Personal chat thread

[RayKurzweilLovesCats]

Anywho. Completely unrelated, having covid anxiety again. I really hate this. The uncertainty, not knowing if my mom will be safe and other relatives. It’s like fighting a war with no V-Day. There will be no triumph or reward when this is over, only relief and regrets.

Same here. Even though I'm double-vaxxed, and my family are all double-vaxxed too.

I keep reading about people who are double-vaxxed, who still get infected, and they say it's the worst illness they've ever had. And then I read about those with permanent effects on their organs, energy levels, etc. and so-called Long Covid.

I need to go out and buy stuff (e.g. new shoes, clothes), which involves a trip on the London Tube and then inside crowded shops. How am I supposed to feel calm, and like everything's normal, when the UK now has 45,000+ cases each day (by far the worst in Europe), and most people here aren't even bothering with masks anymore?

With Covid, Brexit, this awful government, climate change, the angry cesspit of social media, and everything else, it's a depressing time to be alive.

I sometimes wish I could travel back in time to 2012-15 (probably the best period of my life, before we entered the weird, dystopian, alternative universe of 2016-2021).

Things should reach a period of relative stability Covid wise next spring I reckon you'll be able to get a booster then should you wish.

[Redspector]

My relative has a incurable disease that is 100% non-fatal but permanently reduces quality of life. Everything tires her now and she has lost her muscle mass and gained anxiety for nearly everything. I cannot comfort her or do anything. She has lost her ability to enjoy the things she used to do and unfortunately i have to take care of her now more than ever. Its so much work but i'll do it until i die.

Insurance prices have gone up since 2020 and its ridiculous how much medicine costs. I increasingly view the owners and executives of these health insurance companies and pharmaceutical industry lobbyists as pure evil. People go bankrupt and die trying to afford medicine which is absurdly above its production price and even with the need for profit to fund the production process, it is still well above even that. I wish joe biden was actually a communist like neo-conservatives think he is and would just nationalize the industry and distribute the goods according to need. I hate living in america so much.

[wjfox]

Wow, I actually managed a good sleep last night.

I'm reading this book again, and using its accompanying audio (self-hypnosis). It really does work...

If you suffer from insomnia, I highly recommend this –






Link to U.S. version –

[Ozzie guy]

Wow, I actually managed a good sleep last night.

I'm reading this book again, and using its accompanying audio (self-hypnosis). It really does work...

If you suffer from insomnia, I highly recommend this –






Link to U.S. version –

Hey I came across this product randomly today and I think it will work well with your sleep hypnosis. Headphones specifically designed to sleep whist listening to something, I think they will increase comfort rather than reducing comfort as they are like slippers for your head https://www.sleepphones.com/?aff=72

[Redspector]

Got a nice lava lamp and have been working out. I reached a bench of 145 yesterday as my 1 rep max. Im getting up there but still not where i'd like to be. I have been eating 150 grams of protein a day and because of that my bowel movements aren't as common as they used to be. I have decided to eat beans so i can do the "business" in the bathroom. I drank too much last weekend with my friend and i had to stay at his home because i couldn't drive. I need to stop spending so much money on alcohol and start spending more money on protein.

[Ozzie guy]

I've been thinking about it and realised I shouldn't need to look at any futurism until at least 2025 its basically impossible human level AI or the singularity happens by then.

Any futurism I look at pre 2025 is just part of my internet addiction and will not lead to me witnessing the singularity happening or boosting my confidence in the future.

[wjfox]

I've been thinking about it and realised I shouldn't need to look at any futurism until at least 2025 its basically impossible human level AI or the singularity happens by then.

Any futurism I look at pre 2025 is just part of my internet addiction and will not lead to me witnessing the singularity happening or boosting my confidence in the future.

Don't you think you're a bit... obsessed with this subject?

It's like your entire world view is focussed on AI within this decade.

You're saying there's nothing in science or technology that would interest you before 2025?

I would suggest your problem isn't "internet addiction", but is more "singularity addiction".

Anyway, the singularity won't necessarily be a good thing. Imagine bots with human-like (or better) AI, able to manipulate people and world events to favour the rich oligarchs and make them even more powerful. Potentially even leading to a global genocide at some point. You assume it's going to be this perfect utopia overnight, while completely ignoring the massive risks of this gigantically powerful technology.

