Erlend K

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About Erlend K

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  1. The economic freedom index is basically a scam, designed to fabricate a corrolation between prosperity and economic freedom. If you the a look at the algorithm for calculating it, its clear that "economi freedom index" score has little to do with economic freedom. "A particularly tragicomic case study is Saudi Arabia: Economically successful despite being a nightmarish dystopia of wahhabist dictatorship. A government led by a nepotistic royal family with tentacles penetrating all sectors of the economy; An unrivaled abuser of international marked power — the very antithesis of free markets; Its bureaucracy, infamously cumbersome and corrupt; Its legal system, Sharia-based; The female half of its population denied even the most fundamental economic freedoms; The male population mostly employed by the bloated public sector, or living off welfare. One would reasonably expect to find this totalitarian horrorshow’s Economic Freedom score lingering in the murky depths of the scale, wrestling the likes of North Korea for the rock-bottom spot. Its actual score however is a staggering 6,24, comfortably ahead of the likes of Argentina [2.92], Venezuela [4,88], Ukraine [5.38] and Brazil [5,75]. Like any economically successful countries, Saudi Arabia's score is boosted, helping to establish the statistical correlation between EFI and economic success." https://medium.com/@erlendkulanderkvitrud/the-economic-freedom-index-is-a-steaming-pile-of-neoliberal-bullshit-a35205855e29
  2. "Finding your passion" is not an armchair activity. As you go about your life, you have to pay attention to what you feel passionate about. If there is nothing at this point in your life, that's fine. Besides, you are not likely to have one overarching subject/activity that you will permanently feel passionate about. Passions ebb and flow throughout life. If you get bored from studying art, that's probably not something you are very passionate about. Travel is great, but requires money. Money requires employment. Well compensated employment requires skill training. Attending college is meant as an investment in skill training, a door opener for well-compensated employment. Despite the handful of high-profile college dropout entrepreneurs, most highly successful people completed college. The optimal strategy for creating an enjoyable career as an introvert (who is not inclined to risk or perpetual sales) would be something like: - Identify a few skills you have a natural talent for and hone them throughout college. Ex, I excel at logic and critical thinking, so I got into STEM. - Get an entry level job where you can apply these skills - Focus on mastering this job, learn to enter flow, and get recognized in your organization as someone who reliably does an excellent job - You will gradually be asked to contribute on evermore varied and complex projects which bestows you evermore autonomy to select projects you find interesting, and to shape your own workday. Through experience, you will map out which projects/tasks you generally feel the most excited/passionate about, and then just keep steering your career in that direction.
  3. CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents), not CO2 (carbondioxide). CO2e is all greenhouse gasses expressed as an equvalent amount of carbondioxide (An amount with equivalent effect on global warming). For instance 1 tonn of methan = 21 tonns of CO2e. And no, we clearly can't ignore any piece of the pai. I agree with the rest of your arguments, but in the short run our most pressing issue is cutting carbon emissions. It's an emergency we simply have to deal with right now! According to the new IPCC, humanity either takes massive action over the next 12-15 years, or we will miss the 1,5 degrees target. Humaity need to drop everything else and just deal with this crisis for a couple years.
  4. agriculture etc. constitutes 25 % of global CO2e emissions.
  5. Here are a few paragraphs from an essay, I am working on regarding the humanitarian and geopolitical consequences of climate change: Rising sea levels, dwindling water supplies, desertification, and changing weather patterns are expected to erode farm- and pastoral land throughout the developing world. The expected results include unprecedented population displacements, surging poverty, and rapid urbanization, à la Syria’s 2007-2010 drought. Coinciding with the anticipated automation revolution, this booming urban underclass might be largely unemployable - spawning a global archipelago of hotspots for destabilization, civil unrest, civil wars, resource conflicts (à la the unfolding Egyptian-Ethiopian conflict over the river Nile), failed states and a surge of jihadist organisations (Sullivan, 2007), (Nett, 2016). Gemenne (2011) estimates the potential number of climate refugees by 2050 as high as 300 million. The unsanitary living conditions of some of these refugees might become ground zero for antibiotic-resistant bacteria epidemics, rapidly spreading along their migration routes. Some climate refugees will undoubtedly migrate northwards, putting the EU under massive strain. Looking back, the puny refugee crisis of the Syrian Civil War will seem minuscule. Like describing the horrors of the Napoleonic wars to a WW1 trench-veteran. Coinciding with other drastic changes, the scene might be set for populists movements and strongmen. The power to influence migration routes towards Europe might shift the EU-Turkey power balance in Turkey's favor. Ditto for Russia, whose influence over Iran and Syria as well as naval presence in the Black Sea, might strategically interfere with northbound migration routes. Climate change is expected to particularly wreak havoc on Pakistan, where destabilization might result in Taliban acquisition of nuclear weapons. This could usher an age of nuclear terrorism, or at least force a NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan. A Unified Afghanistan-Pakistan governed by a nuclear-armed Taliban: a breeding ground for terrorism and a geopolitical worst case scenario for the west.
