Do Explain with Christofer Lövgren

Christofer and micro-celebrity Aella speak about exploring one's mind in this episode of Do Explain. They discuss Aella's ten months of doing acid, deconstructing identity, inner vastness, exploring pain, embodiment, four categories of enlightenment, fallibilism, spiritual authority, belief construction, holding on to ideas, twitter-questions, and other related topics.

Aella is a sex worker, blogger, and controversial twitter-celebrity who loves collecting data from her audience. She was homeschooled from birth to the end of “high school” by professionally evangelical fundamentalist Christians in Idaho. After leaving home she turned to a series of shitty jobs involving windowless factories and waking up at 4am. She eventually escaped from that into the warm, wet embrace of porn, which she used to fund dives into far away realms, both physical and psychedelic. She did a documentary or two, spent a year somehow getting addicted to LSD, did some analytical escorting, and became one of the top Onlyfans earners until her attention span ran out. Now she's comfortably settled in Austin, working on her research institute for sexual fetishes. 

Website: https://knowingless.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aella_girl

Support the podcast at:
https://www.patreon.com/doexplain (monthly)
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Email Christofer:
[email protected]

This is part 3 of a series where Christofer investigates the ideas of David Chapman with his friend Jake Orthwein. The material covered is mainly from Chapman's two books: 'Meaningness' (meaningness.com) and 'In the Cells of the Eggplant' (metarationality.com).

In the third episode they focus on the different ways Chapman and Sam Harris speak about the central insight of Dzogchen. They talk about the self as an illusion, rigpa, the four naljors within Dzogchen, emptiness, sutric renunciation and dangers of 'no-self', intermittently continuing, embodiment, Nietzsche’s true world theories, spiritual bypassing, comparing non-duality and emotional fluidity, and why Chris thinks Sam Harris might be mistaken about the value of engaging with one's repressed emotional material.

Jake Orthwein is a writer and filmmaker based in Santa Monica, CA. He studied film and cognitive science at the University of Southern California and currently works as Director of Media for the Psychology of Technology Institute, an academic non-profit focused on improving research on the human-technology relationship. He is also a long term meditator.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JakeOrthwein
Website: https://frameproblems.com/

Support the podcast at:
https://www.patreon.com/doexplain (monthly)
https://ko-fi.com/doexplain (one-time)

Email Christofer:
[email protected]

Christofer and entrepreneur Aaron Nesmith-Beck speak about practical tips for having a useful psychedelic experience in this episode of Do Explain. They discuss if using drugs is cheating, dealing with bad/challenging trips, ceremonial containers for a trip, nested arcs, fractal insights, tripping in a group, psilocybin retreats in Holland, DMT, QRI and neural annealing, meeting extra dimensional beings, and other related topics.

Aaron Nesmith-Beck is a writer and entrepreneur most interested in psychedelics as a way to effectively do good. He founded Atman, one of the first legal psilocybin retreats. Atman Retreat allows people to explore the transformative potential of psychedelics safely, legally, and in a setting designed to maximize their benefits. Before that, he travelled for several years while blogging at Freedom & Fulfilment, which has now reached almost a million people worldwide. He's currently based in Toronto, Canada and was previously a board member of Mapping the Mind, one of Canada’s largest psychedelic science conferences, and a volunteer organizer for Effective Altruism Toronto. Other interests of his include meditation, applied ethics, personality and transpersonal psychology, and nonduality.

Website: https://anesmithbeck.com/
Atman Retreat: https://atmanretreat.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/anesmithbeck

Support the podcast at:
https://www.patreon.com/doexplain (monthly)
https://ko-fi.com/doexplain (one-time)

Email Christofer:
[email protected]

Christofer and entrepreneur Aaron Nesmith-Beck speak about the transformative powers of psychedelics in this episode of Do Explain. They discuss how nice Canadians really are, common objections to using psychedelics, Aaron's most memorable psychedelic experiences, Atman Retreat, tripping solo or with a sitter, crying as a therapeutic tool, bodymind tension, highly sensitive people (HSP), the experience of Oneness, the metaphysics of mystical insight, and other related topics.

Aaron Nesmith-Beck is a writer and entrepreneur most interested in psychedelics as a way to effectively do good. He founded Atman, one of the first legal psilocybin retreats. Atman Retreat allows people to explore the transformative potential of psychedelics safely, legally, and in a setting designed to maximize their benefits. Before that, he travelled for several years while blogging at Freedom & Fulfilment, which has now reached almost a million people worldwide. He's currently based in Toronto, Canada and was previously a board member of Mapping the Mind, one of Canada’s largest psychedelic science conferences, and a volunteer organizer for Effective Altruism Toronto. Other interests of his include meditation, applied ethics, personality and transpersonal psychology, and nonduality.

