Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 12
Imagine the power of a life lived for pure understanding. You don’t care about other stuff. You don’t care about pleasure or money or sex or power or success or love or politics or friends or family or sports or small-talk. You just wake up and your primary motivation is to understand reality — truly, genuinely, actually. Not how you want it to be. Not what you believe. Not some spiritual fantasy. Not how someone told you it is. You only care how anything actually is. You just want to know what is true.
And now, try to imagine what steps you would take from this one pure intention. How you’d think, how you’d question, how you’d study, what sources you’d gather, what tools you’d use — if your goal was pure understanding of the highest truths. How would you go about deriving pure, actual understanding of reality from scratch?
Just look at the purity of such a life! Look at all the bullshit that is instantly eliminated. Would you run off to join some fancy university? No! Would you join a cult? No! Would you believe New Age stories? No! Would you trust science? No! Would you believe religion? No! Would you subscribe to any ideology? No! Would you trust Buddhism? No! Would you trust reason? No! Would you trust mankind? No! Would you become a political activist? No! Would you join a giant corporation and do grinding administrative work to earn money and climb the corporate ladder? No! Would you get drunk and high? No! Would you waste your time chasing girls? No! Would you waste your time hanging out with loudmouthed friends? No! Would you waste your time in online debates? No! Would you spend any time defending and rationalizing your worldview and beliefs? No! Would you need someone tell you what to do and how to think? No!
Why not? Because naturally none of this is compatible with a genuine desire for understanding and truth. People who do that shit never cared about truth, they had some other agenda! So what would you do? You would sit down and start exploring your direct experience from scratch, making observations about the world from first principles, observing how your own mind, body, emotions, and rationality work. You would derive all understanding from scratch, trusting no one, believing no one, caring about no one’s approval, validation, nor opinion. It would just be a pure, genuine, selfless process of exploring raw experience, communion with reality itself, having direct insights into its structure and true nature.
Do not underestimate the power of genuine motive for truth and understanding. This cuts through all human nonsense and noise. This desire is completely self-sufficient, able to bootstrap itself from total ignorance to Omniscience. This is the purest, cleanest, healthiest way of life. You just wake up every morning and you look for truth and understanding.
Note: You don't have to be so pure and perfect about it. This was an idealized scenario. You could still make room for stuff like work, fun, family, occasional sex. This was an idealization to help you see the power of pure desire for understanding. To see how self-guiding, self-correcting it is.
This kind of motivation generated Actualized.org. My secret is, unlike everyone else you know, I actually cared about knowing what's true. Not something else. That makes all the difference in the world. I was far from so pure and perfect about it. But the core motive was there. I am not saying this kind of life is right for everyone. I'm just explaining where my understanding ultimately comes from. People often think I do this work as a career, for money, for ego, for approval, to run a cult, to change the world. People even think I do it to help people. No. I do it for pure understanding. Because that is the purest motive.
If you watch the following video through to the end, in the second half, you will have a profound epiphany about the relativity of size and measurement.
This requires some patience because this is not a pure philosophy video.
Ordinarily, we speak and think of physical objects as having a certain objective size — the hard stuff that science simply measures and reports. But upon a deep epistemic and metaphysical inquiry you realize that there is no such thing as "an object" with fixed objective dimensions. It is impossible to know any object's dimensions for profound reasons, not just epistemic but also ontological. How do you know how long an object is? Only by comparing it to another object (your ruler). But you never know the dimension of any object, including your ruler. The length of all objects depends on: 1) it's temperature, 2) the accuracy of your ruler, 3) the material of your ruler, 4) the temperature of your ruler, 5) the velocity of the object, 6) the velocity of your ruler, 7) your mind's definition of the object, and more!
For example, look at how clever this gets: How long is an elephant? What is the correct "scientific" answer? Do you unfurl its trunk and tail when you measure it? How far do you unfurl them? Do you stretch them or not? How much is the correct amount to stretch them? How do you calculate how much you stretched them when you unfurled them? Which unfurling method did you use? At what temperature are you measure it? At higher temperatures the elephant's tissues will be more flexible and stretchy. Do you measure the elephant in the morning or evening? A elephant in the evening may be longer because it stretched out more throughout the day. Do you include the hairs on the tip of its nose and tail? What if those hairs fall out just before you measure it? What if a new hair grows right after you measure it? Do you count that one dead hair that has half-detached from the elephant's skin and is only holding on to the elephant with dirt and oil? Do you count the dirt coating the hair? Is the elephant stationary or running? What velocity is the elephant moving at? The faster the elephant's velocity the shorter its length. Is the elephant in a strong gravitational field that's pulling it apart? What does it mean to say that an elephant is X.XXXXX meters long? How long does that truth last? When does it stop being true? All of this has massive implications for science and engineering.
