trenton

I started using a new technique for self actualization. I wrote the statement in the title on a piece if paper and used tape to stick it to my tablet. I think this could be done with TV and computers as well. I feel like the comfortable life is seductive, but it will never cure the underlying suicidal thoughts. I have a lot of creative potential, but I have been poor at actualizing any ideas. Every act of procrastination breaks integrity with our highest values. I remember Leo released a video about being decisive. I think this is the sort if thing he meant by it.

@LastThursday You raise a lot of interesting points. It seems that a lot of people are shallow because they must be. If they think too deeply about these matters then it can easily turn destructive. There are so many traps that people can fall into and none of them know what they are. Society is deeply unaware that these existential matters may play a very significant role in underlying depression. I can see friction between existentialism and my work. I am a very creative person and it is hard to put this creativity to use. I have a lot of ideas, but I don't know what to do with them. Most jobs don't value creativity because they are made for people who don't want to think and just do as they are told. Other people notice this creativity, but I rarely make it real. It makes me feel like I have a lot of wasted potential. This leads to my creativity becoming destructive when I feel stuck. My greatest gift becomes harmful in this context. I can't stand to stick my head in the sand and let this life go to waste. I have a hard time shifting my perspective to "I expect too much out life and I should just accept what I have." sometimes suicidal ideation starts to emerge out of this for me. It is not as powerful as it used to be, but it comes up sometimes. I don't think the pills my doctor gave me will be enough to solve the root of this issue. I have combined this with meditation and writing in a journal, so I have become more peaceful. I have a narrative that is supposed to be inspiring, but it does not correspond to my experience and thus becomes toxics as if I am hurt.

@LastThursday thank you for responding. You have done a good job of explaining what I am trying to point to. I see people at work who are so scared of these existential issues and they wallpaper over these topics constantly. There is the front of being busy, but what's the point? If these existential questions and issues are not properly addressed, then it can create all kinds of mental health problems. I see how being busy is a coping mechanism for these problems. One thing worth considering is the psychological benefits of religion. Many people who go to church are very happy because their beliefs and their faith make them feel like God can be trusted with their deep existential problems. There are limits to this as well and The existential problems come back once you start questioning holy texts. People must cling to These beliefs because the psychological benefits of religion place a band aid over our deep existential confusion which may be linked to mental illness. Existential angst might even explain other excesses of religion like dogmatism because certainty comforts out psyche just like staying busy at my job without thinking too deeply about these issues. In the past few centuries religion has been in decline in terms of its authority. The separation of church and state, the separation of science and religion, and the massive outrage at the sex scandals have all served to undermine this authority. Many of us are now left with an existential void. We don't count on religion to answer our existential questions because there are so many problems with it. More and more people are resulting to alternative forms of spirituality such as this website to try to resolve this underlying existential angst. If religion declines in authority, then it makes sense that there would be more mental illnesses linked to this sense of meaninglessness and pointlessness. Safety and security in our worldview and beliefs are sacrificed once religion is questioned. like you, I see so many people trying to trick themselves by staying busy. This has become another coping mechanism for our existential problems aside from religious affiliation. Other coping mechanisms can be to find some other ideological ideal in politics even if it feels hollow. Having other people who think like us is comforting because it makes us feel validated whereas people who strongly disagree can undermine our sense of being validated. Rising above these coping mechanisms is a tall order. So many people are afraid to even discuss these things because they are too busy coping through a sense of certainty. I want to do more than just cope with it. As paradoxical as it sounds, I want to be empowered by this hollowness and meaninglessness, not be crippled by it and afraid of it. I'm not sure exactly how to word it, but I'm sure it's possible to be empowered by rather than defeated by these difficult questions. This attitude is needed to come to terms with existential angst in a powerful way, so it can be more than wall papering over our true feelings, attitudes, intuitions and so forth. People want to be drones and cogs who are told what to do because they are afraid to think deeply, but I will not bow to this fear.

