The Renaissance Man

This is an article I wrote, called Blindness. It tries to explain why people don't change and can't change. Blindness is the absence of independent thinking. Almost every human is blind. They are just animals acting out their social conditioning. They lack independent thinking. The average person lives his life, has values, makes decisions, almost entirely based on how they were conditioned growing up. By conditioning I mean what they learned from the environment, their parents, teachers, authorities, and in general what was "normal" in their eyes. That becomes their only reality. That is unconsciousness. That is absence of independent thinking. That limited reality is all they see. Outside that there's blindness. For a fuller picture, add to conditioning a flavor of genetic personality, and life experiences, that in most cases are just little dots of light in a sea of blindness. Far from enough to have enough context to spark independent thinking. Social conditioning is not the same in everybody. Here, again, we have a mix between genetics and upbringing. We may see more and less mature perspectives, or more and less naive people, or more and less people able to interpret certain situations. What remains common though, is that all those people remain limited by their conditioning. Children of entrepreneurs much more often become entrepreneurs. And it's not about the money, it's about blindness. Children of employees were conditioned to believe that entrepreneurship is impossible, in most cases. Why would you pursue something impossible? A person who was conditioned to believe that a needy "nice guy" behavior is attractive, will only have that tool at his disposal, and even though it will keep not working, he'll still persist and suffer, over and over again. In the face of suffering, the blind person reflexively, like an animal, tries to find a way out. But he's blind, he can't see. Just like if you put a cat in a box next to a lever, he doesn't know what a lever is, and so he'll start experimenting randomly, jumping around, scratching everything, until, by chance, he moves the lever and makes progress. But he never understands why he made progress. One step forward is just one data point. One dot of light. How many do you need for the full picture? For actual sight? The average person only sees within his conditioning boundaries. If life's problems are solvable within the boundaries, then everything's great. But when it's not enough, when the tools given by your conditioning don't solve the problem, then it's chaos. Then it's the "cat in the box" situation: Blindness. But the blind mind does not think or see that it's blind. Otherwise he'd quickly find a way to stop being blind (by learning, contemplating, introspecting). The thought of blindness implies a meta-perspective that would make that kind of blindness almost impossible. That's the problem of self-deception! Let's see what it's like to be blind. Blindness is synonym with unconsciousness. To understand the blind person, which is almost everybody in the world, you need to see them like an animal. Not in the sense that they have the intellect or the worth of an animal. But in the sense that their behaviors, values, life decisions, are all unconscious reactions that are the result of the interaction between conditioning, genetic personality and circumstances. The poor blind is a complete victim to his conditioning. His life is just the sum of those reactions, of which he almost never made a conscious one. It's most fascinating to see the blind person when faced with a challenge where the solution is outside the person's conditioning. For example, when a "nice guy" can't attract women, no matter how hard he tries. How is it possible that "nice guys" can often remain such for all their lives? The answer is simple. They're blind! They're the cat in the box! The difference is that attraction is much more complicated than a lever. That's why the cat gets out the box, but the nice guy doesn't get laid. See, even the recognition that the nice guy approach is problematic requires sight in the first place. It requires the ability to see the flawed conditioning from outside. But by definition, the blind when outside his conditioning... is blind. This is how the blind thinks: What is happiness? It depends on what I was conditioned to believe it is. What is a healthy relationship? It depends on what I was conditioned to believe it is. How do you know if you're happy? I just compare my current situation to my conditioning. Does this reflect the reality of most people? I think so. A final point: What about the people who make progress? After all, people seem to mature as they age. They learn lessons, they change. Doesn't this go against the idea of conditioning and blindness? First, progress in those situations is extremely slow. Any experience contradicting your conditioning is just a little dot of light into the 360 view of blindness. A lot of experience is required to become seriously effective, unless someone straight up teaches you how to do things right. But that's not really in your power. Even when those people learn lessons (and this tends to end in their 20s or 30s, when they set up a normal life, just as they were conditioned to), the lessons are extremely specific and isolated. Not enough to gain enough clarity over the whole situation, which is what's required to solve the problem for good. It's true that self-help has made millions change. But remember that not everybody is aware of self-help. If your conditioning didn't teach you about self-help, or the idea of improvement, you either stumble upon it by chance, or you remain the same all your life. Once again, victims of conditioning! What's the solution to blindness then? It's what we have here. It's becoming aware of it. Leo's epistemology playlist is a superpower for this reason. It is the antidote to blindness. The real solution to blindness is when you start what I call a flywheel effect: when you see blindness in action, you now seek to understand and learn, until you're not blind anymore. Your area of sight has expanded. New area of blindness? Repeat, and again, expansion. It's a flywheel effect because unlike blind people, which are stuck for life, you are constantly expanding your area of sight, more and more, understanding more and more, thinking independently more and more. Remember I defined blindenss as the absence of independent thinking. It's a meta-mechanism that instead of reacting to blindness, it sees it from the outside, and then dissolves it. PS - I was "blind" all my life. Actually, I was more blind than normal. I was extremely blind. Extremely naive. I lived this transformation first-hand only recently (3 years). I am in the rare position of remembering how it was to be extremely blind. I have countless stories of my blind life. 95% of them are too painful to share. Self-help, and especially Leo's work, changed my life. It's insane how the same person can change so much over 3 years. If I weren't blind this much and for this long, I wouldn't believe it could be possible.

