populism is the madness of crowds. If you aren't careful, the crowd will take you along for a ride off the cliff.

Since a young age I have been fascinated with the madness of crowds and collective thinking. The key insight for understanding politics is this: crowds do not operate on rationality, they operate entirely on vibes. What leftists get wrong is that they expect policy and logic to matter. No! No! No! Policy does not matter. Only vibes matter. Politics is about vibes. Nobody votes for Trump based on logic, they vote for him because he aligns with their vibes. For a logical person, this sounds insane. But that's how crowds are. Stop resisting it, stop denying it, and deal with the bleak reality of it. Also, be careful not to overlook how much of your political view is based on nothing but vibes. More than you'd like to admit. Most of the leftist policy positions are grounded in vibes, not realism.

"Crowds cannot reason" — that's the key insight. Until you understand that, you will not understand politics.

For example, the Israel-Palestine debate is not about policy, it's about vibes. And so it is with all political debates.

I keep a lot of plants in my house, which leads to fly problems. And lately I got mosquitoes for the first time. So I started researching the best ways to trap them. I found the following traps. I placed half a dozen of them around the house and within a few days caught dozens of flies in each trap. A few mosquitos too. The flies are attracted to purple UV light at night, which these traps emit. Leave them on overnight.

It is harder to catch mosquitoes because they are attracted more to heat and CO2 than UV light. But I found a smelly mosquito bait that draws them in. Mosquitoes are also mildly attracted to the warmth of the lights. They confuse the warm light for a warm body.

I tested the following traps myself and confirm that they really work. I was amazed at how many flies I caught so quickly. I wish I knew about this sooner. If you don't take action the bugs only multiply.

Buy Here - Trap #1

Buy Here - Trap #2

Buy Here - Mosquito Bait (warning: smelly)

(affiliate links)

Here's part 1 of a 19-part university lecture series on the basics of sociology. I haven't watched all of it yet, but the first part on Karl Mannheim contains crucial ideas. Audio quality and delivery style is poor, but oh well, suck it up. The ideas are worth it. Karl Mannheim has important concepts for epistemology. Sociology is an important field for epistemology, although, of course, still too shallow. Understanding and knowledge are not the same thing, and social construction is a secondary aspect of understanding — but learn to walk before you fly.

Part 3: Social Constructionism, is also chock-full of core concepts:

Link to entire playlist

I share this not because I agree with it, but because our work here is about understanding various paradigms. If you are anti-Zionist, it's especially important for you to listen to this entire thing. Don't shut it off. Actually open your mind and listen even though it's irksome. The irk is what forces your mind to see in new ways.

This is how a Zionist sees the world:

I shared this because I want you to see just how relativistic sense-making is. This is what post-modernism is really about: not a blind progressivism, but understanding that progressivism is just one paradigm out of many.