I spoke to EA Toronto about psychedelics and doing good. Slides below!
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Aaron Nesmith-Beck
@anesmithbeck
Interested in making lives better. Founded atmanretreat.com, a legal psilocybin retreat. Likes meditation, Bitcoin, effective altruism. Psychedelic enthusiast.
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Interesting to see the polarization emerging around data collection in OR
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More on this:
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Some participants initially view the group aspect of a retreat (i.e. that there will be other people there) as a bug. My own initial view was somewhat similar to this, thinking along the lines of "How can we best recreate Hopkins-style individual journeys in a group?" (1/4)
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Feels like group or couple retreats are the dark horse of the psychedelic renaissance
Getting away for 4-8 days is a feature, not a bug
Togetherness with others is a feature, not a bug
Over time more people will realize this
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That part that wants to be maximally productive right at the time you're going to bed
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Meditation prompt: enough monkeys on a typewriter, and you get Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe"
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To what extent can a person understand that things may not go as they would like, that neither they nor anyone else can control the experience, that their triggers belong to them and are a part of their own work, rather than the fault of the outside world?
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Perhaps the biggest predictor of whether someone will have a positive or negative experience with psilocybin - beyond basic set & setting - is the degree to which they can *hold their own process*.
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Consumer air travel feels like poor UX on top of incredible 5-decade old tech
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Been thinking about personal growth as increasingly moving towards the simultaneous embodiment of opposites
(Can I be focused & expansive, can I be alive (moving) & dead (still), can I be everything & nothing, at the same time?)
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Write a letter to yourself for when you get depressed!
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Replying to @_brentbaum and @anesmithbeck
I wrote a letter to my future depressed self explaining more, not quite ready for publishing but the draft is here
brentbaum.substack.com/p/c9161a2c-4c0
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What is the most unconventional depression treatment you know of that actually works?
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Your eyes closed, coming up fast and strong on a combination of psilocybin mushrooms and MDMA, you receive the overwhelming message: "You are not in control here... and you don't really want to be, either."
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Pretty glad these are no longer coming off the production line 😄
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But we missed the point the whole way along: it was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”
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“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end — success or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead.
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What is the best resource on goal formulation you've ever found?
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None of this exists for psychedelics. Rollout leading public education by too much is a real risk!
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Most people have a sense of roughly how much to drink, what happens when you drink different amounts, how a person acts when they’re drunk, how to take care of a drunk person, when to call the ambulance (or police) and when not to, etc.
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If psychedelics became just-go-buy-it-in-the-store legal tomorrow, it would be bad. Consider, for example, how much implicit cultural knowledge there is around best practices for alcohol use.
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Looking to connect with folks setting up psilocybin service centers in Oregon to see if learnings from Atman (atmanretreat.com) can be of support. Please DM if interested!
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Does daylight savings feel like it's hitting you harder than usual this year?
- Yes, I feel more affected25%
- No change from past years20.8%
- DST never affects me25%
- Just show results!29.2%
24 votesFinal results
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Seeing “EA is bad” from the crypto community and “crypto is bad” from the EA community. Both wrong views & another sad outcome of the FTX debacle.
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would STV explain this?
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Sometimes on psychedelics or in very contemplative states a cacophony (e.g. downtown city noise, background plane noise) can sound like a symphony. Anyone else experienced this/have ideas for why that is?
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Arc of moral history as humans gradually moving things about each other from the blame/persecution-worthy bucket to the compassion-worthy bucket
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Anyone have resource recommendations for NDSR/yoga nidra? (e.g. guided recordings, etc.)
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Need the right balance of yin habits & yang habits
Too many yin habits and you don't get anything done
Too many yang habits and you get burnt out
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IF bf, hangry gf
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My Twitter followers are disproportionately cool
I mean this completely unironically, reading many of y'alls bios I'm like damn, impressive, nice, gj, props
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"I cured my introversion"
My brother in Christ you were an extrovert with social anxiety. Not the same thing
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Either everyone has everything or no one has anything, jealousy is like the mistake of thinking that there's an in-between
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The irony of jealousy/wanting what other people have is that in the unitive frame you (the all) do "have" it, as much as "they" (also the all) have it, it's just that the "ego" (pattern within the all) can't "have" it
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The irony of jealousy/wanting what other people have is that in the unitive frame you (the all) do "have" it, as much as "they" (also the all) have it, it's just that the "ego" (pattern within the all) can't "have" it
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Lex Balaji-pilling millions of people with an 8h podcast is a pretty good example of the internet increasing variance lol
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Try looking for "the gift in the trigger"
Something is triggering (makes you feel aversive)
There is a lesson/potential insight about yourself in this experience
That is the gift
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A tell someone is avoidant: they don't capitalize words in messaging
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What would you add to this list?
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Do you view or experience your life as somehow fundamentally teleological?
- Yes41.2%
- No35.3%
- Sometimes11.8%
- Just show results!11.8%
17 votesFinal results
"Experiences of pleasure and pain are logarithmic."
This is an incredibly powerful & important idea if you think about it.
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My TEDx Talk is finally online!
If all the effort, time, and energy I put into delivering this word-perfect speech prevents a single cluster headache... it'll all be worth it. But I'm aiming for more!
Thank you to the amazing TEDx Miami coaching team! <3
youtu.be/_gdtHXQW8Os
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