You might think this is merely a problem of lack of accuracy, but it's deeper than that. The problem is ontological. What even is an object? What counts as an object? We ordinarily assume that an object like a steel bar just exists and has certain properties, but this assumes many things. A steel bar at room temperature is a solid object, but the same steel bar at 10,000 degrees is an amorphous cloud of iron plasma. So where does the iron bar end and the Earth begin? An iron bar is always shedding particles. An iron bar is never pure, covered in oil, dust, dirt, vapor. Does that count as part of the bar? How long is a cloud of iron plasma? Is it one cloud or two clouds? Science cannot solve this problem just by doing more measurement or more lab experiments. How many clouds are there in the sky today? Science cannot tell you the answer. Not just because it's hard to count them but because there literally is no such thing as "a cloud" without your perspective of it. You are needed to define "That is a cloud, this is not a cloud. That is one cloud, this is two clouds". And this problem isn't just a macro-scale phenomena that can be solved by zooming all the way down to the atomic scale, because at the sub-atomic scale you can't even say what an electron is, where an electron is, how fast it is. Electrons are not the simple, discrete, crisp things your mind assumes they are. Sub-atomic particles morph into various other sub-atomic particles within nanoseconds, faster than you can measure them.
What scientists don't understand is that to even call something "an iron bar" is already to assume too much! What is the difference between an iron bar and a kangaroo? You think these are crisp, distinct objects. But if you became as conscious as me you would realize that the difference between an iron bar and kangaroo is just relative and imaginary.
The problem of measurement, definition, knowledge, and identity is so ontologically profound that not only is it impossible to measure anything, it is impossible to say that an iron bar is different from a kangaroo! This is what science doesn't understand. My goal in this work is to guide you to such a profound comprehension of reality that one day you realize that the difference between an iron bar and a kangaroo is imaginary. Which is to realize the Unity of all things. Which is to realize Love. LOVE means that you stop distinguishing an iron bar from a kangaroo.
Humans assume that you can just say, That's an iron bar, and That's a kangaroo. But the ontology of reality is so profound that you can't say that! To say that requires making many, many over-simplifications and assumptions, and to engage in all sorts of gross biases. Reality requires that the difference between an iron bar and kangaroo be imaginary, a relative illusion held inside a Mind.
This is the difference between materialism and idealism. Materialism isn't capable of understanding reality in such an advanced, fluid, abstract, and relativistic way. Because materialism requires distinctions to be objectively real. And that hampers science because it hampers the mind. Don't forget that all of science is just a product of the mind. If your mind isn't fluid enough to understand reality then your mind will be bad at fundamental science.
Note: Adam Savage is a beautiful human. Model his passion for work. Become as passionate about your work as he is in his.
Often it’s just easier to instantly recognize something as wrong without being able to explicate or articulate why exactly it is wrong. It can take years to explicate why something that you intuit as wrong, is wrong. But this will be used against you in the meantime because those doing wrong will act like there's nothing wrong unless you can nail their ass to the wall with a formal explication.
The best example I have of this is that you can pretty easily intuit that rationalism must be wrong, however, it took me some 10-15 years of work to formally explicate exactly why rationalism is wrong. Likewise with science. I intuited that science cannot be the final explanation of reality back in college, but it took me 15 years of work to fully explicate in a rigorous logical way. You can be sure that scientists, materialists, and rationalists will use this against you.
Explicating valid intuitions can takes decades of work. It’s annoying because you know that something is wrong but it frustrates you that you can’t quite put your finger on why it is wrong. Why is science wrong? Why is rationalism wrong? Why is atheism wrong? Can you elegantly and rigorously explain it? It took me 15 years of work. And during that whole time I was gaslit by scientists, rationalists, and atheists. They will gaslight you so confidently that you will start to doubt your own intuitions. Which is why this work requires spine and balls.
Another example: the first time in college when I heard that logicians in the late 19th century like Frege, Hilbert, and Russell tried to logicize mathematics, I instantly knew that had to be impossible. I knew this before I knew the history of how their projects failed. To me it seemed absurd that such great intellectuals, logicians, and philosophers could not see that formalization of reality via a dumb system of rules could not be possible. Yet they were shocked to discover this themselves after decades of grueling logical work, which culminated in Godel's Incomplete Theorems. But even though I intuited this, I did not have anywhere near the logical, mathematical, or philosophical skill to explain it.
One of the most infuriating things is trying to get a purely logical mind to understand that logic cannot understand reality. Because this mind demands a formal proof of why logic is insufficient. But breaking out of logic requires intuition, not more logic. So it's like arguing with a religious fanatic except he thinks he's just being logical.
