Vali2003

Who seriously claims that transgender women can just compete in women’s sports if they have serious physical advantages? This is a minor problem that can easily be resolved, as society adapts to the new situation. Same in regards to women’s private spaces — assuming you mean toilets, changing rooms etc. by this. Don’t act like these are such enormous problems such that we can’t have who have gender dismorphia and transition call themselves men, or women if that’s what they actually identify as.

@Leo Gura Got it. Thank you.

Is epistemology unique in that you should contemplate it from scratch? I remember you saying in "what is insight?," that you should study something first, then go into contemplation. That way you have the dots in your brain to connect and can have insights. In general, I struggle understanding when I should study something first, then contemple vs. derive it from first principles.

Ah, ok. Thanks for letting me know

@Judy2 One thing that has mightily helped with decreasing stress is having one hour before bed, where all I do is relax. It primes me for sleep and resets the stress that accumulated throughout the day. I, for example, often watch the sitcom "friends" before sleeping. I've seen it before, so nothing exciting or arousing happens and it allows me to just relax. I understand from reading this thread that adding things on to your to-do list - even if that's "relaxing" - adds stress, instead of helping you relax. But it's important that you get the principle of relaxing. Basically the essence of what it means to relax. It's a melting, mellow kind of sensation. I'm sure you know it. Put your awareness to your body, and try to relax right now so you see what I mean. Find an activity that puts you in this state, whether that's stretching, meditating, taking a walk, listening to music, drinking tea (camomille tea is great for relaxing btw.), progresive relaxation exercises, relaxation visualisations (there are some great ones in the book Psychocybernetics) or something else. Then do it every day before you sleep. Doing only relaxing stuff for one hour before sleep works great for me, but experiment with what time works best for you. You will notice hat much less stress accumulates over time, you'll be less irritable during the day, and more capable of confronting stress during the day.

My point is not that the passion itself is what’s attractive. I’m saying it’s the conviction and confidence you have into this specific way of penetrating the world. It’s the masculine energy you display. Your example with the Star Wars figurines is a strawman, because the person you imagine when you read this is not somebody who has any confidence in his pursuit. You imagine somebody who hides in their mother’s basement out of fear that somebody sees his true self. Funny enough, a friend of mine paints Warcraft figures and has a collection of them in his room as a hobby, and he has a super cool and good looking girlfriend (by my judgment). I think the advice of “be fun and stoic” is bad advice because it points away from the principle that, in my experience, actually leads to attraction. And that is to impose yourself on the world in whatever way you think is good and right. If you take “be stoic and fun” as absolutely true principles for attraction then that leads to people trying to be some way they’re not which I think is rather unattractive. Anyways, I feel there’s some truth to fun and taking her on an adventure as true principles for attraction, and I’m not sure how they relate to my previous point. I’d have to contemplate that a bit more.

@Vercingetorix Women are attracted to masculine energy. But masculine energy isn’t being stoic, or being relaxed, or being fun. At its essence, masculinity is simply you penetrating the world. How you do that is up to you and will be unique to your personality, interests etc. You “penetrate” a woman, by inviting her onto your unique island and giving her a great experience there, telling her all the lore about your island (your perspective on the world, basically) and so forth. Do you see how this “penetrates” her? When I met my girlfriend for example, I told her all about the 2022 NBA finals at the time. How Steph Curry’s legacy would change if he won his fourth championship, how he’d move into top 10 OAT player-lists if he won again, without KD and more. Of course she didn’t give a fuck about basketball and the NBA, before. But I made it intriguing because I thought it was so intriguing. Maybe you, too, don’t give a fuck about basketball but your thing is doing ice-skating. So you go and do that together with her, and maybe afterwards you, just being you and being completely convinced that ice-skating is the greatest thing ever, will have made her fall in love with you. Also, maybe not. You can’t be attractive to everybody if you’re authentic. This is the reason why just be confident is good advice at its core but people misunderstand it and turn into some macho douche. To connect it back to your initial question: You don’t necessarily need to be fun to be attractive. But if your thing is to be fun, then that’s great. Also if your thing is that you’re not fun but you currently try to be more fun, then that’s also great. Just be confident in whatever your thing is and penetrate the world with it.

