Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
hello twitter! my boy @Malcolm_Ocean is running a workshop this saturday and sunday and i'll be at the sunday session as a…
January 2020
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
this is not self-deprecating i sincerely think this is good. memes and pop culture are good shorthands for expressing felt…
@jdunck @dalmo3 @Conaw @paulg It's my impression that Twitter's algo may deliberately put relevant tweets adjacently. Seems to happen more often than I'd expect by chance, with shared keywords. (Also I don't think @Conaw coined #roamcult)
I think this applies to 2010 Malcolm & 2020 Malcolm too.
Replying to @leashless
@leashless I highly recommend @aarondignan's book Brave New Work, which is one of the best takes I'm aware of on how to empower employees without making things naively egalitarian. Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? amazon.ca/dp/0525536205/…
@leashless @aarondignan workwithsource.com is also quite good. Again pointing at recognizing & supporting the sovereignty of individuals while also recognizing & supporting the authority of the leader to lead.
@alifeofmovement I think you probably have lots of ideas what money is! They may be wildly inaccurate or even mutually incompatible though. Try the exercise I suggest here:
Retweeted @aphercotropist
@visakanv @reasonisfun @Malcolm_Ocean @QiaochuYuan Learning to cry cuz you're emotionally constipated vs relearning how…
@OneBigOh Haha I meant it as a literal question 😂 But the metaphorical one is also interesting. I guess if lots of people interpreted the way you did then maybe we don't know how to count the results.
Retweeted @krrishd
twitter's two moods
new decade new face
I've had one form of facial hair or another since 2010 (except one drag party in ~2014). I was in cadets / boarding school in high school, where I wasn't allowed to grow facial hair. I think after a decade I feel free to be clean-shaven as well.
Replying to @slashdottir
@slashdottir I had a friend with complete aphantasia who got wild visual imagination on LSD and reported finding it hard to pay attention to anything else. I mean, he didn't want to, of course. Have heard other v different experiences.
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
We're close to selling out the final 2 sessions of our New Year's planning online workshop this weekend… Includes: 📺📄 h…
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
in 2020 we are kissing our friends on the forehead because we love them 🥰 twitter.com/spinubzilla/st…
Retweeted @NikaHarper
It is ridiculous that, with one day to go, a new favorite song is added to my 2019 list and it happens to be music from a B…
@celestialboon @QiaochuYuan @Aryeh___ If you want a method for processing trauma that's based on getting off on it, humanity has you covered! It's called Existential Kink. There's a book coming out in a few months, but for now this page explains the basic idea: carolyngraceelliott.com/philosophy
@hmmmcurious Oh also they asked me to credit the background image, which is the album cover for Kindred Shadow by Pogo Listening now... pretty groovy: youtube.com/watch?v=MJSoZa…
Thread · Living in a dream mashup of present situation and old emotional meanings · 3 of 5 tweets
@QiaochuYuan @visakanv Pete Walker has a great article about this phenomenon: > Because most emotional flashbacks do not have a visual or memory component to them, the triggered individual rarely realizes that she is re-experiencing a traumatic time from childhood. pete-walker.com/flashbackManag…
@QiaochuYuan @visakanv Note that while he's talking about Complex PTSD, schools are prisons so basically everybody is actually traumatized quite a lot. In some dimensions this has gotten better; in others, worse: x.com/PeterNickeas/s…
@QiaochuYuan @visakanv We recognize a certain baseline level of trauma as being the norm, and fail to realize that there could be a completely different way of humaning that doesn't involve everyone constantly rehashing these old nightmares at each other.
@KevinSimler I thought I had a pretty good experience of school... ...& while that may be true, I recently processed a bunch of trauma related to having been imprisoned for over a decade & subject to whims of authority figures. Am finally jailbreaking my amygdala!
@KevinSimler Hmm, this tweet 👇 sounds pretty similar to what I might have said about my experience of school, prior to this year when I started pointing Bio-Emotive & other trauma processing techniques at my years of school.
@KevinSimler I don't want to assume my experience is true for you too Kevin, but I'd suggest leaving open the hypothesis that like me you dissociated hard from what you didn't like & that part of you is still feeling hurt & angry. (Likely there'd also be a sense of those feels not being ok)
@KevinSimler Ooof yeah and then I read this tweet 👇 and I'm like 😬 This paints a pretty different picture than "really enjoyed myself!" Even if the schoolwork was interesting/fun, you had to be not-treated-like-a-person for most of a decade. That has impacts.
@KevinSimler Anyway, I'll back off twitter-therapy now. Underlying impulse definitely does come in large part from having seen my own blindspots and wanting others to see theirs. So we can all reclaim our freedom, classroom by classroom, from those dehumanizations:
Thread · The Task/Obligation Jubilee: forgiving your backlog · 10 of 11 tweets
Announcing the 2020 Task/Obligation Jubilee! 🎆 A jubilee is when debts are forgiven, so people have a chance to start over. You can do this for yourself, in relation to the backlog of years of tasks & obligations that you've built up. How? Here's a thread of different ways 🧵
Task Jubilee: Logistical 1 Archive/delete your email inbox or your overdue tasks. Maybe tag them all so you can find 'em later, & maybe even intend to look at it… sometime 😉 Maybe give yourself a timer of like 10 minutes to go through and save a couple key ones 🔑
Task Jubilee: Logistical 2 Projects that have been on hold for months… declare them closed. There might still be something to be gained by resurrecting them, but start by freeing yourself from any *should*. You don’t have to do those projects before you can start new ones!
Task Jubilee: Relational To anyone you have an outstanding (esp overdue) deliverable for, send them 1 of 2 messages: "I'm letting go of past obligations… 1 …so let me know if this is still important to you" 🙏 2 …but this is something I'm still hell-yeah about" 🚀
Task Jubilee: Emotional 1 It’s possible to delete all these things 👆 & still feel a sense of burden, like there are things you *should be doing.* As valuable as it might be to do that task, is it worth the burden you've been carrying for so long? Close your eyes & feel into it
Task Jubilee: Emotional 2 Are there things you're feeling excited to do, yet also you feel like you're somehow BEHIND on them? The idea of "behind" is a mental debt, and it doesn't help anything for you to pay its interest (by feeling guilty/frustrated) malcolmocean.com/2019/01/nothin…
Task Jubilee: Philosophical/Spiritual 1 You may have a belief that without the guilt or the obligation or the judgment, you wouldn't do anything. This may be true on one level if you're living in constant rebellion against your shoulds…
Task Jubilee: Philosophical/Spiritual 2 …but ultimately anything you want—anything worth doing—is still worth doing even with the guilt out of the way. The idea that it wouldn't be is just propaganda from the Ministry of Guilt-Based Motivation!
Task Jubilee: do it 🔥 Take a moment right now (before scrolling on) and ask yourself: "do I want to be free of these old debts?" Then do what you need to do, whether archiving tasks, emailing people, etc. Don't you dare put "do task jubilee" into the backlog!😜
If this idea intrigues you but you're nervous & you'd like me to walk you through actually setting yourself free (including looking at what fears come up) …then register for the workshop I'm hosting this weekend & we'll make it happen!
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
The easiest way to ensure something happens this year is to make it happen today.
Thread · The Task/Obligation Jubilee: forgiving your backlog · 1 of 11 tweets
If you want to shift your entire to-do list approach to an app that naturally embodies this philosophy of starting fresh rather than having an ever-growing backlog, sign up for Complice: complice.co/?og=f2&utm_sou…
@radgeRayden @MIKEVtheDORK @visakanv Yeah if you actually attempt to learn from each one and don't just send the same message 100 times, there's something to this.
@nwilliams030 I added this one:
@voodoohorizon @yurifucker @PlushMayhem Here's a strategy for keeping relapses from becoming downward spirals!
This is the most meta-threading I've seen from a brand twitter. They offer a kind of choose-your-own-adventure for exploring a news item. (The options start a few tweets down, after some initial context is given.) Interesting experiment. Tagging @visakanv, @GRITCULT, @conaw
@Prigoose I love watching Tower of Power, after 50 years, with a new vocalist who wasn't even *alive* when they started… …continue to ask the age-old question: What Is Hip? "if you're really hip—the passing years will show" youtube.com/watch?v=IDksWT…
@Prigoose Jamaican In New York youtube.com/watch?v=bdneye…
@QiaochuYuan @FioraAeterna weird flex but I get way too many new followers to notice this sort of thing (it's not actually that many but it's more than I would care to look at individually, particularly in the format it's in. may be worth looking at the expanded list on my profile periodically...)
overheard: "I feel like I'm in the Room Of Requirement... but I don't know what I want."
Yes! I think the GCIs are gonna sell out. Just 8 spots remaining. If you're thinking of going, another reason to get a ticket now is that it's helpful to have a couple days to work on some of the pre-event exercises like the Dream List.