So that’s the crazy thing about reality and intuition. Intuition is able to solve massively complex problems that would take a decade, within 30 seconds. One of the tricks I used to get so far in my work is that I deeply followed my intuitions. I used intuition to solve problems that philosophers and scientists hadn’t solved in a 1000 years. That’s how powerful intuition is. Intuition is a tool of God. Intuition is a conduit to Infinite Intelligence. However, if you blindly trust intuition — as New Agers do — you will fall into massive self-deception. So the follow-up work is absolutely necessary. Those 10-15 years were not in vain. Not all of my intuitions are right. Some are huge illusions.
Of course this also applies to intuiting people. It is much easier to intuit that something is wrong with a person long before you can formally prove it or explain it. For example, the first time my pickup buddy told me about Andrew Tate, just from hearing a verbal description of him, within 30 seconds I knew this guy was an total scumbag, not someone to admire or emulate. It would take a few years for all the sordid details and evidence of his awful character to emerge in the media. Intuition is crucial to dealing with people, especially bad actors and crazies. Over the years doing this work I have honed my intuition so well that I can tell if someone has mental illness just from how they write internet comments. I've seen enough mentally ill comments that I just smell them as soon as I see them. This skill is priceless.
Doing this work I have developed an insane intuition for human illusion. I can see through people like an x-ray. I see every game they are playing — games they don't even know they are playing. Intuition is a crazy skill when properly honed. Intuition doesn't just happen. It requires years of honing. Honing intuition is exactly like training an LLM (AI). Honed intuition is the icing on the cake of mastery. It's what makes the master supernaturally good, awesome, God-like. But the profound truth is that without keen intuition the master would never have become the master. Intuition is God.
Just as a thought-experiment, consider how much easier it is to intuit that Trump is wrong vs having to articulate why exactly Trump is wrong. When I say Trump is wrong, I just mean overall, like, wrong for mankind, wrong for society, wrong for the world. You should be able to just look at Trump for 60 seconds and instantly tell that he is profoundly, obviously WRONG. You won't know exactly why, but you will clearly know. In any semi-conscious, semi-intelligent mind, Trump should evoke a gag-reflex. Yet this intuition is missing for half of mankind. Amazing!
Note: The reason I'm able to do this is because I am an INTP personality type — one of the most intuitive personality types. The kind of intuition I have is rare. I have a one in a million intuition. Which is why I'm just able to leap to answers by skipping all the logical noise. I don't need a bunch proofs and logic, I can instantly see that science is metaphysical bullshit. What baffles me is why can't everyone?
Now I have to spend 10 years writing a book to explain what to me is obvious within minutes.
Don’t you see? If your mind is dependent on cues from society, if you need other human beings to validate for you what is true, real, right, and good, your mind can never develop beyond the development level of your culture. The only way to reach extraordinary levels of cognitive development is to go beyond every culture and every social group. This includes all religions, all universities, all corporations, all of science, all philosophical schools, all cults, all books, all podcasts, all forums, all AI, all social activities. Notice, the more developed your mind becomes, the further beyond culture it must go, the less social validation you will get. Eventually you will become so developed that you will be all alone. No one you know will be at your level of understanding. You will understand reality so deeply no one in society will understand you and you will not be able to explain it to them because they haven’t gone through the arduous and hairy development journey. This is a major reason why extraordinary development is so rare.
People do not appreciate how much of their development only exists because of the on-the-rails mechanisms that society offers — such as school or university. But who would you be, what development level would you have, without university? University is just taken for granted. University makes a certain level of development easy and automatic because it leverages the human mind's readiness to follow the herd. No university kid is intelligent enough to have invented university on his own. He's only there because society told him to go there, brainwashed him that it is right and good and normal. But imagine trying to reach a university level of development 2500 years ago all by yourself. That's analogous to the challenge of reaching extraordinary development today, to go an order of magnitude in development beyond universities.
People do not appreciate the social push-back and isolation. How comfortable are you being all alone? How comfortable are you being misunderstood by everyone you know? How comfortable are you with everyone telling you that you’re wrong and delusional? How comfortable are you with being demonized and smeared? How comfortable are you with being unemployable? How comfortable are you with contradicting all of science, religion, business, politics, and culture? Very few humans have the strength of character and integrity required to reach and sustain an extraordinary level of development because it requires overcoming your emotional dependence on the whole social domain. Do not underestimate how emotionally dependent every human is on the social domain. Your mind craves validation, approval, love, friends, social status, being liked, fitting in, being part of a like-minded group, being regarded as good rather than dangerous.
