mannicken

Ah, so I suppose when you realize that we're all one entity, and there's no such thing as death, and our egos are temporary waves in the ocean that are able to self-reflect on the ocean, then you realize that reality is timeless. And that means there's no rush to find meaning, because all of a sudden your consciousness expanded from thinking within 70-80 years to thinking within billions of years.

So rather than thinking "what can do I do to make myself (local consciousness) happier because I'm gonna die?" you start thinking "how can I entertain the Greater Me (universal consciousness)?" Life becomes a game that gods play when they're bored, rather than a walk on the death row.

I can program but I do not necessarily enjoy it. I enjoy it maybe 5% of the time, the rest is spend thinking "god this sucks". Perhaps wrong-career choice very early on is what made me turn to substances/get depressed.

Wait, so writing code is actually interesting for you? That's funny. I always thought of it as 'means to the end', something you had to do, like paying taxes to the machine in order for it to animate your stuff and make it do things.

Diploma in what? I'm all over the place, and I can't just choose one area of study. What if I want to study art but the diploma will be useless? What if I want to study business but end up writing TPS reports for 100 hours a week at Wall Street? What if I want to study math but will end up hating whatever it is I studied.

The possibilities frighten me and excite me at the same time.

Ah, nice to see that my diet of coffee and cigarettes will at least get balanced by low-carbohydrate consumption benefits :)

There's a lot of opiate users who chip/legitimately use their drugs but don't come out because of fucked up stereotypes ;-)

Yeah, you know what, I take it back. It's not the addicts who are assholes, it's our lovely government.

Use of LSD would be terrifying for governments with strict hierarchies like China. But I think that for countries where social mobility is encouraged (like US) psychedelics would not ruin anything. Example: Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both admitted to use of LSD.

If a bunch of assholes can't control their habits and OD or start stealing for fixes, why should everyone else suffer? It's not as addictive as you think, and I feel like some people use demonization of drugs to excuse their own fuck ups. It's just so easy to blame everything on a drug, isn't it?

It's not that easy :) The "take daily for life" pills work always; you can have the crappiest day of life and take a pill and you're happy. That's why they're addictive, even stuff like cigarettes or alcohol -- always work, always calm you down, bad trip impossible.

Psychedelics require preparation, and active cooperation on the patients side. If you think you can be depressed and suicidal and eat a mushroom and have it all gone you are in for a world of bad trip, that will have consequences after the bad trip: insanity, panic attacks, anxiety, and symptoms of PTSD. Basically, psychedelics aren't an immediate fix, they require preparation before and taking actions after the trip.

Psychonautics requires learning; experienced and knowledgeable people can guide their mind to benefit greatly from a bad trip, but most people are not be able to handle it, and delve even deeper into depression or whatever. Some killed themselves afterwards or during. Some have peed their pants while crying and shaking throughout the trip but came out better. Some had absolutely wonderful experiences with psychedelics.

From personal experience, your set and setting will determine whether you discover the wonders of the universe or hallucinate a penis staring at your face, thinking you are being raped for 8 hours. I am not joking.

People like immediate fixes, hence why psychedelic therapy doesn't get much attention.

Wrong. If you have something people want, they'll force money on you. Make something people want. People are so naive, like they've never seen "Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld.

Have you ever heard of Milgram's experiment? People will actually torture each other if commanded by a higher authority, much less not share a book :)

Over-consumption of everything is bad. Cake is great, cake is fun, but if you eat it everyday you'll probably get fat because it has a lot of calories. And hey, a lot of calories isn't bad, it's just if you eat more calories than burn you'll gain fat. And that's OK, until you start to get so fat that it decreases your quality of life. Body like a loosely tied ballon, if push air into it -- it'll get big, but on itself it'll lose weight.

On another topic, I'm usually pro-legalization of every drug that's out there. But there's a lot of people out there who just put random shit into their bodies in unreasonable quantities without understanding of what they are doing, making stupid excuses. AND IT'S JUST FUCKING FOOD. If heroin or coke become legal, we'll probably see a lot of people overdose. Which I'm fine with, technically. I just now start to understand why some drugs are illegal.

There's no reason to be fatalistic, we're all going to die sooner than we think, so.. who cares.

One of the major advantages of Flash is in its compatibility with Illustrator/Photoshop. I can literally create a vector sketch in Illustrator, copy paste it over to Flash and keyframe myself an animation. Shape tweening and Illustrator == epic win.

Anything like that in Hype? I'd imagine one of the ways would be to use something like .svg and perhaps an open-source tool, but I'm still not sure it would reach the level of Flash&Illustrator.

I mean, as a web-developer/animator, I'm all up for a cheaper product that doesn't require viewers to install Flash, and integrates into JavaScript perfectly. I am very interested in where this goes and might be one of the first users.

Not necessarily. I went from counting calories on a sheet of paper to mentally keeping track of balances in my caloric regiment and keeping track of my weight everyday.

Perhaps it's a diet of coffee/cigarettes (appetite suppressants) that made me go from 200 lbs to 172 in a year but oh well.

I agree with that. I lost around 10kg in a couple of months on a steady diet of ice-cream and chicken, counting calories as I happily ate my ice-cream.

From what I saw, society reserves creativity to artists, writers, composers, and other "creative types". For some reason creativity has become associated with creating useless inventions that no one will ever buy; sometimes people see creative person as a loner who spends days and nights on drugs throwing paint around or mumbling crazily.

