The Psychology Thread, I Guess...

[goDel]

you mean like this?

[zlemflolia]

I feel like many individuals are trapped in a mental loop of perceived social expectations and perceived "adult" behavior, which in reality is completely arbitrary.  "Video games are for kids, if you're mature like me you'll have a drink and watch TV to relax" when in reality many video games are probably far more mentally stimulating than TV, and alcohol is literally poison.  This extends into so many areas of life that it's hard to begin describing them all.  It plays into Terence McKenna's mantra of "culture is not your friend" and psychedelics immediately break you out of this loop and show you what the fuck is going on.  But it's hard to act on it

 

Even if someone knows you're right deep down inside they can often not accept it because it would mean accepting that they've wasted their lives.  Or maybe this is all nonsense and they legitimately don't see it, or it's all wrong.  I don't know

Either way culture is amazingly useful in a utilitarian way, the transmission of information and the creation of more cohesive social groups through expectations which may or may not be oppressive.  But it blocks the individual's freedom

 

These inherited neuroses may be more subtle too in that they may prevent us from doing things we used to enjoy while more childish.  I know that back when I was a kid I'd feel really embarrassed around my parents about being viewed as childish, and they reinforced this (mainly my dad) by talking down subtly on my choice of TV shows.  I was a kid in like third grade, watching fucking Spongebob, and my mom would say "You still watch cartoons?" yeah.  Sorry.  This carried into general embarrassment elsewhere, constantly wondering whether completely normal things are kiddish and avoiding them.  "Na I don't want to go do that, it's childish, rather stay at home and do nothing like my parents always do"

Anyway getting too personal in the rant now so I'll stop lol.  But this is pervasive, this affects everyone to some extent.  The ironic thing is that people who say "It didn't affect me, you're just weak" are perpetuating it themselves

 

There are these cultural neuroses which some people feel the need to be macho and ignore the significance of, and by doing so they let them continue to run wild.  Obvious examples are homophobia where people say "I don't care" because they don't want to be viewed as "one of the people who cares" because they view that negatively.  A self fulfilling prophecy of transmission, even if they don't personally mind it that much.  Even if when they really think about it, they know there's nothing wrong with it.  They want something to be wrong with it to validate their religion and stuff

 

Anyway yeah

[zlemflolia]

It's all a big social game, a competition of words.  Everyone's words have meaning.  Everyone, in their own mind, thinks that the words they are saying are worth saying.  Lingual insecurity runs rampant - with mere language you can present a completely different picture of who you are as an individual, and everyone does it all the time for advantages and to protect themselves.  

 

As you said in an earlier post limpy, 100% frankness is really hard to come by.  There are so many, so so so many unspoken truths that exist in the world.  Opinions that people hold of each other.  Opinions that people think others hold of them that may or may not be true.  And they go unspoken due to a lack of sincerity and the perception that everyone else has to play this game too.  Empathogens make this shit pour out without being scared of the consequences, if anyone has done them you know what I mean.  Alcohol does it too.  

 

It's like war or unjust religious executions - the lack of that moment of empathogenic clarity.  This fuels the absurd nature of our existence.  Events like the WW2 Christmas Truce, these are moments of clarity in extreme measures.  It would be optimal to live in clarity all the time, but we are incapable.  I read some story about some war being ended at some point, and some German guy got up on a mound and started talking with extreme conviction and frustration, everyone even if they didn't speak German clapped and cried along with him even though they didn't know wtf he was saying - they still knew.  I don't know lol am just rambling now

 

Would it be possible for humans, through execution of extreme empathy, to cooperate accurately with others even in a Tower of Babel scenario where everyone speaks a different personal language?  There has to be a way, because we all speak a different language.  None of us understands our language exactly the same

 

We all have our own connotations for words based on our past experiences, it's all a bunch of personal laguages using the same vocabulary.  SO many social, relationship, worldwide issues seem to be based primarily on language issues.  Primarily on connotations of words

 

People say "X is Y" with conviction and mean it, and they are right in what they say in that their understanding of Y is wrong in their head.  But they are wrong in the minds of others who lack that same definition of Y.  And instead of empathy going on and people saying "Yes I understand, but", people are all ignorant and ignore that individual's personal language.  These last few paragraphs are all a big stretch but oh well just rambling

[zlemflolia]

Also it seems that there are so many things people often "know" but they don't understand.  They use the fact in their lives but they lack the understanding of how to generate that fact, which is in itself the most important thing, and so they improperly implement it into their lives and social and political views.  

 

They come to their political views on a view-by-view basis instead of taking a catch-all empirical and rational viewpoint of the world and going out from there

[LimpyLoo]

you mean like this?

My idea(s) about epigenetics? Or were you replying to Zeff?

 

I've come to like Dennet(t?) and some of his ideas are awesome (e.g. 'greedy reductionism' is one of the most useful phrases ever coined), but I seem to part ways with him on stuff like this.

 

In fact, I seem to part ways with everyone I've ever heard talk about epigenetics. Luckily I don't mind being out on a limb, as the stakes are pretty low for generating heretical hypotheses.

