Carl-Richard

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Everything posted by Carl-Richard

  1. I will give you a rundown of how "New Age healing" could work: Let's say you buy a pendant from this highly charismatic, spiritually attuned and good-feeling energy person that makes you feel good in their presence. If this person has claimed to have imbued their energy into the pendant, or given it a specific healing power, here are two possibilities: Every time you wear the pendant or think about the pendant, you will be reminded of this person and their virtuous state and the state that you feel in their presence (which is one of peace, tranquility, safety, reassurance, etc.). This will have a real and direct impact on your state right now. Your mental state is directly reflected in your physical state (they are two sides of the same coin). And this could do things like reduce the rate of aging, cause increased rates of healing of physical ailments (through reduced stress, etc.). Who the fuck knows what reality is: maybe it is possible to imbue something in some way that has a special impact which differs from if you had not done that. That's the claim of places like the Dhyanalinga, or the Himalayas. People do claim this is possible, people with real "spiritual credentials" if we can call it that. Besides, reality is rampantly and in fact inherently mystical (unexplained by physical mechanisms), and we are all somewhat empathically and even telepathically attuned to each other (I believe we share information across mental space that is either poorly explained or indeed unexplained by physical mechanisms). Now, if it's possible to leave an imprint in mental space (which we all do all the time by merely thinking), like an intention that a certain object will evoke certain states in certain people who wear it, then this intention could manifest its effects on those people, simply by virtue that we all share this mental space. And certainly if you are open, willing, and "bought in" (both ideologically and economically), and also align your focus and intention with it, then you will be more open to tune into this information in mental space.
  2. They could actually work though. Does a surgeon's scalpel not work if they don't also teach holistic health? You sound very openminded here. Placebo is amazing. It's amazing that it's possible to heal oneself in ways we can't explain physically. What's being transferred during the assisted meditation?
  3. You could create a Spiral Development Index, e.g. based on other indexes like the Corruption Perceptions Index or Democracy Index (and other data you might find relevant), and then you can give each country its own score (and maybe a color scale from blue to white). And you could give an info chart that maps the SD stages onto the blue-white scale, representing the country's "center of gravity", and make an option to switch the graphic between the blue-white scale and the SD center of gravity.
  4. I really wanted to use the word "metaphysics", but I accepted the framing.
  5. The human game, since the dawn of meta-awareness 30-50k years ago, is to become self-aware and self-interested and distance oneself from the eternal ground of being in terms of identity. The fact that people are different leads to this happening in different ways for different people. So of course people are confused and disagree about the absolute. That's virtually a given.
  6. I'm saying most people here don't, even us who proclaim to understand. Because we don't produce these level of ideas ourselves. We mostly just download a stripped-down version and then go about our lives making simplistic observations, thinking we're being profound when in reality we're as simple as the so-called materialists we put beneath our feet. That's the pessimistic version, as there is also "upward assimilation", in that immersing yourself in symbols above your development will eventually start to lift you up. But there is no good way to prove this other than your mind actually creating something new at these levels. If everything sounds like recycled quotations, the safest bet is that you are indeed only recycling quotations. (And as a proof of concept: "downward/upward assimilation" is something I've read. I did not invent those terms).
  7. That face is barely me, it's from 10 years ago 😆 I expected to be on camera like some of the other radio shows on that channel, but oh well, you're spared from my balding for a little longer.
  8. Well, birds of a feather flock together, roughly speaking: would Sam and Emma be able to understand Wilber? That's exactly my point. You don't need to be very developed to spout some of Ken Wilber's ideas. That's the power of downward assimilation, of adopting cultural symbols above your level of development. Those that are really developed and that are truly able to grasp the ideas down to their bones, are able to produce similar ideas (original ideas) at a similar level. Now, if you take a look around, most people can barely construct a coherent sentence. Forget a meta-systematic or meta-paradigmatic theory.
  9. 🤣 I might make another one of those considering I've played a bit of the newly released Lost City ("2004scape") 😆
  10. A human's job is essentially to deny absolute truth and substitute whatever fantasies they prefer. No surprises there.
  11. Do you think Michael Brooks from the Majority Report understood Wilber? Quantitatively speaking, judging by people's actual behavior, I'm afraid not. Maybe you are in the minority. What does Bill Clinton not understand about Wilber? Consider that this is the entire job of a politician: to make their message palatable to their audience. I just think we on this forum ran into some ideas, and now because we do some self-development on the side, suddenly we think we are intellectually and cognitively superior to other people. When in reality, if you meet other people, you find the same ideas, the same thoughts, the same ways of thinking.
  12. And how do we know you "understand" Leo? Maybe you just "read Leo", just like Bill "read Wilber". Besides, Leo just "read Wilber". That's all we really do here — read stuff. Or where are your integral daily activities? What is your integral occupation? I would hesitate to draw inferences based on what a person does in the world (e.g. as a politician) to what they "understand" about a philosopher. If you had looked at what I do on a daily basis (occupationally), and if you had heard me say "I think Wilber is brilliant", you would probably think I'm not much different from Bill. And I believe I "understand" Wilber. And why does Bill think Wilber is brilliant? What made him say that? Is it really that unlikely that he deeply resonated with his ideas the same way you do when you say Wilber is brilliant? What about Michael Brooks (RIP) from the Majority Report? Did he really "understand" Wilber, or did he just view him through his leftist lunatic lens?
