aurum

Your graph ends in 2023. We are already 4 months in 2024, with much the damage being done in the last several months. Also consider: 1) How much higher would the population number in 2023 have been without the war? 2) Attempting a genocide does not necessarily mean you have successfully eliminated an entire population. That may take much longer for Israel to accomplish, assuming they continue on their current path. The genocide is ongoing.

I would be skeptical of anyone who claims to be enlightened. No one can even agree on what that means, let alone how we would determine that someone had achieved it. But to answer your question, spiritual work as not killed my enjoyment for life. In fact, I'd say I have more happiness at this point in my life than ever. I've been able to set up a very nice situation for myself. So don't despair and think spiritual work is going to turn you into some kind of robot. That's just not been my experience. At the same time, some things have lost their charge. You do need to surrender some of the fighting that your ego is constantly doing against reality for the sake of survival. The tradeoff of peace is a lack of drama.

That's going too far. I do see the potential for emotional bonding between human and AI, at least from the human side. I've already had several conversations with ChatGPT that were emotionally fulfilling and felt similar to talking to a good friend. But I don't think all those predictions are going to happen in 10 years. The integration of AI will not be that total.

I would guess the second option is way more likely. The actual THC you were exposed to sounds minimal from your story.

Could be both. Placebo effects are often objectively measurable.

Maybe you have a genuine sensitivity that I don't have. But it seems like you could be reading too much into this. The exposure you had was minimal, it probably barely affected you.

I think of it more generally as pain. You can just feel how hurt a lot of these people are. And then they clash with women's groups, who are often also experiencing a lot of pain. And each sees the other side as the source of the pain. Note I am not saying it is invalid for these groups to be in pain. The pain is often extremely valid, based on real experiences of trauma and / or lack of some kind. And I see valid points made by both sides at times, although the bias and distortion is very real as well. It's obvious how this leads to tons of conflict. I think another caveat to consider is not to engage in trauma reductionism. I see this in a lot of SD Green-type communities, where everyone is hyper-focused on healing their unworthiness and pain. But this can lead to gross oversimplifications of things. A multi-lens approach will likely be more effective.

It started early in the morning and runs late into the night. I would definitely not fly in same day. Rest up. Also, Tony keeps the room temperature freezing. So bring.warm clothes you can easily slip on and off as needed.

If you want to start a conscious men's group, you can't make it about pickup. The community as a whole is still far too immature for that. You need to make it about things that conscious grown-ups would be interested in. Things like inner work, developing intimate relationships, conscious communication skills, etc.

Creepiness is about violation of autonomy, comfort and consent. If fundamentally you respect all those things in a woman, then almost nothing you do will seem creepy. Alternatively, if you don't respect those things, then trying to mimic non-creepy behavior is still likely to fail. Making the internal switch will help more than anything else if you struggle with creepiness. Use examples to help program your mind with the right attitude, not to mimic.

Highly unlikely. Inequality comes in waves. There will be a correction. There are solutions. And whatever solutions we don't have could be worked out. The issue is implementation. People have to be ready for solutions.

Yes to all of these. But corruption is also a much deeper issue than just cutting corners. That's just one way corruption can manifest. Corruption requires the elimination of strong self-bias. The most self-biased people will be the most corrupt.

There are official tests. Just search them online. The problem is not the lack of tests, it's the influence of self-bias when taking said tests. It's easy to skew the results once you've studied the model and know the "right" answers to give yourself the result you are looking for. The best way to actually determine your level is to rigorously study the model and then do personal development work for many years. Your level will become much more apparent, although always open to some degree of interpretation.

@cjoseph90 I went to UPW once. It's good as far as basic personal development material. You could definitely see some practical changes in your life from going, depending on how far along you are in your journey. But yes, you will definitely sit through a bunch of marketing pitches. A significant portion of the lectures are a mix of information and selling. And lots of people there are stuck in self-help group think. It is also expensive for the average person. If you have above average disposable income, then it might be worth it.

Extreme reactionary right-wing policies also do not get codified. In a sense, you could say these people are as naive as leftists, just in a different way. The US is not going back to becoming some sort of Christian theocracy. What is codified at any given moment is mostly just the status quo and our recent past. Which I would argue leans conservative, since conservatism as a strategy is about maintaining the status quo. That's its fundamental flaw: clinging to what is. Leftism is about spotting the errors in the status quo (in a non-regressive way) and pushing for something better, usually based off of higher developmental values. Thus when leftist policies are codified, they are usually replacing things that are outdated and have been causing problems for a long time. It's only after the problems of the current policies become very obvious that change happens. So when left policies do work, they usually work well. Of course, none of this is to say that just because a leftist gets something passed that it must automatically be good. It could be too strong a push or unworkable in some other way. But I think you already understand that. Asymmetry is probably the right frame here, as opposed to assuming it only happens to the right or the left.

