Podcasts about Solipsism

As the philosophical holds, there's a chance you don't exist, that not only you, but this episode, the podcast, and the entire universe are only projections of Josh or Chuck's mind. If so, then recording this episode was a waste of time. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I have always suspected that lots of planets lined up identically for Victor's and my births. We don't finish each other's sentences, but we do finish each other's paragraphs.Contemplatives, dogma, dynamism, solipsism, belief systems, impressions and projections, impersonation, human spirit progression (with a long gestation and difficult birth) gave us some things to talk about, and then we took a breath and forged ahead.Victor is a delight and a wonder, a gentle soul who shares with me the beckoning light of curiosity. Take a journey with a couple of Globs of Energy.

In this episode we discuss the relation between Nihilism and Absurdism. It's not surprising that Absurdism is so popular in Postmodernity. However, I haven't found anyone on the information superhighway - including Wikipedia - who has correctly characterized Absurdism yet. By the end of this episode we'll see that Absurdism is performative. That is to say, Absurdism is performative Nihilism. Nihilism believes it gets reality right. Absurdism believes there is no such thing as "getting reality right." Performative Absurdism doesn't relate to reality with a meaning-making that seeks to be reality-based. In this episode, some topics addressed are: Sisyphus, Capitalism & Schizophrenia, Humanism, Trans-Humanism, and Post-Humanism, Solipsism, the Liar Paradox, Postmodernity, Nihilism, and Absurdism. . Please post your questions or comments on The Philosophemes YouTube Channel. Accessible through this Linktree link: https://linktr.ee/philosophemes . Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/4cM6nzf . The Existentialism Book: http://shepherd.com/book/what-is-existentialism-vol-i . Online Courses (Gumroad) Coming Soon! . Podcast Page: https://evergreenpodcasts.com/the-philosophemes-podcast #postmodernism, #transhumanism, #FrankScalambrino, #absurdism, #nihilism, #posthumanism, #thejoker, #sisyphus, #schizophrenia, #philosophypodcast . Some links may be “affiliate links,” which means I may I receive a small commission from your purchase through these links. This helps to support the channel. Thank you. Editorial, educational, and fair use of images. © 2024, Frank Scalambrino, Ph.D. *Recent events have caused me to post the last three episodes late. I hope to be back on track as soon as possible and return to posting Thursdays at 12 Noon EST. Thank you for your patience during this time. Sincerely. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The problem for communication if we get to decide at will what our gender is.

Joep Beving is componist en pianist. Na een studie bestuurskunde en werk in de reclame verscheen in 2015 zijn debuutalbum ‘Solipsism', waarna verschillende albums volgden. Beving maakt neo-klassieke atmosferische pianostukken die hij zelf uitvoert. Recent verscheen ‘Vision of contentment' dat hij maakte met cellist en componist Maarten Vos. Het album is een minimalistische verzameling stukken over verandering, verdriet en schoonheid. Femke van der Laan gaat met Joep Beving in gesprek.

