SpectrumDT

• SpectrumDTMay 13, 2024, 5:59 PM

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  on: On green

  I found the opening parts quite interesting.

  I found your usage of the terms yin and yang confusing. Skimming the Wikipedia article about it did not help. In my opinion it would help if you would lead with a link to an article that explains yin and yang in the sense you use them and in a relatively concise way. (If such an article exists. If it does not, you might want to consider writing it.)

  Likewise the term God. You seem to be using it to refer to something ineffable that you cannot describe adequately. It was not obvious to me that this concept was coherent.

  EDIT: The article about yin/​yang that I was hoping for appears to be the one about deep atheism which you did in fact link to: https://​​joecarlsmith.com/​​2024/​​01/​​04/​​deep-atheism-and-ai-risk

• SpectrumDTMay 13, 2024, 2:04 PM

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  on: Rest in motion

  You seem to assume as a matter of course that boredom equals suffering.

  Buddhists will say that it is possible to learn to stop craving constant stimulation, such that you will no longer suffer when bored.

  Buddhists will agree that you should not take damage from moving or working, but I think Buddhists will also say that you should not take damage from being idle.

  (I am not a Buddhist, but I practice Buddhist-inspired meditation and other practices, and so far it taught me to take less damage from work and boredom alike.)

• SpectrumDTMay 3, 2024, 9:06 AM

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  on: EA Ve­gan Ad­vo­cacy is not truth­seek­ing, and it’s ev­ery­one’s problem

  Originally I felt happy about these, because “mostly agreeing” is an unusually positive outcome for that opening. But these discussions are grueling. It is hard to express kindness and curiosity towards someone yelling at you for a position you explicitly disclaimed. Any one of these stories would be a success but en masse they amount to a huge tax on saying anything about veganism, which is already quite labor intensive.

  The discussions could still be worth it if it changed the arguer’s mind, or at least how they approached the next argument. But I don’t get the sense that’s what happens. Neither of us have changed our minds about anything, and I think they’re just as likely to start a similar fight the next week.

  May I ask what your motivation was when you decided to spend your time on the aforementioned discussions? Were you hoping to learn something or to persuade the other, or both?

  It sounds to me as though the solution here is to be more cautious before spending time arguing. Sometimes (often) it is IMO wiser to cut your losses and stop replying.

• SpectrumDTApr 18, 2024, 12:56 PM

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  in reply to: Anthony Skyba’s comment on: Work­ing your­self ragged is not a virtue

  What have you tried?

  In my experience, meditation works wonders to improve focus. Some people might recommend exercise as a way to improve energy. (Meditation and exercise also takes time, of course.)

[Question] Things can be difficult in 3 ways: Pain­ful, time-con­sum­ing, or un­con­trol­lable. Is this rea­son­able to say?

• SpectrumDTFeb 9, 2024, 9:59 AM

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  in reply to: Raghuvar Nadig’s comment on: How to deal with the sense of de­mo­ti­va­tion that comes from think­ing about de­ter­minism?

  Hm. This might be a valid point. Thanks.

• SpectrumDTFeb 9, 2024, 9:57 AM

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  in reply to: Raghuvar Nadig’s comment on: How to deal with the sense of de­mo­ti­va­tion that comes from think­ing about de­ter­minism?

  Hm. This might be a valid point. Thanks.

• SpectrumDTFeb 8, 2024, 2:16 PM

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  in reply to: PhilosophicalSoul’s comment on: How to deal with the sense of de­mo­ti­va­tion that comes from think­ing about de­ter­minism?

  Huh. This is an interesting read. Your mind seems to work in a very different way than mine.

  Have you read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes? I have not read the whole thing, but I have read summaries of it, and your description reminds me of it. :)

• SpectrumDTFeb 8, 2024, 12:05 PM

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  in reply to: PhilosophicalSoul’s comment on: How to deal with the sense of de­mo­ti­va­tion that comes from think­ing about de­ter­minism?

  Do you do painful things with no reward in the near future?

  For example, do you exercise even if you don’t want to? (Here I am assuming that you hate exercise like I do. If you enjoy exercise, this question is not really relevant.)

  Do you refrain from eating tasty but unhealthy food?

  If so, how do you motivate yourself?

• SpectrumDTFeb 8, 2024, 12:01 PM

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  in reply to: Carpenaprec’s comment on: How to deal with the sense of de­mo­ti­va­tion that comes from think­ing about de­ter­minism?

  Thanks for the links. I will look at those.

  You seem to be one of the relatively few people who have some understanding of my problem.

  Demotivation is only a problem when it comes to tasks that I do not want to do—typically because there is a great delay between the action and the reward. It is easy to motivate myself to eat breakfast because it is an easy task with a swift reward. It is much harder to motivate myself to exercise, for example, because it is a painful task with no reward in the near future.