What would Ukraine have to gain through attacking other nations and blaming Russia? The global narrative is already on Ukraine's side. They are receiving a lot of aid from NATO. It has created a gap in the technology between Ukraine and Russia. This sounds like a conspiracy theory. Conspiratorial thinking has this element of fear while speculating about hidden wrong doing. I am Skeptical of this kind of attitude. The entire war has been full of both sides blaming each other.

This constant fear of escalation distorts how we view war. It is not in the best interest of NATO to escalate the situation to world war 3 and they have been trying this whole time to avoid it. When people take this fearful stance it can create a self fulfilling prophecy of getting them before they get us. This fear is a big driving force in escalation. The investigation has lowered the temperature. A Ukrainian air defense missile misfired in an attempt to intercept the biggest aerial assault on Ukrainian territory since the start of the war. Although Ukraine hit Poland, it was not an act of aggression. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/world/europe/ukraine-russia-poland-explosion.html

A significant escalation has occurred. Russia launched 90 missiles at power infrastructure across Ukraine. Ukraine has improved its air defenses substantially and managed to shoot down 73 of the missiles. In the process there was a spillover. Poland was not by a missile and they are considering going to war with Russia for attacking NATO territory. Sweden and Croatia have increased the amount of aid sent to Ukraine in response to these attacks. Putin did not accomplish much with these attacks because engineers have been working tirelessly to restore power to Ukraine. These strikes on civilian targets continue to embolden the Ukrainian people. There have also been various reports of amphibious assaults on the south western region of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces are attempting to to establish a foothold South of Kherson. This would bring the Ukrainian army close to the Crimean peninsula.

It can be hard to work with someone when all they want is to engage in tribalism. If most voters are not interested problem solving, then there is only so much running on good policy can do. Is there really nothing the Democratic party can do to reach such voters? If that is the case, then it looks like the Democratic party needs more time. One of the reasons the red wave didn't happen is because there are more young voters who feel motivated to get involved. Could a more functional government emerge from the older generation dying and the newer generation increasing in number every election cycle?

@Leo Gura do you think democrats could win rural voters if they focused on issues which uniquely impacted these groups? In order to get a functional government, the democrats will need to win rural counties somehow. One idea is to increase access to online learning so that underprivileged rural families don't have to go through long bus rides to get to school while increasing opportunities for the surplus of teachers in the cities. Long bus rides correlate to low GPA. Maybe there are other ways democrats could try to win rural voters. Republicans win very easily in these areas just as conservative parties in Europe win easily in rural areas. Winning rural voters could help ease polarization considerably.

@Danioover9000 just remember that the entire agenda of the Republican party is to obstruct anything Biden tries to pass. Most people don't follow politics so they just pay attention to the results of the people elected while forgetting about the latest outrage within a month. Sometimes the democrats have limited control over what can pass. Hopefully it will be easier for republicans to cross the isle if they are not MAGA republicans. Biden is trying to ease polarization by painting MAGA as an extreme while he is able to work with some republicans.

@Scholar good video. I was wondering about the Russian strategy. They are using a lot of ammunition on civilian targets even though the equipment Russia sends with its troops is getting more obsolete. It seems like a waste of limited ammunition to kill civilians, but Putin is trying to win the war through brute force and intimidation.

I have been studying paradigm shifts in religion when I stumbled into a channel called shattered history. I started to notice how paradigm shifts in religion necessarily overlap with paradigm shifts in science. The video I found is part of a Playlist. It discusses how much of modern science is based on surface level observation which are colored with many assumptions. These assumptions are now held as fact even if the direct proof is very poor. All of this is part of a social game to delegitimize those who challenge the social paradigm. Overblowing climate change could be part of the social narrative science is pushing. One thought occurred to me during the video. If climate change has happened before with rising and falling sea levels, then could it be possible that a city once built on land could end up under water? If rising sea levels are projected to impact cities on the coast, then it does not seem far fetched. Of course I don't know if Atlantis is real, but it is an interesting possibility. Unfortunately, I don't remember what the other thought was, but it was even cooler than the first. I hope you enjoy this channel.

