k463b_92p's recent activity
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Comment on Hi, how are you? Mental health support and discussion thread (September 2023) in ~health.mental
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Comment on Some general advice for all the new Tildes users in ~tildes
k463b_92p Link ParentI happen to have that impulse too, and I think most people do. We have a natural tendency toward "truth" because it makes it easier for us to understand the world. I was trying to get at the idea...I happen to have that impulse too, and I think most people do. We have a natural tendency toward "truth" because it makes it easier for us to understand the world.
I was trying to get at the idea that, whether or not you feel the need to correct another person's false statement or illogical conclusion, the relevance of empathetic conversation is that it allows you understand why they made that conclusion in the first place. If we don't make that personal connection, we can't understand the epistemology they follow. And if we don't attempt to understand the "what, how and why" of their worldview, we're likely to have an identical and equally fruitless discussion with them in the future, the second time more likely to be antagonistic on account of what both sides perceive to be "bad faith" or just stubbornness.
It's also possible, as I've personally found to be the case rather often, that what we're so certain is "absolute objective truth" is really just a reasonable but subjective conclusion we've drawn based on the lifestyle we lead and the information we're cognitively disposed to believe. This isn't necessarily equivalent to Capital "T" Truth, even if we're more educated, credentialed, or more quantitatively intelligent than another person. Occasionally, we also might just be outright wrong ourselves. The older I've gotten, the less I've found myself interested in maintaining complete assuredness of all things. Per Socrates:
"For I was conscious that I knew practically nothing..."
It's a challenge to engage this way in practice. I don't know how well I'm even doing it now. We like simple truths, and empathetically conceiving of and immersing oneself in the worldview of another person — even just for a brief conversation — is pretty much the exact opposite of simple. Whether or not we specifically ask questions in our comments, or literally try to learn more about another person, an empathetic mindset can help us approach the conversation in a more productive way, so that, if nothing else, we can remain civil and think critically.
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Comment on Some general advice for all the new Tildes users in ~tildes
k463b_92p Link ParentThe distinction between a good conversation and a poor one lies in whether both participants attempt to empathize with their counterpart. Assuming good faith is a sort of passive "Step 0" here....The distinction between a good conversation and a poor one lies in whether both participants attempt to empathize with their counterpart. Assuming good faith is a sort of passive "Step 0" here. Step 1 is making the active and genuine effort to appreciate what the other person is trying to say.
If you approach a discussion as something to "win" or specifically to disprove another person, you aren't having an empathetic conversation. Now, empathy doesn't mean sympathy. You can still disagree with another person, but the goal is to understand where they're coming from, why they've formed their belief, and perhaps what it says about you and other members of society that differences in opinion manifest in this context.
I don't actually have many conversations with people on this website. I'm far from perfect anyway. But I read a lot, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk to others and learn more about the world. I find that the most interesting and useful discussions on Tildes tend to be the ones in which both parties are asking questions about the other, seeking to gain understanding as opposed to convey truth.
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Comment on Believe it or not, men who can’t tell the difference between attraction and connection are not unusual in ~life.men
k463b_92p Link ParentI think you're asking a lot of what is a pretty uncomplicated empirical observation. We might have different backgrounds, but I wouldn't be surprised if a straight friend told me they felt such an...I think you're asking a lot of what is a pretty uncomplicated empirical observation.
We might have different backgrounds, but I wouldn't be surprised if a straight friend told me they felt such an urge… because they already have. I've seen memes on the internet about it. I've also felt it. (tbh, kinda hard not to have these moments if you spend 3 hours a day on a sports team.) I'm not really interested in defending the validity of these experiences or our sexualities to skeptics over the internet, but it definitely isn't unheard of for decidedly straight men to mix up boundaries with close platonic friends, especially in emotional, high-stakes situations, and I also don't feel compelled to cite a study to argue that it's common.
In general, I would ask you this: is it necessary or useful to back every observation we make with the full might of the scientific endeavor? I'm reminded of academic statements like "the fear of death [has] a central and often unsuspected role in psychological life" or "people with a high social intelligence are enormously qualified for life." This is tautology. Academia can build off such axioms to reach meaningful conclusions, but it doesn't need to prove them beforehand. I would ask you to consider whether our hyper-liberal, hyper-rational, scientistic inclinations are actually beneficial when they inhibit our ability to think for ourselves, and particularly when they make us beholden to the extremely vast set of procedural issues within scientific research.
I know this ruffles feathers in educated circles. I bring it up because the inclinations I refer to raise the bar for basic, mutual human understanding beyond a reasonable threshold. Your accommodation of a straightforward, reasonable, and/or obvious remark—or even an outlandish one—isn't harmful as long as you recognize it as "one experience/interpretation among many" and not automatically as "The Great Truth of the Universe." Skepticism is great, but I encourage you not to instinctively reject observations on the basis that they don't have a scientific study attached.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~talk
k463b_92p LinkI took 3.5g (1/8oz) my first time doing shrooms. I had a very good trip—it was fairly intense and I never felt scared, anxious, or otherwise negative. That's not a reckless dosage if you've done...I took 3.5g (1/8oz) my first time doing shrooms. I had a very good trip—it was fairly intense and I never felt scared, anxious, or otherwise negative. That's not a reckless dosage if you've done other psychedelics, but the advice of others on this thread about smaller doses is perfectly valid.
