Retweeted @GwendolynHuot
@themarcusnewton @cosimia_ I am reminded of this! youtu.be/jI3LIqinSto
October 2019
proxyocracy
you can play to win but and you might win, but ultimately you can't actually win what you want
(insight from a dream a few months ago, just found in a journal. relates to Finite & Infinite Games, and #GameB)
@themarcusnewton @antonjw Resonating with the lack of transition strategy—some of us are working actively on this. The idea of "jump straight in" seems to me to imply someone could install the new Cultural OS instantly, without growing pains... which in my exp are plentiful.
@themarcusnewton @antonjw But yeah, the other thing is that we ARE still in the transition phase—there aren't (m)any full-on #GameB contexts, mostly just muddle puddles and learning contexts.
@themarcusnewton @antonjw So learning this new culture is a bootstrapping challenge! Usually, one learns a culture from immersion, but if a culture doesnt exist yet, who can we learn it from? How can we learn to model it for others? How can we learn to consciously choose what in others is the new thing?
(This term popped into mind while reading an article that was talking about "meritocracy"—but without putting it in scarequotes, as if it was just actually based on some real thing called merit as opposed to terrible proxies for a bunch of nebulous stuff.)
Take that, behaviorism.
Wtf twitter. Four tweets in a row from people I don't follow. (Many of them I used to follow.) Guess it's back to using realtwitter.com.
Wait it seems realtwitter.com works differently now. Ahh, gotta sort by Latest, which I think it used to do, but now it defaults to Top.
@hunchandblunder POJO without an object.
Retweeted @sonyasupposedly
@danlistensto I mean it in a grander sense — e.g. human nature is "phenotypically" (so to speak) different depending o…
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
Saw an excellent infinity dodecahedron with @Malcolm_Ocean at #LumenFestival in Waterloo this past weekend! Dodecahedro…
@SarahAMcManus @algekalipso Yes. We are still trying to figure out how the moon was, briefly, in front of this building.
"There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe." 👁️ —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
@jondubin @QiaochuYuan @Conaw @HareeshWallis Wrote a LW comment. It doesn't have much more than this twitter thread, but it's a bit more fleshed out! lesswrong.com/posts/HbXXd2gi…
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
I found the fear of death hiding under the fear of suffering hiding under the fear of powerlessness hiding under the fea…
@themarcusnewton @antonjw *recognize, not choose. (That tweet got a lot of edits to fit 280 chars)
Retweeted @cognazor
Today I appreciate @Malcolm_Ocean. Enthusiastic wizard of all things social/productivity/happiness tech, flow engineering, co…
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
“If somebody describes the world of the mid-21st century to you and it sounds like science fiction, it is probably false…
Retweeted @webdevMason
We're providing unhinged, violent people a formula for getting their names spoken, their faces seen and their manifestos r…
Retweeted @AllOfTapenade
the way to angry enlightenment is via temper tantra
@alexito4 @Conaw Yeah if you haven't checked out @Conaw's app roamresearch.com it's almost exactly the thing you're asking for there... and more! And really well-implemented.
@matteoballero @fortelabs @iPhone_PS Yeah, if you really want to know (and not just support some claim for some other reason) then ask not just "can I find lots of evidence for this?" but "if I genuinely try to find evidence against, do I fail?"
@david_perell > Zero communication with alumni to solicit feedback after graduation. Ugh. But plenty to solicit $$$$.
Replying to @alt_visa
@alt_visa Huh, my response reading the announcement post was a non-ironic "this sounds like a cool idea". Odds are it'll be impossible to pull off well, but it seems worth trying!
@mattparlmer I'm kinda with you, but then I'm like uhhhhhhh Quebec? Although I guess if there were open borders between US & Canada, then the Maritime provinces would still be connected to Ontario etc via Maine+New Hampshire+Vermont+NewYork.
@QiaochuYuan @diviacaroline (This is in excellent stereo 🔊💯 anyone listening on phone or laptop speakers needs to switch to headphones or something wider.) (Since we're talking about it: I always thought Nickelback was... adequate? and liked a couple of their songs 🤷)
@QiaochuYuan @diviacaroline Also I remember finding this video profound when it came out. youtube.com/watch?v=jPc-o-…
@QiaochuYuan @mengwong "Outwit everyone. Control situations more. Manipulate the world."
@TheAnnaGat @gmws82 and I are starting to collaborate on @CompliceGoals stuff, and we made a slack but are discovering that we basically want to just use @conaw's roamresearch.com for everything (...except like, specifically pinging each other to schedule something)
@TheAnnaGat @gmws82 @CompliceGoals @Conaw Starting to feel into the differences between: - "I need to tell you this right now" - "I need you to know this eventually" - "I'm thinking out loud about this" - "let's think about this together"
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@TheAnnaGat @gmws82 @CompliceGoals @Conaw Starting to feel into the differences between: - "I need to tell you this righ…
@alexeyguzey What you're writing about here connects strongly to Iain McGilchrist's brain hemisphere model I've been really excited about this year. There's a short cheap ebook by McGilchrist on this, that's also a decent intro to the model itself! link: amzn.to/3169PQv
Retweeted @alexeyguzey
New post: Why We Likely Underappreciate The Pace of Technological Progress guzey.com/why-we-underap…
"We move under covers and we move as one" 😉 #HamiltonFlirts
@AHQuin94 @alexeyguzey I don't think he makes concrete or specific suggestions, but the abstract one would be: "stop looking for meaning via controlling the world"
Retweeted @visakanv
@fortelabs @vgr Somebody painstakingly fills in an entire questionnaire & waits in excitement for the Fedex guy. His box is…
@Timber_22 Riffing on this, I continue to be profoundly baffled by any line of reasoning that goes from [Divine] → [this entire book is true]. Whether it's Anselm's ontological argument or meditation- or drug-induced insight, the jump from "yes, God" to a *specific* text... what?
@Timber_22 I guess atheists were busy arguing "no, not God" and agnostics were busy doing other things with their lives, and the net effect was nobody bothering to point out the absurdity of this?
Replying to @ryn__x
@context_ing @xuenay speculates that this comes from years spent in school: > In that environment, every minute that passes means winning. Every minute takes you a bit closer to being out of there. That’s the real goal: getting out so you can finally do something fun. kajsotala.fi/2019/06/waitin…
@Timber_22 Whoa whoa whoa, hold your beverage that has GOD at the bottom?
@Timber_22 Aahhh fuck too late. Welp, time to get a new universe.
@Timber_22 Nope! Well, not directly. The first speaker in the original quote was me, and my thoughts on regret are partially inspired by one of his workshops:
@Timber_22 Like I'm genuinely confused that this has ever seemed like a reasonable line of thinking to anyone who was genuinely trying. Motivated reasoning? Or maybe Anselm had his doubts about the Bible too, but just didn't mention them because politics.
Retweeted @Timber_22
@Malcolm_Ocean Genuinely don't know. My answer is: Something something mythopoetics, something something misplaced concre…
Retweeted @austinlparker
you think you test in prod, but do you test in prod like Boeing used to?
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
@meditationstuff this is really fucking good and i am gonna need to reflect on it
Retweeted @webdevMason
I really really want to do an event at the chapel that's literally just a 3rd grade egg drop (you attempt to construct a p…
@kacperwikiel @david_perell I don't believe in "regular people" but I've enjoyed multiple 14h+ workdays in a row (drug-free) when it was something I was excited to work on with good feedback loops (coding complice.co). Major diff working for oneself vs others!
@Timber_22 @jondubin *leans over to bookshelf* Just one, p447. Doesn't even explicitly make a connection to hemispheres, just quotes him talking about curved & straight lines!
