MoralParadise
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Posts posted by MoralParadise
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IMO, any lifter must utilize Mentzer's training principles. Try lifting 4+ sets of heavy for every exercise for multiple years straight, and you'll find that your nervous system, skeletal system, and even cardiovascular system will be extremely tired. Even taking breaks from lifting altogether is not enough. The body cannot continually be trained like it is a gorilla. I highly recommend adhering to Mentzer's principles if you want to be able to lift for life. The book is definitely worth purchasing, the philosophy is pretty simple...less sets, less time lifting.
Less sets, it was a good book.
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Well, look...you are only 19 years old, for goodness sake. You do realize that Howard Roark was "the ripe old age of 22" before he went off and tried to even be an architect on his own -- and only after more training from Cameron -- right? Doing something great means to live by your own standards of reason and purpose, but you might not have yet figured out what that means at your age. I mean, what did you expect to achieve by your age -- traveling to Mars, Conquering the Earth, Solving the meaning to Life the Universe and Everything, understanding a philosophy? Perhaps that "anti-concept" is a false expectation of what you believe you should have achieved by now. Under the proper guidance, I guess it is possible to be a great self-achiever by the age of 19, but it is not very reasonable to expect to have done that much at your age in our culture which morally stifles achievement. So, you have to fight that first, and Objectivism can help along those lines.
Thanks!
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I think awareness really follows purpose. Without one purpose, which has to be valued above all alternatives, there is no purpose to be aware of anything to begin with. Now of course you can say that your purpose is as general as your life, but the question here is really how do I achieve my goals? From my experience, following a prescribed code of ethics is not enough. You must make your purpose your own.
It is very easy to get distracted. We live in a world of distractions gleaming everywhere. Take your room for example. There is the internet, a musical instrument, books, and if it's dirty it can be cleaned. There is also a telephone, and then you have family, friends, debts to pay, etc.. There are so many things you could possibly be doing right now that unless you purposefully commit yourself to one value, that can be a long term value, over these shiny distractions, you'll probably be unhappy with nothing to gain and nothing to lose, except maybe your self esteem and time. You might say well, I don't know what I want. Well, you better figure it out and make sure that you are content with valuing that one thing above all else. It isn't enough to value things by default. That is essentially the exact opposite of awareness. Awareness implies an active value over a long term period of time. You are asking for purpose in your post. We live in a society where you CAN survive without actively defining a purpose. Millions of people do it everyday. No one is going to knock on your door everyday and ask if you are achieving your purpose, not even your mom. Only you can know, and persist in finding out what you want to do with your life.
If you really enjoy something, you probably will wish you were not doing anything else. If you have a conflict in your mind with your purpose, you should probably address that so you don't view whatever you are doing as a chore and do something for no reason or purpose. Honesty and awareness are one in the same.
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I found the below in Leonard Peikoff's DIM Hypothesis partial outline (forgot the link). It says that Descartes theory of concepts (or maybe just his undefined use of them) was Misintegrated, or M, as apart of the DIM hypothesis, because he quote thought"concepts to a significant extent must be applied to percepts."
What exactly does this mean? Does this mean that Peikoff is stating that it is counterproductive to try and grant percepts the power of concepts and vice versa, thereby disrupting the functions of our method of cognition, that is receiving a percept and then integrating it into a concept? Is he saying that Descartes confused concepts and percepts and believed that concepts existed in the place of percepts?
The reason I'm most concerned about this is that I see myself using a similar method. I just realized after reading this outline that I do view concepts as percepts at times, which disassociates my brain's content from reality directly because my referents become floating abstractions in essence. Not only this, but in class for example, I will be interpreting information as though it was already a concept (like for example a vocabulary term) and then stare at it in a confused stupor as opposed to just taking it as a new percept and treating it accordingly, exposing it to conceptualization afterwards. I then get into the habit of believing that every thought out of my professors' mouths are essentially concepts, even if they are definitions, and therefore shortchange my thought process in forming my own concepts.
