ephextom

The safest I know of are infrared saunas (red bulb/near infrared is best), and breathing exercises, as well as overall good nutrition and emotional healing to support the body's natural detox pathways.

Clinical practices like intravenous chelation (ETDA etc) or supplements like spirulina, ALA, NAC, vitamin C, cilantro etc are popular and seem appealing from the promises made in their marketing, but they are often ineffective at removing the most deeply-stored toxins, and can do more harm than good by moving some toxins around the body to places where they can do more damage.

A further thought:

Whilhelm Reich’s concept of “armoring” is relevant and worth exploring for those interested.

Here’s the first article I could find about it (no idea if it’s the best):

https://www.somatopia.com/blog/the-art-of-letting-go-why-rei...

One of my practitioners, who I see every 2-3 months, specializes in releasing “armor” from the body with a specific massage technique.

I can easily believe that in many cases where someone is considered to be moderately-ASD, that it’s a case of this kind of armoring.

This is not to say there is no physiological or genetic component, but that the trauma and armoring is a significant factor in the expression of the condition.

Meditation has only been a very small part of my practice. I've worked with a whole lot of different practitioners since about 2012. I can't really distil a decade plus of healing work into a comment that skeptical readers will find persuasive, but for those wanting to look into it for themselves, books by Gabor Maté and Bruce Lipton are a good start, and practices like Internal Family Systems, Family Constellations, EFT tapping, biofeedback/neurofeedback and Neuro-Emotional Technique are a worth trying.

In principle, emotional healing techniques are effective if they involve "letting go" of the physiological reaction (i.e., "trigger") that is activated when experiencing (or remembering) a traumatic event. Once the physiological reaction ceases to occur, the emotion is "processed", and is just a benign memory like any other. But that can take a huge amount of work over a long time for some complexes, if they are very, erm, complex, and deeply ingrained.

I've probably gone as far down the rabbit hole researching this topic as any lay person can, after running into some pretty major "not living up to my potential" issues in my 20s (I was assessed as not diagnosable as ADHD or ASD by a psychiatrist, but I still seemed to be affected by at least some of the symptoms related to those conditions).

I've been as willing as anybody to believe theories (long commonplace among alt-med communities) like "it's antibiotics", "it's candida yeast" (or insert any other bacterial/fungus/parasite/virus species you can point to), "it's the effect of vaccines on the microbiome", "it's due to microbial dysbiosis in utero".

And after nearly 20 years of researching/contemplating/experimenting, I just find myself thinking "there's no singular, simple explanation or solution". And really, nor should there be; the body is a highly complex system.

Microbiome matters – but there's plenty of stuff you can do to improve it. Metals (mercury, lead, etc) and other environmental toxins (PFAS and other endocrine disruptors [1]) matter – but they can be detoxified over time via some fairly safe and non-invasive techniques. Inflammation matters a lot – and all kinds of things to do with diet, allergens, microbiome influence that. Genetics matter – but probably less than we presume, once all the other factors are considered and addressed (and it's probably more a case of genetic expression in response to stressors, rather than anything hard-coded/deterministic).

A big perspective-shift for me was finding that emotions and trauma matter a huge amount. This is the least-researched and discussed, both in mainstream and the alt-med circles, but in my own experience, nothing has made a bigger difference to my life outcomes (including physiological symptoms like inflammation) than regularly practicing techniques that identify and release deeply-held emotional complexes.

It can seem like an implausible, fringe theory until you think about it this way: if a person is perpetually traumatised, they can be in a "fight/flight/freeze" state, which takes up much of the body's energy and resources, instead of that being directed to healthy immunity (dealing with harmful microbes and allergens), digestion, metabolism, detoxification, tissue repair/growth etc.

And just to confound things even further, having to deal with an unhealthy microbiome in utero or early life can be a cause of trauma (just as it can be in later life when an infection like Epstein Barr can lead to CFS/ME).

I know this all seems very nebulous and speculative; it's taken me a long time to get my head around, but my takeaway after all this time is that to correct these kinds of conditions, these factors all need to be addressed in parallel: emotions, microbiome, toxicity, diet/nutrition.

