Depression has always been an interesting excuse that people like to pull out of their sleeves. It’s quite a general overarching term that gets thrown around easily while on a case by case basis, things are much more complicated. Labeling everything that’s not positive as depressive is a bit disingenuous, borderline gaslighting if you will. Such dismissive attitude seems more like a means to an end rather than trying to constructively explain anything in-depth.
Kenny
Karma: −245
How is this not a cult?
Goal: increase the number of people who read EA research
Sure you want people to read about climate change, but those things have extensive peer-reviewed research and have gone through a lot of vetting of information and their reliability. What makes the stuff on this site worthwhile? I truly want to understand why these stuff are worthwhile if people haven’t put in the work to verify and vet the content. A lot of fictions and a lot of hypothetical scenarios don’t usually lead to legitimacy by themselves. Does this make sense to you?
Established intuitions don’t accept these works but I do accept them. That means those institutions must suck and I don’t. If you’ve actually dropped out of those established institutions, then I can definitely see why it might be the case.
Is this not negative?
That’s one big question I still haven’t been able to answer. Just how meaningful is personal happiness? My guess is that it’s very subjective. If that’s the case then wouldn’t existential meaning be completely subjective? How much objectivity, if any, can we derived out of examining existential meaning in different individuals?
Not every number pulled out of the ass is annotated with that. You are arguing semantics with me while I’m just pointing out a general observation on this website. It’s not that hard to verify my observations though. Seems like you are just trying to be defensive rather than providing anything of substance to this discussion. There is definitely not a lack of fictional content on here though, just saying.
Existential meaning. It seems that the individual’s existential issues are generally correlated to the outreach of their own existence and the work associated with it. The more people they reach, the more meaningful they feel their work is. I was kind of trapped in this type of mindset for many years, thinking my life must be very meaningful because of how many people I’ve reached. If my work doesn’t reach as many people, or even no one, then it must not be that meaningful. If that’s the case, does the content and actual substance of the work mean anything at all? Of course, the meaning of the work itself can be objectively and quantitatively measured, just like many historical achievements in math and sciences. Outside of objectivity, the meaning becomes a lot more ambiguous as we can both live with or without great art works that wouldn’t have really affected life in general very much. If you aren’t listening or watching one artist, you could be listening or watching another artist. The content itself seems rather irrelevant in that sense.
If that’s the case regarding existential meaning, then isn’t it just about passing on your jeans?
Kenny ’s Shortform
I often see people pulling random numbers out of their asses on here. No wonder there are so many college dropouts on here if that’s how they go about doing research (i.e. The people who introduced me to this website are college dropouts themselves). Does the general public and established institutions take these works seriously? These articles and “research” seem to be rather self-contained in their own niche communities, much less of a public acceptance of their work at large. Makes me wonder just how much of these things are taken seriously outside of these communities themselves.
‘My April Fools Day Confession’, where he claimed that he actually came from that world and none of his ideas were original.
The god of EA community claiming he’s a god that came from a different world. I’m not sure why I have this feeling that the EA community is full of people who are full of themselves, a lot like other echo chambers we see on the web these days. At the end of the day, how is the EA community any different from other online discussion forums with their own communities? Even academia is known for quite a bit of people who are also full of themselves. I guess human conditions are very deeply ingrained in the subconscious.
The study’s approach to mysticism seems to be rather qualitative than quantitative, based on self reporting and questionnaires, mostly from members of MAPS, whom probably have certain variables that aren’t really controlled for compared to the general population.
Mysticism Scale. This 32-item questionnaire (Hood
1975) contains items that ask participants about past mys-
tical experiences (if any). The Mysticism Scale has been
used in research on the psychology of religion (Spilka et
al. 2003) but has only previously been applied to drug
experiences by Griffiths and colleagues (2006), who used
it to assess psychedelic drug (psilocybin) experiences. The
Mysticism Scale yields a total score based on three dimen-
sions of mystical experience: noetic quality (e.g., “I have
never experienced anything to be divine,” reverse-scored);
introvertive mysticism (e.g., “I have never had an experi-
ence which I was unable to express adequately through lan-
guage,” reverse-scored); and extrovertive mysticism (e.g,
“I have had an experience in which I felt everything in the
world to be part of the same whole”). The items are rated
on a nine-point scale ranging from −4 = “this description
is extremely not true of my own experience or experiences”
through 0 = “I cannot decide” to +4 = “this description is
extremely true of my own experience or experiences.” The
psychometric properties of this scale have been reported to
be sound (Reinert & Steifler 1993).
