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Wow, people are still taking Steve Pavlina seriously all those years later. OK.... P.S. To be clear, I am not a hater. I've learned about Steve when he was a g

Wow, people are still taking Steve Pavlina seriously all those years later. OK.... P.S. To be clear, I am not a hater. I've learned about Steve when he was a game developer, having developed one marginally successful shareware game. That was more than ten years ago. He then decided to teach others how to become successful game developers and launched game publishing business. Which went nowhere. He blogged all along. Then Steve got interested in personal development, polyamory, polyphase sleep, etc. becoming 'an expert' in these topics, just like he has in successful game development and game publishing. This is a guy who believes in spirit guides (yes, really) - https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2020/05/better-than-spirit-guides/ https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2020/05/better-than-spirit... and for a low price of $299 can teach you that your reality is subjective - https://www.stevepavlina.com/submersion/ https://www.stevepavlina.com/submersion/

stinos 6y ago
Can you elaborate? Don't know the guy, but just what I read here seems mostly backed up by science - that is to say, I haven't read a lot on addiction so am definitely not an expert, but none of what I read here seems to contradict with what I think I know about it.
- JackPoach 6y ago
  Yeah, I've updated the post after realizing that not everybody is as old as me. Steve was big in early 2000s (think 2008-2010) in the indie gamedev world that I was a part of too. I actually remember his (then) wife Erin. Erin is a psychic - https://www.erinpavlina.com/ https://www.erinpavlina.com/ There's also a person by the name of Christina Pavlina, who is a psychic and supposedly she's Steve's sister - https://theoneabsolute.com/about/ https://theoneabsolute.com/about/ Steve used to get a lot of 'hate blogging', there were a bunch of blogs devoted specifically to his personality (ex. https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/seriously-sick-of-steve-pavlina/4221 https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/seriously-sick-of-stev... or http://bigwig-bigwig.blogspot.com/2011/03/8-top-reasons-why-steve-pavlina-is.html http://bigwig-bigwig.blogspot.com/2011/03/8-top-reasons-why-... or https://stevepavlinalies.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/exposing-steve-pavlinas-scams-and-making-fun-of-his-nonsense/ https://stevepavlinalies.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/exposing-s...). I would have never imagined that I'd find Steve's post on HN.
  - stinos 6y ago
    not everybody is as old as me Might have to do more with interests etc in this case, because 2008 is over a decade later than my first steps on the internet :) Anyway: I completely get your point now. Yet, and this is a typical problem especially in psychic and other circles: despite the insane stuff which has come out of his pen, this article isn't all that insane. Not that I comletely endorse it, some of his solutions are too simplistic and/or might work for him but not for others, but there's also not a whole lot of nonsense in it. Point being: even though people might be completely wrong on one topic, doesn't necessarily mean they are on another topic. Just requires extra skeptisicm when reading them as precaution perhaps.
kossTKR 6y ago
I found his articles years ago about lucid dreaming, and also subsequently found lots of his 30-90 day experiments very interesting. What makes him stand out in my mind is that he actually does the challenges as opposed to so many other people writing blogspam articles or whole books without the work. It got me into self-experimentation - not with any dogmas in particular, but seeing people actually doing rather crazy long experiments gave me some courage. Also he introduced me to a lot of interesting concepts. I haven't really seen other people actually do this. The biphasic sleep experiment, and the water fast experiment were especially tough, and no one without serious discipline could do that in my mind. This was years before "fasting" became a thing. He was also an early adopter of both the diet and sleep experimentation (that didn't really take of), lucid dreaming and all kinds of other fads i have seen become mainstream later on. So i don't think he has "no authority" or whatever, even though he maybe a freak, but i generally like freaks who are on the fringes if they do the work and can write about it. So i thank him for for introducing me to these concepts that i have been practicing for years now, ie. fasting, having an interest in dreams and general worldview, and experimenting seriously with diet (though i eat completely differently than him). So all in all he is very much a self-hacker - he tries stuff even though it's weird, very tough and obscure - that's a lot of points in my book. (never bought anything from him though or read any of his books). Small off-topic rant about "science": Also yeah when people really take a deep dive into meditation / lucid dreaming stuff just "gets weird" - so he is not that different from a lot of highly educated meditation teachers i have run across, you just gotta say "whatever" if it's not your cup of tea. Another example is Daniel Ingram who i respect but is also doing weird psychedelic stuff or have "crazy" worldviews (many more than most people think in my experience especially in the math/physics sphere). After diving into this stuff myself i would say to my old self: reality is way, way weirder than i thought when i was young - especially when you begin to really go deep (no drugs here). I personally went from a "science is some isolated emergent property of history", to science is an extremely vague subset or evolution of certain historical developments that are all still completely traceable to weird esoteric, fuzzy, diffuse lineages or worldviews that are much more philosophical/religious in nature. A good starting point is "The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast" - for a very academic and rigorous introduction to why the current science-history historiographical paradigm is very wrong. Then afterwards go to a few retreats, meditate 1+ hours a day, practice Koans on science, math and philosophy and slowly see your reductionistic perspective vanish, while you actually get better at doing science and "normal everyday work".
tasogare 6y ago
I read of bunch of his blog posts ten years ago and while there was some interesting content, there was also really weird and dangerous shit. For instance the series his one (or 3?) month experiment on polyphasic sleep[1] or his month eating only vegetable smoothies, which can have serious health consequences. Then he shifted to the edgy polyamory stuff and I quit. Note that I tried the polyphasic sleep for a week or so and I suspect SP romanticized the things a bit in his blog posts. Like down putting the bad aspects, hyping the good ones in order to market the thing (thus himself). It was an interesting series, but this kind of material should be contextualized and display along with warnings. Finally, once you get a few key ideas (mainly that you need to do things to get results), spending time reading personal development stuff is wasting time. Every blog, post, book just retold a few identical ideas. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biphasic_and_polyphasic_sleep https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biphasic_and_polyphasic_slee...
- JackPoach 6y ago
  Yeah, so you might be as old as I am. I remember when he was breaking up with Erin and leaving two kids behind, which clearly was a painful process. And we would be like 'OK, Steve, you are into sex, BDSM, and fucking other people. That's cool.' And he'd be like 'No, it's not that. It's personal development, freedom, next stage, bla-bla-bla'. I never got why polyamory couldn't just be polyamory (a personal choice), it had to be a proof that you as individual have graduated to progress to something that's more advanced. He used to have a ton of blog post about a girl who agreed to be his slave (in BDSM). That's where he lost me. I actually like kink, but I prefer to get mine from Pornhub, because it's personal development-free and I can just enjoy if for what it is. Plus he used to sell the shit out of his $400 per person 'personal growth' workshops. That was annoying as hell too. P.S. I am glad I stopped reading Steve ten years ago, I've just browsed through his website and I think he became more woo-woo. At least that's my impression after reading his recent article about how you are supposed to 'energetically clean money' that you received as payment for your work - https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2020/05/how-to-clean-your-moneys-energy/ https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2020/05/how-to-clean-your-...