Actually, this is not surprising. The Russian soldiers had supply issues due to being on the other side of a river where the bridges were destroyed by Ukrainian missile strikes. Furthermore, the Russian lines were collapsing rapidly in other regions and reinforcements are needed to stabilize the army.

@RobertZ interesting input. I looked into some of the later videos and it talked about a lot of underwater cities. Although the idea of Atlantis seems like something out of myth or ledgend, considering the movement of tectonic plates and shifting tides in the ocean like tidal waves, it starts to seem normal and understandable that there would be underwater cities.

Kherson is liberated. The update I have been anticipating. However, the president of Ukraine is cautious of the media's celebration. Although, Ukraine has taken back a significant chunk of territory, about 20,000 Russian soldiers are estimated to be ready for redeployment on another front. The fighting near Bakmut city and the Kharkiv region have been very intense and the future reinforcements may make the war more difficult in these regions. In exchange Ukraine has put itself in a position to strike various military targets near the Crimean peninsula. The president is wise to see this as not an outright celebration, but as a change in the Russian strategy. The war is far from over.

I remember. It was based on tectonic plates and the earth attempting to "correct itself." The idea that the earth is "correcting itself" makes the earth seem like it is alive. This would be a very profound discovery. From such a view it would not be far fetched to suppose that the solar system is alive, the galaxy is alive, and the universe us alive. The earth correcting itself implies a huge paradigm shift that the earth is a deeply intelligent super organism and so is the universe as a whole. This is very profound.

https://medium.com/@louisriantan/how-tic-tac-toe-can-teach-you-about-life-bdeee1ea3c9 This site discusses what tic tac toe teaches us about life. It is an easy game to master, so I never thought very deeply about it. This is referring to the 3x3 board. There is a 3x3x3 board. On this board the first player always wins if he takes the center. There are too many possibilities for the second player to block. On thing this game teaches us is that a game with only one winner is a broken game. There is a 4x4x4 board. I never tried to master that board, but I probably could. My grandpa played that version a lot. He said that the normal game was boring because it was a quick draw with very limited possibilities. Perhaps we could say that life gets boring in certainty because humans crave to understand more. The greater the possibilities, the more room we have for creativity. This is why I enjoy doing a lot of research sometimes. Understanding different aspects of mankind helps me to make more connections in how I understand the world. This bigger board could probably teach us more about life than the smaller boards.