From Peikoff's Outline of the DIM Hypothesis-
"I Aristotle: Unity through: secular world/grasped by concepts abstracted from percepts.
M2 Plato: Unity through: transcendent world/grasped by conceptsindependent of percepts; secular world is unreal, and percepts are in conflict with concepts.
M1 Descartes: Unity through: M2 above, except: secular world is real, and concepts to a significant extent must be applied to percepts.
D2 Kant: Unity impossible and undesirable; concepts (and percepts) are
detached from reality.
D1 Comte: Unity, in disconnected chunks of percepts, through: secular
world/grasped by lower-level concepts."
Thanks.
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Thanks for sharing! I enjoyed that.
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Haha - yeah I've decided to just have fun learning the material. AT the end of the day, whatever a professor does not conceptually integrate himself is of little use to him. I need my conceptual knowledge, and I am going to get it.
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Michael Moore is the most popular context dropper, and he doesn't even work for the government. For this reason alone, he does need to be put in his place. While he claims that capitalism is a great evil to society, he does not realize that his movies would not exist in another country like China and that capitalism is the only system that protects men's rights. He clearly is short circuiting concepts such as health care and capitalism and expects everyone to be able to have their cake and eat it too, while he makes his living destroying the goose that lays his golden eggs.
I am frankly sick of this bastard, who argues from a point of view that is entirely unprincipled, amasses a bandwagon of followers, only to be clean swept by a greedy politician waiting in the wings with more than one idea of how to "fix" the plight. Garbage in, garbage out, and no effective principled change or thinking.
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Thanks, I am glad my observations are not unfounded. They are treating the symptoms of disease rather than basing their ideas on what constitutes total health.
My experience with doctors as a patient has been borderline absurd. Had I actually believed anything a doctor has ever told me about an ailment I had, I probably would still have that ailment and be taking drugs with multiple side effects. This has happened to me from the use of antibiotics, which I have countered with iodine supplementation. It boggles my mind how a doctor could think that taking in empty calories and not exercising have no relationship to disease. Talking to a doctor today is almost like talking to an animal with no cross conceptualization ability. (I say this with respect for the few doctors that actually seek to treat the patient and not the disease)
I have seen the doctors that maintain their conceptual ability/philosophy of understanding problems, and this is why I am going to continue with it. One glance at the average MCAT scores (which encompass all of one's premed studies) shows that the average score for most medical schools is 50%.
Though I must say, it is physically impossible to retain the massive amount of information beyond test day without devoting much time to establishing context that is not considered by my teachers.
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I'm taking pre med courses - gen chem 2, physics I, bio, calc, anatomy and have realized that the degree of conceptual learning is minimal. I don't know if this is because teachers are required to blow through material at a fast rate or if it's because they learned in that way or what. If I do not read every detail of my textbook and conceptually integrate everything on my own I literally walk away with nothing. I forget the equations, which are presented like memorized hieroglyphs with a near mystical origin. There is next to no passion for conceptual integration from what I've experienced apart from the occasional non relevant aside given by the professor, which they always seem to enjoy giving most (maybe because they are relaying this information in a more conceptual manner).
I guess it's my own responsibility to form the concepts on my own time, though I can see very clearly why many doctors are resorting to tablet PCs with symptom drop down boxes for their patients and computer prescribed treatments.
Maybe I'm just cynical for the fact that I literally have to do all the teaching myself. Some other kids appear to readily absorb the hieroglyphs and readily forget them with undaunted repetition, though my intellectual needs seem greater than that.
Can anyone else relate or advise? I hate to take a class just to forget the material - so total immersion is I guess the only solution (in my own time).
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Speaking from experience, someone becomes an entrepreneur because they see value somewhere and think they can capitalize on it.
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nevermind - all is well
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Dude - have you heard of logic? Logic is a concept which refers to a method of reasoning. Concept formation in itself is a process of reasoning - even if somewhat subconscious. You HAVE to reason to live your life and survive - you can cheat on that though and will suffer proportionally. What's the alternative to "reason"? Faith.