stinos 6y ago

Can you elaborate? Don't know the guy, but just what I read here seems mostly backed up by science - that is to say, I haven't read a lot on addiction so am definitely not an expert, but none of what I read here seems to contradict with what I think I know about it.

JackPoach 6y ago
Yeah, I've updated the post after realizing that not everybody is as old as me. Steve was big in early 2000s (think 2008-2010) in the indie gamedev world that I was a part of too. I actually remember his (then) wife Erin. Erin is a psychic - https://www.erinpavlina.com/ https://www.erinpavlina.com/ There's also a person by the name of Christina Pavlina, who is a psychic and supposedly she's Steve's sister - https://theoneabsolute.com/about/ https://theoneabsolute.com/about/ Steve used to get a lot of 'hate blogging', there were a bunch of blogs devoted specifically to his personality (ex. https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/seriously-sick-of-steve-pavlina/4221 https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/seriously-sick-of-stev... or http://bigwig-bigwig.blogspot.com/2011/03/8-top-reasons-why-steve-pavlina-is.html http://bigwig-bigwig.blogspot.com/2011/03/8-top-reasons-why-... or https://stevepavlinalies.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/exposing-steve-pavlinas-scams-and-making-fun-of-his-nonsense/ https://stevepavlinalies.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/exposing-s...). I would have never imagined that I'd find Steve's post on HN.
- stinos 6y ago
  not everybody is as old as me Might have to do more with interests etc in this case, because 2008 is over a decade later than my first steps on the internet :) Anyway: I completely get your point now. Yet, and this is a typical problem especially in psychic and other circles: despite the insane stuff which has come out of his pen, this article isn't all that insane. Not that I comletely endorse it, some of his solutions are too simplistic and/or might work for him but not for others, but there's also not a whole lot of nonsense in it. Point being: even though people might be completely wrong on one topic, doesn't necessarily mean they are on another topic. Just requires extra skeptisicm when reading them as precaution perhaps.