The Difference Between Solipsism And Realization Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Charlie and Brian as they dive deep into the Druid craft concept of the Law of the Returning Tide, distinguishing it from commonly misunderstood spiritual principles like karma. They explore how our actions and intentions influence the energy that comes back to us, emphasizing the importance of mindful contributions to the universe. Learn about the balance of faith, action, and intention in shaping our realities and the limits of our influence over the unfolding tides of life. Discover practical exercises to experience the returning tide in daily life and understand the broader impacts of our energetic and material contributions.Support us on: https://ko-fi.com/cedorsettBecome a patron of the arts patreon.com/cedorsettFor Educational Resource: Wisdoms Cry https://wisdomscry.comFor all of the things we are doing at The Seraphic Grove go to Creation's Paths https://www.creationspaths.com/BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/creationspaths.comThreads https://www.threads.net/@creationspathsInstagram https://www.instagram.com/creationspaths/Chapters:00:00 Introduction to the Law of the Returning Tide01:05 Meet the Hosts: Charlie and Brian01:23 Understanding the Returning Tide vs. Karma02:22 Misconceptions and Cultural Appropriation03:53 The Returning Tide Analogy08:09 Magic, Prayer, and Influence13:54 Practical Exercises for Compassionate Acts15:00 The Ripple Effect of Joy15:45 The Power of Returning Tide16:15 The Illusion of Control17:02 Surrounding Yourself with Positive Energy18:45 Faith and Action: A Necessary Combination21:46 Miracles and Effort24:26 The Reality of Good and Bad Events26:20 Conclusion and Call to ActionTranscript:Charlie: [00:00:00] This is not an episode about karma. We're going to be talking about something that sounds a lot like karma. But karma is a Hindu idea. And we're talking about something from Druid craft. We're going to be talking about the law of the returning tide. And how it can help you. Understand. So much of what happens in your life. In a way that is vitally important. And easily misunderstood. While you're going to be tempted to go, oh, They're talking about karma. Please. Wipe your mind of anything that you've heard before. So that we can have a fresh. Valid discussion of this topic. So that you can actually find out how it can help you. Today, we're talking. About the law of the returning type. Brian: [00:01:00] Insert intro here. Charlie: Hello, my name is Charlie. I am a non-binary sci-fi fantasy writer. And I'm joined today by my husband, Brian. Brian - New: I feel like Dr. Evil, there is a very insistent cat right now so I'm sitting here petting the kitty cat. Charlie: Which is oddly appropriate for what we're going to be talking about today. Today, we are going to be talking about the law of the returning tide. If you want to know more about this, I highly recommend Phillip Carr-Gomm's, wonderful book, Druid craft. Which is his attempt to bring back together the divergent paths of Wicca and Druidry that started together with two friends. Gerald Gardner and Ross Nichols. And. Diverged. Very far away from each other. With some issues in between. And he's trying to bring them back together in a way that I find oddly compelling. I am not a duotheist and the book [00:02:00] does have a lot of duotheistic ideas in it, but that is kind of core to traditional Wicca. Beyond that I highly recommend the book I really like it a lot. This language. Of the law of the returning tide. I find very, very helpful. In understanding what is probably one of the most misunderstood spiritual principles out there. And this is phrased a lot of different ways. Often it's shorthanded as karma. And it is not karma. Karma is a very complex idea that arises from both Hinduism and Buddhism. And that is not what we're talking about here. We're also not talking about dependent origination. That is , again, a very complex idea. That is found in Buddhism. We'll probably talk about that in a future episode at some point, but again, that's not what we're talking about here. Other shorthands that you might be familiar with for this? You get what you give. Reaping the whirlwind. We have a lot of [00:03:00] phrases for this idea of what you put out into the world comes back to you. On a basic level. Yes. I agree with this. asterisk. Big asterisk. x so big. It's bigger than the phrase that came before it. Because this is a very misunderstood. Misappropriated. CulturallY. appropriated. Idea. That if misunderstood does. Far more harm than good. Because this is how we justify bad things happen. We've said, oh, you get what you get. Brian - New: Yeah. Chickens coming home to roost. Charlie: That is not the law of the returning type. That is not what we're talking about here. That is something that. I want us to learn to let go of. And let it drift away. On the tide and never come back. So the analogy of the returning tide. Helps us. In that, yes. What you put out into the [00:04:00] universe, you will get back. If you put good out into the universe, Goodwill often come back to you. If you put bad out into the universe, bad will often come back to you. If you put up joy, you will reap joy. If you put out. Sorrow and misery sorrow and misery will come back. Yes. All of that is technically true. The problem is. Everything we put out into the universe is like a message in a bottle. You put whatever this intention is, these actions are, they go into the bottle and we throw them out into the ocean and the waves carry them out. And Lord knows. And I mean that quite literally only God knows. Where they're going to come back to shore. Brian (2): Well, it's like with the chickens coming home to roost analogy. First of all, if you don't put out chicken feed, they're not going to want to come back. If you don't have a chicken coop they're not going to want to come back. If there are no chickens they will not come home to roost. There are a lot of other factors involved. Charlie: And also it's not necessarily your chickens that are [00:05:00] coming back. Brian (2): Yeah. This could be your neighbor's chickens, Charlie: we had a rooster for a long time in our yard. We never bought chickens. We have not had chickens, but it got out of one of our neighbor's yards. I don't know what neighbor had that rooster. I don't know where that rooster came from. But it lived in our garage. It. Went around our yard all the time. It claimed our yard is its own. It was our. For all intents and purposes, people thought it was our rooster. We got comments from several of the neighbors about our rooster, doing things in there, their yards, not our rooster don't know where the rooster came from. But it showed up one day. And we had a rooster. We didn't have any other chickens, but we had a rooster. This analogy of our actions being like a message in a bottle. And this idea of the returning tide. All of the energy that we put out into the cosmos, whether it's good, bad. Anything in between. It goes out. But it [00:06:00] mixes. With all of the other energies out there. There is this spiritual and I use this word a lot. Solipsism solipsism is a stage of development that most people grow out of. And you, if you've ever been around children, You know, this phase, it's usually around two years old. Me me, me, me, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. Where a child is individuating for the first time. They're realizing, oh, I am a separate self. And all of a sudden. Everything is about me and everything is mine. And you see this in kids and most people grow out of it. Brian - New: Which doesn't mean it's gone. Everybody has it to some degree still to this very day. We all have it at some level. Charlie: When I talk about spiritual solipsism. This is there's this idea of, I will manifest good things in my life by only putting good things out and only good things will return to me. And if bad things come out that's because I didn't manifest [00:07:00] enough good things in my life. Brian - New: Or one of my favorite examples is praying for my sports team to win. Therefore they should win, or I am not with God or God is not with me. Completely negating the fact that many other fans pray for their team to win and pray for your team to lose. Charlie: Yeah. Brian - New: Many people probably prayed over the winning and losing of that team in that particular event. That's the thing. Charlie: So learning to understand the great cosmic ocean. That we are on the shore of really will help you to get a better sense. Of what we're talking about. Energetically. Magically. This is where I think a lot of people misunderstand magic. And. Yeah, some of that comes from , The movies that are out there, the video games, the. Stuff that's out there where a wizard cast, a spell and amazing things happen, or you cast a spell and it always occurs that way. Or what have you [00:08:00] write that? If I say these magic words in this proper way, and we move my hands just right with the right ingredients. I will have consistent. Results. As somebody who has practiced magic for most of my life, Magic works. Magic is real. But magic is a hedge on a bet. It is not guaranteeing the outcome of an event. I know some people get really weird when I use the term magic and they just want me to talk about prayer and Providence. And it's all magic. I'm sorry. It's all. A prayer is a spell by another name, a spell as a prayer by another name. If we're not going to be honest. I don't know what the point of spirituality is. I can show you a prayer book and I can show you a grimoire. And if I don't tell you, which is which. You will be hard pressed to tell the difference between them until you get to like magic squares and sigils and stuff. Spells are prayers, incantations are prayers. The difference between an [00:09:00] incantation and an invocation is that we call them different things. Don't get put off by the word magic. Magic is all around us. Magic. Permeates everything. Everything is run by magic. And magic is not. Illogical. It is super rational. In other words, it's it is beyond our rational minds to understand. In that, how does quantum physics work? I'm not equating magic with quantum physics. A lot of people make that mistake. That is a mistake. Don't do that. I'm just saying. Quantum physics is kind of magic because it is order a rising from chaos. How does that work? We have some math that shows us. How to predict. How it will most likely work, but again, how does order arise from chaos? I don't know that we will ever have a. Good rational. Understanding of that. But it does happen. Magic has the same thing. Whether it's a [00:10:00] psychological phenomenon where we get ourselves hyped up to the point where we're able to take actions that we normally wouldn't have, or we are actually affecting the energies of the cosmos to cause great things to happen to me, six of one, half a dozen of the other, I don't really. I have a great caring concern, whether or not. There is immense magical power flowing through the universe, or if it's a psychological trick that I can play on my brain. To help me achieve the things that I want to achieve. The point and purposes, is it working? Brian: It's like with our favorite weather wizard. To find the divination, to determine what the weather will be in a few days. For an old. Druid, thousands of years ago to your weather person trying using divining, what the weather will be in a few days from all these predictive models, is basically the same. This is really similar arts and it's all magic. That's all probabilities. Charlie: Our weather. Wizard is a local weatherman that we really like to watch grant date. Who. Will has often very [00:11:00] accurately pointed to a place on a map and said in a couple of days, there are going to be tornadoes right here. And so you need to be watching out. And be very, very mindful and right where his finger is on the map. Is where tornado at turn attic activity will happen. And his predictions are shockingly accurate and he will often predict before the national weather service. Like he has a very good gut instinct. Looking at. All of the probabilities where things will come out. And that is a part of this. And that is part of what we're talking about here with this idea of the law of the returning tide. He's able to see these waves coming to shore. And he's able to predict where they're going to be. That's a lot of what we're trained to do in the work. We have no control over whether or not there's going to be a storm surge. Whether there's going to be a high tide or low tide. The moon controls, whether there's a high tide or low tide. And also our productivity to the moon because. Depending [00:12:00] on where the moon is in its orbit. It's either closer to the earth or further away from the earth that determines a lot of how high and low the tides are. There are a lot of complex things outside of our control. That are involved in. How tights work if a high tide is coming and a storm is coming that high tide has the potential to be devastating. To the coast. This is where the analogy of the returning tide. Helps us to understand the reality that we're living in and get out of this. Main character syndrome that a lot of us have in spirituality where I can manifest, I have the power. Like there's so much He-Man and the masters of the universe energy in all of these movements, right. Ah, I have the power. Uh, no. No, you don't, you don't. None of us. Do we have influence? We have some power. We're not power less. It's back to [00:13:00] humility, which we've been talking about a lot on this podcast. Brian - New: There is a space to be occupied. But know that understanding and knowing how much and what that is. It is very important. Charlie: The returning tide is the tide that carries back in what was through what was put out. So this is where it's very important for us to be mindful of what we are putting out into the universe, because this is true. If you are always a grumpy Gus. Then people are going to start treating you as if you're the one who's always grumpy. You will. Reap what you sow. The phrase becomes very appropriate there. If you're always the somber sad one, if you're the one that's always joking and laughing. This is what people come to expect of you. So what you're putting out is what you will receive back. People will treat you in kind if you're always the silly one. People will find it harder to take you seriously when you are being serious, because they expect you to be silly. Brian - New: I'm gonna have to start calling these Brian's exercise opportunities or something. I love little exercises that everybody can do in their daily [00:14:00] lives. It's wonderful moments to, to test things. I'm very big fan of prove all things and hold onto that, which is true. I came across this actually more through, compassionate practices. The. Act of giving. , gratitude and giving compassionate acts in acknowledgement that they will return in their own time and place in manner without an expectation of any specific reward. Through this exercise. One thing you could do is pick a day, when you have to go shopping and do a bunch of tours in town, when you're in it in public interacting with a lot of people. Set your intention. And remind yourself constantly throughout that day, you are going to be giving compassionate acts at every opportunity. Without expectation of reward, but with realizing through faith, that they will manifest in their own time and manner. Do this throughout the day and just observe, just watch, take the opportunities to watch what happens . A lot of times, it's just that simple. Thank you. Or that simple smile. Or in a joyful moment celebrated between two individuals yourself and the person. Charlie: An honest, sincere non-creepy compliment Brian - New: I couldn't tell you the number of times. I would pass a compassionate act to somebody in the store. Checking out, picking up some groceries or something and then watch them later on, pass it to the person checking them out [00:15:00] at the register. Latter for me to go through the register and them to smile back at me. And be like, this is that law of returning tide. I gave out joy. While I was picking stuff out of the aisle, that person then had joy. Adding more joy that they pass to the person checking out. The person checking out. Gave that to more multiple people while checking out, which probably rippled even beyond there. 'because they probably pass joy along the others . It's absolutely fascinating. Charlie: It really is. And it's something. That we can see, we can demonstrate through like what Brian is talking about here. We should be testing all things and holding to that, which is true. Also always bearing in mind. You are not the only one putting energy intention. And actions out into the world. This, I keep saying this, and I'm going to sound like a broken record throughout this episode. But. This is why the re the idea of the returning tide is so powerful because it reminds us. We're getting back on our shore on a little [00:16:00] bit of shoreline. All of that. That has been put out. All of that coming back. In big ways in little ways. But it's all coming back. You may not have. Put. Poisons into the water. But if somebody put poisons into the water, That water will come back into the tide and can make you sick. And I think this is where. Especially in spiritual practice, people run into error. And into danger. They start thinking that they can somehow put a Brita water filter on their shoreline. That will keep all of the bad things that other people are putting out in the water. From coming ashore. On their patch of beach. I would love to say that that's true. I would love to say that we can do that. And we kind of can't. I cannot. You can not. Now notice the. The language there because that's, what's very [00:17:00] important. T Put out those filters. When you surround yourself by people that are putting those positive energies out. That are putting out that those. Ambitions those intentions, those actions for change. For blessing for good things in the environment and in the world. You're more likely to. Get back in the returning tide. This is why it's important to surround yourself with people that are putting out that energy that you want to get back. ' cause it's hedging your bets. If you're all pouring freshwater. Clean water. Out. And there's a sewer. Pipe. Down stream. You're more likely to get the freshwater. If everyone around you is pouring fresh water in. It's going to push. That dirty water a little bit further out. So maybe it'll sloosh by. But that dirty water is still out there. You may get a filtered version of that dirty water, but that dirty water is still going to splash back on this. [00:18:00] We can hedge our bets and making sure that we're building good communities. Good friendships, strong families, strong relationships with people that are putting out those good energies, those good intentions, those good actions and notice. This Trinity that I keep putting together because it is the energy that we are putting out. Which involves our intention. Our will. Our actual. Effort we're putting into the thing? Our intentions, which is both our mindset and our motivation for doing things. If you're just doing something good to get something back. That we can set the intention. And also our actions, our actions. I need to say this. Like a thousand times. I get so frustrated with the manifestation movement, because they're like, I'm going to manifest a job. So I'm going to say a little words. I'm maybe gonna write a little blessing card. I'm going to put it on my alter and it will just bring a new job to [00:19:00] know if you're not putting in job applications. If drop applications, aren't going out on the exiting tide. Jobs are not going to come in on the returning tide. Because action is required. As I quote the apostle James said, faith without works is dead. You have to take action. It's one thing to believe. It's one thing to hope and pray and try to manifest something right. It's the thing. I think people get raw wrong with the idea of can faith heal you? Yes. Faith can heal you, but also go to your doctor. Get the best treatments that you can. Because together. Healing is much more likely. When we're reading stories about first century healers and Jesus was a first century healer. He was. One of many first century healers. We're reading the best that they had for medicine. Let's put a little honey on this. Let's put a little olive oil on this. This was the best medicine they had at the time. It's not that olive oil is magic and we just need to go back to [00:20:00] the old ways. Sometimes we do need to go back to the old ways because they knew something that we didn't. Right. Why was beer considered health healthy for a lot of people? Because of the microbiome that was within it. Why is kombucha so considered healthy and was given to people? Why was this certain soups and teas and tinctures? We're now learning scientifically. That, whether it's the chemistry of it, whether it's the minerals and vitamins that are in it, whether it's the microbiome that it fosters, that's in it. Yeah, a lot of these treatments did have a blessing and brought good healing to a person. We've also progressed and we have vaccines and we have various other medicines that can bring healing. So when you're putting all of your pot, just in faith, okay. But there are three things that we should be putting out. Faith is only one of them. Brian - New: I think about, the Centurion who wanted to heal his servant. And Jesus said, it's your faith that healed him. The thing was there [00:21:00] was also works and everyone forgets. This interior. If you had already had faith. Then it certainly would have been healed without Jesus saying anything without him even having to go to Jesus . He did the work of going over and talking to. Worked his way through a crowd and approached Jesus and said, Hey. this dude's sick and needs help. Charlie: Probably learned that the. Local language because there's a very good. The odds that Jesus spoke quite a Greek or Latin. Are slim to none. Jesus probably spoke Galileo in Aramaic. Brian - New: At its basic level, there was still work. because he didn't just sit in the room and go. Magically my servent, this healing, like there was work along with it. Part of faith is the works. You had to physically go and talk to Jesus . . Charlie: This is not us saying miracles don't happen. Yeah, my, my grandfather had broken his spine. They told him he would never walk again. I went to the Basilica of St. Jude in, Baltimore and lit a candle for him and my [00:22:00] grandfather got up and went to the bathroom because he needed to pee. And they all went. You're walking. That's not my faith that cured him. Maybe it was St. Jude. I've put a lot of benefit of the doubt in St. Jude. For this cause St. Jude has worked a lot of miracles in my life and the lives of people that I know. If grandpa hadn't tried to get up. Oh, grandpa Jake. Hadn't tried to get up. Then he wouldn't have walked. what cured him? Was it faith? Was it him not being as injured as the doctors originally thought. Was. W they misinterpreting , the x-rays and the other scans that they did on him. I don't know. He couldn't feel his feet. He had no sensation from the waist down. They were pretty sure. He was paralyzed. And he just just got up, went to the bathroom. That's a miracle. I bring that up miracles do happen. But you never want to rely on a miracle. We could often. Help miracles happen. By taking action. And putting things out. Into that [00:23:00] water. Into that ocean. So that we can reap that tide that we want. We need to learn in our own environment. If we don't want the red tide coming in. Maybe we shouldn't be putting those fertilizers and other things out into the water. There are things that we can do that will affect what we bring back on that tide. Concrete actions, material, physical actions we can take. There are. Subtle intentional actions we can take. And there are just energetic efforts that we can take. And that's energetic efforts as in. Both like magical, woo-hoo putting energy out into the world, but also the effort that we put into a thing. Into taking the physical actions. They can bring back the good into our lives. And if we're not doing all three. To the best of our ability. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying everybody has the same ability. I have a lot of physical ailments and issues. That make it not easy for me to just get up and walk and get up and do things. And what have you, [00:24:00] I understand that. But if you don't try. If you're not putting, in what effort you can. Put it. And don't let anybody else tell you what you are capable of doing. Because people don't always know. But if you've got to put in that effort, you have to put in that energy and you have to put in that action. And that's how you bring back those blessings on the returning tide. And sometimes that returning tide. Brings. What washes up a dead whale. Sometimes something bad washes in on that tide, the red tide comes in. There's an algal bloom. I think if you're, especially if you're living in the United States and elsewhere around the world, we've seen that red tide coming in. that algalbloom. That's just poisoning the water. And putting fumes out near rotating our eyes. That is not because you're a bad person. If bad things only happen to bad people. The world would be a very different place. And this is where again, to go to the teachings of Jesus. Did the tower, when the tower of Salem fell, did the [00:25:00] rocks only hit the wicked. Jesus asked this question because the great green tower collapsed. And killed a bunch of people. When the tower asylum collapsed. Did it only kill the wicked? No. God causes rain to fall. On the, just, and the unjust. Good things happen to. Bad people, bad things happen to good people. And to try to simplify all of this down to if you're a good person, good things will happen to you. Is a lie. Straight from the mouth of the devil. That is put out into the world. So that person can take advantage of you. I don't think I can say it any clearer than that. Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. All we can do is hedge our bets. We can do what we can to put. Good things out into the ocean. So that good things come back and the returning time. Beyond that. It's out of our control. It is so far [00:26:00] out of our control. That's why I love this analogy so much. It helps us to have that humility. To put things in their proper place. Of what we can control. And what we can't control. Sometimes. We want to take. Far more credit than we deserve. Or blame. But that's a whole other topic. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I hope that you have learned something about the law of the returning tide. About karma about whatever you have grown up calling this. I really like. Phillip Carr-Gomm's. Law of the returning tide. I love that phrase. If you have learned something and you think somebody else might get something out of this, please share. This episode. If you're listening to us by email for the email on to somebody else, if you're listening to us on Spotify or. YouTube or wherever, and they have a like button like us. If you're listening to us on a podcast app that lets you leave a review, like apple podcasts. [00:27:00] Those reviews are extremely helpful. And those ratings are extremely helpful in getting this podcast to more people. Please leave a rating, leave a review. They're far more helpful than you think they are. It helps the machine know. That, Hey, this is something of quality that maybe I should spread to other people. While you're doing all that. If you have a few pennies that you can cast our way. If you head over to https://www.creationspaths.com/, you can join there. We'd love to have you there. We'd love to hear your comments. Have you be part of the community? You can also support us over on patreon.com/cedorsett and https://ko-fi.com/cedorsett. I'm CE Dorset on both. And that goes to support everything I do from the stories to the music. To these podcasts and everything else. Brian - New: That's where you can leave a tip or donate. Yup. Whatever you like using the best. Charlie: So, thank you so, so much for being here. And until next time. I made the blessings of the light ever shine upon you. Amen. Brian: [00:28:00] Amen. Get full access to Creation's Paths at www.creationspaths.com/subscribe

