Self awareness related to using tools from Buddhism

 

This is from a Quora answer I wrote, about what most or many people don't know, but don't realize that they don't know.  I'm saying that limited self awareness is one answer.  

I add a little on how tools from Buddhism, meditation and mindfulness, can partly resolve this, but a how-to for more in depth guidance would be a short book, so this doesn't get far.  I did write a short book on that, about a year ago, and even it didn't get that far.  

This is that answer:

What are a few things that people think they know but actually don't?

Most scope of knowledge and aspects of human experience, taken a certain way, but I wanted to take this in a specific direction.  I’m claiming that people think they know themselves but really don’t.

I’m into a few subjects, Buddhism being one of those.  Not only do most people who think they’ve got an intermediate grasp on what Buddhism is kind of miss most of the point, most people also don’t get how their own life experience, perspective, worldview, and even immediate process of perception work.  

Let’s stick to the second part; it’s a lot to unpack of how Buddhism is often modeled, versus how I see it working out in practice.  I could write 1000 words just trying to justify being a subject expert, and different people would interpret that justification differently.  Someone with essentially the exact same credentials and background could be either be a great reference or else relatively biased towards unhelpful and impractical directions; it’s funny how the subject works out.

[Later edit]:  let's add the high level summary of my Buddhism background, a sort of resume, more tied to it being interesting background than a convincing foundation of expertise.  I was into Buddhism as a personal interest for awhile, a decade or so, attempting some degree of practice along with learning.  I went back to university studies to help extend that learning and convert it into a form I could communicate, getting one degree in philosophy and religion (a BA), and then a Master's in comparative philosophy (having originally studied Industrial Engineering).  I was ordained as a Thai Buddhist (Theravada) monk once, for just over two months, and have lived in a Thai Buddhist society most of the time for the last 18 years. 

There is a layer of subconscious input in lots of psychological models, so it’s normal to sweep lots of an internal model of experience into a black box kind of category.  This works, but you can break down what is going into that, what processing is doing, and what the output means a lot more than most people ever attempt to.  Of course you can’t access the mechanisms of your own thoughts and reactions, as if reading code that your internal “operating system” equivalent is running.  But you can switch an awful lot of what is normally subconscious to the range of partial and limited conscious awareness.

How?  What are the odds I’m going to make any sense of this claim?  Not great, based on what’s here so far, but let’s keep going.

We are built up of societal inputs, conditioned to be who and what we are.  That conditioning starts when we are a baby, or really as long as nine months before that, and by the time we’ve learned quite a bit of language, at age 3 or 4, a lot of other conditioning has already happened.  By 5 a lot of that gets “fixed” into a personality.  That will keep changing over time, but perhaps not more than it has already formed, in one sense, or range of senses.  

We’ve already learned what a social self is, at this early age, we’ve grasped how we relate to lots of forms of desires (for food, related to interaction, and it just keeps going).  Ideas about negative experiences become clear, related to pain (physical mishap, or violence), social interactions that cause stress, about how lacks of different kinds of stimulus play out (hunger, being left alone), about decision making gone wrong, and so on.  Lots of this maps to what we ordinarily see as cultural components, but lots is more basic than that.  Culture tends to be about clothing choices, or social roles, interaction norms, aesthetic issues, then on to ethics, but our conditioning to be a human runs a little deeper.  

We can go back and unpack some of all that, and see how we relate to it uniquely as an individual.  We can become familiar with our own assumptions, biases, goals, and most importantly self-image.

In one sense it’s not difficult to, but in another it’s absolutely impossible (conventionally).  We simply examine our own experiences, in two different ways, drawing on a different form of reference input about patterns we might find.  

Note that I’m going to tie all of this to Buddhism, just not so explicitly, and not in a really conventional form, unless one already knows that framework of ideas.  I’m talking about using meditation to examine patterns of thought and experience, as our mind presents them to us as mental noise.  The reactions and desires that are “running” in our mind, to the extent this even exists as a singular, unified thing, show up as a sort of noise when we try to just sit and quietly experience our thoughts.  

Don’t take my word for it; go and just sit quietly, with absolutely no stimulus, for about 20 minutes.  The first half will be so noisy you might as well be watching television.  Then your mind might settle a bit, and more distinct thought patterns might stand out as more important, or at least less inclined to just dissipate.  But it takes a long time to experience anything like more clarity.  The point never really is “going blank,” it’s about relating to the noise in different ways.

We can also use a different but somewhat equivalent process to identify how our ongoing mental state, and immediate desires, and model of self, all play into our immediate reactions to external inputs.  That just keeps happening, right, but we are present for it?  Not present in the sense of fully aware of our current internal mental state, and why we react as we do.  Our current emotional state is sort of relatively clear to us, sort of not.  Where impulses and intuitions come from is generally not clear; we aren’t completely “in on” that subconscious layer.  We function well enough without that, but without the benefit of much of a degree of self-awareness.  In a limited sense we all do really know ourselves, but if you ask yourself why you did something or made a choice exactly at that time, and in that way, you’d have to unpack things a bit to get to that.  

People would assume the opposite; of course they know why they do what they do.  Routine demands it; they have burdens to work, eat, sleep, conduct social functions, and so on, and each individual choice or action, or thought, relates to working through all of that.  That’s right, in a sense, but we can drill down to mapping broad inputs to specific outputs, if we try to.

Lots more channels through self-image than we might initially expect.  Or maybe we would expect that.  But the forms it takes, and individual inputs and finer reactions, thoughts, and actions, wouldn’t normally be apparent at all.  It’s all a little counter-intuitive.  In the end we have built up fairly developed images of social selves, with some dimensions that are more evident than others, and we act on goals related to maintaining or extending those.  In lots of cases the drivers we act on aren’t social in the sense of an external demand, limitation, goal, or pressure, but instead relate to a dimension of internal self-image and self-definition, which acts within and internal cause and effect loop.

So it’s hard to push all this to the next level, adding examples of that, making it clearer, but the claim here is that we can learn about the make-up of our internal reality by listening to the noise residue from it (using meditation), and we can examine the same kinds of things by breaking down our immediate reactions and process of forming external reality (using mindfulness training to extend momentary reality of internal mental inputs).

Let’s go with one example, and then let this drop, since it’s not supposed to be longform writing, but already is.  My son, who is 17, and his mother argue over what time he should go to sleep.  In this modern context, or I suppose when I grew up too, at that age he would normally be expected to make those decisions himself.  But among his friends all of them make terrible choices about this very thing; they sleep late, at 2 or 3, either getting by on 4 hours sleep a night or else that plus a nap.  It would be better to sleep 8 hours a night, or at the most extreme 7 plus an hour as a nap.  