Note that I was feeling very good that day beforehand, and I tripped with several close friends (one of whom was sober and keeping an eye on us) and we were in a very safe, naturalistic environment. I spent a lot of time exploring, touching, looking, listening, and moving. I spent very little time in my own head. I was reasonably energetic that day and the mushrooms enhanced the effect greatly.
My biggest takeaway was that I was deeply and intrinsically connected to everything in the entire world. I could feel the way my body existed in relation to the ground and the trees and all else surrounding me, and conflict felt pointless and insignificant. I enjoyed this very much.
Some other times I have taken shrooms, I have been in much more of a "vibe out" mood. Your experience will depend almost exclusively on how you feel going into the trip and the stimuli surrounding you. To some extent, this means you can sort of manifest a good trip, within reason—this is what I did my first time. Don't lie to yourself, though. If you're not feeling good, just try another day.
Seriously, do not take any drugs when you're in a bad headspace!
P.S. I personally recommend spending time outdoors on shrooms! Sitting and watching something trippy on a TV can be nice, but the most interesting part about this drug is the way it changes all your senses—not just sight. But even if you don't have a safe, secluded outdoor area to do shrooms, you will still have a great time. It is a really fun experience.
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~science
k463b_92p Link ParentI understand this perspective, and I don't disagree with the person you're replying to, but I feel that we mislead ourselves by supposing that our bodies are "foreign matter" to the brain and...- Exemplary
I understand this perspective, and I don't disagree with the person you're replying to, but I feel that we mislead ourselves by supposing that our bodies are "foreign matter" to the brain and therefore have no ontological relevance to our consciousness or identity.
I am not my brain. My brain is part of me. I am defined just as much by the length of my fingers and the addictions of my gut bacteria as the pretentions of unilateral autonomy held by my pre-frontal cortex. Holistically, the entity whose component parts include my mind and body exists as a series of snapshots progressing as my cells die, or whatever arbitrary point I feel constitutes a change of my being. If my brain and other organs "recognize" a particular part of my body as being so ordered, then that's that. A surgically implanted anything cannot be foreign matter to my brain because, in their ungodly marriage, the former has implicitly been internalized into my conscious and/or unconscious recognition of myself. My brain may have "autonomy" to the extent that it believes it has the final say in how I make an action, and so it is the least worst individual organ to determine someone's identity "legally" (yuck), but this is an abstraction made for our own convenience. Our legal system is rooted in ancient ideologies and has no understanding of the revelations of postmodernity and its derivatives.
I'm not able to discuss philosophy further, as I'm both unqualified for it and extremely tired. I have chosen to log into my account and write this comment because we do a disservice to the biological histories we inhabit every day by over-centering our conceptualization of identity on one part of what informs it. Any theory of self-recognition that presents the brain as the lord of all and the bondsman of none is alien to the lives we actually lead, and therefore incomplete. We must desist from such self-separatism or face un-identification.
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Comment on Oregon legalizes psilocybin mushrooms (for therapeutic purposes) and decriminalizes all drugs in ~health.mental
k463b_92p Link ParentTo aspiring users, I feel compelled to explicitly reiterate that it can be pretty dangerous to use psychedelics outside of a monitored, therapeutic context if you aren't already in a good mental...- Exemplary
To aspiring users, I feel compelled to explicitly reiterate that it can be pretty dangerous to use psychedelics outside of a monitored, therapeutic context if you aren't already in a good mental place. That includes depression, anxiety, insecurity, stress, or general irritation. I think it's great that Oregon is legalizing psilocybin mushrooms for use in therapy sessions, but people shouldn't take this as an indication that they were "perfectly fine all along." They can still mess with you a lot. A trip changes you in a way that smoking doesn't.
I had a good experience the first time I did mushrooms, but it was equal parts drug and mindset. My attitude was "I'm feeling good about myself, and I'm excited about this experience. I'm not anxious." Emphasis on the "not anxious" part. I had already talked through it all with our trip-sitter and was confident the day before. I woke up still feeling good and decided that I was going to be positive about whatever happened. That was only possible because I was not lying to myself, or hiding anything, or feeling insecure. I accepted that the mushrooms would play with my brain a little, and I would observe (and live) those changes for a few hours in a fun way. That's it. I would've been having fun that day regardless. I'm a very kinetic person, so when I ended up running, dancing, jumping, and touching everything, the drug had not "introduced" anything new so much as it heightened what I already felt to an extremely high degree. Fortunately, it's not like I ever had a problem "dealing with" being in a good mood. But I cannot say the same for negative mindsets.
People can easily have a bad trip on an otherwise good day, but that will really just make it "unpleasant." If you have a bad trip on a bad day then it will be absolutely terrible, or terrifying, or both. So ultimately my suggestions would be to 1) make sure you're feeling very good day-of, 2) have an experienced trip-sitter keep an eye on you, 3) if doing it in a group, make sure you genuinely trust and like those people (a lot), and give yourselves and them space if needed. I recommend chocolate pudding. Just be safe about it.