@VincentBarr There's a welcome email that has an intake form & some exercises. Lmk if you don't have it and I'll send you another copy 🙂
Why so many "follow these people" threads lately? 🧐 (Or have there always been this many and I'm just suddenly cool enough to be on them? 🤔)
Fashionable = dressing in a manner that signals that you have the attention, money, & connections to follow what's popular (esp. in Paris, LA, etc) Stylish = dressing in a manner that signals your taste/aesthetic is unique, evocative, subtle, and/or any other adjective you value
Replying to @willywarIV
@averyhpierce @visakanv By my terms 👇 you mean "bleeding edge of fashion"—there is no bleeding edge of style! Important to remember that "fashionable" & "stylish" are not the same thing and aren't even necessarily correlated among a given population.
@averyhpierce @visakanv Note: the fashion industry is incentivized to have people believe these are the same 😉 It seems clear to me that Visa & I care about style, not fashion, & that that's what this thread is about. By defn, "fashionable" is something only a small fraction of people even *can* be
@averyhpierce @visakanv See @slatestarcodex on fashion & countersignalling, years ago, which explains how fashion comes to be unstylish. slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/rig…
(These are definitions that I've used for years and they feel sort of obvious to me, but then I went to use the words in another tweet and was like "wait I guess I better define them first")
@michaelcurzi You might appreciate this paper on integrity by the guy who founded the thing that later evolved into Landmark Forum. Defines it more rigorously than I've seen elsewhere:
@visakanv Me, regularly:
music that's clearly pushing the edges... music that is building on existing patterns so extensively that you can tell nobody could have created it more than 3 years ago link me such music 👇🎶
@visakanv @averyhpierce Yeah I think I have respect for that in a similar way to how I have appreciation for
@webdevMason Once got asked point-blank by some ex-Muslim friends-of-friend what I thought of Jerusalem etc situation... twas implied that I had to take a side but I managed "well, I don't really understand it well enough to comment, but it definitely seems like a mess" which was acceptable
Retweeted @ribbonfarm
MJD 58,851 by @vgr ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/03/mjd…
@ribbonfarm @vgr @Conaw you'll want to read this. It relates to ways @RoamResearch is like Twitter and to some of the thoughts I've had about roamblogs
Retweeted @SlowwCo
*THREAD ON HABITS* I've tried new year's resolutions. I've tried habit tracking. I've tried *no* resolutions and *no* track…
@kjekac Ah yeah, I guess for example electroswing was possible for years before it became a thing, but it was still something *new*. Like when it first happened, you knew you were hearing something that hadn't been done before. And yeah both is 🎆🤩
Retweeted @andy_matuschak
It's "annual personal review" season! Lots of people are writing about setting their 2020 goals, or looking back on wha…
Thread · The Korzybski Gap: negative vs positive knowledge in language · 3 of 4 tweets
The Korzybski Gap (by Romeo Stevens)
"Korzybski: much of our problem originates in the fact that natural language seems to cross from negative to positive knowledge without noticing the difference. "I do not perceive that she has a cup" & "I perceive that she does not have a cup" seem equiv if we are not careful."
"I've noted before that I think quite a few blindspots revolve around people in a field of science running around seeking out positive knowledge until someone comes along & knocks the field on its head by formulating things in terms of the negatives that can actually be measured"
@tangled_zans He adds "Information theory being perhaps the most profound example." There's some discussion (including elaboration on info theory) on the FB post: facebook.com/romeostevens/p…
@cognazor @aniseh_bro This. Also I voted but then immediately realized that the question is meaningless without the alternative specified even vaguely.
@tangled_zans Mmm yeah. Here's another thread/convo about Korzybski... at some point I'll write a longer more coherent thing about him / General Semantics
@tangled_zans Your comment 👆 actually illustrates the point in this post 👇 really clearly! The *spirit* of e-prime is less about banning the *word* "is" and more about banning the *idea* of "is". And saying "is not" doesn't actually imply anything "is" anything 😮
@tangled_zans The spirit of e-prime is: not[X is Y] for all X, Y TMINTT is: not[M is T] for M = map, T = territory
@KevinSimler Haha wow. Everybody is waking up to this stuff.
@visabrain yeah this is literally what culture is. well, it's what culture has been since the history of humanity. we're making new kinds of cultures now. dive down the David Deutsch rabbit hole 🕳️🐇 ⬇️
Replying to @Foone
@Foone @SwooshyCueb @all_out_of_bots @3dmmSFX for anyone finding this in the future, it appears the limit is about 5 made one throwaway alt too many, now I can't even add the number back to my main 😠
@suchaone @QiaochuYuan Here's me 9 years ago performing a very very very dated and cringy song about social media. In my defense, I mostly wrote it because the songfight title that week was Circle Me. youtube.com/watch?v=FKCW6k…
@tangled_zans So "the map is not the territory" doesn't contain an "is", it contains an "is not", which is a completely different kind of statement! Similarly, it's possible to say "you don't deserve to suffer" without saying that anyone *does* deserve to suffer.
@tangled_zans Something something Anthony Wilden something something contradictions aren't opposites something something (I will say more about this later, probably, though might not be for months. This tweet is mostly a breadcrumb for future Malcolm)
@startuployalist I'd be fascinated to hear more about what you're reflecting on here!
Dzogchen, where everyday meanings are technical definitions! 🤣🤣🤣 This apparent paradox seems somehow deeply appropriate to me, given what I know of Dzogchen!🙃 And also somehow connected with @Meaningness' interest in ethnomethodology.
@Meaningness @dthorson @edelwax
@QiaochuYuan For linky reference re nightmare mashups:
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
feels like i'm close to finding the simplest and most impactful slogan or phrase for talking about emotional projections /…
Most people feel shame about feeling like they feel a shame other people don't feel 🙃
@_awbery_ @Meaningness @dthorson @edelwax Mmm, when I look at the simple [goal="what", value="how"] definition below, I can see how "method" is also a "how", and how it's a more general kind of "how" than a "tool" or a "technique" is, because it includes stances, worldviews, principles, etc.
@_awbery_ @Meaningness @dthorson @edelwax Goal-Crafting Intensive workshop I've run since '17 has a "make a values list" exercise, basically copypasted from some other one, but a lot of those "values" don't actually have howness to them. They're like "beauty", "family" The howness thing seems key for LIVING one's values
Retweeted @mattgoldenberg
@cognazor Kegan Stage 3- Developmental stage theory is a ladder to climb. Kegan Stage 4- Developmental stage theory is…
Replying to @marick
@marick @_awbery_ @Meaningness @dthorson @edelwax Somehow-relatedly, it's largely peoples' left hemispheres that code for tool use (even in L-handers!) My sense is that the L hemisphere identifies with whatever it has under its control, which could include subordinate people too.
@marick @_awbery_ @Meaningness @dthorson @edelwax I've been meaning for months to pitch both of you (@Meaningness & @_awbery_) on reading McGilchrist, based on the incredible resonances between his work & eg Spectrum of Ecstasy, but I haven't gotten to writing that up yet!
@mattgoldenberg @cognazor Ahhhh I like this so much. I basically already knew it but it's a much clearer articulation than I'd had before. 🙏
@edelwax @Meaningness @dthorson I was talking about the goals/values thing with someone today and they were like "wait, you don't realize your values via your goals? they're separate?" & it's making me think that using "values" for this seems to import lots of other meanings. "hows" feels sorta clearest to me
@_awbery_ @marick @Meaningness @dthorson @edelwax Whoa, I would love to try this. Are there instructions that could be transmitted via internet for it?
Replying to @ryn__x
@context_ing Oh definitely, yeah. Very resonant energy around considering days & weeks in broad chunks and focusing on reflection over trying to be strictly accountable. The latter part relates to this article I wrote for the Beeminder blog: blog.beeminder.com/complice
@edelwax @Meaningness @dthorson Mmm, so enjoying your spaciousness around this 🙏 I went through a similar experience of considering the impact of my own word-choice while working on this thread about systems vs goals 👇 (which also cites you on values)
@tobyshorin 👋🌊
@alifeofmovement @utotranslucence I think you're looking for :thinking-heart: (I'm planning to submit an official proposal to add this to the canonical emoji, lmk if you have appetite to help (even just by RTing me later in the process))
@utotranslucence @Meta_Aesthetic
@_awbery_ @marick @Meaningness @dthorson @edelwax One little connection... Arbinger Institute talks about Inward vs Outward Mindset... it's really clear that the left hemisphere's perspective is structurally inward (objectifying is appropriate for tools!) whereas RH's is outward. Then... can you spot the 3 poisons below? 😉
Replying to @qchurious
@qchurious one perspective on this is that you're afraid to buy a plane ticket because your dad will yell, so you don't do it another is that you are taking every opportunity to assert that you have the freedom to buy last-minute plane tickets
@Meaningness Oooh, I really like this bit about finding a basis for communication.
