Ponder
1d ago
People become more religious, but legacy religions decline because people start new religions. We probably see AI religions and more psychedelic religions.
Using nootropics/folk medicine to enhance the well-being of healthy people becomes more common.
Roland Griffiths was probably on to something about creating brain stimulation devices that are able to produce mystical/spiritual experiences that are more reliable and specific than psychedelics.
Ponder
1d ago
I’m actually pretty high in openness. I’m into things like nootropics, psychedelics, woo/spiritual/religious ideas, questioning the system, etc. Being open to weird ideas comes with the framing that we probably aren’t going to reach the exact same conclusions and it is ok to have unresolvable differences. The thing that agitates me is when people I disagree with use social shaming/pressure me into agreeing with their preferred social norm that appears to have logical flaws on the object level.
I think you are getting at something deeper though. I would say I’m very low-trust and suspicious of people. When people resort to peer pressure/shaming to enforce social norms that can’t withstand some light questioning then I feel that I can’t trust their thinking at all. I conclude that there is no reason to associate with them because how they act on the social norms issue will impact their other behavior and they are an unreliable ally.
I perceive that almost all social interactions will eventually test for tribal loyalty at some point (maybe this is just me being suspicious and picking up on something that isn’t actually there). In my model of the world you need to know if other people would make good allies/mates. The way you do that is by testing their reaction to political topics (Examples: Complaining about political policies, implying people that vote a certain way are morally bad). You always need to know if people share your values and then you need to sort yourself into groups that share your values by enforcing social norms. This is how you build trust.
Ponder
1d ago
Flow state might be a term that describes the opposite of dissociation. In a flow state you feel focused attention and immersion in the activity you are doing.
Ponder
1d ago
I live in an area where most social spaces are dominated by woke ideology. People who don’t agree either pretend to go along, or have abandoned the shared social spaces. I feel that there is an unspoken shared social norm in most spaces around me that you must agree whenever someone implies/states that straight white men are problematic/oppressors. I feel like whatever is going on with this social norm is somehow tied to status games and tribalism. I feel that it is morally and epistemologically wrong to blame such a broad group for so many of the problems in society. It is wrong to over simplify societal problems to such a simple ideology. Ultimately, I believe every person deserves to be treated as a unique individual. It is fine to point out specific instances of a straight/white/male doing a problematic thing, but it wrong to assume that everyone in that group is bad and/or benefits from the problematic thing.
I believe it is ethically wrong for me to pretend to go along with problematizing any group of people just because that is social expectation to fit in with the group. Consequently, I mostly avoid social spaces because I don’t feel comfortable with the social norms that I’m expected to conform to.
There is a part of me that thinks the people in these social groups are otherwise reasonable, but they are also caught up in the social mania of modern times. I would like to be more social and make more friends, but the social norms of the spaces around me make me uncomfortable and closed-off to people. There don’t appear to be spaces near me without the straight white men are problematic norm for the areas I’m interested in (such as book clubs or running clubs).
Has anyone discovered a way to let it be openly known that you don’t agree with the group problematizing social norm, while still being accepted into the group? Like steering the group to a pluralistic acceptance of people with different values because those values don’t impact the stated purpose of the group (i.e. social norms about political ideology shouldn’t matter if you just want to go running with some people).
Ponder
1d ago
I believe that your assessment is correct.
To put it in slightly different terms when you workout you are training procedural memory in addition to physical strength. Procedural memory is knowing how to do learned tasks (like riding a bicycle) without conscious awareness. If you do isolation exercises the procedural memory being trained is mostly going to be tied to that specific exercise (e.g. you will learn the form for bicep curls without having to think about each time, but that memory won’t generalize to working with heavy objects).
When you do manual labor (and to some extent compound exercises) you are also training procedural memory on balancing different parts of the body that is more generalizable to many other situations.
Ponder
1mo ago
I enjoyed this write-up. It was informative and written in an engaging style.
One thing that I think makes psychedelics effective is the work that is done after the trip. Being in a supportive community after the trip seems to produce a lot of benefit. Talking to other people who have also done psychedelics can help you feel a sense of deeper connection. If I was designing a psychedelic therapy trial I would include a mostly peer driven support group for people that have participated in clinical psychedelic trials.