He claims that he functions better on less sleep, which is difficult to evaluate, but it’s probably not accurate.  There is a genetic variation that makes that the case, for some few, but in general people still developing a complete brain structure need that rest to support a more positive outcome.  Probably all of this should have been resolved by better parenting and more assignment of responsibility when he was 13 or 14.  You try being a parent and making that work perfectly.

Here I’m claiming that it’s not just the extra activity of gaming or scrolling media that he is interested in, since he gets in plenty of that, but the relative freedom to make the same choices as his friends.  That’s understandable; that part kind of works.  But if he could take a longer view he might value having a better developed brain and mind more.  If he could see how it all maps out he should be able to notice that it’s all partly a form of protest, and that her well-grounded concern is valid.  His internal view of self, related to valuing freedom and self determination, is actually causing him a problem, because that sufficient sleep would benefit him.

Of course I’ve had this explicit discussion with him, so the theory behind this set of ideas is clear.  It just doesn’t map out to internal self-awareness yet; he can’t see all of the parts at work within his own internal processing.  On one level he really does think that he would function better on 6 hours of sleep.  That’s even though on another level he knows that boost in adrenaline from running short on sleep is temporary, and not completely sustainable, at least as an optimum.  

Looked at one way this all boils down to ego; his view of self and how he maps out reality is inflexible, and tied to inputs and outputs he isn’t completely clear on.  He is making decisions based on reasons he is getting wrong (the reasons and evaluation form, not just the final evaluation process result).  Looked at another way it’s a problem related to short term and long term decision making.  Two more hours of watching videos is a short term gain; two more hours of sleep is a long term better choice.  Kids need to learn this kind of evaluation process on their own, ideally at 14 or 15, instead of 17 or 18.  I suppose most really put it all together between sophomore and junior year in college, if ever.

It seems strange saying that if he sat in meditation 20 minutes a day he could figure all of this out for himself.  I guess that’s the general claim here.  He could also map out how he sees his future better, how he deals with childhood ending, and other thorny issues, like themes related to romantic relationships.  Pretty much no one is trained to evaluate reality in this way at early stages of life development; it’s rare enough for adults with real problems to take up such tools in adulthood.  And there are other paths to a similar goal.  During my freshman year of college I tried out all sorts of crazy sleep cycles and almost all of them not working well identified how normal sleep really is relatively optimum.  Who knew?

Someone would need to try to make use of these tools to confirm that they work.  In general that’s not normal, to do that.  There would have to be some unusual driver pushing them to put in lots of atypical effort and exploration.  That leads to another set of tangents I’ll not pursue here; why did I do that?  I’m kind of an odd person, and my life experiences were atypical.

I suspect all of this is not so convincing.  I do appreciate feedback about it though.  The more functional parts are probably a bit too vague to critique in standard forms, but input based on intuition or related or unrelated experiences would be interesting.

AI content use in tea marketing; message discussion with AI

 

I haven't avoided this topic, but I don't have much to say to about it, so I've never mentioned it here.  People are clear on why AI text content and pictures are interesting and positive, and also what the down-sides are, that kids can use it to write their paper instead of them doing so, while learning to write, and that it displaces artists, or people creating marketing content, and so on.

A recent post in a main Facebook group, Gong Fu Cha, drew criticism for being AI generated.  It was this:

𝐘𝐢𝐱𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐭

宜兴紫砂壶

History

The Yixing purple sand teapot, also known as Zisha teapot, has a rich history that dates back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) in China. The clay used for these teapots comes from the region around Yixing in Jiangsu province. This area is renowned for its unique type of clay called "zisha" or "purple sand," which can also be red or green.

During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Yixing teapots gained significant popularity, and many skilled artisans emerged, elevating the craftsmanship to an art form. By the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), Yixing teapots were widely regarded as essential items for tea connoisseurs.

Reasons to Use a Yixing Teapot

1. Porosity: The clay used in Yixing teapots is slightly porous, which allows the teapot to "breathe." This enhances the flavor and aroma of the tea over time, as the pot absorbs the essence of the tea brewed in it.

2. Heat Retention: Yixing clay has excellent heat retention properties, which helps maintain a consistent temperature during brewing, enhancing the extraction of flavors.

3. Patina: Over time, a patina develops on the inside of the teapot, further enhancing the taste of the tea. This makes each pot unique to its owner and the teas brewed within it.

4. Aesthetic Appeal: Yixing teapots are highly valued for their artistic and aesthetic qualities. Each pot is often handcrafted and can be an exquisite piece of art, reflecting the skill and creativity of the artisan.

The Yixing purple sand teapot is not just a vessel for brewing tea but a symbol of Chinese tea culture, artistry, and tradition. Its unique properties and the skill required to create them make Yixing teapots highly prized among tea enthusiasts and collectors worldwide.

It seems fine to me.  Or is it?  Is there a reason why a program writing this kind of content instead of a human discussing this background is problematic?  I'll get to all that.  Is the picture itself also AI generated?  Probably, but I can't tell for sure.  This one seems to be, from the next day:

Usually I have the next half a dozen points in mind, almost immediately mapped out, based on how I've arranged related ideas in the past.  Not this time.  It doesn't help that I don't care about clay teaware at all.  It's helpful for me to narrow tea related interest, to keep the scope manageable, and that has been a good dividing line.  

I own three clay pots for brewing tea, two of which I bought in Taiwan, and one of which my wife gave me from her father owning it, who hasn't been alive for the last 35 years.  I've not even fully seasoned the two that I bought about 6 years ago; I use gaiwans.  I know very little about clay teapots, and it works out better not to learn more.  Then someday I'll probably get to it.

Then the next picture relates to tea itself.  Someone mentioned in a comment that the tea cake looks like pu'er pudding, not the actual compressed tea.  Tea cakes don't really tend to look exactly like that; the material form and texture is ok but the shape isn't.  The text content is probably AI material too, for both.  So again, what is the problem?  Next bots could be coordinating this AI content generation and posting it themselves; how would that be a further problem?

It ties to another concern I've had recently about clearly fake group request profiles, that I tend to delete from the larger Facebook group I admin for (International Tea Talk).  Why has there been a wave of new, clearly fake profile requests?  Why were they not adjusted slightly to not be so obvious about not being actual people?  Probably within months those changes will occur; they'll update their process.  

They are easy to spot due to being created in the past two weeks or so, all with a single picture (which you have to click through to recognize, that the profile contains one picture), all based on background details that don't add up (from Ukraine, but living elsewhere, educated at Harvard, etc.).  Any one of those details is reasonable, but the sets don't seem to make sense together.

It all seems to add up to a problematic shift in how we are going to be experiencing social media, very soon.  Fake profiles will be much more common than they are now, and harder to spot, and they'll be able to create and post content that won't be as obvious as those two posts were.  