I'm quite sure there will be no complete understanding and remedy for conditions like ASD and ADHD that doesn't incorporate all these factors.

[1] https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/07/what-are-endo...

This comment from a similar thread over 10 years ago pretty much sums it up:

I just saw Sam Altman speak at YCNYC and I was impressed. I have never actually met him or heard him speak before Monday, but one of his stories really stuck out and went something like this:

"We were trying to get a big client for weeks, and they said no and went with a competitor. The competitor already had a terms sheet from the company were we trying to sign up. It was real serious.

We were devastated, but we decided to fly down and sit in their lobby until they would meet with us. So they finally let us talk to them after most of the day.

We then had a few more meetings, and the company wanted to come visit our offices so they could make sure we were a 'real' company. At that time, we were only 5 guys. So we hired a bunch of our college friends to 'work' for us for the day so we could look larger than we actually were. It worked, and we got the contract."

I think the reason why PG respects Sam so much is he is charismatic, resourceful, and just overall seems like a genuine person.

Companies can “fail”, for all kinds of reasons, even with perfect execution by the founders. I don’t really know why Loopt failed, but based on sama’s track record since, he is definitely a person who makes a huge impact with whatever he does (even if you think OpenAI hype is overblown, as I do).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3048944

A theory going around a few weeks ago about his apparent inability to STFU is that his defence will be that he was affected by ADHD meds that impaired his judgement and made him impulsive, and have continued to do so even post collapse. I doubt lawyers could come up with anything better than this, really.

You've presented zero facts that demonstrate Musk's authoritarianism. You've given your opinions on what positions others should have on highly complex, consequential topics like nuclear armed countries in prolonged conflict over deeply-entrenched grievances with long and complex histories. Fine, you're welcome to have opinions about those and any other issues. There's still no evidence there for Musk's authoritarianism, and you don't win arguments by dogmatically redefining words and insisting your opinions are facts. That would be, dare I say, authoritarian?

Heh, this reply is pretty-well entirely ad-hom and just-so story. Never mind!

I understand you have a passionately held opinion about these matters, and it's unlikely I or anyone is likely to change your mind about much of it. But, as it's often said, you don't understand your own position thoroughly until you understand the other position thoroughly, so for the sake of you or anyone else who wants to be on solid ground, I'll put some responses. To declare my hand somewhat, when I said I have no dog in the fight, that refers to Musk; I don't find him a particularly admirable person, or someone likely to lead bringing about the changes I want to see in the world. What I bring to this is at least a couple of decades deeply exploring the question of how every/any person can live with maximum liberty and agency, and achieve an objectively satisfying life, no matter the circumstances of their birth or other issues over which they had no control. Musk doesn't have a huge amount to offer on that topic, so I'm not here to support or adulate him, but I do care about words like "authoritarianism" being used with a reasonable level of accuracy, and I always hate seeing people being portrayed negatively on largely false grounds.

I'll note that your previous response contains a lot of just-so argumentation ("He likes good little workers and no back talk. He likes the authority"), and ad-hominem attacks/character insinuations ("It's always fascinating to see people being unable to believe that Musk is what he is"). You need to cut out these swipes if you want to be seen as an objective, good-faith debater.

To respond to your main arguments in the last comment:

- On Russia/Ukraine and China/Taiwan: He just seems to be focused on ending these conflicts with minimal bloodshed and destruction. He didn't argue for Ukraine to just submit; he said there should be an externally supervised referendum so the people in the contested regions can self-determine which country they're in and that everyone can peacefully accept the outcome. That's as anti-authoritarian as you can get. In both cases of Russia/Ukraine and China/Taiwan, he sees that the worst case scenario is utterly catastrophic (all-out global nuclear exchanges), and wants to find ways to resolve these disputes before it gets anywhere near that. As divorce negotiators will tell you, when everyone is playing an all-or-nothing battle, everyone loses, whereas if you can find a way for everyone to get 75% of what they want, a peaceful result is much more likely. It doesn't follow that his desire for peace is authoritarian; generally it's authoritarians who like endless wars. He's advocating for the most effective way to end/prevent war. You can disagree with his position, but authoritarianism is not the issue here.

