Scholar

That's literally completely irrelevant to the video. I am done engaging with you, this is getting to levels of cringe I have no time for.

No, this is not how any of this works. There is no scientific paradigm that tells you aliens were never here, or couldn't visit us, or are unlikely to visit us. That's all just nonsense people make up to sound reasonable. None of this is scientific, none of this is rational, none of this has anything to do with evidence. This is not like we have an established theory if evidence supporting it that can make scientific predictions, and that if aliens exist all of that will turn out to be wrong. This isn't like Relativity overthrowing Newtonian physics. You are completely abusing these ideas. Again, we have the Fravor incident, and you still did not contend at all with it. What does that mean "It is a possibility!", that's the most laziest non-answer possible. Give me some good account of what conventional explanation would fit the data here. This isn't about agnosticism, this is about your previous claims that it's somehow more likely that your pet theory is correct while you have not provided any reasoning for it at all that is solid. Again, we have an object described that behaved intelligently, that did active jamming, that moved in a way that fits no technology we know of. We have radar data and other witness accounts all corroborating this. And you basically treat this the same way like some image made by a smartphone from some random dude on the internet where "it's a possibility that this is aliens". And now you are even moving the conversation to agnosticism because you have talked yourself into a corner. This has never been about agnosticism. You realize that 3 of the pilots were on national television like a week ago? You don't even know what you are talking about yet you have strong opinions about this. That fact alone tells me everything I need to know about you in terms of how you approach this. Here, this is actually a solid degree of open mindedness coming from a scientist:

This isn't about aliens, I don't care if aliens visited us or not. This is about showing how none of you guys have done any epistemic work at all, you work completely from cultural dogma. You don't actually consider how you can know something and this incident is the perfect example for this. You don't have any reasoning here, you are just rationalizing your dogma. Sure, 90% of the people who believe in this don't do so because of rigorous epistemic standards, but this is the case equally for those who just dismiss this incident without even contending with any of the data. It shows how biased your are and that you basically don't have any standards at all. You just backwards rationalized why your position is true. Again, we have 4 fighter jet pilots witnessing an object that moved in basically impossible ways in terms of what we consider technologically viable, we have radar and visual data corroborating this incident. You have literally two options, either they are all lying for the sake of some government conspiracy, or what you have is a technology that you cannot explain at all. Not a weather phenomena, not some hallucination, but a technology. But you don't care, you will just dismiss anything because you think not believing in aliens is the most rational thing to do.

You are not engaging with anything, you are just giving me vague and general claims. Apply them to the Fravor Incident, don't just give me your idea of how you would approach the data. Approach it. You keep making the basic analytical mistake I have pointed out several times now. We are not talking about eyewitness report incidents, then footage of another incident, then radar data from another incident. We are talking about all of this data from one incident. All of them corroborating each other. That's what you have to contend with, not some random stuff that some civilian recorded or saw.

I am not sure if you are familiar with the case because what you say does not make a lot of sense. Highly experienced professionals make mistakes, but it is highly unlikely that 4 of them see an object that according to all of them behaved in the same way. The object was seen by their eyes, not merely instruments. Again, even if you wanted to dismiss all of them, you also have radar data, optical data and so forth all corroborating what these people saw. To me it actually is highly implausable that they are being honest and that at the same time that what they describe is some phenomena we can explain through ordinary means. It is far more likely that they would all be lying and that this would be some sort of conspiracy. But I find that itself rather implausible. I don't actually think you have contended with anything here, you just remain agnostic for the sake of seeming rational. Again, give an account of all of the data points we have, you are doing precisely what I have been criticizing a few posts earlier.

Don't use a razor if you don't know how or when to you use it.

So what is your position on the Fravor incident?