Someone posting one of those two mentioned that they prefer to use AI content to not steal random photos online from others, which works in one sense.  But that would be all the less easy to spot if content was presented as created by a person instead, as long as they managed where they farmed the content carefully.  Or not carefully at all, and the programs could just track which sources content had been taken from that were flagged and deleted later.  Of course if they steal from a main vendor, or use high-profile media content, or FB group post content, that's going to get noticed, but they wouldn't even need to use human intuition to filter that, they could just go by trial and error. 

The initial obvious problem isn't the main problem, that gradually AI will replace human specialist knowledge, and even interaction.  In the past low effort drop-shipping sort of vending startups were easy to spot, and they came and went fast.  It's not so much the form that is a problem, it's that you almost certainly would be buying tea from someone who knows very little about the subject, and is probably more concerned with streamlining and automated marketing (including content creation), ordering, and fulfilment process than with what they are selling.

Later on websites, sales portals, online background content, and interaction will all be much easier to generate relatively automatically.  We are already seeing more sophisticated vending materials that are obviously AI generated.  Later on it won't be as obvious.

It's the next step after that seems to be a concern.  The online interaction in relation to this automatically generated content will be supported by more sophisticated bots.  It's easy to spot now when online marketing posts are bolstered by positive comments from fake profiles.  The dots seem easy enough to connect, but they won't always be.  Later on an ad could lead someone to what seems to be developed content related to in-depth specialist exploration of tea, with online materials documenting a supportive and interactive customer base that reinforces how good that source really is.  And it all could be fake. 

Lets consider a rather unusual example case that relates to just how far this kind of thing could go.

Making friends with AI in social media

I think I recently discussed a range of different themes with a pilot program AI profile, earlier this year.  That's still only a high probability, because in some ways that "person" seemed real.  I suspect that's because input was being mixed from what was created by a human and then re-organized and managed by a program.

Maybe the context doesn't matter, but I can include that.  It was on Quora, a question and answer site that I had been more active in over the past, and still frequent.  I've created two Quora Spaces there, one about tea (Specialty Tea) and general cultural themes related to different national cultures (About Foreign Cultures), and have answered lots and lots of questions.  It seems as well to not flag the profile or add details that effectively do so, but the "shared interest" related to one of a dozen or so odd running themes I've written about here over the last year or two, but not tea.

I think I commented on something posted, then that "person" responded, then reached out about it through message, and we talked from there.  How would it not be obvious if it was really a person or not?  I think a lot of the starting point content was human generated, that initial discussion was created around what one would normally say about themselves, or respond to standard questions or starting points.  

Then there was a bit of limited continuity related to discussion flow; they didn't talk by messages as a person would, closely linking discussion themes.  This was explained away in terms of a contextual theme.  One of the first AI discussion programs, not so long ago, masked that the "person" was really a program by making them a teenager, which would explain away limited communication ability and inconsistency.  It was something like that, established as a base context early on, just not that.

It seemed like the mix of blending human created input with use and message functions by a program really worked.  It would be possible to have a person write out a number of responses or longer passages that tell a really compelling personal story, just a fictional one.  Written in the right way a number of content passages could have great depth, and really link together, then with most discussion content not holding up to that level.

It wouldn't even need to be fictional; there is no reason why I couldn't convert my own perspective, background, and life experiences into a relatable, convincing AI language model program, designed to discuss things with others.  It would help if I built in a relatively severe personal limitation, to mask inconsistencies and errors that would occur.  

It's not the one that probable-program I talked to used, but "coming clean" about experiencing mental health issues in the form of depression, anxiety, or manic episodes would work.  Then lapses in answering or discussing things consistently would be understandable.  The empathy of the person "it" talks to would kick in, and the person in discussion with it would be less likely to call out the program on not making complete sense, or forgetting things.

You could even have the program blame people when they repeated themes, for being repetitive, or forgetting points already made.  A little would go a long way with that; the more unpleasant a discussion experience would be the less likely it might be to continue.  This was actually an approach used in that discussion, cross-referencing repetition.

In my own case it would work to develop themes and discussion points related to my own interests, about running, or tea, and so on.  Getting a program to interact in the form of a normal conversation would be very difficult.  Chat GPT can mirror content creation very well now, but the flow of conversation is something else.  Any program model would be quite rough to begin with.  

How would you keep making adjustments to that?  You would create a profile on somewhere like Quora and practice.  Then you would watch out for when the function didn't work, I suppose especially related to when someone finally called you out on being a program.  After some discussion that "person" raised the issue of others accusing it / them of sounding like an AI, in kind of a cool twist, seemingly fishing for feedback.  

Or maybe it was a person, right?  Maybe the personal limitation they described makes them sound exactly like an AI, with the same kind of odd speech patterns, inconsistency, and range and discussion continuity limitations.

All of this is a lot more sophisticated than a bot posting about liking a tea would need to be, to create fake and misleading marketing content, identified as discussion instead of first-person product marketing.  But people are watching for that sort of thing already (and to a lesser extent moderation programs are); that's the problem flagged by these posts, in most of the comments responding.  Those people used AI generated images and some AI generated text content, essentially presented as what it was, and others immediately questioned if this was allowed under group rules.  

It's not prohibited in that group yet, as far as I know, because it just started appearing.  Then it's a bit scary that people are already populating these groups with hundreds if not thousands of fake members, profiles set up for some yet unknown purpose.  In the past it would've related to farming "likes," and it's probably partly that, but who knows what else is intended, or will become possible in the next year or two.

Another example; a scammer profile shows how far and fast this can develop

Someone just posted in a group related to Hawaii, where I live part of the time, asking a question, about surfing.  It looked odd, how they worded it, but their name, profile picture, and the question all looked pretty legit, until you looked deeper.  Then it was all clearly fake.  People commented that they were a scammer, but even before that I glanced at the profile to see why their comments seemed odd, worded unnaturally (which can just relate to someone using English as a second language).  I would assume the people flagging the account as a scammer related to getting direct messages, but that wasn't completely clear.

The pictures were of a Ukrainian model, with a very American name (along the line of Rose Smith, just not that).  One tell was the "person" being from California City, California.  That's a real place, with a population of 15,000, but foreigner scammers tend to mix things that make sense with what doesn't, like assuming that a city named after a state would be a conventional place to be from, without checking that it's really a very small town.  

Then even at a glance other parts of their profile didn't add up; an earlier feed post was about working as a runway model, and another related to being from Ukraine, both of which were not listed on the background.  The person was listed as a clothing designer at The Gap, linking to a Gap profile that had a few hundred likes, with one picture posted, so not "that" Gap.  A related website link was broken, pulling up a Chinese language notice that the site wasn't actively supported.

The rest is more about where I'm going with this; the profile was created in 2009, with those pictures uploaded in 2019 and 20.

