[HN Gopher] Kapil Gupta: Conquering the Mind [video]
___________________________________________________________________
Kapil Gupta: Conquering the Mind [video]
Author : tomhoward
Score : 46 points
Date : 2021-02-27 13:09 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| gabereiser wrote:
| I only listened to the first few minutes. I'm not a fan of
| podcasts or talk radio at all. I grew up in a household that
| followed Buddhist and Hindu teachings, even though I'm as white
| as it comes. I studied zen, buddhism, hindu beliefs, practiced
| martial arts, and even took chi-gong meditation courses. I'm also
| an engineer and found that the zen achieved in programming to be
| as close to mindful bliss as I've found so far. Intent,
| purposeful, thought and actions.
|
| That said, I collected several books by Thich Nhat Hanh that
| really helped me in my early 20s to shed the past, reduce self to
| its pure form, and approach each challenge with mastery. At least
| that was the idea. 20 years later, some of it worked, some of it
| didn't.
|
| I continue to conquer my mind, it's an everlasting struggle with
| self. I just wanted to add that I do believe there is substance
| to these teachings. I don't have the credentials to explain what
| that is, to me it's just a feeling. I remember when I changed. I
| remember what I was before, who I was after.
|
| If you haven't done it, I highly, highly recommend martial arts
| (I studied Kung Fu) or Tai chi, or anything that can help you
| channel your mental gymnastics into a force for unlocking your
| mind.
|
| Be like Neo in the Matrix.
|
| Sadly, I haven't found the secret to luck which is needed in
| varying doses to be a successful founder. I did find success,
| which is a result of dedication and hard work.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I am listening to it, this whole spiel in first 10 mins can be
| summarized simply: When you're at the cutting edge of any
| endeavor, there are no instructions to follow.
|
| Well... isn't that obvious from the definition - "cutting edge"?
|
| The more I listen to this stuff, the more I realize, it is a
| verbal extravaganza with nothing of substance. It is taking the
| most obvious things in life, making an intoxicating narrative and
| interpretation, and master it with excellent spoken skills and
| voila - you got Naval/Kapil.
|
| They are also rehashing Feynman, Krishnamurthy, Neitsche, etc.
| and pawning it off as their own.
|
| Top comment on YT summarizes this well:
|
| > This is first I heard about Kapil! What an amazing articulate
| man. Blown away by how calm and steady he speaks
|
| That's indeed the seductive aspect of their podcasts. The moment
| you peel it off, it is just basic common sense and nothing
| actionable or insightful. It is podcast porn.
| ghoomketu wrote:
| Thank you and glad I am not alone finding this mostly fluff.
|
| This is sadhguru level stuff imo and weird that it is something
| Naval is associated with now.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| May be I am being a bit harsh, perhaps there is value in
| listening to this and it brings peace to some people.
|
| As far as they are doing this without exploiting people,
| ripping them off like Deepak Chopra and deluding them, I am
| fine with it.
|
| Naval appears to be doing his thing just purely out of
| boredom and to attain fame.
| creamynebula wrote:
| Most people maybe are lacking in common sense and don't
| know these references as well, so I too think it can be
| helpful and it's fine as long as he isn't ripping anyone
| off.
| tartoran wrote:
| You're right but some people in really dark places may
| benefit from a bit of positive delusion. It is when reality
| is starting to become obscured by it that it becomes a
| serious problem. I remember being depressed years ago and
| it's not that I was irrational but I didn't see any sense
| at all and this kind of thing could help in such
| circumstances. Luckily I got over that and I'm not seeking
| this type of fluff. Now Im in a good place, married, kids,
| a lot more reasons to go on but if I think about it, mainly
| things haven't changed in the sense that it is still all
| kind of pointless, it just depends what spin been put on
| them.
|
| So I think there's a benefit in having people saying
| positive stuff even if it's just meaningless words
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Glorified ASMR. Is one of these two people advising Gwyneth
| Paltrow yet?
| yantrams wrote:
| I felt the same after sampling a bit of Krishnamurthy. I've
| seen people go all gung-ho about him with cultish levels of
| reverence but found nothing original. Eloquent prose yes but
| nothing remarkable at all. After everything you said, it was
| surprising to see you casually drop Krishnamurthy's name next
| to someone as original as Nietzsche.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| You're probably right about this, I haven't studied them
| deeply.
