"his laps are now over. overlapping"
November 2019
@bobbyscar @reasonisfun @meditationstuff Huh, intriguing. Seems like one of the main challenges will be avoiding guru dynamics showing up even in relatively sane leaders. You'd probably value reading The Guru Papers btw—not just about this but much more. Random recent thread about it:
@bobbyscar @reasonisfun @meditationstuff Mmm yeah, I think it's possible but still pretty hard to do. Learning about why the default feedback loops point *away* from sanity (eg by reading The Guru Papers) will help.
Retweeted @dthorson
Thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with @voiceclub_. Reminded me of what a gift it is to be asked beautiful questions. ❤️ h…
I'm gonna try this! #NaNoRoaMo Some of it will be visible on my public roamblog at roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo… (some of it will be in private roams)
@ProfJayDaigle @Meaningness @St_Rev You might be interested in this thread:
@xuenay @Meaningness @ProfJayDaigle @St_Rev @michael_nielsen huh I think mine may default the opposite way... at least for 5
@Meaningness @ProfJayDaigle @St_Rev Yeah, this is another example of how categories restrict peoples' thinking. I think it probably gets lumped under visualization (and then considered weak because it lacks eg color 🤦♀️) even though if you actually consider it at all it's clearly a different thing.
Retweeted @andy_matuschak
Knowledge systems which display contextual backlinks to a node open up an interesting new behavior. You can bootstrap a…
@QiaochuYuan @PhoropterRaptor @cognazor
Retweeted @Meaningness
@GregDember @JaredJanes @LC_Ceriello @cognazor @dfarrrr @euvieivanova @utotranslucence @ssica3003 @MarkDForman @_awbery_ I…
Retweeted @JaredJanes
@GregDember @cognazor @ssica3003 @helixly @LC_Ceriello @SentientBonobo @Meaningness @dfarrrr @euvieivanova @utotranslucence…
@QiaochuYuan @PeterBorah broke: homeopathy is just placebo woke: no, homeopathy is *OPTIMIZED* placebo bespoke: placebo is just accidental homeopathy
@QiaochuYuan @PeterBorah Ofc, *actual* bespoke is, in both senses, optimizing placebo in ways that are particularly potent for each individual... ...which on one level of abstraction homeopathy does. I went as a kid. Appts involved a much richer & more meaningful convo about symptoms than @ doc office!
Retweeted @marthagimbel
I just want to state for the record that in my college corporate finance class I was docked class participation points fo…
Retweeted @ATabarrok
@marthagimbel As you know, the questions on economics tests always stay the same it’s only the answers that change.
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
tired: would you prefer that i respond with advice or empathy? wired: would you prefer the response that delays your next…
@cognazor Depends on meanings. My best-case scenario for AI Alignment is an AGI I can play/jam/co-create with! Related thread on AI & brain hemispheres, which also talks about alignment towards the end:
Retweeted @Delafina777
All of it can be reduced to: There is supposed to be a HIERARCHY, dammit, and you're supposed to be BELOW ME, so ACT LIKE…
Retweeted @nathanwpyle
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
you: class struggle, generational conflict, culture wars me, an intellectual: people whose trauma makes them better at ma…
@QiaochuYuan *me, an emotional 😉
@Timber_22 @QiaochuYuan @jim_rutt This article suggests that a substantial number of sociopaths (80%?) might also be well-modelled as operating based on trauma, and that this is somewhat treatable—just not with punishment or repression (which have been the usual approaches for decades). theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
@visakanv @abhilashbingi Context thing seems like it would be the variable to go on if one was to try to study this. 2 dimensions - parents chose name that felt unique vs common - parents' namespace similar/different Although then you have race/language/etc as a factor. Damn.
Thread · Documenting how I actually relate to money, and sharing it · 17 of 19 tweets
Today I wrote up 1700 words to share with a small group of collaborators, describing my financial situation and (more interestingly) some patterns/tendencies I've had in how I relate to money. I recommend trying something similar (even if you just share with 1 person) WhyHow👇
For some ppl, this might be valuable for causing you to look at a balance you've been avoiding. I didn't have one of these, but I did notice I was spending a bit more on groceries & less on other things than I thought. But that's just the numbers. The juice is in the thinking!
Here are the headings of my document: - Accounting for income taxes - Middle-class scarcity - Patterns around “saving” - The realness of money - Working with generosity - Scarcity stress - One time & recurring purchases
I noticed lots of patterns I wanted to shift in one way or another, maybe to improve the managing of my money itself, or to improve my experience of relating with other ppl. But I focused on laying it all out in a post-shame way: This is just how I've been thinking about money!
It got me here, and it won't get me there.
There's a principle in improv: the more obvious you are, the more original you appear.
I attempted to document not how I *should* think about money, not how I *wish* I thought about money, simply how in fact I apparently do. Most of it was obvious and easy to write. And yet—a revelation!
I was expecting my obvious thoughts to be a revelation for others (about me, and perhaps about humans more generally) but I didn't appreciate the extent to which it's also been insightful for me to see my thinking laid out in front of me.
This is intriguing, b/c I've long been aware that writing helps me clarify things. I think it comes back to the improv thing. I held an assumption that writing was valuable to help me clarify *original* ideas, and it never occurred to me to just document my thoughts on a subject.
Of course, this is far from an original insight. But this is by far the strongest experience I've had of it.
It emerged in this situation because a few people very close to me revealed that they didn't have a clear sense of my financial situation, and it suddenly occurred to me that there were a bunch of obvious-to-me details that would be in-sightful for them.
Now I want to do this for a dozen other domains... My relationship to things like: - food - sex - reading books - school ...I don't feel like I "have something to say" on these topics, & maybe I don't in the grand sense. But it'd be neat to see what I *would* say.
(I think this (beyond being The Friendliest™) is part of why @visakanv is quite popular on twitter—he writes about his experience, and follows his own interest and what feels worth saying, but doesn't worry about saying original things)
If you want to try this exercise re $, allow me to propose some simple Qs as writing prompts: - how do I relate to saving? - to scarcity? - to generosity? - to debt? - to wealth? - to paychecks? - how did my parents/childhood affect my relationship with money?
More, if you want: - what really freaks me out about money? - what do I not know/understand about money? - "unlike many people I know, I..." - "I hate to admit it, but..."
Again, the mission is not to produce *advice*, nor to criticize what you notice. Put your anthropologist hat on, and observe the culture in your brain. Your shoulds around money are just part of the data. "I seem to have a should about..."