I agree that your experience sounds like the 10mg dose. If you took a higher dose and had a mystical experience or ego death I suspect it may have given you more motivation/desire to make a bigger change to your life. I’m interested in how the results between 10 mg and 25 mg will vary in the trial. I suspect that the higher dose benefits would be more noticeable and would last longer. If the effects from 10mg start to wane it may be an interesting personal experiment to try something approximately equivalent to the 25mg dose.
Ponder
7mo ago
I'm curious what strategy Trump is ultimately going for here. On the surface it looks like a power move to demonstrate that he is in charge and nobody can stop him from pulling off these types of shenanigans.
Is he really just after the money and/or getting revenge at people that have wronged him in the past?
Actions like these really decrease trust in the economic and political system. It fuels beliefs that there is no point in working hard to get ahead. Why should anyone work hard when you can make more money by monitoring social media and being early to the next viral momentum trade? It also causes you to lose trust in democracy. We are voting for people who are personally enriching themselves at our expense.
This also leads us to a slippery slope. If Trump is allowed to do this then what's stopping him from doing things like telling China he won't introduce new tariffs if they buy $1B of his memecoin?
There is probably some deeper lesson about how when social media content creators have a mechanism to monetize attention it results in unregulated negative externalities.
Ponder
8mo ago
In addition to the responses below 2 other things to consider are reducing salt intake and making sure you are consuming a sufficient amount of magnesium every day. Neither may be applicable to you, but they could be a place to look if regular exercise isn't getting you the results you want.
Blood pressure might be another good data point to measure. I don't know enough to say more but I have experienced that blood pressure and heart rate can be related in a complex way (e.g. something can cause both RHR and blood pressure to increase, or RHR can increase to compensate for a drop in blood pressure).
Btw, I think 60-80 is a normal RHR when awake.
Ponder
8mo ago
what issues SHOULD we talking about
- Environmental issues
- Wealth inequality
- How AI will impact your students' lives
- The Mindfulness Revolution
- The rise of secular wisdom traditions like Authentic Relating
- The Psychedelic Renaissance, including communities that use psychedelics in a spiritual/religious setting.
The common theme is that these are developing issues that involve a lot of uncertainty about the near future. They are salient to young people today and learning to navigate these issues will be helpful to their futures.
Ponder
8mo ago
Let’s suppose you could self-administer euphoria on command. This would be similar to heroin addiction. What would be your incentive to fulfill the hours of necessary daily tasks to maintain health, if you could summon euphoria at will?
I get the point you are making, but this reminds me of people that take SSRIs everyday and never plan to stop. The SSRI state is preferable to the non-SSRI state and people are still able to function normally in the SSRI state. In the SSRI state people have increased interest in basic human activity.
The SSRI example shows that there are altered states of consciousness that are preferable to the default state of consciousness, and that some people can experience altered states of consciousness with negligible/manageable side effects. Therefore, it makes sense that there could be other alerted states of consciousness that are permanently achievable with minimal side effects. They may require lots of effort/training to discover and maintain, but once they are learned a person could permanently remain in the altered state for as long as they desire. You always have the memory of the less desirable state so there is no need to leave the altered to state to experience a more painful state.
Another example is someone who receives eye surgery to achieve perfect vision. The altered state of perfect vision is strictly preferable to that person. There are no drawbacks to remaining in the preferred state after the surgery is complete.
Ponder
8mo ago
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis is what came to my mind too. The first 25 lectures are also now in book format. I think the book presents the material in an even better way because John gained additional experience in communicating the material since the lecture series.
I am curious how the series practically improved your life? For me it provided deep insights into modern problems and explained how we need an ecology of practices to address them. We need to go deeper than propositional knowledge (statements that are true or false) and utilize the other ways of knowing (procedural, perspectival, and participatory). One thing I'm kind of stuck on is the Philosophical Silk Road (in the lecture series it is the idea about a Religion that is not a Religion). I see the necessity of distributed cognition (i.e. collective intelligence), but I haven't had success in finding a like-minded group of people locally that is interested in John's work.
