Joshe

I just showed you how to ballpark it yourself. My primary way of understanding reality is through my own thinking, not studies. If you're interested in trying, you can ask yourself questions like "what have I observed about suicidal ideation prevalence?" and many more questions like that, then collect all the answers and put them together and see what emerges or converges.

Excuse me? You're telling me I'm lying? I've witnessed it on multiple occasions, and I don't even follow Leo. After about the 6th time I noticed it, it occurred to me how irresponsible it was. And since this thread popped up, I figured I could add some perspective. If Leo only ever did it once or twice, I wouldn't be talking right now bro.

I never said it does. And I never implied it did. How could I even have implied that when I don't even think it? There is a lot of interesting mental gymnastics going on here. This is a different thing. Although it looks like the reasoning is trying to prop up the position I'm arguing against. I'm talking about the megaphone and prevalence of suicide-permission messaging. Would you agree that suicide-permission messaging broadcast at volume to a receptive audience pushes the number up? Because this is mostly what I'm talking about. If you agree with that, then you mostly agree with my position and then it just comes down to a cost-benefit weighting. (Normally I would use the term "analysis" but I don't want to get berated for not running this thing through an actual peer-reviewed process.) Of course it would be helpful for suicidal people to discuss it. Keeping that sort of thing bottled up isn't good. If Leo or anyone else wants to have a one-on-one with a suicidal person and let them discuss it, that's great. I've done it several times myself. I've never told anyone confiding in me about suicide not to do it because I have enough wits to know that's useless. I work it out with them. But yes, I agree, one-on-one interpersonal exchanges where you take the taboo out of it is very healthy. Do the cost-benefit honestly and let me know what you think.

I mean that if you understand my argument, which demonstrates why it's a terrible idea for an influential person to make a habit out of saying things like "Humans have the right to commit suicide.", then you'd see you're contributing to the harm of far more than you're helping. Someone actually concerned with compassion would take this seriously and would need to either say how my argument (which to me seems like common sense) is flawed, or would need to call for an adjustment - realize the error.

By this, I meant that they're receptive to reasons for or against. If they're weighing suicide daily, or once a week, or once a month, when they come across Leo or any other influencer who gives them reasons for or against, they're "receptive" to suicidal messaging. The looking can be active or passive.

It was an adjacent hypothetical. I've not confused it. I'm seeing clearly what you think is compassion and understanding. Actual compassion weighs harm and adjusts.

Imagine 100 people contemplating suicide. Roughly how many are in the exceptional-cases category? Possibly not even 1. You might have to go up to 1000 before you even get one. I myself have seen more than 100 cases of people contemplating suicide and not a single one of them fit the exceptional-cases category. So yes, it wasn't meant to be precise number, but it wasn't pulled out of thin air either. I'd say the 99% is a reasonable ballpark. 95 seems too low. Given the size difference, it doesn't make sense to publicly cater to the exceptional-cases category because you'd do more harm than good, which people seem to be having a difficult time grasping. --- There's too much variation/uniqueness for me to conceptualize suicidal ideation on a spectrum. But nonetheless, the examples you highlighted wouldn't fit in the exceptional-cases category.

Who's the best and longest friendship you've had, and what do you credit for why it worked out so well? Also, what would you say are the main reasons why most friendships didn't last?

I agree with you. My point is about communication. 99% of the time, people contemplating suicide are not the people you described - they're just people going through a rough patch and looking for reasons to go through with it or not. Imagine someone pops up a thread saying they want to off themselves and then a bunch of people are like "don't do it bruh, suicide is never the answer" and then some epistemic genius chimes in "well, actually, if the person is suffering enough, it can be the right answer." How is that not reckless and weird? Also, imagine a respected leader said "suicide is sometimes the right answer" 225 times to a community that regularly deals with suicidal thoughts. How is this not reckless and weird? The alternative is to just never say it - keep it to yourself to avoid inadvertently contributing to immense suffering.

Let's hear it bro!

This thing is fun as hell: You can start making music that actually sounds good without having to practice for years.

True.

@Jirh I see it as high Need for Cognition + relatively low identity fusion (perceiving thoughts as objects separate from the self). Ideas are much easier to work with when they aren't intertwined with the self. If you have this combo, disagreement is more like intellectual catnip than it is threatening/attacking, but it's easy to forget others aren't operating this way.

I suppose we can’t really show you in detail without seeming harsh or evil because to unveil the ego/identity is to attack the self/person the ego is operative in. I could point out specifics but none of it would land as evidence for you anyway. I can point you toward where I would look. Your ego seems organized around physical appearance, lifestyle aesthetics, and now, the intellect, as a means for attention and subtle superiority. I suspect you care more bout attention than superiority, but you care about both.

Listen mate, some people are beating around the bush and being nice with you and careful to not dose you too hard. What they really want to say is your ego is so strong that it’s on the nose - it’s so obvious, and yet you’re blind to it. But it’s all good. We all go through this. Especially in our 20s. It is a gift to have it pointed out, else you might carry your ego into the next few decades.

People looking for reasons to off themselves read past this and focus on this: I left it out because I don't want to have to explain how your little disclaimers are useless when your whole point is basically "suicide is okay if you're suffering enough". And obviously, most everyone contemplating suicide seriously will think that their suffering is enough. It's not that I've not thought about the truly stuck minority. It's that you have no way to target them specifically, which means your rhetoric is net-negative. Obviously.

