Leo's Blog Discussion Mega-Thread

[Leo Gura]

9 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Do you not consider that answering questions is an obligation and duty as a teacher?

I have read and answered over 100,000 comments over the last 10 years.

Quote

We understand you may not have time to address them all, but to dismiss them as unworthy is something else. 

I certainly must dismiss some as unworthy as otherwise devils would exploit this loophope to distract me from teaching about Godly matters.

I am wise to these sorts of tricks and distractions.

But I agree with your larger point that I must remain open to feedback and criticism.

It's because I read and answer thousands of anonymous comments that I must have filters.

Edited June 5 by Leo Gura

[Natasha Tori Maru]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I certainly must dismiss some as unworthy as otherwise devils would exploit this loophope to distract me from teaching about Godly matters.

Your prerogative & right as a sovereign individual.

You are quite polarizing

 

[Joshe]

1 hour ago, BlessedLion said:

“What are all the reasons that extraordinary levels of cognitive development are so rare?”

I've found that cognitive development is like a muscle. It develops when you exercise it. If you were lucky to have circumstances that triggered in you a high Need-for-Cognition, then you will instinctually exercise it. If not, you will avoid exercising it. This seems so simple but it's the answer to many questions I've had regarding the humans. 

Some people are completely turned off by thinking. To them, it's boring, makes little sense, feels like work, etc. As a result, they don't develop. Whoever loves thinking (high NFC), is basically just blessed ...or cursed, depending on who you ask. 

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Joshe said:

I've found that cognitive development is like a muscle. It develops when you exercise it. If you were lucky to have circumstances that triggered in you a high Need-for-Cognition, then you will instinctually exercise it. If not, you will avoid exercising it. This seems so simple but it's the answer to many questions I've had regarding the humans. 

No doubt that is a factor, but most heavy thinkers still never surpass the rationalist stage. Why not?

Heavy thinkers are not so rare. Basically all academics. Yet high stages of cog dev are exceptionally rare.

The question is not why ballet dancers and strippers aren't high cog dev. The question is about academics.

Edited June 5 by Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

27 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

You are quite polarizing

Guilty as charged.

Edited June 5 by Leo Gura

[Eskilon]

11 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

No doubt that is a factor, but most heavy thinkers still never surpass the rationalist stage. Why not?

Heavy thinkers are not so rare. Basically all academics. Yet high stages of cog dev are exceptionally rare.

The question is not why ballet dancers and strippers aren't high cog dev. The question is about academics.

I would say open-mindness, mental flexibility & mental and emotional detachment to any position are fundamental to higher dev. Do you think those 3 aspects are genetic?

Edited June 5 by Eskilon

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Eskilon said:

Do you think those 3 aspects are genetic?

Openness certainly has a genetic component but so much of it is cultural and how you were raised.

Openness is very influenced by environment.

[Leo Gura]

56 minutes ago, Nemra said:

@Leo Gura, I haven't seen a ghost and cannot imagine what they actually look like. So to expect that I might see a ghost is also a problem. If I see a ghost, I wouldn't know if labeling it as a ghost would be accurate. I don't know.

But, say, 10 people saw a ghost and reported it to you. How would you study it?

You gonna call them all deluded? That's bad science.

Edited June 5 by Leo Gura

[Joshe]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

No doubt that is a factor, but most heavy thinkers still never surpass the rationalist stage. Why not?

Cowardice + inertia. 

[Leo Gura]

Just now, Joshe said:

Cowardice

Hahaha

It's more complicated than that.

Edited June 5 by Leo Gura

[Joshe]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

It's more complicated than that.

Well, give me something to chew on. I won't pester you about it. 

It seems to me that cowardice and conformity are the main forces that keep highly cognitive people stuck in the shallows, too afraid or too conformist to swim in the deep. I'd love to add to my understanding.

 

Edited June 5 by Joshe

[Leo Gura]

@Joshe It was a question to give you guys something to chew on, so I give less answers.

Your answer isn't wrong, it's just kinda shallow and one-dimensional. A lot could be said on the topic.

Motivation is a big factor.

Edited June 5 by Leo Gura

[Anton Rogachevski]

@Leo Gura

Thank you for your response, I really appreciate that you try your best to answer all the comments.

I hope you can see that this is debate and it seems that this process must be in debate form because that's how minds operate. They need to be convinced by a powerful and coherent argument.

I do find your statements to be a bit optimistic about the scope of their application beyond Phenomenology, the field that I find most fascinating and it's quite enough for me to focus on and really dig deep into the basic epistemic tool that is the mind. I believe that this is foundational to any intellectual persuit.