Retweeted @Aryeh___
"The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an…
@danlistensto Digging this thread! Nice breadth & depth. 🙏
@crtk001 I wondered, then sort of felt like maybe it was an in-joke I was missing. Maybe people embarrassed to ask I've read Island (loved it!) haven't read Brave New World but it's on my queue & in arm's reach. What were you referring to?
@hhpapazian Took me a moment then I got it. Hint:
Retweeted @Snowden
Start the year off right: join the 20,000 who have already signed to oppose the US government's indefinite detention of Chelse…
Here's an old blog post of mine. It's pretty cool...! ...and also the main reason I'm tweeting it right now is that twitter doesn't have a good built-in way for busting cached cards (site embeds) and I want to see if tweeting the link will work 🤨 malcolmocean.com/2016/07/common…
Okay that worked! Weird that their built-in card validator can't just do this. That's sort of the obvious place to put the "ignore cache & refetch button". cards-dev.twitter.com/validator
@zachtratar @Conaw @ryanguill @martinxo @RoamResearch It's worth having 10× fewer users if the users you do have are the users to whom your product is worth way more. Better deal for everybody; otherwise there'll be a ton of demand to fix what isn't broken. (This has been my strategy w complice.co, & I ♥ it.)
@Conaw 😊 Fond memories of watching the meteor shower with you on top of your van, parked next to the panoramic highway... playing 93 Million Miles by Jason Mraz on your guitar, and then me falling asleep on the roof of the van with my contact lenses intentionally left in because ☄️
Retweeted @wyattreed13
One Iranian attending Soleimani's funeral ruthlessly mocked western media coverage of the events "Why did you come here t…
Retweeted @MilanGriffes
The arch of @hotdogsladies: theguardian.com/technology/201…
@MilanGriffes @hotdogsladies I inbox-zero about once a quarter, and I used to feel kinda bad about this before I realized that doing it more often meant much more time & attn dealing with emails without much benefit. I do check it multiple times a week and respond to anything critical, but most is 🤷♀️
@MilanGriffes @hotdogsladies Ahhh, this. I try to embody a sense that no matter how much time I have, it's enough. Even if part of how I make it enough is by hustling, there's still an underneath spaciousness, usually.
@MilanGriffes @hotdogsladies Another frame: efficiency in vs efficiency out. Trying to optimize the efficiency of resource use (costs & staff time in the below example) produces a very different effect than trying to optimize for units of value created per opportunity (quickly treatment for each patient)
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@MilanGriffes @hotdogsladies Another frame: efficiency in vs efficiency out. Trying to optimize the efficiency of resou…
@Conaw @DitriAhmetaj @RoamResearch Oh man yeah this 🙏 I don't have a fancy signalling thing but I feel this way about Complice too. I've been the betrayed user and I'm not going to do that to the Complice userbase.
Retweeted @Conaw
A brief rant on note-taking apps and the structure of thought. Or "Why Evernote is a terrible second brain."
@cognazor I definitely like linking together the books that I'm reading, though I'm not sure if it's quite the thing you're pointing at.
@NE0GRIT instructions unclear burnt my barn down
@mattgoldenberg @SarahAMcManus Baha yeah, this. I see it as essentially a paradox/koan, articulated by Adyashanti as a meditation with one instruction: "No Manipulation"
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
This is a delightfully perplexing little koan. I am sitting. My face is itchy. Do I scratch it? If I scratch, am I mani…
@3blue1brown This relates to the Interesting Number Paradox, which is explored in-depth in Diamond: A Paradox Logic
Replying to @magghu
@magghu @GameB_Phil Cool! It looked like fun 🥳 A few people have done that sort of thing before but often I don't realize until the end, so it was fun to know more about this one.
@magghu @GameB_Phil Also curious if either of you are going to the Bio-Emotive workshop in Toronto next weekend! There are still a few tickets left. cecmeditate.com/event/bio-emot…
@crtk001 interesting! have you read Island? it has a whole bunch of other interesting political bits. Huxley was very perceptive about what might be possible and the challenges of implementing it but the need to try anyway.
Retweeted @Aryeh___
Take one step backward into the unknown- but step slowly, step lightly
@QiaochuYuan It's dangerous to go alone! Take this. soundcloud.com/sonicemporiumo…
Retweeted @meditationstuff
If you experience recurring muscle tension, maybe it moves around a little bit, too, then there's a way in which you'r…
@vgr You want your own self-hosted platform? What's the advantage that you're seeking with that, vs using somebody else's? More ownership of the context? Ability to create custom features? Be a platform for others? Something else?
"Right now, if nothing you do is of any avail, what will you do?" —the fundamental koan from Hisamatsu Zen
@utotranslucence Honestly I feel similarly when coaching at Goal-Crafting Intensive workshops. I simultaneously feel like there's something really beautiful & positive that can happen, and also by default all interventions have absolutely no effect. Kind of freeing 🙃
@utotranslucence Umm... it's from a book called Zen Awakening & Society, that we have in our library here, though I haven't read the rest of it and just managed to find the quote today via Google Books: books.google.ca/books?id=d4fbv…
@utotranslucence It's also kind of related to this ultra-simple koan from Adyashanti: "no manipulation" 👇
@utotranslucence Beyond that I'm like idk it's a koan, it's not like me explaining it is going to be useful? twitter.com/danlistensto/s…
@utotranslucence Beyond that I'm like "maybe read McGilchrist?" @QiaochuYuan read it and then he had some similar thoughts 👇 to the ones you had above ☝️ (this was his first twitter thread, & it cites McGilchrist)
I'm enjoying the idea that these tweets (which showed up adjacently in a search) are somehow related 😂
@utotranslucence @QiaochuYuan But unlike your original remark, about feeling discouraged about trying to write, QC seems to continue writing stuff and indeed changing social narratives & relationships:
> "You won’t fully grasp [Coherence Therapy] until you grasp the nimble, active genius of the psyche not only in constructing personal reality, but also in purposefully manifesting any one of its myriad possible states to carry out any of its myriad possible purposes..."
> "...The client’s psyche is always coherent, always in control of producing the symptom—knowing why and when to produce it and when not to produce it." — the Coherence Therapy folks (who wrote Unlocking the Emotional Brain)
@garybasin Came across this old thread and it inspired me to dig up this quote from the Coherence Therapy folks that says in no uncertain terms: YES. 👇 Tagging @vgr, @KevinSimler, @fortelabs who discussed here before, & @xuenay, @QiaochuYuan, @mattgoldenberg.
Retweeted @garybasin
Are (most all?) people "experts in their own lives" at getting their System 1 needs met, and only appear irrational or crazy…
@The_Lagrangian @QiaochuYuan @xuenay Yeah, deep similarities. Probably faster reconsolidation is in part because Coherence Therapy folks seem to have much better models & methods for surfacing the actual unconscious "competing commitments" (as Kegan calls them). Here's Kegan's ITC table ↙️ & some CoTh schemas ↘️
@themarcusnewton @pospigos Hm, I think that's a little uncharitable. It seems like he tried to say something to the effect of "what about this specific race-related thing?" and got blocked, and *then* he was like "uh this thing is fucked if it doesn't about-face post-haste"
@nosilverv @Aryeh___ @QiaochuYuan @similaralterity Hm, I'm not holding out for this actually changing anybody's mind about anything, but I'm glad it exists! I think it could benefit from offering an alternative way of making meaning of things. Not saying I have one I could articulate in 800 words either.
I have found that there is a delicious taste of freedom to be found in suddenly just closing an entire window of twitter tabs, without checking each one, so I can focus on something else. It has a sense of abundance... agency... choice... Anyway, bye!
2019 Yearly Review blog post! In which I talk about the impact that Iain McGilchrist & Bio-Emotive had on my life last year. #SobSquad malcolmocean.com/2020/01/2019-r…
@jonnym1ller Thanks @jonnym1ller for inspiring me to create a scaffold onto which to write my yearly review blog post! (CC @bobbyscar @DougTataryn)
@mattgoldenberg Wow! Would love to hear what touched you, here or in DM ♥🙏 (Where's that :happycry: emoji when you need it...)
@QiaochuYuan @_jordan_bates Yeah like so many things it emerged organically... @QiaochuYuan's threads & sob-sunglasses emoji header provided a kind of rally-point for others, who then were described by @choosy_mom as "twitter sob squad" which was then reified by me as #SobSquad 😭😎
Retweeted @gmws82
Now that the hugely successful Pt. 1 of this convo is done I wanna see @conaw @fortelabs shock the world with the total inverse…
@QiaochuYuan @_jordan_bates @choosy_mom Started as just me, @QiaochuYuan, & @Aryeh___, but now @celestialboon & @maybegray also have #SobSquad in their twitter bios, and there are a various others embracing the name & the spirit as well: x.com/gmws82/status/…
@QiaochuYuan @The_Lagrangian @xuenay Yeah, if you try to fill out the table, w/o using limbic language & testing for resonance, 1 of 2 things'll happen: 1. your guess will be inaccurate and you won't really notice 2. your guess will be spot on but it won't actually HIT YOU—so still no agency:
@QiaochuYuan @The_Lagrangian @xuenay Also sometimes the insights, when put in objective terms, are like... boringly obvious things. eg, someone who volunteered to go in front at MAPLE retreat started crying about how she was afraid people would leave her like her father did then she was like "this is so textbook!"
