TimStr

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.

Probably the fakest "spiritual" person on the internet: Shanin Blake

Oh boy, this is going to be a hell of a thread!! There is just so much fakeness and bullshitting that happens, when westerners get into spirituality without being serious. I've collected lots of examples over the last year: Commercial spiritual transformation festivals: Trustafarians and voluntourism:

That depends a little bit on the use case. If you just want to be ad free, yes, running an adblocker (like uBlock Origin) will do the job just fine. However if you want a clean, undistracting and fast interface of if you're privacy focused or you want to escape the Google ecosystem alltogether (like me), just going ad free is not sufficient. The youtube algorhythm objetively sucks since a couple of years now. And it sucks for user and creators alike! There are many issues with it. But my main concern is that crappy, clickbaity short videos get ranked higher than actual valuable content, even in your personalized feed. And also targeted advertisement is a thing on youtube, as in getting shown videos, that include products that you're likely to buy. Creaters have to tailor their content to this ecosystem in order to get views, so the overall quality of content steadily decreases as we've seen for the last years now.

We had some talk in this community about the enshitification of Youtube and the interface and search algorithm becoming lower quality. I too struggled with this issue for quite some time now. My solution since a couple of months is to ditch the official interface of Youtube entirely and use independantly developed frontend alternatives. It's basically like a complete redesign of the website that ditches all the shit stuff, meaning all ads, trackers, cookies or recommendation algorhithms etc, but it still allows you to watch all of youtubes content. The most straightforward way to do this is to install FreeTube on your computer (runs on any OS). It's a lightweight, open-source and free / donation based Youtube client. Check the official website here: https://freetubeapp.io/ This app also has the option to filter out certain content (e.g. Youtube Shorts, blacklisted Channels etc.) and it even has a distraction free mode, that you can use to hide distracting elements of the UI. You can also subscribe to channels right from the app without an account. Since it is more lightweight, it's also much faster than the Youtube Website most of the time. And it adds a download button to every video. There is also a way to set up and automatic redirect so that any Youtube URL you open is automatically opened in Freetube. Here is a guide: https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube?tab=readme-ov-file#browser-extensions It gets buggy with age restricted content, sometimes. Other than that, the only downside I found to this is that you now have to find another way to support your favourite Youtubers since they don't get ad revenue by you now. But it's easy nowadays to send most people a couple of dollars on patreon. Bonus Tip 1: If you want to take extra care about your privacy and you are not afraid to get nerdy, there is also a project called Invidious (which FreeTube is based on), that you can self host so you have maximum control where your data goes to. Link here: https://invidious.io/ If you want to use an alternative Youtube Frontend on your phone, a publically hosted Invidious instance it the way to go! Here is a list of such instances: https://redirect.invidious.io/ Bonus Tip 2: There are alternative frontends for many websites, that are enshitified. Find the ones to suit your needs for making your online experiance more bareable, it's really worth the time. Here's a pretty comprehensive list: https://libredirect.github.io/

Thats definately an issue. Invidious, the outher project I shared (which btw is the service, that freetube uses to stream videos) is allready facing legal troubles by google. And since these are open source projects and anyone can just copy the code, this is a real thread that google cannot really control. So you might be right, Youtube might actually change how it's working under the hood if too many people start using these services.

@Princess Arabia The app is not made by Youtube but by independant developers. Since it's open source, you won't ever be charged for using it. To clarify, this is just for watching videos yourself. It's not meant for embedding them. It's an app, that you would use instead of the youtube website. And if you play a Youtube link in the browser, its still going to be on the youtube website.

@Leo Gura My concern with nano-particles is this: If they are able enter the bloodstream and potentially other organs like my brain, how can I be sure, that they will ever get out of my system again? What guarantees, that those partlicles, don't just stay in my body, making any attempt to detox heavy metals with them obsolete?

