Done
Metus
Karma: 2,481
I want to thank this community for existing, all the people founding it, the people contributing to it and all the stuff linked here. I may not like all the topics or agree with all the opinions posted here. Nor may I find use of most of the stuff I read around here. But at least I don’t feel so alone anymore.
That is all, thank you.
I get immense benefit from just knowing that this helpful community exists and that I can ask it for advice.
Generally I try to ask one question in every open thread and to read them in general to see if someone solved a problem I didn’t even know I have.
The latter. The former is already decreasing at an incredible speed but I see no trend for the latter.
Take the warning seriously.
I’m radically cutting any source of information out from my life as soon as I get the feeling that I never use the information or don’t get some measure of enjoyment from it. This reduced the time I spend on catching up from multiple hours a day to less than an hour. My mind feels much quieter in a good way. I still get a “noisy” sensation in my mind (“I just had a thought but have already forgotten it”) but it feels contentless (“There is something on my mind”) and the sensation weakens every day. Replacing the time spent on reading useless drivel with actual books and Wikipedia feels much more satisfactory.
I fear that this might lead to my perspective narrowing, but I act against it by having a couple of information dense blogs in my feed and still meeting with people and having Wikipeda to seek new avenues of information. And of course LessWrong.
I feel reminded of the discussion whether you can actually see something you imagine. Turns out, some people can see a vivid image in front of their eyes and some are simply incapable of this. Maybe this is a similar case: Some people work well with examples, some are better with general abstract concepts.
P.S.: I feel this is a good time to say this: In my limited experience teaching and learning I found that people are massively inhomogenous with regard to how they grasp concepts and there is no telling which way is obviously better. I assume that proper didactics would address different ways of learning and working.
Looking for information on cryonics
Meetup: Somewhere you do not live even close to
[Meta] The answers will be way more informative if they are posted as “X instead of doing/learning Y” e.g. “Underwater basket weaving instead of moping around” as of course I wished I had learned everything.
Aw crap, one time I could give a shit and it is apparently US only.
The ancient Stoics apparently had a lot of techniques for habituation and changing cognitive processes. Some of those live on in the form of modern CBT. One of the techniques is to write a personal handbook with advice and sayings to carry around at all times as to never be without guidance from a calmer self. Indeed, Epictet advises to learn this handbook by rote to further internalisation. So I plan to write such a handbook for myself, once in long form with anything relevant to my life and lifestyle, and once in a short form that I update with things that are difficult at that time, be it strong feelings or being deluded by some biases.
In this book I intend to include a list of all known cognitive biases and logical fallacies. I know that some biases are helped by simply knowing them, does anyone have a list of those? And should I complete the books or have a clear concept of their contents, are you interested in reading about the process of creating one and possible perceived benefits?
After reading David Burns’s “Feeling Good” and receiving a score on the depression test corresponding to a severe depression I tried the exercises in the book. Though I still struggle with them, they have helped me temendously and lowered the score on the test after only a week. I can not attribute the change only to the exercises seeing as I have been more strict in my meditation regimen (15min at evening). The exercises are very interesting to this community I think and maybe I will write a dedicated discussion post.
With my new found optimism/hope/energy I am much more motivated to start exercising again in the next days, maybe a programming project and again taking up quantifying myself.
What are your contrarian views?
One thing I might start experimenting with is a version of morning contemplation. Ancient stoicism seems to suggest to reflect on one’s principles in the morning, christian tradition has morning prayers and Benjamin Franklin reviewed his virtues every morning, so why not do a little personalised version of it? Things like the serenity prayer or Tarski’s litany.
Be careful what you argue for.
For the longest time I was opposing nationalism and the concept of citizenship. I researched the issue, read and crafted arguments in favour of my position and convinced myself that this is a rational opinion to have. Then some things happened that made me feel more connected to the soil I was born on. Still I feel that my identity is not determined by my passport but my previous arguments seem a whole lot less convincing and the arguments I dismissed as unreasonable seem more convincing.
The quest to be more rational is one of the more humbling things I ever did with the hardest lesson to learn being that I am wrong very often and my beliefs are largely not rational.
As a person who has been at this workshop too, I fully endorse this report to the point that a second report from my point of view would be close to a waste of time both for me and potential readers. This explicitly includes the points about the relation of system one and two, the comment about recommending the workshop to others and the emphasis on community,
I applied to a CFAR workshop and got accepted—with a sizable scholarship making the whole thing affordable for me as a university student. And all I really had to do was ask! I wonder how many other cheap lunches I forwent and forgo.
I am currently reading “Getting Things Done” by David Allen and I am implementing the suggestions there. While the implementation is a bit more complicated than anticipated, the system just makes so much sense. As the system is yet in the honeymoon phase I refrain from an unconditional recommendation.
English is not my first language, German is. I am noticing a phenomenon more and more: Stuff I read does not annoy me as much in English as it does in German, though it is the exact same topic. The other day I read a German article complaining about the idiocy of a particular ‘comedian’, angering me that I wasted my time on reading about someone complaining about some idiotic person. Though I have no problem reading the standard subreddits on Reddit, which are no less idiotic than the average column in German. What is going on?
I assume that in German I have plenty of preformed conceptions about what is proper and what is not. In English though I am able to keep an open mind about what I experience, as it is a new and foreign culture. This narrative doesn’t satisfy me though, as I do not see a proper way to test the hypothesis.
An alternative narrative—one should always have more than one hypothesis on any topic—is that German media is inherently inferior to English products. I refuse to believe this, though I am willing to accept an argument on statistical distributions and number of trials. Or am I just unable to find the niches in German that do satisfy my itches?
Is this a phenomenon anyone else encounters? What is your take on it?
Please do.