@themarcusnewton @pospigos Yes, deep resonance on this (and I agree that Vinay was also being uncharitable!) I think a close group representing itself as "Game B" is a type error; that's like having a group called "capitalism". At most it is, descriptively, "some ppl on FB talking about Game B"
@themarcusnewton @pospigos Part of why it's so key to play on an open platform is so that differences can be handled primarily constructively (literally "by building something new") rather than by criticizing.
@themarcusnewton @pospigos See also this discussion with @MSlavin about the inevitability that things will co-opt the names & terms of the new, in service of the old:
"because you're in my pocket, that's why" #overheard
Lots of these are excellent ideas. This guy's ideation process is 🔥🔥 I remember wondering for years why there wasn't a pokemon MMORPG... I guess we got pokemon go instead? twitter.com/zarkonnen_com/…
@uberstuber @fortelabs I heard a story (forget where) of someone who called chiro offices asking "can you help me with my adhd?" and went with the first chiro who said "no, that's out of scope" and apparently found that quite effective! 😂
@fortelabs Another perspective: focus on developing embodied literacy, whether through Feldenkrais, Alexander Technique, or even Ido Portal's stuff. The point is to develop a different kind of *ongoing* awareness of what feels good in your body. (But also what QC said re dreams & feels)
@QiaochuYuan @jondubin Other people describe having this experience and I can't pass that ITT at all. I feel like I could easily come up with 10 lifetimes worth of stuff I'd be *stoked* to do, and with a bit more thought, 100.
@QiaochuYuan @jondubin It's possible that people with my architecture around this are part of what's created the stories that create the shame around the thing? 🤔
@QiaochuYuan @jondubin Oh cool, yeah, that makes sense. > I should mention that even smallish amounts of time have been hard to fill. Yeah exactly, my intuition has been that it's not about quantity at all, and QC/PM's model here makes a lot of sense of this.
Retweeted @visakanv
fun + funny things that happen when I do marketing consulting for people 1- accidentally becoming their therapist, getting t…
@m_ashcroft @danlistensto @vgr Yeah I resonate with both of these, and also the third perspective that both exist and that they are fundamentally different types of organizing and that the most important thing we can do is raise the nascent culture to maturity so it can be the thing.
@GameB_Phil @jgreenhall @jim_rutt @SeamusOhAilin @GwendolynHuot @chrxn @nickredmark @JoNellHomer @peternlimberg @crowddemocracy @derekvg @Sharon_Lewis @HunterBergsma @VincentHorn @cognazor @collinofzion @Connoropolous @Bortseb @SarahAMcManus There's also this sensemaking web / Game B roam db (based I think on @GwendolynHuot's doc) roamresearch.com/#/app/sensemak…
@speakerjohnash I really like this but the curves in the charts are really weird, implying the existence of a -1 and an 11 score, that always get ranked zero. Here I fixed it:
@speakerjohnash Also guessing that you'd get wildly different results in different populations, and that this sort of thing might explain some of the outliers.
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
"stress," which as a psychological term was apparently coined in the 1920s, sure is a convenient way to avoid having to na…
@rfinz @QiaochuYuan @qorprate Yeah, I recall a definition of stress from... some weird class in school... that was something like "stress is when you feel that the amount that you must do exceeds the amount that you *can* do"
@aaronzlewis Much the same sentiment as this article I wrote👇 (I'm now much less certain S1/S2 is actually a good example here... at any rate, the concepts seem confused, and the names allow lots of projecting even if they don't imply anything.) malcolmocean.com/2016/02/sparkl…
@aaronzlewis This same line of thought also, I think, highlights why people often tend to cite the name of an author (eg "McGilchrist") rather than describe a model (eg "L & R brain hemispheres") because the former expresses a distinct perspective, vs many unrelated & contradictory models.
Replying to @utotranslucence
@utotranslucence Meta-threader embedding a related thread to increase thread intertwinglement while complaining that Twitter still doesn't show QT count.
@michael_nielsen Meta-threader embedding someone else's related tweet that I already linked to here (while complaining that Twitter doesn't have a backlinks feature) twitter.com/utotranslucenc…
@cognazor Have been thinking about this since Bio-Emotive retreat at @MonasticAcademy last summer, because two of the Core Feeling pairs are "Hopeless" and "Optimistic", and I have provisionally concluded that both of those are functionally naïve. The stance I aspire to is Courageous.
@ChanaMessinger Answering a slightly different question: "Are there things worth developing an appreciation for, such that you refuse to tolerate crappy versions?" - romantic relationships - friendships - relationships of all kinds, tbh - careers - books
@ChanaMessinger The previous answers aren't quite central because they're all situations where nice options don't obviously cost more. But a few there: - anything you do 4h+/day (desk, bed,.) - audio: 🎧 headphones & desktop speakers (pay a few hundred dollars → enjoy music more for years 🤯)
@cognazor @themarcusnewton I was very similar, got kinda pessimistic hanging out with a bunch of people terrified of xrisk (mostly re AI) and now I've still got some hopes & fears oscillating but I'm starting to converge on a basic stance of courage:
Retweeted @warmbott
Tfw an intro sweeps you off your feet You son of a bitch, I’m in
@cognazor @themarcusnewton Have you also contemplated being tortured? Serious question; I definitely fear it more than death. (Huge range here of what torture means; my emotional brain's most salient example is my experience of my little sister bothering me & not being able to get away or make her stop)
@Meaningness Back in 2013 when I started @CompliceGoals, I was going to try doing it in Ruby. 2h into the low-key hackathon at my friend's house, I hadn't gotten to Hello World yet. Ditched it for NodeJS and am very happy about that. Only one lang to learn, & now files shared between FE & BE.
@cognazor @themarcusnewton As a real possibility? Anyway, I got a copy of Man's Search for Meaning, and that seems like a decent place to start for orienting to hell on earth.
@QiaochuYuan @rfinz @qorprate One answer; intriguing but not really helpful: Anxiety = prediction of bad outcomes w low confidence Source: Friston via @slatestarcodex slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/08/ssc… See also @yashkaf's thread below that posits the missing (noice) quadrant is Curiosity.
@celestialboon @QiaochuYuan @rfinz @qorprate I've been reading Bruce Tift's book Already Free lately (amzn.to/2FPmYW1) & loving it. Haven't gotten to Ch 4 Experiencing Anxiety & Struggle yet, but it's obviously relevant. I'll grab some excerpts... done! The pics below are: - foreword - intro - ch4 - ch4 continued
@celestialboon @cognazor @themarcusnewton Part of what makes it worst, from a human well-being & epistemic perspective, is that it's one of the *best* at replicating, as memes go, despite being shitty at producing caring relationships, let alone creativity. Oblig deutsch cite
@vgr I forget the name for this, but one strategy is to post a sincere but also clearly confused take on the thing you want answered, and people will come correct you.
@spearofsolomon @cognazor @JakeOrthwein @celestialboon @themarcusnewton I mean "seven circles of psychological disorders" basically sounds synonymous to "what happens if each of your chakras get blocked"
@_Srijit @QiaochuYuan Yes. This is part of the premise of #SobSquad 😭🔜😎
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@_Srijit @QiaochuYuan Yes. This is part of the premise of #SobSquad 😭🔜😎
...so this morning... @SarahAMcManus: I'm at the charnel ground Malcolm: What? S: I'm at the pure land M: Naw... S: I'm at the combination charnel ground & pure land! We present to you the latest single from the #BuddhistShitposting label: chirb.it/817pxK
For context see this pair of posts by @Meaningness: - Charnel Ground: vividness.live/2012/08/22/cha… - Pure Land: vividness.live/2012/09/11/pur…
I got no notification about this QT at all. @Twitter, what have you *done*? We wanted a new notifications tab just for QTs, not to remove QTs from the All Notifications tab! CC @visakanv @mykola
@nosilverv @Aryeh___ @QiaochuYuan @similaralterity Guys @danlistensto wrote a thread about the whitepill, which is sort of in this space too and might function usefully for some subset of the manosphere. twitter.com/danlistensto/s…
@mykola @Twitter @visakanv it occurred to me that maybe the issue is that it was both a QT and has an image embed? feel free to do more experiments with this
@nuanceexists @hannahhidukie Mm yeah, sounds like instead of a counteractive approach you're looking for a transformational approach. This book (summary) describes the difference in great detail, and the limitations of counteractive approaches (which reinforce an internal battle) lesswrong.com/posts/i9xyZBS3…
@nuanceexists @hannahhidukie You might try something like reading Your Resonant Self, which I think would start by assuming that even though the narrative seems to be unhelpful, it *thinks* it's helpful, and you need to understand why so you can dialogue with it and find a better way.
