Here is a list of all my public writings and videos (from before February 2025).
lsusr
Karma: 18,971
Thanks! I’ve changed the value to 36 and reordered the table.
I’m glad to be of help!
Explaining how to identify good teachers would take a whole top-level post, but I can give you a few general heuristics.
Anyone who says they have special insight and that there aren’t lots of equally-qualified teachers is (intentionally or unintentionally) a cult leader. Some of these people really are awakened, but you should avoid them because they’re cult leaders.
Avoid anyone who charges money in a formal economic transation, even if they have a money-back guarantee. I have never met a person like this who is the real deal. (A voluntary donation system is fine. Selling books is fine too. A teacher getting paid to travel is kosher because travel is expensive. However, anyone paid to travel is famous, and famous people have too many people vying for their time. It’s better to have Zuiko for a teacher than Thích Nhất Hạnh, because Zuiko has time for you whereas Thích Nhất Hạnh does not.)
Pay attention to how calm the person is, how happy they are, and so on. Is that what you want to be in 20 years? If a teacher is dying of disease, but has so much equanimity they’re more curious how your day is going, that’s a good sign.
Try their instructions for a few weeks. Did your life get better? If so, then continue. If not, then look for another teacher.
This guy is legit and you can meet with him online.
When awakened teachers talk about politics, it tends to be non-sectarian, especially when they’re teaching morality to meditation students.
Good teachers may use the Three Noble Truths (and other standard phrasings) because these words are concise and correct. But good teachers don’t resort to sutras as a source of authority. Think about how a good weightlifting coach thinks. He might be a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he doesn’t do exactly what Arnold Schwarzenegger says to do. The wise weightlifting instructor works from a mix of science, general wisdom, and years of personal experience.
I have never observed an awakened teacher express the slightest anger or hatred toward anything or anyone whatsoever, including themselves.
I’m still doing research and don’t have a recommended diet yet.
Whether to include dairy depends on a lot of things like what kind of athletic training you do, how much money you have to spend, what foods you have access to, whether you are lactose intolerant, and what you consider ethical to consume. Because of all those factors, I can’t give a general recommendation. If you do consume milk, you should do so early in the day or after athletic training. (Unless you are doing the GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) diet, in which case you have to carry a jug around with you everywhere and drink it continuously just to get it all down. (The GOMAD diet is for skinny young men trying to put on lots of muscle.))
As for fruit, I haven’t done a ton of research, but it seems totally optional. Eat some if you want, but you don’t have to. Apple cultivation was common among European peasants, however supermarket fruits are less healthy than historical fruits. But they’re still unprocessed fruits. You maybe shouldn’t consume fruit in huge quantities and you definitely shouldn’t use fruit as the foundation of your diet, but a bit of fruit here and there seems basically fine. (Until recently, Chinese culture even used fruit as a dessert. The practice persists to this day.) Definitely avoid fruit juices though.
I make it more like a chili. Just enough broth that the beans cook properly. I use a single 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes. Right now I’m using 8 oz of dried beans, but I may increase that in the future. I don’t know how much broth I use, because I don’t measure it. I just add enough so that there’s not much soup after the beans absorb the liquids. Freeze any vegetable broth you have left over (perhaps in an ice cube tray) because otherwise it’ll go bad quickly.
Since you’re trying to replicate this, here are some more details:
One of the most important things to getting this dish to taste good is buying good quality beans. Rancho Gordo sells quality beans. I especially recommend Ayocote Negro Beans. [Note: the original post incorrectly said “black beans” instead of just “beans”.]
As for spices, I’m currently using cumin seeds, tumeric, mustard seeds, coriander, black peppercorns (pepper seeds), a single clove, 2 bay leaves, paprika, fenugreek seeds, and thyme—all of which should be bought in bulk by weight to save on costs (don’t buy it in those plastic or glass containers). Using this many spices is extremely ahistorical but I don’t care. The spices probably have a mild health benefit, but they’re mostly there for flavor. I buy the clove and seeds whole and grind them in a motar and pestile because it’s fun to roleplay an apothecary. I sometimes add basil and oregano at the end too.
Add salt to taste, but no lemon juice, lime juice or vinegar. You can get the sour flavor from a large side of saurkraut (with is ridiculously cheap and healthy if you make it yourself) instead. Peasants across Eurasia ate a ton of fermented cabbage.
I also use two seranno chili peppers. [In the original recipe I forgot to mention peppers. I have fixed this.]
That said, one great thing about this recipe is that practically everything about it is super forgiving. Want to add a potato? Sure. Want to double the tomatoes? That’s fine too. Want to triple the garic and ginger? Garlic is great and it’s very difficult to add too much garlic. Want to switch out the chili peppers? Whatever. Did you simmer it for an extra 5 minutes? It’ll probably be fine.
Also, here are a couple of very important warnings:
I’m not just eating beans. They’re just my staple, around which everything is built. Make sure to get your B₁₂ vitamins.
Switching from a modern diet to one line this that has a low glycemic index will crash your energy for the first 2-3 weeks. This is because your body is relying on carbs, but hasn’t yet switched over to burning fat. After that, your energy levels will decouple from your meals (in a good way) and it may feel like you’re 10 years younger in terms of not-tiredness. Full adaptation takes 3-6 months.
You are correct. I have fixed it. Thank you.