@Timber_22 @jondubin In any case yes, I read someone's summary (Corey Breier maybe? Ah yes) of The Alphabet Versus the Goddess and I was like "whoa!" and ordered a copy but turns out my house's library (~5500 books) already had it. Haven't yet read though! medium.com/coreybreier-co…
@drethelin Toothpicks are just a bit more standardized... Fire as a tool, though again we make it differently... and maybe a roasting stick! Drums & simple flutes... I like this question!
Retweeted @drethelin
What are the oldest tools still in use today, largely unchanged? We still use axes and hammers but they're quite different f…
...in *this* ecology?
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Struts in this silly walk from day to day
@ssica3003 Haven't done this as an extended thing, but noticed since childhood that when I close my eyes I see something that I can best describe as grocery-store-aisles that are also made of neon-green-on-black spinning gears. Similar geometry to this, though not nearly as psychedelic:
Retweeted @ssica3003
New post on Theory Engine: Contemplative Practice That Isn't Meditating theoryengine.org/life/contempla…
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
this is an amazing metaphor for *something* twitter.com/ftrain/status/…
@Meaningness Very related:
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
anyway everyone should read Unlocking the Emotional Brain, and by everyone i mean people who know that they have patterns…
@QiaochuYuan Everyone should read Unlocking the Emotional Brain* *Unless you already have heard of it and considered it and have a reason for not reading it 😉
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
NIHILISM: It's no excuse for a lifting injury! (Based on a true story!)
Replying to @ryn__x
@context_ing @alexeyguzey Yeah it's a great intro! Weird that it costs $15+ since it's so short. I ended up leaving my copy at @MonasticAcademy
@Conaw I want all papers to be published on roam with the citations are all linky.
Replying to @gordonbrander
@gordonbrander @rsnous "as" as the "is" of metasystematic thinking
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@gordonbrander @rsnous "as" as the "is" of metasystematic thinking
I think if I were @AndrewYang and @PeteButtigieg we would sit down together and record a bunch of less debatey, less snarky, more collaborative conversations about how to do USA policy.
Before I even tweeted that I realized that it would result in a bunch of amazingly nuanced takes that would sound awful out of context. Fuck.
I tweeted this take after seeing people tweet about the dem debates but before actually watching them. They're actually not nearly as awful as I thought! I might even go so far as to say I feel encouraged.
@diegocaleiro Now I'm watching the Canadian leader debate and they're constantly talking over each other and sometimes name-calling each other and I'm realizing that that's what I grew up with, and I was encouraged not to see it. But I guess that was being enforced by CNN? Hm.
@diegocaleiro Although actually there is something that is fresh about the quips going back and forth between them, so fuck man idk.
Trying to watch the Canadian debates and they're so tropey (which is game-theoretically predictable due to multiparty FPTP electoral system). NDP to LPC: "you failed to meet your inadequate climate targets" LPC: "yeah but the CPC will be even worse" CPC: "we'll cut your taxes!"
Oh man see Yang is kinda thinking in this direction. I still think having a discussion would be awesome. Show people constructive & creative disagreement, where people go "huh I hadn't thought of that".
Retweeted @VincentHorn
"I think my 3rd ball just dropped." - @OortCloudAtlas
Weird take on the Canadian #elxn43: nobody's going to get a majority. Elizabeth May & Jagmeet Singh have way higher approval ratings than Trudeau & Scheer. ∴ Best outcome for Canadians? Coalition—with @theJagmeetSingh as Prime Minister! (Even if Libs get more votes!)
My case here is somewhat undermined by the fact that "job approval" is polled separately from "best Prime Minister", and though Singh is surging there, Trudeau & Scheer are still higher. Surely this is intertwingled with sense of "can get elected" though...
@visakanv buzzy? I assume you're not satisfied with
@themarcusnewton Non.
On further-further reflection, I think that actually the better version of my proposal is: 1. do it months ago, well before main debates & before platforms are even 100% (to avoid been seen as indecisive, as dumb as this is)
2. Talk for many hours and edit it down to stuff that *DOES* make good soundbites, but *ALSO* demonstrates nuance & capacity for constructive disagreement.
3. While I'm being idealistic here, I'm going to suggest that the candidates also create a document that summarizes the structure of their perspectives, both common & different. And of course now I have to tag @Conaw again.
@michael_nielsen @uncatherio Yeah, I think there's something important here about distinguishing between a self-assessment of "I don't feel well-suited to this task/project" vs "I fear I am incapable compared to others." Also a diff in tone between "I don't get it" & "I have lots of learning to do here!"
@michael_nielsen @uncatherio I'm realizing that my technical career has been mostly working on my own building complice.co, and that I've spent a lot of it going "idk wtf I'm doing" but then 🤷♀️okay, learn it. No coworkers to answer my Qs, but also I'm the most competent person in the company 🤣
Retweeted @patrissimo
"It was a minimal viable product. If seasteaders can build a single family seastead for less than an average American home,…
@michael_nielsen @uncatherio Apparently this made me quite comfortable with what I know & don't know, in the context of Complice... I've recently been introducing someone else to the codebase, and finding myself saying things like "oh yeah, that file is awful... I wrote it 3 years ago before I understood X."
@mattgoldenberg Ooh I like where you're going with this. Although I'm surprised to see Focusing & Bio-Emotive on the left... neither has a particularly partsy feel to me!
@mattgoldenberg (Like you *can* do them with parts, and I guess Ann Weiser-Cornell emphasizes that more in Focusing than Gendlin did) There's also a question of if you want to distinguish between things that temporarily separate to integrate, vs things that *create* separation...
@danlistensto @Aelkus Data:
@danlistensto @Aelkus I was musing as I fell asleep last night something like "where, if anywhere, did we go off the rails?" Not from a regret place but like, just recognizing that a lot of the mess right now has a lot of momentum, and wondering like, what were eg the policies in the last 50 years...
@danlistensto @Aelkus ...that created that mess, or the policies that were never implemented, that if they *had* been implemented might have shifted the trajectory somewhat somehow. Something something economic incentives... Of course, the practical question is "what are those leverage points now?"
@danlistensto @Aelkus I would be very curious to know them, and also very understanding if you preferred to keep them private, given the aforementioned mess 🙃
@danlistensto @Aelkus In particular, I want to acknowledge that there are overton windows and zeitgeists and lots of structural reasons why things stay stuck. And yet in any era, some people understand things others don't. Who needed to talk to who, but didn't, in the 50s, 60, 70s, 80s, 90s...?
so cool I don't even need to countersignal
@mattgoldenberg Seems that some sutric practices create separation... <insert embed here, I need to sleep> (embed to what? maybe one of @_awbery_'s tweets or blog posts, talking about TMI)
In the months since I wrote this tweetstorm, roamresearch.com has gone from "cool proof-of-concept" to "thrilling workable system". Currently experimenting with importing an ebook and interlinking it in exactly the way I describe I want to in this thread.
Thread · Features I want in ebook readers and reading apps · 1 of 16 tweets
Update:
Retweeted @Aella_Girl
Ok: My idea of philosophy, or whatever word you want to use that matches this concept, is some category of thinking that as…
Retweeted @jameswjesso
@Malcolm_Ocean I suspect you (and you following) will appreciate this one. mind-crush.com/2019/06/commit…
@ssica3003 @QiaochuYuan @danlistensto @Aelkus I read this article today and it's relevant to this whole situation on a different level of abstraction: > I have to be willing to experience the pain of loss simultaneously with the joy of a connection still in flight.