Michael Sanders is the Co-founder & Chief Storyteller at Horizon, creators of Sequence, the leading development platform for integrating web3 into games. Sequence is on a mission to make web3 easy, fun, and accessible for everyone. Michael is also the author of the best-selling book Ayahuasca: An Executive's Enlightenment. ___Get your copy of Personal Socrates: Better Questions, Better Life Connect with Marc >>> Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter Drop a review and let me know what resonates with you about the show!Thanks as always for listening and have the best day yet!*A special thanks to MONOS, our official travel partner for Behind the Human! Use MONOSBTH10 at check-out for savings on your next purchase. ✈️*Special props

François RecanatiPhilosophie du langage et de l'espritCollège de FranceAnnée 2023-2024Colloque - Transparency, Indexicality and Consciousness : Transparency and SolipsismColloque organisé par François Recanati, Professeur du Collège de France, chaire Philosophie du langage et de l'espritIntervenant(s)Giovanni Merlo, Université de GenèveAccording to Phenomenal Transparency, experiencing a phenomenal property puts one is in a position to acquire knowledge of its essence. In this paper, I will argue that Phenomenal Transparency risks forcing upon us a species of solipsism according to which one is, necessarily, the sole bearer of phenomenal properties. If Phenomenal Transparency holds, having a painful experience puts one in a position to know that pain is THIS (where 'THIS' is a phenomenal concept that captures the essence of pain). The solipsist who endorses Phenomenal Transparency claims to be entitled to a reading of 'THIS' whereby THIS does not occur unless one is pain oneself. By their lights, then, it turns out to belong to the essence of pain that pain never occurs in others. After examining some unsuccessful attempts to delegitimize the solipsist's reading of 'THIS', I will suggest that – unless we are willing to deny Phenomenal Transparency altogether – we may want to come to terms with the solipsist's conclusion in the framework of a more general rethinking of the metaphysics of the phenomenal.

We're covering two movies with “man” in the title, but DON'T BE FRIGHTENED - there's lots of ladies committing trickery in the folk horror flick, The Wicker Man (1973 & 2006). ***CONTENT WARNING: discussion of sexual assault, spoilers for Midsommar Follow us on Instagram at @thewhorrorspodcast Email us at thewhorrorspodcast@gmail.com Artwork by Gabrielle Fatula (gabrielle@gabriellefatula.com) Music: Epic Industrial Music Trailer by SeverMusicProd Standard Music License  Sources:  Campbell, Dr. Danny. “Weekly Sermons: The Unholy Trinity.” The Tabernacle Family. The Tabernacle, 2022. https://www.thetabernaclefamily.org/tabernacle-sermons/weekly-sermons/sermon/650-the-unholy-trinity. Accessed December 2022. Web.  Chambers, Jamie. "Troubling Folk Horror: Exoticism, Metonymy, and Solipsism in the "Unholy Trinity" and Beyond." JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, vol. 61 no. 2, 2022, p. 9-34. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/cj.2022.0014. Accessed December 2022. “Constructing The Wicker Man: Film and Cultural Studies Perspectives.”Offscreen.com. https://offscreen.com/view/wicker_man#:~:text=Ashurst's%20essay%20demonstrates%20how%20The,the%20usual%20male%2Ddriven%20narrative. Poole, W. Scott. “Monstrous Beginnings.” Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsessions with the Hideous and the Haunting. 2nd edition. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2018. Print. The Wicker Man (1973) Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wicker_Man  The Wicker Man (1973) IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070917/  The Wicker Man (2006) Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wicker_Man_(2006_film)  The Wicker Man (2006) IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450345/ 

I'm tryna plan 2024 to be a year I won't abhor, but with the solipsism, food waste and 30,000 monkeys, idk. There's not enough white sage to cleanse this. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cotton-candy-clouds-podcast/support

In a Zoom meeting with the Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK on 13th January 2024, Michael answers various questions about Bhagavan's teachings. This episode can also be watched as a video here and a more compressed audio copy in Opus format (which can be listened to in the VLC media player and some other apps) can be downloaded from here.    

This episode discusses solipsism in women and why it manifests mainly in their early to mid-30s.

In a Zoom meeting with Sean on 1st December 2023, Michael answers various questions about Bhagavan's teachings. References made in this video: 2023-10-26 Bernardo Kastrup & Michael James: Analytic Idealism and Ramana Maharshi's Advaita: https://youtu.be/-i1SskhaLik An Interview with Michael James: The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi Clarify the Philosophy and Practice of Advaita Vēdānta: https://www.spirituality-studies.org/volume9-issue2-fall2023/ Souljourns - Swami Sarvapriyananda, waking up in this lifetime - you can do it. Self Enlightenment: https://youtu.be/Q2JWrGrVeuY?si=spL-0v4DDPnIb5ZZ&t=3539 This episode can also be watched as a video here and a more compressed audio copy in Opus format (which can be listened to in the VLC media player and some other apps) can be downloaded from here.  

Solipsism and narcissism have quite a bit in common. Let's take a look at what that means with a brief philosophical examination. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pesqueda/message

PART 2 of 2 Content Warning: Animal Abuse, Despair In this 2 part episode, Jon and Adi get into the long-awaited deep dive into the chicanery of one Elon Musk, and the ethical and logistical uncertainties of the hyped up and controversial Neuralink project. End Track - I Talk To The Wind - King Crimson - 1969 Follow Jon on Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/ssboommann https://medium.com/@jmukes97 https://linktr.ee/greenhousegaslighting

It's me reading this dictionary word, first exposure was on Instagram reel coming from a courtroom, from the judge toward the plaintiff. I'm so curious about words. It tongue ties me, give a listen about this -ism. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yolanda254/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/yolanda254/support

In a Zoom meeting with the Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK on 28th October 2023, Michael talks about solipsism as taught by Bhagavan, and answers various questions about Bhagavan's teachings.  The analytical argument he gave at the beginning is: 1. We are the experiencer of all that we experience. 2. As the experiencer, we always experience ourself as a person. 3. As the experiencer, we perceive a world that is full of other people, who are just like the person we seem to be. 4. Since we, the experiencer, always experience ourself as a person, ever other person seems to us to be an experiencer, just like us. 5. All the other people and their experiences are no less real than the person we seem to be. 6. So long as we seem to be a person, we experience suffering, and every other person seems to us to experience suffering in the same way. 7. So long as we are firmly convinced that this person whom we seem to be is what we actually are, then our suffering and the suffering of all other people will inevitably seemto us to be real. 8. But are we this person? In other words, is this person what we actually are? 9. If this person is not what we actually are, our experience of ourself as ‘I am this person' is an illusion, and hence unreal. 10. Everything that we (as the experiencer) experience is based upon our experience of ourself as a person, because we experience things other than ourself only when we experience ourself as a person (namely in waking and in dream). 11. Therefore if our experience of ourself as ‘I am this person' is an illusion, our experience of everything else must be equally illusory. 12. If our experience of everything else is illusory, the person we seem to be and all the other people are a part of that illusion, and hence unreal. 13. If the person we seem to be and all the other people are unreal, their suffering and everything else that they seem to experience must also be unreal. 14. Therefore, since the appearance of multiple experiencers exists in the view of ourself as an experiencer who experiences itself as a person, if we are not this person, then the entire appearance of multiple experiencers is an illusion, and hence unreal. 15. Since there can be no appearance without an experiencer of it, the root cause of the entire appearance of multiple experiencers is the experiencer of it, namely ourself. 16. Therefore, before we can reliably judge the reality of the appearance of multiple experiencers, we first need to investigate and find out the reality of ourself, in whose view all those multiple experiencers seem to exist. This episode can also be watched as a video here and a more compressed audio copy in Opus format (which can be listened to in the VLC media player and some other apps) can be downloaded from here.    

Word Test for the following Episodes and Words. 111: Articulate, Dilate, Refute, Dogma 112: Impervious, Impassive, Enumerate, Effrontery  113: Conventional, Fatuous, Repose, Malleable 114: Repast, Desultory, Languid, Exponent 115: Volatile, Affected, Qualified, Effigy 116: Sedition, Intransigence, Indeterminate, Fortuitous 117: Jocular, Idolatry, Vex, Glower 118: Diffuse, Disparage, Magnate, Solipsism 119: Insinuate, Sycophant, Jingoism, Paucity 120: Mollify, Mercurial, Compendium, Discordant VictorPrep's vocab podcast is for improving for English vocabulary skills while helping you prepare for your standardized tests! This podcast isn't only intended for those studying for the GRE or SAT, but also for people who enjoy learning, and especially those who want to improve their English skills. I run the podcast for fun and because I want to help people out there studying for tests or simply learning English. The podcast covers a variety of words and sometimes additionally covers word roots. Using a podcast to prep for the verbal test lets you study while on the go, or even while working out!  If you have comments or questions and suggestions, please send me an email at sam.fold@gmail.com

The words for today are: Diffuse, Disparage, Magnate, Solipsism. Featuring a poem: "In Mrs Tilscher's Class" Carol Ann Duffy VictorPrep's vocab podcast is for improving for English vocabulary skills while helping you prepare for your standardized tests! This podcast isn't only intended for those studying for the GRE or SAT, but also for people who enjoy learning, and especially those who want to improve their English skills. I run the podcast for fun and because I want to help people out there studying for tests or simply learning English. The podcast covers a variety of words and sometimes additionally covers word roots. Using a podcast to prep for the verbal test lets you study while on the go, or even while working out!  If you have comments or questions and suggestions, please send me an email at sam.fold@gmail.com

Hello and welcome to 2 Idiots 1 Podcast, today Taylor and Bailey talk about Solipsism and express their opinions on it. During the episode Taylor and Bailey discuss existence, reality, and perceptions of both. If you have theories, opinions, or thoughts on solipsism or existence in general and feel like sharing please email us for a chance to be read on the next episode. Thank you for listening and have a great day! Check out our link tree to see our Instagram, Twitter, YouTube Channel, or join the Facebook group at https://linktr.ee/2idiots1podcast Please feel free to email questions, comments, or anything else to 2idiots1podcast2022@gmail.com.

