Retweeted @crockerthoughts
401(k) plans have not been around long enough to see a generation retire on them.
December 2019
Click the link in the tweet below to see some interesting (& some banal) takes on: > "Please quote this tweet with a thing that everyone in your field knows and nobody in your industry talks about because it would lead to general chaos."
@_jordan_bates There's a sanskrit phrase something like "Nartak Atman" (can't find it online exactly but I got it from @HareeshWallis) that means "one dancer", expressing the idea that the entirety of everything is flowing as one coordinated dance.
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@_jordan_bates There's a sanskrit phrase something like "Nartak Atman" (can't find it online exactly but I got it from @…
@speakerjohnash @thewiseturtle Looked up Lasso of Truth just now and discovered that the comic book device was created by some of the same people who invented the actual, physical, blood-pressure-based lie detector (a very early version of it). 🤯
Retweeted @visakanv
One of my private beliefs that doesn’t translate very well is that true comedy is sacred. And not sacred as in solemn, but sa…
Apparently Dave Chapman's writing process is fueled by peoples' confusions & trouble caused by not understanding things he understands. Wondering if he'd find it helpful, annoying, or both, if we were a bunch more vocal about our eternalistic confusions... 🤔
@_awbery_ @dopaminendreams @cognazor @TellYourSonThis Since this old tweet keeps getting linked to, I figure I might as well say something about the image. I made it myself, by: 🖊️ drawing on my hand in fluorescent sharpie 🟣 shining a blacklight on it & taking a photo 💻 using Gimp's Rodilius filter (have to download & install)
@_awbery_ @dopaminendreams @cognazor @TellYourSonThis The original hand photo was taken 4 years ago, and the effects added shortly thereafter. Then 1y ago I added the text for the cover photo. The drawing actually covered my whole hand, not just one side:
Retweeted @savinola
Proposal: a greenroom for speakers, but instead of a quiet place to collect your thoughts, it’s a dance party to shake off yo…
@aaronzlewis @DavidDeutschOxf I would say these two books are linked in really interesting ways, and also link even deeper if you add meaningness.com
Retweeted @chezpim
In Thai, when we eat something that’s not to our taste, we don’t really say “I don’t like this” or “this is bad”. We say “I…
Replying to @selentelechia
@selentelechia @granderojo @eigenrobot Looking forward to Vaselgel, which functions as a sort of temporary vasectomy. Nonhormonal solutions seem super valuable for men & women. Harder to do for female reproductive system probably. < impossible to capture all of the nuance in this tweet > blogs.biomedcentral.com/on-health/2017…
@sbkaufman "That can't be true because it's not true for me." If the "finding" is a generalization from a correlation of averages, then in many cases 5-30% of people may have the opposite correlation. Doesn't *disprove* correlation, but indicates need for nuance.
Thread · Why Chatham House Rule fails as a blanket conference policy · 4 of 6 tweets
@othercriteria Seems to me that Chatham House rule is a tradeoff that is good for exactly one thing, and in all other situations is anti-helpful. The one thing is analyzing complex & controversial topics among a group of loosely-affiliated individuals. This is what Chatham House is for.
@othercriteria Note that even Chatham House doesn't use its famous eponymous rule most of the time. Usually meetings are kept on the record, and the Rule is only invoked "occasionally". Source: their site. chathamhouse.org/chatham-house-…
@othercriteria I went to a conference that attempted to put the whole conference under CHR. First off, this was a shitshow because they failed to make it common knowledge, which 100% breaks CHR as a system. It might have been... ok... if they'd used it only for the scheduled topic discussions
@othercriteria But applying it to the whole conference would technically make networking near impossible, because it would imply that I can't even say to my team "I talked with Named Person and they said they'd like to collaborate with us" because that's a violation of Chatham House Rule!
If you set a rule that people will predictably break and then predictably be afraid to talk about having broken... ...you'll undermine: • that specific rule • other more reasonable rules you've set • talkaboutability of things in general
Thread · Why Chatham House Rule fails as a blanket conference policy · 2 of 6 tweets
@othercriteria Now obviously I could ask that person's permission, but this is awkward, so in practice people won't do this and therefore many people will be in violation of this rule and this is predictable and therefore the rule can't be assumed to be in effect.
@othercriteria TL;DR ChathamHouse Rule may make sense in very limited contexts for surfacing sensitive information, but as a blanket policy it undermines relationship-building as well as rule-following in general. I appreciate @othercriteria for being my Somebody Wrong on the Internet today 🧡
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@othercriteria TL;DR ChathamHouse Rule may make sense in very limited contexts for surfacing sensitive information, but…
Replying to @keendisregard
@KeenDisregard @utotranslucence Ooh! I'd love to hear more about the project. Lots of resonance with these desiderata.
@ConceptualJames *sigh* yeah. Saw this tweet earlier today. The text of the tweet is satire based on the text in the image.
@ConceptualJames Unfortunately, up a level of abstraction, Einstein qt “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” obviously applies to climate change incentives, and the only language most ppl have to talk about this is politically polarized (eg patriarchy).
@ConceptualJames This seems like it creates something kind of isomorphic to a Motte-and-Bailey situation, although it's different because it's not about two meanings for one word but about the more general need to shift from blame-based thinking to systems thinking. slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all…
@zackkanter iow
@marcoJcosta @webdevMason Better reinforce your heart before reading about the fourth-world. > The lament that the United States is turning into a third-world country is at once too pessimistic and too optimistic. ribbonfarm.com/2019/04/08/wei…
Thread · "You're not you when you're hungry": scarcity and fluid selfhood
Snickers has a pretty big & long-running ad campaign called "You're not you when you're hungry" and the examples are playful but the underlying point is deep and perhaps unsettling.
I think that this is actually a great example of something everyone knows and nobody talks about because it would lead to general chaos. Simply: If I don't eat, I die. If you don't eat, you die.
Somebody said those sentences recently & I was like DUDE YOU DON'T SAY THAT. I didn't actually blurt it out but it was fascinating to recognize the part of me that was just like "you can't just talk about people dying" even as simultaneously he was stating an obvious basic fact.
Snickers makes their campaign about people getting angry, grumpy, or confused when hungry, but (for obvious reasons) they don't talk about how the anger is often a cover for fear.
Going up a level of abstraction from hunger→fear→"you're not you", there's a more general general thing where *any* kind of scarcity (perceived) dramatically affects many dimensions of consciousness.
Going up a level or two further, we encounter fluid selfness more generally. Here things get loopy, because fear of fluid selfness can itself cause changes in your approach to selfing. Eventually it finds an attractor though 🧭 meaningness.com/self
...not really sure where I was going with this thread.
@loopuleasa Yeah the relationship between information entropy & physical entropy is also fascinating and I feel like some part of me intuitively gets it but I couldn't for the life of me articulate it much better than "something something order something something chaos".
@AltOphidion @loubelleau @GRITCULT Other things that "consciousness" sometimes ends up being used for: • Meta-cognition • Verbal loop
Schmactenberger w @dthorson on Emerge re externalities. I keep coming back to this. > The other thing is, intrinsic to how we do problem solving is that, for the most part, humanity solves problems in ways that make worse problems. Listen: anchor.fm/emerge/episode…
Replying to @infiniturtle
@infiniturtle Welcome back to twitter! Substack is old news now, but you're just in time for #roamcult and roamblogs:
Replying to @infiniturtle
@infiniturtle done
@edelwax @imhinesmi I like the chart! I hope to see many more emoji 3×3s in my life. And... as someone who's investigated Kegan etc for a few dozen hours, it's on a different level of abstraction than what you've captured here. Most stages compatible with most behv patterns, but w different meaning
@edelwax @imhinesmi I really like the disambiguation of different kinds of nihilism though! I wonder if there are a few more archetypes or if that'd be pushing it... 🤔
@infiniturtle Patreon for access to an ever-evolving otherwise-private db. I've actually thought about this myself 🤑 Also @Conaw & @RoamResearch, get on this 😉 Also also my comment about substack was mostly a joke. It's not going anywhere 📨
@MSlavin I tweeted an excerpt from this podcast today, and figured it was worth tacking onto this older thread.
@edelwax @imhinesmi Ahh! Yes, that definitely happens and it's one of the challenges of the field. People want to streamline Kegan's subject-object interview, but doing so removes exactly the part that's developmental! 🤦♀️ It's the research-psychology version of this issue:
Thread · Running out of toilet paper, fear of boredom, and everyday meaning
For some time, I've noticed an odd trigger of nihilistic thoughts: running out of something. Often toilet paper or toothpaste, sometimes peanut butter. It seems to produce "oh my fucking god how many times am I going to have to buy more of this!" 😳🙄😑☠️
I think the particular flavor of this nihilism comes from a fear of boredom. Not boredom itself, but fear *of* boredom.
Makes sense that it's fear-of, not boredom itself. 😨 Actual boredom isn't so bad. Maybe isn't even real! 🤯 On lots of levels I've recently been busting through this:
And yet... these nihilistic thoughts are fascinating because despite my life being incredibly richly meaningful, they still feel tempting! This highlights how easy it is to lose touch with what you ordinarily know, when you're in a fear state. Thread 👇
Today I got to the end of the row of melatonin pills I keep along top of my corkboard for easy access from my desk, and had to put more out from the container in my closet. Dunno if it was the fact that I hadn't fully run out or what, but I had a non-nihilistic experience today!
I poured out a handful, and as I placed each one up there, I felt connected with my future selves who would take one off each day. This represents 2½ weeks of my life! What'll happen in that time? There's meaning in all of that. It's less poetic, but same goes for toilet paper.
One anchor that has helped me in the past when this nihilistic feeling comes up is humming the hook from Setting Up the Pins by @grovesroad, pointing at the beauty of the inevitability of having to take care of stuff again & again. Beautiful music video: youtube.com/watch?v=I1MQaH…
"Sing for the beauty that's to be found setting up the pins for knocking them down." Everyday life itself as infinite game. Creating the conditions for playing the game as part of the game itself, not as somehow separate. Intertwingulating work & play.
My attention much more naturally orients towards exalting the beauty of abstraction—in the computer science sense—the beauty of not *having* to concern oneself with the details of the pin setup. But obsession with *that* beauty is part of the fear-of-boredom nihilism.
Iain McGilchrist wrote an essay/ebook called The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning, which explores this question: > How is it that the more able man becomes to manipulate the world to his advantage, the less he can perceive any meaning in it?
(I'm about to mention brain hemispheres, so if you haven't already read McGilchrist or my tweets about it, I will probably need to clarify at this point that this is a new model, not Gazzaniga's model that's considered debunked even by Gazzaniga.)
So the left-hemisphere tends to be "not in touch with reality but with its representation of reality, which turns out to be a remarkably self-enclosed, self-referring system of tokens." It "sees truth as internal coherence of the system" then hustles to twitter.com/djmicrobeads/s…
Such a coherent model is awesome, but dangerous unless you can reconcile that model with actual reality. This requires the same perceptual shift involved in seeing the beauty in settings up the pins, even—and especially—if you *also* have a PinSetterBot™
This perceptual shift is table stakes for grokking complexity, which is critical for taking on global problems without making yet-worse problems.
How to learn this? I'm working full-time on scaling answers to that question. I wish with all my heart I could tell you in a tweet or two. But it'd be a totally different world if I could, so 🤷♀️
I could try to give pointers at where to start, but of course you have to start where you are, & that's different for everyone. Here's a link to a recent blog post, which works with a lot of similar themes and has links to relevant works by me & others. malcolmocean.com/2019/10/the-ch…
Retweeted @CompliceGoals
Thread about the latest user-visible improvements to complice.co: a new timer mode! twitter.com/compluvi/statu…
It is not power that corrupts, but fear. —Aung San Suu Kyi
The full quote adds: "Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."
Replying to @ryn__x
@context_ing This might have one or two soft words in it but it's definitely not lyrical and might not even have any words (my memory is unclear. I think it's other Estas Tonne stuff that has words) youtube.com/watch?v=WGTxqh…
@context_ing While we're talking epic guitar fingerstyle, also check out my theme song: youtube.com/watch?v=jdYJf_…
@context_ing Different genre: spacious atmospheric electronica, complex mix of slow & fast. Like my first link, may have one or two words but I'm pretty sure it's at most that many and again may be zero on this album. youtube.com/watch?v=qEI1_o…
Thread · Meta-thread of threads on McGilchrist's brain hemispheres · 1 of 38 tweets
@Timber_22 Didn't intend for this thread to talk about hemispheres, but that's where it ended up!
@Meaningness @ssica3003 I thought this wasn't me, but then I remembered that literally two days ago I tweeted this: (at the end of a long rant off of a single tweet)
@bonsaielectric @vgr @QiaochuYuan I've seen it but haven't tried it. My lifestyle is such that most of what's important to me is not well-captured by email, calendar, or tasks really. 🤷♀️ I'm hugely in favor of multiple integrated views though! Have used Airtable for custom versions of this before.
Replying to @keendisregard
@KeenDisregard @utotranslucence Ooh yeah I would probably have design thoughts on this on at least one level of abstraction if not many. @Conaw can attest that I say useful things in this regard.
Replying to @ryn__x
@context_ing Yeah the rest of John Butler is also good but doesn't blow my mind nearly as much as that song. 🌊 I've also personally intentionally put that song on almost exclusively while doing life-reflection (fits 2 repeats per pomodoro) so it has a deep association with that for me.
@uncatherio Yes, for now. Coordinating action can be done hierarchically. Coordinating thought requires integrating perspectives into a meta-perspective, which in turn requires levels of generalized samesidedness that we don't know how to train yet (existing culture actively anti-trains).
@uncatherio For more on this thing about perspective, read Unflattening by @Nsousanis: a PhD thesis created as beautiful graphic art. amzn.to/2YikJ5V (Not coincidentally, I told @Conaw about it in Sept'18, in a convo where we talked about writing a book together) 2 relevant pages:
@tasshinfogleman First thing that came to mind was going to @DougTataryn's Bio-Emotive Retreat at @MonasticAcademy in June :sob-sunglasses: Some similarly-valuable things but they were less decisive more "holy shit watching this youtube video changed my life" (it was 👇)
Retweeted @oluoluoxenfree
I'm really enjoying @CompliceGoals; should really be in bed but smashing out my first few goals of the day before bedti…
Retweeted @emusdrinking
The finest tweets thus will append The hashtag #TweetsAboutThisTrend twitter.com/kevinsimler/st…
Looks like there haven't been many #TweetsAboutThisTrend lately... this is a major issue.
@nibrasibn @JillBolteTaylor @TEDTalks Yeah it's pretty evocative! You might also dig some of these threads about McGilchrist's model. It's based on a lot of subtle research:
I want something like Screenotate, but for Linux. Screenshot→OCR. Afaict this doesn't exist. I would pay $40 to someone for creating it—you can still open-source it ofc, it's linux. This might be a good jumping off point: askubuntu.com/questions/1626…
If you also want this and you'd be down to add to the bounty (eg @voyageur_techno who just retweeted it) then RT the above and reply with how much you'd contribute. We might be able to make this happen pretty straightforwardly 🤑
(idk the full featureset of Screenotate; the thing I'm imagining is pretty simple and would probably take an ultrapro linux expert only a few hours (I say as a way to gesture at scope; there are problems that simply cannot be solved in that amount of time))
Replying to @chumulu
@chumulu listening now soft spacious nerdy odd
@Noah_J_Byrd @Aella_Girl I also answered "no" because of the playing god thing. too many externalities for me to bet on this. Re: the other thing though: correlation between "basic necessities met" and "quality of life" (meaningfully, not just some proxy) is likely weak.
@aaronzlewis @context_ing Mmm wow. Feels alive in your hands too. (Sometimes people cover a song like this and they get a lot of the technical stuff right but the soul isn't there.)