@jameswjesso Wow yeah this is awesome. Had it saved since you sent it and finally got around to reading it. It's going to be a major link I share with people now. It pairs nicely with The Anatomy of Relationships, which lists over a dozen dimensions of intimacy: intimacycartography.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/the…
@_awbery_ @mattgoldenberg right back @ ya 🙃
@_awbery_ @mattgoldenberg And, importantly, the first ngöndros for tantra or dzogchen are oriented towards learning emptiness but without creating this separation, yeah?
Retweeted @spearofsolomon
@Malcolm_Ocean @ssica3003 @QiaochuYuan @danlistensto @Aelkus We have very little ability to cultivate a sense of "hey,…
@_awbery_ @mattgoldenberg I'm enjoying the "adopt" metaphor here: Take the kid on as 100% completely absolutely under your care with all of the same meaningfulness and significance as your biological kid... ...and don't assume they'll share your blood type & hair color.
@QiaochuYuan @diviacaroline Wait actually no, I was on stereo speakers before, and now I'm trying headphones... and it's a whole different weird experience when literally you have a different song in each ear and somehow it works. Something something binaural beats.
@QiaochuYuan @diviacaroline Another thing just occurred to me. I think I basically only knew like 4-5 Nickelback songs, so I didn't know how repetitive they all were. (though I just realized maybe I heard a dozen others on the radio and didn't realize they were different 🤣)
@diviacaroline @QiaochuYuan So taking that in, I have a different sort of appreciation for like, how it's not cool to be a Nickelback *fan*, and this is different from saying that it's not cool to enjoy a Nickelback song? 🤔 Although also like 🤷♀️
Thread · Federations, confederations, and unitary states
#ShowerThoughts: how many of the ~200 "countries" are like the USA and Canada, where by "like the USA and Canada" I mean "have subjurisdictions with a fair bit of their own sovereignty/responsibility for things like driver's license, health care, taxes, alcohol, registration..."
While tweeting this suddenly my brain actually supplied the relevant keyword! "Federation" And with that keyword, wikipedia was happy to provide me with this map: 💙 unitary states 💚 federations
But then I found this image, and now I have all sorts of other questions! Like "what's the difference between federalism and confederalism?"
...ahh, it seems that a confederation is a semi-unified body but each state still also exercises its own foreign policy. This was initially confusing as a Canadian because Canada is a federation in modern terms, but our founding is known as "Confederation".
(There aren't any technical confederations as present... wikipedia says the EU is apparently the closest thing we have to this, but it's politically sensitive to talk about.) ...okay, not sure exactly what to do with all of this, but I guess I learned things today!
If you're reading this and you're Canadian, don't forget to vote on Monday. #elxn43 🍁 You have my sincere grief yet understanding if you decide to strategic vote rather than voting for the party you prefer. ❤️
@visakanv @rothosphere @_Srijit @QiaochuYuan This is AMAZING. See this is sort of shit is why I back @visakanv on Patreon. patreon.com/visakanv/posts
@WilliamAEden Is there a difference between countercountersignalling and just signalling...
@The_Lagrangian @Meaningness This article? buddhism-for-vampires.com/hunting-the-sh…
@The_Lagrangian @Meaningness Oh man if you're loving Spectrum of Ecstasy, I highly recommend checking out Iain McGilchrist's brain hemisphere model, eg in his book The Master and His Emissary (linked in this thread).
@The_Lagrangian @Meaningness (I've been meaning for awhile to update that thread with excerpts from McGilchrist to highlight the parallels, but haven't gotten to it yet!)
@The_Lagrangian @Meaningness For now, I think this thread will give you a taste of the resonance:
Retweeted @kmac
The IPCC 1.5C special report says the speed of change needed to pursue 1.5C is not unprecedented. Only the scale. …
@yes_marcin @QiaochuYuan @visabrain This one.
@QiaochuYuan @visabrain @yes_marcin @cameronconcarne Oh man it looks like the someone was @HuanWin and that it's actually being picked up by other people! See this search: twitter.com/search?q=stran…
@The_Lagrangian @Meaningness Why? Because for years the models were bad? McGilchrist acknowledges this. The existence of alchemy doesn't preclude the possibility of chemistry.
@The_Lagrangian @Meaningness Hm, my previous tweet was defensive. Your skepticism is broadly warranted. Just wanting to note that McGilchrist is on the same page about existing models being misleading. The preface to the new expanded edition of The Master and his Emissary highlights that:
@emareaf Yep. It's not the content, it's the way of relating to it. It's not the content even when the content seems really really relevant somehow.
Thread · Why validity shouldn't depend on having a category
I saw a tweetstorm (that I'm not going to QT because it would read as dumping on them & undermining their point) that was naming a dozen subtly different sexual identities and saying each is valid. I actually want to amplify the part of their point that's: "your exp is valid!"
What I want to push back against is the implied ontology of the tweet, that is "we have a list of the valid categories and you know you're valid because you have a category and it's in this list (or we would add it to the list if you gave it a name)"
To be clear, it makes sense to me that marginalized groups do this, as mainstream cultures require legibility for validity. And in that context, the tweetstorm I just read makes strategic sense! My aim is to highlight to that *the fact that this is necessary* is symptomatic...
...of a larger situation that forces categories on everything.
@ssica3003 has a great post explicitly talking about this in the context of sexuality, and describing how something as seemingly-simple as bisexuality actually busts categorical ontologies much harder than you'd expect: theoryengine.org/bisexuality/th…
In short: nobody's experience is invalid, and you don't need a category to justify that. However, categories can still be very helpful, for meeting like-minded people and learning about yourself from their experiences, or for grokking differences:
@AgnesCallard Very related:
@chriswaterguy Yeah, things seem to sometimes follow a progression like this: 1st: it's a moral failing 2nd: it's a disease 3rd: it's innate ∴ natural ∴ must be accepted 4th: maybe it's actually partially a response to cultural factors, but also it's still okay
@chriswaterguy (Addiction/alcoholism has gone / is going through a similar transition, except it's more like: 1st: it's a moral failing 2nd: it's a disease 3rd: it's a learning challenge that occurs mostly due to cultural factors / lack of psychosocial integration )
Retweeted @AdeleDeweyLopez
as a really basic example, consider a thermostat part of it has a proto-intention to make it cold part of it has a pr…
Retweeted @AdeleDeweyLopez
i don't want my intentions to be a jumbled mess like they are now, but i'm starting to understand i don't want them to…
@rjgoodin @Puglaas Here's my headcanon:
@rjgoodin Totally unlikely. Part of me is really grappling with like... it seems to me like the... correct? thing for the progressives to do if CPC gets non-majority plurality of seats is to form a coalition. But Libs may refuse to do so, picking partisanship over caring for Canadians.🤮
Retweeted @visabrain
Quote-tweeting your enemies only makes them more powerful.
@chriswaterguy Relatedly, I'm reading an extensive article on psychopathy right now, and it's grappling with similar questions... and what to do about them. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
@chriswaterguy Source: @danlistensto & @QiaochuYuan, in this thread: twitter.com/danlistensto/s…
@danlistensto @QiaochuYuan > [11yo] Samantha knows that her thoughts about hurting people are wrong, & tries to suppress them. But the cognitive training cannot always compete. Resonates heavily with the contrast between regulation & transformation, in Unlocking the Emotional Brain
@alexeyguzey this is basically polyphasic, no?
@yashkaf Tried it, it worked well in many was, and also had lots of unwanted side effects. Not sure what to answer. If people ask me these days about going to a CFAR workshop I neither encourage nor discourage them. The community (not RSI) used to be main benefit but has been lurching.