The season finale....we bring it back to films we love which are loaded with philosophical ideas and we dive into a little bit of Latin - Cogito Ergo Sum! We discuss the classic questions of, how do we know anything is real? Is there anything we CAN know is real? Does it even matter? We discuss Descartes and how he came to his famous "I think therefore I am" and what that exactly means, and we extend his skepticism to help explain the relationship with the classic movie The Matrix. This is the final episode for the season and the upcoming break may be a bit longer as we're busy focusing on Stasher's funding round - https://seedrs.com/stasher if you're interested. Support the show: Please leave us a review! Spotify even now let's you do it - see that little star icon - go on, give it a click. Reviews are a great way to help others find the show, and it makes us feel all warm inside. Know anyone who likes to think about or debate the kind of topics we cover? Spread the word - and you'll have our gratitude. Here's the link to our new community whatsapp, where we'll discuss episodes and ask our most engaged listeners what sort of topics/formats they most enjoy. If you're a fan of the show, please consider signing up to our Patreon. A small subscription goes a long way towards supporting the show - and it makes us feel all warm inside too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of Philosophy Uncovered delves into the complex philosophical concept of solipsism, the belief in the certainty of only one's own mind's existence, examines its implications and criticisms, and emphasizes the value of philosophical exploration. Source: https://philosophybreak.com/articles/solipsism-definition-your-mind-is-the-only-thing-that-exists/

There are many wrong ideologies in our society. These 5 are extreme and encompass many parts of our society to a root level. There are more then 5 but these are important. The 5 foundational wrongs are: 1. Moral relativism 2. Social Darwinism 3. Solipsism 4.Non full-filled people 5. Group campers Luemas breaks down each one in a basic way, so many can identify these things that perpetuate wrong in our society. Website: https://www.chantitdownradio.com Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmTlBzFViiv58N4_K9On0UQ  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chantitdown/ Telegram: https://t.me/chantitdownchat Odysee: https://odysee.com/@chantitdownradio:c Rumble: https://rumble.com/account/content?type=all Please help support the show. Subscribe, leave reviews, help algorithms find the show. Support the show if possible. https://www.patreon.com/Luemas https://www.chantitdownradio.com/store.html Chant it down t-shirts: https://chant-it-down-store.creator-spring.com/listing/chant-it-down-logo

Join us as we discuss AI and the new Spiderman movie

Audio Books: The Compass Solutions for Dysfunctional Family Relationships The 14 Keys Join ANU – ANULifeGlobal.org Coaching – http://OsirisLife.com  Shop with us – https://www.amazon.com/shop/theorisha  Classes  – http://www.SaduluHouse.com  Consultations – http://www.AskOsiris.com Other books Grasping the Root of Divine Power – https://amzn.to/2VPKBUj Shrine and Altar – https://amzn.to/2XKWQmZ The 14 keys – https://amzn.to/2VJYZNU Solutions for Dysfunctional Family Relationships – https://amzn.to/2XQxm7F Mind, Heart, and Words – https://amzn.to/2TxuDSb The Compass – https://amzn.to/2JjzSh9

Bryan and Nick continue their conversation about Solipsism and other stuff. This description could be better, but does it really matter? I mean, we're all in a matrix anyway, right? LOL.Send them an email!! helpyourself@brynic.com

Satansplain #040 - Spotlights, Dimbulbs, and Shine Satansplain celebrates its first anniversary with "Spotlights, Dimbulbs, and Shine", a special talk that was presented only at the Church of Satan's 50th anniversary gathering in 2016. Magister Bill shares his own observations concerning members who've come in and out of the spotlight over the years, the dimbulbs who don't get Satanism, and how Satanists might maximize their potential. 00:00 - Intro 05:13 - Overview 11:22 - Spotlights 20:53 - Dimbulbs 42:38 - Shine

Nick and Bryan are feeling alone in their discussion about Solipsism. It seems like they shouldn't feel that way as they record their voices and send them out to the void. Have you ever thought that our whole universe could be on the head of a pin? Well, it really could be...Email Nick and Bryan here... helpyourself@brynic.com

Discover your personality type free: https://www.udja.app/ CS Joseph Responds to the Acolyte questions what's the difference female solipsism and male idealism. Learn to type others by text: https://egohackingbytext.com/ Was this video impactful for you? Buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/csjoseph Test, Blog, YouTube, Coaching, Member, and Discord links: https://linktr.ee/csjoseph Psychoanalyzing and video games collide: https://www.twitch.tv/csj0s3ph Get the solution to bad psychology when it comes to sales and marketing here: https://ultimatemessagingformula.com Intro: Prismo (Stronger) NoCopyright Sound https://ncs.io/Stronger --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/csjoseph/support

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Case for Earning to Live, published by Spending What We Can on April 1, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Background Earning to give has been a classic EA suggestion due to the value money can bring elsewhere in the world. Although lately e2g has fallen out of favor somewhat, for those already established in high-earning careers, or anyone who may have some extra cash available to donate, the question remains of how best to use money for optimal impact. Previous research claimed diminishing marginal returns of money on happiness, and concluded excess money should be donated to effective charities. However, new research has shown that money can buy happiness after all, as anyone who has a lot of money and knows how to spend it could've told you all along. Thus, in this post we advocate for a new strategy of spending substantially more of one's money on oneself, which we dub earning to live. Earning to Live The basic idea of earning to live is that the best use of one's money is spending it directly on oneself. This includes not only survival needs such as food and shelter, but also “luxuries” (though we prefer to avoid the term due to negative connotations) such as travel and entertainment. Further examples are discussed later in this post. Compared to earning to give, earning to live has numerous advantages: Reduced operational overhead: while any charity requires some administrative overhead, money you spend on yourself can go 100% to your desired target. Better quantifiability: a central challenge of effective giving is determining which charities yield the greatest impact per dollar, often relying on diligence and estimates by third-party evaluators. It's much easier to get a feel for how you can spend money to bring yourself personal utility and then do more of that. High neglectedness: while other causes may have thousands of donors contributing millions or even billions in funding, the number of people spending money on you is likely fewer than 10. Improved productivity: it's well established that a miserly existence can hamper your productivity and therefore your impact. By spending to make your own life more comfortable, you can build a virtuous cycle of higher output and thus higher income, which you can continue spending on yourself. Research value: similarly, all personal spending may be viewed as investigation into what kind of spending brings you utility, so there are dual benefits of direct utility and value as data for deciding how to spend in the future. Solipsism: if you happen to be the only real consciousness in the universe, spending money for the benefit of others is irrational. Near-termism: if you value the present much more highly than the future, you can spend money on yourself immediately, but donations will take time to transfer and process before having any impact. This may be especially relevant if we all die very soon. Long-termism: if you value the future as much as the present, you may instead consider investing your money in order to spend larger amounts later, or pass even greater generational wealth to your heirs. Suggestions for spending A tenet of earning to live is that you know best how to spend your money to maximize your utility. However, if you prefer to parrot views of charismatic thought leaders to establish your membership in an in-group, my standard recommendations are: Fine dining: a tasting menu prepared by a world-renowned chef tends to taste better than microwaved lentils at home. If you're vegan for animal welfare reasons, you still have options. Travel: with adequate budget, flying can be a pleasant experience. Exploring new parts of the world can expose you to new ways to spend money. Also, since you're probably American, much of the world is much poorer than you, and seeing that first-hand can build a sens...

Many speculate that the world isn't real, that it a dream or simulation, but if it is, how to we get out of it or control it?To get started planning a career that works on one of the world's most pressing problems, sign up now at https://80000hours.org/isaacarthurGeorge Hoyt Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESXOAJRdcwQRoman Yampolskiy Paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364811408_How_to_Hack_the_SimulationVisit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.netJoin Nebula: https://go.nebula.tv/isaacarthurSupport us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IsaacArthurSupport us on Subscribestar: https://www.subscribestar.com/isaac-arthurFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1583992725237264/Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IsaacArthur/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Isaac_A_Arthur on Twitter and RT our future content.SFIA Discord Server: https://discord.gg/53GAShECredits:Hacking The Simulation Episode 387, March 23, 2023Produced & Narrated by:Isaac ArthurWritten by:Isaac ArthurMikael LampirantaEditors:Mikael LampirantaKari AlatoloLuis Jorge de LunaLukas KonecnyxXxxDavid McFarlaneBriana BrownellMusic Courtesy ofMarkus Junnikkala, "Always Tell Me The Odds"Sergey Cheremisinov, "Sirius", "The Signals"Stellardrone, "Red Giant", "Between the Rings",Miguel Johsnon, "Far From Home", "So Many Stars"Aerium, "Fifth Star of Aldebaran"See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In one of the most introspective sections of the entire series, Corwin has his encounter with Lady. We'll discuss how this scene is a John Keats poem come to life out of the subconscious of our hero. After, Corwin has another showdown with Brand in a red-on-red world.

What if this world is a world where immortals come to take a break from the tedium of immortality? It's tempting to say ‘why would a god need to take a break?' Well that's your definition and your projection of what YOU think a god is supposed to be-and then you expect god/consciousness to fit your definition of how it/she/they/their are supposed to be. Direct quotes from this episode: “If you can get bored then why can't God? As above, so below. You were created in THEIR image, so if you can get bored, so can the gods” “If [Life] is a dream, then doesn't that mean that YOU are sleeping? And if you are sleeping, then doesn't that mean that you are a god asleep?” “If outside of form, you feel all one and connected to the universe; all loving, all knowing and capable of anything, then outside of form, you are god.” “The moment we ‘other' [and demonise] we make demons out of our selves.” “Evil stems from ignorance of and not knowing your true nature.” #philosophy #technophilosophy #nonduality #alanwatts #Buddhism #hinduisim #westworld #advaita Youroneblackfriend.com

In this episode, I will discuss another important aspect of romantic love: solipsism. This is the belief that nothing exists outside of the self, or -- in the case of romantic love -- outside of the merged dyad. As I explained in a previous episode in the series, "Romance is for men," romance was invented by lower-status men for lower-status men as a means of competing with higher-status men for the most desirable women. As a result, one of the imperatives of the romantic lover is to lure the love object away from the competition of these higher-status men. Since he cannot rule in the real world, the romantic lover will create his own solipsistic universe where he can be king. "Chasing cars:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GemKqzILV4w #romance #relationship #dating

Tune in on Friday, when a full-length meditation and hypnosis session is expected. Transcript This transcript is provided for the purposes of information only. Unless strictly necessary, I insist that you listen to the session before consulting this reference.Good boy. Today's episode is a bit rambly. It's my idea of a Utopia setting, but like […] The post 4.33 My Shared Solipsism Confession and an Invitation to be My Muse appeared first on Spoken By Elswyth.

Bill thoroughly answers questions about Artificial Human Companions as well as objective reality, and expecially on how each relates to Satanism.