@aaronzlewis @context_ing I have a song (pure 🎹) I've been playing for about a decade that also varies every time I play it. The first few minutes is always basically the same aside from tempo, articulation, etc (which do vary a fair bit) but then it blossoms into whatever that moment wants it to be 🌷🌺
One of the most lifechanging experiences of my decade was going to @DougTataryn's Bio-Emotive workshop at @MonasticAcademy last June. Opened up a ton about my past and is opening up a lot of future possibilities. ...& he's coming to Toronto mid-January! eventbrite.ca/e/bio-emotive-…
@_awbery_ I recall one of @dthorson's Emerge conversations (probably Miles Bukiet or @PeterXPark) talking about @MonasticAcademy as a place to learn ~"how to be happy no matter the circumstances", and it seems like maybe a similar equivocation going on there...
Thread · Rewriting Complice's homepage with evocative rather than dry copy
“There are dozens of collaborative productivity tools on the market. Not that we are significantly better. We just can't help building another one.” 😂 fibery.io/anxiety
👆 How to market your copycat productivity app when you can't innovate like @RoamResearch or complice.co
In related news, I realized today that the Complice marketing copy above-the-fold was also way too dry. Here's what it looked like: In addition to being verbose & selling feature not benefit, the automated life coach comparison is misleading in 2019. Implies a chatbot or sthg.
Now, inspired by a comment @gmws82 made while reading a draft productivity-philosophy-manifesto I wrote, it just has this Mary Oliver quote: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
I understand emotions & feelings way better than I did when that earlier marketing copy was written (a few years ago). This partially due to general maturity but mostly due to doing a bunch of emotional processing.
Also, I think, with reading Iain McGilchrist and grokking the difference between representational aboutness language & evocative withness language.
I think I've sort of implicitly associated emotion-oriented, evocative marketing with the kind of fear-driven marketing copy that generates FOMO and makes you feel like an idiot for not buying. I've lost count of how many times I got burned by such marketing in my early 20s.
I feel like while the Mary Oliver quote now on the Complice homepage *might* cause fear, it's more aimed at opening up a sense of possibility. Well, sort of. Maybe also fear. Both. The quote is from a poem and the previous line is "Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?"
Consciousness of one's own mortality is a a powerful force, for motivation, or for acceptance, or for humility.
The feeling (or at least *a* feeling) I want people to have when they encounter Complice is essentially:
And on that note, now the header "Stop organizing & start doing" feels too flat. 🤔 Maybe "start living" or "start moving"? Any other suggestions?
@vgman94 Based on this tweet and your bio, I find myself thinking you may dig this article which talks about the need for an axis other than from left & right so that "centrist" doesn't look just like a compromise between left & right. everythingstudies.com/2019/03/25/the…
.@visakanv @visakanv @visakanv did you know that if you actually hit the QT button on a tweet (instead of pasting the link) then you get the full 280 characters ➕QT, instead of just the 256-257 leftover after the link? 🤩🤩🤩🤩 (unfortunately you can only do @ start of thread)
Reverse Lobbying: best worst idea 💡🙃 So there's a thing where some governments genuinely want to do good things, but the officials get bribed by corporations to favor the corporations' interests. Results: fossil fuel subsidies, banks own economies, US healthcare shitshow, etc twitter.com/kajerstin/stat…
It works because while govt is large, the amount required to buy a few decision-makers is small (relatively). However—corporations have the same structure! 🤯 So what if govt ~bribed CEOs etc to 🤫 while laws are passed that would benefit public but undercut their industry?
I'm calling this best worst idea because I think that while it sort of makes some amount of sense... 🤔 ...many different groups would vehemently reject the idea, for wildly different reasons... 🤣 ...and would produce AWFUL incentives in the medium-long term. 📢📉
@mechanicalmonk1 I laughed more than I was expecting at this. There's something about physics magic being used to create unexpected harmless futility that's just 😙👌
Thread brought to you by "if money control so powerful, how the hell could we do this?" > To this end, the power to organize human activity, and provision resources must be torn from the greedy clutches of private banks and returned to democratic control. medium.com/@wayneblewis/w…
Retweeted @meditationstuff
I'm releasing new material. This is huge, bigger than Folding. (It's still in draft form, so it's not easy to consume.…
@rothosphere I found a userstyle that hides likes & other reactions! (and various other things, if you want) Not sure if it still works; I almost never go on fb anymore. userstyles.org/styles/141456/…
Thread · Searching Twitter while tweeting as a shared second brain
I have a habit now of searching before/while I tweet, to see what relevant gems from the past I can pull in. This was a really delightful instance: I had an idea, and wanted to call it "reverse lobbying". Turns out someone already open-sourced the term 6.5y ago!
Usually when I do this I tick the "People you follow" box because the terms are common enough ("intimacy", "meditation", "death", "nihilism" etc) that I want to get stuff that still feels like it's part of the same conversation that I'm in, not randos.
I assume this habit emerged because I was searching for specific tweets I'd seen before to quote, and started seeing other tweets that were even better, prompting me to do a search even if I didn't know what I'd find. That got me both of these! 👆🙃👇
First one was `twitter conversation` and second was `twitter unexpected`. With second search I was actually looking for this one 👇, which I eventually found via searching `from:conaw reward` & scrolling his zettelkasten thread until I found it.
Memory is wack. Twitter is a weird shared second-brain. (Found this guy by searching `from:malcolm_ocean searching`)
Want to up your twitter search game? Custom search commands for yourself and the people you most want to quote. Click through for thread:
Also lobby to @Twitter & @jack to realize that QTs are a killer feature & • give it its own notification tab • # & button on each tweet to see where quoted • improve composer for QT-embed • etc
@margo2468 @DougTataryn @MonasticAcademy Ah and you're in Colorado... maybe you & @collinofzion & @MSlavin & @gmws82 & others might want to explore the possibility of a Bio-Emotive workshop happening there next year too! (Inspired by this tweet)
From a constructivist perspective, an alternate universe is only one ontology shift away. (More seriously, if the AU is about culture/norms, not past events, then it's just a group ontology shift away)
@visakanv Examples of this already happening—you're creating your own AU!
Retweeted @newsycombinator
Wikipedia Has Cancer (2017) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_…
Occurred to me today that meaninglessnesslessness is basically eternalism. meaningness.com/eternalism
Of course, this means nihilism is meaningfulnesslessness
@uncatherio I could probably say useful things about this but not very effectively over twitter, which is probably part of why GameB twitter sounds like buzzword city. In first 15m of this, good discussion about the structural challenges of articulating the new thing:youtube.com/watch?v=8Es_WT…
@uncatherio Relates structurally to goodhart's law. The articulation of the thing would not compile to the actual thing. Having said all of that, here's real case study of an actual large manufacturing company that is doing things in a somewhat new way. hbr.org/2018/11/the-en…
@uncatherio I guess it depends on what you mean by "methods for collective sensemaking" tho. In my work these mostly aren't systematic forms; more scaffolds for emerging a totally different culture. But concretely, here's Etsy re how post-blame improves dev capacity: codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/bla…
@ssica3003 @Meaningness dear god please bless mommy & daddy, and cousin sue, and my dog matcha, an... an my gerbil, and dan for being wrong on the internet to inspire all of my essays
If you're feeling discouraged, go to someone close to you and ask them for a pep talk. They'll give you one. You'll feel more motivated.
👆 That's not my thought—it comes as verbatim as I can remember from some tweet I saw sometime between 24 and 72 hours ago, but I can't seem to find it with search. Posting it both for others' sake (it inspired something important in me) and to see if we can find the original!
To be clear, I don't have a strong opinion on pep talks as a general thing or whether this advice is generally-good-advice. But there's a gem here that I'm planning to write about & I'd love the original source as further inspiration. A contrasting take:
Gem from the opening of An Everyone Culture by Robert Kegan. People in organizations are spending time & energy hiding. Excerpt here: ssir.org/books/excerpts…
@benlandautaylor I really like this take on the incentives that produce this. In many organizations, it's not safe to have feedback flowing.
We are not endowed with ‘temporary trial lives’ that we can repeat *once we have got the hang of it*. This moment— each moment —is as real as your life will ever be. Do not waste it. From the Aro meditation course:
@jondubin @utotranslucence Yeah, these excerpts are gorgeous 🥰 I really like this one 👇 It points at the inherent tensions between experiencing & meaning-making, which are compounded by lacking in workable meanings for situations.
@selfprime @_awbery_ ~= happiness as a lag measure, rather than a lead measure lag m = outcomes you care about long-term, but that you can't directly move the needle on (eg health) lead m = the actions you can take immediately, that you think will 📈 the lag measures you care about (eg exercising)
@QiaochuYuan I have continued to think about this and I wonder if rofl tears are actually supposed to represent pain due to laughing so hard 🤣
@APXHard @QiaochuYuan Yeah I've experienced lots of this and my sense is that in the Bio-Emotive Framework this would be under the Core Feeling of Loss (which is sort of like grief). = reverse of🎶 "don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone"
Landsailor by Vienna Teng is one of my favorite #SongsToSobTo, and the tears come from the intense contrast of "what we have now" with "what we had before" on many many scales. youtube.com/watch?v=KysI3r…
(The embedded tweet below is a response to the screenshotted tweet above it)
Can we make #SongsToSobTo a thing? @QiaochuYuan we got this
For some existing #TweetsAboutThisTrend, see the replies to @cognazor here 👇 I'd love to see emotionally resonant songs tweeted with a few words about what emotions/situations/meanings they really resonate with, so I know when I might want to listen🎧❤️
@APXHard @QiaochuYuan Related:
"Common Trust" Akin to the concept of "Common Knowledge", which is not just "I know you know" or "I know you know I know you know" but "we both know we both know". = We both/all trust that we both/all trust <some dimension of interaction with each other>
@uberstuber I have a rant about this! malcolmocean.com/2015/12/interf…
@SarahAMcManus @QiaochuYuan Ahh brings back fond memories in high school concert band playing timpani on this complex song. We only had 2 timpanis and there's at least one point in the song where the timpanist needs to play 5 different notes in a row. Epic flow states. youtube.com/watch?v=hrPDgu…
@danlistensto have you tried taking yourself out for dinner like "self, we need to talk" have done this a couple times. I typically bring a bluetooth keyboard and write a bunch on my phone: a conversation between me and myself
It's finally paying off! 🚀📈 ...I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it's paying off in spades ♠️ (I started this tweet as a joke but apparently I'm too metamodern to avoid being also mostly sincere. I do a lot of things and it's very hard to know what makes the difference.)
@visakanv I aspire to 🙃 but I don't know if my account behavior matches (cc @brownian19)
@danlistensto @tasshinfogleman And I already sent @MonasticAcademy a copy of it in the summer! Here's my commentary:
@danlistensto Yeah, it's like... kind of weird to set up a laptop in a nice restaurant or a table at a bar, but I think it's mostly the size of the screen, not the keyboard, because I don't feel at all awkward doing this. But then again I
@NeuroAnaTody Not sure how old your kid is but this twitter thread recently blew my mind: twitter.com/johncarlosbaez…
@danlistensto Yeah I think I would also benefit from doing this. Two different things. But I could be more obstinate if you could benefit from having a Someone Wrong On The Internet to motivate your writing 😉
Thread · Complice marketing braindump: numbers, channels, and ideas
So I saw this tweet and was like huh, complice.co could use some marketing consultation. What if I get @visakanv on this? And he was like "sure, email me a braindump" and I got half a sentence in before I was like "this is weird, why am I not just writing a thread?!"
So okay, @CompliceGoals marketing braindump thread. Context for braindump is me saying to VV: > "we have a lot of ideas and it would be great to get a better sense of which ones are actually good, and also to realize things we haven't thought of."
High-level: Complice has been stable at about 300 paying customers for a few years. This is totally enough to live on but there's a sense it could easily be higher. Very little has been done towards marketing in those years. Fair bit of churn, plus new customers, & reactivations.
The Complice homepage gets ~1500 visitors (not counting logged-in users, but counting users who later log in) per month, about 5-6% of whom start a free trial, of whom 5-6% subscribe to paying. Lots of room for any of those numbers to go way up!
There's obviously a lot of work to do on inactivity, churn, etc, but that's not the focus for this moment. In any case, some fairly basic math suggests that if the visitor count or conversion rate went up 2×, the total # of paying customers would also gradually 2×
Most of the new customers are coming in via word-of-mouth, @bmndr, or (this month) a recent Scientific American article that mentions Complice twice. Or this QT:
So! Actual ideas, in no particular order. 1. Referral/affiliate program. We have this sort of half-implemented an a decent number of users have asked to be notified when there's some sort of actual rewards. Probably makes sense for this to wait until other improvements are made.
2. Add a much longer manifesto or other copy to the site. Some of this is written, some of it isn't. Some is in weird draft states. This seems like a very powerful leverage point as it would help convey the Complice philosophy to people, which is pretty unique and profound.
3. More bloggy/newslettery type stuff. I'm a pretty good writer and have lots of thoughts, but I don't like to *have* to write. Maybe an ultra-short podcast? But I've found conversion rates from audio to be absurdly dismal. Probably partially audience size...
4. Try to get Complice profiled on various sites. I've done basically none of this... I think I have ugh fields here. I tried to get on one or two sites (LifeHacker?) years ago and gave up when I didn't even get replies. Did get lots from HackerNews/IndieHackers a few years ago.
5. Try to get my *writing* featured on popular outlets. I think if I knew how to pitch I could write lots of original work for online blogs with large followings, & they might even pay me a few hundred for the article, plus there'd be whatever sorts of references to Complice.
6. Improve the coworking room experience, including the onboarding process from the rooms, and then try to get more communities/influencers etc to start coworking rooms. (The coworking rooms can be used without an account, so they're an easy thing to virally promote.)
7. Create some sort of simple micro-app that I think should exist, which people use for free, share virally, etc and then it tells them about Complice. Maybe frontend+browserstorage only, so no backend, host for free on github.io etc.
8. Add more features to the app and promote those, including promoting them to the ~600 people who used to pay for Complice and the other ~2.5k people who made an account, confirmed their email, and are thus on the "new Complice features" newsletter. This worked well in 2016.
.....I think those are the main ideas I have. Things I don't know: • am I missing whole categories? SEO I guess... • how to decide between things? • how to directly turn money into more money (eg ads or hiring someone to ____)
Marketing has long felt challenging for me. Not 100% sure why. Something about the feedback loops feeling hard. I try a bunch of stuff and the conversion rate fluctuates but..? How do I know what caused it? 🤔 Or I post links in various forums but it seems like ~nobody clicks 😟
I've found it easier with the Goal-Crafting Intensive online workshops we host around new years each year, probably because they're a discrete thing and it's easy to market to my existing audience of Complice users & newsletter subs. (🎯 landing page 👇) complice.co/event/plan2020…
Anyway, I don't know where we go from here—I'm hoping you have thoughts! 🙏 I guess probably next move is to pay you 🤑
Holy shit what. I can tell that this is functionally equivalent to the quadratic formula (it has all the same parts) but it feels obvious and natural and intuitive and how the fuck is this not being taught in every algebra class. cc @QiaochuYuan twitter.com/ben_golub/stat…
Replying to @brownian19
@anderssandberg @robinhanson My mom used to say this and she believed in both as egregores. (she didn't use that word, but that's what she meant)
@loopuleasa This 👆 was basically how I was thinking about it before starting to grok the pep talk thing. I wanna dance, so I put on music, & the music energizes me to dance💃 I wanna do X, so I ask my friend for a pep talk, & the pep talk energizes me to do X 🚀
@loopuleasa Sculpt your environment to make what you want to do feel good, natural, relevant, meaningful. By having a conversation that creates resonance & shared meaning around doing something, the path is cleared.
@loopuleasa @loopuleasa I'm appreciating your comment helping me clarify here—getting the language right is tricky! And I still basically agree with that comment, though I'd phrase it "if you need motivation then you have internal conflict on some level of abstraction"
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@loopuleasa This 👆 was basically how I was thinking about it before starting to grok the pep talk thing. I wanna dance,…
@QiaochuYuan I always found complete the square weird & awkward though whereas this just makes sense. I like the coordinate change explanation 😀
@speakerjohnash Multiple friends of mine have reported that when using bromantane they became more easily impatient with people & less empathic. Also less anxious & more productive? Tradeoffs; cabin in woods? iirc it's approved as a depression med in Russia, unregulated in USA cool molecule:
Retweeted @WilliamAEden
It has been 160 years, and the theory of evolution is *still* underrated.
