I have been practicing meditation for 15 years, sometimes in batch of 100 hours.
The more I practice, the more the time slows down. Not just while meditating, but after the fact as well. Although it fluctuates and I’m not back to my kid self, it feels that I have tremendously more time now than a few years ago.
I suspect that it’s tied to how much present you manage to be.
When you are a kid, you are deeply immersed in whatever you are doing, and less and less so after that, especially in our age of distractions, multitasking, and intellectual work loads.
I think that the more you are immersed in the daily boring stuff, like just walking, doing chores, or taking your shower, the more you register the time you spend doing said activity, and the time seems to pass slowly.
In fact, I am sometimes under the impression my minutes, not just feel longer, but actually contain more, because I do so many things and then looking at the clock, it hasn’t moved much. This sensation increases when I meditate a lot.
I emailed the writer. I was struck again by his reply, some of which I’m sharing verbatim below (with his permission):
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Meditation is uninteresting repetition, again and again, no matter the technique. It’s only natural to find it uneasy.
This is not a race. It’s the opposite of a race. The faster you try to go, the slower you will progress. Yet efforts will lead to results. You have to be motivated without avidity, and it’s not an easy balance to find.
There is a huge difference in effects, between a casual practice (a few minutes, some of the days) and a robust practice (long sessions every day).
It’s a long term work. It’s, in fact, a life work. Our teacher jokes that at the center, we are at “Vipassana Kindergarden”. We are just beginning. Now we have to carry on and on. Half of the secret of success is simply showing up, every day.
I’m a big supporter of the Cosmos vision and an investor in the ecosystem’s $ATOM token. A new Cosmos whitepaper was recently published [source]. I’m sharing a few excerpts and diagrams below that I find interesting / consequential.
Here are a few tweet threads explaining the upcoming changes
The Cosmos SDK has a history of pioneering governance innovations, such as an advanced delegation system; governance-activated node upgrades; and a gen- eralized message passing system that allows any account, whether individual, group, smart contract, or chain, to execute arbitrary transactions, locally or over IBC.
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The Cosmos Hub gave rise to the internet of blockchains. Interchain Security and Liquid Staking are the final building blocks required for a secure interchain economy, which in turn, enable the creation of the Hub’s application-specific functionality, the Interchain Allocator and Interchain Scheduler.
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The transition phase starts the moment that Cosmos shifts to the new monetary policy and ends 36 months later, at which point the steady state phase begins and lasts indefinitely. During the transition phase, issuance temporarily increases for the first nine months as it bootstraps initial funding for a new Cosmos Hub Treasury. Issuance signifi- cantly reduces thereafter. As an additional safety measure, during the transition phase no more than 10% of the Cosmos Hub Treasury can be deployed within a 21 day period.
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At the beginning of the transition phase 10,000,000 ATOM are issued per month. This issuance decreases at a declining rate until it reaches steady state issuance 36 months later. Steady state issuance will be 300,000 ATOM per month (a nod to the speed of light, 300,000 km per second).
Why did founders tie themselves in knots doing the wrong things when the answer was right in front of them? Because that was what they’d been trained to do. Their education had taught them that the way to win was to hack the test. And without even telling them they were being trained to do this. […] That’s why the conversation would always start with how to raise money, because that read as the test. It came at the end of YC. It had numbers attached to it, and higher numbers seemed to be better. It must be the test
And
In practice, the freakishly specific nature of the stuff ambitious kids have to do in high school is directly proportionate to the hackability of college admissions. The classes you don’t care about that are mostly memorization, the random “extracurricular activities” you have to participate in to show you’re “well-rounded,” the standardized tests as artificial as chess, the “essay” you have to write that’s presumably meant to hit some very specific target, but you’re not told what
Contains # of psychoactive compounds, main one is THC, also CBD (cannabidiol), also CBN (cannabinol)
THC = largely responsible for psychoactive fx of cannabis
CBD / CBN = profound effects, but not same altered perceptions / moods
“High” = number of changes in brain and body, some of which are actually result of CBD but this is not widely known
Cannabis plant has 400+ biologically active compounds
1 Sativa
2 Indica
3 Ruderalis – not often consumed; not widely known
4 hybrids of all three
Sativa taller longer plant, Indica is shorter stouter, different morphologies
Sativa = more stimulant, invigorated and alert, not as sedative, reported heightened focus / creativity, less susceptible to pain / noxious stimuli, “head biased effect”
Indica = more full body effect, full body relaxation, sedative effect, state of sleep, relieve anxiety, less stimulant **Indica = “in the couch”
Many hybrid strains
Growers are growing strains with very nuanced effects on brain and body
**Now there’s type 1, type 2, type 3 for any given eg indica, sativa, hybrid – differing THC/CBD ratios
Type 1 = THC>CBD
Type 2 = more balanced THC:CBD
Type 3 = CBD>THC
Why is there any effect (of weed) at all?