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Mod delete this - thanks.
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Wynand's philosophy seems to be formed in this passage. He assumes that people are generally worthless and that he must therefore gain power over them...and subsequently allow them to control him. It's ironic how he resents the second handerism in his would be girlfriend, yet resorts to a darker form of it through pandering to the masses in an opposite form of Roark.
The attitude he adopts is key to his future actions in the novel.
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Oh come on - 40 views and no one read the Fountainhead?
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What does it mean? I think it is an example of Gail not being able to control someone, and being frustrated. Yet, I want to understand what Rand is implying by the part:
"My darling, anything you
wish, anything I am, anything I can ever be . .. That's what i
want to offer you not the things I'll get for you, but the thing
in me that will make me able to get them. That thing a man
can't renounce it but I want to renounce it so that it will be
yours so that it will be in your service only for you"
Here is the whole quote.
Gail Wynand was twenty when he fell in love. He had known
everything there was to know about sex since the age of thirteen
He had had many girls. He never spoke of love, created no
romantic illusion and treated the whole matter as a simple animal
transaction; but at this he was an expert and women could tell
it, just by looking at him. The girl with whom he fell in love had
an exquisite beauty, a beauty to be worshiped, not desired. She
was fragile and silent. Her face told of the lovely mysteries
within her, left unexpressed.
She became Gail Wynanand's mistress. He allowed himself the
weakness of being happy. He would have married her at once
had she mentioned it. But they said little to each other. He felt
that everything was understood between them.
One evening he spoke. Sitting at her feet, his face raised to
her, he allowed his soul to be heard. "My darling, anything you
wish, anything I am, anything I can ever be . .. That's what i
want to offer you not the things I'll get for you, but the thing
in me that will make me able to get them. That thing a man
can't renounce it but I want to renounce it so that it will be
yours so that it will be in your service only for you: The girl
smiled and asked: "Do you think I'm prettier than Maggie
Kelly?"
He got up. He said nothing and walked out of the house. he
never saw that girl again. Gail Wynand, who prided himself
never needing a lesson twice, did not fall in love again in the
years that followed.
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Is this a joke?
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Matt,
You have rational standards, and some others don't. The solution is not let them push your buttons. There is a good chance that someone with low standards is a button pusher. A friend told me to just be content with yourself - and hold an I don't care attitude so that your buttons don't get pushed. Achieve your goals and pursue your happiness- but what other people are doing really doesn't concern you. There's always going to be something to get angry about in another irrational person's life. If you let this shit get to you, and care, you'll develop health problems and your body will engage in chemical memory responses. It's not worth it to me to absorb someone else's irrationality and develop neck stress, acid reflex stuff, whatever. If I continued getting enraged like I did, I'd have to pay 55$ for massage therapy every week at least.
When you are talking to them - just step aside, like outside of your body, and just don't care - lol. Think about all of the negative associations they have absorbed, like you are attempting to absorb by allowing them to push your buttons, that is causing you this distress. Alternatively, knock yourself out.
Also, if you understand how an animal gets excited and has sex, you can understand how people randomly engage in sex. The last thing you need is a guilt complex for promiscuity - you just need an I don't care attitude. What if not one woman existed that matched your standards on the planet? You'd have to just develop an I don't care attitude and or stick to the best (rational/hot) ones. You can apply your argument of ...how can someone get off to this - to how can someone shoot heroin.. etc. Don't care.
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Or you can just not let your emotions become the primary form of judgment. It takes practice - and you must say -"The good is that which will make me happy" as opposed to "I will be made happy by the good". Think about this - if you associate a memory with an emotion first - what does your brain do? It encodes that memory by means of nothing more than an emotion. Then when you go to recall the memory and logically explain it, you can't. This is because the emotion overrides any logical conclusions formed. Now imagine that you store all of your memories this way. Now, you refer to concepts (that have referents) that are so fuzzy that a mixed haze of emotions is all that can be seen by anyone upon recall. Now imagine that you attempt to use these memories to guide your life and form value judgments. Then imagine what the pleasure/pain you feel in everyday life is reflecting (probably nothing).
