Scholar

Well, unless Bernie gets the virus himself and dies. He is part of the high risk group.

The simulation was a coronavirus because the people who were doing the simulation knew what was most likely to become the next virus. This is just proof of their competency, not some global conspiracy. Do you really believe someone who plans to infect the world would test it publically a month beforehand so some youtuber can uncover their great conspiracy plan? And sure, Bill Gates was pure orange when he was building Microsoft. People change, the limitations of orange are the very reason why people become green. With these kind of videos you have to ask yourself, at each assertion the person makes: "Is this true?" "Is this the actual explanation for this?" "How does he know this?" And most importantly, observe whether or not there is emotional attachment to a position before you have even verified the facts. This is a huge red flag "I just look at the facts and my brain is putting all the pieces together". But how is your brain doing so? How does it know whether or not it got the pieces together in the right way?

https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/belgium-all-news/97781/scientist-takes-de-block-to-task-over-governments-covid-plans/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/11/coronavirus-expert-warns-infection-could-reach-60-of-worlds-population There is a reason why we take such severe measures against possible pandemics vs seasonal flus. The analysis you have provided is one-dimensional and myopic. Please do some research before you spread misinformation that is especially harmful in this kind of situation.

There is never need to panic, but there is need for preparation and caution: https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/belgium-all-news/97781/scientist-takes-de-block-to-task-over-governments-covid-plans/ Please do not compare a pandemic to a seasonal flu. This does far more harm than good.

It's a great example of the limitations of rationality and intellectualization.

I don't know, Leo looked pretty impressed.

Green.

The WHO now states nCov poses a grave threat to the rest of the world and must be contained before the window of opportunity passes. They are especially concerned of nCov spreading to countries with weaker Health Care Systems. NCov poses a threat not due to the inherent sickness and deadliness of the virus, but it's potential for sociatal and especially economic impact, as we can observe in China already. Here is a time-stamp on the topic we were discussing here about panic vs rational preparation.

I think this nCov outbreak is actually a really good case study for several human dynamics that are prevalent in our current culture. There are a few things I noticed: People have a desire to establish certainty and confidence. People want to know what is going on and what is going to happen, they want to be able to establish a position so that they do not have to wrestle with the ambiguous nature of reality. They will do so even if the data is insufficient, just so they can get an issue out of their mind. Positions tend to extremefy themselves as each is trying to be the opposition of the other. People adopt an unconscious bias when they are skeptical of conspiracy theories. Their reaction to a conspiracy theory is not the seeking of truth, but the deconstruction or debunking of the conspiracy theory. When a conspiracy for example exaggerates the problem, the skeptic will not seek the facts objectively, instead he will seek a position opposite to the exaggeration. The skeptic seeks the position that is on the other spectrum of the extreme. Instead of saying the facts of the matter, they will, in reaction to the exaggeration, downplay the facts. This can be observed in a lot of cultural oppositions: Socialism vs Capitalism Veganism vs Carnivorism Atheism vs Religion Trust in Institutions vs mistrust in Institution etc. Notice how dangerous this can get and what kind of amplification effect there is going on. The example of trust in institutions is an excellent one: One side is skeptical of institutions due to whatever reasons, with that skepticism come irrational conclusions like Anti-Vaxxing, Climate-Change-Denial, Flat-Earthers, Anti-science and so forth. As an opposition the "rational" side will decide to embrace the opposite of that stance, the complete trust in institutions, science, government and so forth. Because their position is reactionary, they lose all the nuance, they lose all genuine points and half-truths in their oppositions viewpoint. The vegan dismisses the ex-vegan who struggled, which makes the ex-vegan anti-vegan, and not just anti-vegan, soon they might actually embrace complete carnivorism. The most extreme opposition, a literal duality. The vegan will deny any possibility that the vegan diet could be a struggle for some people, and the carnivore will deny that plants could possibly be health. It is cholesterol vs "anti-nutrients", there is no inbetween. Look at Joe Rogan, he had to contend with the evidence that a plant-based diet could be healthy, and for the first time he admitted that the evidence actually agrees with that. A month later he goes and tries a full-carnivore diet. He went even more extreme because his ego could not handle giving up his position. The same is true for the atheist who seeks to debunk the religious person. They become defined by the opposition to the religion, their reaction to the irrational. This means that the reaction to the irrational leads to irrationality. The blind skepticism of the irrational position leads to biased cognition. It is not about whether or not God exist anymore, it is about "God exists!" vs "It is irrational to believe God exists!". There is no curiousity, there is no desire for truth anymore. One does not want to know the truth, one wants to destroy the opposition. People "virtue signal" rationality People want to look and come off as rational, collected, superior in thinking, more spiritual and advanced than others. I keep observing this. When someone worries about the nCov virus, in ths forum a very common answer is: "It's a distraction, go back do you spiritual work!" This does not seem to me like genuine advice but rather an effortless dismissal to not have to engage with the problem at hand. "Look at me, I am so advanced I don't even think about these worldly issues anymore, who cares about politics and climate change. We are all eternal and everything is impermanent!". It is so obvious that these kinds of statements aren't helpful to anything. They don't actually encourage someone to go and focus on meditation, and they are not really appropriate as a response to worldly issues. Outside of this community this phenomena manifests as a general tendency to want to come of as reasonable and foreseeing. "No need to worry about any of this because SARS is worse anyways!". Notice that it takes almost no research to say "SARS is worse than nCov!", and notice how ignorantly irrational such a statement is at a point when we simply do not have the data to make such a statement with any confidence. It's all about "You are panicking! You are being irrational. Look how rational I am, I am not panicking at all. I am calm and collected and I have the TRUTH right here!". When this is what you focus on, you are not actually being rational, you are being emotional. Because the rational position is to look and wait, not to make statements that we have no way of yet knowing whether or not they are true.

