TimStr

Here are a few tipps to at least partly circumvent this as a customer. 1) Avoid costumer loyalty apps! (Ask yourself: "If I get a discount on that app, how is that discount being payed for?" Hint: Its actually being payed for by extracting money from you.) 2) Make your online purchases through a browser like Forefox or Brave instead of an app. Using the browser gives you more control on what data is collected on you. This also works on your phone! 3) Set your browser to delete coockies whenever you close it. Or you can use private mode in your browser. (This makes a huge difference when buying stuff like airplane tickets.) For mobile use there is Firefox Focus that does exactly that on your phone. Firefox Focus also blocks tracking scripts by deafault. (I have blocked almost 35.000 trackers since I started using it 2 years ago.) 4) Use a plugin like NoScript to block tracking in your browser. (This might be a little bit too technical for some of you. And is a little bit of work when you start using it, since you need to unbreak some websites when you first use them. But it gives you granular control over what scripts webites are allowed to run in your browser.) 5) Use a DNS sinkhole like pihole or adguard to filter all your web traffic from trackers. This also gives you the advantage of never being bothered by ads again. (Setting this up is also a bit technical.)

AI powered dynamic pricing is being implemented to extract more money from you. And the way you are being tricked is by exploting a belief that you hold. Notice, that something as simple as a price tag is never really questioned by you. "It's the same price for everyone." is a believe that you probably hold whenever you see a price tag. Notice that this cannot be taken for granted at all. There were times in history before the price tag. Notice how awesome a trustworthy price tag actually is! But now, companies start using AI to adjust the price tag you see in real time according to the data they collect about you. Loyalty program apps are also a part of this. This is a symptom of sourveillance capitalism (a term coined by Shoshana Zuboff). And it will basically turn all consumption and shopping into a game on how companies can extract the most money from you. Be aware that this is allready happening to you and that this will get way worse if no legislation is being put into place. And be aware how this scam is implemented by playing on your subconsciously held believes. One of the most prominent examples is Ticketmaster: Another example is the grocery store Kroger, that used it's loyality program to track users and collect data and create shopper profiles. (Source: Consumer Reports) @Leo Gura I saw on your blog that you are still collecting examples of scams. This one might be worthy of a post.

@Husseinisdoingfine This link is not working for me. I get an age verification prompt but then I links to a "Page not found". Maybe they have taken it down? Did that link ever work for you? If not, then where did you source the document? Either way, they will probably just write it off as misinformation if its not on the DOJs site.

Australia as a country has enourmous problems:

Avoidant people do not actually stop doing the suffering in the way that Ralston proposes. Instead, they continue doing the emotion and bury it with distractions and self-deception. Or projecting it outside into the world or on people so they don't have to take responsibility usually creating more suffering in the process. Stopping suffering is not like this. It actually doesn't even require for the particular emotion to end. You just stop suffering it, by opening up to it, looking into what belief you hold, that causes it and stop believing that. As you do this, the actual emotional sensation in your body stops feeling bad and eventually will transform into something else. You don't try to get rid of the emotion or to make it feel different. Neither do you try to act it out, release it or process it in any way. You just stop doing the shit that makes it come about and it will cease to exist. Doing this is actually not even that hard once you get the jist of it. Did it many times. It's one of the most accessable things that Ralston teaches. Mastering this skill and making it effortless takes consistency, though. And it requires a good ammount of personal responsibility is paramount which is why this way of relating to emotions is just not present in our culture. I think this is the reason he continues to hammer that assertion of "You're doing your suffering, stop doing it."

Japanese work mentality leads to some of the most exceptional products on the world. Insane, artistic kind of quality! In japan there is a word for hard working craftsmen, called "shokunin". They work exceptionally hard to create the best stuff they can. Here are some great examples: https://www.stefanimhoff.de/shokunin/ BUT: Those masters are usually exceptionally stubborn, working only for the sake of elevating their craft and definately not for the money! This is the difference and this is interesting because its a very clear example how hard work leads to completely different results depending on weather it's approached by a conformist mind or by an authentic mind. It's clear to me, that the value of hard work can easily get corrupted by conformity and how this gets exploited by capitalism.

