Here is a list of all my public writings and videos (from before February 2025).
If you want to do a dialogue with me, but I didn’t check your name, just send me a message instead. Ask for what you want!
lsusr
Karma: 18,330
Note: Richard_Kennaway’s quote differs from my post because I miscounted. My original post read “That brings the total to a minimum of 5, but it’s probably at least 7+.” I changed it to “That brings the total to a minimum of 4, but it’s probably at least 6+.” That’s because the woman at Less Online who merely had Stream Entry doesn’t yet count as “thoroughly-awakened”.
Legibility
If you’d like to delete a post, click the three dots next to the karma number, and then click “Move to Draft”. Otherwise, the post will remain visible to everyone.
While this is true, I applaud Oxidize for learning the fast way. Most users of this site do only the “lurk for quite a bit”, and never attempt to write great top-level posts. Ultimately, there is no harm done by crashing and burning a few times—as long as you’re nice about it (which Oxidize has been).
I recommend you find a post you like that was well received and copy its format.
I agree with datawitch that your post “felt like a politician’s speech”. Your post contains vague grandiose claims, but is lacking on specific factual claims. While that kind of writing does occasionally succeed on this website if you pander hard enough, I recommend against it. Good writing on this website tends to be specific, concrete and objective.
I notice you use creative writing styles. While there is value in that, I don’t think that’s a good way for you, personally, to begin writing on this website. I recommend you learn to write in a more detached, factual style first, before embellishing it in that way. That’s because poetic writing can too easily hide unclear thinking.
• What type of post do you like reading? • Would it be alright if I asked for an example so that I could read it?
Just look at the karma number next to each post. Ignore any post with less than 50 karma. Pay special attention to any post with more than 100 karma. That will show you more-or-less-objectively what people on this website like reading. If you want to read the best of the best, check out curated.
But do you think was there something else I could’ve done so that you would have been more interested in reading the linked doc?
In this context, there are two good uses of links:
Linking to a definition of a term, so that people who don’t know the term can find it and people who do know the term don’t have to read the definition.
Linking to supplemental information for people that really liked your post and who want to read more.
I recommend you do not link to a doc expecting people to read it. People will read a linked document only after they trust you a lot. The best source of trust is “What I just read was really worthwhile”. If the first thing you write is “go read this other doc”, then you have failed to establish the prerequisite trust.
When can we start reserving spacetime slots to give talks?
If you’re interested in an example of how to write a well-received post that deviates from a established narrative (in this case, “primordial soup”), you may enjoy my book review of The Vital Question.
In case you’re more interested in the philosophical dialogue angle, here’s an example of a well-received dialogue.. This one in particular goes against the dogma of this website. (It’s anti-Bayesian.)
Does this make sense? Could a fundamental principle – alongside the genetic principle – have existed from the very beginning of life, one that later became embodied in the brain?
There’s no such thing as a “fundamental principle”. Principles, by definition, are not fundamental. There are fundamental laws, but those are physical laws, not biological laws. Moreover, “the genetic principle” isn’t a standard concept in biology, so it’s unclear to me what you’re referring to here.
“The #1 career of people on this website is Computers.”
“What’s #2?”
“More computers.”
I didn’t like The Great Gatsby (the book) either when I was forced to read it, not great at all, do not recommend.
When I was in high school, we were required to read The Great Gatsby and The Scarlet Letter.
The Great Gatsby is about wasting your life chasing status because you molded yourself into exactly what other people treat as high status.
The Scarlet Letter was about being persecuted for violating social norms.
Then the class voted about which one they liked better. I preferred[1] The Scarlet Letter. My (normal) class overwhelming preferred The Great Gatsby.
- ↩︎
This does not imply that I liked The Scarlet Letter.
I love the title “Trojan Sky” and the word “screensnake”.
Panksepp was battling a behaviorist establishment that believed animals did not have feelings.
The history of psychology is as ideological as the history of economics. After Freud, which barely qualifies as science, the reactionary behaviorist establishment effectively suppressed anything which conflicted with their ideology, including common sense. Affective Neuroscience—which should be uncontroverial science—must instead explain basic concepts of the philosophy of science. The book plays so defensive against behaviorist ideology I got bored and never got deep into the book.
The behaviorists made improvements to the field of psychology, but they also dealt damage that echoes to this day. I met someone a few years ago who worked in a (presumably behaviorist) laboratory who insisted that literally all behavior was produced by reinforcement learning.
Lex Luthor or Lex Fridman?
Once I had several positive things to say to a very good CEO. When I was done, he just waited. He was so used to receiving compliment sandwiches that he just assumed my compliment would be followed by a criticism.
