Toto: Dorothy, I've a feeling we were never really in Kansas in the first place!
June 2020
The path (I’m into) leads to a certain type of freedom. It’s not “freedom from desire”, it’s “freedom to desire without suffering”
Thread · Prediction and follow-up on Sweden's no-lockdown approach · 4 of 6 tweets
Update after 1 month: various news outlets are posting that Sweden's approach has utterly failed, though the deaths have still only been increasing (sub)linearly, which seems.... like things are sort of under control? R~=1 wired.co.uk/article/sweden…
Sweden only has 10M ppl, so yes, covid deaths/capita is very high, compared to neighbours... ...but 1700 covid deaths/mo since Apr means by Dec31 Sweden will only have its overall 2020 death rate increased by ~16% (15k on top of usual 90k) is 16% a lot? everyone dies eventually
I think the bigger issue is likely to be widespread health complications for younger & middle-aged people 🤔 imo, jury's still out about Sweden's coronavirus approach. Not saying I'd do the same thing. It also remains to be seen what cascading effects appear from econ shutdown
Of course, given globalized systems, Sweden may find itself profoundly affected by 2nd & 3rd order effects of economic shutdowns, even without shutting its own economy down. Sooo there's that.
btw I got this from @DorKonforty who originally wrote it in an email, but I resonated with it so much I just wanted to tweet it in first person as "the path I'm into" as well.
@EBoodnero @Conaw Damn! Yeah, that is basically the thing! Is it set up to just work in airtable or everywhere? I think having it work for twitter would be super valuable for eg @RobertHaisfield's tour idea:
@pierce_works Depends on where you are.
@KolbeMax Very related, though it's not that fear doesn't get used at all. It's just not good for aiming.
what are some of your favorite snarketypes?
Retweeted @jondubin
@heckinwild @Malcolm_Ocean Both-and, meet omni-and
@cognazor @MenanderSoter @visakanv @fdilke @Aryeh___ @JasnaTod @made_in_cosmos @maltybegray @maybegray @m_ashcroft @nibrasibn @RichDecibels @SarahAMcManus @ssica3003 @tasshinfogleman @QiaochuYuan Wait so does this just mean that you & @QiaochuYuan don't follow each other, but if you did then there'd be a single 14-person maximal clique (out of @visakanv's followers?) Seems to me like that must be true but I'm not 100% sure my understanding is complete here.
@cognazor @MenanderSoter @visakanv @fdilke @Aryeh___ @JasnaTod @made_in_cosmos @maltybegray @maybegray @m_ashcroft @nibrasibn @RichDecibels @SarahAMcManus @ssica3003 @tasshinfogleman @QiaochuYuan And if so...
@PeterorjustP @Conaw Oh cool! Yeah, definitely lmk what you think of it if/when you try it out! @m_ashcroft has also been tweeting a lot about his experience of using it.
@reasonisfun @xuenay @m_ashcroft @phantom_opus Yeah, definitely completely different from System 1 & System 2. I thiiiink that Timothy Gallwey's Self 2 & Self 1 may actually map more onto the hemispheres than Systems 1 & 2. Haven't read it myself but I'm skimming @nateliason's summary & it resonantes. nateliason.com/notes/inner-ga…
@phantom_opus @xuenay @m_ashcroft Yeah, definitely some resonance there in terms of the relationship between them.
@QiaochuYuan @nosilverv Yeah, Romeo Stevens once said to me "mutual triggering is the bedrock of interaction" Also this tweet of mine illustrates this... maybe I shall soon do a longer write-up of it.
Replying to @ponekarl
@ponekarl Hi 💜
Retweeted @nosilverv
Not only that, it was clear to me that the structures were *doing something*. If you compose together a bunch of thoughts on…
Retweeted @utotranslucence
This Thursday we have another session of Relational Exegesis, and we're reading a book to which I owe a lot of gratitu…
Unedited 1h video of me demoing complice.co to @Conaw & talking about how it's unique. It's a rough demo, but it's raw & it's real, so if you're itching to hear us talk in-depth about how I've designed the app, this is it! (vid starts 17s in) youtu.be/G6IqfbKL1Wg
Tighter & smoother version (maybe with live audience Q&A) coming some time in the next few weeks but lots of people who saw this tweet wanted to see a basic rough cut, so here it is! (Tagging in particular @kwharrison13 & @Turbanator23)
Oh and @njabrooks
@Conaw @kwharrison13 @andy_matuschak @CompliceGoals @RoamResearch Update: this happened! Took me til today to upload it given other stuff that came up & probably also nebulous conflicted feelings about whether it was good enough quality. The quality is low. It is, apparently, good enough for now (I did post it, that is)
Twitter is the modular synthesizer of social media.
Was looking for this tweet again today and found it using `from:visakanv twitter slot` which was a lot more direct almost went via Conor's zettelkasten thread again though
@EBoodnero @Conaw Metaphor design is utterly vital in order to do anything fundamentally new. "Setting intentions" vs "organizing todos" point at entirely different meaning-making frameworks.
@EBoodnero @Conaw It's more powerful if you notice the invitation into a new meaningspace and really get in resonance with it, like @m_ashcroft, but even if you don't it still has an effect!