And then, if it feels comfortable, share it with your partner, or if that's too terrifying then maybe share it with a close friend who doesn't have a stake in your life but who knows you well and would find it fascinating—both "aha, I always thought" 😉 and "huh I never knew" 🤔
Replying to @SlowwCo
Retweeted @davidmackau
omfg one of my best friends lives in london and one day his baby girl wanted to know what the black electricity box on the…
@KimStacks Yes, meant to include that! Impro by Keith Johnstone (page 83) Excellent book! twitter.com/AndJohnsonAnd/…
Replying to @jtth
@jtth it is, I'm just not on top of support mail / haven't been on my computer where I need to be to do the reset
Replying to @ryn__x
@context_ing @MilanGriffes @nosilverv @QiaochuYuan
@knrz_ Have used Anki a bit, fell off the wagon when I threw too much stuff in that I didn't really care about. Too rote, not networked. Learned a few useful things but 🤷♀️ Not sure what "incremental reading" is but I have thoughts that may be relevant here: malcolmocean.com/2014/07/focus-…
Replying to @SlowwCo
@SlowwCo I have concluded that it's a spiritual/metaphysical truth. But also physics shows that the universe changes in each moment, and nought will remain forever. But also physics has a bunch of constants, such as the Gravitational Constant: G ~= 6.67430e-11 m³/kg/s² So... 🤷♀️
Replying to @SlowwCo
@SlowwCo Counterpoint: memetic evolution is way faster & more powerful than genetic evolution. We've been stuck in static memetic attractors for a long time, and we're just crawling out now. We have no idea what's possible. cf
@ctbeiser Somehow seems related to this tweet of mine from earlier tonight about obviousness. And I guess, illusion of transparency.
Retweeted @michaelcurzi
This, but every four years, and memetic warfare instead of physical warfare! ... wait a second
@takecarecactus @HuanWin @jpjamipark With waaaaaaay more linking abilities. Changes the game completely. Paper < GoogleDoc < WorkFlowy < Roam youtube.com/watch?v=v9s3pu…
@knrz_ Whoa yeah that would be super cool. I don't know how it would work though... I was trying to remember interesting words I came across, study for engineering courses, & uhh... memorize random stats in deciban (log) form for Fermi estimates. eg population of China = 91@
Replying to @ponekarl
@ponekarl Huh, curious to hear about the distinction you're making here about D.Optimism
Retweeted @vgr
It is a category error to apply the adjective “broken” to a complex system. Complicated systems break. Complex systems merely ente…
Replying to @ponekarl
@ponekarl I think you mean suffering? The way I understand the words to usually be used, lots of enlightened people are also in pain, and lots of non-enlightened people are not in pain.
Replying to @ponekarl
@ponekarl I may have a longer answer later but for now I'll note that I resonate with the "sterile" thing and find myself sort of wishing you'd post many of your private tweets there instead so we could jam publicly on them. The feel I get is you seem to grip your public twitter tightly.
Thread · Documenting how I actually relate to money, and sharing it · 2 of 19 tweets
I'm realizing that one way to think about what I'm doing here is eliciting some of the high-level schemas for how I've been thinking about money, so I can be more conscious of them. Schema in the sense described in this book @QiaochuYuan & I are 🤩 about:
This then will allow me to better see that sense that it makes to do what I'm doing, & also the ways in which what I'm doing doesn't make sense. None of this is possible until it's made conscious in a post-judgmental way. (Still some layers to go to reach the emotions tho)
suddenly realized the term "watershed moment" is just straight up literally saying "change of attractor basin" "previously everything flowed this way ↙️ ...from here it flows that way ↘️"
Retweeted @JaredJanes
Broke: Emotions should be replaced by reasoning & rationality. Woke: Emotions drive most of our actions, & reasoning is ju…
Oh, check your package—for most people the 20 years of cognitive education includes a free –20 years of emotional education!
Broke: Woke Bespoke: Toke
Ever-relevant blog post of mine from a few years ago: malcolmocean.com/2016/06/you-fl…
@QiaochuYuan @Meaningness this seems like a great source for talking about modernist eternalisms
@knrz_ Yeah, I'd like to have a tighter loop of SRS with books. readwise.io does this very-informally
@GKhuyen The group is the latest iteration of the project in Waterloo, Ontario that Tanya (who you know from dance events) is part of! The group is not an invite-you-to sort of situation in that sense, but I could potentially share a version of the doc with you.
@GKhuyen For anyone interested in money-as-lover: you may want to check out Existential Kink, a shadow-integration process which might include feeling into the thrill of a BDSM scene where *money* is dominating you 🤑 carolyngraceelliott.com/philosophy
@HunterBergsma @chrxn @Conaw @visakanv @opinionsonline @GwendolynHuot @nickredmark
I have improved the labels for the evolution axis of #WardleyMaps!
Retweeted @technoshaman
Can the answer be hiding under a question about the "we"? Whom are you talking to? Who do you think can do the work of "t…
That's a hivemind. A hymen is a sample from the set of {Snoop Dogg, Bob Marley, Mr X., ...} twitter.com/JamesWords/sta…
Alternate version! On reflection I think I prefer this one:
We find our way into situations that touch all of our oldest fears, and then it's really hard to find our way out because those fears represent exactly the sorts of situations we don't know how to get out of.
@nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff Not a book, but the first thing that comes to mind is an article coauthored by four people in a long-term collective committed relationship: The Possible Relationship
@knrz_ Yeah I do highlights on ebooks, and also take some notes into Roam or whereever. I don't use readwise, though I might at some point.
Retweeted @takecarecactus
@Malcolm_Ocean "..you go around sculpting the universe into exactly the kinds of problems you don’t know how to solve.…
@marionnjoya Great book called Rethinking Narcissism which constructs a whole spectrum from echoism (self-negation) to narcissism (self-obsession). Middle ranges healthy, extremes destructive. Was helpful for recognizing the structures of some of my N patterns. kobo.com/us/en/ebook/re…
Your dream secret society / underground club wants you in. What's their pitch? (from @mesolude)
Retweeted @anderssandberg
The Trinity nuclear test did not need a control group. I wonder if much of the replication crisis is not due to unambit…
@tobyshorin @fortelabs Or start with @Meaningness' take on legitimate peripheral participation: meaningness.com/metablog/upgra…
@visakanv This implies that nothing can happen until there is an appropriate xkcd comic for it 🤔
Holy shit this is next level shit. @diviacaroline you'll definitely wanna check this out
Retweeted @SofiaParedes79
When I'm bored I go around putting these stickers on paper towel dispensers
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
"toxic masculinity" ❌subtly implies masculinity is toxic ❌encourages fear, hatred, shaming ❌divisive: little "toxic femini…
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
Tired: "Trauma therapy" / "Trauma therapist" Inspired: ✨🧙♀️"Traumaturgy" / "Traumaturge"🧙♂️✨
@ben_mathes Yeah this gets me too. People get into a kind of trance but it's... a boring trance. I want to be possessed by the music and do things it never would have occurred to me to do without the inspiration of the rhythms and melodies and intertwingled complexities.
Retweeted @SamoBurja
Intellectually productive conversation is dynamic and personal. You follow the flow of together after all. It can be diffic…
.@QiaochuYuan OH MAN. you want to read The Birth of Pleasure by Carol Gilligan talks about moms & sons & trauma and about how it can be observed that boys of like 2-4 have a fuckton of emotional intelligence etc, which gets repressed so early people think it doesn't exist 😢
(the "it doesn't exist" is of course part of what represses it) meanwhile most girls don't experience a similar emotional lockdown until more like 9-12 (puberty) so they tend to have more awareness of there being something they locked away
@QiaochuYuan For excellent source on: 1⃣ how being traumatized leads to abuse of power 2⃣ how people abusing often feel powerless while doing it 3⃣ how the patriarchy traumatizes men (well, boys) see this free online book Power-Under: Trauma & Nonviolent Social Change traumaandnonviolence.com
@QiaochuYuan (I've only read the first 3 chapters and iirc each of those numbers above roughly corresponds to those chapters) The list: I: The Politics of Trauma II: The Power-Under Paradigm III: Trauma and Gender IV: Trauma and Oppression V: Trauma and Nonviolent Social Change
@QiaochuYuan (Point 2, about people feeling powerless while enacting patterns of abuse, has an exception: the sociopath pattern. Whatever is going on there, and whatever the prognosis, it seems to be characterized by a totally different internal experience.)