I am an experienced chess player and I have participated in many tournaments. I find it interesting that world champions like Alekhine said that he applies lessons from chess to real life. It reminds me of Leo when he says mathematicians think reality is made out of numbers because when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I have looked into programs like chess in schools, hoping to find an opportunity, but I keep coming up short. These programs claim that teaching chess helps kids to concentrate better during class and they have improved grades in mathematics. I understand that chess makes people feel dumb because of the stereotypes surrounding it. If you feel this way when you can't calculate 20 moves ahead like a genius, don't worry, almost nobody can. Most chess players are average and struggle to calculate 3 or 4 moves ahead. Maybe a grandmaster can calculate 20 moves ahead, but this requires a lot of practice. Sometimes young kids feel like they have chess figured out and they start getting cocky. This happens right before the dip when they realize that there is another dimension to the game. This happened to me as a young kid and I've seen it happen to other kids. In fact I have triggered the dip in young kids when I went to chess club. If they come back, then they have the potential to be very strong players. A depressing lesson chess taught me is loneliness. When I first started playing chess, I was more interested and beat everyone in the family. Everyone gave up and I ran out of opponents. My chess development was limited for a long time because of this. Finally, I joined a chess club at school. eventually, I beat everyone in the club with such ease and confidence that they gave up and stopped playing me. I tried switching over to teaching chess, but most people were not interested in getting good at it. This made me feel like I had unusable skills. Occasionally, there were a few people interested in learning and I blew their minds wide open, but this was very uncommon. Sometimes my brother feels the same way when he is very interested in studying history, but nobody around him shares his interest. He has a lot of interesting knowledge, but nobody cares. When people fail to see the value that you see in something, they will get board quickly and they will not make all of the profound counter intuitive connections that you are making between the may complex systems active in life. It seems that in order to thrive in society you have to have deep knowledge of something people care about. The most interesting thing I noticed in chess is that other people like me have used chess as a springboard into personal development and spirituality. Contrary to popular belief, brilliance does not come from hardcore calculation, but rather it comes from leaps in intuition. Although calculation is a factor, It is like having a eureka moment when you find something deeply counterintuitive that actually works. It can be like sacrificing your queen, compromising your King's castle, sacrificing an exchange to outplay your opponent's rook in a concrete situation, and other counter intuitive ideas. One of the reasons people get stuck in chess is because they get stuck thinking in the same way. Chess is not immune to dogmatism, and I would love to think independently of these rules. They become a habit and therefore a hinderance to stronger players. Finally, what I enjoy in chess the most is being fully absorbed in the task at hand. It becomes very peaceful and can become a form of meditation when nothing else in the world bothers you. For me and other players like me this became the springboard into spirituality through getting a taste of higher consciousness for a moment. This could probably be done with a lot of different board games. I have been looking into other board games to see what they teach. I started with games like Shogi, Chinese chess, Go, and others. The core concept is that you are trying to outwit your opponent. Go is interesting because the leaders of the Chinese military say that America plays chess and they play Go. America prefers direct confrontation whereas the Chinese military prefers slow expansion and consolidation. Culture plays a big role in terms of how governments and militaries think about strategy. I found it interesting to think about board games through these different dimensions. I looked into another interesting board game called Risk and I looked at some of the world champions playing. I think it does a good job of illustrating the politics behind world domination. Unlike in chess, there are more opponents, each trying to take over the world. In order to beat them, you have to give them deals which allow them to get more powerful armies as well. You need to compromise along the way by not taking too many bonuses and getting to strong. If you get too strong, then the other players will gang up on you if you don't spend your troops to progress the game. Strong players can't afford to turtle. In a sense it is better to be the second or third strongest player so that it is easier to manipulate other players into wasting their troops as you prepare to backstab them at any moment. If you give an opponent a deal, then you need to make sure it benefits you more then it benefits them. The strategy becomes very interesting until you reach the top level. By that point the strategy is so well done that luck starts to matter more and more. Usually it is smart not to take the risk, but this leads to a stalemate. The result is a lot of slow back and forth as the players consolidate into their own section of the map. It starts to resemble real life when the champions realize that it is too risky to try to take over the world unless somebody makes a mistake by breaking the balance of the game in your favor or through manipulating an alliance somehow. I think this is a more accurate depiction of war because it includes the politics of constantly trying to backstab each other, rather than a one on one chess or checkers match. Right now I am learning more about money and I am looking into games like Cash Flow and Monopoly. These are games that rich parents play with their kids to teach financial literacy and how to leverage debt. It teaches you how to control your emotions when dealing with money. I am trying to access an online version of Cash Flow right now, but I'm having trouble. How effective do you think games like these are? It is oversimplified in terms of how to spot a good deal, but the general idea is to leverage debt rather than avoid it and pay it all off. It would be nice to learn how to build up passive income. My current habits are very conservative and I don't like taking a lot of risks, but I have some money in the bank doing nothing. I wish I could find a way to get this money to work for me. What other board games do you think teach valuable lessons?

Last time I took an elo test it was somewhere around 2000. My USCF is around 1900. My opponents agree that I'm under rated, but I haven't been getting into tournaments lately to get my rating caught up because of the hassle to organize them. In practice I often get better positions and win against candidate masters, but masters usually beat me. Relative to my opponents I can gauge my approximate strength to be a strong candidate master, but not quite a master. This would be around 2100 or so in USCF. I think the knight is a good symbol for chess. During the game my favorite piece might switch between bishop and knight depending on the situation. If knights are more advantageous then I like giving up the bishops. If the board is open and I have good mobility, the I can outplay my opponent's knight with a bishop. I like having a fianchettoed bishop to defend my king or a naturally developed knight near my king. When attacking I think I like the sudden knight checks and sacrifices a little more than the bishop maneuvers. When the knights are elegant it is beautiful. when the knights are clumsy it is inconvenient. There are pros and cons to the pieces, so it is hard to say which is my favorite piece. Practically, I prefer bishops, symbolically I prefer knights.