(I mean, save for the occasional burning at the stake, social/career exile, death by hemlock, Cassandra Syndrome madness, involuntary hospitalization and lobotomy, John Nash-esque obsession + stress = schizophrenic psychosis + legendary social awkwardness, getting kidnapped by orthodox-Jewish numerologists like the dude from Pi, reputation defilement, spousal abandonment, strange looks from my cat, maybe throw in a pinch of pitchforks and lanterns, castration? was that a thing at some point...)

 

Actually fuck that I'm keeping my weird ideas to myself lol.

[keanu reeves]

before i fall off into oblivion and stop posting here i want to make it really clear. i hate your posts because you position yourself as a contemporary of famous intellectuals and scientists and academics. you use the word "we" and the word "us" when talking about theory as if you are part of a collective of great thinkers. just look at this last post. you act like if you espouse your ideas on an internet messageboard about electronic music you are somehow on a continuum with persecuted thinkers going back to socrates. like you've gifted these posts upon us. if you honestly can't see how terrible that is, from the perspective of someone who is socially adjusted and self aware and has a sense of humor, all the self actualizing and analysis in the world won't save you. 

 

ta ta

[chenGOD]

 

 

I am genuinely trying to offer this community (what I think is) the most important information civilization/culture has yet generated

 

If anyone wants to look for excuses to prod/punish me for that, then I think the burden-of-proof is on you as to why I deserve mockery for (e.g.) formatting choices

Can you honestly not see the gap here?

I talked almost exclusively about sarcasm/condescension tit-for-tat on pp 11-13 of this thread

(In fact, if you wanna read all the way through, you can watch in real time as I fumble through different approaches to the stream of criticisms I received...I actually learned quite a lot about what approaches fail and why)

 

 

 

But TL;DR = I've decided nuclear sarcasm is poison, it's never a good counter-move ever ever ever, it just creates infinite 'defect/defect', and the solution is always sincerity jujitsu, and so that's where I'm at now

 

I am sorry/embarassed I was so sarcastic in our last exchange, I'm primed for paranoid false positives so you probably weren't being sarcastic to me, and I feel bad for throwing poison your way, and lemme know if there's anything I can do to un-poison things

 

Cheers

I didn't get any sarcasm from you in our last exchange.

But seriously can you not see the gap between "I'm trying to spread ideas." And "why should I have to format for you?"

 

I don't think you deserve to be mocked for your formatting, but you deserve chiding for your stubbornness in refusing to change it, especially when you proclaim to want to spread ideas.

I've said it before - writing for others with your stated intent (outside of academia) requires the use of simple words and syntax, as little jargon as possible, and standard formatting.

[zlemflolia]

before i fall off into oblivion and stop posting here i want to make it really clear. i hate your posts because you position yourself as a contemporary of famous intellectuals and scientists and academics. you use the word "we" and the word "us" when talking about theory as if you are part of a collective of great thinkers. just look at this last post. you act like if you espouse your ideas on an internet messageboard about electronic music you are somehow on a continuum with persecuted thinkers going back to socrates. like you've gifted these posts upon us. if you honestly can't see how terrible that is, from the perspective of someone who is socially adjusted and self aware and has a sense of humor, all the self actualizing and analysis in the world won't save you. 

 

ta ta

 

I'm not picking this up at all from his posts.  Do you have examples?

 

I think you're making it all too personal.  Try to become a disembodied brain for the purposes of discussion, it helps

[LimpyLoo]

before i fall off into oblivion and stop posting here i want to make it really clear. i hate your posts because you position yourself as a contemporary of famous intellectuals and scientists and academics. you use the word "we" and the word "us" when talking about theory as if you are part of a collective of great thinkers. just look at this last post. you act like if you espouse your ideas on an internet messageboard about electronic music you are somehow on a continuum with persecuted thinkers going back to socrates. like you've gifted these posts upon us. if you honestly can't see how terrible that is, from the perspective of someone who is socially adjusted and self aware and has a sense of humor, all the self actualizing and analysis in the world won't save you.

 

ta ta

 

With 'take you down a peg and shut you up for good' sniping like this: is it any wonder why people are slow to share big ideas?

 

Why are you so angry?

(It's not a fixed part of you, btw. I'm deeply horribly sorry to have suggested it was, that was not cool of me whatsoever, as that's how this poison perpetuates...)

You can slip through the keyhole anytime you like, dude, and all you gotta do is unclench your fist and let go of all the stuff that doesn't fit through that keyhole...

...No more anxiety, no more shame about trivial shit, no more tense shoulders, no more panic about the '10-thousand things', no more anger/resentment at all the people from your past who wronged you,

 

No more replaying old memories over and over, trying to change them, twisting with all your might but they just won't budge...

 

...it all just slides off you like dead skin if only you can budge.

 

And not even much, and not all at once, but more like scrubbing it off daily with a loofa and a hose and one of those old-timey barrels with suspenders on it.

 

Don't you have big ideas, dreams, ambitions, obsessions...?

Don't we wanna offer spaces for people to swing for the fences (and perhaps fail miserably without fear of judgement/punishment?)