The brand accounts leaving euphemistic comments on this of the top 10 things that has happened on twitter this year. 😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@mechanicalmonk1 Yeah I'm with you. I would not sell my soul working at any of these companies, and I don't particularly want to support them. Brands on twitter feel sort of like demigods (the capricious non-omnipotent greek kind) and so this is them (even the prude ones) cracking sex jokes.
@cognazor #SongsToSobTo continues:
@mattgoldenberg @QiaochuYuan Hmm just realizing the thread would have been even better if more of them did QTs or screenshotted earlier real tweets they'd done. Not that all of them should have been that, but even 5-10% that would have added to the brilliance of the thread. twitter.com/NJDevils/statu…
@chriswaterguy Yeah, certainly seems worth trying that a few times to find out what effect it has. I enjoy having convos about these topics, so if it gets even 1-2 new subscribers that would still be net positive (though would not solve my marketing challenges).
@_exoconnor Ooh yeah! I've a related idea which in my head is covered under this tweet 👇 but I realized just now I didn't actually spell it out. Basically a bunch of pages like: • Complice for students • " " freelancers/entrepreneurs • " " parents
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
😭😭😭🤬🤬🤬🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮 twitter.com/mnovendstern/s…
Retweeted @dthorson
@dthorson I like the four facets a lot better with this 2×2 than I did before! 😍 Previously they seemed kind of arbitrary (why four?) and nobody seemed to know what "show up" was... eg this thread:
@QiaochuYuan @cognazor one step further: "no symbolic or representational communication" the idea here being that everything needs to be evocative of its meaning, rather than *about* it. iow: Can I Get A With-ness?
@dthorson I keep feeling putting "circling" under "show up" is somehow confused. It feels more like a general practice that can be helpful for most/all facets. Relates to what I said to @QiaochuYuan @ MAPLE re the thurs MAPLE+Upstart convo: we need biz meetings that are *also* we-spaces.
@dthorson What if there's another dimension though...🤯🤔 Might need to make a 2×2×2! Candidates: • Act Up • Boot Up • Buckle Up • Bulk Up • Crack Up • Follow Up • Join Up • Listen Up • Mess Up • Open Up • Scale Up • Shut Up • Speak/Stand Up • Wise Up • Write Up • Wrap Up
@JasnaTod @dthorson It was in a draft! ...and then I was like "maybe Mess Up is better because "Mess" is a technical term used by some complexity folks" 🤔 I curated my list from this dictionary wildcard search, if you want to have your own look: onelook.com/?w=*_up&scwo=1…
@JasnaTod @dthorson Oh man I missed Sync Up, which wasn't in that dictionary but seems likely to be one I'd include in an actual 2×2×2 or whatever.
@dthorson @QiaochuYuan If you're actively building models around this, you might find this braindump of mine helpful: roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo…
@dthorson One other candidate dimension: Withness ↔ Aboutness The original facets are all pretty withness-based... Some aboutness-based ones might be: Listen Up, Speak Up, Write Up, Follow Up (not super satisfied with this dimension but it's a start)
@visakanv @chriswaterguy @visabrain 100 podcasts I might do but 100 local talks sounds awful when I've tried, people seem really enthused & engaged at the time but basically nobody signs up later have had *mild* success with *workshops* where people actually create goals during, eg this one at EA Global SF 2017
Thread · Six years of makeshift standing desks · 6 of 15 tweets
Makeshift standing desk thread! I've been a standing desk worker for nearly 6 years. Took a month or two of no seated desk option to switch from "uncomfortable after 30min standing" to "can stand all day; uncomfortable after 30min sitting" Evolution of my main standing desk:
Simplest makeshift standing desk = a desk made for tall chairs/stools. Remove chair & you're good to go. Left is Montreal airport, right is @Communitech Hub. Many airports & university buildings have tall desks like this.
Here's one of my more creative makeshift standing desks, from one time I was visiting my mum.
I once made a desk (enough to reproduce my double-monitor & split keyboard config shown in first tweet) entirely out of a wide variety of cardboard boxes stacked on top of a table, but I don't seem to have a photo of it. @jamesnorris_ do you have pics from Focus Week Feb 2016?
Here's a more boring cardboard box, from a time when I was invited by the now-owner of my childhood home (in a very small town) to spend an evening journalling there. Was a cool experience that I hope I get to do again. Attic turret:
I've also sometimes used a set of shelves/cupboards as standing desks but apparently I don't currently have any photos of those! Which is unfortunate because they'd be pretty funny to see. Now that this thread exists I'll be much more likely to document them probably.
@alifeofmovement Your tweet inspired me to go through years of photos to pull out ones of makeshift standing desks I've had over the years.
Retweeted @cognazor
Every tweet that you take personally is a subtweet meant for your edification twitter.com/EdLatimore/sta…
Retweeted @made_in_cosmos
How would the world be different if we stopped trying to immediately fix or hide grief, anger, sadness, rage, and despa…
Thread · Dissolving the patriarchy through men's emotional processing · 7 of 8 tweets
💧"dissolve the patriarchy" is a phrase I've been exploring recently, to express what I feel is happening as I process my trauma & hold space for other men to process theirs. Deeply sacred work.
The "dissolving the patriarchy" metaphor is very vivid for me: much of my trauma work so far has involved a lot of sobbing, so the tears are the solvent. (I'm using the NEDERA process from Bio-Emotive/@DougTataryn, which tends to involve a lot of crying)
The cultural norms against expression of emotion in men (except anger) is created by trauma, and then it blocks that very trauma from being healed.
(though I don't really like the term "trauma"; I mostly think in terms of emotional unlearning)
Many different methods to unlearn these traumatic & trauma-inducing emotional schemas. This book 👇 talks about neuroscience & practice. It necessitates creating space, beyond shame, for these experiences to surface emotionally, including crying.
It seems very clear to me that the nonviolence of the metaphor "dissolve" is structurally necessary for any change-attempt to actually creating something other than the patriarchy. Otherwise it's just "le roi est mort, vive le reine"
Relatedly, "patriarchy" itself is also a word that in many contexts is counterproductively polarizing, even though it's pointing at something important and worth using in other contexts.
@RichDecibels This tweet of yours inspired me to lay out some thoughts that have been brewing...
Thread · Dissolving the patriarchy through men's emotional processing · 1 of 8 tweets
...somehow I forgot to put any sobbing emoji in this thread. What was I thinking? 😭😭😭😭 😭😭😭😭 😭😭😭😭 😭😭😭😭 Also if you resonate with anything in this thread & don't already follow @QiaochuYuan, do that. It's kind of his thing.
@AdeleDeweyLopez Appreciating your perspective on this! My sense now is that it's probably a fuckton of both, and we totally underestimate how much emotion it's even possible to have stored up as repressed because we're measuring against an average (read still very traumatized) baseline.
Retweeted @alexeyguzey
sci-hub statistics is the best estimate of the number of people in the world actually practicing science. current estimat…
@coponder Yessssssssss YNAB is a great example to copy. I'd had that thought before but had forgotten about it and am appreciating the reminder at a time when I'm thinking more about this. Loving that we're collecting more ideas in this thread for @visakanv & I to talk about 📈
🎶 🤔 let's get quizzical, quizzical 🤔 🎵
Retweeted @jonni
The parallels between mindfulness practice and twitter browsing: Allowing yourself to notice the thoughts of others, accepting…
Retweeted @kareem_carr
There are two types of smart people: the kind that hopes that a new problem falls into a category they've seen before, and…
@ben_r_hoffman Link, partially for future people given that PG's articles aren't easily findable by date: "The Lesson to Unlearn" paulgraham.com/lesson.html
@ben_r_hoffman @bendini0 > Someday we will fund all the companies in the world 😬😬😬 ...he adds "all the good ones, at least" but still, 😬
@nathanbarry This is my nomination for "most important book of the 21st century" so far...
If you're going to do skeuomorphisms, do them right. ⌛️🍅 This is a recent feature announcement tweet for my app complice.co, describing the new hourglass timer (and contrasting it with the pomodoro timer)
Retweeted @webdevMason
If you're following me or following enough people adjacent to me to see this and *not* spending quite a lot of your time d…
Retweeted @andy_matuschak
@RoamResearch @KrisAbdelmessih A good aspiration!
@andy_matuschak @RoamResearch @KrisAbdelmessih Ooh, I'm doing this in general with my roamblog! Shift from "publishing" to "writing stuff in public" Here's a bunch of scattered thoughts on 2×2×2s, for example, that started as tweet-drafts but I wanted to do more thinking/editing before posting: roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo…
@aaronzlewis Just found this: LiquidText! (then re-found your tweet above by searching `read zoom`)
Thread · Features I want in ebook readers and reading apps · 1 of 16 tweets
Oooh this looks like a great reader/annotator: liquidtext.net (Mac only for now, unfortunately)
I think you could basically just build a twitter client into/onto @RoamResearch, and @Conaw probably knows this & will do it. (From DMs with @garybasin)
@reasonisfun @choosy_mom @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff Very compatible. You encourage the feeling to totally fill up your body and your mind, & yet also, if you have the mental space for it (many don't; meditation helps with this) you also can experience a present witness while *also* being made of sobs. 👁️😭
@reasonisfun @choosy_mom @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff As for *how* to do this, these instructions are kind of a simplified version of Bio-Emotive's NEDERA process and could be a place to start: x.com/FioraAeterna/s…
@reasonisfun @choosy_mom @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff This LW post seems related (it doesn't talk specifically about meditation but it's about a similar confusion about what it means to be good at emotions) lesswrong.com/posts/qmXqHKpg…
@BillSeitz @aaronzlewis *click, click, click* @Conaw do you know about Post-WIMP? Could be good for your marketing 💪😉 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-WIMP
@Conaw @RoamResearch @garybasin @vidy___ So many reaction gifs I could post for this.
@choosy_mom @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff Yup, LW isn't the place for this. Check out @DougTataryn's work at bioemotiveframework.com Maybe start with this ebook on Healthy Crying: bioemotiveframework.com/shop/ebook-all…
@choosy_mom @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan @meditationstuff Sob Squad. Wow. Yup, that's going in my twitter bio: 😭😎 #SobSquad Making crying hard not just normal but *cool*
@Conaw @RoamResearch @garybasin @vidy___ I'll build a WorkFlowy import & also probably a Complice integration. Not yet sure what that will look like but one obvious thing is like, if there's a block with: {{[[TODO]]}} [[December 11, 2019]] ...that should probably be a task for tomorrow. @gmws82 let's think about this.
@cognazor An attempt of mine from last week:
@then_there_was & people can confuse you by making the things they want you to pay attention to more legible than other things (that might be harder to quantify). Numeracy is good but it needs to be balanced with paying attention to the ineffable.
Fuck I'm reviewing the little 10 minute videos I recorded for the Goal-Crafting Intensive workshops last year and I'm like "this content is so fucking good!" It's a really clear & concrete expression of nuanced models I have re goal-setting that I mostly don't see elsewhere.
@ConceptualJames @Meaningness you might appreciate this as a tragicomic example of post-modernism gone weird (and not grokking modernism, etc)
Thread · How to choose goals: heuristics from the Goal-Crafting Intensive
> How do you choose goals? Glad you asked! We host an online workshop on this every New Year's called the Goal-Crafting Intensive. This year we have 4 sessions—sign up here: complice.co/event/plan2020… Here's a high-level thread on some of what we share in the workshop 👇 1/10 twitter.com/realtimeai/sta…
2/ Shared meaning is key: what even is a goal? Here's the definition we use:
3/ First step: get clear on what you want. We have a couple of pre-event exercises to help with this: 🗓️ Time Audit helps you figure out what implicit goals you're already pursuing. ☁️ Dream List helps you notice things you want that you *aren't* pursuing.
4/ Okay, now you have a new problem, which is opportunity cost: you can't pursue everything all at once! So here's the choice moment—and there's various approaches to this. We have a guide for narrowing down your dream list, and some methods for working with quantifiable goals.
5/ We often suggest starting by asking "why" then removing goals that probably aren't a good fit: - if you can’t think of reasons - if the reasons aren't things you really care about - if the goal doesn't really help w the reasons - if it conflicts with a more important goal
5/ After that, the Multipurpose Heuristic: Can you find one goal to pursue that will help you simultaneously 🤓 learn something you want to learn 💸 make money 👥 build relationships etc? (make sure those are likely outcomes, not just "hypothetically it could help with...")
6/ Another heuristic is something like "what am I really excited about right now? where will my attention naturally be drawn?" (by contrast, what feels important but can wait?) Try to tap into your own reasons for doing things, not just others' expectations.
7/ Most importantly, remember that as long as you don't get fixated, having imperfect working-clarity is better than staying undecided. Sometimes you need to get moving before you can clearly see where you want to go. So pick something & reassess later.
8/ On which note, it's very easy to just read a thread like this & go "ahh yes great ideas, I'll apply them sometime" & not actually do it. Make time in your calendar. One way to do that is to get a ticket to the goal-crafting workshop. But alone is ok 👇 malcolmocean.com/2017/12/make-a…
9/ That said, lots of challenges show up, making it easy to get discouraged & quit partway through. This is why at GCI, in addition to the coworking time & vids/exercises, you get a private slack channel with all of our experienced coaches, to share your process and get unstuck.
10/ The workshop includes a ton of other content too—this thread is basically just about one subsection of the Goal Crafting module. There's also Planning, Execution & Reflection. Learn more & sign up here: complice.co/event/plan2020…
"we should conclude that a particular thing is real if and only if it figures in our best explanation of something" = a criterion for reality by @DavidDeutschOxf Intriguingly, suggests that new explanation could make old thing unreal. Also, reality @ multiple abstraction layers
Replying to @realtimeai
@RealtimeAI @danlistensto @QiaochuYuan @visakanv My sense is that there are probably phenomena for which the chakras are our best current explanation, so they're real in DD's sense. (Which is not to say that popular chakra ↔ physicalist mappings are any good—probably they aren't.)
Replying to @realtimeai
@tobyshorin @morgan_e_ @ghxstghxst I added some bass synth. Doesn't really come in until the drop at just before 2 minutes. Audio quality isn't great, I'm not a pro & just improvised this demo. Jump to 1m40 if impatient. (the sound is Voice 107 Fargo on my Yamaha MIDI 🎹) soundcloud.com/malcolmocean/g…
@aires_aston For a model of what's going on here, check out this article: everythingstudies.com/2017/12/19/the…
@tobyshorin @morgan_e_ @ghxstghxst 😈
@nosilverv @FioraAeterna I believe something similar but up a level of abstraction: There may be some genetic differences that affect the *type* of trauma adaptation someone ends up with, but almost all mental health issues are most usefully modelled as meaning crises (~trauma) not genes or chemistry.
@nosilverv @FioraAeterna In other words, 👇 twitter.com/FioraAeterna/s…
@nosilverv @FioraAeterna Also in this frame "neurotypical" approximately means "well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society"
Retweeted @nosilverv
Give me your spicy alt-psychology takes 🌶️ Mine: Hypnosis is just hypnagogia + introspective meta-awareness Sleep paralysis…
Replying to @FioraAeterna
@FioraAeterna @nosilverv Yeah maybe my comment would be more apt as "neurotypical" is a contemporary word that is used similarly to how people might previously have said "well-adjusted" (which peaked in usage in the 50s) even if technically the meaning is v different, connotation is similar 🤔
@QiaochuYuan @Aryeh___ @choosy_mom @reasonisfun @meditationstuff #SobSquad assemble! (I think we need a thread of #SobSquad tweets/threads... QC I think probably as de facto Sobbervisor of the Sob Squad probably it makes sense for you to post that. Happy to collect content for it!)
