Freedom is the pleasure of doing one's will. Yet since we often understand concepts better by looking at what they are not, let us briefly consider what we must be free from if we want to experience that pleasure: Free from reaction. The free man does not react passively from emotional impulses to a situation. Instead, he actively responds based on a conscious decision, guided by what he values in life, or acts proactively to begin with.Free from compulsion. The free man is behaviorally … [Read more...]
Two Pitfalls of Enlightened Egoism
The egoist says, "I do what I want." The vile egoist (the asshole) says, "I do what I want—fuck the rest." The enlightened egoist (the sage) says, "I do what I want, and that will be good for the rest, too." As an asshole, your unbridled freedom may give you a certain appeal and bring you some success, particularly in the short term. But being stuck in a combative zero-sum mindset limits your potential, because making other people worse off poisons your relationships, and if you gain … [Read more...]
Which One of the Two Principal Values Do You Choose?
Values are beliefs of the form "X is good," whereby X is an abstract concept, and you know that X is good through life experience that you have reflected upon or, in brief, through wisdom. Values are distilled wisdom. But the wisdom need not be your own. You may borrow it from your family, educators, mentors, or some broader social network embedded in your culture. Political ideologies, philosophical schools, and religious traditions are common sources of values, too. Whatever your source, in … [Read more...]
How Psilocybin Disrupts the Brain
Several weeks ago, I bought myself a nice little gadget, the Muse S brain sensing headband, which is a consumer-grade EEG device for sleep tracking and neurofeedback. I use it predominantly for recording my brain waves during unguided meditation so that I can play around with the resulting EEG data. Being the overzealous data scientist that I am, I quickly (and likely prematurely in terms of data volume) jumped into all sorts of statistical tests and time-series analyses, partly reproducing, … [Read more...]
The Detriment of Self-Knowledge
Imagine you have a few pieces of wood and you want to build a chair. Once you have a plan of how to construct the chair, you must gather certain truths about your pieces of wood. So, for example, you measure their sizes. This gives you quantitative facts that will be useful for cutting the pieces properly. Once you've built the chair, and it doesn't wobble, you have no more use for these facts. You can and likely will forget them. This is how we should handle the truth in general: gather … [Read more...]
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