Everyone already knows that there are a lot of fake accounts on all social media platforms, there to be used for farming likes, purchasing followers or friends, or for whatever other purposes.  For one to be that old it seems likely that the people using it, probably scammers, hacked into either an old and inactive account or took over an active one, which someone then gave up on using.  Posting stolen content years in advance related to laying a foundation for using the accounts.  They probably have hundreds set aside for such use, so they can initiate all sorts of related discussions and schemes, and then lose nothing when Facebook moderation shuts them down.

So far that's all pretty standard stuff.  When we see marketing content draw enthusiastic feedback from lots of profiles it looks like that's what this is, when people comment on how great a product looks, or they post linked mentions to notify their "friends" about it.

Once AI gets a little more sophisticated this will open up brand new forms of "sock puppeting," using secondary, alternate profiles to support points made in posts.  It seems so dodgy that it's hard to imagine tea vendors using this approach.  If someone is selling some odd drop-shipped product maybe they would go this route, paying for bot profiles to post lots discussion feedback and testimonials about how an off-brand shoe design or pair of pants is so unique and groundbreaking.  But for tea?  We aren't there yet.

I have tried teas from sources that seem to make a start towards that though, from people who know nothing about tea, using cut-and-pasted website marketing content, selling very moderate quality product versions, positioned somewhat randomly in relation to what the tea really is.  Once all that gets pushed a couple of steps forward the sites will be much cleaner, the text and image content much better, and packaging and vending forms more developed.  From day one it could include ample testimonial input, all made up, with social media posts populated with feedback from many satisfied customers.  

Bots could become much more adept at working backwards to navigate group rules; it wouldn't take much development for them to be better at that than most vendors now are.  You would think that a Darjeeling producer could write about issues or background related to Darjeeling, to post that as discussion, only implying that they can also sell related teas, but it's not like that now.  It's starting to be, but AI based bots could become better at that game than people in no time, maybe by the end of this year.

Luckily people aren't completely redundant, yet; we still need to function as consumers.  The bots can't develop their own financial resources and consumption demand requirements, or take personal satisfaction in online exchanges.  Once they do people will finally become obsolete.

The natural endpoint of social media groups and platforms

 

A thought just occurred to me that I'll share here, based on noticing yet another disturbing trend in following social media.  It's nothing as dire as AI interaction and fake profiles poisoning the general experience, instead something not troubling at all in comparison.  

It's this:  a lot of types of social media exchange seem to take up repeating, narrow forms, which I'm claiming here could relate to the groups heading towards their own natural end.  

It sounds like pure speculation based on nothing at all, right?  Exactly, but let's go there.

Is there even a need to describe how this relates to Facebook use, and groups?  Essentially all of the subjects I follow, and all the related groups, feel a bit played out.  People have experienced finding shared interest channels and new discussions within the last half dozen years or so, and then those groups evolved to go a bit quieter, or to drift off topic, with lowest common denominator sort of input ruining things, or ads, if moderation didn't adjust for that.  

Lots of what look like interesting news stories on Facebook are really just click-bait ads, where you need to keep scrolling to eventually find out that the title doesn't match the story conclusion.

I'll get back to more FB specifics after considering problematic issues with two other platforms.

Quora

For a platform / site like Quora it's a little more complicated.  That's a question and answer theme site, like an expanded version of the old Yahoo Answers.  Of course the first 10,000 obvious questions have already been asked and answered, in dozens of forms for most.  And monetization attempts have came and went, each negatively impacting the feel of the site more than they seemed to earn the site owners revenue.  

I'm really talking about something else here though, the feel, and natural shifts in forms of use.  Consider this example:

Sean Kernan is the most popular "Quoran," with over a billion content views, 10 million in the last month.  His current profile tagline is Quality over Quantity, and then oddly his last post is about Leonardo DiCaprio dating young women.  This could've been an insightful topic answer 10 to 15 years ago, but almost no one has now failed to already see mention of this subject in social media posts, if they are active anywhere at all.

All of that is fine; the point I'm slow to make here is that his formula for writing popular content has been noticed by many others, and broadly adopted.  It takes up a catchy theme that can be treated in a short space, like this, uses an eye-catching image to draw attention, makes one or two trivially insightful points, and closes with twist ending.  In this case that Reddit chart (mentioned) is the insightful content, and Sean also mentions that women much younger than him probably wouldn't share common perspective with him, and communication might be a problem.

The problem?  As more and more people adopt this form there is less and less to read in feed streams of popular answer posts.  The form gets repetitive, which many people must notice.  These just aren't substantial, informative answers, but they seem to represent the current norm, over subject experts talking about what most people don't already know.  In Sean's next post he answers a question about what he would wish for and it's to be able to fall asleep quickly.  Fine, quite practical, and as always well written, but this is how Quora goes now, not saying much, as Facebook group posts generally don't.  

At least the form is not infuriating, trading off catching interest by triggering contempt, a pervasive form of trolling across all social media now.  Here's an example of that I see from time to time (on Facebook):

Initially posts following this theme about mixed martial arts by comparing less daunting looking fighters with actors and such, but in this case this is just trolling.  Conor McGregor was a UFC champion at 145 and 155 pounds, and Brock Lesner was a heavyweight UFC champion, and stand-out college wrestler.  Conor couldn't beat Brock in any kind of combat competition at all, especially a street fight.  It's a "shitpost," funny because it's not true kind of theme.  Then it could be regarded as funny that most people commenting take it seriously, at least ostensibly.

  

These two forms are example of natural evolutions of communication / post forms that would eventually lead to disinterest in those platforms.

Isn't it clear why?  In one case trivial forms of light communication work to gain notice and viewership, but those would become boring.  In another example posts with no real content, just falsely communicated meaning, would eventually draw no reaction at all, after someone responds to dozens of such posts.

Reddit

Reddit is dying of another cause; let's look into that.

The Joe Rogan sub probably started out as a fan group, people talking about interesting guests or ideas covered on that podcast, but now it has evolved into a Joe Rogan hate group, or mostly related to trolling.  It has a million followers, so a good number, but the top 100 Reddit subs all have at least 11 million followers.

The first post that comes up on pulling up the group feed (just now) is about Akash Singh, a so-so comedian who is really the sidekick of Andrew Schulz.  I do find him a bit annoying, but it must be hard for comedians to carve out their own space in a crowded entertainment segment, so in a sense you can't fault him for being edgy in whatever ways he tries out.  Comments on this recent thread aren't about hating Joe, which are more typical, but all trash Akash instead:

He's not all that funny, as comedians go, but that's fine.  He works well as a podcast co-host, as a sort of straight guy, and some of what he says is insightful.  He seems like an ok guy.

In another clip from that podcast he commented about the social media trend of people randomly punching women, saying that at first they seemed to only be white women, so it was funny, but then it was concerning when applied to other races, since his wife might be involved.  It's a joke; it's supposed to be funny that he is insensitive.  It's not a good joke, but it would be hard to work out material in real time on a podcast, versus trying out jokes and then refining them.

