Another useful-to-notice practical aspect of having a mind that took me a while to notice: things naturally seem a certain ‘size’ in my mental landscape, but I can change that size.
For instance, if I have a meeting this afternoon, it looms there in a certain way in mental space.
Whereas if I will get a drink later this afternoon, it doesn’t really take up any mental space and does not loom.
You can kind of intentionally cause the meeting to seem like the drink, adjusting how much ‘space’ it is taking up.
(It’s more obvious that other things can cause this change, for instance, if a much more important meeting shows up some other time this afternoon. But I think you can also do it intentionally.)
I wonder if this makes sense in others’ minds.
Meta: I am finding your ultra-short posts very refreshing/liberating for some reason. I think it’s just that you’re demonstrating that you are allowed to write up and publish small thoughts without having to somehow turn them into an essay for the sake of it. I’m not sure why this point isn’t already made for my brain by the existence of LW shortform, maybe it’s just that you’re exporting the shortform to Substack too? Idk if there’s a LW norm that posts below a certain length ‘ought’ to be a shortform, but if you’re not violating a norm I don’t know about, I appreciate it!
I really don’t like seeing 20 top-level posts from the same author within 30 minutes, but maybe there are extenuating circumstances like having them pre-written offline over a few days and just regained Internet access to post them.
(Auto-crossposting glitch; these were written over a longer time. My fault that they got batched like this, but I like the posts so I didn’t move them to drafts)
Have you asked Katja what she’d prefer here? (I worry people might get a negative impression of her from this even though she didn’t intend it.)
You are super encouraged to write short posts!
I tried and noticed that I also can do that, which I’ve never thought of trying/doing before. Interestingly, it feels kind of weird/unnatural, somewhat similar to when I’m flexing my body in a weird position that confuses my body schema.
I think the mind space is generally related to the amount of time you spend looping over the event before or after. There are big events that can be smaller because they are using up less of your RAM. Similarly, smaller events and events in the past can take up more space from rumination. That being said, there are probably exceptions.
Edit: Another angle is novelty. Your first day of school is more likely to hold more weight than your nth day.