This is why some meditation techniques are not taught outside supervised environments where a teacher can guide you if you fall into these traps. Self-inquiry can be quite dangerous. It's all nice and dandy until the Dark Night of the Soul. This kind of Spiritual work is not like learning how to play the piano, it's learning how to fly a plane, with no simulation. The teacher would be the co-pilot who can take over control when you make a mistake or have guided yourself into a situation that is dangerous. Alone, realize that there is a very real chance that you will die. You could equally put yourself into a position where even a teacher will not be able to guide you out of it.

Does anyone know good books on Anger and how to resolve the issues? There has to be.

I understand what you say but it is not very compelling to me in this context. I don't think discussing and looking for solutions to current societal problems is "running around like your hair in on fire". One of the reasons why we are here at all is because people had foresight and participated in the process of ensuring a future for all that will come after themselves. Everyone has always been trying to fix the world, and that is what kept the world together. The desire to fix the world is Divine, it is part of the grand game. There would be no game if there was no desire to help each other and to suffer. I don't see a duality between high and low consciousness, it all has it's part to play in the grand scheme. "Low consciousness" is after all the primary way in which the Divine manifests itself into being. You don't see enlightened people running around everywhere and that is not by accident. It is not the time for that. Devirly is the substance of nature. All structure to me is devilry, all that wants to uphold itself is devirly. Devilry is the way by which the Divine manifests it's miracle. There is no reason to avoid it for it is eternal. Devilry will never cease, and in the eyes of Divine there is no Devilry, there is only the divine. This is one of the most important paradoxes to realize I think, that the duality between devirly and purity is imagined by you. Accepting reality as it is, is not better than not accepting reality as it is. All is already accepted. When I desire to fix the world, it is the Divine Will, Divine manifestation. If I desire to argue with you about whatever we are currently arguing, it is Divine Will. The tinkering and non-tinkering are both one and the same thing, for the observed is not different from the observer. God is a silent observer and a deeply invested and immersed tinkerer. There is no difference between the two, they are two sides of the coin of manifestation. There is no need to convince half the population of climate change, there is a need to understand why half the population believes in climate change and how to establish structures which will allow future generations not to fall into the same ways of thinking. I don't know why I would think about myself first before thinking about others. I am utterly grateful for what I have, I don't feel an urgent need to create more happiness in my life. What I try to do is not to resist my authentic expression. I don't want to pretend to be high consciousness for the sake of being high consciousness. To pretend I am apathetic, or to seek apathy, because that is what high consciousness people do. To pretend not to be idenfitied with being vegan because "A high consciousness person will let go of all identification". This attitude has stifled my development in the past, it lead to delusions. In my experience the way to progress is to live through that which is my desire, not to deny myself. I think I am starting to realize that enlightenment is not for those who are losing the game of life, enlightenment is for those who have won the game of life. If you look around you, that is in reflection of the Divine Will. You do not see enlightenment before survival has not been met. You do not see an entire enlightened species or civilization before it has not taken care of it's survival needs. You do not see the wolves enlightened as they are struggling to survive. I desire to understand why this problem exists and I desire to communicate it, therefore I let it manifest. I will not force myself to "Imagine what I would do if there would be no problems in the world.", because I do not care to do so. I want to serve without resistance.