@Aryeh___ @Evolutionistrue @JesseBering @OortCloudAtlas @ANNELAMOTT Huh, there's a book Why Buddhism Is True, by Robert Wright, which also talks about evolution. (I cringed at the title but he qualifies what he means right in the first few pages)
@FioraAeterna @nosilverv Ugh, do I mean "meta-connotation"? I don't think the connotation is actually similar, because my sense is that the term exists in part to allow people who identify as neuroatypical to self-categorize, self-sort, and self-validate.
@FioraAeterna @nosilverv In any case, I think a huge part of what's going on here is a kind of "born this way" phenomenon, where something must go through a phase of being innate=natural=okay in order to escape the phase of being seen as a judgment-worthy problem.
Retweeted @FioraAeterna
working on ascending the ladder atm
Thread · Six years of makeshift standing desks · 1 of 15 tweets
Ah here's another! Feb 2016, right after the aforementioned Focus Week I set this up in the room of my then-girlfriend, who I was staying with that month. Note the extra piece of cardboard to keep the keyboard from slipping off (near side) I miss that water bottle. Left on ✈️😢
@meditationstuff @QiaochuYuan @Aryeh___ @choosy_mom @reasonisfun You're in good company! I've invented an average of one portmanteau per month this year (that were good enough to write down). Will endeavor to share with you when the moment is ripe.
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
"fuck it, we bawl": thread of threads about crying, sobbing, weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth 😭🔜😎 #SobSquad
Thread · Nurturing design: modal interfaces that guide intention
OSes & ways-of-being 😍👇 Part of what is messy about contemporary technology is the everythingness of everything. Hard to stay focused in reading a book while reading it on a device that's also everything else.
Modalness (when an app enters a state that prevents you from doing things you can do in other states) is oft considered bad design, but why? Something about blocking the user's intent. #UXdesign
There are perhaps 3 kinds of design: 📄😶 neutral design = get out of the way. Docs, MP3 player 🎰🤑 exploitative design = hack the user. Facebook, slot machine 🤍🤔 nurturing design = guide the user in integrating complex & conflicting desires. complice.co as an ex
There are way more examples of neutral & exploitative design than nurturing design, unfortunately. This is the topic of @andy_matuschak's original thread:
It seems clear that in neutral design, modals are just in the way, because neutral design is trying to just let the user do what they want to do. Likewise, in exploitative design, modals represent a way of manipulating the user. Here's a super-obvious example:
By contrast, I'll talk about my app, Complice, which uses modal states intentionally. It's a goal-oriented productivity app. "Goal" doesn't necessarily mean quantifiable or deadline-bound though. We see it more fluidly, as what's most important:
The first way Complice uses modal states is by separating the daily workflow of the today page into three phases:
By separating intention-setting & reflection out from do-tasks mode, Complice blocks certain user intents, & in the process creates clearer contexts for when to do these different things. More is possible here—it's still easy to fall into old patterns.
2nd modal type guides momentary flow of user's choice-making to be more conscious & intentional. If you don't do something one day, instead of it staying on the list tomorrow, you have to consciously intend it again. And after a couple of days skipped, Complice starts prompting:
This adds friction—in a place where friction helps the user stay in touch with what they deeply care about 💖 Often there's a reason we don't do something today, and if we don't stop to listen, we might not notice something our intuition knows.
So! There are some examples of modal interfaces used to nudge users towards valuable and easily-overlookable parts of workflows, and help them curate their focus. I'm about to go abstract again, so open this link in a new tab & check out Complice later 🚀 complice.co/?ref=twittermo…
Okay, abstract again: what does nurturing design look like on the level of an operating system? There are some neat hacks that a few friends of mine have tried, to give their computer different modes, oriented to work or play or other options. Easier on desktop than on phone.
What if you could boot up your phone into a mode where you couldn't access any of your messenger apps? What if you could boot it up into a mode that only had your ebook reader & notes app? What about a mode where messages can be sent but not received? (Hard to do on OS lvl)
How long would it have taken for them to invent airplane mode if it hadn't been required by airplanes??? Half-decent do-not-disturb & silence & notification control just hit android a couple years ago. & that's tiny stuff.
Ways of being. What matters. In Complice, almost everything one does is connected to a goal/purpose. Many people then want to have those goal names/colors elsewhere to organize things. WorkFlowy, IFTTT+Hue, Gmail labels (out of date), post-its (can't find photo)
What would it look like for "thing I care about" to be a sort of natural object that syncs between apps, in the way that contacts, calendars, docs do? It's tough. No matter how meaningful, any articulation of purpose is at best oversimplified and at worst a proxy.
But still; currently companies are pouring billions of dollars into optimizing their apps to hack peoples' brains to make metrics go up. Design by proxy, not by vision, purpose, or a sense of alignment with the *user's* vision, purpose, or empowerment.
I hack twitter with userstyles & userscripts so it won't fuck with me as much, but there's only so much I can do given the platform constraints. Tho seriously check this 👇 out if you hate the red dot. Omg I'd go crazy using this site without this:
I notice finding it hard to stay as big-picture visionary as @andy_matuschak & @tristanharris were inviting. Given that I can usually come up with a lot of ideas for improving systems, that's a sign that our whole design paradigm is busted in some way I haven't seen thru yet 🤯
@Conaw In my timeline, literally 2 tweets below 👆 was 👇
@Eminemead I'm planning more tweetstorms like this one 👇 and probably at least one of them will have a video clip (which is why I was rewatching) You can also of course sign up for the workshop & get access here: complice.co/event/plan2020…
Replying to @coyotespike
@coyotespike @Aryeh___ @QiaochuYuan @choosy_mom @reasonisfun @meditationstuff My sense is that getting your body moving is usually a pretty good idea... go for a walk, put on a song & dance...
Replying to @jonni
@jonni @amelapay Wow yup it sounds like @amelapay is approximately looking for Complice. It bugs you to say what you did on days you forgot to sign on, but *also* doesn't pile up with old stale tasks from last week. Less to avoid. Curious if the homepage draws you: complice.co
@jonni @amelapay Incidentally, after this 👆 was tweeted but before I saw it, I wrote a tweetstorm where I explicitly talk about the value of Complice having this multi-part daily workflow (plan, act, reflect) rather than just being a huge list of tasks to organize & do:
@jonni @amelapay The original workflow for Complice was actually fully email-based; it just emailed you in the morning to ask what you were doing today, then again in the evening saying "here are your intentions from this morning... what did you actually do?" You can still use it like that.
@context_ing Have another! The texture is so rich. youtube.com/watch?v=dVuupi…
@Conaw @CompliceGoals @edelwax @fortelabs Yeah, @edelwax on values is 💯... ~= what I'd call "principles"... I sometimes play with: • Kegan 4: self-authored goals • Kegan 5: self-authored values/principles I think Complice > GTD for both stages & both careabout types, AND there's tons more that's possible there.
Retweeted @Conaw
When we first started building this feature like 8 months ago, @Malcolm_Ocean was all "someday @vgr is going to use this for 2x2…
@QiaochuYuan @cognazor @misen__ @Aryeh___ @choosy_mom @reasonisfun @meditationstuff This one 👇 was on a zoom call so I've got it recorded... and it's pretty non-spicy in content so probably a good fit for an upload. Lemme check with the person I was talking with to see if they want me to edit them out or what.
Retweeted @gmws82
I've been 3 times to this Goal-Crafting Intensive hosted by @CompliceGoals—a team I'm now part of! 🥰 Each time I've felt like…
Retweeted @reasonisfun
State of the argument so far: cryguys ↓ 😭💦🌊🏊♂️🚣♀️🏖 ↑ me…
@reasonisfun @visakanv > When I say "bad feelings are bad", I mean *the state of reality that is perpetuating them is bad*. You might say a fever is bad, and indeed it can kill you, but if your body were *prevented* from heating up, it would be unable to win the fight against an infection.
@reasonisfun @visakanv So, not totally analogously but similarly, we could say that any tears are ultimately downstream of something "bad"... ...but the crying itself may be *the way the bad thing gets released* (fwiw, "bad" is not the framing I personally use for anything; this is a translation)
@amelapay @jonni @amazinmarvin Based on what you said, I'd say start with Complice. Sincerely—AM is great and I'd point you to them first if I thought that's what you most needed. Complice will show you a workflow that's probably new. Then if you need more features, could do similar workflow in AM.
@amelapay @jonni @amazinmarvin AM and Complice share a lot of aesthetic resonance (founder of AM was inspired to start by my story, actually!) but the core difference in the app is that Complice is quite opinionated whereas AM takes an ultra-toolbox-style approach. Dozens of modular components.
@amelapay @jonni @amazinmarvin So if you were saying "I know what sort of system I need/want but I can't quite do it with existing apps" then I'd say try AmazingMarvin. But since you said "No matter what planner/to-do-type solution I choose... [eventual ugh]" and Complice is actively designed for minimal ugh🙃
Retweeted @uncatherio
I don't see a conflict btw Lulie's stance and #SobSquad. My take is that this kind of crying happens if some part of you (…
@visakanv @reasonisfun Practice crying when you don't need to so you'll be ready when you do need to. 😭 #SobSquad In other words, make crying not weird.
@QiaochuYuan @mattgoldenberg @PeterBorah Yep, I'm also in resonance with all of this. And I think part of what #SobSquad is saying isn't to maximize crying but to thoroughly 👇
@dela3499 It sounds to me like you're implying that therefore we don't have to worry about deep fakes or something, in which case I think it's important to note that this tree gif doesn't have the kind of motivated cognition & implication going on as a political or inflammatory vid would.
@dela3499 (If you're not implying that, then oops! But even so, other people might take that implication from your tweet, so it seemed worth pointing out.)
@choosy_mom @StrongReduction @QiaochuYuan @Aryeh___ So coherence therapy (from this book 👇) has a sentence stem completion exercise, and I found it WAY easier while drunk. But keeping my train of thought/feel is much harder, so having other people present to keep me focused is really helpful.
@reasonisfun There's a thing in all of this that I still don't understand, which is like... @reasonisfun seems to be starting from a *really* strong position of "crying is bad and we shouldn't do it" and then wanting evidence why it might be good. Where did that strong position *come* from?🧐
@reasonisfun @dela3499 I think that part of #SobSquad's point is that sobbing *can* be fun. Which is not to say it mightn't also be painful—some sports are also both! I would say that for me there's often been an "ohh, awesome" present with the sobs. 😭🤩🤯🥰
@dela3499 Yeah I'm with you, partially because it simply won't be *possible* to prevent the creation of such content. It won't be technically possible nor socially possible.
@amfarrell @uncatherio Have sometimes felt this blocked-urge-for-catharsis, but I mostly don't attribute it to hormones. If I'm facilitating Bio-Emotive for someone & they seem blocked like this, I'd offer "it's scary to cry" or "I don't wanna cry" & sometimes just saying this brings on the tears 😭
@amfarrell @uncatherio Not saying that'll always work or that hormones aren't involved. People who have experimented with raising or lowering androgens/estrogens do report it has a huge effect on what emotions feel possible. But meaning is also a hell of a drug.
@amfarrell @uncatherio Another thing that might help:
@reasonisfun Looks like Lulie has already seen this thread but it seems worth linking as it's definitely relevant to this idea-clash. Basically @QiaochuYuan & I think ~"crying is bad" is actually a keystone meme holding the coercive/static society memeplex in place:
"Real hyperlink artists know that paradoxically, the more people are tempted to click away from your content, the more they want to keep coming back." —@vgr via
@dela3499 Umm.... prohibition is kind of famous for not working 😜 Banning deepfakes won't work, in the same way alcohol prohibition in the USA didn't stop alcohol, nor the War on Drugs drugs, nor piracy laws ThePirateBay, nor Elsevier SciHub, nor Streisand people from seeing a photo.
@dela3499 I'm not suggesting people won't *try* it. The many examples in the previous tweet are evidence enough of that.
@DRMacIver @QiaochuYuan @misen__ @reasonisfun It's like Focusing but turned up to 11 (in a particular direction) With Focusing, 15 minutes felt like a lot of work. With Bio-Emotive, the emotional release creates more energy and 40 minutes feels like a short session.
@QiaochuYuan @misen__ @reasonisfun I'd articulate it differently... the stance I aim for is definitely subject to all of the raw feeling & meaning & everything else—not at arm's length. It's real. But I don't let myself say "and therefore X should happen!" or "and therefore Y is bad!" It's just what it is🧘♀️
@QiaochuYuan @misen__ @reasonisfun (This is an articulation thing; my sense is that QC and I are basically on the same page here... and it's a pretty similar page to the Dzogchen folks! ...but quite different from TMI-style meditation) arobuddhism.org/community/an-u…
@AdeleDeweyLopez @meditationstuff @ben_r_hoffman @reasonisfun @visakanv This piece by @_awbery_ contrasting it with vajrayana/dzogchen practice made it very vivid for me: (the whole article is great)
Retweeted @m_ashcroft
Is there a better way to save interesting stuff on Twitter than to use the bookmarks feature? I want to save this awesome t…
🤔Complice helps w/ adult psych dev 🤯 In terms of Kegan stages: 3→4 Choosing & focusing on personal goals helps ppl break from being reactive to society demands. 4→5 Fluid goal approach (vs rigid plans) helps ppl break from being subject to own goals.
@edelwax @Conaw @CompliceGoals @fortelabs Mmm yeah. @Meaningness' meta-systematicity relevant here. I've coined the term Deliberately Developmental App (parallel to Kegan's DDO(rg)) to think about this. Here's a further elaboration of how I see Complice already helping:
@QiaochuYuan @choosy_mom @StrongReduction @Aryeh___ Maybe just make sure you have someone there to write down whatever shit you say so that you can review & integrate it later. Coherence Therapy folks note that even without drugs, doing this emotional work puts people into altered states & they can easily forget it all later.
@QiaochuYuan @misen__ @reasonisfun Yeah I like the word "reifying" for this. Or yeah, not believing it, but also not *disbelieving* it. Maaan talking about non-duality is hard.
@ckindel @RobTiffany Part of me wants to reply like "ignore bad takes. I only saw this in my newsfeed because you engaged with it 🤦♀️" and then part of me is like "fuck that will bring yet more attention to this" Twitter needs a "reply quietly" button
Retweeted @garius
Why? Imagine you're a firefighter, maybe just a Londoner. The night is full of smoke, fire, death, sirens, guns, bombs. You ar…
@edelwax @QiaochuYuan @michael_nielsen @reasonisfun Entrapment is mutual. If I am to keep something trapped I must trap myself in relation with trapping it.
Replying to @mikemiller929
@mikemiller929 @ravernkoh @visakanv I have custom roam userstyles, available here, to make tags have a unique visual style, that helps me quickly scan a page and see what's going on: gist.github.com/malcolmocean/0…
@ravernkoh @mikemiller929 @visakanv Yup, Stylus. (It's a fork from a thing called Stylish—don't use that; the UI is worse and it has tracking shit in it) I've been doing the custom tag styles in workflowy for years, which was sort of a hack, but for Roam @Conaw added custom selectors. Also
@harmonylion1 @Conaw @fortelabs @RoamResearch It's full unfortunately! I registered as well but zoom caps at 100. They needed a full-on livestream apparently!
@jqtrde @fortelabs @Conaw @RoamResearch Yeah, if you register for the call (even though full) they'll email you the recording afterwards: zoom.us/meeting/regist…
@ericscottsays @Conaw @CompliceGoals @edelwax @fortelabs Not sure where you're asking the question from. I don't have a good answer that parallels the other two. If you're just wanting to learn more about Kegan stages, this is a decent intro. Most ppl don't talk much about 1-2 as they're largely just kids. web.archive.org/web/2014011620…
@ericscottsays @Conaw @CompliceGoals @edelwax @fortelabs Here's another article that talks about all 5 stages: tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1110
corollary: if something is nonlinear, it must have happened late
@WilliamAEden Life is learning.
#SongsToSobTo 🎶😭😎 #SobSquad Yo @QiaochuYuan I think you said something about crying by the water... this song speaks to the feeling of being held by the water. youtube.com/watch?v=-DE19K…
Ahh yeah here's your tweet about that:
Also this:
Damn @JoshGroban's voice is powerful. It's got me tearing up right now even though I just put it on in the background while I'm trying to write marketing tweets about this workshop:
@ssica3003 @meditationstuff I use it to mean ≈, ie "approximately equal to". Might be more of a math thing than a software thing, though I don't think I particularly got it from either of those places.