@QiaochuYuan Btw: I don't particularly think "abuse" is a helpful category; I'm using the term here because it's the main one that is used by the Power-Under book, and probably also by people using the phrase "toxic masculinity". For context, see this book:
@QiaochuYuan This excerpt points at the problem of the term "toxic masculinity" and the need for a term like "traumatized masculinity": > "Efforts at self-protection by trauma survivors that demonize or dehumanize the Other unwittingly and tragically compound the damage to our own spirits."
Retweeted @primalpoly
TFW you're at a party talking with a cat about bitcoin forks, and the cat asks you an unexpectedly deep question about whet…
Replying to @asteroid_saku
@asteroid_saku You might appreciate this essay/art by Robin Sloan pointing at different info-flow structures social media apps could have. Although maybe it's not that relevant? I need to go to bed. Link: platforms.fyi
@chriswaterguy @Aella_Girl As a fellow coach, recently learning about trauma & emotional coherence... my sense is that productivity coaching can do a lot but when it encounters resistance or competing commitments, not much access to underlying generators.🤔 Meanwhile (see image)
@onnlucky @thehandbehindt1 @sentientist Knowledge is made to fit categories, and those categories are not narrative free. Genetic variation between people of different "races" may be less than within "races", so why race boundaries for considering averages? (And even *use of averages* has history in normative oughts)
@onnlucky @thehandbehindt1 @sentientist [Source of latter claim: book called The End of Average, whose main point is "just because you can calculate an average for a population, doesn't mean there's even a single member of the population that meaningfully resembles that average"] (applies to bodies, brains, &+)
@onnlucky @thehandbehindt1 @sentientist See also this post, which considers that IQ tests might be well-understood as primarily measuring The Desire To Pass Tests. The *concept* of IQ is already laden with meaning & value; saying any facts about IQ are neutral is saying they don't matter. hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/113360634…
Replying to @sentientist
@sentientist It seems like the actual issues in all of these situations are underlying unquestioned assumptions, eg that [Trait X] somehow implies more/less human worth/dignity etc. People then refuse to see diffs in X bc it would repugnantly imply worthlessness. Question implication instead!
@sentientist (I'm not yet satisfied with my articulation of this, nor do I think that in practice questioning these implications is easy to do. Those things are implied not just in discourse but in how society is structured, so this is advocating radical social change.)
@ben_mathes @visakanv @QiaochuYuan Yeah, how I came to be thinking about this book is I was doing some processing (Bio-Emotive++) & came across a ~3yo part of me that apparently knew a lot more about tension in my parents' marriage at that age than *anyone* was acknowledging at the time. Immediate gutpunch feel😭
@ssica3003 @fullydavid @peternlimberg @WisdomRebel Sure is! All 8 of us in the current core of the Liminal Space Agency were there, plus a few people in our extended network, such as @Connoropolous
@onnlucky @thehandbehindt1 @sentientist
Retweeted @VincentHorn
I think that "Traumatized, Not Toxic" is a good rallying cry for collective healing of the masculinity/femininity split, f…
Replying to @VinceFHorn
@VincentHorn Great discussion on this over here 👇
Retweeted @visakanv
Brian Eno, when asked to make the Windows startup sound:
Replying to @BewaretheMoon1
@LeahtheMoon @QiaochuYuan @hnrqctx If you want to read about the sorts of traumas boys go through in school (which definitely would have a particular distinct signature in british public schools (read: private schools, if you're elsewhere)) then check out this book, particularly ch3:
@onnlucky @thehandbehindt1 @sentientist Yep, or we're afraid that *others* are judging people on essentialist traits, which... they are. So that *does* need to be dealt with as part of this conversation.
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@QiaochuYuan For excellent source on: 1⃣ how being traumatized leads to abuse of power 2⃣ how people abusing often feel…
@QiaochuYuan > When we honestly looked inside, we found that we were still in relationship with everyone we’d ever been intimate with – exponentially true of our previous sexual relationships... all had contributed in some way to our present identity and expression. context.org/iclib/ic10/uvf…
@QiaochuYuan @PeterBorah Cf this excellent video (by a guy who we later learned did some not-so-excellent things 🙄) that frames "the other same sex conversation" as being not about what unwanted genetic exchange might happen in sexytimes but about unwanted *memetic* exchange. youtube.com/watch?v=s5GMI5…
"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop." —Rumi
Replying to @ryn__x
@context_ing @Meaningness Yeah, deep resonances here. I wrote this blog post a couple of years ago connecting fluid mode & the Köln Concert:
I somehow intuited this the first time I was pissed off at myself about something and imagined having a drink. There was just this immediate sense of "I see where this goes" and immediately a personal policy emerged of not trying to fix my mood with alcohol.
Replying to @_yzkio
@_yzkio Wow, I love this! I wrote a remarkably similar story a few years ago, and I really like your take on the idea. malcolmocean.com/2015/12/then-i…
Retweeted @_yzkio
imagine that tonight you dream that you are a physicist. you observe the world, notice patterns, perform experiments, form theo…
@Connoropolous @ssica3003 @fullydavid @peternlimberg @WisdomRebel @Liminal_Agency, although there's nothing on it yet! Still figuring out how to approach that!
Replying to @ponekarl
@ponekarl @SarahAMcManus This tweet below is an example of a moment when I was experiencing emotional pain but not suffering. I was doing emotional processing, and when I suddenly accessed this it felt like clarity & insight 👁️, simultaneously with bursting into tears 😭 Pain+YES
@ponekarl @SarahAMcManus Suffering ~= "this shouldn't be happening", whether the "this" is physical pain or emotional pain or boredom or even pleasure! Pain is the most obvious source, but it can show up about anything. Very related to my post about regret:
@ponekarl @SarahAMcManus Of course, anyone trying to talk about this also needs to disambiguate what the fuck "should" means. In your terms I would say it's ~equivalent to the fundamental stance of coercion (both interpreting the universe as coercing me, or me trying to coerce the universe).
@visakanv Accidentally voted yes on this before I saw "non-dudes only" (I blame twitter showing me this poll out of context)
@michaelcurzi Yup. Check out the amazing book The Guru Papers, which takes the whole structure of addiction up a level of abstraction and notes that pretty much everyone has internal tension that frames itself as a struggle between good & evil (shoulds & urges)
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
@GnomeWicked_ definitions are for purposes; people want mental health diagnoses to 1) be legible to the medical system re:…
Replying to @GnomeWicked_
@GnomeWicked_ @QiaochuYuan Related thread, including a book recommendation (The Guru Papers)
Replying to @MikeMcCormick_
@MikeMcCormick_ - Senescence & Longevity research (eg @s_r_constantin's Longevity Research Institute) - @Seasteading & other @StartSocieties
I seem to be learning the skill of just closing out all of the twitter tabs I have open, rather than trying to deal with each of them before I do (which can take literally forever given the fractal nature of it and the fact that tweets beget replies). Feels like a superpower. 😎
Replying to @michaelcurzi
@michaelcurzi @QiaochuYuan @mattgoldenberg @tasshinfogleman @MonasticAcademy Yup. In the years I've spent working on creating post-judgmental collaborative cultures, it seems like one can reasonably model most people as essentially being *addicted to judgment/coercion*. Paradigms can be addicting.
