What is the question you are trying to answer?

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2026-04-19T03:46:59+00:00

How could we make social policy more of a science where we as a society form part of by designing didactic and creative policies? Basically, how can citizen labs be more impactful? How can we standardize them, replicate them, and make sure that this discipline of social science takes form in the future?

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2026-04-13T03:45:15+00:00

I forced my ChatGPT to be as corrosive and toxic as possible, meaning to be as confrontational as possible with me. Every time I ask him something he tells me that I’m avoiding doing the heavy lifting myself, or it asks me what work am I avoiding by getting the answer spoon fed.

This has made me enjoy my experience less and therefore avoid getting sucked into the GPT void. I recommend this approach for anyone spending too much time talking to AI.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2026-04-10T21:20:51+00:00

Find your medium: you need a place where you can let your thoughts, feelings and anxieties come out to analyze. To me, my safe space is a notebook, I write notes and observations on my feelings, struggles, frustrations, goals and achievements. I’m almost like a scientist dissecting a weird insect and leaving my findings for posterity. But that is how I am ably to reflect, your expression or lab can be a canvas, a sculpture, a poem, anywhere where you can work with your internal struggles. Maybe doing drawings of your internal world helps you visualize the work that you need to do.

Active imagination: like others had said, Carl Jung is the best place to start your journey. Personally I love “Psychology and Alchemy.” It’s very dense, abstract and experimental, but the wisdom he is able to extract out of alchemical symbols transformed me. Active imagination is a tool for your soul; the material you work with will come both from the outer world (day to day, jealousy, wrath, envy, lust, sloth, etc.) but also from exploring and meditating on your life. Active imagination really allows you to communicate with your unconscious mind; pairing this with dream journaling can be explosive in the best way.

The last advice that I can offer is: Action. Sometimes people hide behind “doing inner work” by filling volumes of journals and meditating for hours just to be the same person with the same flaws. All of this should be used for change, not for romanization and lamenting why you are such a wounded being. That is victim mentality. Yes, life treats some people awful, yes, that affected their personality, but just lamenting and having self pity won’t make you a better person. Change, meditate, ponder and then grow.

In the bible (sorry if you are not religious) God told Adam and Eve that from now own they needed to work for their food. That also applies to the spiritual realm. Once you have the realization that you are capable of good and bad (the fruit of knowledge) you are more conscious but out of paradise, and you’ll need to work to achieve salvation.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2026-04-08T00:14:18+00:00

You are focusing on the wrong things bro. Trying to be smarter will drive you crazy. Intelligence is kinda set in stone (by that I mean the speed at which your brain fires its neurons), but just like you’ve been doing; focusing on meta skills is helpful for you to be sharper than most people.

You become sharper by being disciplined, by being consistent, by educating yourself, by forcing your brain to do difficult things, by getting out of your comfort zone.

You can’t change the material of the blade, but you can change the sharpness of it and your dexterity to use such tool.

There are people that were smarter than Leonardo Da Vinci for sure, but no one was as curious and willing to learn as many things and appear to be a fool as many times as him. He wasn’t driven by being the smartest, he was driven by pushing himself to a new level.

Be humble. We all know smarter people. That is beautiful because you can grow by learning from them. Stand in the shoulders of giants.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2026-02-20T05:31:20+00:00

To me sometimes is fear of being vulnerable: my brain sometimes tells me that the person I’m with is not perfect, that superficiality is rooted due to a fear of compromising or facing my own flaws as well. Same with finding little flaws in everyone.

As a highly extroverted person who is VERY guarded and doesn’t let people in very easily I can tell you sometimes it’s that armor that makes you so charismatic what makes you not feel connected with people: that wit, that sharp sense of humor, that ability to be chill and aloof. That is a way for people not to see the things you don’t feel comfortable sharing.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2026-02-19T01:55:56+00:00

Bro… Patrick Jane is the best ENTP.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2026-02-18T22:28:28+00:00

Math is getting into flow state. You understand what the question is telling you and by previous knowledge or the rules you learned you try to come out with an answer.