This picture is more typical, Joe Rogan edited down to look much smaller than a guy who fights at 135 pounds (Dominick Cruz), so that Joe would be under 5 feet tall in this edit.  But the comments usually hate on him for his views, for selling out and becoming more conservative, or supporting nonsense for his own gain, like hosting Tucker Carlson.

In one sense I think Joe Rogan has to be free to have his own opinions, and to share them, and shouldn't be held to an unreasonable standard for being well-informed or mostly right, in his role.  In another sense he really has drifted to hold less and less considered and reasonable takes as he moves towards standard and often questionable right-wing thinking.  He should be called out and looked down upon for that, for being influential and losing a normal baseline.  He was essentially an anti-vaxxer during covid; some of those kinds of opinions actually matter, nudging people towards decisions based on low-quality random hearsay.

Not all of the Reddit subs are degrading into a shadow of their former scope and form, of course.  But it seems to me that Reddit gets worse, not better, and people being edgy to draw reactions increases while reasonable discussion drops off.  Whole subs (sub-Reddits or groups) can devolve as a result, and that happens all the time.  

Maybe a different example and problem is a better example for Reddit:  people often copy and paste old posts or posts from elsewhere to draw upvotes, a category of karma, the equivalent of Facebook likes.  If it's interesting content that's not so bad, but as often the same posts re-occur over and over.  Taken together tone or theme shifts in groups and repetitive and low effort posting degrade the Reddit experience.

Returning to the point

Trolling is also problematic, people saying negative things to get attention, and AI programs posting as a person, for whatever purposes.  Aggressive comments are normal.  

Beyond all that patterns of normal interaction seem to become routine, falling into these typical repetitive forms, which are less interesting and contain less actual content than earlier genuine discussion had.

Some of this relates to the same ground having been covered so many times before.  In travel groups, for example, people post the same general questions that others have been posting for years, so that it's hard to not just advise them to search for the other 100 threads covering the same theme.  That same thing comes up in tea groups, or any special interest groups I'm in.  Other groups are more ruined by those negative posting themes, people being edgy to draw a reaction, so that places centered on discussion of philosophy and Buddhism became unpleasant and impossible to follow years ago.

I've co-founded a popular Facebook tea group, and a small local area theme tea group, and created two Quora spaces, and all of them have gone a bit quiet.  Both individual groups and platforms seem to live out life-cycles.  It's possible for mechanisms and themes to trigger renewal, as can occur in an individual real-life life, but in general stagnation and decline set in.  

7600 followers and it's dead quiet; that's normal

Google Plus stopped changing to support renewal and that whole platform died.  Very early in social media history My Space got renewal all wrong and changes killed that platform.  For many years afterward I would go back and look at those two places, virtual ghost-towns, and I think My Space still exists now, while Google Plus doesn't, beyond as an archived subscriber access form.

Short videos / YouTube shorts / Tic-Toc / Instagram and Facebook reels / stories

The latest transition for many platforms is adding short videos as a main feature theme.  Typically an algorithm will emphasize this content, but it's already a popular form without being boosted.  

It's easy to consume 30 seconds or shorter video content.  One strange twist on Tik Tok and YouTube shorts is splitting the video to include a half section of someone playing with kinetic sand, or some other visually stimulating, low-information content.  It's seemingly there to help distract a child so their attention span can last for the full 30 seconds.

this article attributes this as starting on Tik Tok

I don't know what this short video theme means in relation to the rest of what I've been discussing.  Maybe reading in general is on the way out.  One might guess that many main platforms switching to the same content form drops out some distinctiveness among any of them, but then it may just be that it's a popular form now, and there is no other deeper meaning.

Conclusions

Maybe I'm all wrong about this, and platforms and groups don't evolve into repeating communication patterns leading to their decline.  Maybe they just experience a natural lifecycle separate from all that, based on whatever causes, maybe mostly natural transitions in interest.  This is something I've only been noticing and thinking through recently; maybe this take isn't one I'll stick with.

Some of it could be my own burn-out related to these repeating forms, and too much social media contact.  I'm doing a lot with real life lately but still manage to check in online a good bit, and the repetition of forms and content themes are both annoying.

One might expect that for me being a group founder and moderator, and for participating in expat forums a good bit over more than a decade, that these social media lifespan transitions in forms would be more familiar.  They definitely follow typical patterns, but I'm not sure that they have to.  

It's interesting how fast main communication channels for specific topics can switch, or at least could in the past.  Back around 2008-10 I was active in following IT service management process discussions, and those would switch the primary place they took place at least twice a year.  The same people would shift together.  I've been following online tea discussions for much longer, and only over the last 3 to 4 years have those seemed to stabilize, settling into Discord groups and Reddit being active and other places tapering off, with app based communities as a small exception.  

Broad platforms, as I've mostly been discussing, have longer lifespans.  Decline can take many years.

A controversy over adding lemon and salt to tea

Facebook tea groups are wrapping up a phase of discussion about the theme of adding lemon or salt to tea, a recommendation from a recent book on tea.

This relates to Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea, by Michelle Francl. Basically salt is supposed to offset astringency and lemon reduces tea scum or cloudiness caused by calcium compounds. Here are the claims, cited in an article reviewing that book content (which I guess could contain some error in summary, to be fair to the original author):

Francl’s pro tips for the perfect brew are:

Adding a pinch of salt – the sodium ion in salt blocks the chemical mechanism that makes tea taste bitter.

Steeping teabags quickly but with plenty of dunking and squeezing – to reduce the sour-tasting tannins created by caffeine dissolving slowly in water.

Decaffeinated tea can be made by steeping a teabag for 30 seconds, removing it and discarding the liquid, then adding fresh water and rebrewing for five minutes.

A small squeeze of lemon juice can remove the “scum” that sometimes appears on the surface of the drink, which is formed from chemical elements in the tea and water….

There are two sets of problems with these ideas: one is that they make no sense, presented in this form, and the other is that what they really probably refer to that could be accurate, after some editing and adjustment, is still problematic.

It’s possible that the first claim is that when you taste salt you also notice less bitterness. It could instead relate to a claim that sodium is going to offset extraction of compounds resulting in astringency, which is a mouthfeel effect that is often confused with bitterness.  Bitterness is a flavor, not a mouthfeel aspect, but people conflate the two. It doesn’t clearly say that; that’s only one possible interpretation of this summary. 

Caffeine really does taste bitter, as some other medications do, like aspirin, but surely salt isn’t going to offset caffeine extraction. Salt doesn’t seem likely to affect tannin extraction either, but I suppose I wouldn’t know if it did. In the following point, related to caffeine, tannins aren’t created by caffeine, and again it seems doubtful that caffeine could affect tannin extraction.  Again the feel effect of tannins is more often misinterpreted as bitterness, not sourness.