That's not how any of this works. The goal of the court is not to determine truth, but to establish justice to the highest possible degree. The entire point of the court system is to create a binary determination, guilty or not guilty. This is not how science works. We aren't trying to establish the motivations of the aliens, or what exactly they were doing, or whether or not the aliens sitting in the proposed craft were a particular alien. We have data and eye witness reports that show behaviours that cannot be explained by conventional means. You don't need to see anything beyond a silhouette to see that an object is moving is physically unintiutive ways, or that it disappears or flies away at a speed equally unintuitive. You don't know anything about a potential alien civilization. Why would it be the case that they would have the ability to mask their crafts? Just because you assume that is possible? And furthermore, what would even be the motivation for conceilment? Why would they believe that your way of conceilment is more appropriate than another? How do you know they are even familiar with the way other beings would detect an object? There are so many ungrounded assumptions it's utterly silly. Okay, provide some arguments for this. You are just assering that it is not unreasonable to assume X. Why would they be motivated to hide themselves, how do you know whether or not in their eyes, whatever conceilment they use, is not effective for whatever they are trying to accomplish? How do you know what kind of technologies they would have and be interested in? What about any of this is reasonable? All you do is trying to project your silly sci-fi ideas onto the real world. But this doesn't actually contend with any of the data there is. There are people who want aliens to exist as much as people who are dogmatically opposed to it. You don't recognize anything, you are simply asserting something that you have no way to justify. How the hell do you know what is most likely? You don't know anything, and you seem to not even be willing to contend or even look at the data that is already present.

Look at the close-mindedness and ability to use skepticism to basically confirm your own biases. When Joe brings up the Fravor case, Neil proceeds to use his skepticism to dismiss every data point. "What about the radar sensor data?" -> "It could be a malfunction or miscalibration!" "What about the eye witness accounts?" -> "Humans are flawed, you know this!" See, you can be skeptical of each singular data-point, but the data does become compelling not because of the individuals points of data, but because of the fact that there are multiple data-points that give you the same picture. Sure, a human is flawed and as an eye witness cannot be trusted. But is this true when we talk about 4 fighter jet pilots who claim to have observed the same thing? Maybe even that could be dismissed, but let's add radar data, optical data and several others data points. You could dismiss each of them individually, but the problem is that you cannot dismiss them all together. And this is precisely the sneaky game the skeptic is playing here. This has nothing to do with testing something with scientific rigour, but everything to do with defending a present dogma in the community. The same is true for video footage of UFO's, you can pretty much dismiss each individual data point, cast doubt on it by claiming that what has been observed was actually X phenomena rather than Y, and then after you do that you exclaim "See, so with all the video footage we have, none of them ever recorded aliens!". How could you possibly know this? And how could you make such a statement and literally a minute after that proceed to explain how we only go so far as to understand the sensory data rather than what might have caused this. How do you know that every single video ever recorded that claims to have recorded a UFO, actually was something that could be explained away by any other phenomena, like weather baloons. Just because something can be explained naturally, does not mean that it is actually that natural phenomena. You have to be equally uncertain of whether or not some of these things are UFO, as you are that they indeed were UFOs. And if you are uncertain you cannot claim that "No UFO was ever recorded!". These are such basic scientific and epistemic blunders it should be embarrassing and it should disqualify Neil from being a scientist. That this is not the case shows you the standard we have for our scientists. The irony that Neil then proceeds to explain to everyone how rigorous the scientific community is, is blissful.

This is actually a huge trap in my opinion. Leo has these huge blindspots precisely because he went for everything that confirmed his already present biases (in terms of valuing his intellectualism so much). In a natural way he has created a personal philosophy of devaluing everything that contradicts his biases and valuing everything that confirm his biases. His concepts of devilry are very much centered around this, how they are applied is not at all objective. It will change depending on what he is trying to justify. Interestingly he will make it appear that these are some sort of objective values, that actually his way is the better way. He gives off this energy aswell, but if you push him, he will recognize, intellectually not energetically nor emotionally, that actually it's just his personal biases and that other ways are just as valid. This doesn't actually mean anything because it's just an intellectual admission, but still for him it is enough, because it he does not value other aspects as much. Sure everyone has their strengths and their weaknesses and it is good to nurture your strengths, however it is easy to fall into this dynamic of falling completely out of balance, as is happening to Leo. So if there is a teachers that especially resonates with you, ask yourself whether or not this indicates some bias you have that might in the future bite you in the ass. This is very much a confirmation bias problem.

With all your "understanding", I find it surprising that you are so utterly blind to the obvious. But go ahead, you are a master rationalizer. You could rationalize yourself out of any challenge to anything you say. To those who lack the biases you have, it will be utterly obvious what is going on.