In the time since making this thread 👇 I've started doing a bit more marketing for Complice on Twitter, partially because we have our Goal-Crafting Intensives coming up. And partially because @Conaw has tagged me in a few things.
One thing I've noticed myself doing that will be of interest to @visakanv as an approach to threading, is posting some kind of evergreen abstract building-block tweets on the @CompliceGoals account, then embedding them in tweetstorms from my personal voice on this account:
These tweets are often tweeted on-demand. It's like, I separate: 💼 the part of my thought that is just a kind of straightforward part of the Complice brand or philosophy ❄️ the part of my thought that is a unique perspective that Malcolm in particular is having in this moment
I think that part of what has felt discouraging to me about a lot of marketing activity (except for content marketing) is that it hasn't felt constructive. It's like, I can go get some attention today, but then I'll need to get *more* next week. Kind like
I think that playing around in this way on the new thread-heavy modality for twitter, in the way I'm describing, is shifting that. It feels different.
Replying to @ryn__x
@context_ing yup, and you can feel sad or happy or however you want about this
Thread · Reading Diamond: A Paradox Logic · 4 of 5 tweets
Reading Diamond: A Paradox Logic It's pretty cool. Parts are very approachable, then suddenly it's dense math that I can barely follow. Will post quotes/excerpts I like.
where “=” denotes “is confused with”
Shared this with a friend who has studied both math itself & math education @ PhD level and he said:
Related:
@ssica3003 @meditationstuff Like to me it just decomposes where a tilde ~always means approximately (see what I did there?) then equals sign means, well...
Not getting what you want feels immensely worse if you can’t pretend you didn’t want it. 🔥🔥 excerpt from a blog post I wrote over 5 years ago: malcolmocean.com/2014/05/self-a…
@Conaw @garyvee Oh nice, yeah. I think I've been kind of intuitively doing that. Have barely talked about Complice on here throughout the past 2 years that I've been more active.
@utotranslucence @visakanv @chriswaterguy @visabrain hmm... seeing that @viskanv liked this and wondering if we might somehow converge there at the same time 🤔 I have hazy plans to be there sometime in like Feb/Mar.
@made_in_cosmos @visakanv Hmm I actually generally prefer my tops tight (& pants baggy or flared—I don't recall choosing this preference) Those particular print+cut combos are nice and I would totally pick them up for $10-20 but I'm not going to invest $100+ in them. I appreciate you looking!
@made_in_cosmos @visakanv And feel free to lmk if there's something new that might be a fit. I think I like all of these patterns 👇 more than the few that were available in oversize. The site is a bit hard for me to navigate given that I don't know Polish. Do they sell just the fabrics?
Retweeted @FioraAeterna
"go to your room, learn to deal with the consequences of your actions" is extremely not actually teaching it
@AaronEstel @QiaochuYuan Fast-forward a few months and now we have the #SobSquad!
Thread · A running collection of delightful animal clips · 1 of 35 tweets
My attention is normally very much on humanity, but I periodically see fascinating animal-related content on here, and apparently I think I want to put it in a thread. This is that thread. t.co/D0c6bXIFyF
@QiaochuYuan I also highly recommend this article, "Sick Systems", although it's less "how to avoid abusive cult dynamics" and more "how to recognize when somehow you've been attracted into them somehow anyway despite thinking that wouldn't happen to you" issendai.com/psychology/sic…
Replying to @witchwrenna
@Lavendhole @QiaochuYuan A friend of mine got a very similar effect from reading How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk (link amzn.to/38B8TIJ) Basically like "What?! It could have been like THAT!?" 😭😭
Thread · A running collection of delightful animal clips · 1 of 35 tweets
doggo conspiracy twitter.com/humorandanimal…
Retweeted @Conaw
This looks exceptionally interesting Please star if you have a github account t.co/6p43blR7J0
@ankurrsharma @garybasin Yeah I used to use Nuzzel but like you I sort of haven't done much newsletter/article-reading lately. Honestly it was a pretty good way to even just see the sorts of headlines going around 🤔
Nothing went wrong. Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing continues to go wrong. Nothing is perpetually going wrong. Nothing insists on continuing to go wrong. No matter what you do, nothing will always go wrong. At the end of the universe, nothing will have gone wrong the entire time.
@LukasKawerau @Conaw Oooh, like basically on render it would change from {{tweet: }} to [Practice being weird when the stakes are low so you'll be ready when it counts.]()
@jamischarles @Suhail @RoamResearch Yeah and they're going to get an API soon, at which point somebody (me if nobody else does) will probably build a little android widget for thought-capture 😎
Replying to @jim_rutt
@jim_rutt @RichDecibels My guess is @RichDecibels is talking about coordination-tech moreso than tech that works directly on the object-level problems. Also my sense is that implicitly people are making bets based on somewhat different timelines, and broadly I'm glad all of these bets are happening.
@ankurrsharma @garybasin Back when I had a really popular Facebook timeline & used to post a lot of great links there, a huge chunk of them came from Twitter via Nuzzel.
@LukasKawerau @Conaw O tru, I guess @RoamResearch doesn't allow page refs inside markdown links yet. So maybe instead it would render as "Practice being weird when the stakes are low so you'll be ready when it counts." [(source: @Malcolm_Ocean on twitter)](…)
@Connoropolous @Conaw (In case you've forgotten, you're both friends of mine that I intro'd a year and a half ago)
Retweeted @InertialObservr
Illusion of The Year 2019 Winner It's based on a simple Lissajous curve, but uses clever shading/highlighting to cre…
@vgr gimme a topic
Replying to @guyatthediner
@ThePerilousDeer This article very much resonates with the sense of being stuck in your own maze. issendai.com/psychology/sic…
Replying to @milyoneirzihin
@quickdrawyall @QiaochuYuan Yeah I said 10-100 because I was following a heuristic like the below. Opinions that I am aware of having and am also aware that I've chosen not to share. Sometimes because controversial, or because I haven't managed to articulate or contextualize.
@quickdrawyall @QiaochuYuan Eg I read books then I have opinions about those books (or about other things, based on the models in the books) but then I don't share those opinions because I feel like I need to share the context first.
Thread · Representing values, not just goals, in productivity tools · 6 of 7 tweets
I like @edelwax's perspective on goals & values, and how it's more important not to sacrifice your values for your goals than vice versa. (goal = *what* I want to achieve) (value = *how* I want to live my life) medium.com/what-to-build/…
It's making me seriously think about how to include more about values in complice.co 🧐 Most productivity apps represent neither deep goals nor deep values... they just have a bunch of random tasks.
So Complice being goal-based is already way better than most systems. But how to represent values? I've done it implicitly by having certain daily Complice intentions like "curate my attention intentionally", but it doesn't keep me in touch in the moment.
Here's an initial thread of me reflecting on how Complice guides people towards ways-of-being that are more intentional, and attempting to speculate on other possibilities.
More that can be said about this but for now I want to highlight that there's a striking parallel between goals & values left & right 🧠 brain hemispheres (I'm talking in terms of McGilchrist's new model, not the old debunked one)
Part of what was confused about old hemisphere model, in fact, was that it was about goals—"what does each hemisphere do?" There's no useful overarching general answer to that Q, but there *is* a deeply meaningful difference between hemisphere *values*! 😮
Thread · Goals vs systems and the trap of pre-success failure
The term "pre-success failure" from @ScottAdamsSays' book is a gem. His related idea that you should have systems and not have goals is absurd. (have both!) Scott cites Olympic athletes as examples. 🤨 Take 3 guesses what goal an Olympic athlete has... 🥇🥈🥉
Systems don't work without goals. You need a goal in mind in order to choose/design what system to follow, and it's literally impossible to evaluate whether a system is effective without something to compare it with. Implicitly, that's a goal.
We know certain Olympic athletes had good systems because they got the medals. They designed those systems to optimize for their athletic performance. Lots of other Olympic athletes *also* had training systems, but their systems didn't work as well—as measured by their goals.
I'm part of a team that runs a goal-setting workshop each year called the Goal-Crafting Intensive (where part of the craft is setting up systems) and the definition of goal that we use in that context is:
This is a very spacious meaning for "goal". It doesn't require: 📅 a due date (usually embarrassingly over-optimistic) #️⃣ a numerical metric (which is just a proxy for what really matters) 🏁 a state of finality (it has to be in the future, but it can be ongoing)
From this perspective, it's impossible not to have goals, so the real Qs are: 1. do I know what my goals are? what they *aren't*? 2. how am I relating to them? 3. do my explicit goals match what really matters to me? 4. am I actually working towards them or are they just dreams?
And it's in "how am I relating to my goals?" that we get to the topic of "pre-success failure". Scott doesn't actually define the term, but it seems to be roughly "feeling bad that you haven't already achieved your goals" His prescription for avoiding this is "have no goals".
This is a great hack, and one that I've noticed myself and many other people doing, without even realizing it.
But as long as you operate this way, you'll never get clarity on what you deeply want, which means you're unlikely to ever get it. If you have taste, it's also possible to just follow your nose, but that still can only access adjacent things you want, not things further away.
Is there another way to avoid having pre-success failure? That's a complex question! One is to note that you probably actually do it all the time on smaller scales: when you decide to go get a snack, you don't suddenly get upset that you haven't already gotten the snack.
Another approach: recognize that what you want is already what you want, & that acknowledging you want it & strategizing about how to pursue it doesn't mean that you have to say something's wrong about your current situation.
@ScottAdamsSays "instead of goals, have systems". I say "have both". Most goals aren't achievable without systems, and systems can't be evaluated without comparing them to the goal they're intended to serve. You can't not have goals. Have them *well.*
There are other caveats to note about pursuing goals: #1: You may feel aimless once you've achieved your goal. This is the corollary of pre-success failure—thinking that you'll suddenly feel happy once you've achieved your goal. No reason to assume so!
Caveat #2: Getting fixated: let your goals evolve as you learn more. I do think it's worth at least *once* finishing a goal that no longer seems good, to make sure you're not just averse to finishing, and to learn how to generate enthusiasm: twitter.com/RealtimeAI/sta…
Caveat #3: You may not want to pursue your goals ruthlessly! You may want to pursue them playfully, or sensually, or curiously🤸♀️ That "how" is your values, and they're at least as important as goals. See @edelwax:
Caveat #4: sometimes becoming goal-oriented can create a kind of narrow-minded focus that blocks out awareness of other careabouts, including relationships. I used to think this was a necessary learning phase... now I'm less sure about that! May still be for some people.
In any case, inasmuch as your way of being in relationship is trapping you in shoulds, & you can instead find a way to tap some sense of what *you* really want to do & do that instead... that that's key to developing self-authorship.
Anyway, if you're still with me at the end of this long thread, I bet you'll get a lot out of our Goal-Crafting Intensive online workshop: 🎯 learn more about goal-setting & pre-success failure 🔭 design your year 💬 get guidance from me & other coaches complice.co/event/plan2020…
Hey @reasonisfun I finally wrote up my rant about how Scott Adams' view of goals is narrow. Interested in your critique 😉 (Keep in mind that our definitions of "goal" vary, so either explicitly point at problems with my definition or work within that definition.)
Thread · Opinions on bridging subcultures that don't quite harmonize · 1 of 14 tweets
1 like = 1 opinion on "Bridging subcultures that don’t quite harmonize" (It's not quite a natural category for me but it's what vgr gave me and I like a challenge! good way to draw out some implicit opinions. comment if you have more specific Qs)
@vgr 🧐
Thread · Opinions on bridging subcultures that don't quite harmonize · 9 of 14 tweets
1/ subcultures that don't quite harmonize are the norm, not the exception
2/ subcultures are fractal and fundamentally subjective. no two people live in quite the same subculture
3/ most co-mingling, in practice, happens by people managing to ignore differences, not by any real bridging
4/ real bridging would exploit the differences to create a parallax effect
5/ virtually all subcultures that exist include core assumptions that differences are wrongnesses, which is why ignoring differences tends to be the approach instead (#3)
6/ differing subcultures that can tap some deeper shared purpose will have an easier time bridging than those that cannot.
7/ that shared purpose can be a shared goal or a shared value, or both
8/ in general, one needs both shared goal & shared value for an ongoing deep bridge
9/ note that because of the fractal thing, what I'm saying here applies to a collaboration between two individuals or honestly even a collaboration between multiple parts of *one* "in-dividual"
Thread · Representing values, not just goals, in productivity tools · 1 of 7 tweets
Also anyone who digs this thread might also dig my thread about goals vs systems:
Thread · Opinions on bridging subcultures that don't quite harmonize · 4 of 14 tweets
10/ honestly I'm kind of afraid of most subcultures and want nothing to do with them. I think that's part of why I'm finding writing this thread hard ...is that true? idk. there's something true about it
11/ I guess on the scale of individual peoples' subcultures, as I've defined it, I can get pretty curious about somebody's assumptions/ontology etc sort of like "there's more that can be said about one apple than about all apples"
12/ it seems to me (based on @cognazor & @JaredJanes talking on early BothAnd podcast about their appetite to be Memetic Mediators) that there are people who naturally gravitate towards wanting to do this bridging.
13/ one sort of bridging that I do feel more attracted to is like... via context-creation? eg Burning Man creates a new super-culture in which dissonant subcultures somehow come together coherently. (caught up to likes, going to bed for now)
@OneBigOh That's the first time I can recall it hyphenated, but the idea of breaking it down came from a friend of mine awhile ago, and I expressed it like a year ago:
@reasonisfun @kenneth0stanley Yeah I think we're actually pretty on-the-same-page here, and my definition of goal is intended to allow exploring things where you don't actually know what the answer will look like but you know you can recognize it when you see it:
@reasonisfun @kenneth0stanley Oh, and it also screens off some of the dysfunctional ways people often relate to "problems" too. Peoples' problems are often in the present/past, rather than the future ("it's a problem that you did this thing yesterday") or they identify with *having* the problem, not solving.
I love you. You've got this. It's worth it.
@chriswaterguy Yeah, this is great! Glad for it to get more use! If it makes sense, you could share this PWYW link that's not oriented to a specific event but for people who've used the content some other way (eg someone is running a homeschool course based on GCI! 😮) complice.co/event/gci/pwyw
@bobbyscar I appreciate your response! I probably have more random drafts/notes about PCT that you'd find juicy if you dug that excerpt. Also check out this blog post which was inspired from a similar source: malcolmocean.com/2017/06/toward…
@jdunck @Conaw Yeah, apparently my strategy has been more like jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab hook jab jab jab jab jab hook jab 🤔 Anyway yup, clearly I need to do more threads about Complice as an app and as a philosophy! So far still mostly the latter, eg
@cognazor Do one for "how many tweets do you have"
@maybegray Nailed it. Relevant post, that in my head-canon is simply called "Whole-Assed Half-Assing". mindingourway.com/half-assing-it…
Replying to @ponekarl
@ponekarl @QiaochuYuan death hides in all sorts of unexpected places
Replying to @ponekarl
@ponekarl Does that sense of wanting to go into the feelings contradict your models around this stuff? (It contradicts my internal model of your model, but my internal model is no doubt oversimplified)
Retweeted @yashkaf
17. You just read 17 tweets in a row. Close your eyes and count to 10 to break the dopamine loop and make sure that browsing T…
@reasonisfun Definitely the idea is to get free of the historical/childhood trauma, and everyone I'm aware of in this space agrees that's the aim. Some people do hit the failure mode you describe though... I would say sobbing needs to be balanced with making real changes in one's life.
