Best Of
Re: The AI tsunami
In fact, “Capital in the Age of AI” poses interesting questions. If anyone will be able to hire a cloud AI agent to do genius-level work for them for just a few dollars an hour, this will have a huge influence on the production of anything mental. Instead of paying thousands of dollars to hire actual labour, you can get nearly anything you want done for cheap.
Jeroen
Waking Up and Growing Up
I liked this one.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-deal-with-difficult-emotions-difficult-feedback/id1087147821?i=1000703709070
Diane Musho Hamilton, author and Zen teacher. She talks about something akin to spiritual bypassing. My take is something along the lines of devoted spiritual seekers over the centuries have removed themselves from society to pursue waking up, and necessarily so to reach such refined states. Living in the world involves dealing with other people and requires some sort of emotional maturity to do skillfully. I think I've very unconsciously made some efforts in that direction as I abandoned the idea of traditional renunciation, but maybe now that I've heard it framed in this manner can feel comfortable making more conscious efforts.
I think also what spoke to me is the way it was presented in this discussion at least, I found it fairly digestible. I'm much more practical and stoic than idealistic and sentimental, and I feel like much of emotional work gets framed in the latter more than the former manner.
person
Re: The Plant Medicine Path
One thing I hear is that the experience of ayahuasca has brought many who drink it to believe in a spirit world, and my own experience of occasional visions has inclined me likewise. So there are certain correspondences between those who have walked this path and myself.
Our modern world has been stripped of its visionary influences, its mythological components, by science and the tendency to investigate and disassemble. Those of us who do still have those experiences are not helped by modern mental health institutions, which encourage us to see these as hallucinations only and stick to a medical and materialist view of the world.
I find in the indigenous traditions a different wisdom, a rich tapestry of story and meaning linked to a much older world, where there were bards and storytellers and shamans and elders. These kinds of people are not found so much anymore in modern cities.
Jeroen
Re: The Plant Medicine Path
@person said:
Just wondering what your takeaway from this path has been in your life so far?
A question worth asking. It’s been a few years since I first heard of ayahuasca, the curanderos who make it, and the indigenous traditions connected to it. I approached it at first with curiosity, and later with reverence for its medicinal properties.
The thing is, I am ‘medically advised not to partake’, otherwise I might have tried taking the tea myself. So you could say I am still ignorant of the core experience of the plant medicine path. I have informed myself as well as possible about it, from videos and books.
Just that much has brought me to realise how divorced I am from nature. I live in a concrete box. I get food from the supermarket. I buy clothes online. At most I bicycle through the park, passing the place where the trees feel welcoming.
Jeroen
Re: Dogen's Shobogenzo - Komyo (光明)
Thank you for sharing. I will need to re-read Kōmyō today. But there is a feeling left behind. Brad recently spoke of another concept, which goes by the name “primordial ignorance.” It speaks of how our senses can also be terribly misleading—yet this system is the one we rely on as the main gate to Reality, with all its various subsystems, categories, and dimensions.
In Kōmyō, I remember feeling this brightness inherent to our nature in this realm. It is so difficult to put into words. Concepts arise, and the more I study them, the more they become neat little labels—against a growing abyss, which inevitably deepens as one gains knowledge, and hopefully wisdom as well.
Kotishka
Re: The AI tsunami
That’s some of the clearest reasoning I have yet seen about what the future looks like, post AI. Respect for Tristan Harris. But the UN is a dinosaur in terms of actually making decisions, and I don’t see the USA under Trump getting its act together and providing leadership on this. In a way things like tariffs, Gaza and Iran are huge distractions at a time when we cannot afford them.
Jeroen
Re: The AI tsunami
This video highlights the challenges and reminded me of Stein's Law "Trends that can't continue indefinitely won't." Its like we can see how things will end up if things continue on as they are and worry about that, but being able to see that changes how things end up. So far we've been able to pull back from the brink in other ways, maybe there is hope that we can do it again?
person