**Top 3 most used drugs – #1 alcohol, #2 nicotine (1-2B users), #3 cannabis Caffeine would be above all 3 if it were considered a drug
**From early conception (still in womb), you have cannabinoid receptors – because body has endogenous cannabinoids (EC) which you make from conception to death
Cannabis has compounds that bind to those same cannabinoid receptors —> biological fx
**THC / CBD bind to those receptors with greater affinity, have greater fx than our endogenous (naturally made) chemicals – 1000x greater potency – your endogenous cannabinoids are out-competed
This is why dependence starts to emerge
This is also why you can experience worse mood, anxiety, etc when not consuming – because your own body’s compounds stop working as well
Similar to how our body makes its own testosterone, but you can take synthetic (artificial) testosterone that gives “super physiological effects” – much stronger than our own body-made testosterone
Same with nicotine + nicotinic receptors
Just because it’s from a plant / naturally occurring does not mean it’s safe or healthy for the human body – depends highly on the plant, compound, person, genetics, etc
Two main kinds of EC (endo cannabinoids)
Released from neurons (nerve cells) – pre-synaptic > post-synaptic – excitation and inhibition
ECs are post-synaptic – they’re a brake on system, adjusting levels
**While marijuana can disrupt short-term memory, these natural ECs can actually strengthen the neuronal connections
ECs work in number of ways, not straight-forward fx
Two kinds of EC receptors – CB1 is highly enriched in brain (found everywhere) / nervous system, CB2 is immune system / liver / genitals
ECs interact with both CB1 and CB2
Cannabis has THC / CBD that potently bind CB1 receptor – 1000x stronger than ECs – “essentially leave ECs dysfunctional”
**Cannabis is fast entering bloodstream = 30 seconds Faster than alcohol and nicotine
After 30-60 min will have peak concentrations and biological fx
**Effects last 3-4 hours – can depend on familiarity / frequency of use
Lypophilic – affinity for fatty cells, can remain in those cells for long time
**After consumption, typically stay in those cells and can be detected for 80 days (!)
CB1 receptors present in many nerve cells / brain
Sativa acts on those receptors in pre-frontal cortex (PFC)
PFC = brake on amygdala (which detects threats)
**Sativa compounds eg, calm down the amygdala, and ramp up the PFC – seesaw effect – enables states of flow / focus / creativity / elevated mood
Except in some individuals – fx are opposite and can experience intense anxiety / paranoia THC / CBD simply increase fx (“potentiate”) of your existing systems – thus likely to experience similar effect every time
**No good predictors of how an individual will respond to a given strain – lots of street lore but no scientific proof
**Indica also suppresses amygdala, but also shuts down hippocampus (memory) – indica can harm short and even long-term memory
Brain / body areas impacted
-deficits in memory (reductions in hippocampus activity)
-PFC – activated by sativa, indica turns off (=relaxation, promoting sleep)
-suppression of basal ganglia and cerebellum (action planning, balancing, motor planning and sequencing) – less physically mobile, reddening of eyes, drier mouth, etc
-increase in appetite – high density of CB1 receptors in hypothalamus – narrow focus to food, hypothalamus signaling to gut that regulate blood sugar leading to increases in appetite
-CB1 receptors in spinal cord – can provide some pain relief – big component of this is a perceptive shift of pain (qualitative)
Most studies detail THC amount, but don’t distinguish sativa vs indica strains
Does cannabis increase creativity?
“Depends”
Convergent (synthesis, analysis) vs divergent (brainstorming, exploration) thinking
**When dopamine is high, divergent thinking more likely = throw out lots of disconnected ideas
From review of scientific literature: in professions where creativity is required, find more manic depression (manic = elevated dopamine) and schizophrenia (also elevated dopamine)
**Creativity involves both – first divergent (high dopamine), then convergent (lower dopamine)
Creativity = process, not an event
Note: only 1/2 finished – will add more notes if I finish the rest
From William White, formerly of the OECD. PDF link here.
A few choice excerpts below, I’ll add more as I finish the paper (it’s slow going for me, I was at best a B+ Econ student in college)
AME = Advanced market economy (eg, the US or Europe or Japan)
Rising inflation along with stagnant demand in AME’s would clearly imply other serious problems for the central banks of AMEs. On the one hand, raising policy rates to confront rising inflation could exacerbate continuing problems of slack demand and financial instability. On the other hand, failing to raise policy rates could cause inflationary expectations to rise. Further, were different central banks to respond differently, as they did in 2008, there might also be unwelcome effects on exchange rates.
One disquieting fact is that these long rates have been trending down, in both nominal and real terms, for almost a decade and there is no agreement as to why this has occurred. Many commentators have thus raised the possibility of a bond market bubble that will inevitably burst.
The famous “Minsky moment” is likely to be shorter, harder to predict, and even more self-fulfilling than Minsky suggested. The failure of Bear Stearns and Lehman provide good examples of these dangers. As well, the shadow banking system has an increasingly international flavor. This not only reduces transparency and the quality of regulatory oversight, but also produces a degree of “balance sheet” exposure that could easily precipitate or aggravate foreign exchange crises.
Third, with central banks so active in so many markets, the danger rises that the prices in those markets will increasingly be determined by the central bank’s actions. While there are both positive and negative implications for the broader economy, as described in earlier sections, there is one clear negative for central banks. The information normally provided to central banks by market movements, information which ought to help in the conduct of monetary policy, will be increasingly absent.
The Japanese crisis of the 1990s began with a very high household saving rate, a very strong home bias for portfolio investment and the world’s largest trade surplus. Contrast this, for example, with the almost opposite position of the US today. A marked shift in market confidence in US Treasury debt would then seem likely to lead to a dollar crisis as well.