If you hate youtube getting shittier you should consider using an alternative frontend for it (e.g. FreeTube). I made a post on this forum about this, today:

@Natasha Tori Maru Thanks for explaining. During your meditation, did you work actively on contemplating this insight or did it just come to you spontaneously? Since you describe both, the insight and the change of habits, as crucial part of your transformation I wonder how this can be recreated. From my point of view I start with „YOU are the obstacle.“ as something I can believe in. I heard it a lot, it makes sense, but I don’t experience what the truth of it means on a very deep level. So I wonder how I can work to grasp it deeper in order to make these changes? Also, I am wondering, how you were able to remove all judgement towards your feelings about doing tasks. Your description sounds to me like you were very focused on creating clarity of your perception of these inner workings.

I love this idea, this can be a very valuable thread! I want to add those: Benn Jordan https://m.youtube.com/@BennJordan/videos In-depth videos on topics related to technology, sound/music and AI. Then & Now http://www.youtube.com/@ThenNow Great videos on the history of politics and technology. Cold Fusion https://m.youtube.com/@ColdFusion Videos on Economy, technological developements and frauds. Adam Curtis https://m.youtube.com/@adamcurtisdocumentaries Outstanding documentaries of 20th/21st century history and post-truth politics.

@Natasha Tori Maru This sounds huge! For me, in certain settings I just feel like getting into my own way all the time. Leading myself into almost not taking action at all. What did you do to achieve this? Was this a singular insight that changed your behavior or was it more like a habit you put into place over time? Do you think this is possible to replicate?

@Leo Gura Would you say, there are legit ways to do polyamoury / consensual non-monogamy? Or would you dismiss the wole idea of non-monogamous relationships as a valid option? I see it being done in varios stage green and stage yellow circles, by people that I have know personally. Many of them have decent experiences and even use this area of their life as an opportunity to work on their trauma and social conditioning.

@Alex4 The issue with atomization is not, that there are too many national states and that they are too individualistic. The issue is that when the EU was formend there weren’t really states to begin with but fading colonial empires that had no chance in surviving other than uniting and creating a strong economy together. (The EU economy is actually way larger than the US economy.) But this also means that fragmenting the EU is very advantageous for Russia and the US on a geopolitical level. I hope the leaders of European countries understand this and act accordingly. If EU separation continues, all the individual countries will fade into obsolescence and might even seperate further, like UK (and Scottland, Walse and Northern Ireland). Timothy Snyder has a great point on this here: He also points out, that the EU needs a common European history, that is taught in schools, in order to combat atomization.

I love looking at this conversation, because its so clear to see, that these extremely intelligent scientists just struggle to make sense of the questions they're talking about, because they don't have a accrate notion of truth. Check 00:54:39 for the section on AI systems and truth. Yudkowsky is sort of stuck in moral absolutism and Wolfram is poking into that. Wolfram himself is stuck in a scientific relativism that is blatantly obvious to Yudkowsky. Both of them clearly see the epistemic blounders of the other, yet they are not able to see each of their own blindspots. It's also very clear, that Wolfram is slightly more construct aware than Yudkowsky, yet he still doesn't get the whole picture, that consciousness is the basis and not computation. Both of them don't get, that the notion of truth is subjected and filtered by the state of development of individuals. I think, getting truth right is essential to solve the issues we have with AI.

I would also recomment Ian McGilcrist - Master and his Emmissairy on the topic of survival.

Great loss indeed. I highly recommend this documentairy, about his life before his first movie. One of my greatest inspirations on life purpose. It shows how his constant drive for his passion ultimately lead to his first successes, even though many of his peers and even his family were not convinced about his endeavours at first.

@Leo Gura Do you consider making another of those more vLog style videos on your blog? Those have allways been highly valuable. I would love to hear where you are right now. Especially since learning about your personal process and hearing about the things that fascinate and challange you has always been super intresting and highly inspirational. I also wonder where you are with your awakening process and what some of your recent insights might have been and weather you tried any other health protocol. Looking forward to that new video on the main channel!!