You don't have to lie, you just don't have to contribute. And it's not about pleasing me. I'm pointing out your immaturity such that you might reconsider your position and see how your rhetoric contributes to the suicide of people in temporary suffering. But we do know the vast majority of suicides are not the rare cases your framing targets. The vast majority contemplating suicide are in temporary states of suffering that will pass. Maybe for every 1,000 people reading your suicide rhetoric, one of them fits your framing. But the other 999 are using your rhetoric just the same as the one. It's obviously a net-negative, and it's not even close.

By saying Leo has to self-censor because he's public, you're admitting you already know public speech about this carries serious consequences. You're writing in public right now and it will potentially be read by thousands of people, some of whom will be looking for reasons to justify killing themselves. When one of them finds twenty posts like yours, each one contributes. IDK how this isn't obvious.

Even if it's not true, the correct position on suicide is "It's always bad and you should never do it under any circumstances." Your need to demonstrate your sophisticated, nuanced philosophy or metaphysics matters so much that you'll broadcast tacit endorsement to susceptible people.

Everyone here is getting something from being here, and in almost all cases, it’s unconscious or vague. The people who sweep Leo’s toxicity under the rug are getting something that would be threatened if they were to acknowledge it, which is why they don’t allow themselves to see it. This used to describe me as well. I suspect for most people who refuse to see, Leo is a symbol of lifestyle and spiritual excellence that they can aspire to. Also, they drew the conclusion that Leo is integrous, which blots out evidence to the contrary. Also, they like access to an “advanced” fame-adjacent figure. Imagine if someone spent years here and went through all these things but eventually it was no longer tenable to sweep the toxicity under the rug. Should we expect these people to “just leave”? Also, consider that If every critic were to just up and leave upon recognizing the toxicity, this place could be 10x the sycophancy, 10x the denigration, 10x the toxicity.

The truth of your historical record and situation is true, but it’s irrelevant. The truth to honor is that worrying about insomnia and revisiting your historical record is preventing you from solving the problem. The solution is to disengage and ignore certain thoughts. Stop feeding them because that’s the only way they survive - by you compulsively acknowledging them. This is being intentional about what you’re cultivating. If someone has crippling social anxiety, they’ll never overcome it so long as they keep acknowledging the “truth” that they suck and reliving their cringe. As long as they keep feeding those thoughts, they don’t stand a chance. I’ve often asked myself a similar question about my own cynicism. “How can I not be cynical when I see the truth of humanity? The truth creates the cynicism, not me. This is just a normal reaction to what is true”. This is all true, but I know that if I continue to see in this way, it will degrade my quality of life. Choosing to not feed my cynicism isn’t choosing to ignore what is true. It’s choosing a different truth that serves something other than my compulsion.

Because certain configurations of mind just produce it. You can understand it if you build a robust and accurate model of the human mind. And you’re right, for the configuration to meaningfully change is circumstantial/lucky, is rare, and usually happens over long periods of time where the mind doesn’t have to tend to it’s deficiency, but rather quietly and slowly forgets about it and replaces it with something new. This is because only a certain kind of mind would even be motivated to question itself. The motivational structure can be understood by understanding things like deep unconscious values, and many more mechanisms in a configuration. I've come up with the concept of "The Foundational Drive", which I think explains a lot about self-deception. This explains why some invest in ego, some invest in ideology, some invest in hedonism, and why some invest in truth-seeking. "Truth-seeking" is itself a strategy - a "reason to continue", lol. This also explains why depression, dark night, etc. are common with deep self-reflection/spirituality. Because willy nilly fucking around and removing your reason to continue has consequences. The most common strategy to solve this problem is to reorganize your reason and ego around spirituality itself, but it takes time. And once it’s stable, you can’t just remove your new reason to continue for the same reason you can’t just remove ideology from the Nazi - the system would collapse from having no organizing drive. This is all provisional and unpolished but here are a few of the mechanisms I was referring to:

Canva. lol. I think Figma would be far better than Canva, but neither would be as fast as a custom tool. I actually haven’t looked into Canva in a while. It might be the better option depending on his workflow and if they let you setup your own design tokens and create + export graphics programmatically. This was a 15-minute throw-away prototype. Fully fleshed out, you could make it so that you don’t even have to pull up the UI to create the graphic. Just type words in a text input, hit a preview button and then hit enter to have it on your blog in 30 seconds. I doubt this level of efficiency is possibly with Canva. When your graphics always follow the same template with just a few design tokens/elements, you usually just need a quick way to plug content in, not a hundred different design capabilities and an inefficient deployment process slowing you down and wasting your energy.

@Leo Gura You need something like this: You can create this with Claude Design, although you will probably need the max plan. Otherwise, I can create and refine this for you for $500, lol.

"It will still feel bad, but at least it will be profound." "The truths I share with you are not magic tricks to make you feel good." These statements seem contradictory. What benefit is a "feeling of profundity" if not to improve one's experience? Conjuring profundity IS the feel-good magic trick. "at least it will be profound" : Reframe your pain and you can get some positive along with the negative - in service of "feeling good".