@DougTataryn @tasshinfogleman @MonasticAcademy @uberstuber AutoHotKey is pretty great for this sort of thing. Not sure what it allows in terms of automatically recording macros, but it does text-expansion plus easy hotkey-driven scripts etc, including things like "type the current date then press enter" autohotkey.com
@collinofzion @QiaochuYuan In this frame, I'm seeing @DougTataryn's Bio-Emotive workshops as being a kind of accelerator...
@nwilliams030 I think the issue here is partially people only count finished books, so they feel motivated to focus on finishing. I have a whole spreadsheet oriented to tracking book-reading to optimize for fluidity! Template: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d… Blog post:
@aaronzlewis not thriftoys, but I have sometimes used random objects lying around for this, and sometimes they still feel connected with those meanings years later. which ofc means random toys aren't ideal. better is jewelry or little pretty objects like a stone/shell picked up on the beach
@SarahAMcManus @QiaochuYuan Wow! @fortelabs' "because I'll die" response in particular resonates very precisely with a section I just read this morning from Already Free by Bruce Tift. Really cool book—connecting therapy & dharma! Excerpt below: "If I have to feel this feeling, I will cease to exist."
I Wish by Hayley Kiyoko Something about the overall sound texture of this track makes me feel like it just wouldn't quite have existed before 2018 or 2019 or so. Very subtle; hard to name. youtube.com/watch?v=oEEml9…
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
Beautiful, comprehensive, vulnerable, amazing piece! If you're following any of these threads, highly recommended! - E…
@QiaochuYuan Three, but I already knew that, that's not a guess.
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
a lot of people in the bay area sold a decent fraction of their soul for money but surprisingly few of them seem to know h…
Retweeted @meditationstuff
sort of like enlightenment. the riverbed is awareness/experience. you are tall enough*. still takes many thousands of…
@yashkaf Closest I've heard to him being in that sort of open, curious state of mind is in this conversation with Iain McGilchrist, which is delightful and absolutely worth watching. He still does a fair bit of look-at-me moves, but it's more playful.
@mechanicalmonk1 @Aella_Girl I picked strength, thinking primarily of Acroyoga, where 2× strength would actually help me pick up partners more than 2× attractiveness. Uh... literally 😂
Retweeted @Conaw
Excellent thread twitter.com/amyhoy/status/…
@amyhoy I'd love to try this out! I love your thinking here in this thread. One of my colleagues works with a similar card workflow (except with sticky notes) and I've been wanting a digital version for a long time.
@meditationstuff The "you are tall enough"/"how the brain works" is one of the really powerful View pieces I got from reading Iain McGilchrist last year. malcolmocean.com/2020/01/2019-r…
@Dandy_Roddick Which tracks feel most ultra-modern to you?
Replying to @Intraplatequake
@Intraplatequake Oh this whole soundtrack is lovely. I haven't been listening to enough soundtracks lately! Here's a favorite (video game) soundtrack of mine with some similar energy as Celeste youtube.com/watch?v=-zA1jR…
Retweeted @ShaneAParrish
What’s the best product you discovered this year that improved your life?
@amelapay @robertwmcguire @ShaneAParrish TL;DR = clearance sale
Retweeted @fortelabs
New free post on the Praxis blog: Groundbreakers: My Journey Healing Trauma, Unleashing Anger, and Awakening the Vagus Nerv…
Retweeted @Aryeh___
Forget about the cartoonish, debunked left/right brain model There is a gigantic enlightened baby in its bathwater https://t…
@delysis @visakanv @sonyasupposedly @yakshavers Muahaha! I had almost forgotten I ordered that for Visa! Remind me what the service is where you sign up to receive books from tweeps?
@fortelabs @SarahAMcManus @QiaochuYuan Yeah! I'd recommend going to Unlocking the Emotional Brain next, as offers a really solid foundational model of the necessary components for any kind of transformational change to happen, independent of what techniques are used to create those.
@fortelabs @SarahAMcManus @QiaochuYuan Sort of like learning the shape of the overall landscape and some basics of static & dynamic mechanics, and then you can choose or design vehicles for traversing it. Here's an excellent summary: lesswrong.com/posts/i9xyZBS3…
Replying to @dispirateparts
@AltAryeh 🙏🙏🙏 (sort of wishing I could easily make my avatar for just this tweet be my face in a less smiley grin expression, more of a warm & connected expression) ...okay, here's me rn. Dunno how warm & connected & look but I was thinking about you & your situation:
Retweeted @G_S_Bhogal
@yashkaf @visakanv @elonmusk @webdevMason @nntaleb
@visakanv @sonyasupposedly @yakshavers Yep, that was my first thought too, reading the above beancounter/sage comment! 🧠 Here's some twitter threads for anyone just getting interested now:
Retweeted @sonyasupposedly
your inner beancounter should work for your inner sage — not as a grumbling employee, but as a joyful disciple
@startuployalist @snigdhar0y Damn, those textbook prices tho.
Thread · A running collection of tables of contents I love · 2 of 6 tweets
I have a Thing for tables-of-contents 📖 In this ongoing thread I shall post ones I like, love, or lust after. Nothing is implied whatsoever re endorsing the books' actual contents—or even knowing what the contents are 🙃 Feel free to reply & add your own 😊
“Understanding Motivation and Emotion” by Johnmarshall Reeve Table of Contents:
Not sure if @RoamResearch or @Adyashanti or @Aryeh___ but I'm pretty okay with this. t.co/ddWx7Mh7pA
Thread · A running collection of tables of contents I love · 1 of 6 tweets
Already Free by Bruce Tift. Loving this book immensely. The table of contents is simple yet attractive and intriguing. In the introduction, he explains the relation of the chapters—something I also quite enjoy when authors do it.
@cognazor Just started reading this book last week and I'm loving it! Was fun to search his name and see you come up. And oh! I just found the tweet from a few weeks earlier 👇 where someone recommended Bruce Tift and you picked it up. Man twitter is cool.
@Aryeh___ @RoamResearch @Adyashanti
@visakanv Relatedly, Adyashanti being like "True Meditation has just one instruction: no manipulation" ....🧐🤔🙃
See also the difference between "not doing" & "doing nothing"
Retweeted @CompliceGoals
complice.co's anti-staleness technology might actually make us an exception to Stuber's Law The app is stru…
@anthilemoon I'm guessing you accidentally made it brain-roommates with War and Peace, which has like 1300 pages.
@anthilemoon I guessed so in part because I had a momentary surprise myself when you said "it's only 50 pages" and traced it back to such a confusion in my own brain!
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@cosimia_ Part of the issue is (and this is why I say positive vs negative motivation are different in all systems) you…
@ben_mathes I just investigated this for a few mins & found that the default chrome dictionaries are stored in some sort of binary format called .bdic, which there are some tools for reading/writing but not easy ways. Might be able to switch to korean then custom-add 20k eng words 😆
Retweeted @uberstuber
Complice is great for this and many other reasons
@ben_mathes This is basically the only useful resource I found on the topic: stackoverflow.com/questions/6882…
Retweeted @garybasin
Romeo Stevens comes in with the best explanation I've seen of Suffering and Craving in Buddhism!
@garybasin @lostpaolo @QiaochuYuan He posts a lot of his stuff, including this post Gary shared 👆 publicly to facebook, so you could follow him there: facebook.com/romeostevens/p…
Retweeted @andy_matuschak
How should we evaluate tools for thought? There's no simple metric, as far as I can tell. The best tools change your pa…
“You cannot create freedom for others through your own bondage. You cannot empower others through your own demoralization. You cannot create a fulfilling life for others by draining your own of its color. You are a seed, and that is not how seeds work.” - adrienne marie brown
So much resonance with that quote! (I got it not from an original source, but from @fortelabs in this post 👇) praxis.fortelabs.co/servant-hedoni…
Ooh, and another adjacent quote from adrienne marie brown in this other @fortelabs article: “you cannot create change that you yourself have not experienced.” praxis.fortelabs.co/pleasure-as-an…
@fortelabs @SarahAMcManus @QiaochuYuan Also, re-reading it I saw "[somatic/emotion work] is merely taboo, and we can change taboos" & I want to point you at the work that me, @QiaochuYuan, @Aryeh___ & others are doing under the tag #SobSquad 😭🔜😎 See tweet below 👇 re us normalizing crying
Replying to @dispirateparts
@AltAryeh Thinking of you 💗
Soliciting images that depict a mountain that is somehow so high up you can see the curve of the earth. I've always loved this one—had it as a desktop background as a teenager, lost it, then found it again & used it for this post to keep track of it: malcolmocean.com/2016/06/you-fl…
Just now I found this pic from the Society6 Artist Calendar for 2020 ...which is what inspired this thread. So far these are the only two that I have. I'll add more as I find them. society6.com/product/societ…
Thread · Living in a dream mashup of present situation and old emotional meanings · 1 of 5 tweets
@QiaochuYuan @visakanv Mmm just found this old tweet and it's also very relevant to the whole school thing. Most schools (and much of parenting) is based on a lot of authority-imposed reward & punishment, rather than exploring & learning via trying things & seeing what happens.
