I, personally, tell the difference by paying attention to and observing reality without making any judgments. Then, I compare that with my expectations based on my judgments. If there is a difference, then I am thinking I am interacting instead of interacting.
Over time, I stop making judgments. And in essence, I stop thinking about interacting with the world, and just interact, and see what happens.
I think it’d be useful to hear an example of “observing reality without making judgements” and “observing reality with making judgements”. I’m having trouble figuring out what you believe the difference to be.
Hey all. i figured that after a few long months of lurking, I might as well introduce myself (that way when I post elsewhere, someone doesn’t feel obligated to smack my nose politely with a rolled-up newspaper and send me here), even though I can never figure out what to say.
I’ve now finished all the Sequences and I’ve successfully resisted the urge to argue with comments that are years old, and I think I’ve learned a lot. One of the high moments was that I had just finished reading the Zombie sequence when I met a friend of a friend, who started to postulate the Zombie world and concept. Thanks to my reading here, I’d already done some thinking about the matter and could engage with him intelligently. How awesome is that?
One of my biggest struggles is coming up with how some of the stuff on Lesswrong is applicable to normal life. I’m not a IA researcher, I get confused with computers, and I’m a fairly normal person. I’m into the outdoors, writing (dream job, right there), teaching, history, and board games. A lot of times, then, I wish the Sequences had parts after each post that suggested ways that the principles impacted normal life. Trying to figure out how to connect the Bayes way to more normal decisions is challenging. Perhaps this is already been addressed—Lesswrong is also a labyrinth for newbies. ^_^
As far as posting go, I’m still finding the right line between investigating and defensive/aggressive. Generally, I’m impossible to offend and I don’t take things personally. I’ll try and live that creed as well as just say it, but now it’s on record. I also believe strongly in giving someone the benefit of the doubt, or taking their statement in the best possible light.
I’m not sure what else to say, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned here, it’s that people are always happy to point out areas that are lacking in both information and depth. Hope to see y’all around and I’m looking forward to exploring various things with awesome folk.