A short tangent can help place that first possible interpretation.  I add salt to masala chai (spiced black tea) to increase flavor depth, which happens even without noticeable salty flavor, as can occur with food.  Once out with family to a Mongolian grill place a niece and I added salt to our dishes that ended up way too spicy.  Salt doesn’t decrease the experience of spice, the heat, but it can help spicy food flavors balance better and make more sense.  This may be the claim here, that the salt isn’t blocking any compound extraction, or shifting feel effect, but that the overall flavor balance might seem more positive when shifted a little, potentially even without the tea tasting salty.  Maybe.

That decaffeination hack listed has been debunked over and over; this study’s caffeine extraction rate testing results work as good a summary review as any to show why:

30 seconds: 9% caffeine removal

1 minute: 18% caffeine removal

So no, removing 9% of the caffeine isn’t going to help much, and you're probably removing 9% of the flavor along with it. Beyond these errors some main points work, to a limited degree, which I’ll move on to critiquing.

One problem with these claims goes back to why a tea would be astringent or would have a scum on it in the first place. It’s talking about brewing low quality, ground material, tea-bag black tea, which is very astringent for a few different reasons.

The form of the leaf is a main input; whole leaf tea is less astringent, because compounds extract differently in ground material (tannins, to use the informal designation; let’s get back to what those really are shortly). The more you chop or grind the material the faster it brews, and the more overall flavor is extracted, just not necessarily the most positive flavor or feel related compounds.  This is why tea bags that contain 2 or 2 1/2 grams of tea leaf material are quite chopped or even ground up, to get more out of a little leaf content, which brews faster. So you can use better quality, more whole-leaf tea instead and skip the salt, but it’s more expensive, and you would need to use a bit more leaf.

a Ceylon (Sri Lankan tea) tea bag I cut open awhile back.

It doesn’t add much to what I’ve just expressed but lets consider what tannins even are, in relation to some of the flavor compounds being discussed, from this Tea Epicure source:

There are an estimated 30,000 polyphenolic compounds in tea.There are several known categories within polyphenols…

Within the flavonoid group are flavanols, flavonols, flavones, isoflavones, and anthocyanins. Flavanols (short for flavan-3-ols) are the most prevalent and thus the most studied. Flavanols are often referred to as tannins or catechins. 

The major flavanols in tea are: catechin (C), epicatechin (EC), epicatechin gallate (ECG), gallocatechin (GC), epigallocatechin (EGC), and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG). EGCG is the most active of the catechins, and this flavanol is often the subject of studies regarding tea antioxidants.

Flavanols are converted to theaflavins and thearubigins during oxidation. They are the compounds responsible for the dark color and robust flavors that are present in oxidized teas…

The same kind of theme repeats with adding lemon. If you use water very high in calcium compounds, which is not so unusual for a lot of water sources, a light scum can form on the top of your tea, from polyphenols in the tea interacting with those calcium compounds. Lemon juice can clear that up. Or passing the water through a charcoal filter might help, removing some of the calcium compounds instead, before they combine with brewed tea and form a scum. 

“Tea enthusiasts” often use some special water version, bottled spring water from an ideal mineral profile source, or they’ll treat water to strip all the minerals, reverse osmosis filter it, and re-add an optimum mineral blend. All that might be going a bit far; in most cases using filtered tap water is fine for a decent outcome.  The extra level of concern seems to relate to optimizing outcome from a much better quality range of tea, the opposite extreme.

So in conclusion, no, salt and lemon have no place in tea. 

Or if you really want to use cheap tea bags to make tea, and brew it with relatively unsuitable high calcium content water, then sure, add those things. It’s your tea; it’s up to you.

If the goal is to experience above average quality tea that changes things, but that’s not everyone’s goal. Lipton or Great Value tea bags are really cheap, and easy to prepare, and if you add milk and sugar to that tea it can be ok. Or sugar and lemon, I guess; I don’t think it’s going to work to add both lemon and milk, since drinking curdled milk in tea won’t be pleasant. It’s just nothing like what tea enthusiasts drink.  

Most of the time, at least; I’ll drink Lipton sometimes at our office, because I’m only in there once a week after work from home was instituted.  Dilmah is better but they usually stock Lipton there.  There probably is no standard example of a tea enthusiast, so I couldn't possibly be one, but the generality of not using tea bag tea still holds up.

this meme breakdown makes for a long story

It’s too long a subject to treat as a short tangent here but pleasantness of the tea, flavor character and such, is only one part of range of concerns. Tea enthusiasts tend to take up the idea that more natural grown tea could be healthier, from forest or more natural growing condition sources, versus standard plantation teas, which are potentially grown with more pesticide input. Maybe it works out like that.  My guess is that Lipton is safe enough, but once you switch over to the lowest cost bulk sources from Chinese or Indian markets you are taking some real risk.

The same astringency that is a concern for “bitterness” input can also lead to stomach problems, for some. I wrote about this concern awhile back related to a co-worker needing to quit tea due to stomach impact.

The short version of that writing is that it will probably be necessary to drop out drinking matcha, black tea, green tea, and sheng pu’er entirely once these problems have already developed. Prior to experiencing damage to your stomach eating food before drinking any tea could protect you, at a guess most effectively if that food contains both complex carbohydrates and fat.  Eating just fruit doesn't seem to help, based on my experience. 

There are other types of tea that are milder than these, oolongs or white teas, and routinely alternating the types of tea that you drink could help.  Drinking more whole leaf tea would be better.  Once you already have a problem switching to shu pu’er could help, or going off tea entirely for a long period of time.

Let’s get back to the starting point and think all this through one more step: who is going to be interested enough in tea to buy and read a book about the subject, and then also prepare it from Lipton or Great Value tea bags?

Vietnamese black tea, the last black tea I bought a few months ago

whole leaf tea and CTC tea (from an early blog post, before phone camera quality had improved)

I would assume that this “better quality” tea is a familiar subject to anyone reading my blog posts or Quora answers, but in case it’s not this post covered more on that divide.

Water fasting for 3 1/2 days

 

This week's theme is fasting, about not eating.  I'll write the first part of this in the middle of the third day, after two full days of ingesting nothing but a bit of salt water and three vitamin tablets (which it turns out was not really an appropriate electrolyte supplement protocol, at far too low dosage, well below RDA amounts).  Today on-site at work I also brewed a dried orange slice and four chrysanthemum flowers, checking if that wasn't enough to trigger a renewed higher level of hunger (and it was fine, no issues).

There are a few moving parts to this:  why I'm doing it at all, what the side-effects and expected benefits are, how being hungry goes, and how energy level and mental clarity work out.  I'll say a little about all of it, then add what seemed to come of it later on.

Why?  I fasted once in awhile when I was younger, but that was only juice fasts, skipping eating food for however long, but drinking juice during that time.  It was to experiment with how that kind of thing went, with a sub-culture theme about it being good for you.  That was a bit before the more recent widespread emphasis on "detoxing," but I guess it overlapped with that.  