I understand all that. Very reasonable. My point is that you may struggle in your quest due to the nature of leftism and how it goes wrong. The majority of harmful leftist ideas just don't get codified. Yes it is harder. When leftism works, it works very well. But it's not just because it's harder that people are going philosophical. The fundamental error of leftism is philosophical. Thus, philosophy is appropriate. Agreed.

Well that's a highly debatable number. Regardless, if we want to go with 50%+, I'd consider that a lot. That's the problem. The left-leaning laws on the books ARE the ones that are more reasonable, less harmful and more workable. Otherwise they would not have gotten there and sustained with any length of time. The more problematic policies just simply don't get passed. But many of these positions still very much exist among leftists regardless. And then they want to blame it on right-wing sabotage, which of course does happen but is not the full story. The fundamental critique of leftism is that it's too utopian. Expecting to find such policies being enacted in the real world is by definition unlikely to exist. I consider myself mostly a leftist. And as I already said, most of the things on the books are fairly reasonable. So there's not much to discuss. I think a more productive conversation will not strictly focus on current laws. It's about leftism more generally, and self-reflecting on how and why we as leftists get it wrong. If you want to strictly focus on current laws, that's obviously your choice.

Consider that part of the reason it's challenging to name left-leaning policies on the books is precisely because they are so unworkable they never get on the books. This doesn't mean that many leftists don't hold these positions. They do. They just aren't able to successfully pass them.

We need to add to this list various schools of thought surrounding Leftist Anarchism, of which exist many. Communism is just one. We also have (just to name a few): Anarcho-syndicalism Green Anarchism Mutualism Anarcho-Pacifism Anarcho-Transhumanism If you aren't seriously considering how your anarchist philosophy might backfire and fail, you've lost the plot. Unfortunately many leftists over-index so much on anti-authoritarianism / populism . It is hard for me to take anyone's political positions who is an anarchist seriously.

Mass appeal is a very different criteria for success. I do not claim what I am saying has mass appeal.

For sure. It's a tricky thing to criticize post-conventional stages right now. On the one hand, I do see people who could greatly benefit from questioning even some of their Pluralist stage beliefs. These are people who have been there for a while. But if we assume the numbers from the Susanne Cook Greuter paper are correct, then the vast majority of people still have a lot of Pluralism to embody.

I am also a licensed health practitioner, and we certainly have our own set of ethics. I can remember in school they would quiz us on various ethical dilemmas, and we had to show how we would handle it. Was it useful? Sure, it was useful. I’m not saying there’s something wrong with contemplating ethics or constructing some sort of ethical framework to guide your decisions. But the question is, what is the highest level of morality and where does it come from? My argument is that any theoretical framework around ethics is going to be inherently very limited, both in its scope (what it covers) and in its practical ability to shape one’s decisions. So if we are interested in the highest morality, we have to dig a bit deeper. You can criticize the Goodness video for being too metaphysical / detached, but that’s really how the highest morality needs to be taught. If it wasn’t, it would again turn into a more limited ethical framework of do’s and don’ts. It’s precisely because it’s not specific that it is powerful.

You don't need all that. It's fine to explore but these ethical theories are not where morality comes from. Literally this:

Leo has tons of content on morality. It just doesn't look like what you want. You essentially want Leo to create a moral code that will tell you how to behave. But this would actually be a lesser form of morality than what Leo teaches, because true morality cannot be codified or made into some sort of algorithm. If you want lesser morality, join a religion. They have plenty of that already.

@Emerald This was essentially the premise of Andrew Yang's 2020 presidential campaign, and why he wanted to enact UBI. I think the most ideal outcome is what you're describing: AI comes in, automates a bunch of jobs that humans quite frankly shouldn't be doing anyway, and frees humanity up to care about higher developmental values. The question is whether or not we can actually pull that off. Or does it descend into degenerate corporatism, exploitation, loss of meaning and chaos for society? Perhaps some of both? How ready are the people of society to truly evolve? Honestly I don't really know. Jon Stewart did a piece of AI not that long ago: I think he somewhat missed the mark on this one. His priority here is that the working-class doesn't get exploited and lose their jobs / meaning, which is reasonable. People will suffer if that happens. But how do you get to a society based on higher developmental values? People cannot just continue to toil in wage-slavery forever, even if it gets them the paycheck they need to survive. At some point we need to move past that. Reasonable thinking would suggest there are going to be pros and cons. Some of it will be ugly, some of it will be beneficial. Long-term I'm optimistic we are heading for a society based on higher development, but the short-term is always unpredictable.