From my stable equilibria answer: the cup on my table is best thought of at different timescales. On a short enough time scale, it’s buffetted by air and shaking and whatever but ultimately staying basically in place due to friction. When we get up to seconds (or more, depending on circumstance), there’s the possibility of me taking a sip, in which case the equilibria we are looking at is “still on the table somewhere” and my sips will lead to me changing which part of the table it’s on after setting it back down. Notice that the liquid in the cup was conserved at the previous timescale, but not on this one. On the order of minutes, the main states are full or empty, and empty is much more stable (though, sometimes I’m doing something and don’t want to take a sip before that thing is done, e.g. eating something else). I’ll often keep it empty for a while before refilling it, so if you zoom out it’s usually empty. On the order of hours, equilibria are whether it’s in the main dining area (which mostly means it’s on my table) or it’s in the dish collection place.
My nails: the length stays short (because I cut them). The color are a bistable equilibrium: If unpainted and not recently painted, I tend to go “ah! I should paint them eventually!”, and then eventually I end up doing so; and if recently painted but very decayed I have a tendency to go “ah! I should repaint these soon!” and then (more quickly) eventually do so, unless nudges (e.g. other stuff to do) make me not do so, at which point they end up unpainted and thus have a lower tendency to end up painted again. My nails are unchanged on the order of a few days; on the order of weeks they have a stable tendency towards shortness, with color unchanged; in the many weeks term have a tendency towards the paintedness-state that they spent most of the period in; in the months term have a tendency towards being painted.
Moment to moment, my mood is basically constant, and multi-stable; broaden your horizons to hours and it no longer is (and from this perspective I mostly jump between stable equilibria like excitedness or hunger or sadness); broaden further to days or especially weeks or months and it’s singly-stable at my relatively happy baseline.
From my stable equilibria answer: the cup on my table is best thought of at different timescales. On a short enough time scale, it’s buffetted by air and shaking and whatever but ultimately staying basically in place due to friction. When we get up to seconds (or more, depending on circumstance), there’s the possibility of me taking a sip, in which case the equilibria we are looking at is “still on the table somewhere” and my sips will lead to me changing which part of the table it’s on after setting it back down. Notice that the liquid in the cup was conserved at the previous timescale, but not on this one. On the order of minutes, the main states are full or empty, and empty is much more stable (though, sometimes I’m doing something and don’t want to take a sip before that thing is done, e.g. eating something else). I’ll often keep it empty for a while before refilling it, so if you zoom out it’s usually empty. On the order of hours, equilibria are whether it’s in the main dining area (which mostly means it’s on my table) or it’s in the dish collection place.
My nails: the length stays short (because I cut them). The color are a bistable equilibrium: If unpainted and not recently painted, I tend to go “ah! I should paint them eventually!”, and then eventually I end up doing so; and if recently painted but very decayed I have a tendency to go “ah! I should repaint these soon!” and then (more quickly) eventually do so, unless nudges (e.g. other stuff to do) make me not do so, at which point they end up unpainted and thus have a lower tendency to end up painted again.
My nails are unchanged on the order of a few days; on the order of weeks they have a stable tendency towards shortness, with color unchanged; in the many weeks term have a tendency towards the paintedness-state that they spent most of the period in; in the months term have a tendency towards being painted.
Moment to moment, my mood is basically constant, and multi-stable; broaden your horizons to hours and it no longer is (and from this perspective I mostly jump between stable equilibria like excitedness or hunger or sadness); broaden further to days or especially weeks or months and it’s singly-stable at my relatively happy baseline.