kossTKR 6y ago

I found his articles years ago about lucid dreaming, and also subsequently found lots of his 30-90 day experiments very interesting. What makes him stand out in my mind is that he actually does the challenges as opposed to so many other people writing blogspam articles or whole books without the work. It got me into self-experimentation - not with any dogmas in particular, but seeing people actually doing rather crazy long experiments gave me some courage. Also he introduced me to a lot of interesting concepts. I haven't really seen other people actually do this. The biphasic sleep experiment, and the water fast experiment were especially tough, and no one without serious discipline could do that in my mind. This was years before "fasting" became a thing. He was also an early adopter of both the diet and sleep experimentation (that didn't really take of), lucid dreaming and all kinds of other fads i have seen become mainstream later on. So i don't think he has "no authority" or whatever, even though he maybe a freak, but i generally like freaks who are on the fringes if they do the work and can write about it. So i thank him for for introducing me to these concepts that i have been practicing for years now, ie. fasting, having an interest in dreams and general worldview, and experimenting seriously with diet (though i eat completely differently than him). So all in all he is very much a self-hacker - he tries stuff even though it's weird, very tough and obscure - that's a lot of points in my book. (never bought anything from him though or read any of his books). Small off-topic rant about "science": Also yeah when people really take a deep dive into meditation / lucid dreaming stuff just "gets weird" - so he is not that different from a lot of highly educated meditation teachers i have run across, you just gotta say "whatever" if it's not your cup of tea. Another example is Daniel Ingram who i respect but is also doing weird psychedelic stuff or have "crazy" worldviews (many more than most people think in my experience especially in the math/physics sphere). After diving into this stuff myself i would say to my old self: reality is way, way weirder than i thought when i was young - especially when you begin to really go deep (no drugs here). I personally went from a "science is some isolated emergent property of history", to science is an extremely vague subset or evolution of certain historical developments that are all still completely traceable to weird esoteric, fuzzy, diffuse lineages or worldviews that are much more philosophical/religious in nature. A good starting point is "The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast" - for a very academic and rigorous introduction to why the current science-history historiographical paradigm is very wrong. Then afterwards go to a few retreats, meditate 1+ hours a day, practice Koans on science, math and philosophy and slowly see your reductionistic perspective vanish, while you actually get better at doing science and "normal everyday work".

tasogare 6y ago

I read of bunch of his blog posts ten years ago and while there was some interesting content, there was also really weird and dangerous shit. For instance the series his one (or 3?) month experiment on polyphasic sleep[1] or his month eating only vegetable smoothies, which can have serious health consequences. Then he shifted to the edgy polyamory stuff and I quit. Note that I tried the polyphasic sleep for a week or so and I suspect SP romanticized the things a bit in his blog posts. Like down putting the bad aspects, hyping the good ones in order to market the thing (thus himself). It was an interesting series, but this kind of material should be contextualized and display along with warnings. Finally, once you get a few key ideas (mainly that you need to do things to get results), spending time reading personal development stuff is wasting time. Every blog, post, book just retold a few identical ideas. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biphasic_and_polyphasic_sleep https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biphasic_and_polyphasic_slee...

JackPoach 6y ago
Yeah, so you might be as old as I am. I remember when he was breaking up with Erin and leaving two kids behind, which clearly was a painful process. And we would be like 'OK, Steve, you are into sex, BDSM, and fucking other people. That's cool.' And he'd be like 'No, it's not that. It's personal development, freedom, next stage, bla-bla-bla'. I never got why polyamory couldn't just be polyamory (a personal choice), it had to be a proof that you as individual have graduated to progress to something that's more advanced. He used to have a ton of blog post about a girl who agreed to be his slave (in BDSM). That's where he lost me. I actually like kink, but I prefer to get mine from Pornhub, because it's personal development-free and I can just enjoy if for what it is. Plus he used to sell the shit out of his $400 per person 'personal growth' workshops. That was annoying as hell too. P.S. I am glad I stopped reading Steve ten years ago, I've just browsed through his website and I think he became more woo-woo. At least that's my impression after reading his recent article about how you are supposed to 'energetically clean money' that you received as payment for your work - https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2020/05/how-to-clean-your-moneys-energy/ https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2020/05/how-to-clean-your-...