Scholar

Just try this: Tomorrow, for the first 8 hours of the day, turn off your internet. Then, when you do watch a video, before you watch a video, ask yourself consciously. "Do I want to watch this video? Why do I want to watch this video, what will it give me?", and instead of just clicking random videos on youtube, take things into your own hand and plan each video you are going to watch. Realize what the videos are achieving for you, maybe you feel some sort of anxiety when you don't watch videos, then ask yourself "What will happen if I just don't watch the video?". Then, observe the anxiety, and then ask yourself "Okay, if I did not have anxiety, if I felt movitated right now, what would I want to do be doing? How would I want to spend my time today?" Realize the space you have within the day, and use it for the things you truly want to do. And realize that the anxiety will not kill you. Just see what will happen if you suffer the first 8 hours of your day without internet. What's important is that you cannot access the internet whatsoever from the moment you wake up, until the 8 hours are over. And later, you can do whatever you want.

What does that have to do with anything discussed in this thread?

This is a really good example to learn about self-bias, it's one of the reasons why progress is so hard to make. Someone will suffer as the consequences of more sensible and rational policy, some people will lose money, some people will lose their jobs. And of course, they will have every incentive to both lobby against the truth, as well as deny the devilry of their own work. I have not seen as much cognitive dissonance in individuals as I have seen in animal farmers. They can tell you they love their animals, while they send them off to the slaughterhouses. They will tell you they love nature, while their livelihood depends on destroying and exploiting it. Of course, not all animal farmers are like that, many are sensible and willingly transition to plant based agriculture, as well as starting to realize the moral hazard they are causing. The danger of the right is not that they will turn your country fascistic, the danger is the ideology they create to dismiss anything that restricts their freedom to cause harm in the world, the blantant self-bias they engage in, and the way the argue away reality so that their life's will remain the way they are. It's expected, that's the nature of self-bias. It takes a lot of consciousness to recognize the way you are harming the world, and be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to change. Notice how the ignorance and devilry is biting these people in the ass. If they had been responsible and conscious farmers, they would have long realized that animal agriculture cannot be the future, and that it is unsustainable. They could have transitioned away long before the government was forced to put them in the situation they are currently in. But of course, they chose to deny reality for their own selfish benefits, and these are the consequences. This is a valuable lesson for all of us.

I think you don't realize that China is equally, if not more, reliant on the US and the West. But you are right I guess if hundreds of millions of people starve in China, noone will bat an eye. This is how economics work. If you sell something to somebody, you are as reliant on them to buy it as they are reliant on you selling it. That's one more reason why China will not start a war, it would collapse their entire economy.

It's cringe to me that every issue has to be politicized, ironically the Right would be saying it was a show of strength if Trump had visited during his presidency. Taiwan is an independent nation, everyone can visit it any time. The only reason China is reacting this way is because they know it will make their devilish plans more difficult. It's actually kind of funny because people who actually thought China would be provoked into war because of this are clearly showing that they have no understanding of China whatsoever. China has been doing this kind of overreaction and flailing around for decades now, it was obvious that they wouldn't be doing anything and what Pelosi did worked the way anyone would have predicted who knows CCP politics. Aside from that China's military is so incompetent and unprepared, even if it tried an invasion it would most likely fail worse than Russia has, let alone if it wanted to start a war with the western nations. I think some of you people don't understand how deeply corrupted the chinese system is. But oh well what can you expect on this forum in regards to political analysis, it's like you guys eat up whatever the current media talking points are whether it be the coming from the left or the right.

I don't understand why you say you are not sure of the geopolitical implications, and then in the same sentence say "seems like it wouldn't affect the West much". To know whether or not it would affect the West much requires understanding the geopolitical implications. You really think the US is "kicking the hornets nest" for fun? Because of solidarity for Taiwan? That's naive, this is a clearly calculated move solely for the benefit of the US.

lol

Well, you saying that over and over does not make it true.

Of course they are, and the fact that you are not realizing this is damaging the trans movement. We have the category of a woman, for example. If you show a nude trans woman to most people, they will not consider that a woman, they will insist it is a trans woman. So it cannot be the case that the categories of woman and man are supercategories. Trans woman does not translate to "A woman who is trans", it actually translates to "A man who transition to appear as a woman". That's actually the way this category works for most people. If you keep insisting this is not the case, then you will continue running into a wall, and all you will be left with is call people transphobic. You won't be able to convince anyone, because your own understanding of what is happening is lacking. So, you do want to destroy old categories and create new ones. If you did not, people wouldn't be confused about what you are doing, nor would they be resisting.

That depends on how you construct the categories. You can't say one or the other thing is the case, because these categories are socially constructed. If you want to advocate for new categories, then do that. But don't pretend like you are describing reality. All we are doing is creating labels.

That's because he is a trans-man. We don't have to have all of these things fit into the same category. The point @Carl-Richard is trying to make is that both the category of man and woman do not fit here. As you pointed out, people would definitely not consider this person a woman. On the other hand, Carl correctly pointed out that if individuals would see their genitalia, they would also not consider this individual a man. Well, it happens that there is a perfect label for this kind of individual! A trans-man. Someone who was born a woman and transitioned to become more aligned with the characterisitics of a man. Viola, no confusion, everyone is happy! Why the need to collapse the concept of trans-man and man? Why is that so important? The difference will always be there, whether you label it the same or not.

