Well-described. And spot-on, based on my experience.
I guess I would add that if mental restructurings are regular, frequent or numerous in one’s life, then restructuring can become a game in itself, and flexibility can be written into the rules.
I really enjoyed internalizing and restructuring my mind around physical materialism (sort of, there were some uncomfortable moments and some chaff that needed to be separated). Now, I’m kind of mildly disappointed that it is apparently so stable. Competing ideas can’t get any traction and I seem to be done now for a while. I still skim through Less Wrong, analyze church signs and listen closely to people for any new leads. But I’ve wondered several times over the past year if there can be any new ideas that would be so disorienting again and yet also possible.
Quantum mechanics seems promising, but for now I can’t distinguish any truly disorientating ideas from just not knowing the details.
Now, since there appears to be a lull in mental reconstruction, I am redirecting my mental energy to tackling ‘soft’, complex problems like understanding social interactions better, especially in the context of generational age and demographic details. (Not as in ‘reading social science books’, but figuring out ways of interacting with people that are most pleasant for me.) It’s the kind of thing where I can expect to make only incremental progress for mental hours dedicated. Although I’m open to reading the right book. Now that I’ve (just now) explicitly acknowledged this goal to myself, I can apply let-me-look-up-the-post-where-you-apply-rationality-to-meet-goals-more-efficiently-probably-by-Anna.
Well-described. And spot-on, based on my experience.
I guess I would add that if mental restructurings are regular, frequent or numerous in one’s life, then restructuring can become a game in itself, and flexibility can be written into the rules.
I really enjoyed internalizing and restructuring my mind around physical materialism (sort of, there were some uncomfortable moments and some chaff that needed to be separated). Now, I’m kind of mildly disappointed that it is apparently so stable. Competing ideas can’t get any traction and I seem to be done now for a while. I still skim through Less Wrong, analyze church signs and listen closely to people for any new leads. But I’ve wondered several times over the past year if there can be any new ideas that would be so disorienting again and yet also possible.
Quantum mechanics seems promising, but for now I can’t distinguish any truly disorientating ideas from just not knowing the details.
Now, since there appears to be a lull in mental reconstruction, I am redirecting my mental energy to tackling ‘soft’, complex problems like understanding social interactions better, especially in the context of generational age and demographic details. (Not as in ‘reading social science books’, but figuring out ways of interacting with people that are most pleasant for me.) It’s the kind of thing where I can expect to make only incremental progress for mental hours dedicated. Although I’m open to reading the right book. Now that I’ve (just now) explicitly acknowledged this goal to myself, I can apply let-me-look-up-the-post-where-you-apply-rationality-to-meet-goals-more-efficiently-probably-by-Anna.