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@EBoodnero @Conaw Metaphor design is utterly vital in order to do anything fundamentally new. "Setting intentions" vs "…
Thread · Looking for the best introduction to complex systems thinking · 1 of 4 tweets
Mmm just occurred to me that this 2017 @longnow talk by @ncasenmare, that I attended in person (& where I met @utotranslucence) might actually be a great candidate here. longnow.org/seminars/02017…
Talking w @reasonisfun as she gets set up on complice.co, & she said: ❙ I *love* that it describes them as “intentions” ❙ Makes me so happy ❙ And even structures them like that ❙ So smart ❙ So much closer to real minds Inspired this 👇
Also @reasonisfun you'll probably dig this thread talking about how I intentionally designed Complice's "streaks" feature to avoid coercing people / making them feel bad.
I saw "wlog" in a message today and looked it up and it stands for "without loss of generality"—a cool concept. I then clicked through to this 👇, & it occurred to me that this might be worth studying (for eg me who groks math but isn't specialized in it) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_m…
It's like, these are a bunch of metaconcepts that aren't themselves mathematical but are about how to think mathematically, and I got lots of basic mathematical intuitions from excelling in IB & uni math, but I didn't get deep enough in to learn most of these metaconcepts.
Replying to @m_altcroft
@m_altcroft The only useful thing I can imagine about having 13k followers is a way of casting a broader net with a "from:<my followers>" search. But would wreck the TL and pretty much everything else, so not worth doing on main.
Replying to @alt_visa
@alt_visa Half-serious proposal: You post a tweet on main, get many replies, and you don't reply to anyone on that thread.
Retweeted @reasonisfun
A (productive) life without to-dos could be huge.
@reasonisfun @CompliceGoals Lmk if you have insights from Inner Game of Work that might improve Complice even more in that direction! I've heard good stuff about it but haven't read it yet myself.
@diviacaroline None if I actually had anything resembling other useful data about them. And on reflection, if I couldn't find anything higher-signal than their fb friends (given how many things that can mean) I probably wouldn't want to give them a platform. (already answered "a lil" tho)
@QiaochuYuan @nibrasibn @danlistensto @literalbanana @selentelechia @mechanicalmonk1 I initially read "twf no butt-rubbing gif" and I was like "it's right there! the gif is right there!"
Replying to @warmbott
@SeanMombo I find myself guessing that part of why the concept mostly connects with $ is that other resources aren't fungible in the same way. eg building up resentment creates a cost that it's not always clear how to pay off later. or spending time... time is different now vs later
@visakanv I have a thread here about another way to look at this. Beautifully illustrated by @Nsousanis - the eyes contradict each other, and this difference is what generates depth perception.
@maybegray POAST VIDS
this site generates fake words (or fake definitions for your fake words) using ~GPT-2 this one seems sort of like a portmanteau of "meta" and "proliferation" seems it was trained on a lot of bio stuff, as it generates a lot of animals & biochem terms l.thisworddoesnotexist.com/ehv3
abstraction is a helluva drug
@Morphenius Original meta diagram in bottom right is by @SarahAMcManus
How I described @RoamResearch to someone today: You know how much more powerful WorkFlowy is than if you just had bullet lists with no collapse / zoom Roam is at least that scale of game-changing improvement over WorkFlowy
@m_ashcroft @RoamResearch That's a great point. I mean, it's not needed as much with pages. I've known a few people who never zoom in on WorkFlowy but they end up with absurd amounts of whitespace on the left. I think also Roam's zoom feature currently feels a little weak, which is fine for now.
@m_ashcroft @RoamResearch idk exactly what's weak about it though. It's basically the same, on reflection. OH! It's not that Roam's zoom-in itself is weak, is that you lose your place when you come back out. So you don't want to go in. That's exactly it. Once that's fixed I think we'll dive in way more💦
@m_ashcroft @RoamResearch And then being zoomed in on roam will be way more powerful than on WorkFlowy because you still have access to the entire rest of the db via block refs & embeds. Fyeah. @Conaw I think ZoomOut is something that if it can be fixed in a few hours would be worth doing after $ set up.
Retweeted @garybasin
Building a company is more fun than any video game. If I didn't figure this out, I'd still be playing Civ4 all day.
@maltybegray There's a technique exactly for this: it's called Existential Kink. Book: amazon.ca/Existential-Ki…
Replying to @selentelechia
@selentelechia beautiful trippy shadows (I think it looked way cooler in person, but you get the idea)
Replying to @selentelechia
@selentelechia amazing ballo chestnut tree
@garybasin @jondubin So timely reading this after getting off of the Finite & Infinite Games co-reading call by @utotranslucence on thestoa.ca
Replying to @forgingtowards
@forgingtowards @m_ashcroft @RoamResearch @Conaw you basically just type the name of the page, shift-click (or hotkey shift-o) to open in sidebar, then copy paste from main to sidebar it's not the most intuitive but it's easily built up from roam's primitives, which are worth knowing
the need to have explicit reasons for everything is dangerous often one has them and they're worth having, but if you feel like you're not allowed to make a decision without them... such a situation* forces rationalization *(as you're construing it; may be internal or external)
@ofmorningshift inspired this tweet
@Conaw @ChrisWGuthrie I've heard some strategists say that riots used to work back in the 60s & 70s when they were sort of a novel technology that citizens had, but that over the decades they've been kind of "captured" by authorities and able to be effectively ignored.