Website: https://anesmithbeck.com/
Atman Retreat: https://atmanretreat.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/anesmithbeck

Support the podcast at:
https://www.patreon.com/doexplain (monthly)
https://ko-fi.com/doexplain (one-time)

Email Christofer:
[email protected]

Christofer and executive coach Joe Hudson speak about resisting positive emotions in this episode of Do Explain. They discuss crying at bus stops, laughing, dealing with anger, the shadow, inherent goodness, original sin, love what you do vs. do what you love, parts work, and other related topics.

Joe Hudson is a sought after executive coach and creator of The Art of Accomplishment, an online learning platform for personal development.  As a venture capitalist Joe found that the most rewarding aspect, and the part he was most successful at, was the mentorship and coaching of the leadership of his portfolio companies. This insight moved him to his present role as a coach, business consultant and teacher. He now coaches 12 CEOs and leaders in prominent companies and runs transformative programs for both individuals and businesses. He is practicing a craft that makes big, lasting, and overwhelmingly positive impacts on the lives of people in his programs and in the companies he works with.

Website: https://artofaccomplishment.com/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-art-of-accomplishment/id1540650504

Support the podcast at:
https://www.patreon.com/doexplain (monthly)
https://ko-fi.com/doexplain (one-time)

Email Christofer:
[email protected]

This is part 2 of a series where Christofer investigates the ideas of David Chapman with his friend Jake Orthwein. The material covered is mainly from Chapman's two books: 'Meaningness' (meaningness.com) and 'In the Cells of the Eggplant' (metarationality.com).

In the second episode they focus on why the search for a universal theory of epistemology is problematic. They talk about mathematical and semantic information, the difference between nebulosity and fallibilism, and Chapman's division of reasonableness, rationality and meta-rationality. 

Jake Orthwein is a writer and filmmaker based in Santa Monica, CA. He studied film and cognitive science at the University of Southern California and currently works as Director of Media for the Psychology of Technology Institute, an academic non-profit focused on improving research on the human-technology relationship. He is also a long term meditator.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JakeOrthwein
Website: https://frameproblems.com/

Article by David Deutsch mentioned in the intro:
https://www.warpnews.org/premium-content/david-deutsch-optimism-pessimism-and-cynicism/

Support the podcast at:
https://www.patreon.com/doexplain (monthly)
https://ko-fi.com/doexplain (one-time)

Email Christofer:
[email protected]

This is part 1 of a series where Christofer investigates the ideas of David Chapman with his friend Jake Orthwein. The material covered is mainly from Chapman's two books: 'Meaningness' (meaningness.com) and 'In the Cells of the Eggplant' (metarationality.com).

In the first episode they focus on problematic cognitivist assumptions that undergird much of Deutsch's critical rationalism. They talk about Heidegger's idea of coping with the world, the relationship between cognition, perception and action, how representations get their meaning, and how Wittgenstein got some shit right.

Jake Orthwein is a writer and filmmaker based in Santa Monica, CA. He studied film and cognitive science at the University of Southern California and currently works as Director of Media for the Psychology of Technology Institute, an academic non-profit focused on improving research on the human-technology relationship. He is also a long term meditator.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JakeOrthwein
Website: https://frameproblems.com/

Support the podcast at:
https://www.patreon.com/doexplain (monthly)
https://ko-fi.com/doexplain (one-time)

Email Christofer:
[email protected]

Christofer and executive coach Joe Hudson speak about emotional fluidity in this episode of Do Explain. They discuss fishing in Alaska, the value of being impartial in conversation, connection, repressed emotion and physical tension, rationality vs. emotion, improving decision making, cognitive deconstruction, enlightenment, non-duality, the self, depersonalization and zen sickness, and other related topics.

Joe Hudson is a sought after executive coach and creator of The Art of Accomplishment, an online learning platform for personal development.  As a venture capitalist Joe found that the most rewarding aspect, and the part he was most successful at, was the mentorship and coaching of the leadership of his portfolio companies. This insight moved him to his present role as a coach, business consultant and teacher. He now coaches 12 CEOs and leaders in prominent companies and runs transformative programs for both individuals and businesses. He is practicing a craft that makes big, lasting, and overwhelmingly positive impacts on the lives of people in his programs and in the companies he works with.

Timestamps:

(1:54) - Who Joe is and what he does

(4:13) - Lessons from fishing in Alaska

(7:42) - What is impartiality and the VIEW state of mind? 