Retweeted @babadookspinoza
If a socialist in another country wins an election by 1% it’s because they don’t really have the support of the people…
fractional reserve thanking
Retweeted @xuenay
This correctly describes many of the rants that have come from me, as well as many of the rants which I've triggered from someo…
@danlistensto At age 12 or so, I went to church with my family and was like "why all this talk about God? clearly the important thing is Good, and these people are missing the point" and I tried to invent a new religion based on this but I was 12 and got bored after writing a few pages on it.
Retweeted @dinodaizovi
Fascinating idea: tasks automatically expire after 24h. I habitually run from todo apps because they accumulate too many…
Retweeted @Conaw
Better fonts will never save Evernote That said, we're hiring, and could use some Visual Design help at @RoamResearch Let us…
@GRITCULT Start a business. Achieving passive (or semi-passive) income isn't easy, but it's possible and one of the highest-rated things that's somehow still underrated.
@knrz_ > I’ve been ruminating on how killer a networked spaced repetition system would be… (Roam + SRS 🤔) Apparently people are hacking this together already!
@SarahAMcManus @cosimia_ @danlistensto 86% ♂️ 36% ♀️ = 122% 😎👌 "This makes you ." Apparently there isn't a category for people who have more than 100% genderpoints! Somehow this + Sarah's tweet makes me think of this comic:
Retweeted @simongerman600
Hours of daylight as a function of day of the year and latitude. Took me a second to read this chart. Totally worth the…
Retweeted @jamischarles
Tried @RoamResearch today because I was struggling to organize my thoughts. Wow. This is the first tool I've used where w…
@jamischarles @RoamResearch I totally feel you. In addition to a few shared Roams organized around different projects, I have for myself: • a private roam for journalling & collecting thoughts/feels • a public roamblog: roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo… Loving how easy it feels to draft things in public there!
Damn yup I have tension in all of these places. Time for bed, and later it will be time to feel into what in me seems to think that that tension is important.
Retweeted @david_perell
Traits of exceptional entrepreneurs: 1) Disagreeable: They’re unsatisfied with the world, often to a point of anger. 2)…
*checks* Yup, there are tweet about Andrew Yang + Yin. twitter.com/punjabiwasabi/…
Some about Andrew Yin; pretty obvious but somehow I'm still glad someone tweeted this?
I like this one about a Yin running mate:
Weird flex but ok 🤷♀️ t.co/ueaR7FMfTo
@spacecrone Mmmmm yeah, a chance to relax. Fuck, now I'm thinking of this tweet:
@TheAnnaGat @JimmyRis @StewartalsopIII I posit that inasmuch as there's a real meaningful thing that isn't just sweat etc, it's something more like "embodied trauma", which isn't a substance but *is* stored in the body and might be slightly released/relaxed from exercise. (Will be recreated by deeper thing by default)
@TheAnnaGat @JimmyRis @StewartalsopIII Ohhhh yeah, the model of water being important is only relevant to the sweat thing. But the concept of "toxins" may be fusing these two.
@TheAnnaGat @mrgunn @Timber_22 @JimmyRis @StewartalsopIII @MalcolmOcean If anyone wants a paper, here's a paper. It lays out a detailed theoretical framework for how repressed emotions are "stored" in muscle tension. (Warning: awkward OCR) bioemotiveframework.com/wp-content/upl…
Replying to @Kurt_M_Barry
@petheth Yeah this seems to me like people who are still identifying with what Integral/SpiralDynamics call "green meme": fairness, consensus, anti-hierarchy, etc. These people don't realize that there's a thing beyond fairness that cares for peoples' needs even better.
What's *your* favourite twitter?
Retweeted @Conaw
@Malcolm_Ocean @TheAnnaGat @gmws82 @CompliceGoals @RoamResearch
Retweeted @callumflack
More on defining truth as unconcealing: “all knowledge is knowledge of difference” — Bateson So when our metaphors connec…
something something @QiaochuYuan something something barber paradox twitter.com/DxGGEAUX/statu…
Retweeted @petheth
@leashless @ConsenSys "At a higher, more semantic level, a subtle distortion in how we perceive reality took hold: things that…
@Conaw @itsarnavb @SarahAMcManus Ugh yeah I've been thinking for awhile about how borked Slack is when trying to do anything fluid at all. We use it here and we've end up with a proliferation of multi-person DMs, because the exact group who needs to talk about something is constantly changing.
@made_in_cosmos I really want the original item too! Where'd you get it—wait fuck.
Retweeted @amelapay
Every time I think I've seen the most depressing possible ad copy (looking at you, Fiverr) this genre goes and outdoes itself…
Retweeted @visakanv
👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿 👉🏿👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👇🏾👈🏿 👉🏿👉🏾👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽👈🏾👈🏿 👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿 👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽👉🏼👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👈🏼👈🏽👈🏾👈🏿 👉🏿👉🏾👉🏽…
@Evolving_Ego It makes sense that this happens: "but" basically implies negation of the previous thing. Instead, say "I agree that _____, AND here's where we're still seeing things differently: ________" namelessvirtue.com/2015/08/19/but…
Retweeted @robinhouston
A useful abbreviation.
@Evolving_Ego I resonate with that, AND I've found that in practice one can generally keep the sentence coherent by emphasizing the "and" (as I've done here). This though, by calling attention to the "and" requires having an interlocutor who won't reject the idea that it isn't just a "but" 🙃
Retweeted @speakerjohnash
@thewiseturtle I considered referencing an axis further, but I thought it would be confusing
@StephenPiment @patrissimo There's conversion, but the point is that all it takes is one memeplex that doesn't suicide and can't be converted to a suicidal one, and that memeplex will be what survives. Anti-natalism is inherently evolutionarily unable to take over.
@meditationstuff @captainkalvis @QiaochuYuan Yeah @QiaochuYuan is pretty bawler
@patrissimo I wrote a thread about this, inspired by an article that moved me:
Retweeted @HumaneTech_
An excerpt from “We’ve Been Sneaking Into Your Brains” @HumaneTech_ Head of Education, @MaxStossel's talk to 800 middle an…
Retweeted @afoolswisdom
Always remember that no matter how ridiculous reality gets, all contradictions will still reside only within your theorie…
@_awbery_ I found this helpful (for noticing places my own shi-ne practice had been operating from more dualistic confusions) and hilarious (imagining your inner tantrika trying to stifle a laugh 🤭 at your inner concentrator trying to focus amidst construction noise 🏗)
Thread · Things I want to exist: apps, tools, and funding mechanisms · 1 of 21 tweets
@twilio Audio for meaning+exercise. I've wanted this sort of thing for at least 5 years. Lots of variations beyond podcast+yoga, which I comment on the original thread because that's how this meta-thread works!
