LastThursday

Should there be a women only section to the forum? And how would it work? From a detached viewpoint I can see there's an imbalance to this forum. Imbalances always cause problems of majority groupthink, suppression of the minorities (even if not intended), and implicit bias towards the concerns of the majority. I know for a certain fact that women are no more or less able to take on the task of self actualisation and spirituality than men. This should be reflected on the forum and on Actualized in general. Women are just as numerous as men in the population and this should be represented here too. A women only section to the forum could be set up. It would just be a general section where anything can be posted. Everyone would be able to see all the posts and replies, but only women would be able to post and reply. This can be controlled through the gender option on a member's profile. There would have to be some nuance to using the gender option. All members can choose to have a gender or not disclose this at all. On top of that a member can disclose their gender, but not have it displayed on their profile. However, only members who identify as "female" can post in the new forum (whether shown on their profile or not). To stop abuse, all new or existing members have one chance to change their gender after which it is locked. After that only a mod can change your gender for you. And as a further safeguard only a female mod can change your gender to "female". Only female moderators would be allowed to moderate the new sub-forum. Only female moderators can post in the sub-forum. This would exclude Leo himself (he is male), and he would have to comment only indirectly through a female moderator. Having a women only sub-forum will have several benefits. It will give women a "safe space" away from male trolling, gaslighting, adversarial style interaction and sexism. But it will also allow discussion of more female centric subjects and concerns. It will start off slowly but I think it would gather momentum over time and have a virtuous effect on the rest of the forum - by redressing the imbalance. With my programmer's head on, the changes required to set this up would be minor (an extra column in the member's table in the database to indicate the gender is locked). And then a few "if" statements to control who can post in the new sub-forum based on the gender field. And a couple of changes to the UI to accommodate all this. Of course, I wouldn't be allowed on there either, but that's a small price to pay.

Do you sleep face down on it? ??? Sleep on it? Why not frame it and put it up on the wall? (I can't believe I just said that)

Sort of, but it's weirder than you say. There is only consciousness and that's it. Perspectives, universes, source code, NPCs, infinity, "you" are just appearances within consciousness. Some appearances give the impression of being stable and permanent (like your sense of yourself), but those impressions are also just appearances. There is no story or explanation for consciousness or what it's doing, because an explanation is just another appearance within consciousness. Even calling it consciousness is just an appearance. My head hurts. I think I need a lie down.

And therein lies the answer you're looking for. It's not your consciousness. You are inside it, not it inside you. In other words you're as much a construct as the person whose eyes you're looking into. They might not have consciousness, but neither do you. Solipsism is not true.

Just playing devil's advocate: There's circularity in this way of thinking. In order to say A is not B you have to know what A and B are to start with. Your claim is that intellectual pursuit IS NOT infinity. This means you know what infinity is already. Maybe you do, maybe you don't, I have no idea. However, I can say that the concept of infinity is itself just that: a concept (a.k.a. coming from intellect). I don't know what infinity means to you. But to me it might mean: never ending process (which you allude to), or unbounded thing with no end. Again, this is just my intellect and conceptual thinking. I can slap on the label of "infinity" onto anything in my experience. But the label is never the thing itself. When it comes to communication, everything is words, models and intellectualising. I don't know if I've explained myself well here, but maybe you see the problem?

The irony of this statement. @Tyler Robinson don't worry, you have more brain cells and eloquence than most of the knuckle dragging gobshi**s on here.

Of course! You are the porn actress (said with Leo's voice).

Because they have a desire to be "seen" and express themselves in a public space for their own satisfaction, but they just don't want the interaction. Imagine going to a park because you like open spaces and fresh air, but you don't want strangers coming up to you all the time asking who you are. As for features maybe certain folks don't want a theme park, just basic grass.

@soos_mite_ah either just ask him straight what he would like or... give him something unique or unusual that represents you in some way.

Recently rediscovered Very cheesy but it's like meeting an old friend from years ago. I like the syncopation.

Keep away from people who smoke! The only way I quit was when I changed jobs (and city) and nobody around me smoked. Keep away from activities where people might be smoking around you. Distracting yourself when you get cravings is critical, but after a few weeks it's a lot easier. Maybe chew gum instead. If you "accidentally" buy cigarettes, then throw them away at the first opportunity (a public bin is best). Personally I found chewing nicotine gum helped a great deal with cravings, and it was way less addictive. But obviously it's not cold turkey. I've been smoke free for seven years. I spent the previous 28 years smoking on and off, the longest break being a year or so. It's hard.