Yes I think exposure to triggers are very important in validating progress, just like how real skill level is measured by real work produced. That’s why I don’t really have much of a problem with the methodology employed. Triggers work both ways though if you are open-minded about who’s teaching who. You can trigger me but I can’t trigger you is bit of hypocrisy though. I don’t really mind the one-sided dynamic. All I can say is good luck for the next decades and centuries.
It’s more about the applicability of your research in reality. The alignment problem has no issue of being discussed in the nonfictional context. That’s why most academic research is focused mostly on nonfiction stuff since the applicability of nonfiction in reality is less convoluted and very straightforward compared to fiction. I’ve never seen research on fiction being much applicable outside of liberal arts. Maybe I just lack exposure. The EA community is definitely something unique I’ve not seen even in the university settings. I wouldn’t mind if someone can link me to materials that explain the applicability of research and fiction.
Little o is just a tighter bound. I don’t know what you are referring to by your statement:
That’s “little ” notation; it’s like big notation, but for things which are small rather than things which are large.
I guess he went back into the cave because he thought he didn’t meditate enough because he wanted to hit that dude after he accidentally stepped on his foot? What was he like before he started meditating? How does meditation help him solve the problem of wanting to hit someone because they accidentally stepped on his foot?
That is exactly what I said in another comment about changing your state of mind and nothing else. Suggestions are outside of that change of state of mind. You seemed to be confused about mixing the effects of psychedelics and voodoo/woo/spiritual stuff. I know psychedelics being viewed as something related to spirituality is rather a popular rhetoric among both users and nonusers. The spirituality is what I mean by suggestion. You are suggesting something that has nothing to do with the mechanism of action of the drug.
I don’t think psychedelics really do much for most people. I think for those who say they have been fundamentally altered by them most likely have a construed notion/prior before getting into the whole spiel. It’s just a means to an end to them. Them thinking that psychedelics would change you fundamentally made them easier to give into the notion that they’ve fundamentally changed as a result of taking psychedelics rather than the psychedelics being part of the entire psychological journey they are going through, regardless of whether psychedelics were involved. Psychedelics are well known for its effect of being open to suggestions. I think that’s ultimately what happened. If you weren’t going to suggest to yourself in the first place or have someone else suggest to you, you wouldn’t have thought of the trip as something special.
spent years and years alone in a cave
A young boy standing in front of the yogi stepped back suddenly in fright—stomping right on the yogi’s bare foot. The yogi, angered and in pain, raised his walking staff to strike the youngster.
What did he do all those years? Seems a bit absurd to me.
The empathetic part probably comes from disconnecting oneself from personal human interactons that allow you to see people in a different light rather than how we see them when we interact with them. You are looking at the human society from the outside rather than how others affect your own interactions with them. It’s a form of detachment that allows you to stop being emotionally invested in your interactions and opinions on fellow human beings. When you aren’t emotionally invested, it’s not difficult to see people as mere animals with their own human conditions and tendencies. You are able to liken others to yourself whereas in normal social interactions or mindset we think of others as completely independent agents with their own autonomous agencies. If they win over a girl, that means you aren’t able to be with that girl. The guy is seen as an adversary who takes away your resource for happiness, the girl. Looking from the outside allows you to realize that that dude is just like you, looking for a girl being a source of happiness. That’s where the empathy comes from, realizing we are more or less the same and share more or less the same thoughts and going about our days in more or less the same ways.
When you aren’t personally involved in some drama, it’s a lot easier to see just how silly it is.
So much of this on this site, it’s incredible. Makes me wonder if people are consciously doing it. If they are, then why would they even join this cult in the first place? Personally I’ve observed that the people who easily join cults are rather very impressionable. Even my wife got duped by a couple of middle aged men. It’s a different type of intelligence and skill set than the stuff they employ at colleges and research institutions.