One of the problems with the way these conversation goes is that they basically are just about fighting for labels, We aren't discussing what something means, we are discussing what we can use the word "woman" for. In the end, everyone understands the differences between a trans woman and a woman. We can both label them the same thing, but we will still understand the difference. It seems to me that a lot of the fight about the label is an attempt to delude away the differences. If we call them the same thing, it must mean they are the same thing! But that's not the case. Trans people will still have a certain set of genitalia, that maybe they made a surgeon change into something that resembles another genitalia. Whether or not we call that being a woman does not change that underlying reality. So really, the game is about the label, and the label is so powerful because we have revolved entire identities around them. Instead of moving society away from the attachment to these labels and constructs, we give them more power, we attach ourselves more, and revolve our entire identity around a simple label.

My memory is suffering due to health issues so I don't remember what my take was, but I think it was something profound.

There is an interesting dynamic that can occur when one is suicidal. Ordinarily the suicidal ego structure is intensely contracted. This sort of contraction is caused by suffering in one form or another. The type of suffering can be manifold, I think often it is related to shame, hopelessness or loneliness. The ego structure is resisting reality because it desperately wants reality to be another way, causing friction that becomes intolerable to the structure. Through suicide the ego seeks to resolve that tension and resistance, in other words, the ego seeks freedom from itself. Freedom from the rigid, constricting and suffocating texture of the structure of the ego. The interesting dynamic I was referring to is that, the ego can realize that it's own death means freedom. I am not talking about some sort of thought, but a direct realization of the solution to this problem. "If I am dissolved, all my shame will be gone, because I will no longer care about being ashamed anymore. It will not matter!" "If I am dissolved, all my hopelessness will be gone, because I will no longer care about hoping for something. It will not matter!" "If I am dissolved, all my loneliness will be gone, because I will no longer care about being alone. It will not matter!" If I died now, everything would be meaningless. Everything I am right now resisting so much against, it will not matter. And then the ego realizes: Why then, do I need to take it seriously at all? What if I let go? What if I let go of wanting to not be alone? What if I let go of wanting to be something I am not? What if I let go of wanting something that is not? If I was dead, none of that will have mattered anyways, so why does it need to matter while I am alive? What do I have to lose? I have nothing to lose if I let go of everything. This is how Eckhart Tolle achieved ego-death. When the ego is inflicting so much suffering to itself, it builds up a tremendous momentum, a tremendous force. If the ego realizes that it's own contraction, it's own nature, it's own structure, is the cause of it's suffering, then it will turn around. It will look at itself, and realize the opportunity of that energy. It will shatter itself and what will remain is freedom. Freedom from shame, freedom from hopelessness, freedom from suffering. There is nothing to hope for and nothing to be lonely about, because it will not matter anymore. There is nothing to lose if you let go of it all, and that's what you want to do anyways. Get in touch with your own suffering, with your own contraction. With everything you want the world to be. If you were dead, none of that would matter. This means that all you need to do is live as if you were already dead. Then you will see the beauty and perfection of existence, because it will not matter anymore where it is beautiful and perfect. Your suffering will have served it's purpose. You must turn the resistance against itself. Make your ego realize that it is the source of all it's suffering, and that there is nothing to lose if it will simply let go. Let it go, and live your life freely. Look at this thread. Terror of letting go. If you are truly suicidal, why do you need to be afraid of letting go? See, you are not afraid of letting go. You want to let go. So, let go. You are one step ahead of most people, because you are willing to dissolve yourself. You just need to dissolve the right thing, the thing that is causing your suffering.

To establish the fact that they are incentivised to do so, or that independent participants even exists, requires institutions. And it will require faith in those institutions to have faith in the process. You'll end up just moving the epistemic problem one layer down, and the skeptic can still point to that and say "But this is corrupt, I don't trust this! How can I know these participants even are independent? What if it's all a lie?".

I do wonder how you would solve the epistemic problems from a layman's perspective. You seem to say "blind" trust in institutions is unfounded, my position is that trust in institutions is really all we have as laymen. There is no way I can verify in any meaningful way even the most trivial inormation about health out there, I must assume certain things to be true on the basis of me trusting the process or the institution. Once the public loses trust in institutions, there is really nothing you can do, because the institutions are the foundation for knowledge making. No single individual could possibly verify all information, and even if they could, it would be a life's work. So we cannot expect laymen to just do the research themselves and come to conclusions. In the end, all we can do is advocate for trust in institutions, almost blind trust. What else can the layman do in an information landscape as ours? If we undermine trust, we can undermine everything, because institutional trust is the basis of civilization. Laymen are not even equipped to "do their own research". I have not yet found a really good resolution for this issue, it seems like either the system collapses due to lack of trust, or we open the door for corruption due to blind trust. But what else is there? People simply do not have the time and competency, nor self-consciousness, to be attempting to understand what is actually going on within the information landscape. I have said it before, but one of the greatest challenges we are facing the 21st century is this epistemic problem of how to navigate modern information landscapes, because everything else depends on it. Just think about how much time and effort it takes to educate a single person on this forum who is convinced otherwise. Even if you are completely rational it might not work. We cannot even think about progressing mankind because we are so busy trying to shovel out the endless garbage everyone is throwing our way. I am curious to hear your thoughts on this.

