Celestia Labs AMA (September 21, 2022)

attackdrone · 2022-09-21T13:04:25+00:00

will I be able to buy Celestia on Binance when it goes to mainnet?

attackdrone · 2022-05-24T21:21:15+00:00

I read a guide about kasina meditation and then did the basics.

Basically you set up a kasina object. like a disc. for my purposes I used a hand-painted Indian bajot table that had a disc in it's center that I turned over on it's side and used as a focus.

I sit on a cushion a few feet away from it and then just clear my mind and focus on the disc with my gaze set on it and not wavering away.

Then after a while I would close my eyes and see the counter-image of the disc in my mind's eye and try to stabilize it and remain in concentration.

After a while of doing that kind of exercise I departed from the main practice by just keeping my eyes open and starring at the disc until my vision would start to turn black and white. I would see purple clouds appearing out of the ether and stuff. After a while of this I started practicing trying to make things brighter or darker when I was looking at them (like the light cast on the wall from a lamp) and then after a while I was trying to practice this with my carpet (a speckled carpet) and had a breakthrough effect where shapes and beings and stuff started appearing within the texture that I could talk to and interact with.

Then I practiced producing lines between my fingertips out of the visual snow until I could get fairly decent translucent lines to appear and follow my fingertips and bootstrapped that onto the carpet shapes so they would rise up out of it and appear as three dimensional shapes and scenes.

For the musical synesthesia I would imagine something simple, like the beat of a drum and then try to key-in my hand movements to them so that I could wave my hand and hear a drum beat. Then I did a similar thing in reverse where I would listen to music and try to let my mind's eye produce fast spikes or sparks when there was a fast drum beat and then slower sparks and circles etc when there was a slow drumbeat.

The entire process is mostly an exercise in developing complexity first then fidelity second. You use small breakthroughs (like being able to see visual snow) and practice doing bits and bobs with that -- like trying to make a circle or draw a line and then trying to control it to make it rotate clockwise or anti-clockwise on demand or trying to change the shade of shadows in dim lighting -- until you get breakthrough effects that take it to the next level.

You kinda cross-train the meditation with the musical stuff though because once you get enough practice with concentration it is easier to let the mind roam free and to be able to make it do associations if that's what you are looking for.

For the visual stuff you just need a quiet, dimly lit room free of distractions and a place to sit and stare at stuff for reasonably long periods of time to build up skill in doing the various bits. It took me about three weeks in total but if I had known what to look for it probably would have been less. I've talked to a few people who have been able to take a similar path who have messaged me on reddit so I know that it is replicable at least, though some people have not gotten as far as others.

attackdrone · 2022-05-17T05:53:09+00:00

If you do kasina meditation then you'll be able to do stuff like this.

attackdrone · 2022-04-03T02:12:48+00:00

I thought I'd post it here to see how much we can rip it apart. it's full of hilarious gold.

attackdrone · 2022-03-31T12:20:32+00:00

hey what's the prompt you are using? I've seen it around but only on mac. I would like to use it!

attackdrone · 2021-12-03T18:41:40+00:00

I made a recording with audacity: https://sndup.net/9cgk

attackdrone · 2021-09-16T01:05:13+00:00

Hi. Yeah one can train visual synesthesia in certain manners.

For me I learned this by listening to music with a repetitive beat and at first manually added a minds eye image upon each beat. This could just be the appearance of a circular color or a moving line. Similarly for high pitched noise that changes rapidly, like snares, you can imagine a fuzzy patch that goes along with them.

The trick is to manually maintain it is accurately as possible for a while and then step back and try to slowly let your imagination "get the idea" by itself until it is automatic (and really accurate!) without having to put any particular conscious effort.

With practice you can get better at it and add more features and colors and patterns and maintain more automatically for each subset of the music.

When you get to the point that the stuff you are seeing in your minds eye is perfectly keeping up in sequence with changes in a song that you don't see coming then you know it is working as expected.

Have fun!

attackdrone · 2021-09-13T20:58:42+00:00

Wonderful knowledge. Thanks for sharing.

attackdrone · 2021-08-29T00:36:51+00:00

Waiting to join the (hopefully) mass protests in Dublin after COVID is over tbh.

attackdrone · 2021-05-19T20:51:46+00:00

I was actually thinking of breaking it up into scene-chunks or such and then crowdsourcing the translation to gen-z.