  6. What does that mean? You just sit and zone out for 45 min? what do you feel like you are gaining from this activity?
  7. Awareness of awareness, i.e. being aware that you are aware of something is what psychologists call metacognition. This is completely different from the transformation of mind "Enlightenment" normally refers to. Of course, one might import the sequence of letters "E-n-l-i-g-h-t-e-n-m-e-n-t" into whatever language game one wants to play, and declare anything as "Enlightenment".
  8. What sort of meditation are you doing? Samatha: Every time your focus shifts towards the physical sensation note "sensation", and move your focus back to the breath. Be mentally prepared for any negative thoughts or feelings associated with the sensations, and set the intention to notice these asap, so that you can note "thought"/"feeling" and move your focus back to the breath. Vipassana: You may use these sensations as an object of meditation. Observe the sensations with as much equanimity as you are capable of, observe your mind's resistance to the sensations and longing for them to pass, notice how neither the sensation, the thoughts/feelings associated with them, the resistance and the longing for escape are "you" but just ever-fluctuating streams of information passing through awareness. If the sensations are too strong for these techniques, you might want to temporarily switch to walking meditation, or meditating lying down.
  9. This sort of dogmatism doesn't seem fruitful. Defining attributes of "God", with a capital C, include omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. By asserting "I am God" you either profess these attributes, or you have simply appropriated the word "God" into your own private language game. It's like stating "I am a turtle", and by "turtle" I mean "man in his early 30's". This is a hopelessly confusing way of communicating my gender and age. Insisting on this conceptualization of "turtle" only begets miscommunication. Most of the great contemplative traditions, including Buddhism, dissent from your "You are God" maxim.
  10. You have two choises a) Only share, never sell. This means you either have to leech off someone else, or be 100% self suficient: grow/hunt your own food, make yout own clothes, live outdoors/in a tent, repair your own bike etc. This leaves you little time to master your prefered craft (for you, music). b) Sell something. Spend most of your time mastering a skill, monetize this skill, use the money to take care of all your remaining needs.
  11. The slogan "life is meaningless" is vacuous nonsense, with a phantom aroma of profundity and insightfulness. It's like saying "Life is joyless/angerless/boredomless/loveless/courageless/whatever part of the human condition- less". Meaning is no hocus pocus, it's a phenomenon of the mind, triggered by striving towards particular goals. Nothing is objectively meaningless. "Objectively meaning-full/less" makes as much sense as "objectively boring" or "objectively fun": nonsense. Meaningful, meaningless, boring and fun are 100% subjective.
  12. Make sure you don't turn meaning into som abstract, metaphysical pie in the sky. Theoretical arguments for why something should be meaningful are bullshit. Meaning is not something "out there", but merely phenomenological, triggered buy certain purposeful actions. There are decades of empirical reaserch on the necessary conditions for work becoming a source for meaning. If our work helps others, we are good at it (or as a junior: practice diligently to get good at it), we work on engaging, flow promoting tasks, and with people we like, then we tend to experience work as meaningful.
  13. The most effective drugs against sa is maoi's, particularly Nardil. The only longterm solution is systematic, incremental exposure, combined with whatever you can do to decrease anxiety levels during exposure: nardil, heavy weight lifting, avoiding suggar and coffeene, get enough sleep, stay hydrated, breath with your diagphram, do yoga/meditation, cbt/psychodynamic terrapy etc.
  14. What is "audio masterfield"? Is this something it is possible to make a career in?