So guys @Macleans has an ultra-chill video stream where they're colouring in the election results with marker on a wall-sized map of Canada. No talking, just marker sounds. Somehow this feels like the most 2019 thing. youtu.be/rw92rsSHl7s
Retweeted @Aella_Girl
THREAD: I wonder how much of our social issues are caused, at the root, by a growing (is it growing or just more visible no…
@Aella_Girl Yeah, suffering is approximately "this shouldn't be happening"—often about something painful but needn't be. I think people want meaning, more than they want to not be in pain. But these get conflated, and "pain" synonymous for "this shouldn't be happening" ...or something.
all roads lead to Roam roamresearch.com
How many of your friends' or family members' email addresses do you have memorized? (confidently enough to use without checking an address book) (Coworkers don't count if you just know they're all gonna be name@companydomain.com or something like that.)
@Aella_Girl That horse/zebra mashup is hilarious. Part of what's hilarious about it is that while it's usually depicted as half-striped, it looks like all we have are fossils, so this is literally just a popular headcanon, probably fictional. Sometimes front shown striped, sometimes back:
@fortelabs Dunno about "best" but I learned a lot about world geography and world history by playing Rise of Nations: Thrones and Patriots. Legit knew almost nothing about the Cold War, the Napoleonic War, or Alexander the Great, before that, and now have a hazy but familiar sense of each.
Replying to @EvanSandhoefner
@EvanSandhoefner @Aella_Girl (I also checked this 🤣)
@knrz_ It has two-way linking, so you can see what's linked to what else, and where different pages are talking about the same topic. I haven't actually imported all of my stuff there yet but I can sense a kind of convergence, hence my tweet.
@QiaochuYuan @yashkaf @Aella_Girl Yes. And as with any choice, one must ask "well, what were my other options?" (Which relates to my answer)
@eriktorenberg Friendly Favors (favors.org) is an attempt in this direction (building a local favor economy) but hasn't upgraded in a decade. I think there's lots of room for stuff to make more legible the flows of value that don't have $ (or BTC) attached.
@eriktorenberg Which reminds me! I recently heard about valueflo.ws, which is not quite an app but is > a set of common vocabularies to describe flows of economic resources of all kinds within distributed economic ecosystems.
Retweeted @eriktorenberg
What does substack / patreon for communities look like? Who's building the pipes for all these membership based communi…
"kind of like... a metamodern baboon vestibule" —me, just now, in a totally serious conversation #OutOfContext
#PoliticalPartyIWishExisted [ Complex Systems Party ] "We don't know how to do this!"
(It would be cool to have a lawn sign meme generator for hypothetical party names/slogans...)
Scientists have trained rats to drive tiny cars and find they are less stressed when they drive themselves than when passengers in remote-controlled cars. inb4 self-driving car opponents cite this then @ConceptualJames has to respond with @justsaysinmice twitter.com/IssamAhmed/sta…
@tasshinfogleman If it had been your "i" key I would have assumed this was a metaphor for ego death or something... 😂
Retweeted @CompliceGoals
Complice has been working with @FalkLieder on a system to allow people to do scientific experiments on what makes people…
Somehow when my bluetooth earbuds are connected to my linux laptop, media won't play. Not "it plays but I can't hear it". It stops and doesn't tick. Not just built-in media players. YouTube too. It was working fine up until yesterday. Just rebooted too.
@drossbucket @everytstudies From my perspective this seems clear it has something to do with brain hemispheres. I'm not exactly sure what, aside from the left hemisphere being the seat of decoupling and the right hemisphere being the seat of context-awareness.
@drossbucket @everytstudies This is coming out of a ton of recent reading of Iain McGilchrist's new brain hemisphere model, which is emphatically *not* just a rerun of old misguided models.
@drossbucket @everytstudies @QiaochuYuan noted something similar:
@drossbucket @everytstudies @QiaochuYuan I think both of you (@everytstudies & @drossbucket) would get a lot out of checking out McGilchrist's work, whether his book, this podcast metalearn.net/podcasts/ml41-…, or wandering around my various tweetstorms on the topic:
@drossbucket @QiaochuYuan Loool see this is what I get for tweeting before I've read my notifications. Crossed threads 🤣
Retweeted @drossbucket
🍌☎️: new post tracing back the origins of the 'cognitive decoupling' idea to a 1987 paper on pretending that a banana is a…
@AdeleDeweyLopez @QiaochuYuan @DavidDeutschOxf Animals get trauma but as far as I've heard they mostly don't get ~PTSD in the wild... and mostly when we say "I have trauma" what we actually mean is "I have unprocessed trauma" (~=PTSD) Random tweet that is pointing at the thing I've heard re animals:
@QiaochuYuan @AdeleDeweyLopez @DavidDeutschOxf @DougTataryn Yeah, QC's summary here basically matches my sense. And you can see how this is a stable attractor in memetic evolution space. The attractor in which memes approximately don't evolve is one in which people can't innovate.
@QiaochuYuan @AdeleDeweyLopez @DavidDeutschOxf @DougTataryn Worth reading David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity for the details on this, or this other book that talks about more of the biology & coevolution of human memes, and how early culture knew more than its people so innovating was not an adaptive move.
@QiaochuYuan @AdeleDeweyLopez @DavidDeutschOxf Yeah we need better ontologies for all of this stuff. @fortelabs seems to be hopping on the "but what about the huge overlooked levels of baseline trauma tho" train too btw:
@QiaochuYuan @AdeleDeweyLopez @DavidDeutschOxf @fortelabs (Also hi Tiago, welcome to this thread. If reading Bessel van der Kolk prompted you to wonder how the hell we all got so traumatized in the first place and thought it was normal... well, this thread is a sketch at an answer, plus a book reco. Start here👇)
Retweeted @emmalsalinas
A failed nap is a successful meditation
@HarshSikka @briantimar @emmalsalinas
@danlistensto Mmmmmmm nice. You might value reading The Biology of Desire by Marc Lewis, a neuroscientist & a former addict, who interweaves 6 vivid case studies with detailed neuroanatomy. amzn.to/2PjUbPd
@danlistensto That book is where I got this sense of addiction shifting from a disease to a learning challenge:
@danlistensto Gabor Maté is in the same school for sure. While we're talking about it, I also want to tip my hat to Bruce K. Alexander, who did the Rat Park experiments (altho they may have had some replication issues) & popularized psychosocial integration w book Globalization of Addiction
@nosilverv Mmm! Daniel Quinn wrote in Beyond Civilization about how homelessness is effectively illegal. Since that criminality is based nebulously on blaming the homeless, it seems that focusing on the rights of innocent children might a powerful way to approach these situations.
Thread · Trauma, pseudomemories, and capacity for digesting
I once did an emotional processing session starting w: "I feel weird/bad trying to get out of bed" I found my way to expressing a hazy memory: "Nobody woke me up and I missed the pancakes!" ...then I suddenly started sobbing 😭 Traumatic meaning can occur in benign situations.
The meaning I made of this event was apparently something like "Nobody loves me and people will leave me behind when something important is happening and it's not safe to sleep-in but it's also not safe to get up because then I might discover the empty plate and feel awful."
(Technically this was not a memory but what I call a "pseudomemory", because I can't locate it as a single specific autobiographical event in my life, and I'm not going to confidently claim it happened as stated. It was clearly very real to my emotional brain though.)
For years I pushed back against "everyone's got this cultural trauma". And of course some people have more intense histories and/or more present blockage than others, but in the last few years I've come to appreciate that indeed, everyone is traumatized.