(17:45) - Imperfection and oscillation

(22:48) - Emotional fluidity

(27:40) - Are emotions rational? 

(33:14) - Prejudice against emotions

(38:30) - Bottling up and bodily tension

(44:27) - Intellectual and emotional deconstruction

(49:14) - Different methodologies for achieving emotional fluidity

(55:44) - Stages of the sense of self

(1:04:14) - Every epiphany leads to a rut

(1:08:10) - The phenomenology of being Joe 

Website: https://artofaccomplishment.com/
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-art-of-accomplishment/id1540650504

Support the podcast at:
https://www.patreon.com/doexplain (monthly)
https://ko-fi.com/doexplain (one-time)

Email Christofer:
[email protected]

Christofer, Walter Veit, Dennis Hackethal, and Matt Guttman speak about whether animals are sentient in this episode of Do Explain. Walter argues "yes", Dennis argues "no" and Matt argues that the hard problem really is hard. They discuss the difference between sentience and consciousness, the special way humans learn, consciousness as a binary jump vs. gradually evolving, animals as mere robots, information processing and computation, the hard problem of consciousness, anthropomorphism, panpsychism, different animal behaviors, and other related topics.

Walter Veit is a theoretical scientist and philosopher with interests stretching widely across science and philosophy. His primary research interests are located at the intersection of the biological, social, and mind sciences in addition to empirically informed philosophy and ethics.
 
Website: https://walterveit.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wrwveit

Dennis Hackethal is a software engineer and intelligence researcher in Silicon Valley, California. He hosts a podcast called Artificial Creativity about how to create AGI and also writes regularly about philosophy on his blog.

Website: https://blog.dennishackethal.com/
Podcast: https://soundcloud.com/dchacke
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dchackethal

Matt Guttman is a software engineer and analyst in Chicago, Illinois. He holds degrees in philosophy, business management, English literature, and education, and have an active and intriguing online presence on Twitter, @RealtimeAI.

Links provided by Dennis:

- https://www.windowonintelligence.com/
- https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/animal-sentience-faq
- https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/buggy-dogs
- https://blog.dennishackethal.com/posts/evidence-is-ambiguous

Studies provided by Walter:

Browning, H. & Veit, W. (2021). The Measurement Problem of Consciousness. Philosophical Topics. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.23082.75207

Veit, W. & Browning, H. (2021). Phenomenology Applied to Animal Health and Suffering. In S. Ferrarello (Ed.), Phenomenology of Bioethics: Technoethics and Lived-Experience, pp. 73-88. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65613-3_6

Veit, W. & Huebner, B. (2020). Drawing the boundaries of animal sentience. Animal Sentience 29(13). http://doi.org/10.51291/2377-7478.1595

Browning, H. & Veit, W. (2020). Is Humane Slaughter Possible? Animals, 10(5), 799. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10050799

Veit, W., Dewhurst, J., Dołega, K., Jones, M., Stanley, S., Frankish, K. & Dennett, D.C. (2019). The Rationale of Rationalization – Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43, e53. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X19002164

Support the podcast at:
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Email Christofer:
[email protected]

Christofer joins Josh Levent on the Humans podcast (Josh's episode description below): 

"Christofer Lövgren calls himself the irrevocably curious dickhead. Born and raised in Sweden, he grew up playing with Legos, Gameboy and Trading Cards. When he was 5 he picked up the guitar from his granddad and fell in love with it.

He only gave it up at age 19, when his workout addiction led to extreme pain in his hands and forearms making guitar-playing impossible.

Luckily he’s now again at a place where he can play guitar and is even playing with a band.

Christofer is someone who loves conversations. He told me that exploring the outer world doesn’t interest him much, because he is so fascinated by his own and others’ inner worlds, which he can tap into through conversations.

One of the places he does this is on his podcast, Do Explain, which he started 2 years ago to explore the work of David Deutsch and Critical Rationalism more broadly.

At school, Christofer loved maths when he had fun textbooks until 6th Grade. At that point the serious textbooks with fewer interesting pictures and colours, and a separate book for doing the work made him lose interest. He now says that anyone having fun is learning, even if just on an inexplicit level.

While we also talked about serious and difficult topics related to mental and physical health, at the end, we had a lot of fun recording this episode and you will hear us laughing a lot. And at the end that encapsulates Christofer’s personality completely for me. He is deep, and a great conversationalist for serious topics, but he will always make it fun as well."

Support the podcast at:
https://www.patreon.com/doexplain (monthly)
https://ko-fi.com/doexplain (one-time)

Email Christofer:
[email protected]