You could posit the precise opposite. Bobby Fischer and Kasparov continued to play chess because they loved chess, even though they have already conquered the field they continued with the risk of eventually being beatne. Magnus Carlson does not love in and of itself, but only winning and being the best. If he stops playing now, his title will never be able to be challenged, and because he doesn't care about chess that much, he can move on from it.

I feel like there is a systemic problem where we keep discussing this nonsense. It's a waste of everyones time, we need to have some sort of resource that can immediately refer people to all this reasoning, otherwise we just have to keep educating the garbage out of people's minds. It's a sisyphean task. And most of the time reasonable people aren't around here to point out all the misinformation people spread. Maybe time would be better spent working with Leo on some solution here, educating him and then simply referring people to the proper ressources when they spread misinformation. We have been going in circles and circles for years on this topic now.

You can't just assert this to be the truth, you have to give reason for why it follows. So why is it the case that using one step instead of two steps to explain something makes a thing correct? You could easily imagine that something works in two steps in reality, but we could still maybe have an explanation that only uses one step, yet missing the mark on what is actually happening. Right, but that was never established, how do we know the most simple solution is more likely to be correct than a more complex one? Just because something is less probable doesn't mean it isn't the case, that's the problem here. You are assuming that reality will perfectly coincide with what you deem most probable. Then you also have the reference class problem and so forth. It's really all just a chimp game in the end. But even if you do play this game and confuse it for reality, you still have to have explanatory power, not merely simplicity of cause. To what degree does what you say explain reality, and what predictive power does it offer to us? To say things are the way they are because they are the way they are does not really explain anything to us, nor does it give us the ability to predict or explain particular phenomena.

Remember that occam's razor is not really valid. There is no reason why the simplest explanation of reality is actually the true explanation of reality. That's just what some chimp came up with, it's completely arbitrary. And you have also consider, in regards to scientific theories, how much explanatory power a given theory gives you. You can say reality is just the way it is, but does that help you predict anything? Not really, I can't really understand why the earth revolves around the sun with that explanation. "Because it is so!", well, that doesn't tell us anything really. A theory of physics and motion can give us a reason for why the Earth revolves around the sun, and we can extrapolate from that what the earth will do in the future. That's explanatory power, and therefore we ought to prefer that theory in regards to science.

Nice try, lol.

The thing is, people who are conscious already do the work. There are just not many people who are conscious enough, this is why we have to understand self bias like this, to increase our own consciousness and find all the self bias within ourselves.

This is not my position, but the position of Leo as well as people who seem to follow him. I'm not interested in a philosophical discussion, this is not the topic of the thread. True, which is why consciousness is so important. If you had been conscious during the time of slavery, and your livelihood depended on slavery, you would have predicted that the way you have constructed your life was unsustainable. You would have transitioned long before governments were pushed to enforce these policies the way they do. In fact, your very self bias has lead to this situation, because you have been denying reality for decades, and even lobbied against it, coming up with reasons why slavery is good, why slavery is moral, and why those who are trying to enforce laws against your interests are just doing so out of some sort of conspiracy to gain control over the population. You could have used that time and effort to work on solving the problems you would face, and go with the flow of evolution, instead of trying to stop it. This is blatant self-bias, and this is why self-bias does not survive. It's the very reason why progress exists in the first place, precisely because that's how evolution is structured. I support governments helping farmers transition, subsidizing them and so forth if they choose to go plant based. But the farmers have advocated for the opposite. Instead of advocating for subsidies to transition, they advocated for subsidies for their dairy farms, which simply are not economically viable. Instead of having focused on how the government could help them transition, they dug their heels into the sand, denying environmental science in favor of their own self interest. I am not trying to moralize, I am trying to show you the problem with self bias, and this is the perfect illustration of it. You will see much more of this in the future, as the consequences of environmental destruction will become more severe. At that point, there will be no negotating, it will be too late for that. The nightmare of the authoritarian government will become true to the degree to which people continue to be selfish.

You are using Spiral Dynamics in the precise way it ought not to be used, which ironically showcases your lack of sophistication in regards to understanding the model and your own development. If you want to give a critique, give the critique. Stop being a child and throwing words around as if they were arguments. I can just assert the opposite you claimed, without evidence, as you did. And then what? You will give me a speech about how the world government is creating studies after studies showing a vegan diet is appropriate for everyone? I have no interest in these discussions.

We're all one and our sovereignty ought to be respected... unless you're an animal, or insect, or really anything that isn't a human! The good thing about lack of compassion is that it will bite you in the ass, as we can already see on a global scale. The very reason why people are starving is because of selective compassion.