Ran Prieur is a philosopher, writer, blogger, and is well known for writing on collapse, society, psychology, freedom, drugs and consciousness. We spoke about these topics and more.Leafbox: Ran, thanks so much for taking some time. I've been a reader of your essays for many, many years... I've watched some of your documentaries, but I think I get a sense of who you are, but if you were to introduce yourself to someone new who's never read one of your works, what's your first kind of statement, usually, on who you are, what you're into.Ran:Oh, I don't know. I've been doing a blog for about 20 years. I used to write about ... I guess I'd say I used to write about critique of civilization... Now I'm writing more about psychology and metaphysics and less about politics and society, but I'm still kind of interested in that stuff. I'm writing a novel. It's going very slowly. I just like to think about things and write about things.Leafbox:So maybe we can start there since you're in Seattle and you're more interested in the psychology. I was watching the short documentary about you, and I think a lot of ... I wouldn't call you a ... I guess  not a prepper, but a doomer, but there's kind of a sense of a meaning of crisis in the West. And I'm curious where you think that comes from?Ran:The sense ... where does the sense of crisis come from?Leafbox:Yeah. The meaning of crisis in the West, possibly.Ran:The meaning of crisis, like what meaning do people get out of thinking there's a crisis? Or ... I mean, I can talk a little bit about why people might ... what sense of meaning people might get out of ... I mean, I think there is a crisis and I think there's a lot of things that are going on right now that can't keep going the way they're going. And I used to more of a doomer. I still think that there's going to be a lot of big changes. I think we're in the middle right now. We're in the middle of a slow collapse and people get a sense of meaning about ... well, I think that's part of the reason that we're in a slow collapse, is people want to be part of something.People want to feel like they're participating in something that they feel good about. And society is not doing a very good job of giving that feeling to people.So they get into other things and other movements, some of which might destabilize the system that we've got. People might ... I mean, it's fun to imagine that everything is going to collapse and that I have these special skills other people don't have that let me do better other people. And a lot of people think that way, I might say the intersection of meaning and collapse.Leafbox:And where do you think ... why do you think society's failing to give meaning to Western, kind of modern people?Ran:Why do I think it's failing? Well, you can see this and a lot of things where something starts out ... when something starts out, people are excited about it and then it just builds up all kinds of cruff, it builds up lots of stuff that's just added on and it's easy to add stuff and hard to take stuff away. There's an important book that I haven't read, but everybody talks about it, The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter, and he just talks about how complexity ... societies keep adding complexity, incrementally. It's easy to add complexity incrementally and hard to remove it incrementally.So they just tend to build up more and more complexity and then lose a bunch of complexity all of a sudden.So, you know, you could look at how much more expensive it is now to build things than it used to be. If you want to build a tunnel or a new subway, even accounting for inflation, it's way more expensive, and nobody is sure exactly why that is, but I think it's just that society gets more complex and the more complex it gets, the more clunky it gets.And part of that is the ability to provide meaning. I think ... I can go on a bit of a tangent. I'm optimistic about the unconditional basic income. If we get something like that, then ... what people want is they want to do things. The goal for society should be a society that builds itself upward from what people enjoy doing. And ... it's hard to do that. And a society might originally build itself upward for what people enjoy doing. And then people are just doing it to go through the motions and not really enjoying it, like in ancient Egypt, the first great pyramid was better than the second. The second was better than the third. I think it's because for the first great pyramid, people were excited about like, Oh, that's cool. We're going to build a pyramid. And then they built it, and they're like, Oh man, another pyramid. But that was all they knew how to do.So I'm just trying to triangulate this whole idea of why society starts to feel less meaningful as it goes on longer.Leafbox:Do you think other civilizations have the same decadence of collapse, like Asian or Russian or Middle Eastern or developing?Ran:Yeah. I think the same dynamic happens all over the world. I don't think this is uniquely a Western problem. It is a modern problem and there's never been so much complexity as there is right now. And just so much ... so many things we have to keep track of, and not all that stuff is going to be fun. And so it's going to be tedious, but I don't think this is uniquely Western at all. I think it's just modern. It has to do with the ... humans are always going to try, humans have been trying a lot of things that we've never tried before and we tend to mess it up and try, do it the wrong way a bunch of times until we get it right. That's happening right now all over the world with the internet and social media and lots of technologies that we haven't worked out how to work them well yet we're working them in a way that's not satisfying.Leafbox:So do you know who Balaji is? He's that South Indian American kind of venture capitalist, philosopher, writer, Bitcoin guy. And he's modeled the future based on what he considers three contemporary forces, that being what he calls the CCP model, which is the Chinese kind of authoritarian state versus what he calls the NYT model, New York times, future model, where it's kind of a progressive eco kind of authoritative state, versus the BTC model, which is the Bitcoin kind of decentralized, utopian, anarchistic model. Peter Thiel also has a similar model, but he calls it sharia law versus the CCP model, versus eco hyper kind of ... progressivism, like European, or ...I'm curious if you're in Seattle and Washington, and you're kind of worried about collapse, what's your future image of what is going to collapse and what's the future? Is it a Mad Max image? Is it a CCP kind of China image? Sharia law image? I'm just curious what you think. Use the term "long emergency," kind of the long slow collapse, but I'm curious what you see the future as.Ran:Well, I have to break it down into different things. I don't ... and one of those things is technology, and another one of those things is the economy. And if I could just start with those, I think economic collapse is inevitable and there's going to be ... the economy we've got is based on perpetual growth, exponential growth, and there's no way we can keep having exponential growth. I think we're probably actually already done with the age of exponential growth and they're just kind of counting things that they shouldn't count to try to argue that ... economists are trying to create the illusion that we still have exponential growth and we don't. But we're going to have to figure out a way to live without that. So there's going to be all kinds of economic troubles.And technology, my latest thinking on that is it's not going to be monolithic or global. It's going to be different everywhere. There's going to be really advanced ... I mean, technological innovations and ventures are going to continue. There's going to be lots of cool stuff and materials, and lots of questionable stuff, and AI, I mean, it's exciting stuff, but dangerous stuff. There's going to be lots of cool technological stuff and dangerous technological stuff continue to happen all through this. But in other places it's going to totally go to hell. There might be some neighborhoods that are Mad Max-like, but it's not going to be on a global scale.Yeah, that's all I can think of right now. I mean, I don't really know much about China at all. It's such a big subject that I haven't really looked into it, but they're going to be in trouble because their system is also based on perpetual growth, and Americans continue to buy more things than the Chinese are making and they have their own troubles with the limits of authoritarianism.Leafbox:You ... going to limits of authoritarianism. I used to be more of a fan of the concept of UBI, but I think the whole last two years of COVID have made me very nervous about UBI, and the potential of UBI being connected to state requirements. I'm just curious if you have any kind of fears of UBI being limited to authoritarian aspects?Ran:I don't think ... the best thing would be not to have a UBI, but just have everything necessary be free, but that's really hard to pull off in practice. So I think I see the UBI as a transition from more of more of a top-down economy to more of a bottom-up economy where people can ... if people's basic needs are taken care of, then they can work more for quality of life and less for money. But yeah, I-Leafbox:Ran, my fear is let's say you live in Singapore, a modern technocratic state, and you get your UBI, a thousand Singaporean dollars a month, and then they start requiring you, if you didn't get the latest booster, Oh, we saw you spit on the ground once.Ran:Oh, yeah.Leafbox:There's a lot of carrots and sticks associated with the UBI.Ran:Then it's not unconditional, is it? Then it's a conditional basic income and that's not good. It's got to be something everyone gets, I think.Leafbox:So your definition is unconditional. I didn't hear that.Ran:Yeah, that's what the "U" is, unconditional. Everybody. I mean ... and I see you're right, that's a real danger that they're going to do that and they're going to call it unconditional though really it is conditional. I mean, you're probably right. That's going to happen in some places and to some extent, so then the challenge is to try to keep it ... try to make sure that they can't take it away for things like that. For any reason, really. I mean, I think should everyone should get it.Leafbox:Have you heard of central bank digital currencies?Ran:Yeah, that sounds ... yeah, I don't really, that's not really something I follow, but ... yeah, I don't really know much about that.Leafbox:It's just a way to create debt mechanisms. Instead of the central treasuries creating money and then giving it to banks, they would give it directly to the end user via an app. So the digital one in China has that.Ran:Okay.Leafbox:But the problem is then they can have negative inflation or turn off your cash based on whatever they do. So if you ... in China, "Oh, you said the word Tiananmen," and then they'll just turn off your cash. So something similar is happening in the US with like if you say anything wrong on PayPal, then they'll just turn off your PayPal account. Or if we saw that in ... you remember in Canada with the truckers, they got their bank accounts turned off, and things like that.Ran:Yeah. I mean, that's a danger. They could totally do that. I mean, there's a constant struggle. It's never going to end, the struggle for people to be able to live in a way that they enjoy living and the struggle between that and the other desire that people have when they have power to leverage that power and get more power. And we're never going to be done with that struggle. We're just going to have to ... I think we're less willing, humans as a whole are less willing to see people starve and die from lack of having necessities. I think in practice as it works out like that, there's going to be the people who don't obey or whatever are going to live worse.Leafbox:So that's interesting how you said ... do you think you have a tendency ... I believe you're kind of in the underground and kind of counterculture always, but how do you maintain that freedom? That kind of philosophy of freedom?Ran:I'm not sure. Could you phrase that another way? I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.Leafbox:I'm curious how do you keep free in terms of your thoughts or actions against a state or a group that might be against those freedoms?Ran:How do I personally?Leafbox:Yeah.Ran:Well, I've just been lucky. I've been lucky that I have enough money that I don't have to have a job. That's how I do it. And I don't spend a lot of money. I try to live frugally so that the money I have will last the rest of my life. But in general, people just have to find some way to make it through, there's going to be ... there's a lot of niches. There's a lot of ... people just have to find a niche. And I mean, I don't know, I'm starting to veer off into trying to give advice to people who I don't know anything about, but I'll just say that yeah, for me, I've just been lucky. I bought a house in Spokane when the market was low and sold it when the market was high. And I got the money from that.Leafbox:Ran, I was going to ask you where do you ... just maybe in terms of freedom, where do you see the counterculture now?Ran:Where do I see the counterculture now?Leafbox:Yeah.Ran:In terms of freedom? I'm not sure exactly. I mean, there's always going to be cultures and countercultures and freedom is such a loaded word. But ...before I talk about freedom, if I were to define freedom, I like to define, I like to say the most fundamental freedom is the freedom to do nothing. And all other freedoms come from the freedom to do nothing. If you don't have the freedom to do nothing, you don't have the freedom to do anything. It's like the void from which everything is created. It's like, I've got nothing to do, we have nothing to do, then you can figure out what you really want to do.So for me, that's the basis of freedom. And the word freedom gets thrown around a lot, and this is ... when people talk about freedom, sometimes they're talking about power, like, okay, you're driving your car and somebody cuts you off. That to you, it feels like power. They've exercised power over you by cutting you off. To them, it feels like freedom. They get to go wherever they want. So that's the constant trade off of freedom versus power. And a goal of a society should be to have as much freedom as we can. And as little power, people having power over other people as we can.Leafbox:Interesting. And then Ran, right now what kind of ... maybe ... I've followed some of your zine work and I've seen the development of your novel. What kind of other things are you interested in right now? Could be anything, technology, lifestyle, baking, anything?Ran:The ... I've been ... my latest obsession, one of my favorite motivational quotes is from the filmmaker John Waters, who said "Life is nothing if you're not obsessed." So I just like to get obsessed with little things. And I've been obsessed lately with hits of the seventies, believe it or not. I grew up in the seventies and I remember a lot of songs from then. I've just been going back and re-listening to a lot of those songs I remember from the seventies and making playlists. So that's my latest little obsession, but yeah, you mentioned baking. I'm doing ... I'm starting to make pasta now, which is surprisingly not that hard, to do homemade pasta. It takes more time than using pre-made pasta, but it's not hard and it's a lot better. So that's another little thing I'm doing.Leafbox:Are you still interested in the occult, and pan-psychism, and some of those-Ran:Totally. Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. I'm totally ... I mean, it's been a while since I've read any books on that stuff, but I'm always interested in woo-woo stuff. Yeah. In models of reality, other than materialism, and ... just all kinds of weird stuff.Leafbox:And then where does that interest in the woo-woo come from?Ran:I don't know where it comes from. It's something that's always been there. I just always like ... I like to see the cracks, I like to look beyond, I like to see things that are not working the way they should and are ... it's hard to explain it. That's not quite how I say it. What is it exactly? I mean, it's just ... it's newness. It's novelty. It's the world's supposed to be this way in terms of description of reality. And then you see something that doesn't fit, and wow. What is that? Maybe let me follow this thread and see where it leads.And there's the idea that maybe outside of this I mean it's the whole, what the movie The Matrix points to, that the reality we see is not the real reality. And the real reality is more interesting. I wonder if it comes down to a kind of boredom, I don't know. You want-go ahead.Leafbox:I think he wonders ... you have a lot of writing about psychedelics, and I think that always opens up questioning of reality. And I'm just curious if that has an overlap there, or-Ran:You know, I've used psychedelics. I'm actually watching that Michael Pollan TV show, How to Change Your Mind. And I read his book, and something I noticed about his show, How to Change Your Mind—they have all these psychedelic trip reports and every single trip report is better than any trip I've ever had or anyone I know has ever had. They make it seem like every time you do psychedelics, you go off in another universe and you explore all your past traumas and you come back a changed person. And I'm afraid people are going to get their hopes up too much from watching that.But I still think ... the insights that I've got from psychedelics are not that earth shaking, but they really helped me appreciate nature more. That's my favorite thing to do. I mean, I haven't done ... actually haven't done psychedelics in quite a while. I haven't done a large dose in a while, but when I do, I always like to go out and walk in nature and I just appreciate a lot more the beauty of ... well, when I'm speaking carefully, I don't call it nature. I call it the non-human made world. And compared to the non-human made world, the human made world looks pretty clunky and ugly, but we have a lot of room to do it better.Leafbox:What do you think about the kind of democratization of psychedelics?Ran:Oh, yeah, I mean look, they're not ... there's some problems. They're not completely miraculous, but I think it's overall good that more and more people are using them. And I think overall that's going to be good for society. It's not automatically going to make you a better person to use psychedelics. And a lot of people are going to use too many and fry their brains. But overall I'm in favor of more and more people using psychedelics. And I think it's going to cause some interesting changes in the world. It's inevitable.Leafbox:Going back to the occult and ... I think on one podcast I heard you were talking about, I think biblo ... I've heard the term-Ran:Bibliomancy, yeah.Leafbox:Are you still using that, or how is that?Ran:I do. It's a fun thing to do. It's not ... it's kind of like a parlor trick where you don't know exactly how it works and the way ... I guess, after I wrote about it, I found out that the normal way the people use bibliomancy is to open a book, you open a book at random, you riffle the pages, you put your finger down, and the way most people do it is they're looking for a phrase or a sentence. And that's not how I do it. I like to look to pull out a single word. So I use a dictionary, or ... I recommend a thesaurus to beginners because it's more simpler answers, but I use a dictionary. I just flip it on. I might be starting to write and I'm like, Let me have an idea. I say, Give me a seed crystal for what I'm going to write about today, and our starting point. And I put my finger down and there's a word. And surprisingly often whatever word I land on either fits the question or it's helpful.So yeah, that's something I enjoy doing. And it's something that's helpful. And I have to be careful talking about it because you can ... if people get in trouble, if you do it too much, you can really get into a bad mental state where every time you need to make a decision, you go, I mean, it could be bibliomancy, it could be tarot, it could be whatever you're doing. You could get in a pattern of relying on it too much or taking it too seriously. So I have to do all these disclaimers, but if you don't get all wide-eyed and goggle-eye about it, if you just say, Oh, I'll do this fun thing and it's going to help me, then I think it can help. I Find it helpful. Yeah.Leafbox:Do you have any religious practices, Ran?Ran:No. I mean, religious is a ... that's something I write about, is religious is a hard word to ... it's a tricky word to define, but I guess you could say bibliomancy is a religious practice, but I was raised Catholic and I went to Catholic church and at the time I did not like it. And I don't go to church now, but looking back, I kind of appreciate the epic spirituality of Catholicism, how it really gives a sense of a world beyond this world that's really epic and beautiful.And I know there's ... the word religion points to a lot of things. And some of those things are harmful, and some of them are necessary. One of the things it points to is just community. It's like people being with a group of people who think the same way, and that's always going to be that. And the challenge, if you're choosing that group of people, is to make sure they're not thinking in a way that's damaging or that's veering off from reality, so-Leafbox:Are you agnostic, or atheist, or what's your spiritual belief system?Ran:I mean, it's pretty much what anyone who's done psychedelics says, is that mind is more fundamental than matter. There is a universal ... I mean, I don't use the word God, because it ... sometimes I use the word God cause it's a really convenient word, but I don't want to give anyone the idea that I believe in a human-shaped sky father deity. That's a silly idea, and I think it's on the way out as more people use psychedelics and as the patriarchal culture, hopefully, the patriarchal culture is going to decline. And when people think about the absolute universal, they're not going to think about some old man. They're going to think about something that's way beyond what we can understand, but we see a little sliver of the universal.So I guess I would say ... I wouldn't say I'm a religious or a ... I wouldn't say an atheist because that kind of implies ... that implies materialism, belief that the matter's final reality. I don't like to say I'm religious cause that implies belief in a sky father deity. But I believe in a universal consciousness that we are all a part of. And there's all kinds of things about reality that we can't understand from here.Leafbox:Do you think there are ... that universal force is only good or are there evil forces, or-Ran:A quote I like is that, it contains ... call it the universal, call it God, whatever, "It embraces all opposites." So it includes absolutely everything. So there's good in it, there's evil in it. I think evil ... have you ever see the movie Time Bandits? It's one of my favorite movies. It's like an early Terry Gilliam film, and there's this bit in Time Bandits where they run into God, the Supreme Being, and they ask ... this little kid asks God, "Why is there evil?" And God says, "Oh, I forget. But it seems to me it has something to do with free will."So I think ... one thing I like to imagine is ... people imagine you're going to die and you're going to go to heaven. What if we're already in heaven right now? And we don't know it because we've forgotten certain things. We've wandered off into a bad neighborhood of heaven. And if heaven is heaven, it has to include the possibility to ... oh man, there's been some smoke in the air lately. Very smokey. Wow. The air doesn't look very smokey, but I'm getting these coughs. Let me see if I can go inside and see if it helps.I forgot what I was talking about, let's see, I was talking about the idea that if we're already in heaven.Leafbox:Correct. Yeah, in the neighborhoods, heaven.Ran:Yeah. This could be a bad neighborhood of heaven. And we're just trying to find our way back into a good neighborhood, or ... there's this famous question, can God make a rock so big he can't lift it? Or can God make a burrito so hot that he can't eat it? And you could say that, can the universal consciousness forget that it is the universal consciousness? And that's a common insight that people have on psychedelics, that ... that's like a cliche. Oh, we are all God. I think that's basically right, that there is a universal consciousness that divided itself up, or duplicated itself into all of us, and beyond that, it's really hard to say what's going on.Leafbox:Where does your universal consciousness emerge from?Ran:It's on the inside. It's not on the outside. It's like ... a metaphor I like to think of is, there's the universal consciousness just like looking through different keyholes or pinholes. And it looks through one keyhole and it sees what you see. It looks through another, it sees what I see. Not just what we see, but what we experience, our whole sense of self. So your whole sense of self or my whole sense of self is something larger that's making itself smaller and constraining its view in different ways. So where does it emerge from? It always existed. It's outside time and incomprehensible to us. But within us, it's ... go ahead.Leafbox:No, I was going to ask just related to consciousness is, do you have any thoughts on augmented reality and relationship with consciousness?Ran:Augmented reality ...Leafbox:VR ... if this is ... a lot of people-Ran:Yeah. I see what you're saying. I mean, that's a new path. I mean, augmented reality is a new thing that consciousness is doing. At the same time I wonder if we're just ... there's two directions you can go with it. You can go outward or inward. You can use it to go deeper and deeper inside of things, or ... man, having trouble putting this into words. But imagine you've got augmented reality, just trying to teach people how to do martial arts, and they go, they put on this full body suit, and they have this simulated person they're fighting. You can only go so far simulating it. Or let's say somebody's trying to figure out how to do augmented reality about how to fix a car, how to repair an engine. And you can only go so far with a simulation before you have to go back to reality. If you're trying to learn martial arts, you have to go back to the real physical world.And it's funny because on one hand I think the physical world is not exactly real, but the physical world is where we work it all out, and you've got to get back to ... augmented reality has to remain anchored in the physical world, and if it veers off too much from it it will kind of make people insane and be less effective.Leafbox:Ran, do you think that reality is a simulation?Ran:I mean, I think that's a nice metaphor. I think this whole physical world, it's not that ... now one way to think about it is this whole physical world is not really real because it's all being simulated. But the way I see it is, this is the simulation. I'm a flesh avatar, of something that I can't understand, and this whole physical world is the ... it's not that it's real because it's being simulated. It's that it is a simulation that we are all in and this is what we have to work with.It's like, this is how ... imagine you're just one mind. Let's imagine solipsism. You're just one mind floating in space and you create this entire world. Solipsism is a cool idea because you can't be falsified. It's like, you can't prove that's not true, that you alone are floating in nothingness and imagining everything. But then where it breaks down is, okay, if I'm imagining everything then where does all this stuff come from? Where does all the not me come from? Where does all this stuff come from that ... where does surprise come from? Where does all the stuff come from that is not consciously part of me?You could say, well, it's still me, but it's my subconscious. But in that case, it's much bigger. I mean, it doesn't really make sense to say it's only me given that the part that's not me that I'm not conscious of is so much is so much bigger.So trying to tie that back to the physical world, it's like, you're floating in space and you find someone else floating in space and you join together with them to make a world together. And then sometimes there's two of you, then there's three, then there's four. And if it's just you, you can do anything, you know, you can create anything. It's just your conscious mind floating in nothingness. You can create anything. You can create anything you want. The same was ... it's like a single player video game with good mods and good cheat codes. You can do anything. But then as soon as it gets multiplayer, you have to work it out with other people.So when I see the physical world as just ... the physical world is what you get when you have multiple perspectives that are trying to reach agreement. And I don't know, I think in one sense, reality is a popularity contest. But then if reality's a popularity contest, who gets to vote? And I think it goes far beyond humans. There's all kinds of perspectives or beings or aspects of consciousness that are collaborating to decide what this world looks like. And maybe humans aren't all that important in the whole scheme of it.Leafbox:Well Ran, that connects me to, have you ever done DMT?Ran:I never have. I would like to, but I know there's ways to synthesize it from Morning Glory seeds, I'm just too lazy to do that. So I'm just kind of waiting until someone gives me some, but I would like to do DMT. Yeah, never have.Leafbox:Have you read any of the research in DMT, like the beings, or the prolonged DMT experiences?Ran:I have seen that people are trying to get it to make DMT that last for a longer trip. That's a cool idea. I mean, maybe something bad will happen, but I think they should try it. I think it would be fun. I mean, yeah ... I look at the psychonaut subreddit. That's basically where I look, where ... that's the only psychedelic community that I look at regularly, is the psychedelic subreddit. And they're always talking about machine elves and the various DMT entities that you run into. I've never ... and haven't ever used a big dose of any psychedelic. I always just using just regular kind of small doses, but I've never actually hallucinated. I've never seen anything that's not there. My mind has never gone off into some other world. So it would be cool to do that sometime.Leafbox:Yeah, there's a neuroscientist out of Okinawa, Andrew Gallimore. I think he's in charge of that DMT, kind of psychoneurotic extension program. Very fascinating.Ran:Okay, cool.Leafbox:They're just trying to enter into that other world for longer to see what happens or what they can learn or take back or ... a lot of interesting. Have you ever ... I don't know if you've ever done, heard of the game of life computer science program? it's like-Ran:Yeah. I think I read about that a long time ago. Can you remind me about what that is?Leafbox:Well, every first-year computer science student basically learns the game of life, and you set up these rules and it almost looks like a checker board. You put these little bacteria on there and you set rules. If the bacteria's next to another bacteria, they mate, if next to three, they fight. And then what happens, these self-emergent civilizations emerge just from these basic rules. And a lot of people extend that then to reality, that the rules are just beyond our grasp, but those rules are defining the consciousness or the reality or ... so it's similar to what you're talking about of, it's just the fascinating neuroscience and math and information. And so the DMT people want to enter that world because they think that's a way to see the information behind this layer of reality.Ran:Okay. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I mean, that's a cool idea. I have to wonder about the limits of the human brain to ... it's like maybe the drugs put your brain temporarily into a state where you can see this stuff, and then ... but you can't stay in that state and you have to come back to this state and then you're like, It made total sense when I was in there, and now that I'm back here, it doesn't make sense. So I wonder how that could line up with ... how that could synergize with actual trying to actually change the human brain to have a different structure. And that's getting into some real weird stuff.I think one of the technologies that is going to come along that is going be interesting and dangerous, but also maybe, fun is brain hacking. I think there's going to be a lot of, assuming we don't get a total tech crash—when I'm talking about doom, I always have to keep the possibility open that we are going to get a total technology crash. But if we don't, if there's still people somewhere that are doing new stuff with technology, I think brain hacking is going to be big.Whatever we can do by ... it's going to get to a level where ... or LSD will seem primitive. You take this molecule and put it inside your brain and you could actually have implants in your brain that are doing whatever. I think there's going to be a lot of action on that front in the coming decades.Leafbox:So would you consider yourself a techno utopian, then? Kind of-Ran:Oh, I don't I that ... man, no. I do ... I don't want to put that tag on myself. I think technology is going to do some cool stuff. There's this quote from I think Arthur C. Clarke that says, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And I like a variant on that, which is, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature. And that's the insight I get when I'm on psychedelics is like, Wow, everything ... you know, you go out, you walk down to a river in early summer, and this is it. This is ... these creatures, these plants and animals and water and whatever, they've got a system that's robust, that's enjoyable. And humans are tinkering around trying to do our own thing just like that. And we're trying to duplicate in our creations the heavenly nature of the non-human made world.So I do think I'm utopian in the sense that I think we can do a lot better. And I think inevitably we're going to do a lot better, humans. I think humans, it's our nature that we try to ... we're always doing crazy new things and we make a lot of mistakes and then eventually we start to get it right. I think we're still, in a lot of ways still in the mistake-making phase and we're going to get it right. And I think in a thousand years, they'll look back at us as pretty brutish and primitive. And if we were to look a thousand years ahead of them, we'd say, Oh, they're doing some cool stuff, but maybe they'd also be doing some stuff that we don't like. So in that sense, I'm a utopian.Leafbox:Do you have any thoughts on biogenetics and some of ... what are your fears on technology, in terms of ... some of mine personally are just losing the aspect of humanity.Ran:Yeah. I think that's the way that humans could actually go extinct. If there's one way ... if you ask me what way is most likely for humans to go extinct, is through biotech where we ... we're like, We're going to make this change to our own genomes that looks like an improvement. And because we're shortsighted, it's not an improvement and it makes things worse. And we can't go back to the way it was before. And we go extinct. That's a real possibility, that humans are going to drive ourselves into extinction through irreversible biotech.But then when I talk to people who actually know more than I do about genetic technology, it's really hard. It's not like the DNA is like a blueprint where you go in and you're like, Oh, we're going to give people wings. It's really hard to go in there and just get whatever changes you want. You have to muck around and try different things, and then something comes out that is not what you expected.So yeah, but we're going to do it. Humans are going to do crazy stuff with genetic technology. And then it's going to be interesting to see where it goes.Leafbox:Talking about genetics and biotechnology and even bio warfare, do you have any thoughts on the last two years of COVID, or how has that been for you?Ran:Oh, I mean, I enjoyed quarantine because I like to stay home anyway. And I think one good thing that came out of it was the whole working from home thing. I mean, I'm here in Seattle, the King County administration building is now empty. They've gone 100% working from home. And there's a lot of places that ... and it's better overall. And I think it's going to ... there's a lot of managers, a lot of managerial jobs that are not really necessary, and the managers want to keep people in the office because they have power over people, but people working from home and then things might work out better with fewer managers. I think that's a big benefit that's come out of COVID, is more working from home.Of course, with the class aspect, the service workers can't work from home. And it's funny, the people who still had to work during COVID are the people who make the least money, but a lot of people did get ... are living better now because of COVID making it easier to work from home.Leafbox:I read some of your thoughts on 9/11 on your website.How do you feel about kind of ... I call it kind of the mind virus, or some of the ... that went on for the last two years, or three years with the pandemic. I think the West lost a lot of ability to ... free speech. The psychological operations were clear. I'm just curious what you think about just some of the responses to the virus, or the vaccine, or anything like that. The masking, the rules.Ran:I mean, yeah, some of the rules are silly. Like, they actually said that it's not good to wear a mask, and the reason they said that was they wanted to save the masks for the medical places where they were really ... I mean, it's going to be clunky, there's going to be mistakes. But I think overall ... I mean, when COVID first appeared, my first thought was, why are we taking so many precautions against something that only has a 1% death rate? But then it makes sense when you look at hospitals because if hospitals get overwhelmed, a lot of people would die who would not otherwise die. So the way I started framing COVID was, as long as hospitals are not getting overwhelmed, we should call it a win and we should just do whatever precautions are necessary to keep the hospitals from getting overwhelmed, and beyond that, we should just let people get sick if they want.I think ... I understand why people are afraid of vaccinations because here's the central authority saying you've got to put this thing in your body. But when I look at the science, it looks pretty good. I got the vax, I got the Moderna vax, and I think it helped me when I got COVID to get less sick than I would've got. I think it's a pretty interesting technology, the mRNA thing that they developed, and it might ... we might still not have it if they hadn't had to develop it really fast to try to fix COVID.Leafbox:I was just curious, do you partake in any of the conspiracy theories or are you outside of that?Ran:I think, I mean as far as I can figure out, it did come from a Chinese biolab. It was accidentally released. That's what I think about it, is that, it was a Chinese biolab that was tinkering with bio weapons or something, and they were sloppy with, and it accidentally got released. That's where I think it came from. And beyond that, I don't really prescribe to any of the COVID conspiracy theories.Leafbox:What do you think about conspiracies in general? What do you think?Ran:I mean, conspiracy's one of those words that points to a lot of things. But I think it's good for people to not take it face value, what we're told, and to try to figure things out on our own. At the same time, I mean with the internet, it's really easy to just create these groups that veer off into beliefs with, I mean, you get into echo chambers really easily. And it's easy, I mean, it's human nature to want to tell beautiful stories. I think that's where a lot of this comes from. You want to tell a story about the world that makes the world seem more exciting and more fun to live in. And the internet allows us to self filter where we get our stories from. And people can go off and find their own stories that paint a world that seems more exciting for them to live in or more meaningful. And they can find other people who back up from that.I stopped writing about politics because I just got tired of arguing. But I'll say this about Trump, is that he's a political cold reader. He's a cold reader is someone who like, someone like a fake psychic who will say, "Oh yes, I've been thinking of a person named Jeff," and was like, "Oh yes, yes. You know my brother's named Jeff." Trump does that on a massive scale where he'll just say stuff and whatever people respond to, he says more of that stuff and that's why he became president. Because he's so talented at doing that. But that's also what the internet in general does, is if you start thinking of a certain way and you plug it in, it can reinforce that. And you can get, I mean, this AI is going to do some crazy stuff like bots that, I mean, I haven't read it a lot. And they're more and more bots on, right?And my view of AI, which I mentioned on a blog a couple weeks ago is that, I think the way to look at it is something created by humans and AI is part of the human story, and it's going to give humans, this is going to be interesting to see what the intersection on the internet of bots feeding back what people want to believe or feeding back stories that people enjoy telling each other and how that could grow in AI space.Leafbox:Ran, how do you avoid, or do you drop into the echo chamber?Ran:Well, so how do I avoid dropping into an echo chamber is just to ...Leafbox:Or, conversely, do you go further into it?Ran:To go further into it is, I mean, I guess, I've done that a little bit in the past where you're like, you're into something and you, to go into it is, I guess it's, you can almost put in terms of, you can always define in terms of the body. Do you feel like your body's expanding or do you feel like it's contracting? Or you could just say the mind is expanding or contracting and to go, it feels good to contract, it feels good to zoom in. It feels good to look at smaller and smaller things and see more importance and value in smaller and smaller things. And I try to resist that by ...And the nice thing about having a blog is people will tell me when I'm wrong. And readers have done that a lot over the years and it's helping me change my opinions a lot, is to have to people emailing me saying, "Hey, here's some evidence that goes against what you're saying."So the way to avoid, the way to get out of an echo chamber is just painful expansion into stuff that you don't like hearing. And you have to be willing to endure some pain to see things that don't fit your narrative. And I'm not great at that, but I do try to practice that. And there are some people who say they intentionally go to all the whole spectrum of political sites to keep their perspective wide. I'm just not interested enough to do that. But I do try to remain open to the idea that I'm wrong and practice.I think it's good to, for metaphysics, I've written about this in terms of, for example, solipsism. I don't actually believe in solipsism, but if I can go temporarily into that space is helpful and I can pull out of it. Or determinism, I can go temporarily, if I start to think I'm better than other people, then I go into determinism mind space and under determinism, any way that I'm better than anyone else is 100% luck. And I can't go around thinking, Oh, I'm all smart and these people are stupid, because I'm just lucky and they're unlucky. And you go into determinism and then it does its job when you go out of it. So I think that's a good mental skill is to practice going into and out of ways of thinking. And if a way of thinking is fun and compelling, then it's easier to get into it and harder to get out of it, but you have to practice that.Leafbox:Ran, what's some of the examples of where you've changed your mind?Ran:I guess I'd go, I guess it'd look more like, I used to think that the whole system was going to collapse. If you look back at stuff I was writing in 2003, about 20 years ago, I thought that the whole global society was a lot more delicate than it turns out to be. People use the house of cards metaphor, the whole thing is going to come down like a house of cards. Well, the moment that I changed my mind on that was Hurricane Katrina. And if you'd asked people a year before Hurricane Katrina, what would happen if America's largest port city would be shut down for months, they would say, "Oh, it would cause a cascading series of effects and we'd all be living in the ruins." But actually, no, it just, where I was, the only effect of Katrina was gas prices got a little higher. So, I changed my mind on how fragile or how robust the human society is. It really can take a lot of pretty hard hits.At the same time, every complex society eventually falls. And I think there's going to be some event, I know I'm going off on a tangent here. There's going to be some event in the future where everyone looks back on the effect of the equivalent of the Visigoths sacking Rome. People don't know much about Rome. Ancient Rome would be, "Oh, Rome was just buzzing along fine. And then one day the Visigoths sacked it, and then it was over." When really it was weakening for hundreds of years before that event happened and continued weakening for hundreds years after. So I think we get we're going to have a Visigoths sack Rome event. It hasn't happened yet. The history will look back, dumb history will look back and say, "Oh, that's where it all collapsed," and to us it'd be like, "Oh, that's just another bad thing that happened."So, I'm going back to the subject where I've changed my mind on, like the critique of civilization. I haven't exactly, I still think that the best primitive tribes live better than us. And if you could pick any human society that ever happened in the history of the world, if they got the best ones, they would all be nature based cultures. But at the same time, a lot of nature based cultures are terrible. So the tribal people were in the whole range from living a lot better than us to living a lot worse in terms of subjective quality of life. So I used to write a lot about civilization, and now I stopped using that word because it has too much baggage. The word civilization points to things that I'm against, like central control and empire. And it also points to stuff I'm in favor of, which is people getting nicer to each other. And those don't necessarily go together.Leafbox:Have you heard of Dmitry Orlov?Ran:I actually, I read his stuff, I haven't read his stuff recently, but back in the aughties, I actually emailed back and forth with him a couple times and I read his stuff. He's an interesting thinker.Leafbox:I just wondered if he, I mean, he definitely thinks, well, he leans more to the west in his analysis. But I mean, he does have the example of Russia collapsing, and I lean to the long emergency framework, like you.Ran:Okay, okay.Leafbox:Collapse takes centuries. It's not like an instant thing. And some things get better, some things get worse. So it's hard to know really.Ran:Yeah. Yeah.Leafbox:I am concerned ...Ran:Go ahead.Leafbox:Just personally, I just wonder, in your writing, do you have any topics you want to write about but can't or self censorship or anything like that?Ran:Not really. The left right now has certain things that it doesn't want people to say, but I'm not really interested in saying those things. So, I mean, the main self censorship, I don't write about, I stopped writing about politics because I'm tired of arguing. But, it's funny that some of the most hostility I get is when I'm too optimistic, when I say, like I said, something nice about Steven Pinker and his idea and his idea that humans are getting progressively nicer. People got pissed off about that and it's true, when you look at Steven Pinker, his reasons for why he thinks the people are getting nicer don't really add up. But I think that data is accurate, and I believe in something like moral progress or ethical progress.And that's oddly one of the things that I've got the most pushback from writing about, that the people are getting nicer. I think we are, and over time, you look back thousands of years ago is all kinds of terrible stuff that's not going on now. And I think in thousands of years there'll be terrible stuff is going on now that will not be going on. At the same time, there's going to be new crazy stuff. But to go back to your question, I don't really, other than not writing about the hot button subjects anymore, I don't really do any self censorship.Leafbox:Ran, maybe just to wind it down, how do you design or build your moral framework then?Ran:That's an interesting question. How do I design and build my moral framework? I mean, I think, this is an idea, a phrase I got years ago from some new age book, and that is the greatest good of all life everywhere.And my moral framework is the greatest good of all life everywhere, which is beyond my comprehension. But I can work towards that and, I mean, morality is all about being unselfish. It's all about getting out of the small view of what's good for me and the larger view of what's good for other people. And I guess that would be that's my moral framework.It's just thinking about trying to understand better the interests of more people. And at the same time, I know what makes me happy. I don't know what directly experience what makes me happy, and I don't directly experience what makes other people happy, nor do they experience what makes me happy. So for the same time, I have to serve myself. I have to do what makes me feel good. And that's balanced against trying to figure out what other people need and not stepping on other people's toes. So that, I guess, that's my moral framework.Leafbox:To maximize the good in the world, I guess, or even in all layers.Ran:Yes. And it's hard to find, if you say, "Okay, the greatest good." Well, what ... It gets into hard stuff to define, but it's a challenge, it's a constant challenge to try to work out what to do. I wonder if in hundreds of years they'll look back. I wonder if I'll get canceled in hundreds of years because I eat factory farm meat. But that's something I do, and I look forward to some future world where we'll be able to eat without that. But right now, that's too much of a sacrifice for me to make, is to give up eating meat.Leafbox:Well that's a whole world of topics. I heard the most interesting argument against vegetarianism is the moral value of all the animals alive. So, there's just so many animals, billions of animals that are obviously factory farming versus an organic, wonderful farm and a rural place. So it's just an interesting thing. You'd have to terminate all those lives in all ...Ran:That's an interesting idea. I say that's better to not exist at all than to exist as a factory farm animal. But another argument I've seen is the vegetables, to clear farmland to grow vegetables? A lot of animals have to be killed. You have to cut down a forest to build those fields. And a lot of creatures that we're living in whatever the field is now in, have their way of life destroyed. So there's no morally pure way to eat. Although there could be, in the future. This is my utopian vision is that is genetically modified trees so that everywhere you go you can just live by eating the fruit off trees, which is totally unrealistic now, but who knows? In a thousand years maybe we'll just be able to live off eating the fruit off trees.Leafbox:We'll see. Very complex.Ran:Yeah.Leafbox:Ran, is there anything else you want to discuss today? I mean, there's a hundred topics I could ask you, but I don't want to take more of your time.Ran:My voice is getting a little tired, so I think I probably better hang it up. But, it's been nice.Leafbox:Thanks so much,Learn more of Ran's thoughts @ RanPrieur.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leafbox.substack.com