Do you agree 100% with all of your heroes?

 

Peace,

-brandon

[LimpyLoo]

This...this is the best I am capable of

I offer it humbly to you all, my friends, my fellow beautiful souls

And I hope it helps at least one of you climb out

 

 

If I can be embarrassingly, brutally candid for a moment:

 

When I was about 18 I started having a meltdown.

The timing was pretty bad: I had plans, I had a really good college lined up, I had a girlfriend I was gonna spend my life with, I had friends all over the place, I had parents who were really proud of me, I had a cool job,

I even had a '92 (iirc) navy blue Grand Am with a cassette deck and one of those cassette-to-CD player converters,

 

And then something happened that I didn't understand and almost didn't even notice, but next thing I knew: all of it was gone. Every last item on the above list.

(even the Grand Am died and my fusion-heavy tape collection melted from sitting in the sun and fucking 'fused' seamlessly into the probably-plastic interior of that fucking shite car...)

 

And so instead of starting a family and having a career I was passionate about and just generally thriving in all the ways people seem to like to do,

Well instead I found myself involuntary admitted into a 'hospital' with the quasi-Orwellian name 'Spring Harbor'.

Well, it turns out places called 'Spring Harbor' contain the scariest things I've ever seen in my entire life. Have you ever seen someone exhibit the 'Thorazine shuffle'? (Yes, it's so common it's got a catchy nickname to distance everyone from the true horror of it.)

 

14 years later a drop of the Water of Life accidentally fell on my tongue

And I caught a glimpse of sunlight through the fog

And then the sunlight showed me I was in a fucking Hellraiser film

(One of the later ones, of course)

So everyone around me was in fucking agony

And no wonder we wanna end this whole game

 

 

And so dude I'm trying, I'm really trying to climb *fully* out of the fucking Underworld, forever, mate. Please I'm trying to pull you *out* and you're trying to pull me down back in...but I'm still tuning myself so I'm still making mistakes so Please work with me here, give me some slack, please give me some room to fail. Please. I swear on my life I am trying to pull myself up, my girlfriend, my emotionally-hobbled fucking parents, my neighbors, all my aunts and uncles that didn't commit suicide, every fucking person I encounter in this world is wounded and I swear I am trying Keanu I am trying to resemble a human being who has not being failing my entire life, I swear to all the mystical shit mentioned in fucking Mahavishnu Orchestra song titles, yes I know I'm a fucking idiot, I already fucking know that, let's change the subject fucking please mate, please.

 

 

Fuck, that sounds exactly like a speech from Grey's Anatomy. Sorry.

(Slightly-underrated show, btw)

 

So if anyone is interested, here's everything I've ever learned about psychological self-repair, condescended into a (forgive me) only-slightly-pretentious mythological narrative, starring a badass (if fickle) Egyptian chick named Ma'at:

 

Someday, you might wake up and realize you have been pulled into the Underworld.

If and when this happens, you won't be able to see what pulled you under. And you won't have time to investigate. Why? Because you're now in the fucking Underworld, that's why.

Other people will not enjoy being around you. You will not enjoy being around you.

And if other people realize you are in the Underworld before you do, most likely they will not tell you.

Why? Because that would be the most awkward conversation either of you have ever had. And also they have no idea how to help you. Not a clue. And neither will ~95% of the psychiatrists (yes sir, believe it) and other clinicians you are sent to.*

 

But look, there *is* a way out of the Underworld. You gotta beat a boss, though.

And it's a weird kind of boss: it's a hot Egyptian ballcrusher type of chick, but she doesn't want to fight you or hurt you or anything; rather, she wants to weigh your soul against an ostrich feather. (yes it's one of those 'eat your vegetables' sorta NES games where you gotta think and solve stupid puzzles)

 

Okay well, how the fuck do I make my soul lighter than an ostrich feather?

(Well lucky for you, LimpyLoo knows because he found out the hard way!)

 

YOU NEED TO STARE AT THE THINGS THAT FRIGHTEN YOU MOST, AND YOU NEED TO KEEP YOUR GAZE FIXED, AND YOU NEED TO POKE AT THOSE THINGS AND TAKE THEM APART AND SHAKE THEM NEXT TO YOUR EAR [sorry but I needed you to pay attention to this, neurotic person reading this]

 

...And you can't do it all at once, because it's horrifying, and it's frighteningly lonely, and because it fucking hurts your entire body...and it's so hard to figure out that virtually nobody figures it out...it took me like 14 years to figure it out, and no my 4 psychiatrists didn't tell me this shit, they gave me meds so my behavior didn't cause problems anymore and I guess that's mental health...?

 

And it's all just so awful that everyday people commit suicide rather than live through it another day (yes, twice)

 

So you will get this weird information about the things that horrify you, and now what?

 

Now you have to use that information to re-tune your expectations of yourself, others, your environment...and you need to learn to re-tune those expectations on a dime, when anything changes (for more information see: Zen Buddhism, Daoism, Wu Wei, etc...because yes this is a fucking 90-headed multi-discipline dragon we're dealing with, and why does nobody both a) know this cross-discipline information, and b) thereby share it with everyone?