@lxlichael I thought about it a little more and I think it applies to all games in general. For example, Pokemon is strategically complicated game when taken as a competition. It is thought to be strategically similar to chess, but it is much more difficult for AI to learn because there is more uncertainty and variability. Alpha star was a machine used in star craft 2. It eventually got really good at competing with master level players even though there was more uncertainty. The machine made unusual strategies which sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. I wonder what strategies a machine might come up with in a game like Pokemon when teaching AI to deal with uncertainty. In games like chess it is easy for computers to crush humans because they calculate millions of moves ahead. There is no uncertainty and the brute force of the calculation overwhelms any human player.

It really is looking pretty bad for Russian soldiers on the ground as the casualties continue to rapidly increase. Ukraine said that they should be ready to take back Kherson within a few more weeks, hence they refused the ceasefire. So far Kherson is still at a standstill for the moment. Ukraine is not advancing, but Russia moved a lot of civilians out of there not too long ago.

A few weeks later there have been some major developments. So far the war is mostly a stalemate with a lot of back and forth in terms of the territory occupied. The same cannot be said for the vehicles and soldiers. The Russian army is sending less advanced equipment to the front line, including cars without armor. Conscripts are surrendering for two common reasons. One, they are abandoned by their commanders. Two, friendly fire is a serious issue in the Russian army. The problem is that Russian artillery fires in the general direction of the enemy with less precision. The soldiers close to the front line often get hit because of this. The gap in technology is becoming noticeable and problematic when the Ukrainian army receives all kinds of up to date equipment from NATO. The daily casualties have been increasing as untrained men are sent to the front line. Apparently, Russia is getting low on tanks and missiles, making it increasingly dependent on North Korea. Belarus does not seem to be joining the war, which is good news for Ukraine. One thing I can't tell is if the numbers are inflated. Is Russia really getting low on tanks? How many are left? Counting the losses for both sides remains complicated. I don't know if I trust all of these numbers, especially since it is a common point for propaganda to make the soldiers feel high morale like they are winning.

I am doing my best to learn more about money, business, marketing, and financial literacy. I would like to continue learning more, but my inner voice has a lot of objections before I continue. If I keep reading about these things, then it might cause more harm than good given my current attitude. In the self help field there seems to be a lot of talk about money and psychology. To some extent it is true if you spend everything you have, don't spend at all, or make a foolish investment and lock yourself in wage slavery forever. For most of my life, I have been very stingy and I am trying to learn what to do with the money I have. I am trying to invest it in personal development, books, seminars, and maybe something else that actually makes me money. I don't want to buy things that give no value. That said, I am skeptical of the emphasis on money psychology. It's because I am looking at how people ultimately make money rather than how they think about it. Although the psychological aspects seem deep and profound in conjunction with the law of attraction, it does not seem to add up. At the end of the day, many self help authors started buying and selling real estate. Sometimes they made tens of thousands in a matter of hours. It looks like they learned some marketing techniques, figured out how to raise the value of land and then this ultimately made millions. It seems to me that the most effective way to make money is learn the marketing techniques and then just do it. If I don't know the business techniques, then what does psychology do for me in the end? Why is there so much emphasis on psychology when so few people are taught financial literacy given the current educational system? It looks like the real problem is that so many people are simply never taught how to make money, so of course they fail. If they are ambitious and start a business anyway, then had of businesses fail within 5 years. These are not promising statistics. So much of business requires insider information that most people don't have access to whether it is legal insider trading or otherwise. Maybe the problem is not psychology, but the fact that so few people access good information. There are people who exploit disaster capitalism for hundreds of millions. It seems that I could treat business in a very cutthroat way and through low consciousness I could throw out psychology and be a corporate sociopath. All this talk about deep psychology and the law of attraction do not seem to add up when so much money is made through unethical exploitation. The reason I am not interested in doing this is because I want to make good money and impact the world in a positive way. Maybe this is the real lesson in money psychology rather than how money is actually made. Before I continue with self help on this topic, the elephant in the room needs to be addressed. Why is there so much deep talk about psychology, yet self help authors buy land, increase the value, and sell it after attending seminars and chatting with rich friends to learn the necessary techniques? It seems that if I had the techniques and applied them properly, then I could make the same money as they did. I did notice a couple of signs up for land I could buy. There probably is a way to profit off of it, but I don't know the techniques to make the entirety of my self worth in a matter of hours by selling a house, nor do I know how to develop the empty land. I need to figure that out. What is the flaw in my thinking? I don't want to frustrate myself more and take the advice the wrong way and be destructive about it. Why not learn the marketing techniques and just do it? Is this not as effective if not more effective at making money then all this talk about psychology? Sorry if I come off as foolish or arrogant. I don't mean to, but I need to express these doubts as soon as possible so that I can grow and move on with a healthier attitude toward money and self help. Thank you for any thoughts.