A few things:
First of all, what we consider “insulin resistance” is a semi-arbitrary point on a spectrum. In this post, I’m aiming at a target better than what modern medicine considers “insulin resistance”.
Secondly, the relationship between insulin resistance and obesity is bidirectional. Insulin resistance causes obesity. Obesity causes insulin resistance.
Thirdly, being skinny means you’re less likely to have insulin resistance, but does not guarantee you don’t have insulin resistance. It does mean you’re less likely to have insulin resistance.
Finally, as to whether you can avoid the metabolism FUBAR while eating a westernized diet, I think the best case study for people who eat a Western diet while getting primitive amounts of exercise is the Amish. The Amish have relatively good metabolic health by American standards, but it’s still horrific by historical standards. Elite endurance athletes are in their own special category; they’re great at metabolizing fats, but the stresses they put on their body cause totally different risks. Are there other people eating a modern diet who have good metabolic health? Probably, but just because there is tremendous individual variation and special cases. Some people need all the calories they can get. For example, I would be wary of putting a cancer patient on a historical diet.
I’m using “normative” to refer to what consciousness is like for the majority of people who don’t do intense meditation.
[H]ow do we know you are learning to distinguish fine-grained attention, instead of confabulating a new type of thing?
Trial and error. This belief pays rent. If you want to cultivate an altered state of consciousness through meditation, then you have to stabilize your attention on a single target. Stabilizing your attention on multiple targets doesn’t work. If your attention really could perceive multiple sensations at the same time, then it should be possible to cultivate altered states of consciousness by holding multiple targets in your attention at the same time, but nobody does that.
I was recently coaching a guy who had been trying to do insight meditation for years and was failing for this exact reason. One of the things he was doing wrong was he trying to pay attention to the sensation of the breath and <other sensation> in the same instant, not realizing that this is incompatible with access concentration.
Good question! Your experience is entirely normative.
What’s happening is that your attention is rapidly shifting between the words you are typing and the sensations your shoulders being in pain. You are not paying attention to both of them at the same time. However, the movement of your attention is too rapid for you to percieve. If you strengthen your observational skills sufficiently, then you notice that your attention is only at one place at a time.
As an example, here is a vipassana practice Daniel Ingram writes about in his book MCTB2.
In one of these exercises, I sit quietly in a quiet place, close my eyes, put my right hand on my right knee, my left hand on my left knee, and concentrate just on my two index fingers. Basic dharma theory tells me that it is not possible to perceive both fingers simultaneously; so, with this knowledge, I try to see in each instant which one of the two fingers’ physical sensations are being perceived at any given moment. Once the mind has sped up a bit and become more stable, I try to perceive the arising and passing of each of these sensations. I may do this for half an hour or an hour, just staying with the sensations in my two fingers and perceiving when each sensation is and is not there.
It depends on how you do the wireheading.
If you define wireheading as hacking the brain to do something weird that makes you feel better, then mystic practice (including but not limited to Buddhist meditation) constitutes wireheading.
However, the term “wireheading” comes from experiments on rats that stimulated their reward system which, under RTB, is unlikely to solve the problem of chronic suffering. It is entirely plausible that some alternative neurotech solves the problem of chronoic suffering. LSD and psilocybin certainly go in that direction by e.g. showing the potential to sometimes heal PTSD.
As for reincarnation, RTB does eschew classic Hindu-style reincarnation. However, an informatic theory of consciousness + the known existence of powerful LLMs attempting to replicate the thought process of human beings wrecks havoc with Anthropics.
[Edit 2025-11-29: This conversation thread happened before I changed “RTB” (Rationalist Techno-Buddhism) to “Cyberbuddhism”.]
I’m using the word “cybernetic” to refer to circular causal control structures, in which a system’s outputs affect its inputs.
That was an error. Fixed. I have combined the definitions. Thanks for pointing it out.
Yup.
To continue with your metaphor, not all abstractions are created equal. There are good abstractions, like “car” which make your life better, because it simplifies the world well without much loss of important data. There are also bad abstractions like trauma, which make your life worse. To continue with your metaphor, “there is no self” is to say that the self is a bad abstraction that causes harm by modeling the world badly.
Basically yes. But it doesn’t feel like that to most people. By default, it feels like the self is a real indivisible thing. By doing insight practice into (no) self, you get your internal subjective state to match the no self reality.
Here’s what I see on my account page. Perhaps this is because I created sequences long ago and Lightcone has changed the UI for people without existing sequences.
To edit your user profile, go to your profile at https://www.lesswrong.com/users/quinn-dougherty and then click “Account Settings”.
To create a sequence, go to your profile at https://www.lesswrong.com/users/quinn-dougherty and then click “Create New Sequence”.
You must be logged in for this to work.
Ah, I see. Fixed. Thanks.
It isn’t?
To clarify: I do not claim that I have experienced enlightenment. Just awakening, stream entry, etc.
A plane of existence that does not interact with conscious beings is a priori unobservable, because there would be no one to observe it. In that way, world without conscious beings is value-equivalent to no world at all. In my opinion, there is positive value in the world I live in. That said, it is possible to imagine worlds with negative value too. This isn’t much related to Buddhism or special insight. It’s just philosophy.
The target was food intake, not metabolism.
We’re basically just fish with a few recent adaptations that allow us to live on land.