It‘s important not to be too choosy with who you consider a good fit as your friend in the beginning. Go do stuff you enjoy anyways, chat people up there, get their contact information and meet up with them, even if you think they‘re a bit weird. For example, just chat up the person that was next to you in the yoga class afterwards and get their contact info. It’s not super important that you think they’re amazing or god-realized or anything. Next step is to meet with them regularly. That means at least once a week, but it’s better if you meet more often. This is, of course, easier if you have something to do together, like study, do sports, or something like that. You‘ll probably grow to like them, or you won‘t, but you will definitiely get to know other people you do like through them. They’ll probably introduce you to their friends. Also, you‘ll get invited to other social events where it‘s much easier now, and less awkward to meet people. Now you can maybe start being more selective about who you want to be friends with. But maybe, as you’ve spent so much time with your first friend, you’ve grown to like them. The most crucial point is not to be too picky at first. As soon as you get into ANY social circle, it gets easy to make friends. But first, you need some way to get in. That problem is solved by not being too picky.

@Natasha Tori Maru @Joshe Glad it resonated

@czar24 I think you make being fun and feeling free around women too complicated. The easiest way to have fun is just to, well, try to have fun. There really isn‘t much more to it. Of course, as you get better at being fun you‘ll be able to make more distinction. And don‘t say you don‘t know how to have fun, I‘m sure you‘ve had fun before in your life at some point, no? It‘s uncomfortable to accept this as the solution, because it‘s hard to do something if you’re unsure you can do it 100% correctly. It’s always like that when learning something new. But that’s inherent to growth, so you gotta eat the bullet. Try to notice how serious you‘re being, stop, try to be fun, and iterate from there. That‘s the most direct way I know.

Lately, I’ve opened up to seeing how narcissistic, and immature I (and other men) sometimes act in relation to women. This connects to the discussion about men/women being dramatic somewhere back in this thread. For example, sometimes, I would tell my girlfriend a potentially hurtful truth, like me having a crush on another woman. I act all stoic, and as though I’m simply a messenger of truth, and am there for her to cry on my shoulder, or hold space for her or whatever. In that moment, I feel like that’s just the truth, and she has to deal with the truth. Just like I would. It’s a really self-absorbed kind of perspective. In that moment, I’m completely disconnected from how I’d react if she told me she had a crush on some dude. I’d probably react “worse” than she does, but she’d likely be more considerate than me in how she told me, and less self-absorbed. I hope the comical nature of this comes across. I don‘t want to idealize women, but it shows - at least in my experience, and I feel this applies to many men - the self-righteousness, men feel entitled to, simply due to centuries of being in a position of power over women or being seen as superior. Whether that‘s societally, academically, or in a relationship. And it‘s fascinating how much I can feel this self-righteous, entitled belief that there‘s something about me that makes me better, smarter, more truthful etc., than my girlfriend simply because I‘m a man. And, boy, does it hurt when that belief gets shattered by reality. Waking up to this understanding makes me see feminism in a different light too. And it makes me notice how big of a dick I can be, and makes me very grateful for my girlfriend. I think most men drastically underestimate - or are completely ignorant of - the chokehold that their need for power and superiority over women has on them.

There are a couple positive use cases for boosting your understanding, but overall I think any claims like “It will 10x your learning” are completely overblown. One way to use it productively is as a sparring partner for debating a certain topic. Letting it come up with counter-examples, prompts for you to think about etc. But even then, I think the upside is limited compared to contemplating a question on your own. Another function that is really useful is DeepSearch. You can give really specific prompts about topics, it may otherwise be difficult to find quality information on. You can let it create in-depth guides 10+ pages long. But, I must say, there has never been an AI output so far that really changed my perspective or impacted my life meaningfully like has happened through some excellent books I’ve read. I don’t know if that is due to my expectations to it or a different reason. So I think even when you use it responsibly, the potential for it to significantly boost your building of your theoretical foundation is quite limited. All that being said, I do often use AI to help me understand some concept that I struggle with and it’s quite good for that. But the main purpose always has to be for it to serve my understanding. And the problem is, it’s quite easy to slip into accepting whatever output comes out as valid and not thinking critically about it anymore, which will definitely decay your mind.

The White Rose was a resistance group in Nazi Germany fighting against the Nazis, not supporting them. I think they’re only referring to the aesthetic style the resistance takes, but I think South Park is incredibly funny.

This is gonna be my summer jam for the year