Hating on mondays and looking forward to weekends, that's some conformist shit. Generally, the whole attitude of relating to work in western society in general is full of conformity.

I am backing this! Do not attempt dry fasting!! It's not worth the risk. If you stop giving water to your body you can run into dangerous territory pretty quick! You certainly cannot avoid running into trouble after 3-5 days. The issue is not even so much the lack of water but your bodies reaction when you rehydrate it. Google refeeding syndrome !! It can have deadly side effects. Also, is there a way to keep the ai trolls from polluting this forum with potentially dangerous content like this thread? @Leo Gura

I did 4 Myers-Briggs tests in the past and got 4 different results. Not hugely different but still different types. I also think that the mood and well-being of the moment you take it has a big impact. I would suggest that just like all other typologies you treat it more like something you have put on, like a costume or mask rather than something you are.

@Carl-Richard This question requires way more nuance than a simple yes of no! If you would ask me if psychedelics mindfucked me in ways I couldn't even anticipate and revealed how malluable my experience is and how few things I can take for granted in life, I would say HELL YEAH! If you'd ask me if I undertook tremendous work to change my behavior and my attitude to life as a result of a psychedelic exsperience, I would answer: Maybe some of the times. There were many trips, that despite having them approached as a serious conscious endeavour turned out to be mostly recreationally entertaining and didn't affect some of my deeper inner mechanics in the long run. If you would ask me if psychedelics produced any change in my life by themselves without conscious effort on my end, I would answer: Definately not! After a solid 10 years of regular tripping at least 3 - 25 times each year, I have to admit, that all those trips produced way fewer lasting changes than I was telling myself all along. This became more and more clear especially during the last couple of months. I hate to say it but intense inquiry and meditation retreats and even just deeply educating myself on an intellectual level seem to have produced a lot more lasting changes in my life. The couple of deep trips that shifted a great deal for me were also during intense retreat settings so it's hard for me to seperate out the effect of the psychedelic from the rest. Then again we could talk about weather life changes are even the point of tripping and consciousness work of if it's more about gaining experience or understanding. You asked for the first thing that popped into my head. After 10 years of experience, at this moment, it's a NO. Maybe I change my mind at some point.

It's also an option that they just failed to integrate their experience adequately and therefore didn't get any life changing effects.

@Leo Gura Got it. So the creator of the videos I posted has a pretty comprehensive website linking some gear that still seems to be avaliable: https://sites.google.com/view/mintylovesrue/emesh Besides knockoffs that usually seem to require some fixing to get them to work properly, he seems to be recommending this one: https://sites.google.com/view/mintylovesrue/emesh/mesh-rda-reviews/cthulu-iris#h.oqv98jpf3scm https://www.cthulhumod.com/product/iris-mesh-rda/ I have no personal experience with it. Looks decent though.

@shree This is almost the exact setup I use, except that I prefer a short mouthpiece to ensure that no DMT resublimates in it and I inhale the exact quantity that I put in. So far emesh the cleanest and most effective method for vaping tryptamines that I've come across. @Leo Gura I can recommend. For anyone that doesn't know: The emesh is a stainless steel mesh coil that you place your DMT on. You then heat that coil up and it immediately vaporizes the complete dose. The main benefits are, that once you got the technique down, it is extremely precise regarding dosing and that you inhale only DMT no vape juice. Also it's a lot less harsh to the throat and it doesn't taste like breathing the fumes of burning tires. You could use this gear: - Mesh Coil - Vape Mod - Stainless steel mesh These videos do a great job of explaining the details and the smoking technique:

At this point this thread is almost comical!

Happy to hear that! What I love about them is that he mostly uses archive footage and this makes for a really relateable experience of the specific time, he speaks about.