@SarahAMcManus Other variations I've thought of (some much harder to do) - generate a timed workout that connects with a particular audio track - news, podcast, audiobook or whatever, somehow mashed up with running music - ummm music in general that just has detailed meaning in its lyrics
@SarahAMcManus Closest current stuff probably #meaningwave by @akirathedon. This one is too chill for a run or workout, but could work for yoga or similar. 🧘 youtu.be/gH3eGosOqXU?t=4
@SarahAMcManus @akirathedon I shared the Alan Watts one first because I know it's more your style, @SarahAMcManus I also want to link this one, which would be much better as a (slow, intense) workout track, both in genre & in content 💪🏋 youtube.com/watch?v=qjQC-0…
Retweeted @robertskmiles
@Malcolm_Ocean Blogged about this a long while back. Didn't quite work out how I'd hoped …fe-in-a-monospace-typeface.tumblr.com/post/815030028…
@_awbery_ Haven't done much in a few months, unfortunately, but I expect at some point I will find my way back into it, and I still feel excited about the insight described here:
@QiaochuYuan @Timber_22 @danlistensto Mmmm yeah. Fond memories of that epic three-way conversation with @meditationstuff about... a lot of things. Started hereish. Probably the most satisfying convo I've ever had about ~consciousness.
@Timber_22 @QiaochuYuan @danlistensto @meditationstuff Ah yeah, the meat of it more starts hereish I guess. Gotta expand the other threads. *sigh* Twitter.
Retweeted @utotranslucence
In the mundane world wisdom is moving away from pain In the sacred world wisdom is moving towards it You need both t…
Replying to @brownian19
@brownian19 @Timber_22 @meditationstuff @Triquetrea @VincentHorn @cognazor @collinofzion @SarahAMcManus Yeah I introduced @QiaochuYuan with this thread I've since re-used. I'm not yet aware of anyone that I've introduced having majorly introduced someone else (which is what I would assume "grandfather" is) but it may well have happened!
Retweeted @iangilman
Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Absolute knowledge corrupts absolutely. #AphorismMath
@RoamResearch @visakanv Yep! Currently mostly has a bunch of drafty stuff. Very fun to write in public without a fix boundary of when something is "published". roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo…
@RoamResearch @visakanv Here's the page on my Roamblog called Thoughts About Roam, which is currently mostly feature requests, eg this screenshot of feature requests for Roamblogs roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo…
Retweeted @visakanv
THE USER EXPERIENCE WILL BE DEGRADED UNTIL METRICS IMPROVE
@JayDugger @visakanv @RoamResearch related to purple numbers, I've found myself wanting to be able to block-ref individual sentences from paragraphs (typically in imported text). Seems like the solution to this might actually look something like "make all of these blocks inline"
"When you switch off moral judgment, preference remains. Most of us, given a choice, actually prefer that good things happen, that we act in ways that are good & kind & righteous, that are not about fighting Evil, but simply making more of whatever we want to see in the world."
(quote lightly edited to fit in 280 chars) Source: @pjeby in this amazing post The Curse Of The Counterfactual: lesswrong.com/posts/E4zGWYzh…
@RoamResearch @JayDugger @visakanv Roadmap — Oh cool! Is the roamdap visible anywhere? I don't understand the hack. Make a little demo in the help db?
@ssica3003 @gmws82 @visakanv @Conaw Yeah I try to stay logged out of twitter on my phone, because it makes me prone to scrolling & liking, without actually typing anything. I do have an IFTTT widget to allow me to post random thoughts though 🙃 eg
@_exoconnor @RoamResearch @JayDugger @visakanv Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh I see, yeah. And agreed about the question of where that block should then live.
Retweeted @Conaw
I've gotten a lot of strange looks over the years when I've told people that the thing which comes after Twitter will start out…
@cognazor 💙 Singing or listening to music used to be basically the only way I could process anything.
Retweeted @cognazor
Hot tip: If you're in some kind of mood that needs to process but is too vague to hold/allow in explicit awareness, throw you…
@cognazor Weeping by Josh Groban youtube.com/watch?v=JNoWlc…
@jonnym1ller Not sure what "emotional resiliency" is. Seems there's one thing which is like, short-term ability to regulate. Many people manage this through dissociation. That's okay but long-term very costly. Important to learn how to process emotional structures:
@jonnym1ller With that in mind, I'll point you at this summary of Unlocking the Emotional Brain, along with their table of wtf sorts of things turn out to be under the overt "symptoms". Summary 👉 lesswrong.com/posts/i9xyZBS3… 🔥 (Read table bottom to top)
@jonnym1ller I think it's important to note that *some* methods of emotional regulation function to reject & push the unconscious models *deeper*. The authors of these books call such approaches "counteractive", which are distinct from the transformational therapies they are developing.
@cognazor 🙏 The most recent deep resonance it found for me was in grieving the USA. Like if you think of America as a being, as a big spirit, and then realize how much anguish, pain & fear is present there...
@jonnym1ller @jkglei Totally. I've now read this article, which I assume is the context for the term "self-regulation": > "a conscious being with our difficult experience that transforms the underlying patterns profoundly" If that's what you mean, we're on the same page.
Retweeted @eriktorenberg
A Facebook employee who blocks FB for their kid. An Ivy League professor who has their kid homeschooled / not attend un…
@dehowell @Conaw @RoamResearch yeah I don't have a specific suggestion of my own but this one seems pretty good. the only issue is that roam already uses key:: value for something I don't totally understand.
@Conaw @RoamResearch to anyone proposing syntaxes (including me-of-a-minute-ago) go check out the quoted tweet above, which is actually already a poll...
@Conaw @nateliason @adam_keesling @beh_zod @robbienicholasd @visakanv @aashaysanghvi_ @aaronzlewis @kevinakwok @KevinSimler @kimmaicutler @Meaningness @vgr @sarahdoingthing @gordonbrander @michael_nielsen in order for this to work with progsum, it'll need to also support nested bold/highlight, and links nested within bolds etc, which currently seems to somewhat break although I guess you could in principle support progsum with highlights required to be within boldness (not vv)
@Conaw @dehowell @RoamResearch yeah I'm very excited about these. I have a hunch they're related to some of the stuff I was pitching you in the summer that would make @RoamResearch majorly competitive with AirTable 🔥
@fortelabs @SarahAMcManus and I have recently been reading stuff by Daniel Wile (HT @uncatherio!) and it's really solid. Reading it together (separate copies) and laughing/facepalming about "oh man I do that!" has been a delight. Definitely recommend!
@fortelabs @SarahAMcManus @uncatherio To elaborate, a lot of the dialogues he gives as examples in the book have similar levels of self-awareness as the Tiago+Lauren exchange, although Wile notes that many people don't have this level of introspection. I think it's therefore even more a resource to people who do!
@QiaochuYuan Wanting to pull out this list of impossible constraints from that thread:
Replying to @AscendantPower
@AscendantPower The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGilchrist Improved my metacognition, my relationships, & my wu-wei. Incredible composition of: - neuroscience + phenomenology + psychiatry (1st half) - history + philosophy + anthropology (2nd half)
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@selfprime We are a way for the cosmos to touch itself.
