eatitraw

Author of the article here! Yes, of course, I've tried this sober — merely shifting attention does not work.

Thanks for the report. Some people do report being able to cancel it while sober. For most of them, defocusing their vision is required, which is not particularly surprising - you are removing the surrounding context.

Could you please tell me more about downshifting the visual cortex? I am planning to publish an update on this illusion, with various sober attention techniques to establish a baseline for future research.

> Why should an emigrant in London affect the life of a city in Siberia he has no relation to? He has no skin in the game, if life becomes worse because of his choice, it will not affect him in any way.

Notice that I've never said that an emigrant should have such access. Also, it's a state Duma election, by definition it's going to be affecting the entire country.

> This kind of "Holier than thou" attitude is part of the reason why "Russian liberals" are not popular in Russia

Is this why they didn't let even Yabloko to be on the ballot? If they are so unpopular, let them have TV access and be on the ballot, make fools of themselves and let it settle.

Sort of, in a weird way. They do seem to treat their ability to get the results they want as a test of the ability to steer things. But there is no true result to hide, it's rigged all the way down.

> The second sentence is a link to a Substack essay

The author of the second essay here! It's a pro-nicotine one — the OP just linked to the very end of it. Moreover Gwern himself reviewed my essay during Inkhaven (https://www.inkhaven.blog/), a 30-posts-in-30-days program.

I asked Gwern explicitly if he ever feels responsible for getting some people addicted to nicotine. His answer was something along of the lines of: “No, I explicitly warned people that (1) vaping/smoking is addictive and (2) if you ever was addicted to nicotine, even sublingual nicotine is enough to get people addicted”.

I do think it's important to warn people that they should be careful with the substance and watch their usage, so I included the screenshots in my essay!