Because Wittgenstein and the Tower of Fucking Babel, that's why. Nobody fucking knows what I'm telling you because it's a lifelong study to understand it, and it spans disciplines that otherwise have nothing to do with each other

I didn't pick my study topics out of a hat

So give me some room to fail here, jeez.

 

So expectations:

Yeah so it's like when someone is being really annoying, and you wanna punch them, and hurt them and strangle them, and then they leave and someone leans over and says 'it's so sad that that person has stage-4 terminal cancer and they're gonna die in 6 months months and so they can't control their voice or their muscles anymore'

What changed when you learned about the cancer? You immediately tweaked your expectations of that person

So you need to start training yourself to do that like every 5 minutes, anytime you encounter an obstacle...become the Bruce Lee of dancing with obstacles

 

 

And once you've done that, and you think you're ready, Ma'at will be waiting

And if you're lucky, and you've (literally and figuratively) 'eaten your vegetables'

She will open the hatch door, and now you can slamdance with the Sun

 

 

 

 

(*Why? Because the information I'm trying to share with you usually requires battling a dragon for years, and learning through careful study and observation how to outwit it and catch it in a net, and chop it into pieces, and either build a shield with the pieces, or you eat them and gain its powers, all depending of course on which metaphor you think sounds cooler.)

 

Here's a joke from Annie Hall, probably butchered or fused with other jokes but close enough:

 

Alvie: I think I'm starting to finally make some progress with my shrink

Annie: Oh yeah? How long you been seeing this shrink?

Alvie: 12 years

 

Yeah well, hardy-fucking-harr, turns out that's exactly how it goes, which is why everyone's on fucking meds (and rising!) but nobody gets better.

 

 

 

 

p.s. I can't look at this post anymore

I humbly ask that if the formatting is wrong

If a mod would please fix it for me

I'll happily give you money

Just please I need to go out for a walk and come back tomorrow

[Ivan Ooze]

i was with you, especially with that molten cassette collection in the car meltdown, i'v been there but you lost me when you said grey's anatomy was underrated

 

 

also lol

[LimpyLoo]

i was with you, especially with that molten cassette collection in the car meltdown, i'v been there but you lost me when you said grey's anatomy was underrated

 

 

also lol

(I need to revert to lazy ee cummings mode because I'm exhausted I'm sorry long day I can't...)

 

(I think it was) Birds of Fire that 'became one' with my gross-ass Lucky Strike-unfiltered-scented dashboard

The Sun read some Magma lyrics and was inspired to do some fucking alchemical juju on my remaining worldly possessions

 

Seriously though...

 

 

 

 

I might be a ridiculous person, I don't know...probably

But when I go out into the world, nobody seems to like making eye contact with each other

Everyone basically acts like a shifty ex-con

Kindness and sincerity are suspect

(See: altruistic offers nearly always get punished in Ultimatum games...because the recipients always assume the altruist is playing some Machiavellian long-con...because look at the world and how it twists everyone)

 

And (for once) I know what is happening here

And I know from a few different angles, in a few different languages

 

But it turns out if one day you decide you love the world

And you wanna start feeding it useful information

It's nearly impossible...for like 70 completely-unrelated reasons

 

I tried to offer my dad some advice...both abstract and step-by-step pragmatic

And his evasion strategy was basically to convince me I was probably just as miserable as he was, so who am I to say anything

 

So, now I have to figure out what language he speaks

He seems to speak "I know everything and hands off my vulnerability or else"

Well, I think I have to talk to him in late 30's Mississippi Blues lyrics

That's some granular-level Babel/'inner dictionary' shit right there jeez

Good *luck* talking to anyone/everyone else without some ungodly Frankenstein-looking language toolkit

 

I tried to present an idea to an intra-disciplinary community a few months back

I tried soooo fucking hard to 'read the crowd' and figure out their preferred micro-jargon

I swear to Vishnu I presented (by request) modal logic 'system k' truth tree versions of multiple details of my argument

Well so I got those right

But I couldn't tell if they wanted to talk in Bayesian or 'self-locating principle' or what

Yeah I was ruthlessly punished for every little linguistic mis-guess

My intelligence was questioned at every opportunity

And yeah this is the Babel game...nobody would meet me halfway

 

Now, to know what's going wrong there

You need to have *already* read some linguistic philosophy

But if you say 'Wittgenstein' too often, that's a paddlin'

(see that reference right there? That is me pointing to an entry in your 'inner dictionary' to give you a meaning-signal)

But...if you talk about linguistic philosophy *too* much

You will be called pretentious and arrogant

If your concision/precision balance is offkilter, or your formatting choices, well you better believe that's a fucking paddlin'!