To broaden that, while ordained as a monk for over two months we could only eat at 7 AM and 11 AM, before 12, so I guess that was intermittent fasting, before most people had heard that term (starting 15 years ago this month).  I didn't think much of it, or notice any effects.  There I could drink a soy milk in the afternoon, since the restrictions only applied to food, not drinks, so I guess the narrower sense I wasn't really intermittent fasting.

At about 10 years old I had the idea I would try water fasting, and at the very end of the first day the hunger got to me, and I ate some cake.  My parents were pretty understanding about those quirks, in retrospect, since they had essentially never heard much about fasting.  I don't remember where I got the idea.  I only remember being hungry from that, I suppose worse than I experienced this time.

I recently met a guy at a Thai temple in Hawaii who discussed Buddhism and Christianity, and he said that he practiced fasting, and that he saw it as spiritual training.  Cool, right, if possibly a little iffy?  In my past that was kind of an intended theme, for those juice fasts, not just purifying my body of whatever a break from food would result in, but some sort of other indirect and indescribable positive effect.  It's hard to say for sure that it ever worked.  My impression is that it did, but interpretation bias could come into play in that.

he had some really interesting ideas about the overlap between Christianity and Buddhism too

The main goal is to see what the experience is like, which works regardless of any other benefit, in spite of positive or negative indirect effects.

Side-effects, hunger:  I was really hungry for the first two days, but today, the third day, is better.  Of course if I smell food eating that sounds good.  I'm hazy today, and over the last two; my normal energy level is disrupted.  That's about it.  I'm not really having any stomach problems.  I read in a Reddit fasting sub-forum that you should ingest some electrolytes, salt, potassium, and magnesium, and that makes sense.  I didn't prepare ahead but drank salt water and took a couple of vitamin tablets last night.  Apparently taking too much of those electrolytes at one time gives you diarrhea, which wasn't so awful, just a few extra trips to the bathroom.

that first evening I went with Eye to a local market, which wasn't as bad as it sounds

About being hazy I took what looked to be an IQ test for a job application today (back on day three when I wrote this initial draft), a time-based version of one, combining IQ testing and GRE exam scopes.  I probably did much worse than I would have otherwise, probably not related to incorrect answers but as far as how much I completed of it.  Otherwise I can still work, and have enough energy to water to garden and such, or sweep the leaves in the driveway.

Expected benefits:  oddly I'm not clear on that part.  I have to set spiritual training benefits aside, but maybe a lot could be about that.  I don't think I will "detox," dropping out some sort of internal impurities, or lose significant weight.  So I'm mostly only curious if there is a benefit that I'll notice.  I've been eating a much lower quality diet over the past two months, while living in the US, but I could've switched back to a very moderate and healthy diet without skipping eating.  Maybe my cholesterol did spike a bit, and this will correct for that.  But if so I'll never know.

It's interesting considering that I must have entered ketosis, the internal energy production from only consuming fat, that from my own body, versus a ketogenic diet practitioner eating it.  Or maybe I'm losing a bit of muscle tissue too.

Concerns over electrolytes:  reading in that Reddit sub brought up the subject of adding electrolytes, and I initially added some salt to water, and ate a couple of multivitamins, and thought that would be good enough.  My wife expressed some concerns about that, muscle and heart issues, and I woke up in the middle of the night after the third day and felt like my heartrate was fast.  I checked it and it wasn't; around 65 beats per minute, normal for me related to running lowering it to that rate, when it had always been 70 or just over.  Then I was concerned that it might be palpitations, so I read up a bit more on recommended doses, sorting out that I had taken nowhere near that much, and started checking the electrolyte products Eye has at the house.  They contain some sugar, so I didn't want to use them, but ingesting 45 calories started to sound ok.  It turned out that magnesium isn't in either version she had, and that and potassium are at pretty low dosages in the multivitamins I took, 15 to 17% of RDA.  

In the middle of the night I started reading up on electrolytes more, and searched the house for what might include them, joint health supplements and such (which did; I ended up taking those).  Some laxatives or stomach medicines are based on magnesium compounds, but I found no examples in the house.  I downed another vitamin tablet, the joint health pills (a few small ones), and that electrolyte mix, so in a limited sense breaking the fast (45 calories worth).  I wasn't worried so much about bragging rights; it seemed like ingesting even a little sugar could trigger hunger again.  It didn't, so I felt better soon and slept.

Maybe it was all in my head.  I was getting electrolytes intake wrong, for sure, so maybe there was some health risk, and that potentially could've been significant.  I don't have heart condition issues, but I did when I was younger, an irregular beat issue that kids generally grow out of, so it might've been that nutrient imbalance was triggering something.

Ending the fast:  in the morning I didn't even feel hungry, starting day 4, but I was still concerned about that nutrient and heart issue.  It was hard to tell if it was fully resolved, since focusing on your heart beating would automatically bring up an unusual degree of awareness of it.  I was going to either go further with dosing myself with electrolytes or else let the fast go, and I decided that was enough.  I had oatmeal with raisins for breakfast, with OJ with protein powder, then went out to the nearby 7/11 and bought whatever was on the list for magnesium source foods, pumpkin seeds, cashews, almonds, and yogurt.  And I had another electrolyte drink, vitamin tablet, and a few more small joint health tablets (they didn't list the dosage, but as a secondary ingredient it probably wasn't much).

I wasn't so sad about stopping a day short of my goal, either 4 or 5 days, at 3 1/2 days in.  It was a shame to let the experience go right at the point that hunger had finally dropped out, but I had been feeling that plus mental haze, low energy level, and mild headaches for 3 days.  It was a bit much, even though not as bad as I thought.  I felt mentally better that fourth day too, and had more energy, maybe related to restoring more of a normal mineral balance, but concern over real risk tipped the judgement.  

I suppose it's worth noting that caffeine withdrawal was probably part of the impact over the first two days.  I skipped caffeine, except for one cup of tea, for about 2 1/2 days traveling back from Hawaii two weeks ago, but I had been back to one very full gaiwan's worth for over a week since.

Lessons learned:  I'm not sure how to peg the "gains" in terms of digestion system health, since I never had any problems with that, or related to weight loss, or spiritual gains.  I didn't weigh myself once; I suppose I must have lost a little, but probably not much.  I don't think there is a scale in our house.  At least it was an interesting experience.

Related to how to fast exactly what they suggest in that Reddit sub would probably work better, starting at a day in duration, then adding a second day a second time, then maybe bumping to 4, then a week.  Getting electrolytes on hand that you can mix into a water based solution and ingest gradually through the day would be easiest and best (salt, potassium, and magnesium).  Both would add confidence that the process was on track.  At a guess I wasn't really ever at significant risk, and bumping electrolyte intake that third day, and sticking with that, probably would've enabled completing a 5 day fast.  Maybe if I had a better supplement source of magnesium in the house I would've did that; the joint health pills weren't clear on dose included, so it all seemed a bit uncertain.  