@reasonisfun Basically unlearning the kind of thing that I think you call "hangups". Then be as upset as you are, given what you're experiencing, neither trying to downplay or increase that. (This is about what's already so; also act to improve the future of course)
@reasonisfun @_jordan_bates @QiaochuYuan Not sure what the difference between literal & metaphorical is in this context... Can you describe what would be implied by it being one or the other? While we're talking metaphors...
you: learned helplessness me, an intellectual: learnèd helplessness
Retweeted @nosilverv
This is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. Neural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything https://t…
@tasshinfogleman by @acesounderglass: acesounderglass.com/2017/04/09/epi…
Replying to @FioraAeterna
Retweeted @Conaw
Looks like Tucker Max is in with the #SobSquad
Retweeted @loopuleasa
@ShaneAParrish @CompliceGoals and probably @FocusMe for limiting my distraction time
I still get tickled every time I type in JavaScript: const now = Date.now() ...
@utotranslucence @vgr @TaylorPearsonMe @amelapay Yeah! Here's a thread a bit about the goal-setting component, though it includes a lot more than that. We've been pioneering a novel format that involves a mix of participants doing solo work in sync'd pomodoros while getting guidance from coaches.
@Aryeh___ 😮🔵 Was the blue light like a dashboard light or was it this amazing orb coming into view as the spacecraft rotated?
Replying to @ponekarl
@ponekarl fyeah! Would love to see an expanded articulation of that last "really meant" line. (though I think I get what you're saying)
@TuckerMax It was coined by a fan, so I think we've got our niche 😉
@QiaochuYuan @reasonisfun @_jordan_bates Now I find myself curious about an analogy to an itch wanting to be scratched, and then realizing I don't know to what extent an itch is stored in the part of the body that's itchy or in the brain's map of it 🤔 Given that people with phantom limbs have itches, probably brain 🤯
@The_Lagrangian politics (have recently started actually forming opinions on this myself, beyond just "the incentives are fucked all the way down")
@alexeyguzey I'm about to do a 2-3 day retreat with a friend, basically entirely focused on me doing deep emotional work (based on this framework 👇 among other things) We think it'll allow for some breakthroughs due to increased focus & space to fall apart.
@WilliamAEden @ben_mathes Given a net-positive (including opportunity cost) way for clients to interact with each other, absent the therapist, could have a few people show up for the whole day, and the therapist sees different people for flexible durations of time.
@visakanv either 69 inches or 1.07 smoots
Replying to @Chris_arnade
@Chris_arnade Tarzan soundtrack! youtube.com/watch?v=w0ZHlp…
@Chris_arnade Also this: youtube.com/watch?v=mOl5Ok…
@QiaochuYuan @alifeofmovement Yeah, we have thousands of hours of conversation recordings here, and one of my medium-term plans is to tag a bunch of it based on judgmental, stress, openness, etc and then run a neural net on that.
Retweeted @The_Lagrangian
@Malcolm_Ocean the fact that everything involving humans is in fact political does not imply anything about when you sh…
@alifeofmovement *poke*
I'm about to do a 2-3 day retreat with a friend, basically entirely focused on me doing deep emotional work (probably a mix of Bio-Emotive, Emotional Coherence stuff, mapping interconnections in roam and whatever else emerges) See y'all on the flip!
Retweeted @visakanv
nothing for me represents "vulnerability is being willing to be hurt, having the courage to put yourself out there with no as…
Retweeted @reasonisfun
Procrastination sometimes isn't to avoid doing the thing, but to avoid looking at the *feeling* you get around doing the t…
@Aella_Girl Book National Populism makes case that many people feel failed by liberalism. As I understand it, original liberalism meant "the educated (rational & wise) govern in service of everyone" (in spirit). Education has become proxy, so elites are faking it. kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/na…
Retweeted @visakanv
@Aella_Girl thebaffler.com/salvos/tell-me… “Belonging is an essential human need. (Fascists understand this basic fact; neoliberals…
Retweeted @Aella_Girl
Does anybody have some good hot takes about why nationalism seems to be on the rise globally?
@Aella_Girl Same thing @nosilverv is saying to your question
Retweeted @Meaningness
Our ability to science rests on our ability to breakfast, and that’s where our understanding of sciencing has to start too…
"If you want to change the world, throw a better party" — Rick Ingrasci (@Bigmind)
@metaashu @ShapesOfEmpathy Exactly. You don't change the existing institution—you create a better one. So it's not top-down in the classic sense, but it does involve organizational design.
Retweeted @keithwalkiewicz
As comedy strengthens, ideology loses its grip over the individual psyche. If we know how to laugh, not everything nee…
Replying to @thejollybard
@thejollybard @eigenrobot @Meaningness Meaningness (esp combined with a bunch of other things) has been one of the most useful books of my life so far.
Retweeted @GretchenAMcC
(I wish I had a version of "stet" for answering multiple-choice quizzes in pen, when I'd circle the wrong answer and then…
@tasshinfogleman I have a thread on this! Just re-read it and I still really resonate with it. (Have been thinking more about resentment lately too... we'll see if new thoughts bubble up)
@Aryeh___ @tasshinfogleman Ooh nice! Anyone who wants to explore this lens might value this blog post of mine on regret, which several people have described as life-changing.
@antonjw I have a thread with @MSlavin about how this is likely to occur again and again with whatever flags are raised by the new thing (that we're currently calling #GameB) as they get coopted by the old thing. And that's inevitable, and okay.
@antonjw @MSlavin It's okay bc as long as ppl who *are* tuned into the real new thing (& not just things dressed up as it) continue to forge ahead, we'll be able to create new institutions that will out-compete current politics. In the meantime, let terms die, keep moving
Retweeted @JimmyRis
What would the Temple of You look like? Feel like? Where would you be worshipped?
@JimmyRis Floating in the air, with an iridescent floor and prismatic & mirrored walls, you discover your inalienable freedom by releasing your fears & shames in the form of song & dance, and it all echoes & reflects back to you, held in a deep feeling of:
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@JimmyRis Floating in the air, with an iridescent floor and prismatic & mirrored walls, you discover your inalienable fr…
Custom roam userstyles! @RoamResearch #roamcult Install Stylus extension then use mozilla-format import to install. This link has 3 of mine: 🌈 custom DB themes 🌛 dark theme (not perfect) #⃣ custom tag styles gist.github.com/malcolmocean/0…
Replying to @TristanFJohns
@TristanFJohns @calhistorian @RoamResearch Here they are!
@TristanFJohns @calhistorian @RoamResearch Btw @Conaw I could improve my styles (particularly the darktheme) if you made all/more of your styles class/id-based rather than inline. eg how am I supposed to select the references section? .roam-article > div:last-child > div 👆 works but is awkward and could easily break
@RoamResearch Probably I should move these to userstyles.com where there's a one-click-to-install button. (Reluctance because userstyles.com promotes Stylish extension, which has creepy tracking and a worse UI than Stylus (they're forked from same source))
@TristanFJohns @calhistorian @RoamResearch @Conaw Yeah see I tried it and it ends up selecting daily notes too.
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
> How do you choose goals? Glad you asked! We host an online workshop on this every New Year's called the Goal-Crafting…
@danlistensto You will either love or hate this, probably both: youtube.com/watch?v=UquvMd…
@Aella_Girl @Chris_arnade's perspective on this is relevant. He spent a bunch of time going around America seeking to genuinely meet & understand people living in exactly the neighborhoods that travellers would be warned to avoid. Interview goes live shortly:
Retweeted @visakanv
I think this is close to my core frame, (still need to think on it): I feel like most productivity thinking begins with the…
Thread · Living in a dream mashup of present situation and old emotional meanings · 1 of 5 tweets
@QiaochuYuan @visakanv My latest frame for this: everyone is basically living in a dream mashup of their current external situation and their old emotional meanings. Like dreaming you're at school but it's also on a boat somehow. & as in dreams, somehow the weirdness of this mashup goes unnoticed
Retweeted @backus
Thinking about the intersection of these two quotes: > Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.…
@wolftivy @nosilverv @danlistensto Nah numb is a different dimension... Someone pumped full of adrenaline might be numb to pain but have heightened proprioceptive awareness as they {sport, fight, escape, chase, dance}
Retweeted @chenoehart
One aspect of this which I am trying to work through: a set of metaphors around personal vs. public where the rise of headp…
@POPEthanC @ThePrimalMan @ScottAdamsSays I have a thread elaborating on this that you guys might find valuable:
Replying to @man_vs_chaos
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@QiaochuYuan @visakanv My latest frame for this: everyone is basically living in a dream mashup of their current externa…
Retweeted @tferriss
"Baba Ram Dass, Proponent of LSD and New Age Enlightenment, Dies at 88" buff.ly/373wxfv via @nytimes. RIP Ram Dass 🙏.…
Retweeted @harmonylion1
Learn to raise each eyebrow independently. Do “the wave.” This raises interesting questions about how different our ex…
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
the question blame wants to answer is: “what can i get angry at that will end my suffering?” the answer is nothing, least…
@danlistensto @wolftivy @nosilverv I "numb" could apply to lacking awareness of the sort of inner feeling of your body / the presence or absence of tension. I would also say "disembodied" or "dissociated" for that. For lacking spatial awareness, "uncoordination"? not a simple short word tho 🤷♀️
@eriktorenberg Iain McGilchrist (@divided_brain) has an new model of what's *actually* going on with brain hemispheres, that has important implications for literally all of the topics you named there. He's the expert I'd most love to talk to. Hear him here: youtube.com/watch?v=fI1ngq…
@eriktorenberg @divided_brain I'd be happy to scheme with you on what to talk with him about. I've been deep-diving on his model this year and found it tremendously valuable:
Retweeted @yashkaf
And finally the missing mood: predictable world + current model bad = CURIOSITY. Strong desire to learn and to explore. It's w…
@notyetzealous Haha yeah I... have not yet written the intro, because I wanted to base it off of this podcast interview but when I tried to load it into Otter for an automatic transcription it bugged out and I just didn't get around to it. This is a great intro: metalearn.net/podcasts/ml41-…
@AdeleDeweyLopez Learning about other logic systems seems really valuable for expanding sense of what reasoning even is. This book talks about a logic system with four values: true, false, true but false, & false but true. Lets you explore structure of eg "Liar Paradox"
@thethinkersmith @reasonisfun @cognazor Check out Robert Fritz re Creative/Structural Tension... tension isn't intrinsically negative—physically it's necessary to hold objects together! The metaphorical "pull" driving you to want to solve a problem is like the tension in an elastic. robertfritz.com/wp/principles/…
@HunterBergsma @cognazor @thethinkersmith @reasonisfun I would avoid the frame "fixed", but I think there's a real thing around discharging the traumas of the past so we can respond emotionally to the present, rather than our limbic system being stuck eg in the trauma of being imprisoned in school
@HunterBergsma @cognazor @thethinkersmith @reasonisfun Processing doesn't necessarily require #SobSquad-level crying, but it *does* require making the fears, shames, etc conscious, rather than trying to avoid, suppress or deny them. To see this more clearly, check out this book summary:
Wow, this is quite an epic dense summary of meaningness.com. If you've been meaning to read it and you want to get a general sense of what it's about, read this 👇
Tons of rich stuff on meaningness.com that isn't in this tweetstorm, of course. So I recommend actually reading it. If the nonlinearity of it is daunting to you, it *does* have a table of contents so just start at the beginning (as I did) & read it straight through 📖😊
Retweeted @utotranslucence
Ok but for real, who is actually doing this? Comment or tag people who are (or are trying)! twitter.com/tobyshorin/sta…
@QiaochuYuan @danlistensto @chaosprime @meditationstuff Seems @meditationstuff's standard for what counts as adequate meditation has requirement of including the kind of work that the #SobSquad is doing with sobbing. I find this a bit misleading because ppl who never check his spec may just walk away thinking "cool, just 'meditate'."
@QiaochuYuan @danlistensto @chaosprime @meditationstuff Also because many models (eg Ken Wilber's four facets) seem to highlight that it's possible to attain *something* via doing only Culadasa-style practice, etc... So it seems worth having good language to talk about what that is, and what it isn't.
hey @meditationstuff, do you have at-all-legible words at this stage to fill in a chart like this for the thing you're training? base, path, result, etc
@QiaochuYuan @danlistensto @chaosprime @meditationstuff Relatedly,
@meditationstuff Part of the context for me asking = writing this tweet, in which I found myself positing that you had somewhat unique standards for what counted as real meditation:
I had a goal this year called "Integrity", where I was tracking (among other things) my acting in a post-judgmental way. I eventually realized that trying to ask "was I in integrity or not?" was essentially judgment. Turns out in some sense it's impossible not to be in integrity
Remember, words are just words. There are uses for the word "integrity", and I honor that 🙏 It was just also a delight to manage to completely bust the concept 😂 What does that perspective look like?
If you find yourself experiencing some aversion or resistance reading what I'm saying here 👆, you might value reading my write-up of my multi-year journey through my own version of that resistance, here 👇
@OperationMoksha @QiaochuYuan @patrissimo Related experience of mine:
@patrissimo @OperationMoksha @QiaochuYuan I have some sense that this concern is structurally similar to the classic Christian propaganda "if people weren't afraid of hell, they'd murder and steal and stuff" 😱 ...turns out that there are lots of atheists who are totally prosocial, because they care about other ppl 🤷♀️💞
@patrissimo @QiaochuYuan @OperationMoksha > I hope ambition & self-acceptance are compatible I've been staring at this koan for 3-4 years. See this blog post with some initial explorations of the question: malcolmocean.com/2017/06/toward…
I feel like it's time to make a better version of this 2×2 soon. Got input? (eg suggestions on better labels for the axes, or the quadrants)
Replying to @emadabdulrahim
@emadabdulrahim @jorilallo YESSSSS. As far as I'm concerned every microwave without a dial is as absurd as having to program the temperature into your faucet using digital buttons every time you want water. The design trend against knobs towards buttons is one of the worst basic UX fails of all time.
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@emadabdulrahim @jorilallo YESSSSS. As far as I'm concerned every microwave without a dial is as absurd as having to pro…
@QiaochuYuan @patrissimo @OperationMoksha GuruPapers💯 That said, it does seem possible there may *also* be ways to sort of wirehead on some spiritual practices or similar that might lead to a state that just sits blissfully all day. Whether anyone whose opinion I trust would call that "state" enlightenment... dunno.
@QiaochuYuan @patrissimo @OperationMoksha It seems likely to me that in any case it's not a state that someone who's starting from a super ambitious place is likely to end up in? Check out @leashless' interviews on @dthorson's Emerge podcast for a pretty intense take on some of this: anchor.fm/emerge/episode…
@Aryeh___ @emadabdulrahim @jorilallo This is my fucking jam. Wait, he started getting random devices sent to him for review? I love the internet. Also why the fuck didn't I think of this??
@Aryeh___ @emadabdulrahim @jorilallo Relatedly, one of @dthorson or @PeterXPark suggested to me at the Bio-Emotive retreat that I combine my newfound emotional processing skills with my long-time passion for UX design, and do a series of "I use <product> while processing my feels about it" videos.
@meditationstuff @QiaochuYuan @danlistensto @chaosprime I have no idea what that tweet means 👆 (well, I have a few partial ideas, but nothing coherent)
@mrgunn @OKalliokoski @jamesheathers @systemsbiology @JPdeRuiter @Shawpsych Yeah I'd rather a comment that's spoken with the entire audience in mind than a question that is certainly still just about the questioner's pet theory or could be easily looked up. The underlying issue is that people don't account for everybody's time, attention, etc.
@Aella_Girl The difference—in principle; tone may imply otherwise—is simply the first is talking about X as if it is true for all Y in the territory; the other is acknowledging one's own emotional responses, which are usually overgeneralized. Nightmares:
@paraschopra That the differences between each person's brain hemispheres are actually really important. (The models we had in 60s were just bad, so it became an unpopular topic for decades) Check these various threads on Iain McGilchrist's new actually-good model🧠
Replying to @Austen
@Austen Yessss, hang out in this new culture with me & @visakanv.