 

So welcome to Modern Neurosis

with your host: a fucking paddlin' hanging over your head at every fucking turn

So now you gotta study Zen and Taoism so you can withstand the paddlin'

(But if you talk about *those* too much...that's also a paddlin')

And if you turn to the paddle for some counter-paddlin'

You will be engaged in a long drawn-out multi-generational paddle-oriented Cold War

 

And you better hope your parents weren't into random sadistic paddlin'

Because you will expect every touch on the shoulder to be accompanied by a paddlin'

You will act like an ex-con

And people will not like that lol

You will become lonely

You might get sent to a clinical psychologist

And they will talk about what medication you need

Because they are under time/economic constraints, and so they don't have endless hours to offer you psychotherapy

 

And maybe someday you bump into an internet weirdo who talks about psychotherapy and Wittgenstein and Babel and dragons

And best to assume he just needs a fuckin' paddlin' to correct his weird fucking verbal tics

And if he's not flawless in every way, make sure everyone lines up like the soap-in-pillowcase scene in Full Metal Jacket

break out the paddles, boys, cause' the fucking weirdo snuck out of his hole again

(This is all social psychology 101...yes I know Chen, thank you for finding the first opportunity for a-paddlin')

 

So TL;DR =

-Avoid psychiatrists mostly (listen to late Coltrane instead)

-Hear out heterodoxic ideas (I got a cool Epigenetics idea but I'm scared as fuck to share it anywhere for some reason)

-Treat others as well as you can get away with

-Paddles are evil

 

 

 

 

[zlemflolia]

 

i was with you, especially with that molten cassette collection in the car meltdown, i'v been there but you lost me when you said grey's anatomy was underrated

 

 

also lol

(I need to revert to lazy ee cummings mode because I'm exhausted I'm sorry long day I can't...)

 

(I think it was) Birds of Fire that 'became one' with my gross-ass Lucky Strike-unfiltered-scented dashboard

The Sun read some Magma lyrics and was inspired to do some fucking alchemical juju on my remaining worldly possessions

 

Seriously though...

 

 

 

 

I might be a ridiculous person, I don't know...probably

But when I go out into the world, nobody seems to like making eye contact with each other

Everyone basically acts like a shifty ex-con

Kindness and sincerity are suspect

(See: altruistic offers nearly always get punished in Ultimatum games...because the recipients always assume the altruist is playing some Machiavellian long-con...because look at the world and how it twists everyone)

 

And (for once) I know what is happening here

And I know from a few different angles, in a few different languages

 

But it turns out if one day you decide you love the world

And you wanna start feeding it useful information

It's nearly impossible...for like 70 completely-unrelated reasons

 

I tried to offer my dad some advice...both abstract and step-by-step pragmatic

And his evasion strategy was basically to convince me I was probably just as miserable as he was, so who am I to say anything

 

So, now I have to figure out what language he speaks

He seems to speak "I know everything and hands off my vulnerability or else"

Well, I think I have to talk to him in late 30's Mississippi Blues lyrics

That's some granular-level Babel/'inner dictionary' shit right there jeez

Good *luck* talking to anyone/everyone else without some ungodly Frankenstein-looking language toolkit

 

I tried to present an idea to an intra-disciplinary community a few months back

I tried soooo fucking hard to 'read the crowd' and figure out their preferred micro-jargon

I swear to Vishnu I presented (by request) modal logic 'system k' truth tree versions of multiple details of my argument

Well so I got those right

But I couldn't tell if they wanted to talk in Bayesian or 'self-locating principle' or what

Yeah I was ruthlessly punished for every little linguistic mis-guess

My intelligence was questioned at every opportunity

And yeah this is the Babel game...nobody would meet me halfway

 

Now, to know what's going wrong there

You need to have *already* read some linguistic philosophy

But if you say 'Wittgenstein' too often, that's a paddlin'

(see that reference right there? That is me pointing to an entry in your 'inner dictionary' to give you a meaning-signal)

But...if you talk about linguistic philosophy *too* much

You will be called pretentious and arrogant

If your concision/precision balance is offkilter, or your formatting choices, well you better believe that's a fucking paddlin'!

 

So welcome to Modern Neurosis

with your host: a fucking paddlin' hanging over your head at every fucking turn

So now you gotta study Zen and Taoism so you can withstand the paddlin'

(But if you talk about *those* too much...that's also a paddlin')

And if you turn to the paddle for some counter-paddlin'

You will be engaged in a long drawn-out multi-generational paddlin'

 

And you better hope your parents weren't into random sadistic paddlin'

Because you will expect every touch on the shoulder to be accompanied by a paddlin'

You will act like an ex-con

And people will not like that lol

You will become lonely

You might get sent to a clinical psychologist

And they will talk about what medication you need

Because they are under time/economic constraints, and so they don't have endless hours to offer you psychotherapy

 

And maybe someday you bump into an internet weirdo who talks about psychotherapy and Wittgenstein and Babel and dragons

And best to assume he just needs a fuckin' paddlin' to correct his weird fucking verbal tics

And if he's not flawless in every way, make sure everyone lines up like the soap-in-pillowcase scene in Full Metal Jacket

break out the paddles, boys, cause' the fucking weirdo snuck out of his hole again

(This is all social psychology 101...yes I know Chen, thank you for finding the first opportunity for a-paddlin')

 

So TL;DR =

-Avoid psychiatrists mostly (listen to late Coltrane instead)