Yeah, I am in an ego-backlash currently so I am in a very venting mood. But I do think that there is currently a problem going on that might get worse and bite us in the ass really badly down the line if we do not address it in some sort of major systemic way. I can work on myself all I want, if half the population denies climate change things are not going to go well for me. And who is going to address any of those if not people like us who are aware of them and understand more of the dynamics that are going on behind the scenes?

I agree, that's why I called it Frankenstein green.

I don't think that is true, I think it is possible to navigate a human being into a position of development where they are stuck. You will not get Alex Jones or this Bobby guy to get up and read a book on philosophy or science. It won't happen, because there are no consequences to their actions. This is a huge problem. There is no natural selection in the sense that we actually get to test out our reasoning capacities, our ways of thinking and so forth. We are sheltered from everything. If there was a high stake environment, Bobby would very quickly die or realize how limitated his way of approaching truth is. This is why things like the military and business are so efficiency oriented. There is no room for mistakes because of how high the stakes are. If you are going into a battlefield being deluded about how to fight your enemy, reality will very quickly teach you. If you however buy into this kind of relativism, or deny scientific authority, what will happen to you? Nothing much nowaways, even social stigma is now disappearing because everyone can collect into their own groups who agree with everything they will say. You can be an anti-vaxxer, you can be a carnivore, you can deny climate change. You can even be a flat earther. What's going to happen to you? Maybe you will get a heart attack down the line, at which point it will be too late anyways, maybe some people die of viruses who you don't know and never hear about, maybe the climate become so harsh that most complex life on this planet will go extinct. But those things don't happen now, they might infact not effect you at all. What do you do about this? People can deny reality because of how removed they are from reality. There is no convincing them. A flat earther would need to see the earth himself for them to believe it is actually a sphere.

I keep seeing more and more people like this. I have many people in my family who seem to skip important stage orange aspects and go right into the relativism. They always use the relativism to justify their own position. "But morality is relative, morality does not exist! There is no good and bad, I can do whatever I want!". They don't have developed the capacities to realize the consequences of their position. Why it's a bad idea to use moral relativism to justify whatever action you feel like you want to take. And the distrust in authority is also really concerning to me. Look at Leo, Leo studies philosophy, studies science, he was especially in the past extremely interested in mastering these stage orange aspects. Only after that did he become so skeptical of authority, from a position of actually understanding where the problems in the scientifc method are, what the limitations of rationality are and so forth. This guy, and many people on this forum, they are hide their underdevelopment in these areas. They use relativism and distrusts to justify their own position without having to make any effort to be truthful. And there are people who will exploit this. What happens when people lose trust in "official authority"? They seek other authority, because they did not actually master stage orange. They are at stage blue. They are believers, they want to listen to someone who they agree with and who can tell them the truth. You kill corrupt Authority and it's replacement will be greater corruption. You kill the church, people listen to Alex Jones. You kill Hillary Clinton, people listen to Trump. It doesn't get better, because mistrust in authority is not the way. What is needed is replacement of authority. Better authority. Not the cessation of authority. We are not developed enough to go beyond that. Before we go into green, we must master orange. Before we go into orange, we must master blue. Otherwise you get these Frankensteins. The moral relativity of stage turquoise is categorically different from this frankenstein relativity of stage green. If you are getting nailed on a cross and you can say "This is not Good, nor Bad!", then you can talk all about your relativity. Everything else is egoic justification. The realization of stage green relativism should terrify you. It should put you into an existential crisis. "Holy fucking shit there is no truth? There is no good and bad? What the fuck that does mean?!". It should not be "I'mma eat my hamburger because morality is relative, good and bad is subjective!", "I don't believe scientists because it's all theory and there is no truth anyways!". Your ego is not going to like to hear that it being raped while being burned alive "Is not good, nor bad.". It will not like that there is no meaning to life, that all you do has no point to it whatsoever. That there is no difference between if you die now or if you suffer for a thousand years. Let's not kid ourselves here. This is what some of you guys are doing. "Good and bad is relative? Hell yeah, that means I can rape whoever I want! Fun times are ahead, no need to feel bad about it!", that mentality will only work until you are the one who is being raped. And only then will you truly know whether it was just a fascade to let go of responsibility, of if it was truly ego transcendence.