Helen Yetter-Chappell is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami. She received her PhD from Princeton University, and has since been a Bersoff Fellow at NYU and a lecturer at the University of York. She is currently writing a book, titled "The View From Everywhere: Realist Idealism Without God." The book develops a novel quasi-Berkeleyan realist idealism, which does not rely upon God to do the metaphysical heavy lifting. This non-theistic idealism offers a fresh approach to the persistence and stability of the physical world. The resulting theory has implications for the nature of perception and the relationship between our minds and our bodies, and affords a uniquely optimistic account of our place within, and our ability to comprehend, reality. Her other research focuses on consciousness (its nature, contents, and how limited agents like us conceptualize it). EPISODE LINKS: - Helen's Website: http://yetterchappell.net/Helen/ - Helen's Publications: https://philpeople.org/profiles/helen-yetter-chappell - Helen's Work site: https://people.miami.edu/profile/hxc655@miami.edu TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Introduction (0:57) - Consciousness & the Mind-Body Problem (7:20 - Physicalism & Dualism (10:12) - Idealism (14:54) - Panpsychism (18:49) - Berkeleyian Idealism (25:01) - Types of Idealism (30:11) - Idealism without God (37:10) - Implications of Idealism on morality & death (43:15) - Idealism vs Solipsism (49:33) - Tapestry of sensory experiences (54:46) - Naïve Idealism (1:00:39) - Epiphenomenalist Dualism & the paradox of phenomenal judgement (1:06:23) - Challenges facing Idealism (1:09:44) - Defending Idealism (1:18:24) - Idealist misconceptions (1:23:40) - Helen's Philosopher Mt Rushmore (1:26:46) - Conclusion Website · YouTube · YouTube