-Hear out heterodoxic ideas (I got a cool Epigenetics idea but I'm scared as fuck to share it anywhere for some reason)

-Treat others as well as you can get away with

-Paddles are evil

 

 

 

 

 

Just biked in to say I'm with you on this post 100% though I don't have any experience with psychiatry and medication etc.  But I can imagine it (I probably actually can't but I can imagine imagining it, lol)

 

But it turns out if one day you decide you love the world

And you wanna start feeding it useful information

It's nearly impossible...for like 70 completely-unrelated reasons

 

I tried to offer my dad some advice...both abstract and step-by-step pragmatic

And his evasion strategy was basically to convince me I was probably just as miserable as he was, so who am I to say anything

 

It's all because of lingual competition and imprinted connotations from culture mixed with widespread insecurities and the rejection of the admittance of insecurities.  This doesn't affect some people because they don't care enough to prod.  

 

Abstract lingual prisoners' dilemmas.  Etc.  If you go far enough to say it all you are exposing yourself and someone will swoop in, and others will view your being swooped in upon as a sign of argumentative weakness and therefore a lack of value in the meaning of what you are expressing.

[LimpyLoo]

 

Just biked in to say I'm with you on this post 100% though I don't have any experience with psychiatry and medication etc. But I can imagine it (I probably actually can't but I can imagine imagining it, lol)

/quote]

 

Since I'm running on all-nighter fumes (I'll be fine)

I'm gonna just puke out information I think is crucial to thrive in this (or any possible) World

And if it turns out tomorrow it's all just jumbled letters...

 

[aka 'snow crash'...which (btw) looks like first-line-of-Neuromancer TV static because that's how stress/'uncorrected prediction error' is coded into your hippocampus/episodic memory...it is *literally* (as per John O'Keefe) aliasing, and stress levels are identical (r=1) to bitrate modulation playing out along the corridors of your memory/past, which is why you have to think about painful memories to heal yourself, because your 'thermodynamic system' of a brain obeys the 'free energy principle' (like all matter-constrained systems subject to entropy are) and so it wants you making good quick accurate abstract(!) predictions about your environment so you are (e.g.) quick in climbing trees (for millions of years) to avoid becoming lunch, and this is (probably, at least in part) why you laugh/cry on roller coasters but also why our language to describe emotion

 

 

...then hey nobody got hurt and let's just pretend it never happened:

 

So this is what stress-induced mental illness feels like

Followed by 14-15 years of a rotating cast of medications

(In metaphor/simile, as usual, because neither your amygdala nor sensorimotor 'extended mind' really care about the literal concrete details, really, because it all feels exactly the same):

 

You are outside playing with your dog on the lawn

(and you *expect* to continue doing so without incident...turns out that's THE crucial piece of information in this little story, even though it remains hidden if nobody points it out, but keep it in mind because that crucial piece of information is gonna determine the quality of the rest of your life, IF you can remember it, and I promise I will lay out in grueling detail exactly WHY...if you'll hear me and the whole "predictive coding" crew out...)

Bammo! A vehicle swerves onto your lawn and crushes your dog to death

You are shocked and frozen (because massive fucking prediction error in your hippocampus) so you can't run after and see the make or model or license plate of the car, or really anything useful at all

 

We all know roughly what happens next:

Your thermodynamic brain needs to compensate for this 'as-yet-uncorrected prediction error' (and the meter's running so get fixing!)

So it has a few (rather demented) options:

Denial (bye 'uncorrected prediction error'! See you whenever this doomed-to-fail strategy fails!)

Anger (I bet I can smash something to fix this, which was true for like hundreds of millions of years so hey worth a try!)

(Etc etc you can fill in the blank on the list...I'm happy to flesh it out tomorrow but I'm just trying to quickly get to..)

 

DEPRESSION!

 

Prediction errors necessarily occur within the context of *motivational states*

Because your brain is trying to 'predict' where the things you *want* (and *don't want*) are gonna be 5 seconds/minutes/days/months/years from now

 

So how about draining out all the motivations/goals/hopes/dreams from your (mostly) hypothalamus?

Yes, that will remove almost all (uncorrected) prediction error

('Uncorrected' being the across-time bit that is hidden in the static phrase 'prediction error' btw,..as per Frege and Kripke and non-equilibrium thermodynamics and Chaos Theory, which yes they're all basically the same thing just different renormalization groups/coordinates...and that's actually useful to know that things ACT the same way because your hippocampus loves abstract information because again efficient predictions and mental health are really the same thing)

 

Okay so now you're in the Underworld...

Try to only take drugs or meds to facilitate defeating Ma'at

Don't take them to further numb pain/prediction error

Emotion will point you the fuck out of there

Don't dull it whatever you do

It's an ancestral voice that talks in riddles

But if you learn how to listen to it it will give you great advice

Try to humble yourself and take some lickings

So you can climb out and start chasing all your silly hopes and dreams...