• SpectrumDTFeb 8, 2024, 11:50 AM

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  in reply to: Ape in the coat’s comment on: How to deal with the sense of de­mo­ti­va­tion that comes from think­ing about de­ter­minism?

  “I” control my choices in a sense, but this “I” is deterministic.

  And I am not making any particular distinction between small and large events. Suppose I am hesitating over whether or not to eat a piece of cake. One part of me wants the cake; another part of me wants to skip the cake for the sake of my future health.

  The part of me that wants the cake will use this argument: “Eat the cake. In the end, it’s predetermined whether you’re going to eat the cake or not. So you might as well take the path of least resistance. Why struggle and go through hardship? You’ll always end up doing the one and only thing you can do anyway. If you ingest more sugar than what would be optimal, then it’s because you were always predetermined to ingest that sugar. Do what feels nice.”

  I find this hard to refute.

• SpectrumDTFeb 8, 2024, 11:17 AM

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  in reply to: blhayk’s comment on: How to deal with the sense of de­mo­ti­va­tion that comes from think­ing about de­ter­minism?

  In the end, it comes down to being able to train yourself to purposefully pick and choose the aspects of life you choose to judge with fierce rationality and the aspects in which you allow a little leeway… or maybe just tweaking your definition of rationality as a whole to maximize long-term happiness.

  Can you say something about how you did this?

• SpectrumDTFeb 8, 2024, 11:14 AM

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  in reply to: Raghuvar Nadig’s comment on: How to deal with the sense of de­mo­ti­va­tion that comes from think­ing about de­ter­minism?

  A practical exercise I like is asking “If I had to bring myself to face the most ‘makes me feel bad about myself’ cause of my demotivation, what would it be?”.

  Could you please explain that again? This sounds like it could be useful, but I don’t completely understand it.

[Question] How to deal with the sense of de­mo­ti­va­tion that comes from think­ing about de­ter­minism?

• SpectrumDTJan 9, 2024, 1:28 PM

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  in reply to: Slimepriestess’s comment on: How effec­tive are tul­pas?

  Thanks!

• SpectrumDTDec 21, 2023, 10:50 AM

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  in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: The Hard Work of Trans­la­tion (Bud­dhism)

  I don’t agree that the solution to it is to shut up and go practice more. Or rather, it may help the individual who makes that choice, but it doesn’t help the community in general. It just means that in the absence of that one person, the other people will shift their philosophizing to other topics.

  A good example of evaporative cooling. :)

  https://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​posts/​​ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/​​evaporative-cooling-of-group-beliefs

• SpectrumDTDec 21, 2023, 10:42 AM

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  in reply to: snarles’s comment on: The Hard Work of Trans­la­tion (Bud­dhism)

  The truths of General Relativity cannot be conveyed in conventional language. But does one have to study the underlying mathematics before evaluating its claims?

  General Relativity makes testable predictions. Conversely, whenever I hear descriptions of “nonduality”, it is not at all clear that these claims make any predictions at all. Most statements I have heard about nonduality seem like non-statements with no ramifications. But I might be wrong.

  You do bring up one example of a potentially testable prediction of nonduality:

  A consequence of the statement “we are all One” is that we should be able to experience this unity. If there exist people who experience this as a reality (and not just as an altered state,) they should be able to detect the thoughts and feelings of others around them.

  Why merely “others around them”? If “we are all One”, I would think it should also be possible to detect the thoughts and feelings of people on the other side of the Earth.

  What links here?

  • Said Achmiz's comment on The Hard Work of Trans­la­tion (Bud­dhism) by romeostevensit (Dec 21, 2023, 5:33 PM; 2 points)

• SpectrumDTDec 21, 2023, 10:30 AM

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  in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: The Hard Work of Trans­la­tion (Bud­dhism)

  > The truths of General Relativity cannot be conveyed in conventional language. But does one have to study the underlying mathematics before evaluating its claims?

  Yes. Of course you do.

  I was surprised to hear this from you. In other threads you have seemed rather quick to dismiss mystical claims without trying to master the underlying “language”.

• SpectrumDTDec 20, 2023, 1:30 PM

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  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: The Hard Work of Trans­la­tion (Bud­dhism)

  Neat! Could you elaborate on what the person in question “used” the idea of the Trinity for?

• SpectrumDTDec 20, 2023, 1:26 PM

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  in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: The Hard Work of Trans­la­tion (Bud­dhism)

  Your link has since rotted. But I found this other article which also paraphrases Batchelor’s paraphrase of the parable: https://​​thebuddhistcentre.com/​​westernbuddhistreview/​​does-it-float-stephen-batchelors-secular-buddhism

  It references Batchelor’s book Secular Buddhism.