- "Sure there is. He likes good little workers and no back talk. He likes the authority": You've presented no evidence for this, it's a just-so story, though a familiar one; plenty of people will similarly assert that he just wants to fill his companies with sycophants. The thing is, sycophants and "good little workers" don't get reusable rockets working reliably, nor newly developed automotive technology. The evidence I can see is that he wants highly skilled people who know their field extremely well and will just get shit done, not waste their colleagues' time and energy with endless petty drama. When people spend a lot of time stirring up drama, it's generally a pretty good sign that they're not so good at their work. So again, it's not about authoritarianism, it's about getting good work done without drama.

- On COVID lockdowns; you can disagree with his position, accuse him of playing the victim, fine, whatever. It just doesn't have much to do with authoritarianism. Clearly, the governments/bodies mandating lockdowns and vaccinations were authoritarian. You can say it was justified authoritarianism, sure. I've been fairly comfortable with the lockdowns and measures imposed where I live in Australia, which many have described as being very authoritarian. But you can't say the people arguing against lockdowns were authoritarian. Any criticism for opposing lockdowns has to use words other than "authoritarian".

That's probably enough of a reply from me; the earlier reply from someone else covered the rest.

As I said I don't expect to persuade you but if you must respond, please try to do so without ad-hom and just-so story.

Musk is an authoritarian at heart. What he cares most about is achieving the maximum authority with the least constraint

I'm really wanting to understand where this view comes from.

What are the specific pieces of evidence for this? Who does he want authority over? How does that help him achieve his desired outcomes?

From my position, I have no dog in the fight but from a brief assessment of his public words and actions I see someone who is fairly left-wing on economics, drug policy and the environment, and his underlying position on free speech seems congruent with those of George Orwell and John Stuart Mill, both of whom were strongly left-libertarian in their time.

What are the specific pieces of evidence that demonstrate what he really wants, and what will really benefit him personally, is to take away people's freedom and agency?

I'm not advocating it, but intravenous ozone is a treatment offered by some alternative medical practitioners, as is rectal ozone.

It's how they are going about it and what kinds of systems they want to build.

You don’t seem to be well informed on how they’re going about it and what kind of systems “they” want to build. Who are “they”? Which of the multiple levels of government, several states and territories and multiple political parties who all have different policies and priorities do you mean? What do you mean by “enslavement”? None of it makes sense, and you’re making giant extrapolations from exaggerated and inaccurate headlines and reports in a media that you probably wouldn’t trust or believe on most other topics.

military patrolling your streets to enforce these covid laws

This is not happening. It's a complete beat-up and it's utterly false. The military has been engaged to provide labor, not enforcement. They have no enforcement powers. Parking inspectors have greater powers to enforce civil laws.

As for the inflammatory "checking papers" trope: many countries in all parts fo the world have had lockdowns, including in the U.S. Why single out Australia for condemnation when it is doing the same thing as so many others have done?

That aside, on the ground, there is really not much enforcement of the restrictions - less and less as each week passes and everyone accepts that the virus is here to stay.

Imagine being told in 2018 this would happen

Every possible scenario would have been alarming. 50000 deaths and a collapsing hospital system would have been unthinkable too. Australia has chosen to avoid that nightmare, and has chosen a different, also highly undesirable but marginally preferable path.

People are getting whipped up into a frenzy about all this, based on mental models of government and population relations that may apply elsewhere but don’t apply in Australia.

In truth:

- there is heavy pushback on government by the media and population, acceptance of lockdowns is in rapid decline, and governments are being forced to change their polices week by week.

- We don’t have a heavily militarized and hostile relationship between police, military and the population, it has always been egalitarian and cohesive, like pretty much everything else in the country.

- Australia has been ranked in/near the top 10 freest countries in the world for a long time, and little of what has happened during the pandemic would warrant that changing.

In that context it was 40 days for each returning ship. Australia’s quarantine is only 14 days for returning travelers.

Whatever their intentions, governments can’t sustain these measures forever economically or politically.