And maybe even help others climb out too

Because it turns out they're all fucking awesome if you look past the pain that's plaguing them

They never wanted it and they don't know how to make it go away

So please try not to punish them

Please try to help them, all of them

[LimpyLoo]

Oh dude vampires....tell me if this sounds like anything in real life:

 

They can only enter your doorway if you invite them in

And if you *do* and then later you change your mind...

Well now you've gotta become a highly-committed vampire expert if you wanna drive a stake through its heart and stop it

(So careful with that first doorway choice, geez)

 

 

So that could be everything from like:

Bad choices in general and their oversized consequences, diabetes, smoking, 'temptation', heroin, friends who only surprise you in bad ways, your (jungian) shadow, Jungian dragons***, etc...

 

I mean the whole abstract beauty of myths (and why during REM sleep your brain tries to boil what you experience down into abstract archetypal information that applies universally because efficient predicting = not dying and all that) is because they already try to do that for us, whether we consciously understand this process or not

 

***the reason we need to slay every dragon we encounter instead of feeding them, is so that later down the line we don't end up in one of their bellies (aka the Underworld)

[dingformung]

Okay so now you're in the Underworld...

Try to only take drugs or meds to facilitate defeating Ma'at

Don't take them to further numb pain/prediction error

Emotion will point you the fuck out of there

Don't dull it whatever you do

It's an ancestral voice that talks in riddles

But if you learn how to listen to it it will give you great advice

Try to humble yourself and take some lickings

So you can climb out and start chasing all your silly hopes and dreams...

And maybe even help others climb out too

Because it turns out they're all fucking awesome if you look past the pain that's plaguing them

They never wanted it and they don't know how to make it go away

So please try not to punish them

Please try to help them, all of them

That part's beautiful

A little sentimental but beautiful

[LimpyLoo]

And yeah Hoggy, I agree about Peterson. And man alive do I agree...

 

 

I was obsessed with his lectures for quite a long time. I watched (I think) every one up through the end of 2016, many times over and over, trying to understand everything he said.

And I am eternally grateful for what I learned, because it pulled me out.

But I think he kinda turned into a moralistic demagogue for some of the unsavory sorts that paid him attention. Like, I know 'kek' and 'Pepe' aren't these evil-on-their-own words/concepts, but the people who tend to talk in that shorthand are not people I'd ever want to encourage if I had the choice.

But political idea wars create strange bedfellows. And so he did a fucking *slew* of appearances on Alt-Right-y media, and I very very quickly became skeezed out by what *that* turned him into.

You dislike nazis so much, Jordan? Well you missed like fucking 30 massive opportunities to speak directly to the neo-nazi element of the Alt-Right. But instead let's all just agree with each other how bad political correctness is, over and over, not a peep about the thousands of skinhead-types listening to you and saying 'right on, dude, right on.'

(Remember: he wasn't doing 3-minute CNN spots, he was doing like 1-2 hour podcast everywhere, over and over...)

 

So yeah he broke my heart, actually. I was fucking devastated. I had seen him as an agent of good, as a role model, and I was literally a fucking pathetic junkie who was desperate for a role model to fashion myself after someone who wasn't just a fellow fuck-up (like virtually everyone you ever meet in the opiate underworld).

 

So yeah I can't stand his voice anymore. I think he's a self-righteous prick. If I saw him in person for whatever reason, I might even say (referencing his Christian 'inner dictionary'): "My brother, I think you lost the faith somewhere along the way."

 

 

 

[LimpyLoo]

Sorry Darre I pulled an all-nighter so my balance-fu was definitely off by 5-6am

In the well-rested light of day I'm sure I'd phrase things a little better

I will take that note, though

Cheers

[LimpyLoo]

So fwiw here's what I've learned about trying to offer Suffering-dissolving information to others, so if you ever find yourself surrounded by also-wounded people who could use some good information...

 

 

 

 

What kind of manner-of-speech will people listen to and actually wanna *hear* the meaning of?

As it turns out: who-the-hell knows, because until you gather some 'theory of mind' information about who you're talking, it is a shot in the dark

 

So going into things blind, the Perfect Speaker might need to be a duct-taped-together Frankenstein ('s monster) of the following Good Speakers:

 

Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Khalil Gibran, Louis CK, Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, Wallace Stevens, R.D. Laing, Bruce Lee, Basho, Robert Plant, Bob Dylan, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, Terrence McKenna, Wittgenstein and Kripke* (Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein is often called "Kripkenstein," so try to take it easy on linguistic philosophers, because they may be boring but sometimes they make jokes), John and Alice Coltrane, Leonard Cohen, Steven Wright, Mitch Hedburg, (e.g.) Chen, ZoeB and peace 7...and all of this Wittgenstein might call a good diet of examples, and we need good example-diets or else we fucking fail in every conceivable way

 

***Kripke is not a fun lecturer to watch, btw

The god-mode Autistic Savantism that helped him revolutionize modal logic when he was a teenager...turns out to not help you much as a public speaker

But (of course) nobody was rude enough to point this out to him, and so most of his communicating ideas during his career has *not* been through writing, but instead through...lectures.

Or...he might *know* this (he is, after all, Saul motherfucking Kripke) and I don't know exactly what that would mean lol

He's stone-cold? He's a stone-cold autistic sadist? Maybe someone DID tell him this early on, and he decided to punish everyone for the rest of his career lol

 

Either way...fucking boss lol.