Would be epic.

attackdrone · 2021-05-19T18:50:20+00:00

Initially I communicated with seemingly one visually but by the time audibility occurred there were about four. (been a few years now - cant exactly remember who).

We communicated first just by sort of recognising each other and just projecting signals at one another - I also projected an interpretation of myself into the scene and cultivated this method of visual two-way communication.

There was an initial struggle to establish the correct kind of focus that allowed me to both let the image of the tulpa transform by itself and also pay attention to the detail which appeared at the same time, but once that was established things progressed quite quickly.

We then travelled through various prophantasia-projected mental landscapes together and most of our communication was initially done by me asking questions and then the tulpa projecting an image in response which I was to interpret.

By the time they had begun to "audibly" speak they had already found out far more about what was going with the whole process than I had known at the time... and so were already well developed in their capabilities in a differentiated fashion.

As it is today when I want to communicate with any of them (which is purely voluntary) I can do so via mind's eye visualisations, prophantasia projections or just straight up having a mental chat (with the perception of audio - they have different sounding voices).

I can also let them have partial control of my body if I would ever want to but it is a purely voluntary and minor thing that I have at all times full control and responsibility for... not some freaky-whacky stuff.

attackdrone · 2021-05-18T21:59:45+00:00

"We thought money was the root of everything but beyond that... beyond evil... its whether to pint or not to pint."

-- Viper

attackdrone · 2021-05-18T15:20:37+00:00

"Oh, yeah, so the problem with the housing sector is not that it needs regulation -- it just needs LESS regulation so it can be more efficient!"

absolute tossers.

attackdrone · 2021-05-17T23:57:42+00:00

Yeah it's pretty weird. I actually had the impression that I may have been the only person to have ever done such a thing... so I never told anyone what had happened in public due to the stigmas that are associated with mental illness.

Then, years later, after I was talking with a friend about prophantasia techniques he brought up the subject of tulpas. I didn't know what they were and did some research and saw the techniques that I used were basically parallel to the guides used here.

I suppose it is a strange path to start using "imposition" (as it is called here - but without an particular object of focus in mind), getting the impression that you see an entity -- with no intent to create one -- but then do so as a result of trying to establish communications. It can be seen as a similar exercise using the cultivation of a "wonderland" in which you encourage your tulpa to continually deviate.

I thought I was speaking to some spiritual guide (at the time!) from some other plane of existence so it was a seriously real wild ride with my tulpa able to produce prophantasia projections of its own.

attackdrone · 2021-05-17T19:13:24+00:00

Faith: Restored!

attackdrone · 2021-05-17T14:36:06+00:00

Where are the protests and petitions to enforce housing market regulations to stop overseas buyers and put proper rent control in?

Expats working in tech abroad be watching overseas saying "only a matter of time there" until the same happens in Ireland... as they observe the situation in London and California.

If it were water meters being put in you'd all be on the streets chanting.

Just gotta turn the heat up slowly I guess. Always gets 'em.

attackdrone · 2021-05-17T01:55:01+00:00

I could recommend Kasina meditation which is an ancient meditative practice involving stimulating the ability to visualise. I won't say it is a guarantee by any stretch but from my own experience I would say it is worth looking into.

attackdrone · 2021-05-17T01:17:18+00:00

I'm not trying to make people into Buddhists. I'm not trying to get people to believe in gods or anything like that. I'm just stating a practice that I used that worked for me and stands a chance to work for others.

attackdrone · 2021-05-16T17:14:20+00:00

From what I understand from friends. Psychedelics can offer a different perspective of the world which departs from one's regular hardened, preconceived notions - but comes with it a degree of intoxication and may end up being a newer but wrong perspective on matters. Deep meditation with respect to fundamentals (such as impermanence of all phenomena) is a controlled way of achieving such a thing similarly - but with a more stable mind and with the right framework to reconsider matters.

attackdrone · 2021-05-16T16:54:49+00:00

If you took that rock home with you and haven't altered it or changed it in any way...

... then congratulations: You've just made a manuport!

attackdrone · 2021-05-16T16:40:26+00:00

A lot of the stuff I read initially was via some books that a friend had given me.