Brother after creating this I learned to stop underestimating AI Never say never!

I use all 3 all the time so I have more prompts and multiple perspectives. Claude free doesn't have the thinking feature though. DeepSeek is free by the way, you can test it out with a complex question and the difference is just apparent. Get ready to add a new tool to your arsenal!

@WikiRando I feel what you're saying and I still live this problem. But there's clearly people out there. Just fewer of them. The solution may require to be far more intentional about it than what's considered normal. That's what's probably going to be required of me if I want to develop a circle of people with my same values. Serious intention in creating it. That may look like trying to bring up deeper topics sooner (you never know about hidden gems that talk about what they care about because it's never received with interest). Or just meeting more people, increasing the raw numbers, and actively going to places where there's a higher probability of meeting developed people. Maybe physical meetups from online communities, maybe local circles. Will I actually do all this stuff? I don't know, but probably at some point. A few solid friends whith whom you can just talk naturally and they just get it can have a huge impact on your happiness and even development. So it's probably very worth it despite the effort.

@The Caretaker I agree with you that Hormozi is kind of shameless with squeezing every cent out of his clients. The only reason he doesn't do it openly is because it would affect his reputation, which would mean less money long-term. So for him it's about money, money, money and that's it. The purest stage orange in terms of values. At the same time, after contemplating on the topic, I feel like more "aggressive" kinds of marketing are justified if you're struggling financially. Obviously, as long as you're not lying and trapping people. Imagine if Leo had 10k subs instead of 1M. If he made 80% of his content available under a paid subscription, plus if he more aggressively advertised his coaching or a $600 course, it would still not be a scam. Far from it. The harsher financial condition would force a more aggressive form of marketing, and I believe it's justified. But I'm going off-topic lol.

Thanks for sharing @LordFall What are your other top 5 books? Mine are Hormozi's books (both Offers and Leads), Atomic Habits, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem and Flow. For now, these are the only ones that I'd buy, over 30 or so I've read. Ralston's books are a bit too far ahead for me but otherwise they'd be part of this list too.

@TruthFreedom For marketing, I'd study Alex Hormozi's books like the bible. If you have no prior experience with helping people in your field, you're probably not going to be that great initially. In other words, poor client results. That's normal. If that's the case, you may want to start by working with people at a lower price, even for free initially in exchange for reviews. This will give you a ton of experience (worth much more than the money you'd have charged at this point), plus if you don't deliver the best results --which is likely in the beginning-- no one's going to be mad, and you'll be able to sleep nicely, knowing that at least you haven't charged much for sub-par results. As you get skilled on all fronts you can start to charge what feels appropriate to you. Anyway, Hormozi Hormozi Hormozi, books! and YouTube.

Actualized.org at 24 y.o. with the first videos on enlightenment from 9 years ago (discovered in late 2022). Didn't know enlightenment was a thing. Pure scientism. I thought monks were counting breaths to be happy and that anything "spiritual" was religion BS.

I just tried it, it's ridiculous. I've used MidJourney a lot but this is crazy, it feels on another level.

In my experience DeepSeek's DeepThink is like ChatGPT's Deep Research on steroids. Like no comparison.

$100M Offers & Leads - Alex Hormozi 10/10, to me this is almost as good as a book gets The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey 9.5/10 Atomic Habits - James Clear 8/10 The 4 Hour Work Week - Tim Ferriss 7.5/10 Secrets Trilogy - Russell Brunson 5/10 The Big Leap - Gay Hendricks 5/10 Never Lose A Customer Again - Joey Coleman - 4/10 Deep Work - Cal Newport 4/10 Purple Cow - Seth Godin 4/10 Steal Like An Artist - Austin Kleon 4/10 The ONE Thing - Gary Keller 4/10 Think And Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill - 3/10 Rich Dad Poor Dad - 2/10 4-5/10 are books that gave me little, maybe one idea or two. 3/10 were a waste of my time. The scores are mostly based on how much I learned, but also on how practical the books are, and how dense of information they are. I hate books that take 300 pages to talk about one idea that could be expressed in 50 pages or less (like Purple Cow or Deep Work). But the scores are far from absolute. I started reading after 2 years of a Leo and general YouTube self-help deep dive, so I was already familiar with a lot of the concepts, which is one of the reasons why many books are rated 4-5. @The Caretaker Our lists and scores are quite different. Especially Hormozi, which you rated your worst and I rated my best. I'll check out Noah Kagan's book.