 

 

 

[dingformung]

Because English is not my first language I miss out the nuances anyway so the phrasing was perfect for me

[LimpyLoo]

Dude, I can only speak English

I went to Spain once and quickly learned that my "Spanish" was not a language that Spanish people spoke *or* understood: word-wise, pronunciation-wise, usage-wise, turn-of-phrase-wise, decorum-wise, autism-wise...

 

So dude I'm *always* impressed by English-as-second-language ninjas

That is a promise lol

[LimpyLoo]

Y'all wanna know ((IMO) the *main* reason that human beings don't all appear to be Will Hunting-esque geniuses?

 

Babel-stein (patent pending)

 

 

 

 

Imagine an inarticulate Will Hunting

Well, he is not gonna look genius-y

(And if genius depends merely on his awesome education

Then that is fucking good news for humanity

Because then there's nothing rare about genius

But please bear with me, I will get to all that)

 

(Always remember this really-fucking-fun-fact from the IQ studies literature:

If you take two random samples of people

And give them IQ tests

They will do average...on average

(Meaning: both samples will resemble the general population, IQ-wise)

 

Now, get another two random sample-groups

Put them in the same situation

But incentive one of the sample-groups...

 

...okay, let's talk about crazy heterodoxical hypothesizing for two seconds

Scientism is fucking real...it's a Snow Crash-esque virus...because people tend to be stubborn...because humans are (currently) "all too human"

And studies consistently show that even *understanding* cognitive biases does not only *not* protect against them, but (get this) it makes people *more* arrogant, and *more* prone to them, because they think they are immune to cognitive biases lol)

 

...so is IQ fixed? Is "genius" a special rare thing?

Why don't you go find out for yourself so I don't sound like a fucking lunatic and get punished for it lol

 

But now, what if Humanity optimized our diets

Lowered our stress (stress is the *main* language that epigenetics speaks, btw

And cognition modulates stress

And good information modulates cognition

Therefor good information modulates fucking epigenetics)

 

Well...what might THAT world look like

Let's start shooting for THAT

Because that sounds like fucking Paradise, m9!

 

TL;DR = be optimistic about Humanity, pretty please

 

 

 

[LimpyLoo]

So here's an (/thread) TL;DR:

 

 

 

If you are on this forum, reading this right now

You are a way-too-fucking-young-to-be-cynical genius

Sitting idly at the start of your genius career-of-choice

Now...pick a subject you fucking love

Remove your neurotic self-doubt go-cart-governor

(Because the people who run the go-cart track don't know more than you

They merely think they do...because snow crash/Babel-stein/scientism)

 

Yeah yeah we didn't all start at fucking 9 years old like Kripke

But I promise you had way more fun and maybe even touched a boobie or two

Who the fuck cares...you are you now

And this is all true right now

 

So fix your diet so that oxygen reaches your toes and your frontal lobe

And become a fucking zen prediction-error-corrector

This is the bit that Neil Stephenson didn't quite get to

Because he didn't have ~10 years to sit around learning it

(Because human life span....allegedly...

p.s. Riddle me this: Why does stress look/act exactly like aging?

Ask Barack Obama's entire fucking body about stress and aging)

 

Which is why you should be a polymath/alchemist/chaos theory fucking weirdo

And if someone calls you a weirdo and tries to punish you for your weirdness

You know *exactly* what is happening there

Do not engage in counter-paddlin'...it is the enemy, here

Offer that person your weirdo psychotherapy knowledge

But you gotta present it right, and be the Perfect Speaker so they might listen

 

And you can't just send them some inspirational copy-pasta

The copy-pasta hasta reference their *private language/inner dictionary*

Or else that's a paddlin'

If they don't get your references

They are not dumb

Do not paddle them

 

(1/2)

 

 

 

 

[LimpyLoo]

 

 

 

And I promise: *none* of these ideas are *my* ideas

It's just cross-discipline alchemy

You gotta smash it all together to get something useful

And then gather folks around a campfire ("Babel")

(And don't feed them fucking Ritalin if they won't sit still)

So you can shoot this shit into their brain

Because everyone is your would-be friend

We're all just one big tribe that got scattered

Go reassemble Babel and let's shoot for Ideal World

And see how that goes first, before writing off the whole Human Project.

 

(That's my set, you've been a great crowd, thanks for coming out tonight

Please drive home safely and responsibly, you gnostic alchemist-genius you)

 

(2/2)

 

/thread

 

(Okay, where's that porn parodies thread again...)

 

 

 

 

[LimpyLoo]

(Forgive me just one Coda, please...)

 

Some "men" "here"

They know the full extent of

Your distress

They kneel and pray and say...

 

 

 

 

..."long may it last"...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=fQvy2uu2BV0

 

(Please: hear this occasional-fellow-genius out just this once

He's got a good grasp on language, and was also "taught" in English public schools in the 60's/70's--the very ones Roger Waters likes to sing about--so he's met some of the "men" "here")