She told me that a child needs to hear and truly understand only three phrases from their father as they grow up. ‘I love you.’ ‘I will help.’ And, ‘I don’t know.’
Clipping
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books > The Strength of the Few (James Islington)
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clippings > Vasocomputation
[https://psychotechnology.substack.com/p/meditation-as-wakeful-relaxation]
Vasocomputation’s basic thesis is “vascular clenches stabilize neural patterns” — patterns of muscle tension will set certain aspects of phenomenology as constants and others as variables. I.e. every stance has a certain internal feeling that defines the stance and as long as you hold this feeling, you “hold frame” — if you lose the feeling (i.e. if this core pattern of stabilizing tension shifts), you break frame.
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clippings > Post-modernism as conflict theory for PVP games in life
[https://qualiaadvocate.substack.com/p/postmodernism-for-stem-types-a-clear]
Epistemology scales with interest alignment. In high-trust zones (family, startups), Mistake Theory dominates because you share a fate - bad maps hurt everyone. In mixed zones (corporate departments), you use Strategic Emphasis - spinning facts without breaking the system. In zero-sum zones (politics, war), you shift to Conflict Theory, where helping an opponent see reality is a strategic error.
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clippings > To know is to die
[https://knowingless.com/2019/08/17/you-will-forget/]
But upon realizing TO KNOW IS TO DIE, that to achieve completion was suicide (which I say with the greatest love and awe possible), I noticed that a rejection formed, and the movement towards Looking flipped to a movement away. I watched the decision happen to me, as if TO KNOW IS TO DIE by its nature contained a renunciation of that truth. If to know is to die, then it was in the very nature of life to look away, for that which does not look away, does not exist. The understanding was the rejection. I’d been swirling around it like a galaxy in my search this entire time, and the moment I finally laid eyes upon the white hot core, I fell into and through its event horizon. I was reversed, I was undone. I was completely, finally, mercifully, finished.
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clippings > The skill to psychedelic action
[https://psychotechnology.substack.com/p/neural-annealing-directing-psychedelic]
Psychedelics ramp up global uncertainty in the mind, subverting habitual patterns of looking at reality, so cultivate tolerance for uncertainty. The skill is to stay with it, without freaking out and without latching to the first new story that might explain what’s going on.
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clippings > Determinism vs compatibilism
[https://extelligence.substack.com/p/emotionally-unsatisfying-panpsychism]
A determinist derps, “Will you accept that if we rewound time and replayed things exactly you couldn’t have behaved differently?”
A compatabilist knows, “Merely by existing I have already constrained the number of possible universes to more closely align with my personal desires.”
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clippings > Harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy
[https://usefulfictions.substack.com/p/there-are-nine-wolves-inside-of-you]
You won’t see me trying to argue anyone out of astrology, because I’m all about finding the “harmless untruths … that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy,” in Kurt Vonnegut’s words — hence the name of the blog itself.
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clippings > The only defence against AI is to not write people-pleasing bullshit
[https://smalldarklight.substack.com/p/you-me-and-the-ai-genie]
The only defence against something that can write like the average of everything that’s ever been written is to be relentlessly unaverage. To write more like yourself than you’ve ever written before. To create art that’s coherent, directed, original, self-expressive, daring, unabashedly emotive, unremittingly honest, and absolutely never a bunch of people-pleasing bullshit.
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clippings > It's jumping the gun to try to rejoin absolute consciousness
[https://samkriss.substack.com/p/numb-at-burning-man]
I am also a vague panpsychist. I think our individual consciousnesses are just the brief permutations of a pervasive mental substance, that all of reality is in some sense charged with mentation, that when we die our individuality is extinguished but the stuff of our being rejoins that ocean of thought, and that one perfectly reasonable name for this mental substance would be God. I really do think we are all one person and that person is God. I just also believe that if God has chosen to divide himself into billions of subjective beings he must have had some reason for doing so, and it’s kinda jumping the gun to try to rejoin the absolute consciousness. Plenty of time for that when we’re dead.
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books > The Last Wish (Andrzej Sapkowski)
“Don’t you think”—he smiled—“that my lack of faith makes such a trance pointless?” “No, I don’t. And do you know why?” “No.” Nenneke leaned over and looked him in the eyes with a strange smile on her pale lips. “Because it would be the first proof I’ve ever heard of that a lack of faith has any kind of power at all.”