That linked tweet and this one are both from a thread talking about how there's a kind of memetic meta-trauma that keeps trauma from being able to be digested & developed:
So I resonate a lot w eg @nosilverv's underlying sentiment here but if expressed as "children have right not to undergo trauma" we're gonna end up with a huge motte-bailey mess. There's no clear lines & the issue isn't trauma but capacity for digesting.
Ofc, many co-morbid Adverse Childhood Experiences ALSO wreck capacity for digesting. However, I think that reifying the idea that "trauma shouldn't happen to you" / "you have a right to not experience trauma" makes it harder, not easier, to digest though.
@Aella_Girl has a really rich & nuanced post grappling with the same sorts of question, around the value of recognizing one's pain, but the way that "trauma" & "abuse" can reinforce a blame frame that blocks healing. knowingless.com/2018/09/21/tra…
Most people have heard of PTSD, but most people haven't heard of PTG: post-traumatic growth. That sometimes adverse experiences, *when* they're able to be digested & integrated, yield powerful learning. PTSD isn't inevitable from trauma.
And of course part of the issue here is we've got one complex and very loaded word "trauma" that we're throwing around to mean a lot of different things. Necessary to a collective sensemaking here is going to be developing better language & concepts.
It's feeling like a rich time to be alive and exploring all of these questions together, and learning. 🎶🎵 I'm your landsailor in the bed that we've made may every nail be shown great lifebringer the price that we've paid time that you made it known youtube.com/watch?v=KysI3r…
@moridinamael @QiaochuYuan @AdeleDeweyLopez @DavidDeutschOxf The *meanings* that are made of the painful experiences are important.
@uberstuber Personally I've noticed a few benefits, depending on methodology. Pomodoro is a kind of time-tracking that also forces *choosing* what to focus on. I've also used something I call duration calibration, that includes estimating time & reflecting on why it took longer than expected
@uberstuber Categorizing Cause has been helpful: • sometimes it's more like an estimation error (pretending the task was simpler than it was) • sometimes a huge unknown snag would hit • and other times it was "taste"—I nearly did it quicker, but then spent 20mins tweaking the formatting
@uberstuber Also taught me about patterns of how estimates go over. Sometimes I've had a dozen things in a row that are pretty accurate, but then something I thought would take 20 minutes takes 3 hours and wham there goes my day. Recently have been trying to re-estimate at upper-bound time.
@uberstuber I have a template here. It's not great but enough to get started with. I'm also looking to build this workflow more into complice.co docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
@nosilverv Yes—all of these! Btw I had already started working on this thread when I saw your tweet & thought I'd weave it in. It talks about how "right to no trauma" may not be a workable level of abstraction.
@uberstuber I think some people also do genuinely encounter surprise to realize how many of their hours per week go towards eating or watching TV/youtube. Or email vs creative work. Obviously on some level they know already, but it's easy to not see how it adds up.
Retweeted @utotranslucence
‘...the nature of power is that it never stays equally distributed, and any attempt to force equality of power itself…
@danlistensto @visakanv This tweet prompted me to start doing a little writing on the topic of opposites... something I've been sitting on for awhile. Here's a wee draft:
@danlistensto @visakanv (The whole concept in my head isn't particularly about math; math just provides the most direct/precise way of pointing at some parts of it, so it was easy to write it up. I'm going to write less mathy stuff before I publish this anywhere, & leave this section collapsed.)
@danlistensto @QiaochuYuan @visakanv He was part of the Singularity cult in 90s before anyone had heard of it but left the "hasten the Singularity" camp to work on AI Safety. Prior to his work, basically everyone was 🤷♂️on it. Given how much AI Safety work remains, AGI-decades-away may still be very soon—start now.
@danlistensto @QiaochuYuan @visakanv I hope to someday share said room, beer, & opinions with you! 🍻
@DellAnnaLuca @NavalBot @naval
@Prigoose Avocado's number guacamole 💯 A near-identical product is now available at many stores in Canada, which is AMAZING. 😋 Also: • Sliced gouda • Dark chocolate peanut butter cups • Dark chocolate cinnamon dough cups
@diviacaroline @Conaw Aha, excellent, here's the set up that this tweet from Tuesday is the punchline for:
@QiaochuYuan @DougTataryn Agreed with Qc on both counts here. Might have to invent new words to talk clearly about this though, either some weird mashup like "unem" (short for Unresolved Emotion) or finding some nice latin root & remixing it. Or ofc a new metaphor, as "trauma" comes from physical trauma.
@QiaochuYuan @DougTataryn "seldu'u" in lojban would be "that which causes emotional distress", could be shortened for english purposes to "seldu"... ...mmm I think metaphor may be a better bet. In any case, I need to sleep.
Excerpts from the intro to Iain McGilchrist's book, The Master and his Emissary, which presents a new model of what's going on with the brain hemispheres.
Thread · AI models behave like left hemispheres
Reading this post by @JanelleCShane and I'm like "oh man, our current ai bots are basically left hemispheres". > "When confused, it tends not to admit it" aiweirdness.com/post/175110257…
To explain what I mean, first I need to be clear that I'm talking about new models of the brain hemispheres, not the old and well-debunked models from the 60s! And I'll share a few of the new findings that are relevant.
Early research on split-brain patients, by Gazzaniga, noticed that the left hemisphere would invent ("confabulate") explanations for things the right hemisphere had done, without any apparent regard to the possibility that it might be missing information (that the RH had).
Building on knowledge that LHem handles speech, Gazzaniga concluded that LH was the "interpreter". Later he realized his answer to "what does each hemisphere do?" was an oversimplification, and abandoned the prospect of a LH/RH model, in favor of ~"100s or 1000s of modules"
This was an improvement, on one level, since his model *was* an oversimplification, but it leaves a question unanswered: why then *are* these modules divided into two very distinct groups, not just in us but in most vertebrates?
And unfortunately, people got so embarrassed about how oversimplified the early hemisphere models were, that for decades it's been unfashionable to research hemisphere models and so most people basically pretend that it's not important. However...
Fortunately, a psychiatrist named Iain McGilchrist has spent 2+ decades working on a new @divided_brain framework, which is less about "what does each hemisphere do?" (functionally) and more about the "how": the personality, attitude & paradigm of each.
McGilchrist talks about how the LHem perceives everything in terms of the known categories it understands, so is remarkably unaware of its own blindspots—both conceptual blindspots and visual blindspots (eg not shaving left side of face)
Coming back to @JanelleCShane's post, there's a clear parallel between current ML developments and how the LH functions. This was boringly obvious when all classifiers could do was categorize things, but now they're attempting to describe scenes & the blindspots are glaring.
To be clear, these classifiers don't appear to even be *attempting* to update their model of the scene based on someone's skepticism of their original description, and I imagine there could be straightforward hacks to train them to do this by tweaking priors etc based on Qs.
...I'm imagining an exchange like: person: "those aren't goats?" visual chatbot: "holy shit wait maybe those are goats!? I've never seen a goat in a tree before..." 🤣 (instead of what we actually see 👇)
But even then, it'd still be thinking purely in known categories. Ppl are researching AI+uncertainty, but there's a diff between in-model uncertainty vs uncert re which model to use. And choosing among finite set of models is still technically model-uncertainty, just up a level.
Bayesian updating requires a fixed ontology & even a fixed collection of hypotheses stated in that ontology, which means it's completely inadequate as an account of how reasoning/learning actually works, since any interesting problem (/life itself) starts w/o adequate ontology!
Relatedly: DeepMind winning at StarCraft is still waaaay closer to Go than to real-world strategy. SC has all known categories. Nobody can invent new units you've never seen, with not just different stats but abilities you can't imagine. The terrain can't be modified/destroyed.