[Ozzie guy]

I've been thinking about it and realised I shouldn't need to look at any futurism until at least 2025 its basically impossible human level AI or the singularity happens by then.

Any futurism I look at pre 2025 is just part of my internet addiction and will not lead to me witnessing the singularity happening or boosting my confidence in the future.

Don't you think you're a bit... obsessed with this subject?

It's like your entire world view is focussed on AI within this decade.

You're saying there's nothing in science or technology that would interest you before 2025?

I would suggest your problem isn't "internet addiction", but is more "singularity addiction".

Anyway, the singularity won't necessarily be a good thing. Imagine bots with human-like (or better) AI, able to manipulate people and world events to favour the rich oligarchs and make them even more powerful. Potentially even leading to a global genocide at some point. You assume it's going to be this perfect utopia overnight, while completely ignoring the massive risks of this gigantically powerful technology.

I am certainly obsessed I will google for news multiple times a day even though not much change should occur in a month.
I am very unhappy in life and feel like the singularity is my only hope of happiness.
I have been making improvements, my thought right now is that I need to develop the frame of mind that if I have a hope of happiness its though giving myself more time to work on myself by reducing internet use especially singularity related internet.

I don't think much would, I am also interested in age reversal and cryonics but I don't think much will happen pre 2025.

It looks like I have replaced a Marxist addiction with a singularity one as I used to be like RedSpector but not rude (I hope) so I think I need to cut down on the internet all together.

[erowind]

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[Ozzie guy]

It looks like I have replaced a Marxist addiction with a singularity one as I used to be like RedSpector but not rude (I hope) so I think I need to cut down on the internet all together.

You were never aggressive in that way please don't worry. I've been ruder on the forum than you have before and I remember you checking in on how people were feeling and usually leaving a caveat at the end of whatever you wrote that you might be wrong.

Btw, in the future I may be down to be a check in person on personal goals with you. I need to fix my sleep but I'm in the middle of a move to a new house right now so I don't have the energy to anything more than I already am for the time being.

Thankyou for posting those sleep headphones, once I move I might try to switch to them. I already sleep with headphones but they're bulky noise cancelling ones. This new place might be quiet enough that non-noise cancelling headphones might work.

Feel free to message me on discord, I will be check there even if I do get away from unproductive internet as there is a quitting internet support group there I am in. My name should be "just some guy on the internet #7637" I am making a fresh attempt tomorrow.

If you need something to block sound ear plugs may work better than earphones I just recommended earphones to wjfox as he has a audiotape to self hypnotise you to sleep.

[Dr. Casey]

So if anyone remembers, my dad was diagnosed with severe aortic stenosis the June of last year and received open heart surgery that July to get the valve replaced. It was an incredibly severe case that had about a 50/50 chance of killing him by the end of 2020, and if he'd never received surgery to replace the valve it's almost a guarantee that he would be dead by this point.

Things have been going well since then. He began cardiac rehab the August of '20, resumed his work as a dairy farmer in October, and finished rehab in November. By the time January came around I had relaxed a lot about the whole thing - it was always in the periphery of my consciousness, but life had moved on and it wasn't something I thought about much or stressed over - and for the past several months I have genuinely almost completely forgotten that it ever happened.

I did have a flare-up of anxiety yesterday, though, because my dad went to the doctor for an echocardiogram (which he will receive annually from here on out). This was the first echo that he's received since his largely horrific June 2020 one, so the first real word on what kind of condition his heart is presently in, 15 months after the surgery.

My hopes were exceeded and then some. Not only did the doctor describe the echocardiogram results as "perfect," but the echo results were so good that he took my dad off heart medication altogether, saying that it's no longer needed. My dad will, hopefully, have no more heart problems for the rest of his life, and things will be uneventful besides eventually needing a second non-invasive procedure to replace the replacement aortic valve (93 percent of the time replacement valves are in good shape 10 years later, which declines to 80 percent by 15 years and 50 percent at 20 years - 20 years being 2040 in my dad's case).

Thanks to everyone who offered their support back then. Even though things have been better on our end for a long time, I'll never forget the three weeks between my father's aortic stenosis diagnosis on June 17th, and the surgery on July 7th. Those three weeks were by far the darkest and scariest of my entire life, completely in a league of their own and awful beyond words. The reassurances that things would be alright helped.