Replying to @PeterIsaacSimon
@PeterIsaacSimon @thisiskp_ @fortelabs @david_perell @edelwax @Libera_Rex @_jordan_bates Wow, I'm in good company here! My two best long-form posts are... this post on @ribbonfarm
@PeterIsaacSimon @thisiskp_ @fortelabs @david_perell @edelwax @Libera_Rex @_jordan_bates @ribbonfarm ...and this article on my own blog, which has been deeply moving for many people:
@PeterIsaacSimon @thisiskp_ @fortelabs @david_perell @edelwax @Libera_Rex @_jordan_bates @ribbonfarm And the online course I run isn't a sort of ongoing self-paced multi-week one, but this super intense 5-hours-straight workshop with videos, pomodoros, and live chat-based coaching: complice.co/event/plan2020…
@PeterIsaacSimon @thisiskp_ @fortelabs @david_perell @edelwax @Libera_Rex @_jordan_bates @ribbonfarm And here's a description more of the structure of the Goal-Crafting Intensive, comparing it to one that @fortelabs (also mentioned above) hosted last year:
@thisiskp_ @PeterIsaacSimon @fortelabs @david_perell @edelwax @Libera_Rex @_jordan_bates @ribbonfarm Totally, hmu in DM.
@thisiskp_ @PeterIsaacSimon @fortelabs @david_perell @edelwax @Libera_Rex @_jordan_bates @ribbonfarm Love the analogy to IH on the WC site btw; I have an interview on there too: indiehackers.com/interview/turn…
Replying to @logicregressor
@logicregressor @emadabdulrahim @jorilallo I appreciate you bringing up those issues, *and* I think both of them can be solved. A non-springloaded dial (ie doesn't actually wind but just lights up dots around it; have used one like this) could easily be turned with an arm or a wrist.
@logicregressor @emadabdulrahim @jorilallo Also neither of them is an issue for me in the first place because I basically never have oily or otherwise dirty hands when using my microwave 🤨🧐
@thethinkersmith @reasonisfun @HunterBergsma @cognazor I am totally with you here & *also* I think that emotional baggage (eg the dream thing described above) takes huge precedence over whatever your explicit epistemology is. If your limbic system sees person speaking as {threat; authority; friend} => very different "info" response
Retweeted @khemaridh
I still can't wrap my head around the fact that in @RoamResearch with a single sentence (and no mouse taps) you can append a…
Thread · A running collection of delightful animal clips · 1 of 35 tweets
This fish struts around, not giving a shit about your categories. twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl…
Retweeted @visakanv
someone asked me what I'd like for christmas I'd like 26 more patrons so I enter 2020 with 100 patrons 😂 one of those arbit…
@SarahAMcManus In addition to being delicious and the dark color being more realistic (unless albino pangolin?) I'm realizing just now that the non-uniformness of the color adds a lot to the overall texture & detail. Like you can see the individual scales much more clearly.
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
if you toss out every preconception about what feelings you "should" have about stuff and just actually start looking at w…
@GretchenAMcC some interesting tips for language-learning, many of which involve clever uses of technological approaches (but not just like, duolingo) Talks about the important role of context.
@tobyshorin @Meaningness @andy_matuschak Yeah, when I started taking meaningness seriously, in 2016, I apparently was like "I really need a way to track what I'm reading here" and made an "Article Reading" spreadsheet. Eventually gave that up and just read the whole thing in ToC order.
@tobyshorin @Meaningness @andy_matuschak I bet a decent chunk of the rest of what people want though is basically a better ability to read offline / without having to load pages or keep track of where they left off. And this could be done using a very simple service-worker pre-cache on the site + Add To Homescreen.
@tobyshorin @Meaningness @andy_matuschak I'd be happy to help experiment with setting this up. It would be a layer on top of the existing thing, that would have some button that would cause: • entire site to be precached & to work offline • some little menu thing to appear & track read-% and pages read/unread
@tobyshorin @Meaningness @andy_matuschak It's not to destroy that structure, but to allow for other structures *as well*. The problem is, people get spooked and don't have a workflow for those other structures and feel like they need to do something clever instead.
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
7/ Most importantly, remember that as long as you don't get fixated, having imperfect working-clarity is better than sta…
@mrgunn @Conaw I did a huge deep-dive into an isomorphic model to PP a few years ago, called Perceptual Control Theory, and I literally did this exact experiment with a mentor's neutral face. I was perceiving it as angry and I tried looking at it and perceiving it warm, and it worked.
@mrgunn @Conaw PCT talks about "neural reorganization" and basically what I was doing there was saying to my neurons "reorganize how you're parsing this until you see something you feel a towardsness towards" It shifted a bunch of other things about my state of mind, not just the face parsing.
@QiaochuYuan definitely I am okay with allowing myself to receive these with myself as the "dear lover" being addressed 🥰💗
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
The first two Goal-Crafting Intensives of the season are coming up this weekend! 🌎Online workshops ⏱️5 hours 🙋♀️Person…
@QiaochuYuan definitely I am okay with being everyone
@Meaningness @tobyshorin @andy_matuschak Mmm, you might appreciate this braindump of mine on the question of "what is prose?" It notes that there are lots of muddling-through sorts of ways that people insert nonlinearity into otherwise linear prose. Of which this is one. roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo…
@JimmyRis @Meaningness @tobyshorin @andy_matuschak Digitize a copy? I used 1dollarscan.com and it worked great! (Blah blah disclaimer about copyright; I'm going to recommend this without having yet checked whether the book is in the public domain. Doughnt brayk loz 😉🤫 )
@QiaochuYuan (wouldn't want to be just *anyone*, but *everyone*... that I'm into)
@thethinkersmith @reasonisfun @HunterBergsma @cognazor Okay cool, just wanting to make sure we're on the same page about the supremely common failure mode of trying to reframe what you *think* you feel, without giving space for the actual feeling. (I predict anyone trying to use your words as instructions would make that error.)
@thethinkersmith @reasonisfun @HunterBergsma @cognazor The foundations of critical rationalism may allow you to reframe your interpretations, but only the ones that are conscious, which are often spurious random stuff generated by a nightmare mashup... the details of the ontology in question don't present so readily for critique.
Considering a new heuristic for twitter conversations: leave any conversation in which I don't feel like ♥️ing every tweet. (inspired indirectly by @QiaochuYuan & @visakanv)
A ♥️ isn't agreement, it's "am I glad this tweet exists?" Replying to a tweet is likely to produce another tweet from the same generator. ✅ jamming & co-creation🥰🙃🥳 ✅ misunderstanding that feels good to clarify 🧐🤓😎 ⛔️ fussing on fiddlybits 🤨🙄😒 ⛔️ angry arguing 😡😤😵
Not yet sure how this strategy integrates with using Someone Is Wrong On The Internet as writing-fuel 🤔
Retweeted @Aella_Girl
Have you ever done intentional 'emotion exercising' - where you become still and then call forth an emotion, feel it as har…
@QiaochuYuan I think sometimes even QTing is fine, because it still has the potential to create a different conversation than the original context. But something to be conscious of. Chewing on this.
@krrishd listening!
@krrishd I love unpredictable, and am thus loving this. Also it feels all three of hip-hop/indie/electronic to me 😜
@krrishd I have the sense you might like @BT, if you like the complex textures & rhythms in this. Probably start with either the Emotional Technology album (2003) or Movement in Still Life (1999). Album playlists: ET: youtube.com/watch?v=uj2fSK… MSL: youtube.com/watch?v=VvO_jG… 🎧
@krrishd @BT His earlier & later albums are more abstract & instrumental than those two👆 which are more hiphop/pop (fun fact: BT mixed *NSYNC's song Pop) My all-time favorite album is sorta both: the 2-disc These Hopeful Machines: A: youtube.com/watch?v=bfjKC8… B: youtube.com/watch?v=T5Orpd… 🎧
@krrishd @BT I also recommend listening to this 8min interview about his album This Binary Universe, which was mixed in surround sound and has several symphonies. Gives you a sense of how he relates to music: youtube.com/watch?v=GGG6T-…
@QiaochuYuan True. Yeah, I guess basically that creates a contradiction from the original terms. QTing is signal-boosting, and definitionally I would only signal-boost a tweet I'm glad exists, which is one I would thus also ♥ (Although it could still be Someone Is Wrong On The Internet)
@krrishd Oh man, was digging the track Underground Big for the first 3-5 minutes, then kinda meh on it for another few minutes, and then eventually I was like "nope I don't want a whole 24 minutes of this"
New blog post! It's an edited version of last week's tweetstorm, slightly expanded with a few more examples: malcolmocean.com/2019/12/system…
Here's the original thread:
Thread · Goal-Crafting Intensive: online workshops on goals, planning, and visioning
We're hosting a series of online workshops on goal-setting, planning, & visioning! Rave reviews from past participants. First event is tomorrow. See you there?
We use the term "goal" very open-endedly, so if you're like "ugh but isn't goal-setting soooo 1950s Management By Objectives?" then don't worry, we're with you. It's just a tool for thinking.
We do live chat-based coaching with each participant, in a private slack channel (just you and the coaches). Coaches this year include @SarahAMcManus, @chriswaterguy, @utotranslucence, @mattgoldenberg & probably @QiaochuYuan 🔥😎🤩 Me last year:
The self-paced content means you can work on whatever you want (including some activity that's not part of our content) and the personalized coaching means that whatever you're working on, we can help get you unstuck.
Here's a thread I did on choosing goals, based on a little bit of the content from the Goal-Crafting Intensive: (Feel free to ask me more questions here!)
And here's a thread I did on the "goals vs systems" debate. And if it doesn't convince you that goals matter, you can also come to GCI and spend the whole workshop just working on the systems that you want to create! Our coaches have lots to say on that.
Here's the link to check it out & sign up! 👇 complice.co/event/plan2020…
@cognazor @RichDecibels @LogoCentrifuge @0x49fa98 @MimeticValue @GRITCULT, in a similar vein.
@sarthakgh Mmmm so key to see the empowerment available via capitalism too. Tho @RayDalio recently observed: > At the same time as money is essentially free for those who have money and creditworthiness, it is essentially unavailable to those who don’t have money linkedin.com/pulse/world-ha…
Me: signing onto twitter instead of working on the decade-visioning content for the workshops I'm hosting (needs to be done by tomorrow)... @FioraAeterna & @QiaochuYuan:
and then @aaronzlewis is all like:
So yeah, other suggestions welcome! What useful thoughts are there to have in 2020 about 2030?
@nosilverv @incelwhisperer @QiaochuYuan We're working on it. Seems we've got a crux right here in his pinned tweet: twitter.com/HealThyself15/…
@mrgunn @Conaw It's subtle and hard to articulate into a formal belief proposition, but it (PCT, not PP) produced a profound reconciliation for me internally, about the futility of trying to navigate the world while fighting myself. malcolmocean.com/2017/06/toward…
Retweeted @bobbyscar
Sup wit it -- I've decided to start 2020 with my first New Year's Resolution in over a decade: grind out Gratitude. On Sunda…
@joselito_ny @bobbyscar @CompliceGoals Yeah, complice.co (which I made) is powerful for this. Looks like a to-do list app at 1st glance but it's ruthlessly goal-focused & forces you to keep asking "but what will actually achieve my goals tho?" instead of just doing random shit.
@danlistensto microwaves (and other devices) having a bunch of little fiddly buttons instead of the simple, powerful knob
@joselito_ny @bobbyscar @CompliceGoals It's funny? tragic? both? ...how simple some of these core shifts can be. Yours is one example ("just write down your goals on various timescales") Another example:
There's a fun thing you can do with a certain kind of definition where you invert one part of the definition and ask "what do you get then?" Here's one example 👇 ...what are some others?
@AidanOGara_ @alexeyguzey "Relationships are all we have." —Sandy Schuman
Replying to @magghu
@magghu Oh man yeah that's one of the main challenges @SarahAMcManus & I are talking about. It's hard to imagine what one's life might be like in 5-10years, even *assume* a sort of business-as-usual economy/ecology/geopolitical scene. But given the level of VUCA there....🥴 how to even.
@ConceptualJames This article makes a really direct comparison between SJ & Medievalism: medium.com/@even.aesphasi…
@ConceptualJames For more on the author's term Medievalism is, check out this Political Cube, where Medievalism is the polar opposite of Liberalism (which is different from "bleeding heart leftist") (I'm unsure what the axes are of this cube) medium.com/@even.aesphasi…
Replying to @IonaItalia
@IonaItalia @CathyYoung63 On taboo and the apparent irrelevance of truth:
@xuenay @QiaochuYuan @AidanOGara_ @alexeyguzey The case being made is that the relationship also has benefits *to the recipients* broke: transactional model of care 💸 ("I have more; you have less; I give you some") bespoke*: generative model of care 🙏 ("how can this relationship create a better world?") *literally
@xuenay @QiaochuYuan @AidanOGara_ @alexeyguzey Then within relationship, could be $-flow (as in the dana tweet above) but it has a totally different *meaning* I see EA as a reaction to charities goodharting on this ("sponsor this kid") but it goodharts on other things🤦♀️ Deep attunement needed to avoid goodharting altogether
@xuenay @QiaochuYuan @AidanOGara_ @alexeyguzey I wouldn't suggest ppl just naively try applying what I'm suggesting here. Building high-quality relationships where information flows adequately for this to work is *hard*, even within a single organization. I'm saying there's a different way of thinking to learn.
@xuenay @QiaochuYuan @AidanOGara_ @alexeyguzey And then within that different way of thinking, sometimes the thing to do is still absolutely going to be buying medicine or mosquito nets!
@coponder @JimmyRis fragments of self looking back who am I?
@xuenay @QiaochuYuan @AidanOGara_ @alexeyguzey this is kind of a nitpick but I think it's important: he doesn't say it's wrong ...he's also talking about EA-model donation, not donation in general. The original remark:
@xuenay @QiaochuYuan @AidanOGara_ @alexeyguzey In any case, while I deeply deeply value the articulations that this exchange has produced, I resonate with QC's sense that it's got some unconscious emotional stuff in the background, and I'm noticing myself feeling less hearty than I was before. 🙏
@harmonylion1 @fortelabs ....bible...? yep: biblehub.com/matthew/20-16.…
@TheAnnaGat @DavidDeutschOxf 😂🤣😂 > "Trigger warning: logical positivism"
@nrose @vgr @Conaw I think you'll want to read this 👆 but I only half-follow it myself so I can't quite say why. Talking about new hardware possibilities for doing this 👇 differently
@Human__Age Ah hadn't seen the email. You should be good to go now!
@bobbyscar @CompliceGoals Btw if anyone just tried signing up and got an error, there was a typo in my date that caused registration to close for this weekend's sessions. I've reopened it until 2h before each event starts! 🚀
@QiaochuYuan The specific combination of the quote and image in the second last row of your galaxy brain progression above reminded me vividly of this: twitter.com/briecode/statu…
@Sneeed @Aella_Girl Also I think that part of what's happening here is that 1) stock etc investments don't generate much real value for society 2) investments don't make their way to everybody, due to various systemic factors I don't understand but maybe @RayDalio does 👇
Replying to @hmmmcurious
@hmmmcurious Mmm that's a great idea. I'm not aware of anything published, but I just messaged the ongoing goal-crafters community of practice slack to see if people there feel moved to share their stories! Will follow up 🙂
@aaronzlewis This immediately brought to mind a memory of reading Anthony Wilden's System & Structure (fascinating book) and seeing him reference "publish or perish" as a familiar phrase, in 1972 😮 Apparently the phrase goes back to 1928 😳 My original notes taken while reading:
@jondubin @alifeofmovement Sign me up for the answer to this too!
@nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @similaralterity down to comment on a GDoc; don't have quite the right wellspring from which to generate text on my own
@spacecrone @QiaochuYuan Yeah it's a very rich book. Talks about how people who are abusing power are often themselves actually feeling profoundly powerless while doing so. Everyone from mothers (to their children) to CEOs. Waking nightmares of their own childhood powerlessness:
Retweeted @visakanv
Fools and their Money Metaphors ribbonfarm.com/2009/03/02/foo…
@HunterBergsma Feel Alive by ATB youtube.com/watch?v=zJy8J9…
@brewingsense @xuenay @QiaochuYuan @AidanOGara_ @alexeyguzey @Meaningness & who can also say, as I considered saying to @xuenay's tweet here, that I think what QC's saying is also compatible with non-dualism in the also-non-monist sense! I'd love to see more ppl read The Master & His Emissary, as it points at similar things from a neuro- perspective🧠
@brewingsense @xuenay @QiaochuYuan @AidanOGara_ @alexeyguzey @Meaningness In particular, I'd say that dualism is kind of the natural stance of the left hemisphere, which takes its categories as fundamentally real. Monism is when LH attempts to fixate the RH's perspective, which is just always in some sense real-non-dualist.