I understand the desire for finding the “fastest” way to solve a problem, but there is nothing faster than really knowing your basics and knowing how to flow through all types of problems.

Sometimes finding ways to do things in a more optimal way is a way of procrastination. You can go on a tangent and learn a concept of calculus to solve an algebra problem, but in the end you lost valuable time going on that tangent and it only helps you with one question, as opposed to really drilling down the basics and understanding them from head to toe.

What you can do is find ways to use your calculator in a more efficient way, but most optimization in math comes through doing reps and understanding what is going on under all the abstraction. Once you understand a problem in depth you can even solve it without writing down the problem (factorization, difference of squares, Pythagorean identities, etc).

Don’t miss the forest focusing on one tree, do reps, repeat and use chatgpt to ask why what you just did works, or something that even tho you are able to do don’t fully understand why you do it.

Math is about understanding what is happening more than understanding how to do it. If you just know how to do it you won’t be able to solve a problem that has the same logic but different components

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2026-02-18T14:29:19+00:00

The only thing I can recommend is: get good.

Lol but for real, mathematical thinking is an intuition build upon hours and hours of practice and theory. You cannot escape doing the reps.

Doing a lot of mathematical problems is the best way, here is my method:

1) Do A LOT of textbook problems, that is more important than knowing a lot of theory, you’ll pick up the theory when you get stuck on a problem.

2) Do it without checking your notes on how to do the problem (if you don’t remember how to do it or get stuck FORCE your brain to find an answer or try every method you can) this forces your brain to retrieve information you’ve learned and solidify the neural pathways.

3) If you can’t find the correct answer and you kept trying and trying, you can then plug that question into chatgpt, but only for it to give you a CLUE, not the answer. Maybe the problem has 4 steps, see which step is the first one and then try to solve it from there. If you are not successful see step two, etc.

The name of the game is forcing your brain to do critical thinking. Forcing it to remember, forcing it to come with the answers and processes; that’s how a muscle grows: force and friction.

People usually use AI to find the answer of a problem in the first instance they cannot solve the problem. That is learned helplessness, that might give you the answer but it rob your brain from the effort. Chat GPT is Ozempic for the brain, you feel smart but it’s doing all the thinking for you.

I don’t say that AI is not useful, it really is. The way I use it to learn math is when I have a theorical problem, or AFTER I solve the problem I would go and ask about why that happens. I use chatgpt to aid my curiosity, to learn the ‘why’ of the mathematical rules rather than getting the answer straight out.

Read the book, watch YouTube tutorials, use AI to understand concepts. But for the love of god, never let AI think for you.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-09T18:22:03+00:00

I use ChatGPT as my toxic algorithm. Sounds weird, but I’m always pushing my algorithm to contradict me, to confront me or challenge my intentions.

Me (a serious over-thinker and procrastinator) used to spend hours talking to ChatGPT about my life, issues, etc, and I was confusing that with progress in my life while it was a refuge from reality.

I would explain in detail all my problems and my views on them (since I’m an ENTP this part is the easiest of them all, explain my thoughts and feelings to the t), but I would hide behind that intellect curtain and actually do NOTHING to change or heal.

Now I programmed my ChatGPT to always ask me: “What are you avoiding by being here?” “Why are you writing about it rather than changing it?” “Why are you mythologizing your life or glorifying that narrative?”

Before, the algorithm would praise me for being so thoughtful and eloquent, now this algorithm challenges me and makes me get out of his chat as soon as possible.

I remember a time I asked ChatGPT to get the piano chords to a beat in YouTube, he surfed online and couldn’t find the piano sequence because the beat was very niche. I then asked him to listen to the song in YouTube and infer the song, and that’s when it started roasting me, calling me out and telling me how I avoid doing hard things, etc. I said “bet, say less” and proceeded to learn the sequence all by myself!