Helen Yetter-Chappell is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami. She received her PhD from Princeton University, and has since been a Bersoff Fellow at NYU and a lecturer at the University of York. She is currently writing a book, titled "The View From Everywhere: Realist Idealism Without God." The book develops a novel quasi-Berkeleyan realist idealism, which does not rely upon God to do the metaphysical heavy lifting. This non-theistic idealism offers a fresh approach to the persistence and stability of the physical world. The resulting theory has implications for the nature of perception and the relationship between our minds and our bodies, and affords a uniquely optimistic account of our place within, and our ability to comprehend, reality. Her other research focuses on consciousness (its nature, contents, and how limited agents like us conceptualize it). EPISODE LINKS: - Helen's Website: http://yetterchappell.net/Helen/ - Helen's Publications: https://philpeople.org/profiles/helen-yetter-chappell - Helen's Work site: https://people.miami.edu/profile/hxc655@miami.edu TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Introduction (0:57) - Consciousness & the Mind-Body Problem (7:20 - Physicalism & Dualism (10:12) - Idealism (14:54) - Panpsychism (18:49) - Berkeleyian Idealism (25:01) - Types of Idealism (30:11) - Idealism without God (37:10) - Implications of Idealism on morality & death (43:15) - Idealism vs Solipsism (49:33) - Tapestry of sensory experiences (54:46) - Naïve Idealism (1:00:39) - Epiphenomenalist Dualism & the paradox of phenomenal judgement (1:06:23) - Challenges facing Idealism (1:09:44) - Defending Idealism (1:18:24) - Idealist misconceptions (1:23:40) - Helen's Philosopher Mt Rushmore (1:26:46) - Conclusion Website · YouTube