Replying to @qchurious
@qchurious gotcha, so the insecurities about 🅡🅔🅓🅐🅒🅣🅔🅓 stay on the alt 👌👍🤝
Replying to @brian_armstrong
@brian_armstrong Also if you can manage to be completely unavailable for ~8h while you sleep, you can probably manage to also keep your phone on airplane mode for another 1-2h just before/after bed while you do some focused deep work on whatever's most important.
@Prigoose @RoamResearch Omfg I'm very into this.
@nbashaw Ooh cool! I like the energy of it. And complex incentives are always super interesting. I say yes, keep going!
Retweeted @_jordan_bates
I recommend learning the art of sacred silliness
@friar_b Whaaaaat. I thiiiiink that is some fish-eye lens magix, not actual earth curvature? But I'm not even certain about that and in any case it's cool as fuck.
@KHPavle Whoa this sounds really cool! I'd love to try it out once you have a demo ready. @Conaw can attest I gave some great feedback on early versions of @RoamResearch
@friar_b (if it were actual earth curvature it would have to be photoshopped foreground+background or something like that, to be clear)
@KHPavle Delighted to e-meet you! I started a biz (productivity app) to avoid having to get a job when I graduate (✅) and it's been very meaningful. Interview 👇 which talks about both the business and how the app's philosophy is oriented around meaningful work: indiehackers.com/interview/turn…
@nbashaw and ping me when you make it! I'd love to watch & probably share (not sure yet where it's going)
Retweeted @noampomsky
I like this point about how charismatic people are great at going "out of book": instead of following a sequential convo sc…
@patio11 I guess some languages have more/different uses for putting negations in different places...
Replying to @warmbott
@warmbott Lots of similar stuff, though different content. Was compiling some resources lately, and highly recommend - Pete Walker's article on flashback management - Tiago Forte's article on Groundbreakers - Kaj Sotala's book summary of Unlocking the Emotional Brain (All googleable)
@visakanv Nice! I started learning a bit about this from Esther Gokhale's book Eight Steps to a Pain-Free Back, which features lots of similar comparison images plus instructions. It notes that most Westerners' attempts at "good posture" are not actually sustainable.
Retweeted @Meaningness
The best part of academia has moved onto social media. (I was asked a couple days ago “should I just cite your tweet, or i…
flexcellent #portmanteau
@QiaochuYuan @sashachapin @visakanv @maybegray @JasnaTod @DougTataryn @SarahAMcManus @AliTataryn I feel like this event is already more-than-sold-out and it hasn't even been scheduled yet.
@KHPavle Yeah! Check out this page 👇 for a few jumping off points. It's organized by topic so it's a great place to start 🚀 malcolmocean.com/best-posts/
@KHPavle @Conaw @RoamResearch Cool, sounds fun! I tried building a virtual whiteboard tool like 8 years ago that would allow embedding all sorts of different media and drawing connections between them, with a UI like google maps (infinite scroll & infinite zoom) was called thinkfree.ly
@QiaochuYuan Oh shit! Umm... honestly, post to craiglist, kijiji, and other car-share sites saying you're looking for a ride to Toronto (& search for existing posts). There might just be someone driving, although I guess that's getting more and more unlikely to be today as time goes on.
@QiaochuYuan If you got someone going to detroit/windsor tonight, then it's only like 4h to Toronto tomorrow (again by car; dunno what transit looks like but it's probably shite)
@QiaochuYuan If it helps you access better options, I'd chip in ~$20 per marginal counterfactual hour of QC being at this workshop. Might contact Doug too, given that you're intending to be there largely as someone helping with the workshop... could be worth it to him 🤔
Retweeted @maybegray
I figured this tension we are addressing in the Cleaning Up section would be all emotional but now Doug is pointing out a lo…
the cosmic dine-&-dash
Retweeted @Aryeh___
“To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath…
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
holy fuck you guys @Malcolm_Ocean got me #SobSquad towels THIS IS MY NEW LOVE LANGUAGE ❤️❤️❤️
@IonaItalia @gita_ @MeherM @LacerantPlainer Somehow this comedy sketch comes to mind. Not even quite my sense of humor but too relevant not to mention. youtu.be/huSP7PtctC4
@dthorson I've now added a link to this thread to the page on my roamblog 👇 that is collecting similar such models, which I linked to you before! Page contains new notes from @DougTataryn's recent talk on facets, including my take on confusions in 4F models.
Retweeted @dthorson
I've collected some of the more or less 'comprehensive' models of human development that have come my way recently. Which on…
@WilliamAEden @orthonormalist @ouranometrian My mom and her parents are about to get 23andme (I got mine last year) and I'm like... pretty sure that none of the relationships there are suspect? I look a ton like my grandfather, and my birthmark means there's little chance of a hospital mixup after I exited the womb.
Retweeted @dthorson
In the past I encountered hierarchical developmental models and attempted to project myself as near the top as possible. No…
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
bio-emotive weekend with @DougTataryn was v v good as hoped. some quick highlights / notes / thoughts: 1. "emptiness is…
@HiNaryan @QiaochuYuan @maybegray Here's the intro thread I made for QC last year... it's a little out of date now because things are evolving! I'll also recommend following @Conaw who's doing lots of threading now.
@HiNaryan @QiaochuYuan @maybegray @Conaw See also this convo, that talks a bit about the shifting usage of the app:
@HiNaryan @QiaochuYuan @maybegray @Conaw And while we're at it, this, about how I think about twitter (commenting on twitter culture etc too)
Replying to @warmbott
@warmbott The entire book is also good! Written in a dry (ie thorough/academic) manner but I found the content in it very exciting! They also have a coherence therapy manual that is very cool:
@RobbSmith @dthorson @geofffitch @MonasticAcademy @leadermaturity Would love to read this, or maybe even give feedback on a draft of it.
@thewiseturtle It's just not evenly distributed
@Meaningness @ssica3003 I continue to wonder how the world could acquire you more time & space to write 🤔 Aware you've been dealing with complex family stuff and that I have no idea where that situation is at at this point 🙏
@visakanv 🐯 🎹
@aaronzlewis There's a book (also a movie?) I read as a kid called The Neverending Story, that I think is like this.
Replying to @utotranslucence
@utotranslucence First acct that comes to mind is @man_integrated, who tweets fascinating detailed geopolitical strategy threads.
Retweeted @itsjesszhou
The Kids Are Brilliant (aka they always innovate a way to pass notes in class)
Retweeted @visakanv
the trick to earning someone's respect/interest when you want to ask them questions is to demonstrate that you've done the re…
Retweeted @noampomsky
“I miss civilization, and I want it back”
@eugenewan @orbuch I was also gonna comment this.
Retweeted @jessi_cata
The biggest lie psychiatry ever told is that normality is sane. This is falsified by social psychology.
@jessi_cata Related: (cc @s_r_constantin)
Retweeted @meditationstuff
When I finally wished to become an adult, I trained and trained; with great and careful diligence I learned to set asi…
Retweeted @vgr
“We don’t actually know how to get there right now,” CEO Jeff Guldner says of the commitment’ <—- only way to actually set meaning…
@visakanv @QiaochuYuan Baha yuppp. Even back when the best models we had of brain hemispheres were very confused, Sir Ken knew what was up.
@aaronzlewis Someone I've talked with on twitter built a thing like this but I can't remember who or what it was called.... Wait, found it by searching for tweets about my concept of captain's log—and I guess you already know about it!
@SarahAMcManus I've been considering an emoji proposal for this expression!
Thread · The double bind of 'come dance with us' and cultural appropriation
@danlistensto @QiaochuYuan I read a new article on the same site 1mo ago. 2017: "my best advice [to white allies] is come dance with us" 2019: "culturally appropriated activities such as dance" 🧐 Um, no. I don't do the double-bind dance. selfishactivist.com/understanding-…
@danlistensto @QiaochuYuan This person has lots of fascinating models, but the way they choose to express them feels actively confusing. what do "white" and "dance" mean? not the usual meanings, in this article:
@danlistensto @QiaochuYuan Meanwhile, I'm as white as it gets and I grew up dancing improvisationally, at my home, not particularly because anyone taught me but just because humans want to dance when they hear music & nobody stopped me. If anything is a human birthright, dance is.
@danlistensto @QiaochuYuan Incidentally the thing about pants is kind of amusing, and a huge chunk of my ancestry is Scottish and would have done lots of kilt-wearing and Céili-dancing.
@QiaochuYuan @danlistensto yup yup I am very with you that the definition is more the thing than anything else, I just... ...can we call it something different?