@roche Episode 8 (The Buddha and "Mindfulness"),9 (Insight), and 11+12 (Higher States of Consciousness) are particularly relevant to your post.
Ponder
9mo ago
This is a good response and I'll add one more thing. Tariffs reduce the amount of stuff being produced because it costs more to produce it. If the price of raw materials doubles people are more thoughtful about what they produce. A lot of what gets produced just ends up in a landfill after x years. Maybe it is good for the planet if the world produces less trinkets that ultimately end up in the trash.
Ponder
9mo ago
Maybe the newspapers are trying to cause some of their staff to quit because the newspaper wants to reduce staffing and/or get rid of disagreeable staff.
It would be similar to how some companies use return to office policies to get a portion of their employees to quit. When an employee quits they don't get severance or unemployment. Causing an employee to quit, instead of firing them, saves the company money.
Ponder
10mo ago
Instrumental rationality. Think about the goal you are trying to achieve and then think about if a display of anger will help or hinder your progress toward that goal. Then think about the best way to achieve your goal and work on doing that action. It is redirecting the anger to a productive use and re-engaging the rational part of your brain.
One small caveat is that sometimes a controlled performative display of anger may be appropriate.
HPMOR chapter 19 may help you internalize this lesson:
What you demonstrated today, Mr. Potter, is that - unlike those animals who keep their claws sheathed and accept the results - you do not know how to lose a dominance contest. When a Hogwarts professor challenged you, you did not back down. When it looked like you might lose, you unsheathed your claws, heedless of the danger. You escalated, and then you escalated again. It started with a slap at you from Professor Snape, who was obviously dominant over you. Instead of losing, you slapped back and lost ten points from Ravenclaw. Soon you were talking about leaving Hogwarts....
...The next time, Mr. Potter, that you choose to escalate a contest rather than lose, you may lose all the stakes you place on the table. I cannot guess what they were today. I can guess that they were far, far too high for the loss of ten House points
Then Harry realizes:
I would have taken the slap, waited, and picked the best possible time to make my move...
Ponder
10mo ago
Scott talks about them in the article: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-trustworthy-are-supplements
Ponder
10mo ago
I occasionally take mushroom extracts.
If I take Red Reishi or Tiger Milk before bed it tends to improve sleep (falling asleep faster, vivid dreams, and better recall of dreams).
If I take Cordyceps in the morning I'll sometimes feel a mild energy boost for a few hours. It feels somewhat like a milder version of caffeine.
Ponder
10mo ago
The biggest gains will probably come from the income side. For new grads there is often a path of increasing job titles e.g. associate --> staff --> senior --> manager. If you stay at one company each jump is usually a minimum set amount of time and the pay bump is often somewhat fixed based on your current salary. If you look externally for the next step/network you can sometimes get to the next job title sooner and be offered higher pay.
Also, a good perk to consider is employers that pay for continuing education that can be leveraged into higher paying jobs (e.g. an employers that pays a large percentage of tuition reimbursement for pursuing a master's degree).
Ponder
10mo ago
I think response 2 is directionally correct, but it can be combined with other approaches for a more beneficial outcome. You can only focus on a very small amount of the world's data your lifetime. You have to focus on things that are relevant to you. For instance, if you thought about every food (down to the specific plant/animal) in the world before deciding what to eat then you would starve to death because it is too much data to process. With suffering it is just not relevant to focus on most of it, and doing so will drain you of precious resources that you need to address the much more localized suffering.
It is axiomatic that an individual human can only impact a very limited amount of suffering. Once that boundary is chosen it becomes much more manageable. You can do local things that will have an impact on alleviating suffering for others and for future generations (e.g. helping preserve a piece of public land). Also, don't intentionally do things that will cause suffering for others. There is only so much you can do, and the rest of the suffering is out of your control.
You can also expand on response 1. There are techniques that allow you to think about suffering without being as bothered by it. Those include meditation, therapy techniques, Stoicism, psychedelics, and teachings that help you focus on appreciating the present moment (e.g. Letting Go by David Hawkins, or The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle).