| codeproject wrote:
| thanks for your comments. it is insightful. really appreciate
| it. If you read the current self-help books, you will find
| there is really nothing original or new there. but that stuff
| sound so engaging. it keeps your reading.
| senthil_rajasek wrote:
| I've never heard of Kapil before but why are Naval and Kapil
| grouped together?
|
| Why not Kapil and Ryan Halliday ?
|
| Is this because of a subconscious bias?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Well, this podcast is a discussion between them.
| senthil_rajasek wrote:
| Apologies, I thought it was a youtube video of a talk.
| teatree wrote:
| This is the one podcast on Naval's Youtube channel that I found
| wired. Most of what Naval says makes clear sense to me, but the
| conversation with Kapil & Kapil's twitter+website gave me all
| kinds of wrong vibes. I have seen too many of these guru type
| scams in India.
|
| Naval is the only reason I want to explore Kapil's works a bit
| more, despite my instinct shouting at me not to. If a guy who has
| understood the game of life and money far better than me finds
| this guy a true intellect, maybe I am missing something ?
| codr7 wrote:
| It's called the age of false prophets for a reason.
|
| Trust your experience, it's as close to your reality as you
| will get. If it feels off, you don't need evidence, and that
| goes for everything.
|
| Right now you're acting like someone standing outside in the
| cold, freezing like crazy; but refusing to accept it because
| someone else says it's warm outside, and you think they might
| have figured something out that you missed.
|
| There are plenty of real teachers out there, no need to settle
| for scraps from the table.
|
| Which leads to the question: how do you know? You know because
| they will tell you to trust your own experience.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkHvZp-mrKk
| dkarl wrote:
| The way I see it is, there's no benefit to you if your
| involvement with a guru is to follow, support, admire, and
| believe. If that's all you do, then the benefit only goes to
| the guru. On the other hand, if you believe that any benefit
| will come through building your own understanding through work,
| thought, and experience, and they influence you to do this
| work, then you will benefit, and it hardly matters if they
| personally have any great insights or not.
|
| There are gurus who encourage the first kind of involvement at
| the expense of their students, but different people can take
| different things from the same teacher. Some people are
| strongly predisposed towards one or the other forms of
| involvement. Some people want to just sit and listen, and
| they'll get little benefit whether they're listening to a saint
| or a fraud.
|
| As for intellect, when someone is presented to you as a guru,
| all or nearly all of their specific insights are going to be
| well-worn, recycled cliches. A guru is more of a coach than an
| intellectual. An intellectual's job is to say new things, or
| old things in new ways. A coach's job is to say what you need
| to hear even if it's been said a hundred million times before.
|
| For some reason we get this all mixed up when it comes to
| "spirituality," and we believe everything hinges on the quality
| of the ideas. Instead, imagine your kid's soccer team is being
| coached by the great soccer manager Carlo Ancelotti. Imagine
| that they spend every practice sitting on the ground and
| listening to him lecture them on technique and tactics (not
| that he would make this mistake.) Meanwhile, the other teams
| are coached by parents who know nothing about soccer, who run
| their teams through dribbling and passing drills they looked up
| on the internet, followed by some chaotic scrimmaging. Your
| kid's team is not going to win a single game, even though they
| have a "true intellect" for a coach, and the other teams are
| coached by frauds.
| maxFlow wrote:
| Buddhist regurgitation.
| [deleted]
| beaconstudios wrote:
| He's talking about how as you specialise in something you have to
| systematise your disparate, formulaic knowledge of the topic into
| a systemic understanding that you can draw new insight from.
| Working in that field goes from applying learned techniques to
| having an instinctual understanding of it as a whole, and
| consequently being able to be flexible and creative with your
| approach. I think this is what happens when something "clicks"
| and what were previously seemingly-disconnected rules of thumb
| join up to make a cohesive mental model.
| factsaresacred wrote:
| It may be that there's nothing new in what Kapil says, yet I do
| value the way in which he says it.
|
| I prefer his direct and succinct approach over what you hear from
| popular sources of counsel such as Tim Ferris, Gary V, Tony
| Robbins, and - dare I say - Naval.