@QiaochuYuan @danlistensto Mmm yeah, good point! I like the meme that POW* can be rehabilitated by teaching them how to dance & healing trauma! (* = People of Whiteness, but also Prisoners of War!?)
@QiaochuYuan @danlistensto Mmmmmmmmm yep. Makes sense. Looks like maybe an opportunity for "whiteness" to go through a conceptual transition like 👇 and like anything, where it is in that transition varies by subculture.
@mechanicalmonk1 @QiaochuYuan @danlistensto Yeah, this 👆 Although also my snark chakra is like "based on this definition (& reifying "white men can't dance") I'm actually not white!"
@mykola @QiaochuYuan @RichDecibels @DougTataryn One idea for doing loud emotional processing in crowded cities is to rent a private karaoke room, blast some music in there, and sob/scream/wail/howl. They're pretty soundproofed and even if you *are* loud enough to be heard, w the music it'll just sound like ur a bad singer 🤣
Retweeted @startuployalist
woke: school is a prison, over the course of more than a decade children internalize “waiting” to be free bespoke: no…
Replying to @alt_visa
@alt_visa @TurboRational Just ask your followers?
@QiaochuYuan @maltybegray While we're on the topic, Iain McGilchrist has a lovely soft voice 😊 I haven't watched these videos but they seem like they might be your flavor: tawai.earth/iain
@QiaochuYuan @RoamResearch @michael_nielsen @s_r_constantin I haven't done anything particularly fancy yet but I'm already loving it as a place to draft things in public, and how I can make tiny pages for concepts I haven't defined yet. Naturally sort of resembles meaningness with WIP pages. roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo…
@garybasin @vidy___ @nnnnicholas @aaronzlewis Small businesses/ passive income software startups are totally underrated. Which is impressive, given that they're pretty highly rated.
@dthorson @mattgoldenberg Yeah, the MHC (model of hierarchical complexity) that @HFreinacht talks about explicitly notes that people often think at different levels, and says "level of dev is highest level at which person has ever had an original thought" vs Kegan uses both upper & lower bounds
@dthorson A friend of mine, a few years ago, after he'd scored my Subject-Object Interview: "Well, the bad news is, it came out that you're roughly at Kegan stage 2... the good news is... if you're this cool at stage 2, think of how much more room you have to get even cooler!" 😎🙃
@mattgoldenberg @dthorson @HFreinacht Yep, totally. Seems clear to me "grow up" needs at least 2, almost certainly 3, likely 4-6 dimensions to really capture someone's developmental progress, at a moment and over time. MHC & SymbolStage point at 2. There might also be meta-variables for "under stress" or "with help"
@danlistensto It's not much, but I think worth recalling how much more variance there was a few hundred years ago... I suspect there's also cool stuff to draw on in SciFi.
Retweeted @dthorson
Continuing to refine the inquiry of the Emerge podcast for the coming year. Check out the living document I made: https://t…
@ShapesOfEmpathy @dthorson You might dig Bruce Tift's book Already Free, which comes from his perspective as a psychotherapist and serious buddhist... studied under Trungpa at Naropa. He orients to the dialectic very creatively. First excerpt below is about Tift; second is by him.
@danlistensto Also: KILTS. Still often basically-a-suit on the top, but pretty funky on the bottom!
@QiaochuYuan A beautiful & playful song, about a newborn baby dreaming, that has the word "fontanelle" in the lyrics: youtube.com/watch?v=nKnVbC…
@maltybegray it's like celery's badass older cousin
Retweeted @leahstokes
Fascinating new research: What happened when Germany shutdown its nuclear plants? It replaced much of the lost energy with…
Retweeted @mbeisen
I have a favor to ask. For 20+ years I've been working on a dream: to make all science funded by US taxpayers freely available…
Retweeted @Timber_22
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
By showing someone that our default systems have significant crappy elements, and introducing the move of transcending s…
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
*This* is a whole entire thing It's probably the hardest part about learning / growth / blind spots / developmental cha…
Retweeted @_awbery_
Apprenticeship: twitter.com/TheRealDoctorT…
Was feeling nervous about Wuhan Coronavirus, thinking about eg 1918 Spanish flu epidemic... ...then saw people are already working on a vaccine... ...and that the first flu vaccine wasn't until 1945. This is a different world than 1918.
@qorprate @QiaochuYuan @sportsandcraft Yeah, there's different versions of magnesium... my understanding is that magnesium glycinate (aka magnesium bisglycinate) is the chillest on the stomach.
This, all of this. (Including the "this was true for me too"—have recently been working to make that connection more conscious.)
@TuckerMax Mmm I resonate with this, both about others and about myself (and the challenge of coming to recognize the disowned feeling powerlessness for oneself). Reminds me also of this book, "Power Under":
@TuckerMax Also relevant—the original tweet that I was replying to when I linked to the power-under book in November: "toxic masculinity" → "traumatized masculinity"
@visakanv @rmbalt @danlistensto "turn the other cheek"
@mattgoldenberg While we're at it, just gonna note there's a whole range here that includes: - screaming - yelling - howling - wailing - sobbing
Do you want your own #SobSquad towels? The site I made them on has them 35% off until January 31st! (+free shipping w code CLEANCOZY) That means they're only ~$10! Here's the link: society6.com/product/sob-su…
Here's another pic of what they look like:
@OfMatriarch @QiaochuYuan @RichDecibels @DougTataryn I haven't yet found a site that makes custom hankies (I'm sure they exist though) but we do have TOWELS.
@cognazor @tangled_zans Yeah I'm 🙅♀️at post-rationalism, but there's something beyond rationality that isn't cynical or beefy or whatever and might be called meta-rationality, and that thing seems pretty cool. Likewise, metamodernism, not postmodernism.
@QiaochuYuan Society6 gives me like $1.50 per towel... if you want half of that then I'm down... though I already gave you 3 towels for free so you know, maybe your royalties only kick in after we've sold 20 😝
Also there are stickers, iPhone cases, clocks... and of course reply here if you want some other product that Society6 offers and I'll enable the #SobSquad design for that (might require a bit of reformatting the image to get it in the right spot)
@QiaochuYuan Ultimately I am 0% doing this for the money though, so I don't really care 🙃 (If I could remove the markup & just make them cheaper, I would) It's kinda fun to earn a few bucks from an online store though! A reminder of how different of an economic world we live in now.
And the original context of this is @QiaochuYuan tweeting about crying and then saying this:
And then we found that emoji from @EmojiMashupBot and @QiaochuYuan made it his twitter cover photo. (Yo @EmojiMashupBot DM me your address if you want me to send you a sob-sunglasses towel or sticker or throw pillow.)
@cognazor @QiaochuYuan @tangled_zans I actually think "postrats are the random mutation to the meta*s selection" is quite appreciative. Breathing in and breathing out aren't in conflict with each other.
Replying to @minobenjo
@SlaytonBenjamin To be clear, I'm still nervous. Just... taking stock of things. Also I'm using a fuckton of hand sanitizer r/n because I have a cold and live with some people with weaker immune systems. ...also we didn't have nice little plastic pump bottles of hand sanitizer back in 1918.
@QiaochuYuan @default_friend @visakanv as a corollary, visa existing helped me get friends like QC & @Conaw to come play, which has also made *my* life better!
Replying to @default_friend
@default_friend @visakanv by demonstrating epic meta-threading as a form, he implicitly created more space for me to get back into writing publicly online, which has been really satisfying examples:
@visakanv Practice being surprised when the stakes are low so you'll be ready when it counts.
Retweeted @visakanv
I think an elegant string to tie all of this up with is the idea of... are you willing to drop your assumptions and allow [y…
@meditationstuff @default_friend @visakanv Mmm 💞🙏 This is the tweet: (click thru for full thread, ofc)
Replying to @XComms
@TwitterComms Nice! Can you also combine the notifications for each thread into one blob so I can ensure I don't miss a single reply to one thread while scrolling past dozens to another?
Retweeted @visakanv
Unsurprisingly, few players put much thought into precisely defining the game that they are playing. Most players “pick it up…
Thread · Fragments extracted from longer works that stand on their own · 1 of 6 tweets
@visakanv See original for context; this tweet generalizes to pretty much all of human life. There's a related blog post called The Metagame is the Process of Discovering its Own Constraints, which seems to be gone, but maybe archived here? web.archive.org/web/2018122502…
Thread · A running collection of delightful animal clips · 1 of 35 tweets
actually fighting is very costly; stand-offs are much cheaper
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
this is a tricky but important thing to talk about so i'd like to clarify, the wording here is slightly off many of us ar…
@QiaochuYuan definitely could have used this reminder like.... yesterday 🙃
@Aryeh___ Somehow that video just made me think of this youtube.com/watch?v=a-VqEn…
Replying to @dispirateparts
@AltAryeh @maltybegray @jondubin Also related:
@maltybegray @AltAryeh @jondubin Also I highly recommend the book The Guru Papers for detailed untangling of paradoxes around self-trust.