There's an implicit model among many people, particularly computer scientists, that informal thinking is just a poor approximation of formal thinking, as opposed to being able to accomplish things that cannot be done formally, due to limits on certainty
It seems to me that concerns (which I share) about Robust & Beneficial AI are oriented to the apparent impossibility of aligning something with the basic architecture of a LHem... given its native categorical tendency towards goodharting, & the complex nature of real world value.
I think many people who are *not* concerned about AI Safety are unconcerned because they assume that anything intelligent enough to be scary will have the level of non-blindspot-ness & interconnectedness that a human does (with its right hemisphere).
But we need to differentiate 2 things: 1. It may be impossible to build AGI without it also having a more right-hemisphere architecture and that this *may* imply that AI safety for actual AGI won't be as impossible as the corrigibility problem currently seems. (Still very risky!)
2. It may *also* be that it is possible (& likely) to build a very powerful Narrow AI with more of the kind of left-hemisphere-esque architecture of current AI systems, which could totally fuck us up in ways @ESYudkowsky has warned about. (I seem to currently think both 1 & 2.)
This is obviously an oversimplification in many ways, but it at least starts to distinguish things so we can talk about them. Although having serious conversations about it will require shared frameworks for discussing eg brain hemispheres (much morethan this tweetstorm offers!)
If you're wanting to learn more about this new hemisphere model, this podcast is a pretty good place to start. It's just 44 minutes long and touches on a lot of the things I want to include in an intro write-up when I finally make one: metalearn.net/podcasts/ml41-…
If you'd rather read than listen, McGilchrist's book is also excellent. Detailed, well-structured, and well-sourced. Amazon link: amzn.to/2qKnnoo
@nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @DougTataryn Oooh yeah. "We all have lots of things to unlearn" lands very differently than "we're all traumatized". Although... advantages to the latter, too. Emotional (un)learning has major differences from other kinds, it seems.
@RatCritical @DavidDeutschOxf @ToKTeacher @reasonisfun @dchackethal @Crit_Rat Mmm yeah. As I recall from B°Infinity, the Universality thing is talking about a level/type of intelligence at which everything is comprehensible (in principle, given enough working memory & concepts etc). Is that roughly what you're talking about? How does it feel incompatible?
@lobrien @andy_matuschak @noahlt
@nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @DougTataryn Here's me answering a question from someone on the CFAR mailing list, postulating about how emotional unlearning is different than other unlearning:
@ssica3003 Am listening to music right now and was like "I want it to be faster" and I just kinda tried to listen in a way that would make it faster, and it sorta worked, like 20%. Also some success mentally slowing it down. "con-tempo-lative" The song 👇 youtube.com/watch?v=62VASk…
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@ssica3003 Am listening to music right now and was like "I want it to be faster" and I just kinda tried to listen in a w…
@nosilverv ‼️ Source for "Eliezer is a postrat"?
@visakanv what are you most excited about that might happen in the next year: - in your life - in global tech/social development
@nosilverv Ah. That's... disappointing. I'd forgotten that post-rationality is made of nihilism and sarcasm. I'm looking forward to him becoming a meta-rationalist.
@visakanv Yeah this one is funny, it's like, it probably didn't used to be allowed but then at some point they allowed it but it still somehow feels like I shouldn't be able to get away with embedded two things in one tweet.
@nosilverv Oh yeah, I'm clearly somewhere past rationalism, but I don't identify as post-rationalist, nor do I think it's a particularly accurate description. I guess inasmuch as PR does resonate, it's the parts of me that are still reactionary against rationalism.
@JamesClear The fuse was lit on a loaded cannon, and not only did you not see the cannon get loaded, but you didn't see the years of work that went into constructing the cannon and inventing such a device in the first place.
@MSlavin I think this happens without even bad actors, just due to the general tendency of memeplexes to drift toward virality, instead of integrity/coherence/value/meaning. Lots of Qs here, including "how do we make envs where meaningful memes thrive?"
@garybasin @Meaningness @byrneseyeview Huh, fascinating. Curious how this approach for getting pricing curves might generalize into less niche markets...
@MSlavin Also if you (or others interested in this topic) haven't seen @Meaningness' piece on how subcultures evolve (read: devolve) then check it out—it's 2k words talking about this phenomenon. meaningness.com/geeks-mops-soc…
Replying to @peternlimberg
@peternlimberg @whatisemerging @AndrewYang @TulsiGabbard 🙌
@MSlavin David Deutsch has a book called The Beginning of Infinity that talks a lot about selection factors for memetic evolution and about two different attractors in evolutionary space. These attractors roughly map onto #GameA & #GameB!
@dchackethal @RatCritical @DavidDeutschOxf @ToKTeacher @reasonisfun @Crit_Rat I mean, as a Popperian/Deustchian, you would know the value of having a good explanation, that explains a lot and is hard to vary. Most vertebrates have a lateralized brain, which is hardly the most efficient way to organize modules. Do *you* have a good explanation for that?
@dchackethal @RatCritical @DavidDeutschOxf @ToKTeacher @reasonisfun @Crit_Rat Biological evolution absolutely optimizes for energy efficiency, which is what I'm talking about. Speaking of which, while a universal computer can compute anything a simple circuit can, it takes more energy to do so. So again, evolution would select for computing "in hardware".
@dchackethal @RatCritical @DavidDeutschOxf @ToKTeacher @reasonisfun @Crit_Rat So we should expect some of the structure of how the system is set up to be relevant to how it processes information. Properties of chewing gum may be irrelevant, but the structure of the system is not.
@dchackethal @RatCritical @DavidDeutschOxf @ToKTeacher @reasonisfun @Crit_Rat With a computer, if you destroy a chunk of its hardware, one of a few things happens: • eg CPU: it stops working. it is not a computer anymore • eg memory: has lost data/info but is just as "smart" as before • eg cracked screen: it loses some specific interface
@dchackethal @RatCritical @DavidDeutschOxf @ToKTeacher @reasonisfun @Crit_Rat With a human, if you damage a chunk of brain, shit gets WEIRD: • eg they insist their arm isn't paralyzed, even though it is • eg their personality completely changes • eg everything on the left of them doesn't exist, not just visually but someone trying to talk to them (?!)
I'm thinking instead of #NaNoWriMo I might do #NaNoRoaMo where I put 50k nonlinear words into roamresearch.com in a month.
(the "No" in #NaNoWriMo stands for "Novel" but in #NaNoRoaMo it stands for "Nonlinear")
Retweeted @yashkaf
You're having a second child?! If the first kid is not good enough, you should just abandon them. You're just selfish and afra…
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
How many of your friends' or family members' email addresses do you have memorized? (confidently enough to use without…
@miro23 Many collections of words are designed to be read linearly, ie from start to finish. Novels, even more so than eg business books, are written this way. A nonlinear collection of writing is not. eg meaningness.com; has ToC but also designed for jumping around.
Something granted me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the courage to change the things I can. Nobody told me what to do about the things that are a bit of both. New blog post on this 👇 malcolmocean.com/2019/10/the-ch…
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
Broke: Incense the change you wish to see in the world Woke:
@MatjazLeonardis @zarzuelazen @caerwy @dchackethal @DavidDeutschOxf @RatCritical @ToKTeacher @reasonisfun @Crit_Rat Guys, this question isn't gonna be usefully answered or explored here. You all appear to be assuming you know what each other means when you each use words, & that's not a reasonable assumption here. (Which, btw, is hugely related to the original point about brain hemispheres!)