@QiaochuYuan @SarahAMcManus Probably makes sense to QT sarah's diagram as a third tweet in your top-level thread so that new people see it ie as a reply to this one:
@eriktorenberg @DeeWHock's Chaordic Organization model. I particularly like this talk (transcript) linked in the tweet below. Describes how if you can get these 3 things right, the rest can be dynamically improv'd: - people - (shared) principles - (shared) purpose
Retweeted @AgnesCallard
“Emotional Labor” doesn’t mean what I thought it did! It was coined by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild to refer to “the…
@visakanv Full Spectrum White
@made_in_cosmos Literally was just a few minutes ago cracking open Primate Change. Link: amzn.to/2Ox6Dco Table of Contents:
Retweeted @Conaw
The mention that got me back on twitter last year
@Conaw In 2017 I was like "I think I need to be on twitter more" & it's becoming real to me that the impact has now cascaded to @Conaw, @QiaochuYuan, & @Timber_22, with surely further cascading impacts. My mind boggles trying to grok ripples of causality 🧐
@tasshinfogleman "all-or-nothing"? One term I've used for the opposite of this is "a bet/investment that pays dividends".
me: wow, no new bug reports a few hours after this major code push! ☺️😎😤 me a few moments later: ...fuck I broke the @intercom integration 😬😅🙃
@diviacaroline "Let's measure legible things and compare them to illegible things!"
@ben_mathes If you take enough averages, you end up with things that resemble normal distributions even where there weren't originally. To people who take averages for granted, the world looks normal. 🤷♀️ ...nevermind the fact that almost nothing is average 🤦♀️
@visakanv @FakeUnicode @GretchenAMcC @maybegray @jenniferdaniel Woo! I'm hoping that the single-tear one doesn't preclude this tearing-up one becoming official, which seems importantly different. I add this as :happycry: to all of the slacks I use regularly.
@visakanv @FakeUnicode @GretchenAMcC @maybegray @jenniferdaniel Exactly! Tho this one is kind of weird in that the 2nd proposal could basically be like: "see this proposal by @jenniferdaniel? well, this one is the same except with a different image that will feel different, & the level of justification for hers is enough to justify 2 emoji"
@KevinSimler @QiaochuYuan @context_ing Do you guys know about Email Debt Forgiveness Day? emaildebtforgiveness.me
@KevinSimler @QiaochuYuan @context_ing (as far as I'm concerned, every day is EDFD—and incidentally I just got a reply to an email I sent a friend 3 years ago! ~"finally read this article—remind me if I've forgotten the context") ❤️ @ben_r_hoffman
Retweeted @devonzuegel
"Every speaker of a language is contributing to that language's open source project." "Dictionaries are help documentatio…
Oh neat. It looks like @Airtable (which I love) but unlike Airtable @spreadsheetcom is actually a fully functioning spreadsheet under the hood. (@Conaw something to be tracking) fastcompany.com/90432824/move-…
Replying to @ryn__x
@context_ing @ssica3003 Yeah I've gone back and forth on this. Ultimately I do feel like the fundamental misalignment of incentives due to the ad-based business model etc will point twitter towards garbage like this 👇 (read whole thread) instead of eg uplifting QTs.
Replying to @ryn__x
@context_ing @Conaw @RoamResearch Yeah that seems quite far away but I see early signs already...
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
hmm, writing this all out i'm now realizing i was more "professional" than i would've liked to be in my most recent sessio…
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
@slatestarcodex post on therapy books all promising to bring about revolutionary change but all therapies seeming about eq…
@QiaochuYuan From the post: > I sometimes see if I can come up with these kinds of historical-purposeful accounts of my patients’ symptoms. Fwiw, @slatestarcodex, as I understand historicism from reading UtEB, therapist imposing account is moot. Needs to emerge from subconsc & surprise both!
@KevinSimler We would use stuff like this in contact improv dance, but more as weird play than to achieve some particular purpose. Examples: - dance like your body is a bag of sand - dance like gravity isn't real - dance like you're made of fire
@webdevMason Came across this thread again after recently seeing this vid. It seems like a whole nother category of "a dance like this is dangerous... it can change you". twitter.com/justinkirkland…
Retweeted @phirate
@samjarman The interfaces between things matter more than the things themselves
@dust782 @visakanv @OrigenOfSpices Yeah, maybe they're just fucking with Visa? 😒🤨 Anyway yep. All comes back to incentives. This is why when I've talked about a #TwitterReplacement I consider it vital to have the user be the customer, not advertisers.
@dust782 @visakanv @OrigenOfSpices Such a biz model obviously precludes growing as big as twitter, but it could still be a powerful medium for having small group conversations. Most of my best interactions on twitter are with a dozen close-knit heavy-threaders. We'll leave when it's time.
@jenniferdaniel @visakanv @FakeUnicode @GretchenAMcC @maybegray @visual_linguist Oh wow! Yeah, hoping that both of those can be added separately, as they evoke very different feelings. Super appreciating the work you're doing here.
Retweeted @visakanv
I still have a lot of feelings about twitter breaking threads. they really broke the best thing about this site. I was tellin…
Replying to @alt_visa
@alt_visa Have you read this? You definitely want to: platforms.fyi (microfiction about the website, written as if on the website, but not actually on the website, for reasons that will probably be clear once you read it)
@meditationstuff @QiaochuYuan @RexChapman @PoliteButFirm @reasonisfun Yeah definitely feels like Loss is usually the main underlying thing. Often Loss about the past, though could also be prospective Loss: "this is so precious; I don't want to lose it" Easier to get in touch with that when experiencing the preciousness. A kind of relax/release.
@meditationstuff @QiaochuYuan @RexChapman @PoliteButFirm @reasonisfun Re: "crying always bad", there's huge difference between; 1: "crying always has, at its core, something 'negative'" 2: "crying is harmful and we should prevent it from happening" It seems like even if 1 is true, 2 is not, because the negative thing has often already happened—and
@meditationstuff @QiaochuYuan @RexChapman @PoliteButFirm @reasonisfun —and the crying may then be a necessary part of the process of maintaining the body's system. Feces is "bad", both in the sense that it is a waste product and in the sense that it can carry disease. That doesn't mean don't shit—on the contrary, it means *do* shit! 💩
@QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff Can vouch that QC has skills. Here's another testimonial 👇
@Functorialist @meditationstuff @QiaochuYuan @RexChapman @PoliteButFirm @reasonisfun good news! there's actually an alternative where you see the thing is "wrong" and you do something about it and *also* you don't suffer! and often the suffering doesn't actually help with the noticing & doing anyway. See this post 👇
@made_in_cosmos Mmmm, yeah, you seem more alive in the second photo, on multiple levels. Also... your 2019 dress is 🔥 Curious if you can point me to where you got it or if it was a more one-off sort of situation.
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
hello tweeps if you want to learn the secret sauce that i use to sob like a baby on the regular, @DougTataryn is doing an…
@StrongReduction @FioraAeterna @QiaochuYuan I think that that link maybe used to point to this ebook, which isn't free but is available! (I guess someone linked to the file & google picked it up.) bioemotiveframework.com/shop/emotionse…
@Functorialist @meditationstuff @QiaochuYuan @RexChapman @PoliteButFirm @reasonisfun Hm seems we're on the same page about pain, so it's not the classic pain/suffering confusion. The way I'm using "suffering", there are 2 ways to move towards complex things one cares about, one with suffering (by far the default) & the other without. See
@nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff @SarahAMcManus @xuenay Sure... it seems to me the interesting questions are: - so why are everyone's childhoods so awful? - how the hell was this evolutionarily adaptive? And then, I don't think David Deutsch has the answer to everything, but he does to this! Big messy thread:
Just saw this amazing headline: 'Everything Is Not Fine': Nobel Economist Calls on Humanity to End
It is, of course, truncated. The missing words are "Obsession With GDP"
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
i don't go out of my way to tell people to go to therapy because 1) i suspect most therapists aren't that good, but also b…
@Functorialist @meditationstuff @QiaochuYuan @RexChapman @PoliteButFirm @reasonisfun In my framework, any suffering when you stub your toe is functionally regret, even if it doesn't feel like it's about the past. It's wanting to make the toe unstubbed, rather than wanting to figure out what to do next. Figuring out what to do next just is. Maybe diff in lang.