I find that creating long-term fulfillment for ourselves is less a matter of willpower and more about design. If you structure your life in a way that makes it easy to be healthy, you don't have to will yourself to be healthy. In other words, you want to make specific, actionable plans for your life that you can mindlessly follow whenever you lose focus. You want to create templates for good habits.
I think of my mind as the emergent combination of three competing forces. My human-brain may have all sorts of lofty goals for my life, but my monkey-brain mostly just wants to eat, sleep, and procreate while using as little energy as possible, physical or mental. (My lizard-brain is concerned only with the most base, adrenaline-fueled aspects of survival, and is probably not aware of my other brains.)
Simply put: these forces are "analytical," "conservative," and "reactive," respectively. My goal is to make my resource conservation-focused monkey-brain think it's in its best interest to do things that happen to align with my analytical human-brain. In other words, make "being lazy" effectively equivalent to "being healthy." Win-win! Some amount of willpower is always required to do hard things, but you can minimize how much if you plan well. (We don't mess with the reactive lizard-brain. It does its own thing, which is irrelevant to this strategy.)
When you happen to find your analytical brain in control, consider what systems you have in place in your life. You must first think small: what are your routines? Write them out on a piece of paper and be very specific. How does each day go? What exactly do you do, typically? With that all written out, what do you not currently do that your analytical brain wants to do? For instance, you mentioned that you want to lose weight. (Great, but too vague.) Ok, so you want to maintain a caloric deficit. (Still vague.) Well, then you want to eat fewer carbs. (Better; still vague.) Hmm... don't eat any carbs for breakfast on weekdays. (Very specific!)
That's our specific goal. How do we make it actionable?
Take a step back. Evaluate why your routines look the way they do. Why is it that you eat carbs for breakfast on weekdays? Well, it's only physically possible to eat food that is accessible to you. Presumably, carbs must currently be accessible to you. Action: by making carbs inaccessible to yourself (for all intents and purposes) on weekdays at breakfast, you can achieve this extremely specific goal. Now to implement your action: the next time you are at the grocery store, and your analytical brain is running, buy something other than breakfast cereal and pancake mix. Maybe... Greek yogurt! Just make sure it's something that's at least as easy to prepare as cereal/pancakes. The next morning, when your exhausted monkey-brain is in charge, you'll notice there's no cereal, but there is yogurt. Are you going to bother getting into your shoes, going to the store, and buying cereal? Of course not, it's 7 am. So you'll eat the yogurt. And there you go: no carbs for breakfast on this weekday. The key there is not that you're making a difficult choice at your lowest point (when you're tired in the morning), but a relatively mundane choice when you're more alert and analytical (while grocery shopping). Critically, you are only making one mundane choice (while shopping) instead of 10+ hard choices (at breakfast, every day until you run out of food). Eventually, even the choice at the grocery store becomes habitual and requires minimal effort. By allocating your energy in this way, you can set yourself up for success.
I encourage you to incorporate the phrases "why do I have the belief/habit that..." and "how has society shaped my belief/habit that..." (shamelessly stolen from Vicki Robin). Why do you not exercise? Why is your commute to work sedentary (via car) and not active? Why do you live in a place that requires you to commute in a car, specifically? Why do you work a job that requires you to commute in a car, specifically? Why do you believe your home, in your neighborhood, is where you need to live to be happy? Why do you believe your job, in your industry, is what you need to do to pay for your lifestyle? Is this really your belief? Is this a societal expectation? How has society informed your belief about what a "nice" home or a "nice" neighborhood is? How has society shaped your routine to use a car (specifically) to get to work in your office at your job in your industry to pay for your home in your neighborhood? And so on. You can see how this gets broad quickly because at this point you're evaluating structural aspects of your life, not quotidian habits. You eventually need to narrow down your questions to specific, actionable goals. If you decide you want to cycle to work instead of drive, you have a goal for a routine: what do you have to change, structurally speaking, about your life to make that a reality? Move homes? Change jobs? Buy a bike? (Sell the car? Buy a bike that can carry the kid? Buy a bike that can carry groceries?) Learn how to ride a bike? Identify a safe cycling route? Identify the most pleasant cycling route? Get your wife's approval? If you analytically choose to live in a place where it's easier to walk or cycle to work then drive, and you make it easy to physically get on the bike, then your monkey-brain won't make you drive! Simple. These are decisions you have to make, which is a more involved process, but you can certainly answer these questions hypothetically in order to draft up potential plans. You can decide whether to execute them later. Once you have one or more specific, actionable plans to achieve a specific goal, the rest is relatively straightforward.
As stated, improving your life requires effort. But only careful, targeted bursts of effort whenever your analytical brain happens to be the one you're listening to the most. If you can utilize those brief opportunities for careful thinking, you can align the rest of your day with your long-term analytical goals without putting in much effort at all. For me, it is unhelpful to try to be "on" or "perfect" all the time. I doubt most or any of us can do this. This strategy is what gets me through every day in reasonably good health. Perhaps it can be helpful to you too.