Nobody is using it for the opposite narrative. Quarantine has nothing to do with enslavement. You’re being histrionic, but also inconsistent when worrying about loss of life through totalitarianism but not loss of life through preventable illness. You’ve said elsewhere that the pandemic is not deadly enough to justify the actions we’re seeing, and I somewhat agree (population-wide lockdowns have been excessive), but hospital systems everywhere, including in Australia, have been pushed to beyond capacity. Australians can accept some limits to their freedoms to keep the medical system functioning. They won’t accept it forever, and regardless of any malicious intentions, governments can’t afford it forever.

Quarantine has been used in all kinds of societies for thousands of years during times of infectious outbreak. It’s described in the Bible, and it was used in the USA during the Spanish Flu. What is the point of quarantine without systems to ensure it is obeyed?

Is that quote really your smoking gun evidence that Rogan is Republican or Republican-supporting? Try and replace the names with people who don't have a political charge attached, and try to honestly assess whether it's such an outrageous thing to say.

He didn't say he would vote Trump and there's no evidence that he did. He was simply commenting that Biden was in decline, which was and is increasingly there for everyone to observe, and is highly concerning for a person who holds the most powerful office in the world.

You can disagree that his cognitive impairment disqualifies him from being president, fine, but to make that kind of comment is just not deserving of the outrage, and clearly the media whipped it up and perpetuated it in order to keep us all clicking and arguing.

You brought it up and keep replying, so you've clearly got an axe to grind. Not a single person is denying he was privileged. Your implication is that a privileged life is a life of "little to no worries", which is frequently asserted by people who seek to attack the wealthy simply for being wealthy, but it is a deep misconception in most cases, and particularly so for a sovereign leader. I understand you feel it's important to express contempt for a rich person at the time of their passing, but that doesn't excuse falsehoods.

"had little to no worries"

- As an infant, was evacuated from Greece with his (and his family's) life in grave danger. Spent his childhood mostly estranged from his family

- As a young man, served on a naval ship as part of the campaign to defeat fascist Germany and Japan. At least once helped save his ship's crew from a German bombing attack. Probably faced many other threats to his own life and to his comrades.

- Spent the rest of his life as an ambassador for his family and country, and counsel to his wife whose job it is to ensure the country and Commonwealth continues to function with stability and prosperity, including through political/economic crises, national emergencies, local/global cultural shifts, etc.

- Attended 22,000 official events and delivered 5000 speeches. Was an early advocate for environmentalism and animal welfare. Conceived and headed a youth development organisation for most of his public life.

- Endured family tragedies, relentless media/public scrutiny and criticism, and constant campaign against his family's wealth and role in the political system.

You may not like him. Fine. I didn't care much for him, and I don't hold a great deal of pity for him for the difficulties he and his family have faced.

But "little to no worries" is a giant leap.

The full context of the "spears" comment in Australia:

"[Prince Philip and the Queen] were coming down the [cable car] and we were putting on a special performance," Warren Clements recalled.

"We had royal fever so we said 'Let's go out the back and throw some boomerangs and spears and hopefully we'll get a glimpse of them as they come down'.

"They waved and we were showing off. I think Prince Philip took that in and that's why he said it.

"He's been taken out of context."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-03/prince-philip-was-not...

Aside from the different handling of capital investment vs expenses, "deciding [not] to reinvest" is not the only factor that determines a company's net income.

Take a company that loses $100M one year because of a natural disaster (like a pandemic), just manages to stay afloat by taking out loans, then makes net income of $50M the following year.

The company has net-lost $50M over two years and incurred large debts, and now has a huge tax obligation on the $50M, before they can start paying their lenders back.

A company in that situation may be better off shutting down, leading to huge job losses for the employees and trading partners, and an overall loss of tax payments that the company could otherwise have generated long into the future.

Your line of argument seems to be that it's always important to get the most possible tax out of a company in any given year, no matter the overall net outcome for society over the long term.

Capital expenditure (infrastructure) and operating expenses are treated differently.

An investment in a new factory cannot be deducted as a business expense all at once; it must be depreciated over its useful life, so only a portion of it can be recorded as an operating expense against income for every year it is used.

For software companies it's fuzzy; if you have a team of developers constantly working on enhancements to the company's platform, should the staff wages be counted as expenses or capital investment? It comes down to accountancy technicalities:

https://www.wallstreetprep.com/knowledge/accounting-capitali...