@Thought Art actually if I made a chess course, then I could seriously start by finishing the mark to a life master and then include limiting beliefs as a section in the course. A lot of players get stuck around 1600-1800, just under a candidate master even though they showed promising results as a child. This looks doable if I set up an easier way with work to get to tournaments. I tried before, but sometimes it is inconvenient because I have to say I am available on Saturday and Sunday. One idea is to get a second job as a tournament director. This requires availability on weekends, but not all weekends. Maybe this is the push I need to claim unavailable on weekends for sure.

@Thought Art I will definitely look into that. Thanks for giving me hope.

Maybe your right and I can keep trying. First I tried following my passion in chess. I clearly have the potential to be a master level player because I defeated multiple candidate masters and drew some master level players. I ran into several problems with this. One problem is that I had to go to college, but there was nothing I wanted to do that requires a degree. I could do writing or chess without it. I practiced everyday until I got out of college. I bought a ton of courses and books and studied them so strongly that sometimes I didn't notice I was hungry. Once I got out of college, I performed well in two tournaments before COVID not and all the tournaments shut down. My success in chess includes becoming the best player in the history of my high school and training the first chess team. I even can link you to a game in which I defeated an international master. I played with black. https://lichess.org/guK01WfB/black Eventually, the tournaments opened again. I won a medal in the INDY 5000. I played four candidate masters with 3 draws and 1 win. I didn't get to play the grandmaster in this tournament, but if I keep playing then eventually I will get the opportunity. The second problem came with my job. I spoke with a grandmaster who told me that holding down a full time job kills the idea of being a globe trotting professional player. Furthermore, tournaments became a hassle to organize with my work schedule and I need to pay rent. Hotels can be expensive. What I enjoy in chess is not the money, but the inner peace when nothing else in the universe bothers me and being focused to the point of flow. Once money starts to interfere with this, I get very frustrated. I looked for jobs that I could take related to chess. There are not as many opportunities as I would like because many of them are out of the state. I will always be required to hold a second job to pay for the house. I have been a successful chess teacher before and I enjoy the job, but chess in schools and kidchess are both located out of the state. In order for me to do something like that, I need to build something similar in this state near where I live. The question becomes how to do it. I probably could do that somehow. I start getting frustrated when all of it seems like a net negative in terms of how much money I put into it and I feel pressure from my family telling me to track the expenses of the tournaments I need to become an official master player. Moving out seems like it would make it harder as I would have to pay even more for rent. My second try has been unrelated to chess and it is my current attempt. I will expand on this later if you want. That is a good story and it gives me more hope. Thank you for showing me this is possible. I'm glad I posted all of this.