09bjb

The sarcastic question that popped into my head was, OK, then what are the preconditions for becoming open to being persuaded? How do people develop a higher degree of openness? Then I thought...maybe if you're not being bombarded with opinions that are aggressively trying to convince you of something, you'll explore the world in a more open way, looking constantly for the next informational morsel that will evolve your mental schema of the world.

There seems to be something about modern art specifically where collectors value something more highly when it's palpably inane--the $58M for Jeff Koons' balloon dog springs to mind. It puts more focus on the fact that the collector not only had that much money, but could throw it away on something visibly and obviously "worthless" to almost anyone else.

I think a lot of the attraction to NFTs is this "flex"--they're totally arbitrary and the only thing "original" about them is that someone, somewhere on a blockchain minted one (rather than the artist themselves creating only one original, for example).

What are you referring to? That Intuit killed the product? I use Mint and don't particularly like it but am not yet aware of data abuses or breaches.

Yes and...crucially, assets are 25% more expensive to buy. I.e. if assets are things that are "bought by everyone" and not just by the 1% or .0001%, then the dollar is worth 20% less for that purpose.

I would love to have this conversation with my dentist but don't have much data to back it up at the moment. Do you have any good sources?

> A materialistic interpretation may be that spirituality is nothing but a personal physical experience.

"This very place the Lotus paradise, This very body the Buddha."

> However, a non-materialistic interpretation could be that the robot is considered to be an extension of another person that created it.

See "dependent origination" in Buddhist theology or, less officially, "a level of interconnected that you just can't shake."

Thanks for your anecdote. Just came here to say that I'm enjoying similar benefits in the relationship with myself, so to speak. I go strictly by the book (the book being "Trust, Surrender, Receive" in this case) with exact dosages, a trusted and sober friend/attendant, and the intention to learn and grow from the experience. It's helped a ton with behavioral patterns that I needed to leave behind, a victim mindset that turned out to be the sole cause of my depression, and has really helped turn my existential curiosity into a source of fulfillment rather than panic.

YMMV as well, but +1 to the comments here wondering how this medicine can be illegal for therapeutic use.

Two caveats: always test your stuff (DanceSafe sells test kits), and remember that the drug is just some extra help/horsepower behind whatever therapy you do and the intention to treat yourself right.

I don't entirely disagree with you, but if we're comparing to SSRIs, anything beyond one day can be considered "sustained." The fact that there are lasting changes beyond the immediate pharmacological effects seems significant to me.

> Before the advent of the pharmacological revolution, it was widely understood that brain activity depends on both chemical and electrical signals. The subsequent dominance of pharmacology almost obliterated interest in the electrophysiology of the brain for several decates.

From The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., in a section about "Applied Neuroscience" as it pertains to resolving trauma. It seems that the wave properties of the brain have been under-valued since psychopharmacology really took off in the 70s.

Just popping in to say...that sounds hard, brother (or sister). I feel you and keep going. This time too shall pass, and keep investing in the things you know are important even if they feel for now like they're not working.

It's true; this yin-yang of "What if there's a better way?" / "Don't tell me what to do" is inseparable in America, and is at the root of so much of what makes it both great and terrible.

> The workers are well represented by a strong union, have good healthcare and reasonable wages.

My spouse and sister are both schoolteachers. Sister's situation: laid off from a private school where enrollment will drop significantly this year. Spouse's situation: works for a well-funded school in one of the most populous states in the U.S., where there is no strong union, the pay is below the poverty line after mandatory deductions, and the healthcare is so bad (no out-of-network benefits and in-network only applies within the county, basically) that most people have to expand their view of what "health insurance coverage" is in order to understand it. A number of the teachers in their network are considering teach 5 kids in a private daycare group (working 30 hours a week) instead of teaching 30+ kids working 50 hours a week under very constrained public school conditions. These are anecdotes, of course, but what we're seeing from over here is that teachers don't feel safe reopening schools, and aren't overly committed to their benefits since they're not particularly well taken care of by the standards of the average American worker. Just a different two cents.

I've been through some very similar stuff. It was two years after "I" was blown to pieces before I had really integrated these strong pangs of anxiety, memories that I was nothing at all and that ultimately reality is terrifyingly absurd. It's been a long process of learning that these pangs are important learning experiences, that they are fuel for compassion for others, that curiosity and awareness transform them into something else... etc. etc. down the rabbithole of self-care for the unwilling mystic.

If you're interested in what I did with all that since then, I'd be happy to chat more and share what I've learned, where I'm at, and where I'm headed. Seconded on the cup of virtual coffee, /u/artsyca, although of course I'm perfectly happy not to crash y'all's party.

Seconded.

> It's like there is this thirst for disaster or some global drama everywhere

People like to pretend like the world is causing their internal state, that their mood is an inevitable product of the environment they're in. I feel catastrophic, disastrous, and look at all the evidence that the world is headed for a cliff! True, we're embedded in our world, but a peaceful person doesn't spend as much time focusing on Eschatology.

Life is confirmation bias. Numbers can help, I suppose.

> There is a philosophical conundrum at the root of all this: morality requires we maintain a safety net at the bottom that catches everyone—the alternative is simply inhumane—but we also need an aspirational target at the top, so as to inspire us to excellence, creativity and accomplishment. In other words, we need worth to come for free, and we also need it to be acquirable. And no philosopher—not Kant, not Aristotle, not Nietzsche, not I—has yet figured out how to construct a moral theory that allows us to say both of those things.

