Structured Daydreaming

 This is an old topic. But it receives review for two reasons :

• I was talking to a friend about how I manage memory for sleeping
• I am in a period of physiological recuperation which benefits from more active management

Again.

Epoch 1. Subtraction of dreams from memory state

So, in college, with the intention of making sleep more energy efficient, and restful, I applied a study of sleeping with minimal dreaming. That is, as much as it is consciously possible, zero the imagination.

It turns out that the motivation for this was that my state of mind at that time was quite [ ( consciously passive, but subconsciously ) active in terms of pushing out concepts from the subconscious, into conscious imagination ], so the antagonistic calibration was [ to actively reduce this ].

This became the norm, and I soon needed to make little effort to live in this mode.

• The sleep period for wakeful productivity was determined to be 10 hours/day
• It would found to possible to function at lower rates of learning with 8 and 6 hours/day 

Epoch 2. Addition of dreams to memory state

12 to 14 years later, when I ran a 24-hour cafe and would sleep irregularly, I found that the opposite state of mind to be true. Due probably to [ a combined absence of semantically stimulating work, and a shortage of dream-stage sleep ], my mind was quite sluggish at pushing out concepts from subconscious, into conscious imagination, so the antagonistic calibration was [ to actively increase this ].

In order to execute that, I found it useful to enforce sleeping for long hours, with hydration and stimulants along the way ... mainly fish oil which may have [ assisted vasodilation ], and methylcobalamin which may have aided both as [ a nerve growth factor and a modifier of melatonin metabolism ].

This required active management, so it would be paid more or less attention tactically, over the years since that project

Epoch 3. More measured approaches

Five more years or so, after the cafe project ended, I find myself on sabbatical, mainly active as a student of quantitative subjects, and working on my physical conditioning, albeit with a budgetarily restricted diet.

• At this point, with minimal physical demands from sedentary studies ... I seem to need to make extra effort to get more daily physical resistance.
• Caffeine, m-B12, multivitamins, creatine, fish oil, have been a mostly continuous protocol, albeit with disciplinary gaps; to these I have added carnosine ( via beta alanine ), and arginine ( via whole foods or citrulline .
• Sleep periods last as short as six hours, but days may be correspondingly poor for learning

So it may be time again to enforce more structure : at least 20% of bedtime should be spent in lucid dreaming of some non-zero level of consciousness. For example if I wake after six hours, and don't feel like lying down more, I may rehydrate, dose protein and or m-B12, and then reinsert myself to bed for another 1.5 hours.

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After all, without proper lab equipment and a huge budget, it is very difficult to determine rigorous methods for the delineation of factors from results. But a poor man's science ... proceeds throughout one's life.

The Privileges of Dating

 Why do YOU go on dates?

I think a lot of people have many layers of secrets / sensitivity, so they date to admit people to privileged layers. The only privilege I have to offer to dates is in my pants.

All other privileges are already available to everyone else ... LOL ... not just dates

The Business of Taste

Much pride is attached to taste. Here are the economics of its manipulation.

1. Assert the existence of taste ("taste ...")

2. Assert that taste has ethical import ("... matters")

3. Assert that a subject may identify with taste ("you have taste; you recognise taste; you know what taste matters")

( Now we are more than halfway done, and the final tricks are simple. )

4. Assert that taste is available, for a fee ("must try")

5. Assert that acquired taste is of lasting value ("once you go black ... ")

( Voila ! )

( Beyond this, we decay from hipsters, to capitalism. )

6. Taste can be SOLD.

( And the rest, is corporate finance. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. )

🤣

Avoiding Disappointment : advice most people need

 Tips to avoid disappointment, and unnecessary sadness which will limit your productivity :

• 1. Your memory is not reliable - don't expect it to be. Install guardrails.
• 2. Your instincts are not cultured - don't expect them to be. Review culture frequently.
• 3. Your society is not safe - don't expect it to be. Make it more what you wish.
• 4. Other people face the same limitations 1,2,3 - don't expect otherwise. Work together to address common concerns.

Aging and Amorality

The older I grow, the more I am convinced that I am weird not because I am smarter than other people ... but because I think that the smartest people are amoral ( regardless of how dumb, or moral, I myself might be ). In other words, even if I was not born with certain personality disorders ... my ethical alignment, choices, and implementations, over 20 years, would position me as disordered, in the eyes of many people.

5 things you should never outsource, but which most people do :

1. Understanding how legal-laws work, as they confer property rights, and basic freedoms, which most people really care about.

2. Understanding the data-pipeline of brains, from basic sensation, to imagined representations, to linguistics. Allowing cognition of 1.

3. Understanding how food transforms into hormones, and tissues, which then immediately impact conscious sensational experience, i.e. 2.

4. Understanding how synthetic finance creates, via 1, money, debt, equity, etc., upon which household economies are defined.

5. Understanding how to train and manage a brain from infancy to adulthood, and from apprentice to expert, via 1, 2, 3,4.

All these things, I see every day, and the way other people handle them, irks me.

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Maybe these are the new liberal arts. A veritable quintium.