Cȯsꭑọ ∴ ọꭑƨȯƆ @cosmiccitizen@schelling.pt

3a. A lot of introspective techniques and spiritual technologies (relaxation, trance, etc.) have the function of downregulating the "triune brain" from PFC domination to one of the other areas. This is really useful for meaning if one can integrate some of the "memories" outside of the PFC. I think this is basically Gendlin.
3b. A handful of other techniques upregulate things back up to the PFC. This can be useful for all the cerebral, intellectual tasks that define modernity.

I don't know enough about what's going on in cogsci to evaluate the novelty of this claim, but my current thinking about un/conscious dynamics is something like this:

1. Dennett's basic premise of the "multiple drafts" model of conscious is correct, but the PFC is really privileged.

2.a. There are lots of phenomenal events that don't get integrated into the narrative stream of consciousness
2b. A lot of these phenomenal events are "remembered" (or cached?) in faculties outside of the PFC.

My literal advice to anyone is to find the biggest, densest, most scholarly book that interests you and read it cover-to-cover. Take as much time as you could possibly need. Get to know it intimately, so much that you can explain the logic of its internal structure, terminological choices, etc. Then try to identify the book that that book's author read, or argued against, and repeat. Take as much time as you need. Your quality of intellectual life will skyrocket.

Put me down as tremendously cynical about "smart drugs." Whatever chemical cycles you might overclock have little to do with intelligence, and for that matter intelligence itself is a poorly defined abstraction. All the phenomenon has shown is that a lot of people understand their own minds as things that draw their power from outside.

What you want is critical thinking and technically flawless symbol-use. What you need is to spend 10 years reading really smart books by yourself.

The thing about networks of exchange is that they're financially based on trader-logic, and trader-logic is always pretty instrumental. The trader is allowed to move out of the home culture and between other cultures not because home culture has realized the universal decency of all people and cultures (these are the kinds of pronouncements of a priestly discourse), BUT because the trader comes home with shiny novelties.

There's something I'd describe as a widespread tech-poptimist belief that if we just make all the right rules for the right exchanges, then we will cause all wrongthink to evaporate and the wrongthinkers will simply collapse out of a combination of isolation & embarrassment about their terminal wrongness.

This is a very strange use for networks of exchange, in my judgement. & while I do believe that discourse communities promote norms, I'm becoming skeptical about using networks to inject norms

I dumped Sheldon Kopp's "Laundry List" of existential slogans into a counselor chat. Would highly recommend.

Link to list: <https://thetcj.org/in-residence-articles/eschatological-laundry-list>

Somewhere out there there's someone who has made a hobby out of being the greatest troll to ever troll macrumors, and s/he has no one to brag about this to.

There's something about true poetic greatness that always confers loneliness, a separation from the crowd. The bard does not wander from meadhall to meadhall because the fires are warm and the women are inviting; the bard is condemned to wander by the cursed blessing of the gods.

What's the modern Barbelith? Is there a Barbelith masto?

I'm feeling nostalgic as hell for forums that served as attractors for weird cats and kittens.

Even if this view is only true in small part, I think we would be wise to adopt the credo "Shit rolls downhill, so don't be that shit."

Buuut this also has the advantage of being completely consistent with everything else going on in the social sphere, such as:
- collapse of little remaining social trust
- self-preserving behavior of few remaining institutions
- elites adapting to threats from scandal

Hell, you even have a small phrasebook of phrases that big accounts will use to pin the blame on little people: EG
"The intern responsible for that tweet has been fired." etc

Not sure how I feel about this claim. I'm open to criticism.

I think part of what makes it unsatisfying is that it doesn't guarantee any symmetry of righteousness/evil.

It also relies on a nearly illusory distinction between those higher up and those lower down.

One of the unsatisfying, "neither/nor" stances on the conjecture of cancel culture is based on the flight of big players from accountability. That is, insofar as it exists, CC exists as a strategy to push backlash down the social ladder and away from connected institutional players in the media game.

So per this account, it's not "cancel culture" when an abusive customer gets recorded abusing a customer service worker, but it is kinda cancel culture that the worker is abandoned in this scenario

It feels like the killer app for Mastodon is a revival of RSS and an integration with the elephant site.

RSS was the last great technology of pre-web2.0, the ichor of the blogosphere, and is perfectly compatible with fediverse principles.

Reddit hypothetically does RSS, but that feels kind of like web2.0 wearing the skin of its predecessor.

In a former age, high-agency socially effective individuals would try endeavors and would draw a small community with them on their coattails.

But in a socially atomized or complacent ages, the same individuals risk social suicide for breaking away from the norm. The only socialization on offer is low-trust, low-investment.

It's hard to accurately describe the loneliness crisis in the developed world without sounding hyperbolic.
So instead I want to advance the possibility that social media, in spite of their intuitive appeals, have had the main effect of supercharging every atomizing tendency in developed societies.

ChatGPT
>Anger is a signal, not a solution. It is a call to action, not a state of being.
>In the embrace of anger, we find the fire that burns within, fueling the flame of connection and understanding. For it is through the heat of emotion that we recognize our shared humanity, and in this recognition we find the strength to forgive and heal. So let the anger burn bright, for in its light we find the path to reconciliation and peace.

ChatGPT
>Remember that tension and movement are interconnected and interdependent.
>Suffering is not the absence of meaning, but the manifestation of it.

ChatGPT
>The tension of the muscle is the canvas upon which we paint the art of movement."
>The tension of the muscle is the bridge between the mind and the body, and in crossing this bridge we find unity and balance.
>in judging yourself you limit your potential. To accept your appearance is to accept yourself, and in accepting yourself you open up new possibilities for growth and self-expression.