The point is they do pay all kinds of taxes; the more they spend in a year, the more taxes are generated (as I said, employee income taxes, franchise taxes, sales taxes, etc etc etc).

Federal income tax is just one of the many taxes that companies are subjected to, and one that innovative companies normally don't pay anyway because it's not good business to hoard profits, it's much better to invest for future growth, leading to more of all the other kinds of taxes being generated now and into the future.

These rage-bait articles that always focus on corporate income tax only work because many people aren't aware of this.

Seriously the current tax structure in the United States seems to be anti-human being

Companies are groups of human beings, earning income collectively. Corporate income taxes wouldn't be needed if the tax system was effective at tracking all financial flows. If the system worked properly, we'd just tax the money when it was paid to individuals as salary or dividends, which has to happen for it to be used by people; it's no good to anyone just sitting in a company bank account doing nothing.

The focus on company income tax is just a media trick to get people enraged, but it really is a non issue. Big companies generate huge amounts of taxes by merely exisiting, because they move huge amounts of money around that ends up in the hands of other companies and individuals, and plenty of tax gets paid when that happens.

Or, told another way:

For several years, Zoom has spent much more than it has earned ($300M more in fact), on expenses like staff, rent, services and supplies from other companies - which will have generated large amounts of income taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, franchise taxes, municipal taxes, etc.

This past year they have grown dramatically, and will have generated even more income taxes, franchise taxes, municipal taxes, etc than ever before, and also some present or future capital gains taxes due to the huge increase in the company's valuation.

They just don't have to pay federal income tax yet, until the net income they make exceeds the net losses they recorded over previous years.

A friend worked at a Macy's in Nevada for a few years. Staff were told that shoplifters should be assumed to be armed, and that security would not normally confront them. Staff would often stand by and let shoplifters walk out the door with big hauls of stuff. Large daily losses to theft were just budgeted for.

Can you comment with links pointing to his support for neo-Nazis?

I can agree that some of the people and ideas he aligns with are creepy, but Nazism has a meaning, and critiques like this need to be accurate and evidence-backed.

OK, fair enough about the specific/technical errors, but on the other hand it's a mistake to dismiss someone's entire argument over specific technical details when the overall argument may still be "directionally" true/valid.

"If I wrote an essay riddled with technical errors staking a position about technology" - this is not really an apt comparison, because politics is something that everyone is meant to be qualified to comment on, by virtue of the fact that every adult is considered to be informed enough about politics to vote. So it's the directionality of the argument that matters, not every fine detail. And given that the real topic of the essay seems not to be politics but leadership, as a successful company founder the author is very qualified to comment on that, and his mistaken beliefs about political details are not central to the argument.

In the case of the particular error you point out, sure it's technically incorrect of him to refer to "the city and county of San Francisco she controls", but as a Democratic Party congressperson representing that area, she could easily influence policy to improve the running of that city/county. So he's not completely off target with that critique.

"The belief that everyone is equally bad/corrupt is wrong and it just makes you a mark"

I don't think that's what he's saying, and it's not what I said or what I believe.

As for “pretending to be wise”; he doesn’t seem to be offering a neutral position and by virtue of writing a very long, reputation-risking post on the topic, he’s not avoiding investing resources, so that post doesn’t seem to be relevant.

But this notion that is morally incumbent for everyone to endorse and vote for a major party candidate is, in my observation, usually an attempt to guilt/shame people into supporting the proponent's preferred party.

How is it not acceptable for an educated person to adopt such a view as: "this whole circus is a stupid game orchestrated by media behemoths, financial institutions, military contractors and other cronies and rent-seekers, and it serves mostly to divide and exploit ordinary individuals and families in order that a small number of elite insiders can profit, and I choose not to play a role in perpetuating it"?

I'm not saying you have to believe that; clearly you don't, and nor do I, completely. But I know of people, educated, objectively intelligent people, not just fringe conspiracy-theorists, who hold this kind of position very sincerely, and whether it's completely valid or not, I don't see how it's an unquestionably wrong or immoral position to hold.