Richard Firth-Godbehere is an independent researcher and consultant in the history, language, and science of emotions. He is also a witty, entertaining, charismatic, and "occasionally funny" man. This conversation goes "all over the place" with stops at: 01:50 – Feelings throughout history and the changing vocabulary to describe them 04:15 – Narrating one's own book 07:15 – Convergent evolution in different religions' stance on desires 11:33 – Ashoka the Great and Buddha "the fat guy" 16:45 – Abiding neurotransmitters and their role in emotions 19:05 – Defining love 21:07 – Reading Marcus Aurelius vs laughing at proto-scientific papers on evolution 22:05 – Scientists moving things forward (despite lacking in eloquence) 25:20 – Desire-led need to know things and the scientific revolution 26:44 – Emotions in decision making and the archetype of Mr. Spock 33:30 – Chipping away at jobs, task by task; paying humans to observe their emotions 35:35 – Emotions being the hardest nut to crack in creating genuine "General AI"; needing bigger "roomfuls of computers" 38:25 – Solipsism 2.0 and the future of emotions 39:05 – Passing the Turing test vs being sentient 43:50 – Digital communications and the wielding of one's "offendedness level" as an argument 47:05 – Getting freaked out by new information technology, on a global and historical level 48:25 – Changing culture of letter-writing and interpersonal communication (and the oxytocin connection) 51:45 – Pursuing copycat happiness and letting Instagram and TikTok be our guide doing it 54:30 – Modern art, filters, attention, and social media apps 57:15 – TikTok being better than YouTube at guessing the user's interests 61:20 – Computers telling us what we really want Links: Richard Firth-Godbehere: @DrRichFG KMO: @Kayemmo | padverb.com/kmo Comments? Join our Telegram channel: t.me/padverbpodcast

Read by Martin RoehlerProduction and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

“When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.” – Pope John Paul II The phrase "don't be evil" was used in Google's code of conduct before 2015; now their motto is "do the right thing" and now an internal chatbot technology coined LaMDA could be sentient according to a veteran Google engineer, proving once again that maybe, just maybe, the Wolf has predicted the future. We are in a simulation, and maybe the singularity has happened. Who knows? Join The Wolf, Bull, and Baewolf in episode 51 as they discuss the newest events within Google, and how the social acceptance of philosophies such as Solipsism, Hedonism, and Nihilism might be negatively impacting our current culture. New episodes are published every week! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wolf-and-the-bull-podcast/support

Mentally Gone Conversations Ep. 30 w/ Ferdinand Loperena - ONLYFANS | HUSTLE CULTURE | SOLIPSISM In this episode I had the pleasure of meeting and sitting down with Ferdinand Loperena for the first time and we touched on a plethora of topics including: hustle culture and it's toxic implications, motivation and the corny motivational speakers/gurus/videos, Passion and what success means to us, Solipsism and the egg theory, movies and the philosophical messaging they sometimes relay (Nihilism in Everything Everywhere All At Once), Some hot takes like Ben Affleck's Batman being better than Christian Bale's Batman and whether or not Marvel is satanic... That and much more! Be sure to check out and support Ferdinand and his clothing brand "Eunoia" Ferdinand's Instagram: @ fahhbaadeelop Ferdinand's TikTok: @ ahhbaadee Eunoia Website: https://www.eunoiaappareld.com Eunoia Instagram: @ eunoia_appareld Mentally Gone's community is almost 1 million strong on TikTok, come join Gabriella and I! Mentally Gone TikTok: @ MentallyGoneStudios Mentally Gone Podcast: https://anchor.fm/mentallygonestudios --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/mentallygonestudios/support

Felurian is not a great storyteller. We wrap up this quarter of the book and embark on our break by talking about a storytelling shorthand, the difference between knowledge and trivia, and speculate as to Kvothe's fecundity. We'll be back to wrap up the book in September! @pageofthewind pageofthewind.com twitch.tv/pageofthewind

Christian Langalis is the co-founder and C.E.O. of Tirell Corporation What is Orbis Tertiary? What is the Orbis Ledger? Are there any cyberpunk references for Urbit business? What is the distinction of cyber-punk? Dystopia. What is cypher-punk? Who are Timothy May and Satoshi Nakamoto What is the overreach of instrumentalization? What is the atomization of the social? How did computers atomize humans even further? In what ways has studying culture informed your world view? What is the ultimate holy grail for Tirrell? What is an interregnum? What is the role of Urbit in the Web 3.0 ecosystem? How do you maintain legacy systems on an entirely new system that is censorless? What is a Spot ETF and why is it important? What is Bitcoin's fifth pillar? (15 minutes) What is a cantalon insider? What is the New World Order that George H. W. Bush setup and how does it work now? What is the Minsky Movement? What is the Austrian tendency when it comes to economics? Who are Larry White and George Selgen? What is synthetic commodity money? What is the New Wyoming Bank Charter?  What are Full-Reserve Cryptocurrency Banks? What is the difference between a bank and a bitcoin wallet? What are interbank clearing systems? What is the difference between a deferred system and a credit card settlement? What is unchained capital multisig? What is an FBO? What are extant regulations? What is the Nick Land quote (“in the mouth of madness”) (25 minutes)? How did science fiction inform your life? Who is Phil Monk? Urbit strives to have a system that is human scale, that will never require the long-term intervention of a specialized third party. Why do people call Curtis Yarvin an authoritarian? What is peer discovery? What is the contained podcast and who is Barret (36 minutes)?  What are your favorite exclaves? How do I use Tirrell? Download the thing (find the thing). What is landscape (groups) programming language? What is the future of NFTs when it comes to fan groups? NFT's can be digital cellophane wrappers for an album. How many people are in the Tirell corporation? What should someone know about the Urbit foundation? What is Hoon School? Do you have any insight into the people aspect of doing business? How is Tirell corporation set up? What church do you belong to (55 minutes)? What is the correct view of Urbit?  What is the Jungen? What is Cottage Core? What is the relationship between Solipsism and being a Luddite?  Who is Junger? What is the naming scheme? ~tirrel ~pindet-timmut ~tirrel corporation tirrel.io

If you would like to support Naturopathic Earth (www.naturopathicearth.com), the easiest is via our crowd-funding account via PayPal (www.paypal.me/agregoryluna) The Awakened Man… The post #567: Why ALL Men Must Understand Female Solipsism appeared first on Naturopathic Earth.

What's up you beautiful souls. In this episode we talk about Consciousness and theories revolving around it. What percentage of the population has a inner monologue? What is Solipsism? What is Quantum Immortality? Come hang out with us as we try to explain it. Please like and share the podcast! New episode every Sunday! Be sure to follow our Instagram @ShinoBroz Follow Sly @SillySly07 on Instagram and Tiktok Follow Jericho @Jamokee on Instagram --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/shinobroz/support

The Knuckleball Podcast is an exploration of what it means to be human. Each episode, I'll sit down with one stranger or friend, and we'll ponder about our existence and all the elements of the human condition. // Hi friends! Gosh, I'm so excited to share this week's episode with ya'll. I have the wonderfully chaotic, Mel, on with me today. The biggest thing I love about her is how free-spirited she is. The girl does whatever she wants, whenever she wants. Is that a bad thing? Maybe? But we could all use a little of that IDGAF attitude once in a while. Mel and I laughed over: 1. What's it like to be a sugar baby? 2. Solipsism - is reality really anything beyond our senses/perception? 3. Her very inappropriately funny sexual alien space jail dreams Please enjoy! Instagram - knuckleballpodcast Discord - https://discord.gg/QkzMpbbq

Joep Beving is a Dutch composer and 21st-century music phenomenon, known worldwide for his gorgeous and haunting compositions which he often refers to as "simple music for complex emotions.”  Joep has reenergized the world of modern classical music  and proven that it's never too late to embrace one's creative passion.  His first album "Solipsism", which he humbly wrote and recorded at age 38 in his kitchen, was self-released with the hope of a few listens.  Instead, it became an overnight viral sensation.  Over the following five years, Joep's penetrating and deeply moving songs gained more than 320 million streams (and rising).  "Solipsism" was soon followed by the acclaimed albums "Prehension", "Conatus" , "Henosis" and "Trilogy".