I really doubt that this is his motivation to make videos about this. I don't get the impression that this person is motivated by views.

The guy seems pretty genuine, I don't think it has to do with opportunism. Be careful about projecting onto others because you disagree with them. The guy seems genuinely concerned to me.

What we are talking about here will be very difficult to pin down and it will be very easy to simply create rationalizations why each of us are correct. I can create rationalizations why Leo is harmful, and he can give rationalizations why actually no, he did everything he could to prevent this. One thing I want to say from the beginning: I think it is unfair that Leo is making this about his teachings, rather than about, what I think most will agree, the critique of the way he advocates them. We are all here because we found use in his teachings and most of us Love and appreciate Leo. This is not about being against Leo, against his realizations, or anything of that sort of manner. It will become about this if Leo pushes this kind of narrative. I disagree, for me this is purely about what I believe to be some things about Leo that I think are worthy of critique. It is a lot of feedback so I expect Leo to be dismissive of most of it, he is a human after all. And I do believe that Leo will not ever be a perfect human, I don't expect him to be. But I do believe this is important and that the insights we are gaining will be important for future teachers and this community aswell. All of us, including Leo, have an expiration date. If this was not so, our ignorance and blindness would live on forever and the world would remain as it is. Leo is not the pinacle of evolution, nor am I. There will be far wiser people around in the future who will at one glance see the "flaws" in all of us. So firstly, I think one important aspect that is lacking in Leo's videos and here on this forum, is that he often makes it very much seem like the Framework he is using to explain to you things is actually equivalent to that which those frameworks point to. Now, I understand that Leo makes remarks that these are just Frameworks (I think he did so more in the past than now), but I think both in the way he then proceeds to speak about the Framework, aswell as the importance he attributes to them, actually communicate the opposite. He can respond "No, look here and here I clearly said this is all just a scaffolding which in the end you let go of because it isn't Truth!", but actually then he proceeds to treat those frameworks as if they were Truth, rather than as a tool. You can clearly sense this energetically, he has an attachment to these models he has created. I am not saying they are even bad models, but I believe his attachment to them, his need to defend them, his need to communicate them in this way, is unhealthy. Now, Leo can argue that this is not the case, but when we look at his followers and people of this forum, we have clear evidence that actually it is the case that people take on these models as Truth and then proceed to communicate them in a very gospel like manner. Firstly, when someone asks the question, usually people give that person an answer. An answer that is not and cannot be the Truth. Infact an answer that might not even help the person and that if they do adopt as "Truth", might hinder their progress. So what exactly is the purpose of this answer? If it's entire original point was to be a framework to help people get to the Truth, then you have just misused that framework. You did not use it to help this person, you just gave them the answer, as if this was the Truth they needed to hear. Now, I think there is a reason why this is a naturally tendency on this forum. Leo does this all the time too. To me it seems like the natural dynamic resulting in the form of communication, which is pretty much limited to test messages, makes it much more difficult to gage where a person is at. See, if someone asks me a question about the nature of existence in person, I can immediately read from their faces where they are at and what answer would be appropriate. I might tell them "No, this is nonsense, no nature of existence for you, sit down and do X", or I might tell them "Ah okay, well here is what I think will help you, look at it this way for now". I would never tell them "You are just imagining this lol, haha just become conscious of it!". In what world would this help anyone? This kind of advice is appropriate at a very specific point of someones inquiry or journey. And it's not even that useful after that either. But here in this community we don't look at these frameworks that way, we treat them as if they were Truth. So, let's use the framework of "dream" vs "awake". Now, firstly let us be clearly that this is a framework, a very human-centric perspective. A dream has very specific connotations, it carries with it ideas. We use the term "dream", because these ideas are kind of useful in the way of looking at this certain phenomena, actually at a certain point at time. But that's not what the phenomena is. It's not actually "dream", it's not actually "imagination". "God imagining things", is a framework, it has nothing to do with Truth. It has everything to do with human interpretation, used to navigate this landscape. Now the problem I see with Leo and his advocacy is that he very much makes it about the framework and I am not quite certain