@garybasin @Meaningness @byrneseyeview got DM: "I'm not on Twitter enough to reply there, but I can point out here that this is literally how most of open finance (stock exchanges, not closed-room deals) generates prices daily. (Except that it's usually a double auction, w/ a supply curve as well as a demand curve.)"
@The_Lagrangian Yep, and that's where the juice is—Deep in the intertwinglement!
@_awbery_ @dopaminendreams @cognazor @TellYourSonThis Wait, I'm seeing this again and realizing I want to understand what this Anki card is about. It seems to be different than an ordinary card!
Mmm @Conaw you know about the intertwingularity? (I would totally buy a shirt or sticker with a funky graphic, a link to roamresearch.com, and "The Intertwingularity is Coming" or similar.)
Thread · Two opposing memeplexes: memes that resist change vs memes that invite it · 9 of 13 tweets
@MSlavin Yeah, so basically there are two ways that memes can propagate themselves: 1. they somehow convince people they should propagate them, with complete disregard to the impact of that 2. they are true/valuable, and therefore people want to use & share them
@MSlavin These two ways operate in fundamentally opposed way, because they have different error-correcting mechanisms. For #1, error-correction means "keep meme the same even if you don't understand it" For #2, error-correction means "modify the meme to be better"
@MSlavin Therefore a given memetic host (read: person, group, civilization) will be much more hospitable to one type of memes, so these two types form two large opposing memeplexes—potentially they're THE two largest opposing meta-memeplexes that could possibly exist. 😮 (~ GameA, GameB)
@MSlavin So the type-1 attractor is static, bc its "the set of memes that are [so far] best able to keep people from changing them into something else". Ofc, change still happens. Whereas type-2 attractor is dynamic, bc its "the set of memes that most empower creative exploration"
@MSlavin At early phases in humanity, our development of explicit concepts & reasoning tools had barely begun, so cultures knew more than their ppl, and creative attempts to modify existing memes would tend to produce worse (often fatal) memes. This book expands:
@MSlavin So an early human needed to somehow NOT attempt to fix things that seemed problematic or inconvenient. And it seems the solution that evolution came up was memetic (not genetic) which was to traumatize people into not innovating.😬 💯 thread on this cxn:
@MSlavin By contrast, now we can develop a model of why existing solutions work, and design better ones that will also account for externalities. Or... somewhat. Blindspots are rampant. Daniel Schmactenberger points out side fx can be worse than original problem! anchor.fm/emerge/episode…
@MSlavin Note that about here 👆 is where my understanding is different than Deutsch's. He seems to be profoundly unconcerned about the idea that we might create a new problem that we can't solve in time. The opposite comforting-certainty of this: twitter.com/collinofzion/s…
@MSlavin He also doesn't seem to meaningfully recognize that we're in a transition phase. Like he obviously knows that everyone is still traumatized and not maximally creative, and yet his book gives impression that current prognosis is as if already GameB. Thread
@_awbery_ @dopaminendreams @cognazor @TellYourSonThis Of course! I'm also an Anki nerd, or was. Curious to know what some of your other "favourite word right now" entries have been!
@Aella_Girl @primalpoly @Scientific_Bird Man, wouldn't it be nice if we could assume that given that adults are still the ones running for office, that all of the options would be safe enough to let kids vote. Can we assume that? Or I guess moreover, would letting kids vote incentivize even WORSE political shitshows?
Thread · Two opposing memeplexes: memes that resist change vs memes that invite it · 3 of 13 tweets
@MSlavin Oh, one important thing to note is that unlike GameA, which is suggested to start around the transition to agriculture, Deutsch makes a solid case that the static memes (& their coercion) actually go back to very beginning of human culture!
@MSlavin But clearly there's a sense in which hunter-gatherer societies were less crazy-making than ag/GameA ones. I have a few theories as to why, the most interesting of which is that in agri society you have to let your kids starve to have seedcorn for next year → dehumanization.
@MSlavin I actually think that in some ways things are crazier now than in the past, bc of profound tension between old way & new way. Instead of traditional, choiceless mode: meaningness.com/choiceless-mode ...we have an incoherent mess of judgmental anti-judgment:
Retweeted @xuenay
@AdeleDeweyLopez @QiaochuYuan @Malcolm_Ocean @DavidDeutschOxf Or the thing where people initially refused to do repetitive work…
Thread · Meta-thread of threads on McGilchrist's brain hemispheres · 1 of 38 tweets
@Timber_22 An high-level initial exploration of the deep relevance of the brain hemispheres to: • current AI systems • prospects for AGI • AI Safety
@dchackethal @jamessseattle @ToKTeacher @Crit_Rat Hmm, I think your categories of "analog" & "digital" are getting in the way here. And part of why the hemisphere thing is important is that it points at how categories can get in the way. Like you, I find David Deutsch's models incredibly valuable, but they're not gospel.
@Nnedi Definitely thought the first one was a beaver+moose mashup, which would be basically the most Canadian animal ever 🇨🇦🤣
@fortelabs Lumineer Academy! I've met the founder Susan Wu and she was clearly very sharp & knowledgeable & fluid in her thinking. I forget exactly what she told me about it but I remember being like "oh my god ofc, why is that not more of a thing!?"
@fortelabs Ask @reasonisfun about Taking Children Seriously, an ultra-anti-coercion parenting philosophy (that is an alternative education experiment because basically all schools involve some if not a fuckton of coercion, so afaik all TCS folks do ~unschooling) takingchildrenseriously.com/node/87
@fortelabs @technoshaman What's the purpose of your blog post? - To say "look at the range of stuff that exists"? - To evaluate the different experiments? - To aggregate a big list in one place, as a reference? - Something else? (Both leads I gave you were ppl, not books—before I saw this exchange)
@jessi_cata @zackmdavis @a_centrism & given neuroplasticity, we would expect socialization to change brain structure. (cf London cabbies) Humans are fucking meme machines and this is widely underappreciated. The fact that ppl are freaking out about fluid gender is itself evidence that gender is fluid.
@zackmdavis @jessi_cata @a_centrism I guess I'm more talking about gender norms than twonesses of gender. Like, if ppl were simply genetically wired to do X if ♂️ and do Y if ♀️, then there'd be no fuss, ppl would just do it. Existence of gender policing means that these behvs must be memetically encoded.
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
Situations of partial control can be extremely challenging -- it's right on the edge of my learning as well. Noticing…
@RabbitHoleJoe @DRMacIver @QiaochuYuan participants
@diyer647 @lisyarus @danlistensto @ruckerfoad @QiaochuYuan @DRMacIver help
@stubborncurias @DRMacIver @QiaochuYuan wrinkles
@QiaochuYuan taught
Retweeted @callumflack
Desire is unidirectional. Longing is a betweenness.
Replying to @nornagain
@mindmeanings @reasonisfun @Meaningness Mmmm yeah. And now that I've read more of McGilchrist than I had at the original time of this thread, I can add that I would say the actual hard-to-articulate difference in how one *relates* to models. (diff between LH & RH, or philosophies) Related:
@mindmeanings @reasonisfun @Meaningness I'm excited seeing @mindmeanings contrasting Deutsch & McGilchrist side-by-side. I feel like I contain a pretty integrated view of the two perspectives, and I want more people to:
@danlistensto @nosilverv @chaosprime This also seems to be core to how emotional reconsolidation works! (cc @QiaochuYuan) See this summary: lesswrong.com/posts/i9xyZBS3…
@TLBKlaus @Evolving_Ego See also malcolmocean.com/2015/10/causal…
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
we might talk in terms of there being a "concept economy," and of ideologies competing to satisfy demand for concepts like…
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
it is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both as a result, we've limited some of your account features
@Timber_22 @BitterGiuseppe @QiaochuYuan @jedzza @DestruReeva @whyevernotso @danlistensto @ruckerfoad @DRMacIver tho
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
How can we care for both: - Being able to totally fucking express what's coming up for you - Actually being heard by t…
@cognazor @Timber_22 @JimRutt could also say "had a transcendent experience"!