What's so funny to me is that people don't notice the inherent irrationality of this guy. When he goes on his insane anti-vegan crusades, he is being completely reasonable. Nothing about his logic and approach is flawed, because after all one agrees with him. But then, when he uses the same kind of logic, the same kind of reasoning capabilities to criticize Leo, then suddenly he is delusional. How can someone be this biased. The guy starved himself with a raw vegan diet + fasting, he literally praised himself how thin he was while he was looking like he came out of auschwitz, with people encouraging him in the comments. And he is using the same kind of logic with his psychedelic usage. This is why epistemology and open mindedness is so important. This is what happens when you do not get the stage orange tools, like rationality, science and philosophy, and just move into a world of chaos that you will have no idea how to navigate. "Oh look, he is so much healthier now that his diet is not vegan anymore!" Yes, I'm sure it was veganism, not at all the insanity of his dietary approach. And now here you go. He takes psychedelics, has no clue how to even begin to interpret them, and who would have thought? He goes off the rails. I can't decide what is worse anymore, a materialist or this kind of mutant, stage red/blue/orange/green relativistic, regressive frankenstein spiral monster that basically takes the worst aspects of each.

The carnivores are trying to get to Leo, love it. I still am mind blow that people who listen to Leo can at the same time take people like Bobby seriously. How is that even possible.

We should indeed be highly conscious and responsible, but I was trying to create a false dichotomy: Panic vs complete apathy. Panic no doubt has a lot of negative consequences in the short term and also in the long term, especially economic impact as we can currently observe. For example, people are currently panic-buying the masks that keep one from being infected, and it now turns out that medical personell starts to have problems aquiring those masks themselves because of supply shortages. This is extremely ineffective, especially with a virus that spreads so well in hospitals. But complete apathy, in the long run, will bite us in the ass because we will not be able to: A) Detect a substantial threat when it actually arises. B) Create the political will to increase preventive measures for future outbreak. A lot of people for example are comparing the common flu to pandemic outbreaks, which does not really make sense. That kind of attitude becomes a problem when it is adopted and reinforced by cultural mechanisms like media. In the short term, apathy is actually preferable because it is accurate and it saves emotional and probably even economic labor. Yet panic is detrimental to the short term but will eventually prevent the one case that is really bad. Now, obviously this is actually a false dichotomy and not really applicable to the world because of for example the effects panic has on apathy. Like the story with the boy who lies about the wolf, panic or an overreaction makes us apathetic to new threats in the future. This means that panic leads to apathy and is therefore actually just as dangerous. This means that consciousness is necessary for sustainable behaviour in the actual real world where dichotomies don't exist the way we imagine them. We for example do not need to make a case that the common flu kills more people than the nCov virus. That would be a reaction to the panic which keeps the attention where it does not actually need to be. We do not yet know how bad the nCov virus will be, we have some estimates and based on those we can act. We probably want to be a little bit more cautious just in case the estimates are inaccurate, although in the end there is very little we can do other than what we are already doing. Not selfishly buying tons of masks, and not comparing the common flu to a potential pandemic, those would be a good start.

I personally know a socialist who thinks North Korea is actually an amazing place and being demonized by the world because it sits on the biggest rare metal ressources in the world. They are learning korean and are planning to visit it in a few years, and I don't doubt they will try.

There is nothing random about evolution, but also everything about evolution is random. That is the very miracle. A painting which paints itself with random random strokes and yet created an intentional piece of artwork. Random is causeless, and Causeless is the Source. God plays dice, but the game he created is made such that the dice will allow for the game to play out in an intentional manner. That is the very ingenius thing about it. The random is not simply found in evolution, mutation or DNA, it is found in the metaphysical nature of this world. When a chimp wants to create a predictable, specific outcome, he will generate predictable rules. Reality works the other way around, it creates the rules from the outcome, it generates the premises from the conclusion. This is categorically different from linear intelligence. It is the AI which travels back in time so to create itself in the first place. The snake which gives birth to itself. This is Free Will Leo, it is freedom, it is Chaos. Chaos and Order must not be dualities. The Dice rolls, yet the Dice has structure. And the hand by which it is rolled is pure Freedom. I found the more I contemplate this the more human notions of intelligence and causality are just limited. I think there is everything random about Evolution, Mutation and DNA. It is utterly random, it's very core is randomity. That is what makes it so utterly miraculous, for the intelligence it takes to bring Chaos and Order together is simply beyond all I could even possibly fathom. It is different from intelligence as we talk about it. It is a completely different category. Like abstract thought to the ant, this form of intelligence has not even evolve in our chimp minds. I wonder if there will ever be a being that will have this kind of intelligence in terms of it's survival abilities. I do feel like Creativity can be genuine in the human mind and I think it is Sourced directly from the Free Will. The theory of Relativity constructing itself within the mind of Albert Einstein. A self-emergent Insight so to speak. All that is in this world seems to be this self-emergent insight in the All-Mind. It's seeing the Tree, and then all the causes for the Tree emerging to give content behind the thin veil of Treeness. Manifestation, then Causes. Pure Creativity.

