Carl-Richard

Tell me what you think about this. He strikes me as the definition of "direct".

He definitely is. Don't get me wrong: the "opposite" list is not that bad overall if you ignore what I put in the parentheses. They can be pretty good in other areas, and that definitely applies to Sam Harris. So I just find his use of metaphors and analogies a bit excessive with respect to actually getting a point across, but it can be fun to listen to as well (same with the Weinsteins or Terrence McKenna). I used to listen to his videos and podcasts all the time when I was like 15-18 He also just tends to draw his answers out a lot beyond what is meaningful (it's a bit self-indulgent in a way), it's a bit hard to explain. That's just a feeling I have.

That's a highly contentious one 😂 David Chalmers Bernardo Kastrup Robert Sapolsky Rupert Sheldrake Noam Chomsky (And although I hate to say it): Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson. — little fluff, straight to the point, avoids jargon unless completely necessary (and explains it when necessary), properly paced, good flow, clear and well-conceived tried-and-tested thoughts, well-rehearsed, concerned about things that are meaningful (in their own ways). The opposite (although they're not guilty of lacking all the points above) would be: Jordan Peterson (at times, speaks in convoluted paragraphs). Eric Weinstein (and Bret Weinstein at times; both use a kind of poetic, flowery and academically technical language; pretty difficult combination). Daniel Dennett ("philosophy ate my brain"). Sam Harris (uses way too many analogies and thought experiments). Daniel Schmachtenberger (has very peculiar interests which affects his language, and his mind goes 15% faster than anyone else). Terrence McKenna (too flowery and "out there", but he is fun to listen to generally). Ben Shapiro (15% too fast, other than that he is pretty good). Chris Langan (jargonitis). Curt Jaimungal (mild jargonitis, sometimes odd word choices and pacing).

Good. Now, that's not solipsism 😉 (if you agree with the definition of solipsism in the videos you linked). And it's one thing to say those words, but it's another thing to fall to your knees and cry because you got hit so hard by the reality of such a realization.

Wut

Stumbled across this one. Pretty remarkable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL1oDuvQR08 (YouTube doesn't allow embedding). (@Scholar I will answer you when I have time, don't worry ).

Omg new Aristocrats album coming February 16th 🤩🥳

How do you know that / who is he?

Solipsism, Advaita or Ajata never entered my mind when I first took the step into non-duality. But after I took that step, I started to see those aforementioned constructs for what they are: constructs. But sure, there are degrees of construct awareness within the realm of constructs. It's just that stepping outside all constructs is the only true step towards non-duality. If non-duality is approached in any other way, it's just another construct.

If your endpoint is true non-duality, I wouldn't say solipsism is the first step. It's more like a step backwards. It's not actually a deconstruction. It's a construction; a fantasy, a dead end. Any conceptual idea is a step backward, even ultimate skepticism, the seemingly most bare-boned position there is ("I can't know anything"). Because it's still just a conceptual idea. With respect to non-duality, Actuality itself is the only step forward. Now, if you want to stay within the conceptual realm, these would be my steps (more epistemological than ontological): realism -> skepticism -> pragmatism -> meta-theory. I wrote a thread about it some years ago (and the various pitfalls associated with them): Here, you can notice that each step becomes less restrictive and more expansive, as a result of each step countering or "deconstructing" the former. But each step can make the mistake of naivety, of essentially clinging to it like a dogma and creating a contracted and inflexible version of it, and that the mature perspective requires developing a nuanced grasp of it. Only adopting a conceptual idea of non-duality is similar: you don't have the right grasp of it but instead you cling to it like a baby on a tit.

😂

https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=e-Research (It's an undergraduate article, but at least this passage is well-written). I think this makes a lot of sense. If you're talking to someone who comes off as unreasonably rude, who doesn't seem to care about your opinion, who scoffs at your arguments, who says you're stupid, etc., then it's probably not just that they don't care about your feelings, but it's likely that they're actually not able to put themselves in your shoes. Hence, they don't just lack empathy, but also openmindedness. Again, I think this makes a lot of sense. What do you think? () Here is some other research on the topic: "Similar Personality Patterns Are Associated with Empathy in Four Different Countries" "Associations between Medical Student Empathy and Personality: A Multi-Institutional Study" "Empathy and big five personality model in medical students and its relationship to gender and specialty preference: a cross-sectional study" "Relationship between empathy and the big five personality traits in a sample of Spanish adolescents" "Associations between empathy and big five personality traits among Chinese undergraduate medical students"

When you say "well-designed", then of course we're no longer talking about the 50% statistic, but I think a similar thing could be said for psychology and social science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis That said, in general, I will agree that psychology is probably more prone to replication issues than medicine. But let's not forget that it can get pretty bad in medicine too : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

And medicine. Once you throw humans into the picture, it seems to reliably screw things up.

Imagine if you did nofap back then. You would create two mutually orbiting black holes in your balls.

Most actualized forum member 😆 🤓 😂😘

The "you" we're referring to (mind with a small "m") is created by predetermined stuff, which is "You" (Mind with a big "M"). So "you" is created by "You", and "you" has ultimately no say in what "You" is creating. In order words, the person and their apparent choices are ultimately created by the transpersonal. From this perspective, the notion of the person making choices is mostly a pragmatic psychosocial convention, a bit like money.

You wouldn't believe me if I told you.

Or just the mind beyond concepts.

@Razard86 I can make choices, but I can't choose which choices present themselves to me. I'm a compatibilist, so I say that Sapolsky is right in the sense that the choices that present themselves to us are determined by forces outside of our control (biology, environment, upbringing, etc.), but we can still talk about making choices, because we're doing that all the time (in a pragmatic socio-linguistic sense). I can say that I chose between eating rice vs. eating pasta today, because that is how I tend to describe what I just experienced: I was confronted with a situation where I felt like I had to pick either making rice or making pasta for dinner, and I ended up picking one of them, hence I made a choice. But that doesn't change the fact that I did not choose which choices presented themselves to me (pasta vs. rice).

Any compatibilists in the house?

You might benefit from looking into the pernicious dynamics of psychosomatic disorders, or more generally the two-way street between psychology and physiology (e.g. the placebo study that found that sham knee operations produced the same subjective and functional improvement as real operations, or the finding that anti-depressants are only 2% more effective than placebo pills). (I highly recommend the video). You seem to fall into the group that would be affected by that (just like me), already just based on the very detailed and oddly specific description you gave, but also based on a study I read which showed that higher education (basically Big 5 openness) and higher proneness to modern health worries (basically Big 5 neuroticism) increased self-certified sick leave and subjective health complaints (basically psychosomatic disorders). I'm saying we're both open and neurotic people 😂

Haha, no it's something you learned. No creature is born unmotivated, unless they're some gene-modified synthetic abomination produced in Michael Levin's lab (or the natural equivalent).

Micro-awakening. Psychedelics put you in the same ballpark as spiritual awakening. Everything has to do with brain chemistry (in this discussion at least 😆). It could be residual 5-HT2A agonism causing you to feel drained (it feeds into the stress response, although it has complex effects). Or you might have traumatic baggage coming to the surface (not uncommon when you're new to it). I didn't have these problems when I used to microdose as far as I can remember, although I was already pretty unmotivated for some things, but less others (hence the post I referenced about awakening). But yeah, brain chemistry affects behavior, and behavior affects brain chemistry.

We're not talking about that though, are we? ;P