I think we’re in agreement that dense 4-story buildings tend to be usually more efficient than skyscrapers. I’m mostly referring to the cities like Paris which are shorter than free market economics would build—and especially cities (and even more, suburbs) of the USA where land use restrictions are even more restrictive.
Another option is to go full Victorian, with coattails and a top hat.
you can just do things
I’m glad we’re on the same page. :)
Personal moderation decision: I’m cutting off the Trump discussion here. Any further comments will be removed, on the grounds that their political mindkillery effects trump their relevance to this discussion.
This policy applies only to this post and does not generalize to my other posts.
This is indeed a hard problem, hence why this stuff is so illegible. First I’ll define how I use these terms.
Meditation is sitting quietly and stabilizing your mind. (Technically-speaking, some people consider zazen meditation-adjacent and therefore technically not meditation. This distinction is not relevant to this post.)
Jhanas are altered states of consciousness characterized by stability of attention. There are other altered states of consciousness relevant to Awakening, such as mushin.
Stream Entry (aka Awakening) is the first big checkpoint on the meditative path. It’s when a large chunk of your suffering drops away permanently because of a fundamental shifting in how your consciousness works. Under Zen dogma this happens suddenly, but I believe it can happen gradually.
Arahant has a traditional Therevada definition that I don’t use. In this post, I use Daniel Ingram’s Revised Fourth Path mode. I feel the term is unwieldy due to the conflicting definitions. I used it for ease of readability, so that I didn’t have to write “person with the fruit of the meditative path” over and over again.
Enlightenment refers to someone who is perfectly realized. It doesn’t really exist in our physical universe, but it’s useful to aspire to, the way a Carnot Engine or “a perfectly beautiful painting” points in a useful direction. (Note: I do sometimes use “enlightenment” in other ways—just not in this post.)
I don’t know what you mean by QRI. I don’t think you’re referring to the Qualia Research Institute.
The first thing to understand is that altered states of consciousness like jhanas are instrumental. I mean, they’re useful and pleasant, but they’re somewhat orthogonal to altered traits. The Powers don’t count as insight either. They’re just a side-effect.
What matters are stages of insight. Whether these are discrete “stages” or a continuous process is not important. Sometimes these things happen suddenly, which makes them obvious to you; other times they sneak up on you gradually, over a period of time. That’s why Awakened people sometimes don’t even know they’re Awakened. (And that’s not even counting the rare people getting Awakened just randomly outside of a mystic context.)
Statistically-speaking, if you haven’t done 100+[1] hours of meditation and/or had an obvious transformative experience that permanently altered your conscious perception of reality, then you’re probably neurotypical, in this respect.
It’s much easier to discern your own state of meditative insight than someone else’s. Here are a few examples of signs you can use. All of them are difficult to communicate, since they’re so non-normative. Do not take this list as authoritative.
85% or more of your suffering falls away suddenly. It’s been a year since then and it still hasn’t come back. (This can happen more than once, with compounding effects.)
You no longer feel that your “self” is in a privileged position against the other stuff in your consciousness.
You accidentally touch a hot stove and don’t feel any pain. It’s been months since your sensory inputs have congealed into pain.
Your conscious perception of time and space break down such that they are directly perceived as mental constructs rather than immutable aspects of external reality.
Except now we have a problem, because the moment I list things like this, people who read the list will (mis?)report these experiences, even if they haven’t had them. This happened to one of my teachers. Kriyas somehow entered the pop culture and then his students began reporting them. Which is stupid because kriyas are useful only as a metric of concentrative progress, and this wrecked the utility of kriyas as a metric of concentrative progress.
This is even harder than discerning your own level of insight. The most important thing is alignment of incentives—namely, to be in a community where nobody is incentivized to misreport. At my zendo, nobody ever talks about their own level of attainment except in one-on-one private dokusan with the head teacher. (You can talk about your own hinderances.) This isn’t because there’s a hard rule against it; it’s just counterproductive, like eating junk food at Fat Camp.
But just because it’s counterproductive to state your own level of attainment doesn’t mean it’s not useful to get a rough idea other peoples’ level of attainment. I consider Zuiko an arahant because of how she talks about (or, more accurately, doesn’t talk about) her health problems. Zuiko’s hands are failing due to arthritis, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. She pays more attention to my new scooter helmet.
There’s a autobiography Reports from the Zen Wars: The Impossible Rigor of a Questioning Life by Steve Antinoff. The author notices that a specific Zen Master is highly awakened and wants to become a disciple so he can be the same way. The book is a tragedy, because the author looks externally (to the Zen Master) for teaching, instead of to his own conscious experience.
I often encounter claims that it can thousands of hours of meditation to hit Stream Entry. For me, it took me significantly less than one thousand hours.