You can either attack the problem at the root - or attempt to sort it all out at the end - which is essentially impossible and certainly not cured by some 10 second response. Now, when you do feel sad or something, you must decide why you feel sad - is it because of the above misdirections or is it the result of some logical conclusions that weren't evaluated with emotional primaries. If it was the latter, you can do the ten second thing and experience it and move on with your life - but if, like I suspect, you experience sadness for reasons you don't essentially understand, thinking that tricks like these will somehow make you understand the problem will only make you more neurotic.
Again, I wrote this because there is a difference between authentic emotions that are the result of something happening (that you can logically trace) and those that are the result of a confusion above.
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Value seeking is implicit in thinking. Your values essentially dictate your pleasure and pain. If you achieve a value, you feel pleasure, if not, you feel pain. Do not divorce goals from values and values/goals from pleasure/pain. That's probably the best advice anyone here can give you.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pleasure_and_pain.html
Read this and make sense of it. There are a lot of people that love to divorce your values from your goals - to change you because they do not know this stuff and are anti conceptual. Never underestimate the lack of anti conceptual thinking in the world.
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I can take 19 hours of college summer courses over the two month mini semester and roll through them perfectly well - yet during my two to four week break I'm not really motivated at all. I don't know if I'm doing some context dropping or I just don't have a solid goal that I am extending out to the long term when I'm not under some pressure or what.
I feel like Hunter S Thompson requiring deadlines to get things done and what have you. I feel like I need to be in the heat of a big battle to get anything done to some degree - otherwise I just get way bored and have no clear goal...
Any comments?
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I had an arguing discussion with a neighbor who said that eventually capitalism implodes upon itself due to vast increases in efficiency. He said that if machines take over the jobs of majority of people, people will have no jobs, and therefore no one will buy anything.
I have read what Ayn Rand has to say about machines needing intellectual creators behind them or they die and that a gold standard is necessary to allow producers to keep all of their savings. I then got to think - what if the gold standard was still enacted and money was in so limited of supply with the growing population? Then how could businessmen sell goods to the masses? Would inflation still exist - but in a different way?
I then thought - in the future would everyone be a machine tech or what? Will ultimately the % of manual production type assembly line workers drop, while the human population grows? If this is the case - it seems like education must become more specialized and work faster so that people are better prepared to enter their chosen field. I am basically contemplating all of this plus the fact that education is a relatively long process to specialize - and that future degrees of specialization will have to be accomplished much quicker - especially due to the increasing rate of technological growth.
I need some counters to the initial argument at least. It seems very abstract and dependent upon variables like expanding markets simultaneously (which might not happen to the degree it needs to happen without the appropriate government intervention).
Henry Ford said that if the majority of people knew how the money supply worked that they would wake up and storm the government.
My neighbor basically said that everything depends on everything- and that once something is understood another variable must be understood.
Obviously there are holes in this logic - because there has to be a way to sustain everything while guaranteeing people individual rights.
Everyone is welcome to respond!
High Intensity Training Book Recommendation
in Psychology and Self Improvement
Posted · Edited by MoralParadise
If you guys want cardio endurance, go vegan and drink 8 glasses of water a day. I sprinted 10mph for over 15 minutes straight after not doing any cardio for probably 2 months after getting on this diet for about 3 weeks. I still had steam in the tank and ran 6mph for another 45 minutes afterward. While this happened I increased my bench press from 145 (1 rep) to 250 lbs (1 rep) in less than 2 weeks. It's sort of hard to keep the muscle mass up unless you are eating a ton of non meat/non dairy food, but you will be in a state of disbelief when you jump on a treadmill after following this diet for 3 weeks.
I'm not selling anything here, I was fascinated.
My rotator cuffs seriously felt this (flat barbell bench is brutal on them), so make sure to include rotator cuff strengthening exercises all along the way.