Finally, the suffering might serve some purpose that you don't know. Maybe it is needed to teach new people a lesson that they would not be able to learn if the suffering was eliminated. Maybe the suffering is needed to motivate humans to take actions that will lead to a better future world. Maybe suffering is needed so that non-suffering can be properly appreciated.
Ponder
10mo ago
I like how you clarified what wisdom is. The content that I like the most is attempting to explain underlying causes across time, perspectives, and often domains. I agree that it is hard to find this on the internet.
read books
Do you have any tips on determining which books contain useful wisdom? I still run into the problem of sorting out the good content from the garbage.
The other problem with books is that they often aren't timely/relevant unless you have the ability to connect them to modern knowledge/issues. Social media and other technological advancements have significantly changed the world.
The wisdom in many books no longer directly applies to the current world because it is optimized for environments that no longer exist. Some people have the ability to connect/adapt that wisdom to today's world. If you lack that ability then it could make more sense to focus only on current content where other people make those connections for you.
Ponder
10mo ago
What do you think?
If you have a popular forum that is free to join then people are incentivized to push products and narratives because it creates a way for them to advertise for basically free. People are gaming the system with bots and other tactics.
I think Elon Musk came to realization that the only way to solve this issue on forums with anonymous users is to gate content creation behind a paywall.
If you're going to gate a forum behind a paywall it would probably need to have something else that is worth paying for that also attracts a community with shared values. Then the paywall gated forums are a bonus, instead of the main feature.
I'm not endorsing this, but https://petersonacademy.com/ is an example of a paywall gated social media platform.
Ponder
10mo ago
From a biological perspective, humans are wired to survive and reproduce. Having allies and mates who are socially well-adapted to the local culture helps achieve these goals. This is because social support from people with power gives you access to useful resources that you could not acquire on your own. People implicitly/unconsciously know that people with mental conditions do not make the best allies/mates when they have the option to be allies/mates with mentally healthier people.
People are selecting for unconscious predictors to the question of if the person makes a good ally/mate. That is why Elon Musk (who has Aspersers) can overcome the "ick" treatment by demonstrating qualities that make him a good ally/mate.
People cover up their instinctual repulsions because they are following the current cultural norms of polite society.
People with disabilities often try to distance themselves from other people that have a lower-functioning version of the same disability. This is because it is a strategy that enhances their own image as a potential ally/mate.
Ponder
10mo ago
Generally, women in their 30s have lower standards about how much entertainment and validation you need to provide on an on-going basis.
They have much higher expectations about things like owning a house, your career trajectory, and how well you can navigate standard social interactions.
For instance, with many women in their 20s it is fine if you’re just having fun, rent a mediocre apartment, and haven’t got your career sorted out yet. At some point by their 30s those become dealbreakers to many women.
I don’t own a house because I wanted to live downtown to help with my social life, but then I got locked out of the housing market by not buying a house before the inflation from the Covid policies. So, that is one factor that puts me a disadvantage with the 30s women. Also, due to autism I don’t have any desire to become a manager/leader at work, so my career has kind of peaked as an individual contributor.
Ponder
10mo ago
Does anyone have tips on how to use to internet to gain wisdom? I know there is content that will make me wiser, or have some beneficial impact on my life, but what I’m looking for is very ill-defined and non-specific.
Searching for this type of content feels like a slot machine where most pulls pay nothing, but very occasionally you hit a nice payoff that keeps you addicted.
For example, finding Scott Alexander or John Vervaeke had highly positive outcomes to me, but I had to wade through a ton of internet garbage to find them.
This search is also complicated by other factors:
- Once you find and engage with the gems you get sorted into an algorithm that keeps feeding you similar content and then it can switch from being helpful to just being confirmation bias.
- The garbage isn’t easily identifiable because most content is knowledge that helps you stay current and connected with other people that consume it.
- Other people can’t reliably help you find the gems because they are driven by tribalism/jealousy/biases. For instance, I can’t rely on the New York Times or rationalwiki to decide if Scott Alexander belongs in the gem or internet garbage bucket.