The selfishness angle is hard to get a handle on I would say. Is a cheetah that kills a gazelle for food acting selfishly? Or is it just that it has no other choice than to be a cheetah? Does that same logic apply to a human? It seems to be a human's innate flexibility - via copying each other and using imagination (a.k.a culture) - that is the source of its disruptive power over nature. So for example if a cheetah can't find gazelles to eat it will die because it has no problem solving ability, other than what nature gave it. Whereas humans can build on experience and share and record those experiences with each other over time. Evolutionarily that's a huge advantage over other animals. But, the ultimate source of that experience is still nature itself, our "problems" came from that source. There's this ratchet effect with culture and it builds up (exponentially) over huge timespans. At some point human population densities and numbers get high enough that they start disrupting the dynamic equilibrium of the local environment. Once that happens every "problem" that is solved creates further problems down the line. Instead of being unconscious animals evolved by millions of years of adaptation, we have to start being conscious custodians of the Earth and masters of our own fate. But a human is no different from a cheetah in that a human has no choice than to be a human. In that sense we aren't selfish. The most nuturing state is that where nature is left to its own devices. So it comes down to really understanding deeply how our imaginations and actions are affecting the dynamic equilibrium of the Earth. Or basically understanding how even good intentions can create bad outcomes in hugely interconnected non-linear systems. After all a farmer will nuture their crop and feed their communities, but at the expense of biodiversity and ecology. The reward here is knowing that every problem solved has a cost (or negative consequence) and being aware of that.

And... immediately locking all threads talking about, dissecting, gossiping or analysing over specific forum members. Especially if the members are not active and can't defend themselves. Or even giving warning points if anyone starts this sort of thing.

For the forum at least by balancing out the demographic (I know, easier said than done). Of course the ideal being a one to one female to male ratio, and a wider spread of ages. More female mods maybe? Banning the use of the word "Leo" in forum topic titles. Banning the use of the phrase "I became enlightened" or the like in titles (boo! hiss! I know yeah yeah). And for the love of god being able to control who can post in your journal or even blocking everyone from posting in your journal. Personally I don't care about this, but others do very much.

For a more out there perspective: I can't help that think before humans the system of the Earth was in perfect dynamic equilibrium. There were no problems to solve. Then people came along with their fancy imaginations and dreamt a new reality for themselves, and over time pushed the whole thing out of equilibrium. When you have a perfect system any perturbation upsets the whole thing in the wrong direction. Every "problem" people try and solve manifests yet more problems - they are architects of their own misery. For me the fact that humans have such a large effect on Earth, is the smoking gun for high weirdness in our reality. If the Earth is an organism then why did it choose to kill itself? After all the Earth birthed us. And why am I here to witness it? Anyway enough woo woo.

A smörgåsbord for your tasting delight

@Something Funny don't be a petulant child. Stick to the topic.

The appearance of an Amazon package is a literal miracle as are all other appearances. You're correct that there is a process, but it's not the one you think it is. To get a handle on it, if you ask yourself "what did I have for breakfast?" then it's clear the breakfast is not literally existing right now. It's just your imagination. You have a strong feeling that it's something you experienced, but it's just a feeling nothing more. You may even feel your breakfast in your stomach right now, but it's still not your memory of the breakfast. There is no functional difference between something that "happened" to you and it never having happened. The only thing that exists is what you experience right now in the moment, and you work backwards to create a story of how it got here. It's a story of cause and effect; where does a cause end and an effect start? Any process you imagine is no longer in existence - it's all effect and no cause. So what's the process? Reality is constantly being created from nothing (dreamt) along with all your memories. Stuff over there seems to be connected to stuff over here and you call it "cause and effect" or "process". Reality is like an unfolding fractal with repeating patterns, those repeating patterns are what to materialists refer to as "real" and "matter" and "cause and effect".

@Something Funny, @AndylizedAAY why not have a private conversation about it, so we can stick to the topic instead?

Why not? We all live in cages, why not set each other free? @Julian gabriel lead by example not by analysing her, show her what it's like to be free.

