Carl-Richard

If you're doing something like mindfulness meditation (following your breath), then don't try to get rid of thoughts. Just follow the technique.

Don't make things personal.

You would start with the pre-socratics (some have a fascinating amount of non-duality in them).

Max being Max as usual. I didn't like how it ended at all. There are pros and cons to what makes him interesting. It did make me think that Nick is more like a nazi than I used to think though.

Consciousness never ceases to exist.

Language aside, and while again emphasizing that I'm talking about socializing with other intellectual perspectives (e.g. a famous philosopher) as opposed to more rudimentary perspectives (e.g. your friends), you'll certainly agree that there is a difference between generally relying on other people's ideas to guide your thought process vs. deriving your own. The former approach relies more on the amount of ideas you can gather and synthesize into a new perspective, while the latter relies more on your own intuitions and synthesis of these. Now, in order for you to lose intelligence through socializing with many different sources of ideas (the first strategy), you'll have to consider yourself more intelligent than the average source of these ideas. I think this is Leo's main assumption, and it's a big assumption. Conveniently for him though, he essentially defines intelligence as "the ultimate good", wherein he includes insights that are intrinsically tied to psychedelics and mysticism, which automatically places him on a pedestal compared to the average intellectual. From that perspective, Leo is essentially saying that "everybody except me is stupid", and he is right. However, if we were to walk back the definition of "intelligence" to the Western conception of "intellect" (conceptual thinking), then we would draw a more humble conclusion about the negative or positive effects of socializing with other intellectual perspectives. From this perspective, socializing with other intellectual perspectives won't necessarily make you stupid, but they're instead "fucking with your high" so to speak (pulling you away from the insights related to psychedelics and mysticism).

Leo says you should deconstruct the frames you've adopted through socialization and build your own from scratch. That is how you reach high levels of intelligence. But how do you know that your own frame is better than the ones before you? Is it that those frames were founded by people who didn't deconstruct their own frames and hence got stuck on false assumptions? But what if you through your own lack of socialization so to speak, underestimate other people's ability to deconstruct their own frames, and that in fact by tapping into these other frames, you're thousands of steps ahead of where you could ever be in one lifetime? Why place the epistemic mother lode inside one mind and not thousands? Is the claim maybe that by deconstructing your own frames, you fundamentally transform the inner workings of your mind? But still, why stick to constructing your own isolated frame, instead of manipulating multiple existing frames with this new-found power? What about the value of combining and contrasting already well-fleshed out perspectives?

That doesn't mean anything.

But what did you feel?

I've always been mystically intrigued by the pyramids and Ancient Egypt. There is something magical about it.

Feels like when you have 5 minutes to prepare a presentation and you quickly search up some bullshit to say.

Authenticity and fearlessness.

Idealism. The main lesson I've learned from him is how you can draw a clear distinction between approaching idealism from a naturalistic framework vs. a mystical framework, but if you understand both, they compliment each other beautifully (which you can see in his conversation with Rupert Spira).

He's the perfect storm that academia needs; a rebel who you can't shoot down by referencing a lack of credentials.

My question is mostly intellectual, i.e. philosophy, science etc. I'm not talking about hanging out with your friends.

I almost bought some of Bernardo Kastrup's books on various philosophers to read this summer, but then I forgot

See house, buy house.

Real estate

I actually don't do drugs. Surprise surprise.

Yep.

You were addressing the video, without addressing the arguments in the video.

That's really weird.

It applies to all drugs. It's not a good idea.

There is a threshold of suffering for entering non-existence. Deciding to take your life is probably the most stressful thing you can experience, unless you're completely numb and apathic. It's like how you'll feel better after a workout than before it. Not everybody wants to do the work.

I agree, but I still think it exists. Just think about it: if you go back to the void forever, what stops the universe from birthing a new "you" seemingly out of nothing? After all, that is what happened to us.