[I only skimmed the post so you might have addressed this, but…]
I once met a sometime who made super intense eye contact all the time, and it gave me weird vibes. Sort of uncanny valley vibes, if I try to put words to it? It was like they were staring at me in normal conversation. One hypothesis I had as to why is that maybe he did one of these type of activities that you outline here (iirc, I was introduced to the idea being a thing through an old LW post on scientology doing it?).
Epistemic status: I don’t know if an event like this was the cause of this person’s intense eye contact. I don’t know if anyone at your events has this result. But just thought I would mention it in the off chance that “getting in the habit of giving super intense eye contact” is a possible failure mode of doing activities like this.
[I only skimmed the post so you might have addressed this, but…]
I once met a sometime who made super intense eye contact all the time, and it gave me weird vibes. Sort of uncanny valley vibes, if I try to put words to it? It was like they were staring at me in normal conversation. One hypothesis I had as to why is that maybe he did one of these type of activities that you outline here (iirc, I was introduced to the idea being a thing through an old LW post on scientology doing it?).
Epistemic status: I don’t know if an event like this was the cause of this person’s intense eye contact. I don’t know if anyone at your events has this result. But just thought I would mention it in the off chance that “getting in the habit of giving super intense eye contact” is a possible failure mode of doing activities like this.
please see the new version of the intro and read the full post