The universe has no narrative or story. It's only you that has one. Some challenges don't help you grow but actually suppress you. The only "guide" is your ever increasing awareness.

It's interesting. In a public setting a woman will check you out (if you're a man) when you first enter a place and there will be prolonged eye contact. Then nine times out of ten she won't look at you again. You can safely ignore that sort of eye contact, it means nothing. Also there is the reciprocal eye contact. Women will sense when they're being checked out by a man, and some women will enjoy the attention and play up to that attention. Again this doesn't mean anything. Who doesn't like being flattered? But there is what I call "the stare" or "the blink" where genuine interest is being shown. It's very difficult to describe, but there's kind of focused prolonged attention and undertone of excitement or tension in the woman's body. If you get that then you should immediately start talking.

@r0ckyreed everything in your experience is highly correlated. You ordering a book from Amazon is correlated to you receiving it tomorrow. Notice how you don't actually perceive the process of how it happens just the end results. What actually did happen if you didn't receive your book tomorrow? You have no idea, it's completely fuzzy. What you're calling logic is actually an "inference engine" that is constantly filling in missing information and guessing what happened. Nothing is 100% certain. That inference engine of yours has to be trained over a lifetime. How does it get trained? It notices the same things happening over and over again. It then learns to extrapolate when there's missing information. It's a self re-enforcing system, so it only learns to notice the things that are actually correlated to each other and ignores those that are not. So reality "crystalises" out of a soup of random experience, by noticing correlated things in an ever increasing way. Since reality is actually a unified whole everything has to be correlated with everything else without exception. It's like cutting a cheese in half, the left side is inversely correlated in shape with the right side, but the correlation occurs because it's all one cheese to begin with. Awareness itself cuts the cheese of reality and creates perception out of it, so all perceptions are correlated to each other. What you choose to correlate together with your inference engine ends up being "your perception" and "your reality". Do you think babies have any idea about Amazon deliveries? It's not part of their reality.

Music to procrastinate to

Society - the Western based ones, which is most of the world now - is missing a trick by not persuing existentialism more widely. If we were able to connect a lot more deeply with reality as a collective, then a lot of things would naturally fall out of that. The main one is a much richer connection to reality: we would stop behaving in such brutal and shortsighted ways. We would naturally recognise each other as being one, and stop hating, enslaving and hurting each other. Well, that's what I would hope for - that and world peace (sorry Miss World joke, you have to be old enough). I don't know what's harder, having no choice or having choice but not being able to exercise it. Us first worlders are constantly told we have choice, but the reality is that exercising that choice is either very hard or impossible in a lot of circumstances. This leaves us with a bitter taste in our mouths. What are we supposed to do if we can't "get sex" or "be creative" or "be authentic" or "be loved", and yet we see others not so different from us getting those things? For some the torture of being teased by the ghost of choice is too much (sorry for the flowery language I'm exercising my creativity) and pulling the rip cord on living is tempting. Personally, when I repeatedly depressed about topping myself, in the end I came to the conclusion that I wasn't actually willing to do it at which point I simply gave up on the suicidal ideation, it was simply too wearing and idiotic (in my case) a thing to continue desiring. But this is what resonates for me about what you wrote, my depression was ultimately existential. In my case I also feel like I'm running out of runway because of my age, either I take off now or I hurtle into god knows what - anyway I digress. Talking to you as I would talk to myself, my advice would be simply to face things head on. If you're in your twenties or thirties then you have plenty of runway left. Don't be too rigid in how your express your creativity, hedge your bets. Society does actually provide you with a huge playground of avenues to explore - some will excite you enough that you will know what to do with your ideas. I don't know what turns you on, if it's art or chess (I think I've seen you mention) or a million other possible things, go do it, master it! If you feel you're not in a position of choice (real or apparent) then get yourself into that position, you still have time. If you need money to express yourself, strategise and then do the short-term grind to get there (trust me in hindsight it will seem short). Pragmatism and taking action can be very good for mental health - and you can create narratives which do match your reality. But. Also continue to do the existential investigation and master this side of things. Why not even start at "suicide" and investigate it, think about it deeply? There's nothing more existential than the threat of death itself. After all WTF is death anyway? Some Camus quotes about death: https://www.azquotes.com/author/2398-Albert_Camus/tag/death