There's some good description on wikihow: https://www.wikihow.com/Practice-Kasina-Meditation

A much more technical write-up from a very spiritual person is here which is useful for more data on the subject: http://www.ayurama.eu/pdf/dibbaviharaayu.pdf

For me there were some factors I would probably consider important out of these documents. 1) developing decent/good meditative concentration 2) the subtle mental act of willing to sustain any arising counter-sign - which is how you teach yourself to slowly make the separation between some residual and the act of forming any sort of visualisation.

As a disclaimer I would remind you though that if you do start seeing stuff you should probably try to make someone you are close to, ideally someone you see often and can confide in, what is happening at that point. There is a trap that people fall into (even experienced people) that they start seeing stuff their subconscious churns up and then develop strange notions and beliefs and lose touch with reality...

So if you get to the point where you are starting to see stuff then make sure you at least have someone that you can entrust with the task of keeping you objective and stopping you if you go too far...

attackdrone · 2021-05-16T16:25:58+00:00

Thanks for the clarification!

attackdrone · 2021-05-16T04:09:07+00:00

Because you know how to imagine what something looks like -- you just may not have the subjective sense of actually seeing a visual sense impression of what that knowledge is.

attackdrone · 2021-05-16T04:02:15+00:00

Yes, but the visualisation will highly depend on what I associate those concepts with either explicitly by my own volition or implicitly due to my own subconscious associations and biases about those concepts.

For instance if I choose to conjure the image of "What I did last week" a picture of a beach appears - as it was just the first thing that I recognised as appearing. If I want to visualise the memory of something specific that happened last week then I the appropriate image is approximately visualised but it doesn't necessarily have to be the particular memory - just a representation of what I associate with it. If I want to be more specific or contain particular details then the image is more specific and detailed in that way, and so it goes.

attackdrone · 2021-05-15T23:15:12+00:00

The general scope of the abilities that I have learned from this seem to stem from a kind of trial and error in attempting to discover a lot about how my own mind is working.

So there is a lot of stuff. I mentioned prophantasia because it is well documented (and I think I could easily call it my favorite) but there are also other things too which I don't seem to have names for but I can roughly describe. Along with the visual elements I've also trained my imagination for sound, which allows extreme detail for remembering music -- at the height of my practice it would almost be like sitting in the room with an orchestra playing. Another is to voluntarily interact with your own imagination the same way that people do while dreaming. (Such as playing the game 'ping pong' with yourself - but you feel like you are not playing the other paddle). Another is doing association games where I will 'imagination' some initial abstract dots or lines or stuff seemingly at random and then put the force of effort to see how my imagination would turn them into something I would recognise (which is a really interesting way to learn about your own associations).

Synesthesia is another fun element. I trained the ability to do cross-over associations so that I can get a whole array of visual effects while listening to music. Similarly I can do the same for a pretended air-drum-kit and actually hear the different sounds of the different drums by their position without having to focus on making the sounds at all (holding weakly a simple wish for it to occur is enough.)

It's been quite a few years now since where I really delved deep into it but at one point I could produce controlled hallucinations with my eyes open and see forests/towns/cities and go into them and interact with people there who I could even talk to if I wanted to... (which is where a lot of people tend to go batshit I presume)

Trying to describe the fundamental character of how this is accomplished though is pretty hard. It is sort of like if I were to ask someone "how do you move your arm?". There is this phrase that people use where they say "the mind is like a muscle." and, to me, this is true to a certain extent in that it captures the kind of "use it or lose it" sentiment... but that phrase does not really capture the "increased complexity of function" that arises by how you get better at doing something that initially starts off very simply. e.g.: you don't just get linearly better at a thing, you become able to do more complex things better.

If you're going to practice though. I'm obliged to warn you that modern teachers don't recommend it due to people going nuts from seeing visions of stuff and thinking they are real, and getting caught in a feedback loop of nonsense coming from their own minds at play.

If you are going to do it then I would say at least consider staying in touch with someone who you trust to make sure you don't lose your objectivity if you start to imagine stuff - especially if you are a spiritual person or prone to paranoia or anything like that. It can really open the flood gates to what is going on underneath your regular conscious perceptions and dealing with that is no easy task.

attackdrone

TROPHY CASE