Replying to @meditationstuff
@meditationstuff Intriguing! I often don't stop for video content, but it's cool to hear your voice. Also noteworthy how the whole presence of your voice shifts as you switch from the content to "okay, that's all I've got so far" at the end.
Thread · McGilchrist's brain hemispheres and Buddhist impermanence
McGilchrist's brain hemisphere model 🧠 + buddhist concept of impermanence ⚱️ thread! (CC @_awbery_, @Meaningness)
The left hemisphere (which if you read McGilchrist you'll see is responsible for most of what is often called "ego" etc) orients to the world as being largely static, or dynamic in some manipulable way. Also fixed, separate, categorizable things.
The right hemisphere (which is responsible for much of spiritual experience, or even experience of *meaning*) orients to the world as being dynamic, process-based, etc. Also a basic non-dual (though not monist) stance. See also many Heraclitus quotes.
Both of these 👆 perspectives have truth (ie map-territory correspondence) Yet: "everything changes but we can usefully pretend some things don't" seems more true than the reverse. (Similarly "everything is interconnected but we can usefully pretend things are separate")
These useful oversimplifications are, in large part, what the left hemisphere is *for*; they are necessary for being able to usefully count things, plan, talk about anything (before it's gone) etc. However, fixated as true, they are illusion & confusion.
So it seems like the shift from the left hemisphere's perspective being primary to the right hemisphere's perspective being primary is core to the shift that recognizes impermanence and the other buddhist structures. The implications of this...
eg "Tanha", usually translated as "desire" or "craving", is described below left (by Romeo Stevens) as "zooming in" or "grasping". Lo: these are left-hemisphere moves!
For more connections between brain hemispheres & buddhism, check out this thread 👇 I am hardly an expert on either subject, but I seriously think that for people orienting towards awakening, McGilchrist is one of the most valuable resources for View 👁️👁️
it me 🙃 twitter.com/humorandanimal…
@zachtratar Reminds me of the time hotline said "go to branch", then bank teller was like "we can't help you; call hotline" and so I called at the branch and forced them to talk to each other. After 1h of this, turns out the thing I wanted (empty account closed) had happened automatically.
Retweeted @normonics
Dean of Medicine at the University of Hong Kong gets it. - we must apply the precautionary principle - we don't predict, w…
@nJJJJRh Mmm, had initially been slightly confused by the 🤨 responses to my tweet... ...but now I'm reading a bit more closely and seeing that there have never been vaccines for *any kind of coronavirus* (a category that includes the common cold). I see. Fuck.
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@nJJJJRh Mmm, had initially been slightly confused by the 🤨 responses to my tweet... ...but now I'm reading a bit more…
Retweeted @yaneerbaryam
@nntaleb See beliefs that quarantine is not useful. Note proof that even people who have said many wrong things can say a…
@_StevenFan @_awbery_ @Meaningness Say more? I'm loosely familiar with his 7 circuits...
Had a dream that I was a Harry Potter wizard and ordering a nuclear strike. (For some preemptive strategic reason I now forget.) We had to sit in a circle and speak incantations to activate the big red button.
@maltybegray @AltAryeh @jondubin mm, fear 💞 maybe honor the fear 🙏 & thank it for doing what it can to keep you safe 👀 = me, practicing the sort of thing @QiaochuYuan's saying here:
@tasshinfogleman @pierce_works I was gonna say "livestream or it didn't happen"—your comment is probably better 😝 ...in all seriousness though, godspeed Tasshin 🙏🚀👁️
Replying to @eigenrobot
@eigenrobot I'm gonna go with shame, since mostly the other emotions are only spiraling out of control due to layers of shame preventing us from feeling them. Though fear also plays a similar role there. Fear of shame, shame of fear... pretty hard to disintertwingle emotions.
@RichDecibels @collinofzion Kindred spirits! I have a thread of improvised standing desks:
Retweeted @VincentHorn
I'll be starting an extended retreat today, in which I continue to be immersed in the realities of day-to-day life and the…
@die4kelly It's been great! Waaaay easier to dance while at my computer. Not sure there's much else to say.
@collinofzion @DougTataryn @QiaochuYuan @aryeh @maybegray @celestialboon Fyeah. My friend Tanya who was at the MAPLE Bio-Emotive workshop last June has some forms she uses for combining improvised movement & emotional processing. Probably wanna get her involved. (It combines Authentic Movement & Contact Improv)
"Infants sometimes learn to sit up because they are trying to put their feet into their mouths, not because they want to sit." ~ Norman Doidge, neuroscientist, in his latest book "the brain's way of healing", in the chapter on Feldenkrais technique.
Ooh! 5 years ago I posed a "10 years from now" question. Got some decent answers at the time, though my sense is that the actual trends that I'm seeing are towards increasing contextuality & intertextuality, via @RoamResearch & dense twitter thread rhizomes. Thoughts?
I also have this weird feeling of "has anybody even built new software in the last 5 years?" There've been some nonlinear changes on eg Twitter due to the introduction of threading, but that seems like mostly an accident. Main new stuff since 2015... dark themes & ui tweaks?
@jondubin @maltybegray @AltAryeh @QiaochuYuan i'm on retreat too tho twitter.com/VincentHorn/st…
Replying to @TetraspaceWest
@TetraspaceAdmn if you want a serious MoR sequel that is *way, way more epic than this* 👆 ...I really dug Significant Digits 4-5 years ago. Warning, 300k very compelling words; might eat a few days. fanfiction.net/s/11174940/1/S…
@RichDecibels @collinofzion Looks great for someone with an actually-portable laptop! Mine is 7 lbs and has even fewer minutes of battery life.
@TetraspaceAdmn Ahh here's the non-ffnet site, which is where I read it. anarchyishyperbole.com/p/significant-…
Retweeted @visakanv
Big @QiaochuYuan energy
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
Both of these 👆 perspectives have truth (ie map-territory correspondence) Yet: "everything changes but we can usefully…
Thread · Meta-thread of threads on McGilchrist's brain hemispheres · 1 of 38 tweets
@Timber_22 Buddhism! Of my threads, this one is maybe the clearest/simplest justification for why RH is Master & LH is Emissary (McGilchrist's book is titled The Master and his Emissary, a reference to a story from Nietzsche)
@nJJJJRh Yeah. I had assumed (for whatever reason) that whatever was happening right now was much more equivalent to like when Swine Flu / H1N1 happened in 2009, and they had a vaccine within 5 months. Excerpt below is re swine flu: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_…
Retweeted @Aella_Girl
The popularity of astrology is one of the few things that makes me feel really despondent about current culture. It seems s…
@nJJJJRh Also this piece! H1N1 people planned for 50% worst-case global infection rate, actual amount seems more like 10-20%. I had no idea it was anywhere NEAR that high. (I almost certainly had it; had a bad flu at the high school it first broke in Canada) cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspecti…
@nJJJJRh Yeah, I'd be very curious to what extent this is related to: - time invested - money invested - relative difficulty of the problem from a technical perspective I've heard no commoncold vaccine because it mutates too quickly, but how many Bil$ has actually been put towards colds?
Twitter highlights, for me, the "pointing" nature of all communication particularly of anything complex (including the entirety of human experience) like... it's very hard to bridge more than one inferential gap, in any dimension
but if people are willing to go along for the ride, you can point out a bunch of other things that they could deep-dive into such as techniques to try, or books to read
you're not going to be able to actually fully convey it to anyone who doesn't already have a taste but you can create resonance & increased clarity among people who do and like, you'll get lost really quickly without a common understanding of what words mean
thank you for coming to my ted talk in which I subtweet people arguing on twitter about things like "consciousness" or "intelligence"... who clearly mean different things by these words but are each acting like their own meaning is true & common knowledge
@celestialboon @Sir_Mart_Ash @limitoftruth @Aella_Girl seems like the seasons might have substantial effects, but this suggests the need for 2-3 different systems, because it's snowy af here in Ontario in January, but meanwhile Australia still is in January but it's hot af. Then there's equatorial wet/dry seasons.
@celestialboon @Aella_Girl My astrologist uncle did a natal chart for me when I was born. I listened to it (on cassette tape!) when I found it at age 14, & it didn't resonate at ALL. I was horrified by the idea that if my parents had taken it seriously they might have treated me like person from the chart
This 👇 + I'm intending to be off twitter for the next week or so because I need/want my attention elsewhere. (May still fire tweets into the void from my IFTTT widget) twitter.com/VinceFHorn/sta…
(Seemed like a good week to do it in part because QC is also on retreat)
@collinofzion @DougTataryn @QiaochuYuan @aryeh @maybegray @celestialboon Nope. Would have tagged her if she was. I'll forward this idea though.
@collinofzion @DougTataryn @QiaochuYuan @aryeh @maybegray @celestialboon Also I won't be replying for awhile! 👋🌊