if he is conscious of this. To me Leo is very attached to intellectualism and he is risiding much of his time in the "left brain mode". Many of the symptoms I see, with the way he behaves and interacts with people, I view as a consequence of this choice to reside in a certain mode of being over the other. Leo will frame this as his authentic self, I will disagree and call it a tendency he has rationalized to fully embrace. I am not trying to judge Leo for this, but I do think it makes him a less holistic and embodied person. I don't quite know how to communicate this to Leo because he is absolutely certain he is correct about his ideas of the authentic self (something I believe he picked up from some of the self-help materials he consumed) and therefore would dismiss this outright. I don't want to go into detail with this, so I will move on to how frameworks are being misused. A good example of frameworks being misused is when we have people talk about Relativity or Moral Unrealness. Now, the realization of Relativity is important, but it is not really Relativity. Again, that's just what your chimp mind uses to frame whatever you experienced, much like the concept of dream or imagination. Many people here don't truly have any sense of relativity, but yet they use this framework to justify and rationlize certain actions. They will tell you "morality is not real", when it suits them and then when something comes biting them in the ass, they quickly use the notions of morality and reframe them. They will call it something else. They will call it "unconsciousness", they will call it "foolish", they might call it anything. It should be very clear what is going on here, but it is not. People have a tendency to do this completely unconsciously. I think that is something we need to really work on as a community. Another unhealthy thing about us is that we often have this attitude of "telling people how it is!". Now I myself experience being pulled into this dynamic, so I do not blame people for doing this. Leo style of advocacy very much is that of "Telling people how it is!", and I think that could work, but I just don't think it is working quite as well as it could. People have a tendency to adopt the energy of their Gurus, and while Leo might not agree that he is a Guru, everything he does communicates that he is indeed a Guru. A special kind of Youtube/Forum Guru. I think anyone who is honest would see this, including Leo. He can say whatever he wants about what he intends to do, but what he actually does has a specific impact that is undeniable. I can tell you "I am not your Guru", but if I then proceed to give you life advice, to tell you the nature of reality, to tell you to continue to listen to me, then what I am if not a Guru? So, some people do adopt Leo's tendencies whether he intends to or not. And part of that is his "Telling people how it is!" attitude. This attitude I don't think stems from anything but what Leo considers his "authentic self". He enjoys communicating this way, and it is very much a Left Brain Mode tendency. To be full of certainty, to put oneself over others. To be judgemental, arrogant and so forth. This isn't Leo's authentic self, this is simply the tendency of the Left-Brain Mode. Both Leo's lack of compassion (or what he would call personal Love) and his issues with not being connected to his body basically stem from him residing way to much of his time in intellectualizations and analysis. Now, I don't expect Leo to really change, he made his life purpose kind of dependent on being an intellectual. But atleast let us be aware of this and the drawbacks this will have. Some of which are lack of embodiment, intellectual defensiveness, lack of social awareness and so forth. Many people here will naturally fall into the category of Intellectualism, as do I, but I want you guys to know that this will lead to unhealthiness and that you can indeed change this. Some of the problems I think stem from Leo's obsession with finding Truth. He has basically indoctronated himself for his entire life that this was the purpose of life. It's all about Truth, truth that is then understood and explained to others. But this is just his game, none of this has the importance he attributes to it. It's all wonderful and good, and maybe obsession is even needed to reach some of the things Leo reached, if he reached indeed anything, but projecting that onto all of reality I don't think is wise. There is an inherent lack of playfulness in the way Leo approaches this and again I think it is due to the Left Brain Mode. The Right Brain approaches this very differently, and it does not take it's frameworks seriously at all. It would look at it's Left Brain brother and kind of smirk at it, patting it on the head. See, it doesn't matter whether Truth is discovered, known, understood or seen. It makes zero difference, because it is the Truth. It won't change anything. While Leo understands this intellectually, as I said, he does not embody this very well. And maybe he won't until the maggots start nibbling on his corpse. This might not matter to Leo, because Leo just wants more Truth. More and more and more. And then he wants to spoon feed all of you this Truth, because he enjoys it. Now there is not a problem with any of this if we are all clear on what is happening and if Leo is conscious of this himself. And I think sometimes he is, but other times he is not.