- Some wise people seem weird when you first encounter them because their ideas are different than your own. Yet, sometimes their weird perspective is exactly what you need to gain wisdom.
Ponder
11mo ago
I’m in my mid 30s and I’ve never had much success with romantic relationships. When I was in my 20s I could get occasional 1st dates through OkCupid or friends. There were a few girls I was in short-term relationships with, but nothing lasted longer than about 6 months.
I believe that I’m on the autism spectrum and that is why I struggle so much with social interactions that have a romantic component to them. I’d say my biggest challenges are (1) that I find eye contact uncomfortable so I mostly avoid it and (2) that I avoid trying to take any interaction into a flirtatious direction because I lack the skills to do it well and I don’t want to make things awkward.
I workout a lot and I’m in great physical shape. I started taking my looks/diet much more seriously around age 25.
When I was in my 20s things were also complicated by the fact that I had a very naïve and delusion model of how dating/relationships were supposed to work. Basically, I thought being nice, conscientious, reliable, and having a respectable career were the main things I could do to be viewed as good boyfriend material.
In my 30s I got good at getting attractive women in their 20s to approach me and initiate the interaction. It only works at bars that have dancing and involves me being on psychoactive substances (primarily Phenibut) that reduce social anxiety and put me into a flow state. I only do this up to once a week. In these interactions I get feedback that I’m very confident and have good vibes, but I rarely try to flirt even though the woman is usually giving me clear signals that she is sexually attracted to me. I usually try to de-flirt the interaction by dancing in a non-sexual way, or by saying things like, “I’m just doing exposure therapy to help build confidence”. If an interaction goes really well sometimes I’ll ask for her number so that we can hang out in the future. Usually, when I ask for her number I get it. But usually she doesn’t want to actually hang out if I text her in the future.
I think there are number of reasons why I don’t put much effort into flirting in these situations:
- Learned helplessness from my earlier experiences. Knowing that whatever I do will eventually fail at some point in the process even if the next step succeeds.
- When I’m sober and not at the bar I’m not nearly as confident and fun so she’ll probably lose interest in me.
- Wanting to be known as the friendly/approachable/safe guy at the bar instead of a creepy guy just trying to get laid. Currently, most of the bar staff enjoys my presence and is friendly with me.
- Having a low sex drive so I’m mostly wanting a relationship for companionship instead of the sexual component.
- Having to deal with the stigma of a 10-15 year age-gap.
I’ve tried looking for women to date in sober environments and online dating and I just haven’t found anything that works for me. I’m not good enough at masking my autism so most of my social interactions go poorly. Even if I find a decent sober environment (like book club) I feel like there are social norms that prevent me from asking a women out.
My views on dating have also soured in 2 relevant ways:
- I’ve seen first-hand how the confident/fun guy gets treated so much better than the boring/stable/normal guy. I don’t want to just be treated like the normal guy that she reluctantly settles for.
- I can get attention from women in their 20s and it made me lose interest in most single women closer to my age (generally the ones that would have made good girlfriends/wives already paired-off when they were in their 20s). Since I don’t have much relationship experience I probably can’t meet the expectations of women in their 30s anyway.
What is the best path forward for me if I’m looking for a relationship that is mostly focused on companionship with a woman in her 20s?
I’m at a crossroads because my Phenibut experiences made me disinterested in pursing women in any other way. The women I meet sober are much less enthusiastic about me and less physically attractive. I feel like I could attempt to flirt more while at the bar, but I’m afraid of getting a reputation of being the guy at the bar that hits on too many women.
Yes, you are probably thinking of Twin Flames Universe. Leadership encouraged several cisgender women, who had no prior indication of being trans, to transition to men.
ETA: I did some brief searching on Twin Flames Universe to determine why members are mostly women. It seems like the marketing and messaging about spiritual counterparts, inner healing, emotional transformation, etc. appeal to women more than men.
It seems like there is an opportunity to improve upon this model. Once you have a lot of lonely single females in your cult it seems like you could pivot the marketing/messaging to attract lonely single men to keep the gender ratio in balance. You need to have different roles for the men that are more appealing, instead of trying to force all members into a model that appeals mostly to females.
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