@integral This is insane, is this ChatGPT??

🤮🤮

@JimMorrison Hey, I know there are already similar tools around. I think Notion AI does this. It's available for $8 a month or something like that. I don't have direct experience with it. Keep in mind most people already have their favorite knowledge management system in place, so asking them to migrate to a new tool entirely is tough. It needs to be something extraordinary, and if it is, the competition will try his best to replicate it in their own software. Just so you know what you're getting into. Anyway, to be honest I don't see how it would be useful to me. The functions you mentioned (quote below) are not a current issue of mine. Organization when you have tons of notes and resources has been a problem for many, but I've found my own solution. So I don't need to "find" information. I almost always know where it is, and I find it easily. It's not perfect, obviously, but it's low maintenance and good enough. Also, I always take notes with the purpose of understanding and learning, and never of just "capturing" interesting stuff. If I need an AI to pull up my knowledge, that's a problem for me, because it's a sign that info is not in my head. So unless I am missing some function, I would not find it useful, for the way I like to manage my notes. But that's how I use my PKM system. Maybe I'm the exception.

@Davino Great share, I didn't know this channel. Some of their other videos are tough to watch. In the case of Daniel, it's also a phenomenal example of above average IQ and introspection, while at the same time suffering from mental disorders. I always find the dynamic between independent traits fascinating.

Good luck! @Leo Gura a holistic video on meditation would be sooo good. How to structure week long retreats, even technique-wise (I'm assuming you don't do labeling 24/7? Maybe there's some contemplation mixed in there, or other techniques), for example when and why you shift between techniques, favorite techniques, pro-tips for enduring it, etc. And on the theory side, how meditation works, the difference between 1 vs 10 vs 100 vs 1000 hours of consecutive meditation, what to expect, even the different mechanics explaining why different techniques work, etc. I never really understood how meditation works. Even after watching your older videos, I can't draw the connection between the practice and the result. I can't see how labeling would lead to God or any awakening. Am overcomplicating it? Is meditation just about doing nothing for countless hours, and that just automatically raises your consciousness, regardless of how you do it?

You're doing 5 reps, it's normal. Lactic acid starts at 1+ minutes or continued effort or something. It's just initial muscle damage from training because you're not used to it. Your legs don't get larger in 5 days, they're just a bit swollen.

Thanks also proof that referrals are something else. Always worth it to make killer product/service.

@Emerald Can I ask you what the conversion rates for a $2800 coaching program are? In particular: Response rate Appointment rate Close rate

Oh shit!

This is just from typing notes, no dedicated practice (besides the very beginning), no gaming. I learned how to type with all 10 fingers a few years ago. One of the best things I've ever done.

@integral It's not dangerous, don't worry. It can be healthy if you're untrained, because you'll put on some muscle (it will eventually get easy, unless you add weight to the pistols). It's not dangerous because you can only overload pistol squats so much, between them being one-legged and unbalanced. So it's hard to get hurt (if your knees hurt stop though). You can do 5 pull ups or 10 push ups if pistol squats give you problems, I guess. Until they don't, you're good though. And they may never give you problems, even if you were to do this for 30 years.

@LambdaDelta makes total sense now I see it

@integral why didn't the black queen eat Leo's bishop at move 10? It makes no sense to me. Seems like an irrational move a beginner wouldn't make. Shouldn't the bot be pretty damn good at 2000 elo?

@BojackHorseman The numbers are rough guidelines (very very rough). Different individuals have very different metabolisms. Two skinny 40 year old men doing the same job, same height, same weight, may need to eat 2000 calories more or less than the other, just because... genetics. If you're overweight, you're eating too much. If you're extremely skinny, you're eating too little. That's really it. Think about it! Science has got this figured out, and has been for a few decades. Look at yourself in the mirror. Is there fat that shouldn't be there? You're eating too much. The right amount of food to eat is the one that makes you maintain a healthy level (low) of body fat. Depending on your metabolism, sex, height, daily activity, etc, this number will be higher or lower. Nonetheless the only thing that matters for the quantity of food is how fat or skinny you are. PS - If you read @Michael569's great recommendations above, you'll see that the answer to the question "eating too much?" is in just two points: The other points are more about what to eat, and less about how much which is what you were asking. So, it's really that simple. Hopefully this gives you some solid ground to work with