I recently began learning meditation through the work of Sam Harris, which was recommended me here on LW.
I also read about the plasticity of the cortex and the effects of attention on creating neural networks.
Combining those, I now am trying to break bad habits by focusing my attention on my experience as I’m tempted, and simply observing the urge, disconnecting it from progressing along any ingrained neural patterns.
I’ve been moving consistently through the Sequences. I decided that the marginal gains of re-reading the significant portions of the same which I have already read were less than those of reading new material, so I’m skipping parts I’ve read before.
I applied thinking for five minutes at something for the first time today. It was good, and I intend to think five minutes about each of the things I want to study and practice to see if I can’t improve my study plans.
I was told today that I’m extremely defensive when arguing. I assign a high probability to this not being about an emotional reaction on my part. Probably the fact that the people who think as such do not successfully convince me of their points, for reasons I find sufficient, contributes to this perception.
I’ve determined I ought to do something about it, and am considering marking my general argumentation style with a near-constant tendency to ask people to make predictions about their points beforehand, to clarify them in both of our minds, and so we’re agreed on how to determine whether or not a point is sound, distancing myself from any apparent stubbornness, and hopefully improving my ability for persuasion and teaching.
I tried a Mandarin course, the textbook for which was more expensive than all others for me. I bought it used, and it was lacking a code to access an essential online component of the course, so I had to buy a second for the same high price. A little bit into the course, I determined that it was not an efficient way to learn the language, and dropped it, not allowing my sunken costs to affect my decision very much.
I recently began learning meditation through the work of Sam Harris, which was recommended me here on LW.
I also read about the plasticity of the cortex and the effects of attention on creating neural networks.
Combining those, I now am trying to break bad habits by focusing my attention on my experience as I’m tempted, and simply observing the urge, disconnecting it from progressing along any ingrained neural patterns.
I’ve been moving consistently through the Sequences. I decided that the marginal gains of re-reading the significant portions of the same which I have already read were less than those of reading new material, so I’m skipping parts I’ve read before.
I applied thinking for five minutes at something for the first time today. It was good, and I intend to think five minutes about each of the things I want to study and practice to see if I can’t improve my study plans.
I was told today that I’m extremely defensive when arguing. I assign a high probability to this not being about an emotional reaction on my part. Probably the fact that the people who think as such do not successfully convince me of their points, for reasons I find sufficient, contributes to this perception. I’ve determined I ought to do something about it, and am considering marking my general argumentation style with a near-constant tendency to ask people to make predictions about their points beforehand, to clarify them in both of our minds, and so we’re agreed on how to determine whether or not a point is sound, distancing myself from any apparent stubbornness, and hopefully improving my ability for persuasion and teaching.
I tried a Mandarin course, the textbook for which was more expensive than all others for me. I bought it used, and it was lacking a code to access an essential online component of the course, so I had to buy a second for the same high price. A little bit into the course, I determined that it was not an efficient way to learn the language, and dropped it, not allowing my sunken costs to affect my decision very much.