@made_in_cosmos Aww HELL yeah. This is totally my style. Yo @visakanv check this shit. (Was initially worried about the prices, until I realized they were złoty & did the conversion to CAD. Still not *cheap*, but very reasonable and they look nice quality.)
@made_in_cosmos @visakanv I love how it seems to be sorted by fabric pattern, and then within that there's a bunch of different cuts. I'm sad (but not surprised) to see that most of the stuff is made for lady-shaped bodies though. (I'm not opposed to wearing it but it usually doesn't look as good on me.)
@nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff @SarahAMcManus @xuenay Awful per any reasonable standard of human subjective well-being? 🤨 "emotional trauma" is straight-up a metaphor from the concept of physical damage I think we're mostly on the same page here, honestly, but the vibe I'm getting from your articulation feels depressing somehow.
@nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff @SarahAMcManus @xuenay I *do* like how referring to trauma as "just an update" encourages people not to *judge* it, which sort of feels like progress but only as a temporary step to generalized post-judgment. Similar to these progressions (context: sexuality / "born this way")
@Functorialist @meditationstuff @QiaochuYuan @RexChapman @PoliteButFirm @reasonisfun Does your languaging have a terminological difference for distinguishing the person who is holding a stance of complaint / "I shouldn't be cold" from the person who is simply like "I don't like this cold... I'm going to do something about it" (I would call the first "suffering")
Replying to @TaylorLorenz
@TaylorLorenz @iwelsh fuck
Replying to @threat_update
@SpotifyCares Just bought a family plan and it said 3 months free, but it looks like it just billed me and is going to bill me again in a month.
@jdunck @Conaw Honestly I think to some extent that's a problem we can solve AFTER the paywall problem. The paywalls are extortionary; *that* should be illegal, instead of sharing pub research openly being illegal. Fix *that*, & solutions to distributed trust will emerge among those who care.
@jdunck @Conaw And like, the existing incentives don't actually produce optimal quality of research & publication anyway: • researchers can't access • ...replication crisis • publish or perish blocks deep work • valuing exclusivity incentivizes excessive rejection👇
@mrgunn @Conaw @mendeley_com @meta @scite @RoamResearch I'm talking not just a citation graph on the level of papers, but on the level of specific claims & quotations being deeplinked. I think that would be really powerful, and would allow for a whole new level of following an author's thinking.
@jonnym1ller Gonna loop in @DougTataryn, who is doing emotional processing coaching for entrepreneurs! At a high level, I would say that you can't consistently make good business decisions if you've got unprocessed emotions hiding in your blindspots.
Retweeted @visakanv
In my alternate universe, any child that reads books under the desk at school is given a full scholarship to do whatever they…
@vgr @Meaningness 👆 I also think this. I have some thoughts here in my public roam about roamblogs & roambooks and meaningness is my main go-to example for the latter. Read here: roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo… (This is a feature wishlist, not thoughts on what is or could be profoundly possible.)
@jdunck @Conaw Among those who don't care, publication exclusivity isn't something they value anyway, except inasmuch as they could use it to try to convince people who do care, and those people will have new & better resources for figuring out who to trust now anyway.
@jdunck @Conaw Hell, among those who don't care, they'll write a popular article about a study, and the study is behind the paywall, and the popular article totally misrepresents it, but nobody can even fucking check because of the paywall. And yet the article *seems* to be well-sourced.
@jdunck @Conaw I'm pushing back here because I read your original response as "we should solve the trust problem before breaking up the journal cartels" and that seems super backwards to me and likely to not actually work. Gatekeeping publication doesn't require gatekeeping reading access.
Whose writing do you give the fewest caveats when you recommend it? (Caveats might look like: "read X, but [don't take part Y too seriously] / [X doesn't understand Z]" which is something I often find myself saying, eg about rationalist writing)
Nothing is objectively bad, except _________________. My answer: MM/DD/YY date format (in case it's not clear, this game is intended for playful snark, not for more serious stuff)
Retweeted @CompliceGoals
Productivity journalling can increase performance by 22%. Pretty simple: reflect daily on what you accomplished that d…
Retweeted @visakanv
guy: how to be productive complice: keep a log of what u produced guy: ur kidding complice: im really not …
What is prose? By "prose" I don't mean "as opposed to poetry", I mean "as opposed to a pile of post-it notes", or "as opposed to your twitter feed" This seems like an important and nuanced question, and I have thoughts on the subject!
...if you were expecting a tweetstorm, well, there isn't one at the moment! But I have drafted a bunch of thoughts on this over on my roamblog, talking about twitter, wikis, google docs, tables, & #ToolsForThought in general. roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo…
@coponder New instance. Much of the writing on there so far is stuff I drafted awhile ago in a private context though (mostly pre-roam).
@Conaw You mean reffing that block elsewhere? I keep not knowing where to put those 😛 (Also that thing was written pre-roam, in workflowy, so I probably need to revise it a ton)
@scholarcy @mrgunn @Conaw @mendeley_com @meta @scite @RoamResearch Oh neat. That's Scholarcy? And it's AI-generated? Still not quite the same as it looks like the references don't take you directly to the paragraph in the original paper that supports the claim, but it looks cool and I'm glad you're working on it.
Thread · Roamblogs: nonlinear public writing and the blog/book distinction
Thread about Roamblogs, prompted by @vgr (thanks to @QiaochuYuan for encouraging me to write it)
@vgr @QiaochuYuan I'm experimenting with writing publicly on roamresearch.com, and its graph features seem to be solving some core challenges: 1. wanting to be able to reference ideas I haven't written a full post about 2. not wanting to post about something before my post is 💯
@vgr @QiaochuYuan ...you can see how those two challenges reinforce each other. Since everything's so intertwingled, this made it really tough to publish anything!
@vgr @QiaochuYuan (EDIT to thread: Apparently twitter refused to let me publish this storm because I've used the phrase "everything is deeply intertwingled" too many times already. Had to edit the phrasing slightly to stop a vague "Whoops, you already said that" error message)
@vgr @QiaochuYuan Anyway, with Roam, I can just mention a new idea using a [[page link]], & get a placeholder page for it. Even before adding content to the page, it already displays every place where that word/phrase is used, giving context for learning more about it:
@vgr @QiaochuYuan I've only done a little bit of this but it's been amazing and I can tell that it's going to make a huge difference to my online writing. I've wanted something like this for years. Here's some thinking from 2 years ago. Ended up making an Airtable and it helped... like 5%.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan In those notes, you'll notice I talk about Tables of Contents and about meaningness.com, which is one of the best examples of a hypertext *book* that I'm aware of. @meaningness made drupal plugins for 🛠️ WIP pages & hover-glossary
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness But meaningness is a nonlinear book. What's a nonlinear blog? What distinguishes a book from a blog?