@Timber_22 @cognazor @JimRutt Barista: what can I getcha? Me: ...Advaitantrazenosophy blend, one sugar Barista: sure, I should warn you, you'll probably find a god (or several) at the bottom of it
Problem 😡 I wanting to leave a tweet open for reference or to reply to the thread... but the (1) in the title or the red dot in the favicon makes me end up checking notifications. Solution 😎 this custom userscript I just wrote: gist.github.com/malcolmocean/9…
In order to run it, install an extension like GreaseMonkey (Firefox) or TamperMonkey (Chrome/Brave/etc) and then import this into it.
Note that by default it removes the sidebar when you're on a permalink as well, so that you're not distracted by notifications there either. I was already doing this with a userstyle, but I added it to the script for convenience. You can comment it out if you don't like that.
@Meaningness - while revisiting your ngöndro post, I noticed something I'm confused about... It seems Aro is dzogchen (ie too close, too accessible, too present, etc), and that you were* following the Aro school. *(I think you recently said somewhere you had left... something?)
But in this post... > "So ideally someone would invent a ngöndro that efficiently induces emptiness, is well-suited to contemporary people, and is in the style of contemporary Buddhist tantra." ...the colorful tantra, or the ultra-simple dzogchen?
I guess I'm asking a few things here: 1) what school has your practice been in? one of those? both, alternatingly? 2) what is it now? 3) how is your practice similar to / different from your more theoretical studies/priorities?
& are you writing about tantra here because vividness.live is a site about reinventing buddhist tantra, as opposed to dzogchen? 🤔...except it definitely says a bunch of things about dzogchen, and is also definitely framing things in terms of dzogchen perspectives...
Relatedly, I'd be interested in seeing a third column to this chart for dzogchen! I know how to do fill in a few of them, eg the prereq is the "recognition of inseparability of emptiness and form", and the result is "self-liberation"... but what else? vividness.live/2013/10/23/sut…
@Timber_22 @VincentBarr @SarahAMcManus @xuenay @nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff What *is* the literal book to use for Imago? (I'm seeing a few things when I google...)
the more things change, the more they stay the same as a result, we've limited some of your account features
@Timber_22 @SarahAMcManus @VincentBarr @xuenay @nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff It seems very similar to Heart Sharing, as practiced by the UV Family: context.org/iclib/ic05/uvf…
@Timber_22 @SarahAMcManus @VincentBarr @xuenay @nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff Oh if you love this, check out The Possible Relationship (also by the UV Family) 😍 context.org/iclib/ic10/uvf…
@Meaningness Ah yeah, this is helpful. And then confusingly both Tantra and Dzogchen are part of Vajrayana?
@Meaningness .......it would be nice if they had picked *different* words ending in yana, to be. Or something. I'm not sure exactly 😝
@Meaningness I guess I still have a question here, which you don't have to answer ofc, but I'm going to try to operationalize it as something like... 1) how many hours have you spent practicing "tantra"? 2) " " " " "dzogchen"? 3) how many hrs/week do you currently spend doing either of these?
@Meaningness (I realize #2 may be hard to answer given dzogchen's whole "once you're enlightened you'll see you were enlightened the whole time" thing, which makes the amount both "none" and "always")
Retweeted @AgnesCallard
6yo: Words are fake, they’re just copies of ideas. Husband: That’s a philosophical theory. 6yo: Am I the first one to thi…
@QiaochuYuan *confers* "So... based on the diagnostic criteria in the KYM-IV, this patient seems to have a mild-to-moderate case of ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)... do you concur?"
@jondubin @Timber_22 @chaosprime @KC_Rounder Hmmm, this 👆seems suspiciously close to this 👇 twitter.com/collinofzion/s…
@made_in_cosmos That sounds like exactly the sort of thing I would excitedly order and then find disgusting, and even knowing that I would still order it.
@Meaningness Gotcha. Am I correctly inferring that what you're saying re #2 is that previously your main practice wasn't Dzogchen, but the Dzogchen ngöndro? (Aro's version of the four naljors, presumably) (and/or maybe you were also saying some sort of "mu")
@Timber_22 @jondubin @chaosprime @KC_Rounder Mmmm yeah, as with everything worth saying, there's a confused interpretation! eg if a left hemisphere gets its grip on > with enough "wisdom to know the difference", we can cleanly split up our experience into "things we can change" and "things we can't" it'll make a mess 🤣
@Timber_22 @jondubin @chaosprime @KC_Rounder Ahh man, and I'm realizing that my reply was misreading you! Reading "classical prayer" tweet, missing the "whereas" from previous tweet, gave me the impression you were somehow endorsing Niebuhr's take, in a kind of daoist in-the-limit way: that which I am changing / am not.
@Timber_22 @jondubin @chaosprime @KC_Rounder Somehow-relatedly, this post by @threat_update (@Timber_22 I think you'll dig this acct) twitter.com/threat_update/…
@Timber_22 @jondubin @chaosprime @KC_Rounder I think my read of the monk tweet is basically recognizing that it has an ambiguity/paradox, because the left hemisphere is tempted by the certainty in "nothing is under control" but terrified of the lack of control therein. So yeah, I'd say I like it & resonate.
@misen__ @Meaningness Hmm, the link from the arobuddhism.org/books/wisdom-e… to "Order direct from Aro Books" is broken... seems it wants to link here arobooks.org/books2.html David, do you know who to contact about that?
@MSlavin Glad your questions invited my thinking out to play! Looking forward to talking more about this & related topics 🙃
Retweeted @fortelabs
Presenting my summary of The Body Keeps the Score, one of the most impactful books I've read in recent years: https://t.co/…
@utotranslucence YESSSS. I volunteer as beatboxer for prototyping this. Except we can't really jam because I'm way over here and you're way over there and latency 😔
you have so many relationships in this life only one or two will last you go through all this pain and strife then you turn your back and they're gone so fast and they're gone so fast as a result, we've limited some of your account features
I'm curious @visakanv if this resonates for you, and how it might connect with your experience of building a media empire* one tweet at a time, without trying to plan where it's going? *🤣 that's apparently how I decided to phrase this. t.co/1wlBqC8qM9
@QiaochuYuan @nicklovescode 🤣 (I believe Qiaochu is referring to his and my recent experience of talking out loud while exploring/writing in the same roamresearch.com space together)
Thread · Features I want in ebook readers and reading apps · 1 of 16 tweets
Another excellent feature request:
@QiaochuYuan @nicklovescode Oh or maybe he's just referring to this thread of mine on better ebook readers 😛
@visakanv Totally. Btw, if you haven't tried writing in @Conaw's roamresearch.com yet, I highly recommend it. There's a sense of it being more fluid to refer to a concept I haven't defined, then just go & make a quick placeholder page for that, then keep writing. Or oops—deep dive🌊
@bobbyscar @reasonisfun @meditationstuff Say more about what you're up to?
Retweeted @everytstudies
New post up (%!#*?$& finally!): Let's say I said: "I prefer honest argumentation to dishonest rhetoric." Do I mean that…
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
shame is only even kinda functional as a mechanism for controlling other people’s behavior when it occurs in the context o…
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
@savjani @Twitter - separating QTs from RTs and tracking them - a way to view the tree structure of twitter threads - a…