|
| And unlike their advice (work 3 jobs you hate, delete emails you
| don't like, practice not finishing things), most of what he says
| won't ruin your life.
|
| I spent the last few years building a business and Kapil's
| writings got me through some of the lower moments:
|
| - _A man is who he is. Until it is no longer acceptable to him to
| be who he is_
|
| - _Humans do not like being alone. The ones that do have a chance
| at Freedom_
|
| - _The Mind does not assault man for his mistakes. It assaults
| him for the cover-up_
|
| - _If there was one single thing that stands between man and his
| freedom, it is the belief that he has time_
|
| At the end of the day, there's nothing new under the sun and so
| the value of a person's words lies in the impact that they have
| on you.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| What are the best resources to become a guru?
| factsaresacred wrote:
| Take your pick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religio
| ns_and_spiritua...
| tovej wrote:
| I'm 2:40 in and he invents the word "prescriptionize" instead of
| using the perfectly useful "prescribe". My gut is telling me this
| is likely to be a bullshit self-help lecture.
| [deleted]
| trynton wrote:
| @tovej:
|
| I concur, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to
| see it for yourself.
| vishnumohandas wrote:
| You should start a religion. :)
| bestowingvirtue wrote:
| I believe it refers to the process of generating prescriptions
| and on a deeper level untethering away from the corrosive
| nature of words that already socially abstract a certain
| behavior. For words and reality interact much like the stomach
| and stomach acid.
| tovej wrote:
| No, he really does speak like an undergraduate that doesn't
| have much to say about a subject but has to write a 10 page
| essay on it. As someone who writes academic texts, this is
| painful to listen to. I understand every word, but quite
| often the words are simply badly chosen. They are more
| difficult words than necessary, and they often mean the wrong
| thing. He doesn't even seem to understand the words and
| phrases he's using. He talks like someone who wants to
| __seem__ smart.
|
| The whole talk's been stretched out, muddied, and fed through
| several thesauri.
| aryamaan wrote:
| Care to talk about these things with some examples?
|
| My gullible brain thinks that he has something valuable to
| say and that requires more efforts from my side to extract
| that.
|
| I feel same from reading his books too like.
| tovej wrote:
| The main point of this discussion seems to be the old
| "don't concern yourself with material things"-spiel. And
| I agree with the general idea. I also agree that to
| succeed, you can't just follow rules of thumb blindly,
| you need to understand your field of work.
|
| I don't really take issue with the content, but there's
| not much of it and he's not very efficient at
| communicating it.
|
| Examples: When trying to say "don't let the means become
| an end" he uses the 5-dollar word "intermediary", which
| typically means a person, instead of the simple "means".
| He says "my speech is fraught with peril" instead of "If
| you don't listen carefully you might misunderstand". He
| says "the solution isn't the solution, the problem is the
| solution" instead of "There is no arbitrary solution
| that's applicable to all problems".
|
| He's really just paraphrasing common aphorisms with
| bigger words or wrapping them in koan-like phrasing. I
| think that's why he sounds appealing. He's telling us
| what we already know, but in grandiose terms.
| inakarmacoma wrote:
| Honest question, do you have any direct or indirect
| relationship with the speaker/author, closer than the
| average HN reader?
| aryamaan wrote:
| Well, I find this question... Interesting. Why do you
| ask?
|
| No, I don't have any different relationship with Kapil
| Gupta but I did feel that some of his points (in this
| talk and from books) hit the chords. Specifically for the
| problem part but for solutions, I feel he uses mystic
| language and don't leave me any wiser.
| [deleted]
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I think he means "formalise a rule of thumb", and in my mind
| "prescriptionise" just sounds better for that is case than
| "prescribe". The "ise/ize" suffix is usually used for a
| transformation of the subject, which is appropriate in this
| case, even if its a made up word.
| tovej wrote:
| "Formalize a rule of thumb" is one of the definitions of
| "prescribe"
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I know but its most common use is to tell someone to do
| something. When a word doesn't feel right in context,
| sometimes people make up a word using the syntactic rules
| that feel more correct. Same story with "solutionise", a
| word I hear semi often in industry that's just when people
| don't want to use the word "solve" for the process of
| solving because it's most associated with the completion of
| said process.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-27 23:01 UTC)