What is your vision for science? How would it look different if your insights are applied?

Edited June 5 by Anton Rogachevski

[Leo Gura]

Science is all about using the mind. Everything I teach opens up the creative capacities of the mind to crazy levels.

Anyone doing science is negligent by ignoring the fundamental operating dynamics of the mind.

Whole new fields of science could be unlocked by learning these fundamentals.

Visionary science is very rare and just what we need.

I could write a whole book just for scientists on how to upgrade their epistemology, ontology, cognitive development, requisite variety, creativity, and insight capacity.

Nobel prizes are there to be discovered. We could have a science revolution. These ideas are so fundamental and so clearly superior to current science education that they will become the default education paradigm in 50 years, unless AI replaces us all.

It's just a ton of work to lay out my whole circiculum for science. It requires years of writing thick books. I'm throwing out scraps on my blog for now since the books and courses are years out.

I have thousands of pages of insights for books and courses. It's just a matter of organizing it all for mass consumption.

Edited June 5 by Leo Gura

[Jayson G]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Science is all about using the mind. Everything I teach opens up the creative capacities of the mind to crazy levels.

Anyone doing science is negligent by ignoring the fundamental operating dynamics of the mind.

Whole new fields of science could be unlocked by learning these fundamentals.

Visionary science is very rare and just what we need.

I could write a whole book just for scientists on how to upgrade their epistemology, ontology, cognitive development, requisite variety, creativity, and insight capacity.

Nobel prizes are there to be discovered. We could have a science revolution. These ideas are so fundamental and so clearly superior to current science education that they will become the default education paradigm in 50 years, unless AI replaces us all.

It's just a ton of work to lay out my whole circiculum for science. It requires years of writing thick books. I'm throwing out scraps on my blog for now since the books and courses are years out.

I have thousands of pages of insights for books and courses. It's just a matter of organizing it all for mass consumption.

@Leo Gura are there any particular videos you made that opens the creative capacities more than others? 

I listen to some of those creativity, requisite variety videos from your blog a lot, as that puts me in a creative state before work, but I was wondering if you had any on your channel that is particularly good at that? 

[Leo Gura]

21 minutes ago, Jayson G said:

are there any particular videos you made that opens the creative capacities more than others? 

Not directly. It's a byproduct of doing the whole work.

But I have stuff planned more directly about creativity.

Edited June 5 by Leo Gura

[zurew]

5 hours ago, Nemra said:

Yeah, but why they do those experiments and what conclusions they make is based on their metaphysical beliefs.

You frame it as an absolute when its not (again its sometimes true and its only true for a small subset of beliefs), and you seem to ignore the evolution of frames. Its not like you see the frames dropping as science progresses "Okay, there are no more christians guys  - in order to do science you have to drop your belief in the Christian God".

You can have a modern atheist and a modern christian be much more aligned on everything that has to do with science and the epistemology of science than a modern christian and a christian from 2000 years ago.

 

To me it seems clear that there are change resistant metaphysical beliefs, that you won't ever need to reflect upon no matter what kind of experiment is conducted or done.  You can maintain those forever, because you can almost always recontextualize things. And the reason why is because categorically you cant rule out all alternative hypotheses. The dissapearance of your shoes will be  always compatible with a creature coming from a different dimension stealing it.

 

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, zurew said:

To me it seems clear that there are change resistant metaphysical beliefs, that you won't ever need to reflect upon no matter what kind of experiment is conducted or done. 

The stuff I teach is not metaphysical beliefs. It's insights about the structures and operations of Mind, which is highly relevant to any process of understanding reality truthfully.

Actualized.org is focused on structure not content. Adopting beliefs is already a bad structure for scientific inquiry.

For example, materialism is bad content, bad epistemology, bad ontology.

There is no scientific reason to believe in an external mind-indepedent reality. This is as silly as believing in unicorns.

[zurew]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There is no scientific reason to believe in an external mind-indepedent reality.

That just seems to validate what I said about not needing to drop certain things.

You can maintain the belief that there is an external mind independent reality and you can have the view that there isn't a mind independent reality and a bunch of experiments and results will be compatible with both of those.

 

[zurew]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

This is as silly as believing in unicorns.

It can be silly, but not logically impossible - and hence the frame can be forever maintained and one can always say that there is a corner in the Universe where there is one unicorn or that there is a hidden dimension or that the Unicorn is invisible etc.

Edited June 5 by zurew