Sephalopod intelligence is the closest thing to alien intelligence, we have on earth. Here are some of the things that struck me as I was researching about them: They have twice as many neurons as a cat but 2/3 of them are distributed in their 8 arms and only 1/3 in their head. Each of heir arms has basically its own brainstem and sense organs. Their arms can act independantly but also concertated. They can change the color and texture of their skin to match their surrounding within an instant despite their eyes being color blind. They do this with photoreceptors in their skin. They can solve compex problems and mazes, they have memory and the capability of abstract planning and can recognize people. They exhibit play despite being an antisocial and solitairy creature. (Play as a form of learning is usually only found in species that form social relations.) Contemplating this is valuable to realize just how many aspects of our mind and our intelligence we take for granted! Realize how radical this becomes: It's not a given, that your body is one entity. Imagine the possibility of your left arm, just going on, doing its thing for a while, grabbing, managing and learning stuff, while still allowing for your body acting as a whole if one of arms fins some information that would necessitate that. This ability to switch between centralized and decentralized intelligence is something that humans are not good at at all. How would it be to have an octopus awakening and become octopus-god? Realize what aspects and what believes about yourself and your intelligence would need to be dropped? More Resources: My Octopus Teacher (Neflix) Inside the mind of an octopus, interview with Dr. Jennifer Mather (Youtube) Dr. Jennifer Mather about Octopus Intelligence (Youtube)

Wow, I can only try to imagine. I think, this is basically what this guy did:

Those videos are just dogfights, organized to generate clicks and views. I don't see productive debate being modeled there. So I agree with them doing more harm. It's just people fighting.

Are there any other plattforms for video creaters, that are worth considering, to be used instead of youtube?

Here is something from the depths of tibetan buddhism: The oracle of Nechung. He puts himself into trance and performs dances wearing extremely heavy bronze costumes (sometimes up to 40 kilos) while transmitting visions. He serves as one of the primary advisors for the dalai lama. By the way: I don't want to discredit this by saying that all of this is fake in the sense that it is purely performative. I believe that going into trance and having visions can be archieved. And I think that if anyone the tibetans are experts in this. But we still have to ponder, weather this is actually genuine truthseeking or something distinct from that. We also need to consider whats the role of tradition within all this. I am mainly posting this because we wanted to have a thread about the peculiarities that happen when humans start to engage with spirituality.

Here is another one for the shits and giggles: The church of dudeism, a religion founded on impersonating the Dude from the famous Jeff Bridges movie: The Big Lebowsky Practicioners usually go bowling, drink lots of White Russians and wear cozy sweaters. It was founded by his holyness, the dudely lama, Oliver Benjamin. The great thing about this is, that most practicioners have self-awareness about the whole thing being a mockery. Here is an interview with the founder of Dudeism.

I think the issue is not so much, that these things are woo hoo. There might be people with legit psychic or healing abilities. But thats not so much what the question of fake spirituality is about. As I see it, the issue is more that people confuse the believes they have about those psychics and healers for doing spiritual work. Many people think they become spiritual by immersing themselves in these kind of new age circles and adopting the "spiritual" culture. They become trapped in a sort of spiritual performance. For this to happen, it doen't matter if the new age hypothoses or the psychic ability is actually legit or not. People create the fantasies about it weather there is legitimacy to these things or not. But thats not what genuine truth seeking means.

This is probably one of the most sinister people on earth: João Teixeira de Faria, also called "John of God", claims to be a spiritual medium and psychic surgeon. He promises to heal peoples psychological or physiological illnesses by "operating" on their body despite having no medical training. Common procedures include inflicting cuts, inserting hemostats into peoples noses or scraping their eyes with blunt knives usually done without any kind of anesthesia or sanitation. He targets people with terminal illness and exploits their hopelessness. Edit: Trigger warning, some of those videos contain imagery of those operations that are quite shocking to watch.

I am genuinely happy that we are talking about this topic! I see, that this kind of fakeness is doing serious harm! Not only posing a trap for ones personal spiritual developement but also hurting the image of spirituality at large, turning spirituality into a weird kind of hippy cosplay! Performative authenticity. Letting those words sink in makes it clear, that there are some deeper epistemic issues at work here. Poststructuralist philosopher Jean Baudrillard called this the transition from the real to the hyperreal.