What do you think is my view? Give a summary.

I think you really need to step back and realize how you are literally rationalizing to a degree that it is becoming childish. Christianity as an ideology is and was tremendously harmful. Of course it was necessary, but we have grown wise enough to let go of it and not repeat the same mistakes. We should criticise Buddhism aswell, and all tradtions. It doesn't matter what tradition it is, if it does something that causes harm, we should poiint that out and seek change. This is basic "whataboutism", google the term. I understand your need to defend Leo and your own identity. Nobody here is "blaming Leo", or demanding him to be perfect. We are simply pointing to areas he can improve in. What you are doing is exceptionally dangerous especially in a spiritual community. I can disagree with Leo, I can criticise what he does. This is what a community does, we take each other into account and we share our perspectives. Your attempt to invalidate anyone who is "speaking against" Leo is unhealthy. I am not pointing fingers or blaming, I have repeatedly said this. I am challenging Leo because I think it is the right thing to do. You guys are behaving like children and this is a serious issue. Stop defending a full grown man from something that is not even done in any bad faith. Most people here are reasonable, concerned and compassionate. We aren't out to get or blame Leo.

By the way, there is a very real possibility that if Leo and similar people do not adjust their way of advocacy, that in the future these ideas might get banned from youtube and similar social media platforms. It's still pretty contained to a small part of spiritual community, but trust me if this went to the public, how many of us here talk with Leo will seem like childsplay. We are trying to help Leo, this community and the future of the spiritual movement. But of course, wisdom often has to be taught through suffering.

When you say "something is simply foolish", you are implying objectivity without being aware of it. You can call it foolish, but in the grand scheme of things, according to Leo's philosophy, it all must be Perfection and Wisdom. There could not possibly be anything foolish in reality.

He can say what he wants, but it's nonsense and he knows this. If there is no such thing as objective morality, there certainly is no such thing as objective foolishness. It's just better PR to say otherwise.

There is no way for you to actually justify this line of reasoning and you know it. A direct consequence of your philosophy is that you cannot say any of this was bad, foolish or ignorant. Who constitutes what a misusage of teachings are? I guess if it's bad PR for you, it must be misusage. Warnings from what exactly? A breaching of your personal moral code that you have established for your own selfish reasons? You can't reason yourself out of this.

These religions actually tell you that if you commit suicide you go to hell. But those that do say committing Jihad grants you heaven actually do lead to people interpreting that as an invitation to blowing themselves up together with others.

It's right here my dude. Now let's stop talking about this it isn't leading any of us anywhere. Thinking about this is a waste of time and energy.

But this idea of blame is completely silly. This isn't about blame, this is about responsibility and compassion. Leo can adjust his behave. Him spouting that he is God and reality is a dream, and morality unreal, in the way he does that, it's completely unnecessary. Leo loves being right, that's fundamentally why he likes talking about all of this. He loves being intellectual, he loves telling you how it is. That's the primary reason why he does communicate this stuff in the way he does. It has nothing to do with some sort of grand strategy of wanting to be the most effective teacher. If he wanted to be effective, he would have long ago found a way to test his teachings with solid feedback. The best way to do this is if you do it in person. He can very much control to a degree how his ideas will be received, it would be absurd to claim otherwise.

I think you have to go back and carefully re-read what I wrote. Some information should not be given out like Leo is doing it and also in the way he is doing it. He is doing deeper deconstruction that Spiritual Teachers will do in person, where they can constantly monitor and adjust the trajectory of the person. If you want to go deep, you cannot do it in a robot way. You can't do it like Leo is trying to do it, at his home talking to a camera and just telling everyone exactly how it is. That's like so bizarrely silly it's mindblowing to me that it's not obvious. This literally doesn't change anything. But again, just keep on shifting responsibility as far away from Leo and yourself as you can. That's the attitude the spiritual community needs right now.

Because to you all of this is nothing but intellectual masturbation. If you actually were to take this path seriously, you would notice that it would start being the case that putting your hands in the hornest nest wouldn't be problematic to you at all. Connor Murphy got hair replacement without anesthesia to prove the point that to him every experience was "Good". You are doing intellectual gymnastics here.