* When your worth is already infinite, you are free to aspire to whatever accomplishment you choose, knowing that it'll be the same in the end whether you get there or not.

* When your worth does not change when it is compared to another's "excellence, creativity, and accomplishment" at some superior "top", you don't have a moral conundrum (or an inferiority complex).

* The "conundrum" becomes non-sensical when you can celebrate the accomplishments of others with the same enthusiasm as your own.

* Worth is not "acquirable": it is something you always have but have to discover. Hoping that comparative excellence, creative output, and worldly accomplishment will provide it for you will simply cost you time.

So I would argue that the real game here is widening your sense of identification to include all players of the game. And once you're there, maybe you'll have a lighthearted, arbitrary aspiration to see that that point of view is spread...

Who wants to play the love game?

Haha, well, when it starts with "oppressing racial minorities, especially via voter suppression through felony disenfranchisement" ...just follow the data ;)

Nonsense. The number of potential marijuana users that would stand to benefit vastly outnumbers the number of potential users who have a psychotic break in their future that could be accelerated by marijuana or another psychotropic drug. Which, yes, is an acknowledged risk of many of these substances.

"Those" have admitted it publicly too:

https://qz.com/645990/nixon-advisor-we-created-the-war-on-dr...

No, your Portugal-model belief isn't that "out there." In my (subjective) opinion, once you do your homework on the issue you come away assuming that the continued scheduling of drugs with low addictive potential and high potential for therapeutic use is due to:

1. The healthcare and pharmaceutical profits at stake if people needed less care and fewer prescription pharmaceuticals

2. Cultural momentum excluding Alcohol from being considered a drug (LOL) and approving of drugs that support the protestant work ethic and existing labor system (caffeine, nicotine, and prescription amphetamines to stay alert on the job and alcohol to wind down in the evening), plus the cultural momentum of billions of dollars and decades spent on a pointless and damaging "War on Drugs"

3. The threat that psychedelics in particular pose to existing authority structures: high self-respect, beliefs that each human is as worthy as the next, and the ability to imagine less authoritarian systems are all threatening to the existing system. Tim Leary wasn't wrong when he said that (users) "won't fight your wars, won't join your corporations"

~~~~~

    There are five different schedules of controlled substances, numbered I–V. The CSA describes the different schedules based on three factors:

    Potential for abuse: How likely is this drug to be abused?
    Accepted medical use: Is this drug used as a treatment in the United States?
    Safety and potential for addiction: Is this drug safe? How likely is this drug to cause addiction? What kinds of addiction?

You might also check out Kentucky Ayahuasca from Vice Media.

Well said...thank you.

Unfortunately there is no straightforward way to do this, unless you're willing to travel abroad where Ayahuasca/Psilocybin Mushrooms/5-MeO are legal and do your trip there. My recommendation would be to read How to Change Your Mind and The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, join your local psychedelic club (meetup.com maybe), and ask around. The better informed you are, the more easily you'll be able to trust your gut and know you've found someone you can trust. If in any doubt, back out. Stateside there don't seem to be very many nefarious actors, but substances are quite illegal.

If you can afford it, these 5-MeO retreats are probably a slam dunk, although 5-MeO is not for the faint of heart. Check out the psychedelic toad - hamilton's pharmacopeia for more on that.

All you really need, though, is a high-dose mushroom session with eyeshades and music, supervised by someone's that's done it before whom you trust. Their sense of attention and compassion are more important than extensive experience using them. They're just there to hold the space. Again, see James Fadiman's book for the how-to.

+1: similar experience and same book recommendation.

I've had one high-dose psychedelic session in each of the last three years and while the experiences themselves were sometimes difficult, the positive changes are hard to overstate. They seem mild at first, but the unshakable sense of self-worth, of purpose, and of belonging in the universe have become such strong foundations for all the positivity that I build above them that at this point I don't know how much of my beautiful life to attribute to my luck in getting into psychedelics in the first place.*

* ...in the right way, of course. The drugs themselves are a neutral technology like any other, and must be used in the right way in order to be helpful rather than harmful or merely novel.

Yes. I've done a lot of reading on the subject trying to explain and begin to understand how the incredibly positive changes I've experienced come about...and "reverse PTSD" seems remarkably close. A guided, safe psychedelic session is similar in that it's a one-time, extremely powerful event that causes a lasting change in the brain--except in this case it's positive and intentional* whereas PTSD is negative and wasn't sought out.

* There seems to be a large degree of choice in which changes one wants to take away from the experience but this is a highly subjective, personal conclusion.

Reversing the 2010 Citizens United decision would be a good start. Campaign finance reform (the flavor espoused by Bernie Sanders, perhaps) would be another great step. Unfortunately the recent history in this realm is one of dismantling the apparatuses that kept the exchange rate of money to political influence high. Crony, corrupt, corporate-subsidy capitalism rules, and politics is its servant.

Or with Afghanistan the first time around, or Iran, or South Vietnam, or Cuba, or Nicaragua, or...

Welcome to retail. Companies recognize that the best way to get a lead is to advertise the lowest base price out there, and the best way to make money is to have the most leads and then use every tactic in the book to extract revenue from them (close the deal, and then fees, upgrades, upcharges, rate increases, etc.)

n=2 now. My wife works a 1.0 FTE that the district rates as 1.6 to 1.8 FTE (seven classes per day). She works 50h / week at the absolute minimum.