See, when an academic or scientist begins the journey of studying reality, it never occurs to him that the understanding will eventually get so deep that he will become a social outcast, leaving behind all human conventions, and be treated as a traitor and crackpot by all his colleagues. Almost no scientist or academic has the balls needed to reach extraordinary cognitive development. That’s how serious social incentives are. Science and academia is all done within the domain of social survival. Reaching extraordinary cognitive development requires cutting the social umbilical cord, which most humans are not willing to do because the costs are so high. The costs are material but also emotional. The emotional labor has a real bite which rationalists tend to overlook because scientific rationality has the benefit of being the norm in today's elite society. But good luck if you dare to question rationality and science. Now you get huge push-back and gaslighting from the Social Matrix.
Extraordinary development cannot be reached by following others, it requires leading yourself into mental territory no one has dared to go. It requires questioning things none of your colleagues is willing to question. It requires studying exotic, unconventional domains that your colleagues consider taboo. It requires a different mindset, attitude, values, and motivation than everyone else. It requires detaching yourself from the social domain, which means not only less friends and sex, it means losing many of the benefits of society. It literally endangers your life. So why do it? You'd need some extraordinary motivation that transcends survival.
Nobody appreciates just how deeply they are embedded in social survival. Just that insight is emotionally difficult to handle and will take you a decade or two of work to fully comprehend. Scientists just assume that they can reach truth or serious understanding without it rocking their social situation. This is very naive. That's not how serious understanding works. Because reality is just that profound.
Contemplate this question:
What are all the reasons that extraordinary levels of cognitive development are so rare?
Why is it that reality is so difficult to define? Notice that every time you ask the question “What is X?”, in any field, about any thing, no matter how simple or complex, a definition cannot be readily given. For example, What is computation? What is gravity? What is space? What is time? What is an apple? What is red? What is reasoning? What is light? What is a number? Etc. Definitions are notoriously problematic and elusive in all fields of science and philosophy. But why? If reality is a just a dumb clockwork, this should be easy. Everything should have a single, discrete, clean, canonical definition. Yet that isn’t the case. Definitions are plagued by problems of ambiguity, nebulosity, subjectivity, perspective, framing, relativity.
Notice that no thing in science is ever absolutely defined: not energy, not matter, not time, not space, not life, not trees, not machines. Why? My claim is that this happens because of the most fundamental existential truth about reality. It happens because reality is Infinity. Infinity is by its nature Undefined. All definitions of reality must ultimately fail because all definitions are relative, finite, and perspectival while reality as a whole is Absolute. This most fundamental aspect is not understood nor appreciated by scientists and rationalists. Science and rationalism demands and assumes that all parts of reality can be well-defined and that reality as a whole has an objective, mind-independent definition. This is false. From this one fundamental falsehood many problems and stupidities of science and philosophy stem. Things do not have clean, crisp definitions because reality is a Mind and things only exist as conceptions within this Mind. That means all things are Mind-dependent and perspectival. No thing can truly be defined because the distinctions between all things have no absolute reality. There are no things per se, there’s an Infinite Field in which all things are conceived/imagined. The boundaries between all things are porous and collapsible because the ultimate truth must be Unity. Unity precludes definition since any definition is a division.
Absolute Unity is Undefined. What does definition mean? Definition means division of reality into parts. Definition is the explication of one part of reality in terms of another part, off-loading the explanatory load from one part of reality onto another part. This allows the mind to play a shell game with itself where it feels like reality has been explained but not really because all the mind achieved was deftly shifting explanatory load from one part of reality onto another. Definitions allow the mind to keep sweeping the Unknownability of Being from under one rug to under another in an infinite chain. But this only works as long as you divided reality into parts.
Science just assumes that reality is made out of discrete objective parts (objects), but this turns out to be a false assumption. If all parts are just a matter of perspective or imagination, then in the absolute sense there are no parts because all boundaries between parts can dissolve, leaving behind a Unity. And Unity itself cannot be defined because definition requires parts. How do you define a thing which has no opposite, no parts, no other? How do you define an Absolute? Thus you can see that Absolute Unity cannot have a definition. But scientists and rationalist take this to mean that Absolute Unity therefore cannot be real — since it can’t be defined. No! It just means that science and rationalism is unreal. But this radical idea never even occurs to scientists. Yet it is true. Science is unreal. Is it any surprise that scientists cannot grasp that science is unreal? Of course they can’t, otherwise they would stop being scientists.
I just explained the core limitation of all science and rationality. Does anyone care? Nope. Business as usual.
The more profound my explanations of reality are, the less people care. That's human-kind. How do you fix that? There's no fix for apathy.