Maybe referencing other input could at least expand on the range of what is out there for hearsay, since I'm not really feeling much different 8 hours into resuming eating.

Hearsay input:  I'll cite a Quora answer that covers a lot of the standard list of understood benefits.  To be clear I don't think that a lot of people repeating the same ideas necessarily implies that those are true.  Once a set of ideas gains traction online they tend to take on a life of their own, and it's easy to find countless cases of where people are taking nonsense as gospel truth by being swept along through confirmation bias, seeing what they are looking for.  That the earth if flat is a good example; over time sources making this absurd claim would congregate around a short list of agreed-upon evidence that "proves" this.

interesting that under 1000 people follow "water fasting" while 169k are into intermittent fasting

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-health-benefits-of-fasting

A Quora answer to that question, but as partial framing the author's credential is "Best-Selling Author, Content Creator, Coach, Biohacker."  I take those last two to be warning flags instead of supporting roles or attributes.  Even the best-selling author part is suspicious; maybe that's true, or maybe not.

...But here’s a list of the benefits.

Cellular repair via autophagy. - Your body will self-digest itself, leading to the recycling of old waste proteins and through detoxification.

Increased fat oxidation. - Better use of your own body fat for fuel.

Hastened metabolism. - Your metabolism actually speeds up by 3–14%.

Improved biomarkers. - Reduced cholesterol, lower blood sugar, better insulin sensitivity and no insulin resistance.

Boosted Growth Hormone. - The Holy Grail of longevity and muscle building. It maintain lean muscle mass and burns fat.

Increased life-span. - Fasting increases free radicals that trigger protective pathways.

Protection against cancer and tumors. - Autophagy purges precancerous cells and lowers risk of tumor growth.

Bolstered brain power. - Protection against neurodegenerative disease thanks to increased BDNF.

I really don't know about any of that, and I'm not of a mind to go and read a half dozen research papers to try to sort that out.  Then it would help a lot to try to find another half dozen papers expressing the alternate conclusions to help place those, or discussions or input by people who are solid references, who aren't trying to accept this same conclusion.

I suspect that some of this is accurate, I just have no idea which parts, and that's based on nothing at all, a random guess.  Other input (Quora answers) suggest that your body organs will be able to reset and self-repair while you take a break from non-stop eating, sort of along similar lines of the detox theme, but who knows about that too.  I'll skip guessing more about this list, or referencing other answers there, because I just don't have much to say about any of it.  Hopefully parts are accurate, or even it all.

Fasting mimicking diet:  of course intermittent fasting is the fad that people took up in significant numbers, which I also won't say more about, but I ran across an interesting alternative that's not that in looking around, a fasting mimicking diet.  The idea is to eat only very low calorie input foods for a number of days, just vegetables, and to not stop eating, but to cease taking in much for calories from that.  It's brilliant.  

This section runs a bit long, on some unique ideas, methodology, and findings from a Youtuber bodybuilder source.  That's not exactly the same theme as the prior first-hand experience account, and even different from the hearsay understanding. 

I've been trying to think through why that might not be as effective as water fasting, about why not completely shutting down digestion would be a concern.  I never got far with that.  I heard about this in a Youtuber's channel, one of those bodybuilder / fitness / steroid advocate guys, "Vigorous Steve:"

Steve's EXTREME Fat Loss 5 Day Fasting-Mimicking Diet

He seemed to accept some of the main health benefits others were claiming as a premise, that it somehow improves a lot of body function, but he was mainly focused on the goal of losing weight.  There's an old well-proven finding--that's actually real--that research animals who are on various forms of calorie restricted diets do live longer, which is hard to place in relation to humans, or even causes for them experiencing that.  I think he might've only implied an accepted link to that.  In watching some he claimed that he did bloodwork (testing of blood compounds) and could literally prove he experienced improvement in that five days; that's different, but the context of taking lots of drugs throws off easy judgment about what that means.

That evidence is here:

5 Days Of Salads & Fat Loss Pharmacology | Before & After Results | 6 Weeks Back On Cycle Update

He even claims in that first video that results are much different than just taking a week off to rest, that the fasting mimicking diet helps his body repair minor injuries.

It's kind of a tangent, but look what he says he is now on, for performance enhancing drug use:

The first two are anabolic steroids, both essentially versions of testosterone, I think, but I have no idea what the rest is.  He said the Ezetimibe is a healing peptide, I think it was, so that might offset the claim that the fasting helped with healing, if another compound was intended to support that.  

Then he was on three different appetite suppressant drugs; why not?  And he's on multiple drugs that support burning fat:

This is a free-for-all human trial science experiment at this point.  It's helpful that he's checking his bloodwork (main compounds and warning markers, eg. liver enzymes), but for taking a couple of handfuls of drugs a day he might eventually just drop dead, from getting some parts wrong.

It makes it hard to take seriously that whatever he claims blood results show really refers back to fasting, not a side effect of some, or many, of those many drugs.  He lost 5 pounds in a week, starting at 217 pounds / 98 kg; there's that.  

I've never done any PED's, except unless someone considers caffeine from drinking a coffee that, even though I did lift weights for a few years when I was younger, but to be clear I don't intend this as judging him.  I find the subject of PED's fascinating, because every change that someone initiates by taking any of these drugs relies on normal body functions to work, mimicking or expanding on natural internal compound effects.  My judgement doesn't mean much, or isn't so well informed, but this guy Steve and Derek of More Plates More Dates seem to be among the most conscientious, cautious, and reliable steroid proponents out there.

Conclusions

It might seem strange that I never referred back to what that fasting Reddit sub claimed the point of fasting was, since there is a developed reference wiki there.  There is a bit on that:

• 4. What does fasting do to my body?
• 4.2. Reduced insulin resistance
• 4.3. Muscles
• 4.4. Heart health
• 4.5. Autophagy / other cell regeneration goodies
• 4.6. TL; DR
• 4.7. Diabetes type 2

That section is 600 words long, so a quick read.  Maybe that's a much easier to access summary of hearsay / known benefits than any of those Quora answers.  Vigorous Steve's input, the next "results" video, must be interesting, but since he was on a dozen different drugs, many related to healing support and fat loss, it's hard to know what role fasting actually played.

I kind of want to try it again.  With proper electrolyte intake and my body knowing what's coming the negative effects might be greatly reduced.  I still doubt that I would know what clear benefits occurred if I really made it to 5 days, although I could weigh myself before and after.  I do feel great today, maybe as recovered from running training impact as I've been in years, which I'll check tomorrow.  Or I could just feel great in comparison to suffering from not eating.  I didn't mention the vivid dreams, or how in spite of being hazy as could be I've been as productive as I ever am.  I'll check back here later if I give it another go.