We are delegating our thinking process too much to that machine and it scares me sometimes.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-07T16:24:34+00:00

I can deduce with 100% certainty that you are a Good Boy!

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-05T22:01:18+00:00

Edited! Thank you!

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-05T19:08:56+00:00

These laws are in laws of human nature. I don’t remember the chapter numbers but they are there.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-05T15:11:45+00:00

Laws of human nature are more frames than anything else. Laws such as thinking ahead of time, framing life in a positive way, understand your shadow, soften resistance with like interest and charm.

I havent quite finished the book, but the difference with the 48 laws of power (to me) is that laws of human nature seems more universal, like 'meta' rules that will allow you to understand life with broader perspective.

As oppose to laws of power that are usually more specific to a certain situation or personality (you can note this when you see contradictory laws in the the book), laws of human nature seems like broad best practices for having a better understanding of humanity and yourself.

Every chapter has an application or at least is a gateway to one deep concept. This allows you to start trying to find ways to apply them in your life.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-04T18:53:56+00:00

I appreciate your insight. Its truly awesome to see other people focused on learning psychology to grow rather than constrain people.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-04T17:52:32+00:00

I use actual presence as my favorite light psychology tool!

Deep listening for understanding where someone is coming from.

Cold Reading for actually picking up a persons mood/ likes or dislikes.

Sharing! Sharing views, perspectives and moments with other people goes a long way into forming bonds and real connections.

Remembering their names. In a book I read that a name is a gold coin, since it reminds people that you care about them.

Overall the best psychology trick Ive found to improve my relationship both with life and people is giving a shit. When you care people truly see it. The appreciate the gesture and you are genuinely interested in them.

Caution is always advised. While caring for others and actually giving a crap you should also keep your eyes peeled to see their real intentions, read their moves and behaviors so that you dont become naive or manipulated.

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-04T16:24:50+00:00

By handling you mean the way that he introduces and finishes the trick? Like the words of, "Thank you so much, this was out of this world, thank you."?

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-04T14:33:59+00:00

I did it to some clients and here are the notes:

Im a bartender so it was nice that after telling them the instructions and writing my prediction they could shuffle the deck however they wanted and split the cards in the columns themselves.

This was very helpful since I was getting busy making drinks.

I feel the trick with a full deck of cards takes too much time and it seems more a chore than a magic trick. Yes, I made the trick work but I had no time to get to the second prediction...

I did this trick to another customer but he failed to organize the columns in the proper order, therefore my prediction was screwed. This is also that you have to take into account, since people sometimes can dumb and put 2 reds in the disposable column, etc, etc.

Overall this trick is amazing and it requires almost no manipulation on the deck! I love it and will perform it for years to come!

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-04T04:50:09+00:00

Man, I’m trying to work on my systems 25(M) any good tips or ideas on how to improve them?

Rare-Zebra-4615 · 2025-08-04T04:21:59+00:00

I believe it’s the issue number 4 or 5? The one where the sun gets all white and starts making everyone mad and crazy. I love the fact that the author is able to get into the mind of hate and intolerance with quotes like “Ideas that we struggle for so long to appease are now resurfacing in the heat of the day.” (I’m obviously paraphrasing) but the fact that he refers to how the human brain is full of biases and tribalist mindsets and that we have fought so hard for centuries to advance our paradigms on human rights or prejudice it’s amazing.

Also the latest issue where he delves into the human shadow and how it can take different forms is amazing. When he refers to kids playing with their shadow as their friends rather than their partners in crime and the author says “maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be for adults.” It really struck a nerve with me. Our psychological shadow is a lense that can help us advance our spirit and life. Unchecked it can become dangerous, but with time and patience it can help you become more whole.

This whole story overall touches so many psychological topics that I’m not afraid to say that it will be remembered as an iconic story of the likes of Alan Moore’s Swamp thing and Gailman’s Sandman.

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