[productiono-notes] Episode 5.7 (Patreon)

Alan Watts' lecture on Meditation really stuck in my head. Editing and re-listening on repeat for 6 hours while you write music for it will do that! https://soundcloud.com/namtao/stop-talking-to-yourself-1 (you may remember this from the signal from 5.2, but the full version is the same length as the lecture: 13 minutes!)

One important thing he talks about is that typically we talk about the world in symbols. Like, if I say "I'm taking the train to work today", you don't think about the actual train I'm talking about, you think about a symbol, or abstract object with attributes you're pretty confidant about. The train is probably electric, you might think, maybe it's red or blue, and if I'm going to work, it's probably busy. these are all useful abstractions, but, according to Watts, not useful for understanding the real world, only the world society has made.

I realised that Seth, as an AI, only has symbols, these abstractions, to work in. We humans are very lucky to be able, if we want, to experience the world directly. Unless our senses are a further abstraction, which I suppose you could argue. Oh no.

Yeshi's sleep schedule is a real thing. It's called Uberman:

I've tried to get in to Uberman, oh how I've tried. Details here (https://www.0atman.com/articles/20/sleep-experiment) but I think it's probably impossible for normal people who live in the real world.

What actually worked for me was a hybrid schedule called Everyman, specifically Everyman-2, which is a core sleep of 5 hours, and two 20-minute naps. You can read my writeup of how the two months with Everymanwent here https://www.0atman.com/articles/20/polyphase-one-month

I'd say give Everyman a try if you want to experiment, it's very flexible, you can start with Everyman-1 which the Spanish call "just having a siesta", and then add another nap or two during the day to steal back your night-time. The trick is that 1h of napping during the day counts as 2h during the night, it seems to be more efficient to nap than to sleep.

Have fun with that!

Oh, did you like Heliophage? I'm SO pleased to have published it finally after many setbacks. Karl and I recorded episode 2 last night, which will be releasing on September the 10th, or thereabouts. We received lots of feedback about the speed of the episode - it was too dense and fast. We've fixed that in the second one, thanks to everyone who provided feedback.

Talk to you next week, and thank you again <3