Replying to @hmmmcurious
@hmmmcurious Nothing written up like that yet, but it's a great idea and I've now just asked past participants about it. I'll keep your tweet in mind and come back to it when people reply 🙂
@hmmmcurious tiny1 "You asked about whether it made a difference, well I would say "yes"! This is the first year in my life that I've actually set goals for the year & consistently made progress towards them throughout the year. I put my top 10 goals from last year's workshop as bg on phone"
@jonnym1ller Hey, didn't see you there today! Lmk if you want to come to one of the other sessions 😊😎
@mechanicalmonk1 @QiaochuYuan @NickParkerPrint I adopted "gals" a few years ago and it seems to work okay.
Interesting brain-hemisphere relations to gesture. Expressive gestures, revealing inner emotional states, tend to originate in the right hemisphere. Instrumental gestures, consciously engaged for a purpose, tend to originate in the left hemisphere.
> Perhaps the most striking finding of all is that, when there is a mismatch between gesture and speech, it is the gesture that carries the day in 100% of cases. > When a mathematical speaker made a mistake verbally, his gesture proceeded with the metaphorical meaning correctly
> "Gestures do not merely *reflect* thought", writes McNeill, "but help *constitute* thought ... Without them thought would be altered or incomplete."
Source, of course, The Master and his Emissary. Check out my meta-thread for more:
Replying to @tomscott
@tomscott @GretchenAMcC Another fascinating bit of research on the relation of gesture & speech 👇
Thread · Meta-thread of threads on McGilchrist's brain hemispheres · 1 of 38 tweets
@Timber_22 Some excerpts on gesture. Second tweet is the real gem here, talking about how usually when people misspeak, their gesture is still accurate 😮
@hmmmcurious Got a 👍 from the person to post their phone background. They said "You can see that 7 out of the 10 are done! (and the year isn't over yet!)" & "Looking forward to the next GCI!"
Replying to @hmmmcurious
@hmmmcurious Oh, neat experiment. I guess... maybe accept that *whatever* strategy you follow, you will miss something important! And if the recommendations come from others (as they often do) you could say "tell me next year!" and if it's really important they will.
@hmmmcurious You could also, if you come across a new cool book/movie, recommend it to a friend you think would like it instead, to see if they check it out, and that will increase the odds it bubbles its way back to you eventually, without you actually queuing it up.
@Aryeh___ @divided_brain Haha nah it didn't get published (I was writing it in parallel with the meta-thread) Still planning to come back & finish it at some point, based on this podcast (metalearn.net/podcasts/ml41-…) and this interview 👇 For now, either of those is a great intro🧠 youtube.com/watch?v=fI1ngq…
@ecceplusultra @QiaochuYuan @visakanv It's actually less like "slow to update the model" and more like "the model is actually locked, non-updateable, unless a particular set of conditions happen". See this summary of Unlocking the Emotional Brain for details. Book is both therapy & neurosci lesswrong.com/posts/i9xyZBS3…
@aaronzlewis @visakanv Fun to remember that Italian cuisine didn't have tomatos until they were brought back from the Americas. No pizza sauce, no pasta sauce, etc. Also the "Old World" had black pepper but not chili. And no coffee iirc? And dozens of other things like that.
Retweeted @bobbyscar
Just finished this workshop and it was SUPER worth it :o There are 2 more next weekend (Sat/Sun), if you're thinking you ne…
@bobbyscar Would you say it's kinda like Twitch Plays Lifecoaching? 🤣 Like you're a streamer, you ask questions & share where you're stuck, and then 8-10 coaches in a chat bombard you with excellent—but sometimes conflicting—advice & suggestions. (+course content - videos, exercises, &+)
@bobbyscar I guess less like Twitch Plays Lifecoaching because the multiple people aren't controlling a coach... ...more like Twitch Plays Personal Life Planning
Retweeted @orpheaskk
so... just did this and it was 🔥 @Malcolm_Ocean & the @CompliceGoals team created a ''select your own story'' workshop, pro…
@Human__Age Oh cool, have you read this? It's at the intersection of a bunch of things I'm interested in, and framed in a way I like (I described myself in GCI Session #1 as a "freedom junkie" or something like that)
@c3kel @orpheaskk @CompliceGoals If you're curious about the GCI, Cameron, I'd be happy to answer questions about it. One person wasn't sure if they would come but then asked about a particular thing they wanted to learn and we were like "yeah we have exercises for that!" And in any case, guided reflection 🔥
@_awbery_ @ajkirby01 My 🌶️🔥 take: Transaction & kindness are compatible and indeed (as you say) inseparable... and they are also both dualistic and profoundly limiting as a default frame for modeling human decision-making, economics & care.
@visakanv Seems like there might be an initial decrease, due to things like 👇, but then most people then find themselves back at an equilibrium around perfectionism and/or fear of success/failure?
@visakanv In trying to find that tweet, I found this one on the way, and I found myself thinking like "how could you approach these marketing consults this way?" and maybe that would literally involve starting with a rambly thread about what comes to mind re a biz.
@visakanv Like what happens if you re-read this tweetstorm about my complice.co marketing situation & ideas and then just play around? 🙃
@alifeofmovement Drive to a small town, go to local café, and ask if anyone there knows someone who owns an isolated cabin they'd be open to renting.
Retweeted @visakanv
I think it was Alan Watts who said that laughter and anxiety are both two sides of the same coin. The very serious job of the…
@_jordan_bates Qualia Research Institute / @algekalipso has an article that goes into WAY more detail on questions like this than most people could imagine anyone bothering to 😂 qualiacomputing.com/2016/08/20/wir…
Imagine you have no willpower—that future you will continue with your existing jumble of conflicted behaviors. How would you design your life so your existing patterns would get the outcomes you want? malcolmocean.com/2016/06/you-fl…
@JamesClear At our Goal-Crafting Intensives this past weekend, a bunch of participants were like "I just need to force myself to do all of these things" and I offered them this reframe: (which blew a few minds 🤯)
@alifeofmovement Like the fact that you didn't speak of it is depressing? Yeah. I grew up in a town of 1400 people, where this strategy would have probably worked fairly well. Lots of people in town would know someone with a unoccupied cottage (we were on the shore).
@misen__ @_awbery_ Based on first few paragraphs, I'm seeing resonance with this article that I quite appreciated, which (as "The Coming Age of Prayer" suggests) also predicts an imminent surge in prayer-like practices. The author is a mathematician, & notes relevance: relentlessdawn.wordpress.com/2019/05/15/the…
@uncatherio @JeffLadish "potential childbearer" seems to maybe point at the thing more directly? or even "prospective childbearer" which implies slightly more intent, not just "could" but "is orienting towards it"
@QiaochuYuan @visakanv @nuanceexists @maybegray @simpolism
@garybasin @QiaochuYuan @KevinSimler I read book & did Ann Weiser Cornell's class and found it 🤷♀️ I think there's juice in Focusing but it never really did any magic for me. By contrast, @DougTataryn's system produced an immediate sense of "WHOA, this is tapping some deep part of me"
@QiaochuYuan @a_witch_in_time Yeah, I generally phrase this as "because the DSM measures deviation from norm, it is structurally incapable of recognizing a dysfunctional condition that everyone has." I tried to say this to a group of ppl at YC120 and one of them literally said "but then it would be normal!"
Replying to @jim_rutt
@jim_rutt @Plinz @HiFromMichaelV It seems to me that you're using the term "nihilism" in a way that is more like what @Meaningness calls, uhh... "meaningness". I figure no point in defending the word "nihilism"—let it continue referring a confused stance, since that's how many ppl use it meaningness.com/preview-eterna…
@ssica3003 @coyotespike @alifeofmovement Yeah Bio-Emotive / NEDERA is sort of the obvious one here. It's very explicit about the need to express emotions and not to worry about caveating them. Excerpt from a non-public piece I've written captures the difference in how one talks depending on these modes.
@jim_rutt @Plinz @HiFromMichaelV @Meaningness Moreover, not just is that how many people use it, it's also a stance that we need a word for! So "nihilism" might as well be that word.
Retweeted @Aryeh___
@sharanvkaur in seminary they told us not to joke about god because "one joke can erase a thousand torah's (teachings)". I th…
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@QiaochuYuan @a_witch_in_time Yeah, I generally phrase this as "because the DSM measures deviation from norm, it is stru…
Replying to @uncatherio
@uncatherio @alifeofmovement seems like there's an interesting case to be made that if you freeze eggs and use a surrogate, this is in some key way (re: birth, not sexual intercourse) like the sperm donor case. hm 🤔
@nosilverv somehow feeling like issendai.com needs to be linked here maybe this section on how estranged parents (who seem to often be narcissistic) also tend towards having an authoritarian follower personality issendai.com/psychology/est…
@vgr "charisma" ...but somehow it was pronounced like the name "Charise" ...more specifically, exactly how Doughty says the name at the end of this @BT song: 🤨 (I've started it at that clip, but it's a cool track; worth jumping back to the start) youtu.be/m8Q8_d-5SsU?t=…
Retweeted @tylercowen
Work on these things (now, and fast): marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…
Retweeted @random_walker
In our data-driven world, the claim that we don’t have a good way to study something quantitatively may sound shocking.…
@jonnym1ller divided brain reconciled by meaningful sobbing
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@jonnym1ller divided brain reconciled by meaningful sobbing
@visakanv @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan Yeah, eg some people cry a lot, but it doesn't move or release or shift anything and they feel like they have no idea why they're crying. This is... well, calling it "bad" is a judgment, but it is: stagnant, stuck, meta-unpleasant. Meaningful sobbing key:
@reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan From the school of thought I come from, labelling anything "bad" is basically functionally coercive-memey, even if that's not the intent. Inasmuch as you think we're onto something, you might consider trying on that perspective for a week.
@reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan (There's an obvious exception, sort of, for things like "this milk has gone bad" in the rancid sense... it's not fundamentally about the word but about whether it contains a should. "this milk is bad" basically unambiguously means "this milk is no longer safe to consume" 🤮)
@reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan (But it's not as obvious as it seems, because eg one might try to stretch it & say that "goals are bad" means "goals aren't safe as a tool" but that ends up functioning as a normative claim, partially bc generalized. that's equiv of "(all) milk is bad")
@reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan (& claiming "all milk is bad" implies "you should feel bad if you drink/enjoy milk." Likewise w/ goals. This is clearly part of coercive memeplex. Instead, share observation: "I notice when I drink milk ➡️ phlegm" "I notice when many people use goals ➡️ pre-success failure" )
@reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan (Sometimes there's a useful generalization, but that requires pinning down terms much more precisely. To exactly which things called "milk" does this apply? Only cows? Only animal milk? (is soymilk milk?) To exactly which people? What's the causal model? ...still no "bad" here)
@HunterBergsma @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan It leads to a paradox because you're trying to evaluate it through your existing models. From within those models, yes, you can't get rid of bad, because to get rid of it you'd have to call it "bad", hence paradox, hence proof-by-contradiction.
@HunterBergsma @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan But the claim is that there are value systems that don't use good/bad altogether, and that within those value systems, you can eschew "bad"/"good" without paradox. The above proof-by-contradiction does not (cannot) say anything about said value systems except "they don't exist"
@HunterBergsma @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan But that proof is only true within a frame that took as an assumption that choosing/valuing requires good & bad, so the proof-by-contradiction actually relies on circular reasoning! It's therefore an invalid proof. TBC, this does not, itself, imply the existence of post-judgment
@HunterBergsma @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan 🎩🏃♂️🐰 ...post-judgment/post-rationalist, yes! It's not post-truth per se, although the concept of truth can sometimes get people tied up in knots depending on how they relate to it. It's also not post-evaluation. One can evaluate without judging, eg "yum" & "yes"
@HunterBergsma @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan And as I use those examples ("yum" & "yes") I feel the ever-present need to clarify that it's never never never the words. The words are all just pointers. Post-judgment is more of a stance than a formal philosophical position (tho so are most philosophies)
@HunterBergsma @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan Put another way, what I'm saying here is that I recently had a profound insight that emotionally/embodiedly/behaviorally I didn't grok post-judgment. I could have written all of the above tweets years ago, but <2 weeks ago I realized I was still striving to *be a good person*
@HunterBergsma @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan The idea of "good person" / "bad person" (again, NOT the words! the meme) is core to the coercive memeplex. The book The Guru Papers articulates really clearly how it sets up an inner authoritarian that manifests external norms as constraints on creativity.
@HunterBergsma @reasonisfun @QiaochuYuan (Wanting to clarify for others reading this: I'm using some jargon here around "coercive memeplex" because @reasonisfun & @HunterBergsma are followers of David Deutsch, and so this is the most useful short-hand I have with them for explaining a very nuanced topic.)
You know how if you write a "(" but no ")", everything you say is now in a parenthetical? How many layers of parenthetical do you imagine you're in at this point in your life?
Corollary: what happens if you close parens that you never opened?))))
Retweeted @jonnym1ller
Intention for 2020: "Let Go. Let go. Let’s go"
@jonnym1ller I love this. Curious if there's something non-obvious to elaborate on in the distinction between "Let Go" & "Let go"...
@Neats29 @jonnym1ller Very curious to hear what this is about. Clicking your profile it seems maybe referring to infodistillery.com?
Fucking WIZARDRY. #UXdesign I have mixed feeling about @WordPress' new Gutenberg editor. But just now I copied a link, selected some text, and hit ctrl+v (forgetting the ctrl+k link step)... ...and IT AUTOMATICALLY LINKIFIED THE TEXT.
I fucking love design that turns [what in other contexts would be] an accident into *exactly what you wanted in fewer steps*. And now I can link even quicker in the future. Need to think about how to incorporate more of this kind of thng into complice.co 🤔😎🎨
We're close to selling out the final 2 sessions of our New Year's planning online workshop this weekend… Includes: 📺📄 high-quality content (videos & exercises) 🍅👥 structured co-working on goal-setting & planning 💬💡 live coaching - bypass blindspots complice.co/event/plan2020…
It's self-structured & Pay What You Want, which means that as long as you show up, it's hard for the event to not be worth it! I've personally been burned many times by paying $$$ for a course then finding out it's not a good fit, or not managing to actually complete the course
The event is 5h, which can seem like a lot when you're imagining it, but the structure (breaks,coaching+) makes the whole thing fly by smoothly. If you try to plan on your own, it's so easy to get stuck or distracted, but with the live coworking & coaches, you'll get further 📈
We get many returning participants from previous years, and a couple participants from last weekend liked it so much they've signed up for a January session as well! Here's another rave review:
So! If you sense your 2020 would go better if you took some time to reflect on it, and you: - aren't sure how to think about it - worry you won't get started at all - expect to get lost/stuck - just want some extra minds helping you strategize ...then 👇 complice.co/event/plan2020…
@aphercotropist People host story-telling events in some places. Could go to those & learn the knack.
@aphercotropist Also ofc "Authentic Relating" events. They don't quite cover all of authentic connection, but probably some dimensions that you're missing.
With the context at the top, I find myself unable to read this tweet in any other way than Throne Of Glory = 🚽 twitter.com/TheRaDR/status…
@DRMacIver @tastytronic One approach would be to assume that it's *important and urgent* to some part of you that you *not* experience such a link. That the connection is there but you're blocked from feeling it.
@DRMacIver @tastytronic You might find that part by saying out loud: "If my upset is really about <current situation>, then..." (~Coherence Therapy style - complete this sentence multiple times #nofilter) or "it's not okay to be upset about <situ>" (~BioEmotive style - attune for resonance in body)