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.
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.
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).
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.
> 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?
> 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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.