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness I see the essential difference between blog & book as: a book has a finite breadth & depth, that's somewhat known from the beginning, and thus is organized around a ToC, and can be *finished". Also intended to be internally coherent.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness By contrast, a blog is an ongoing exploration of whatever captures the writer's interest at a given moment (perhaps with a theme). Any table of contents must be mostly retrospective, since the writer doesn't know what comes next. Later posts may contradict earlier ones.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness This implies some bloggers who are super organized & have dozens of posts planned out could be considered to already be writing digital books. Then ofc there are blogs converted into books, one example being the conversion of LW Sequences into R:A-Z lesswrong.com/posts/NjFgqv8b…
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @Meaningness again becomes a helpful example here. The homepage says it's a "work in progress ... hypertext book and a metablog that comments on it" and the book has a table of contents whereas the metablog is simply posts organized by date.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness One advantage to writing a book is you can assume readers will start @ start, so you can introduce multiple new concepts, then use them to say more. A huge part of the point of a hypertext book is that it affords multiple points of entry, which absolutely necessitates glossaries.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness At *minimum*, one needs accessible quick reminders of what terms mean. Roam's contextual backlink approach is even more valuable as it means you see not just the definitions but also references to what else you've said ABOUT and WITH those concepts
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness This is critical for allowing writers to write deep thoughts using new concepts without having to re-explain themselves every time, but also not having to manually pull up a reference link for each use of a term... & ofc some people don't even try 😂
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness And we haven't even gotten to some of the more epic features of roam, including the ability to embed-quote nodes or entire subtrees, and to see where a given piece is quoted. This allows for remixing old pieces or drafts, producing meta-commentary, & stuff I haven't even dreamed!
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness Previously the best thing for this was twitter & QTs (and it's still better along some dimensions) See @visakanv's answer to @vgr's original question
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv There are challenges though. People find meaningness.com daunting to read because they don't know where to start. In order to ensure I read the whole thing, I chose to just go in ToC order anyway. I guess the main value is being able to publish a half-written book at all.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv So going back to @vgr's original point, @RoamResearch is clearly not built around a core use case of blogging and has barely optimized for it at all... and yet it's already a powerful platform for this. What's possible with a few years of further development?
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv @RoamResearch Here's what I'd like to see for roam to make it better for graph-based-blogs: 😍 1. Basic usability stuff: shareable page url with previews, custom header/theme/css, private drafts, commenting (block-level!)
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv @RoamResearch 😍 2. Better ways to organize posts to point people to new content & updated-old content. Currently landing page is Daily Notes, which is... sort of appropriate for a blog... but it ends up being mostly blank unless actively updated frequently.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv @RoamResearch 😍 3. Subscribe-related features. One option I would like is to be able to easily export a page as HTML and pipe it straight into wordpress+RSS and into mailchimp, so that I can announce new posts to followers. Could also be more internal.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv @RoamResearch 😍 4. What-I've-Read tracking. This is key for nonlinear reading. Visited-links turning purple is the Web 1.0 version of this, but it doesn't suffice when pages may also be updated. It needs to be both on a page level and on a node level.
@vgr @QiaochuYuan @Meaningness @visakanv @RoamResearch 😍 5. Inter-roam linking/embedding. I've talked to @Conaw & this is en route but is tough & needs a new data model. 5b. Some extensible standard for doing deep backlinks & embed between completely different *sites*. Revive the blogosphere! Also science 🌎
@QiaochuYuan @vgr Your imagination is well-calibrated 😀
@visakanv Wow, I'm just taking in that your tweetcount has increased by 66% in the past year. ...mine probably has as well, come to think of it, but in both cases my # is 1/10 of yours.
Retweeted @vgr
How would you reimagine blogs around graph databases as the foundation? (Roam, Notion, Gatsby all seem to have blog like functio…
"How are you doing?" "In... what context?" "Uhh, you know, generically..." "Well, generically-brand: I'm fine!"
Wondered with @SarahAMcManus "whence index cards?" Found this excellent article! Relevant to @Conaw's interests, it cites an early mail-in search engine project that would return index cards! 😂 Founder gave up but envisaged eventual digital solution. popularmechanics.com/culture/a19379…
@Meaningness @vgr @QiaochuYuan @visakanv @RoamResearch @Conaw The back-links thing mentioned above is one answer, the hierarchical workflowy-like structure & ability to embed trees from one place into another is another.
@BillSeitz @Conaw Yep, @RoamResearch is not optimized for sharing stuff at all yet. Appreciating you Grring as part of encouraging them to make that happen!
@Meaningness @vgr @QiaochuYuan @visakanv @RoamResearch @Conaw and in terms of large-scale vision... (from my perspective this will also require major changes in *culture*, which is also what I'm working on)
@Conaw @vgr @tomcritchlow @context_ing Honestly I think the clarity you need comes from having two separate modals: (could even re-use the actual modal code, the point is for the user to not feel confused about what they're doing)
@JYSexton Maybe you've seen this already: you might appreciate Bob Altemeyer's work on Authoritarian Followers as a sort of personality type. theauthoritarians.org/why-do-trumps-…
@vgr @Conaw @tomcritchlow @context_ing I think that the daily notes feature, while not fully well-developed atm (eg you can't see a week at a glance or search of "mentions of the term 'slacking' on a monday") is actually valuable for providing a basic scaffold for dumping stray thoughts without needing to process them
@vgr @Conaw @tomcritchlow @context_ing Inbox implies needing to touch again. Not sure if that's how you mean it, but it's implied by GTD & the skeuomorphism. Roam daily notes ~= journal, where you might have specific topic journals, but if you don't know where to start you just: - open - date the page - start writing
Retweeted @LordChisholm
I'm gonna say something you might not know: you are not bad for not already knowing this thing I'm saying right now
@speakerjohnash One human mind or one "mind" as an abstract thing, that could be arbitrarily large & complex? In any case, my answer seems to be "no" many times over. Challenges relating to: - organizing it all - contradictory perspectives - paradox of knowing "what it's like to not know"
@Plinz @speakerjohnash Any serious take on the question demands definitions of: - "mind" - "hold" - "all" - & "knowledge" Plutarch's famous quote would mu the question altogether, by negating "hold" as an appropriate verb for "mind".
There's no such thing as "all knowledge". Knowing is a process. It's all fractal & contextual, & lies not in a countable set of facts but in an uncountably infinite set of relationships & meta-relationships.
@Plinz @speakerjohnash I'm also inclined to mu the question with:
Retweeted @FioraAeterna
i was recently shown a method for dealing w/unwanted feelings and its not special or anything but i figure there's some o…
Replying to @FioraAeterna
@FioraAeterna @QiaochuYuan Wanting to understand the story here... did you read some NEDERA guide, then develop a sort of simplified process based on that, then articulate that process in this tweet? 👇 Or was it more independent/coincidental than that? twitter.com/FioraAeterna/s…
@dela3499 @DavidDeutschOxf @DorianKBandy When I was in cadets, we had one marching cadence in 6/8 time, that effectively balanced the accents pretty well. Left and your Right, (5 6) Left and your Right, (5 6) Left and your Right and your Left (2) —"You're Right!" Silent beats in (). All sung by sergeant except "YR!"