Jayson G

@Leo Gura I dont know about the escalation of these wars, or other doomsday stuff, but I do think nuclear war is a very serious concern. If you watch this, she's pretty credible, a journalist focused on documenting the truth, spoken to a lot of credible people around the world and stuff .. after I listened to this, Im sure that nuclear was is like very serious she also has a nice voice

This has been on my mind for a while. To start off, like many of you, I love philosophy. In fact, it's, as of my understanding, my #1 deepest passion. I can't see anything more meaningful than philosophy, to understand the world, reality, life, myself, others. It's both meaningful and fun. But as I pursue this passion, a few key concerns come up, serious ones, that keep persisting, and have overlaps: Is it 90% to 100% metaphorical? intellectual? Idea-based? If so, is it even real? Or is it just creating stories and fantasies in my head? I'm talking something as simple as understanding science or investing for example, or engaging with ChatGPT for hours on any topic, spiritual or non-spiritual. I know it has immense practical value, as I've experienced it in my own life. But in the end 95% feels like mental masturbation, bullshit, time-waste, unnecessary thinking, stories, fantasies, nice ideas, etc. I also remember Leo's post about Hayao Miyazaki, and that really inspired me, because there's this part of me that really loves art. But I try pursuing art and although I feel more myself, feel alive, feel this sense of magic when I do art, philosophy is more meaningful to me because of the impact I will have as well as meaningful for my own personal life. So how do you deal with this, if art is something you're deeply passionate about as well, or even more passionate about in some ways? There are philosophical components to art, so that's nice, but often it feels better to pursue philosophy directly, it feels more real, and less disillusioning with life. Is all this intellectualizing healthy? Is it healthy for the mind and body? Is it disillusioning me with life instead of the opposite? Are these problems a natural consequence of doing philosophy, and should be accepted or is this a matter of doing something wrong? Maybe there's a way of doing philosophy that doesn't incur such problems? I'm saying all this while also pursuing as much direct experience as possible, new novel experiences as well, etc. but the amount of experience I gain is no where close to the amount of philosophy I do. So does that just become armchair at that point? Any books or sources that can help do philosophy right, without incurring such problems? @Leo Gura how have you approached this in your life, solved these problems or dealt with them? are these to be accepted or is it a matter of doing better philosophy? I've been struggling with this for years, and as I go deeper this seems to be a bigger problem. Anyone else solve some of these problems?

That does seem like a life that is more real .. its a bit different for me as my highest priority is philosophy, even if I do have these other pursuits, but I can definitely see the profound lesson here to make life much more about this other real stuff.

@Leo Gura and does it take a lot of this theorizing that can feel like BS at times, to reach occassional moments of genuine insight and deep understanding? Is this theorizing the path? kind of like scouring a large pile of shit for golden nuggets?

Highest Truth, yeah thats something I struggle with ... I have this fear of it, so I partly go for it, yet I do seek truth I guess, maybe lowercase truth, or as much truth as I can stomache .. but good point, I also think prioritizing truth is key

@Leo Gura "However, proper contemplation and study can produce serious and valuable insight and understanding into the nature of reality and any systems within it. Do not discount the importance of high quality sensemaking and serious understanding that's grounded in direct experience and genuine insight rather than speculation, belief, and fantasy. The real work is in seeing past the fantasies to see how nature really works." - What's the difference though, between valuable insight and deep understanding vs. all the other bullshit? Like at one point, after watching your video "valuable things require development over time", after like 40 times watching it, the 40th time or something, it hit me that this is a video on "investing", and that there's a whole field on investing, and so Ive been digging deep on investing, opportunity cost, intangible assets with time, etc. and so I got into that rabbit hole. That time it hit me that there's a whole field on investing, felt like a genuine insight I had, but even all that still feels like mental masturbation. Investing principles has practical value that I apply in real life, but I mean even that just seems metaphorical? Am I making the mistake in thinking that metaphorical is bullshit? Or is it that "valuable insight and understanding" goes beyond metaphor? "A healthy life is something like 80% action and practical affairs and only 20% pure philosophy. If you get this ratio backwards you will run into problems." In terms of living a good life, wow I didn't even think about this. I can definitely see myself being a LOT happier and on-top of life if I restructured life to be in this just 20% philosophy path. I pretty much think all day, and now Im becoming conscious of how much that holds me back.

cultivating that level of discipline and commitment to long-term habits is all I want

I shit you not, I listened to his "valuable things require development over time" at least 60 times, and just the last time I watched it, some of the biggest realizations of life came out of that.

Thats littt af .. dont forget us mortals who arent so deep in spirituality and could use more practical stuff, but of course you do you man

@Yimpa lol dude you quoted ChatGPT in your signature ... thats funny af and damn who would have thought, its good you approached her then .. I think the lesson definitely is that its always good to approach a girl no matter what situation shes in

ahh good point

@Leo Gura isnt it a time waste to approach girls with a boyfriend or husband? or do you just do it for the reference experience, or to train your mind to approach everyone? Tyler also has a strategy that has worked wonders for me, to approach everyone, guy or girl, old or young, anyone, to just train to be highly social .. do you see value in that as a top strategy

@Leo Gura before we even get to such a sentencing for trump, we have to first acknowledge the extent of what he's done. I know a lot of people, smart friends of mine tbh, they work in good careers, good companies, some millionaires, good familys, healthy minded, they support trump, think he did nothing wrong, I dont get it ... feels like theres a massive denial in america