[Ozzie guy]

I am seeing hype rapidly brew over reddit regarding google pathways I knew all the details for months but couldn't share them due to a reddit ban (mind you maybe people wouldn't have believed me).

Example of a post

"Pathways - the first real stab at AGI

https://blog.google/technology/ai/intro ... hitecture/

I'm calling, the > 100 trillion parameters announcement will follow pretty soon ...

Of course, parameters aren't anything, but at the very least, this thing will validate/invalidate Karpathy's hypothesis that consciousness will arise from training a single neural net on a lot of hard, disjoint tasks."



Maybe as I hear more views from people I will realize life will be simpler than I thought and I can just sit back and enjoy myself letting the singularity soon happen. Without being a depressed tryhard trying to become motivated.

[erowind]

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[erowind]

My hopes were exceeded and then some. Not only did the doctor describe the echocardiogram results as "perfect," but the echo results were so good that he took my dad off heart medication altogether, saying that it's no longer needed.

Thanks to everyone who offered their support back then.

I'm so happy you're Dad's doing well. Glad to hear about him and you!

[wjfox]

So if anyone remembers, my dad was diagnosed with severe aortic stenosis the June of last year and received open heart surgery that July to get the valve replaced. It was an incredibly severe case that had about a 50/50 chance of killing him by the end of 2020, and if he'd never received surgery to replace the valve it's almost a guarantee that he would be dead by this point.

Things have been going well since then. He began cardiac rehab the August of '20, resumed his work as a dairy farmer in October, and finished rehab in November. By the time January came around I had relaxed a lot about the whole thing - it was always in the periphery of my consciousness, but life had moved on and it wasn't something I thought about much or stressed over - and for the past several months I have genuinely almost completely forgotten that it ever happened.

I did have a flare-up of anxiety yesterday, though, because my dad went to the doctor for an echocardiogram (which he will receive annually from here on out). This was the first echo that he's received since his largely horrific June 2020 one, so the first real word on what kind of condition his heart is presently in, 15 months after the surgery.

My hopes were exceeded and then some. Not only did the doctor describe the echocardiogram results as "perfect," but the echo results were so good that he took my dad off heart medication altogether, saying that it's no longer needed. My dad will, hopefully, have no more heart problems for the rest of his life, and things will be uneventful besides eventually needing a second non-invasive procedure to replace the replacement aortic valve (93 percent of the time replacement valves are in good shape 10 years later, which declines to 80 percent by 15 years and 50 percent at 20 years - 20 years being 2040 in my dad's case).

Thanks to everyone who offered their support back then. Even though things have been better on our end for a long time, I'll never forget the three weeks between my father's aortic stenosis diagnosis on June 17th, and the surgery on July 7th. Those three weeks were by far the darkest and scariest of my entire life, completely in a league of their own and awful beyond words. The reassurances that things would be alright helped.

That's very good news.

[Ozzie guy]

I am going to be doing a kind of meditation mental health course which has two calls (I think group calls) with coaches a week for 2 months.

Whist I already see a Psychiatrists, Psychiatrist's more or less can not give advice as they are trained not to because if they give advice to a client and it doesn't work the client will trust them less.

The course I am doing is based on letting go of Truma so it does not subconsciously run you into the ground and levelling up your base line mental state.

[Ozzie guy]

Covid lockdowns basically ending where I live.

I have to live in the real world now, hopefully I find happiness and maybe even success.

[caltrek]

Well, the good news is that I just got invited on Facebook to join a group that seems to include a lot of Hollywood insiders. The bad news is that a celebrity that seems to be central to the group is one of my least favorite Hollywood actors. Oh well. If my application is accepted by the moderators, I will just have to struggle to stay on my best behavior.

You all can imagine how difficult that is going to be for me.

If I am not accepted...well...their loss not mine

[caltrek]

^^^Just a little follow-up. I am not sure I have been accepted as a full fledged member, but the group is showing up in my feed. A major difference is in the videos posted. Not only are they of good quality, but we are told who actually produced the videos. Sometimes by members of the actual group.

It is like getting a You Tube video in the very first or second round of release before it has been shared by countless others. Right near the source. Of course, I am still struggling with the need to keep my big mouth shut and just enjoy...

[Ken_J]

I think I'm going to start producing zines. I've known about them for years, yet never considered them as something I could or should do for so many of my projects. it's sort of a weird blind spot I've discovered in myself.