In reality, creativity is, perhaps, our only advantage when trying to not get killed by other animals. Picking up a stick and fighting off a larger animal -- great example of creative solution. It's novel.

Before, no one ever thought to pick up a stick. Perhaps sticks were viewed as merely lying there, to be carefully avoided in case somebody steps on one. Maybe those who tried to pick up sticks were viewed as crazy, sinful by some sort of primitive Republicans (not that Republicans now are more evolved :)... I mean, who cares about sticks, animals were usually fighting with their own teeth, hands, or horns (I wish I had a horn).

It's not until an animal with a stick has beaten the shit out of another animal without a stick for calling him crazy, that the sticks became a useful tool.

I mean, face it -- we're just animals, and without creative approaches to our problems we wouldn't be talking about this on a giant electronic mind-network-thing.

It's easy to say "spend $30 extra" when you actually have that money. There were times when I was in debt, and had like $10 on my bank account, and so many personal problems I couldn't handle work. His advice was pointless at the time. That advice is pointless for anyone who doesn't have free $30 to spend around.

My verdict: the author lives in a bubble that he has created and paid for. However, that bubble is also his prison; it suppresses his ability to make sudden changes in life.

I am fairly ok with sleeping on the street, since I've done it a number of times, so when it comes to making a mildly life-changing decision I'll be more confident about taking a risk.

Look, I like sitting here in a nice couch, typing on a Macbook about how hardcore I am, just as much as everyone else does. But ultimately, a nice couch is just that -- a nice couch, and a candle in the bathroom is just a fucking candle. And in a hundred years, no one will care if you had a nice couch or a candle in your bathroom, but they will if you wrote a book or created something beautiful.

Oh, right, let's talk about oil and US being in Iraq for a second. How is that not a seizure of resources with force?

Pardon me, Iraq is too far for a typical HN-visitor, let's talk about various police enforcements stealing drugs from sick people and throwing those people in jail. How is that not a seizure of resources with force?

Not necessarily and depends on many variables. Counter-example: I would respect a guy who slept with few girls and has a stable relationship much more than someone who goes to a bar every night, takes advantage of half-conscious, drunk women and somehow boasts that as an achievement.. I think that's what most "pick-up artists" try to do.

I think his outlook on achieving his goal interferes with every reasonable pick-up theory in the world, is offensive to women of other color, and is borderline fascist.

I also think he is using his race as an excuse for his problems.

It's slightly different. Opening doors is a sign of politeness. Politeness has nothing to do with putting people on a pedestal.

Politeness can be done in a way that indicates disgust, similarly to passive aggression.

It's a wrong attitude because it implies that having sex with a white woman is somehow an achievement in life worth respect from others. I disagree.

"Yes, it is about attracting those women whose hair is the color of the midday sun and eyes are the color of the ocean, and it is about having sex with them. "

No-no-no. That's the wrong attitude.

I think the key is this -- women are animals, just like men, with slightly different genitals. And they should be treated like men, not put on a higher pedestal.

I'm sorry, girls, but if you think that just because you have a vagina you're somehow better than the rest of the world -- you are wrong. The worst possible legal thing you can do to a man is not have sex with him. And if you think having sex with you is the best and indescribable pleasure one can have -- you are wrong. Sex is not as fun as it sounds, it's a physical workout, it gets tiring, there's sweat and weird noises and everything. It's overrated. Get over it, not everyone is dreaming of you everyday of their life and you are not the fantastically beautiful cute cuddly thing you'd like to think you are.

You wanted equal rights, have fun.

Now, this is a question you want to ask yourself "Would I treat her differently if she had a penis?" If you say yes, you are biased and you need deep introspection into yourself and your life-values.

I'm tired of all this miserable bullshit where people take things like color of the skin, or genitalia, or height, or whatever into account to justify their own laziness, incompetence, mental illnesses and whatever personal problems they have.

Actually, I'm not truly conscious either. I think self-awareness is like love or a perfect circle, or a perfect line.. an idea that can never be achieved in reality.

PS. I am particularly half-conscious since I woke up five minutes ago :))

Death and life are fluid points, not black-and-white absolutes as some like to see them.

Then only thing that could distinguish me from a rock is self-awareness.

One can argue that self-awareness is enjoyable but he is merely repeating words of gurus who achieved self-awareness. Without the slightest realization of what they are actually saying. In reality, self-awareness requires introspective meditation and there is nothing harder than to sit still for long periods of time without external stimuli. Just like it's easier to code in VB than to subject yourself to abstract concepts of LISP.

Most people who consider themselves "alive" are more like imperative biocomputers, programmed for a specific task by educational system. One part of their programming is repeating to everyone "I'm alive". I'm sorry, but most people are coded in Visual Basic whereas only some in LISP.

Please be careful before you go out and drop acid thinking it'll make you a better developer. Psychedelics like that are powerful.

And by powerful I mean I've had bad trips where I thought I was being raped, and hallucinated a giant penis staring at my face for eight hours.

On the other hand, acid is one of the best drug out there if done right, it unclutters minds.

I used the one-two in my job applications. Cover letter that describes how I'm a high school drop-out who will probably od in a very near future, then a resume that blows the mind.

The fun thing is, struggling artistic types are already more successful than your typical materialistic office employee.