  13. The practice is intended to simply "treat" rumination. Whether somebody wants to go all the way or just become a little less bothered by negative thoughts, that's up to them. The next step for this research would be to test it on groups with diagnoses like depression, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, etc., (which my advisor also advised me to look into as a potential next step). I think the point about "bypassing" is an important one, in that I think most people who struggle with these thoughts, do so because of the reality or structure of their life (the unconscious), and that it's this structure that needs to be addressed before the thoughts lift. Merely shifting your focus to something else or elevating your state temporarily through some practice is ultimately merely a temporary Band-Aid. The thoughts do actually serve a purpose as alarm systems for when things are not going the way they are supposed to, and I believe the alarm systems are in the vast majority of cases working as they should, it's just that people generally don't want or aren't aware enough to address the real problems. And the real problems are most likely in the order of importance life purpose/career/occupation, relationships/community/belonging, and health/state. If you get these things aligned with what you really want (and you don't do things that sabotage these things), your thoughts will be in service of you. And that's very individual what that looks like (except maybe physical health). It's interesting you mention that. I had a similar obsessive period of maybe a year where I literally tried to stop thinking. It made me into an insociable, dissociated rock, and I was still an anxious, awkward kid. That's quite ironically a grotesque example of what happens when you only do practices but don't work on the foundations. What practices can do however, is to build up your state, which creates a platform of resilience to stand on where you can make the necessary steps towards transformative change. And for some people who struggle with things like depression, this is exactly what they need, to get out of the rut and get the ball rolling. And that's why music (in combination with mindfulness) can be especially beneficial for them, because practicing mindfulness "on its own" (without music) often requires a baseline of resilience to begin with (because "traditional" mindfulness, staring at a wall, can be quite tough if you don't feel like even getting out of bed). So in a traditional framework of "treating illness", this approach seems, on paper, to actually fit very well.
  14. What makes you different from Bill Clinton?
  15. Yep, and I gave you reasons why we talk about an objective world and then I gave you reasons why we seem to not agree on things.
  16. Yes, I understand that the first part of your statement in the title (that you also repeated once in your post) had apparently nothing to do with your question 😂 But I did actually answer your question in the second paragraph.
  17. 14 activities is still limited, isn't it? As long as you are in human form, or really just in form in general, you will have limitations, so the points still apply. But we don't have to go into deep metaphysical speculation to acknowledge that there are definitely limitations to taking a questionnaire, and that a machine will be better able to handle a larger quantity of data, and more reliably. Maybe you can have a certain kind of deeper qualitative knowledge of yourself in some ways that the machine cannot, but I will argue that this will not be captured by a single sentence on a questionnaire either.
  18. @mmKay I have no idea what I just watched 😂
  19. Is that a male lion in the kitchen I'm seeing? 🧐
  20. An observation about yourself (your behavior, your actions, your values) can be somewhat "ego aware", but not "ego independent". Despite how spiritually awake you are, you are still dealing with limited information and perceptual constraints that we attribute to the ego: You can only hold 7 ± 2 things in your head at once You do tend to focus on what sustains you and nurtures you rather than what diminishes or destructs you You have beliefs, notions and constructs that uphold your perception of the world and blinds you to some things and focuses you on some things over others etc. Survival in human form is a game of priority and limited resources. If your data collection only relies on structures that run directly on these constraints, that will be reflected in your data. A stage Red teenager can have the intention and desire to be a Stage Yellow philosopher, but there is of course some potential conflict there. Would it not be interesting to see how the teenager reacts in situations and challenges in everyday life and see if their self-proclaimed intentions and desires are actually aligned with their behavior? Besides, if your self-proclaimed desires say one thing but your behavior says another, what do you really desire? You can do that, but yet you only have 7 ± 2 things in your mind at any moment, you only have two eyes, two ears, ten fingers, etc.
  21. The AI takes say a forum post or a conversation you had with your wife, then it's essentially prompted with something like "which Spiral Dynamics stages were represented in this interaction?" (but probably much more systematic and detailed, maybe multiple steps). The AI can be biased in some ways, yes, but it's a third person, like a scientist, which removes the self-inflationary ego problem. Because we cannot handle much data ourselves. We have horrible bandwidth and lost of data errors. When you're answering a general question about yourself, you're working with an availability heuristic, which is just a few memories tossed up and a feeling. It's quite lousy data in itself, even self-inflation put aside. Machines can track all your utterances and give strong statistical models. Because you delude yourself about what you can do. You ignore what is convenient to ignore. You focus on what is convenient to focus on. You focus on what you like and suppress what you don't like.
  22. That's still what the ego thinks about itself. The ego likes to idealize and inflate itself, it has selective attention and memory, etc., so you will get skewed answers, especially when the answers that are given are extremely simple. And I don't believe such simple answers in themselves give justice to what is proportedly being measured. No, you just need an app on your phone, a smartwatch and maybe an eye tracker that you wear or is installed on your computer. Then the app and the AI does the rest. It's true you would need somebody with some scientific knowledge to create the app and the AI, but once it's in place, it should be very simple. Wisdom is being aware of what you're possibly not aware of at any given time.
  23. A better way to make this test would be to have AI survey your last forum posts or have it record your voice in daily interractions for maybe a month, as well as record physiological reactions to other people's posts/voice (which could be done through a smartwatch and possibly an eye tracker). Asking what the ego thinks about itself in general is different from recording how the ego acts and reacts in everyday real situations. Besides, if a stage like e.g. Green is a lot about being aware of subtleties of context, then your measurement of that stage would benefit from reflecting that, in context, not just in the form of a click-option answer to a single sentence. Here we're essentially trying to measure stages higher than Orange with Orange methods. Also, the type of data and richness of details you get would be very useful (e.g. measurements could be coded into categories based on context, e.g. "while speaking about x topic", or "while walking down the street", or "while reading Twitter").