The materialist will say this happened by chance, that all of this ingenuity was caused by random events. By happenstance. Therefore, there materialist will argue, there is nothing mysterious about life at all. It would be a miracle if life was created with a plan written in a book. This is not the case. Yet, what the materialist cannot see is that it is a far greater miracle that it is the nature of existence for all of this ingenuity to happen by happenstance, by random activity. That is utterly miraculous. Try to design a system that will create human beings by happenstance. That requires design on a level beyond intelligence. Foresight so unimaginable that it is beyond all that is reasonable and comprehensible. A nature in which life will spawn all on it's own. A nature in which intelligence and life are so imbued in the fabric of it's very substance so that it is inevitable for it to come into being and evolve. Nature so intelligent that all things apparently unintelligent have the capacity to evolve into greater intelligence. A world in which rolling a dice will inevitably lead to all that you see. All the life-forms that ever did exist and ever will exist. A world which requires nothing but the dice to be rolling for those things to all happen by themselves, by happenstance, by random events. This is miraculous. Ironically, the scientist has not demystified nature, he has mystified it just so much more. We must ask ourselves, why is nature the way it is? Why is the way it is, the way it is? Why is it possible that random events create a being that can comprehend the very nature that spawned it into being? The materialist must deny metaphysical questions, for if he too long contemplates them, he will see the impossibility of all things that are. There is a layer right between the things most common to us, the things that seem like they could not be otherwise, and the nothingness which gives rise to all of them. That layer in which the mind cannot grasp for any explanations, the layer which if revealed to the mind will lead it into insanity. The sane becomes the insane. The possible becomes the impossible. Vice versa. The more the scientist explains, the more he reveals the mysterious and impossible ingenuity of nature. He inevitably points out how utterly miraculous nature is. By revealing more about how things are, they reveal to us the insurmountable intelligence it took for things to be the way they are. God does not simply paint a painting. God paints a painting that paints itself.

nCov seem to have a high R0 and additionally spreads asymptomatically which increases the risk for a Pandemic significantly compared to a virus that only spreads when symptoms show, like SARS, Ebola and the Swine Flu. Additionally nCov spreads through air by means of droplet infection. From the data we currently have it seems like around 20% of people infected require intensive care, although that number has to be taken with a grain of salt because of self-selecting biases. The problem is not how deadly the virus is in an of itself, the problem is the way it spreads and the amount of people who require focused medical attention. This means if a lot of people get infected we will be unable to sustain medical treatment for those who need it, which will most likely increase the death-toll. Also the data we currently have is very lacking due to how early it is and where it is coming from. This means obviously we should take it as a serious threat even if it might in the end turn out to be nothing. The attitude of "It's just a virus like any other, lol" will in the long run bite us in the ass. One day the virus that is going to actually have potential to become a pandemic will hit us and people will be conditioned to treat it the same way as they always did. From a point of view of systems thinking, we must ask ourselves "Is my behaviour sustainable throughout multiple iterations?", and because Viruses and bacteria pose such a significant threat to human health, I would conclude that even panicking a little bit is more sustainable than being apathetic about such threats. This means that the irrational behaviour of panicking is more rational or sustainable than the behaviour of dismissing such threats without enough evidence, atleast in the long run. Of course optimal is a behaviour that would attempt to detect the threat level accurately and then determine an action plan. Currently we have not left the phase of detecting the threat level, because we simply do not have the data yet.

Look at this: Bill Gates the prophet. Being not prepared for a virus that spreads asymptomatically by air transmission. Do you guys think a global pandemic could contribute positively to the reduction of human caused environmental destruction?