@Leo Gura I noticed that lol .. I always wondered why you started a forum? Don't you enjoy your solitude more? and also it's a lot of work, and there's a lot of human bullshit to deal with whereas with your videos you can just focus on intelligence and philosophy? No hate, I get a lot of value from the forum, but I have wondered this for a while

From this entire thread, I've realized some things: 1) It's probably better for a guy to prioritize a) becoming a high value attractive man than being a good PUA (even if that involves PUA), I think that's better for the world, healthier and higher potential for a man, and better for women. 2) It's also clear from this thread that men and women have conflicting agendas, and one's agenda can step on another's agenda, but maybe there is no reality without such a war. In the end both men and women need each other to thrive to their highest potential, whatever that means for someone. This is tricky stuff I see. I can totally understand how women don't like the PUA agenda. And if I were to be real, and I had a daughter, I don't know how I feel about her being gamed by a guy lol .. I do think as a society also we need to get a lot of these cravings out of the way, I can see it perverting society in various ways.

Yeah pickup isn't for everyone, and I do admit it can feel dirty and messy sometimes, but so does all my other pursuits in life: overcoming fears, writing mastery, building a business, etc.

It's not that doing pickup is attractive, but the person you become after doing it for a few years (if you do it right) is attractive, which is why pickup works. Like the process of making music can be ugly or messy, but the product of making music for a few years is some really good banger songs.

@Leo Gura gotchya, these are great insights.

@Leo Gura If I take Eben Pagan for example, I would say he's a mature conscious leader, though somewhat corrupted with his marketing mindset. But overall he had a net positive on the business world. He's into spirituality but not super deep into spiritual work. So from his example, I plan to develop myself into a mature conscious leader, even with spiritual work, but I don't know about going super deep with spiritual work. But as long as I'm proactively doing personal development work, purifying my psyche, etc. this path seems like it is doable?

@Emerald

@Leo Gura Yeah that makes sense, people will do just about anything to get their way when they are desperate, and a host of other problems. But then again I think, how can I create a holistic personal development community and not talking include an aspect of dating, and getting that part of their life handled. Right now Im leaning more towards the angle of not including any pickup content, but that might change in the future. But do you have any important lessons for ensuring the least toxicity in a community in general? I would assume: a) removing toxic and low quality posts, b) removing toxic people from the community, c) basic general rules like no promotion, no hate speech, no racism, no sexism, etc. d) good moderators, and I can learn to properly manage moderators .. anything important I'm missing? The community is part of a larger online university, with different masters teaching, so that in itself should lower toxicity, with the consciousness of these masters trickling into the community discussions.

@Emerald Honestly I never did a strong investigation into shame, this is pretty new to me, but I'll definitely look into it. Also I never got to thank you, you helped me like 5 years ago on a call, took your advice and that contributed to getting me out of a dark emotional pit. Thanks for that a lot.

I went to a DJ Khaled concert in Miami once. We waited 2 hours because he was late. He finally came on stage, yelled "We The Best" and left. No concert. I was so confused fr

@Emerald there's definitely that aspect of feelings of shame of not being ideal, but I'll give a perspective of sort of normal drives that drives much of the community: - a desire to date a ton of girls, just because of high sex drive and stuff .. being able to date anyone you want, talk to any girl you want at any time, that if we land in a new city and see a girl at the airport we approach effortlessly and strike up a conversation. - wanting to better ourselves as a man, less out of shame, but more out of a positive desire to reach our highest potential - wanting solid social confidence etc. Now these are some of the main drives of PUAs. 90% of PUAs have such drives as the main drives, and these drives are not problematic as you see. But of that 90% of PUAs, 80% of PUAs will do some nasty things to satisfy those drives like heavy manipulation, canned routines, etc. But there is that 10% of PUAs who have healthy drives, and want to satisfy it in the healthiest way possible. And yes there's going to be some manipulation. But what I mean by that is that even flirting is a form of manipulation. But everyone does that, and without that there's no great relationship at all. So a small degree of manipulation is needed. But by talking about these important drives, I know I'm going to attract a lot of that crowd who has the healthy drives, but will do nasty things to get there. That's the worry. I get your point of shame, and there definitely is elements of that, but there's an overwhelming factor of other drives. If it was primarily shame, people wouldnt undertake a massive journey that is learning pickup. And yes there is also an aspect in communities of "needing to live up to masculine ideals", but I wouldnt undervalue the importance of masculine ideals. It helps to have some form of compass. Otherwise guys get stuck in their needy behaviors, fearful, unsocial, etc. behaviors.

@Leo Gura you can also do dataset philosophy, like Jim Collins. He would study leaders, tons of them, hundreds or thousands, characterize what he wanted to study in an excel sheet, you can philosophize with AI to determine the columns (their belief systems, how old are they, what profession are they, etc.), create high quality datasets of maybe hundreds or thousands of rows of leaders (in an attempt to study their psychology in your own way), feed it as a document to AI, and ask it to study the dataset, draw unique insights based on the dataset itself, to find specific patterns you're looking for, etc. you can also create custom chatbots with ChatGPT4, feed all the documents beforehand so that any conversation is based on that custom dataset (like a video you're working on), and that would eliminate the problem of the docs eating the context window also. Custom chatbots you can create your own, a whole team of them for whatever you're working on, on the openai website itself.