Replying to @selentelechia
@selentelechia I suspect that this is a key part of the methodology for indoctrinating people into the Cult Of The Left Hemisphere (read: entirety of modern society)
@tclaiborne @visakanv @RoamResearch @m_ashcroft @Conaw Ah yeah, the animation is part of not getting lost when zooming in and out, for sure.
Retweeted @DanielleFong
@maltybegray i mean, i have great capacities but since heightening my design sense I tend to channel frustration into inv…
@visakanv @DanielleFong @maltybegray @paulg that escalated... quickly
@DoqxaScott @MatjazLeonardis It's both the judgment and the idea that the answer ought to be immediately forthcoming, as opposed to being able to hold the question gently without demanding an answer. ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/10/que…
@maltybegray @DanielleFong @visakanv @paulg
@utotranslucence Yeah I had searched for from:utotranslucence to find a recent tweet and when I saw this one I liked it so you'd notice it again. Enjoying the update 😆
@m_ashcroft I like the "open close" thing and I particularly like how you say "while reading this" so that the verbal loop is occupied from otherwise trying to unnecessarily tag along.
Woo, custom css has arrived on Roam! Here's my roamblog: intertwingled.blog Nothing fancy, but it looks like home now 😊
@m_ashcroft I noticed it by simulating a person who was like "actually, I WAS thinking "open, close"" and I noticed "huh that person probably wasn't following the instructions" and appreciated the move
Our brains aren't dumb enough to let us simply overwrite our old understanding of things with a new understanding. We'd lose hard-earned lessons. Learning happens by holding the old & new knowings together, til they form a clear, more complex picture 📔👇 lesswrong.com/s/ZbmRyDN8TCpB…
@TheOrangeAlt Finite & Infinite Games by James Carse and this thing I wrote up about an experience I had playing it recently: roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo…
Thread · Why surprise UI changes trigger blame, inward and outward
Design & blame thread 🧵 Was wondering why I'd recently accidentally discarded a few tweets and then I realized that twitter recently changed the X / esc popup so that now it looks like this ↙️ Whereas it used to look like ↘️ (threads aren't saveable) Now very obvious why 🤯
Many people would feel shame or a sense of clumsiness about having made such an error. I noticed surprise when it first happened, then a *different* kind of surprise when it happened the second time, then today I was like 🤨👀😒🤔 then managed to guess the above had happened.
And I was right! But I was genuinely unsure that this was it, until I saw that it was still the same with threads. This is the equivalent of your car suddenly and without warning swapping the brake pedal and the gas pedal. And sure, they're labelled, but you're not LOOKING.
This sort of change now happens all the time, especially since we all live in this world where technology updates itself without even announcing it. It can be unsettling. medium.com/@Malcolm_Ocean…
It's common for people to respond to this with blame. A recent case study: Insight Timer recently updated its Android app, and in the process seems to have thrown out user timer presets for over a million users! So you start your timer, but there's no ding at the start... huh?
My response, when this happened to me, was exasperated & angry 🙄 I've long had a beef about how designers rarely think about the actual experience users might have; although they might be fixated on a concept of "UX" as a thing to optimize. Outward blame 🤬 "they fucked up"
Next day, a friend of mine encountered the same thing, and even though I'd just been ranting about the redesign, her instinctive response when the app behaved differently than usual was shame—she was used to being labelled the stupid one. Inward blame 😳 "I fucked up"
Neither of these responses is particularly useful or creative. I certainly feel glad I've tended to have the former rather than the latter, but it's still blame and blame doesn't make sense. (blame isn't blameworthy, just confused, like geocentrism)
Yet despite knowing intellectually that blame doesn't make sense I still felt unsafe not blaming, when confronted with bad design. After years of exploring this… - I still don't fully understand why - & it's still not completely transformed but I've had insights & a shift
Recently had an emotional breakthrough with this. Three key things happened: 1. While doing some BioEmotive with @SarahAMcManus holding space, I realized a lot of my bad-design blame was guarding a sense of feeling Alone, alien (that other people didn't seem to Get It)
2. I started to find others who Get It and collect them here on my "Deep Design" twitter list. If I feel alone, I can just walk by the open-garage of any of these people... and so even just *knowing* I can do that makes me feel less alone. twitter.com/i/lists/125671…
3. Started to feel that others could recognize that I Get It. Tweets like this one from @Conaw were part of that, along with other exchanges where people whose work I respect deeply appreciated my design perspective on it.
Meta to those 3 things, and utterly vital: I actually let all of this sink in. Just collecting the list or getting validation from others wouldn't automatically change how I felt about it. Had to juxtapose the scared-alone-angry me with new reality.
So, it seems I now feel: - more spacious about "bad" design - less alone - possibly less guarded on some other level (vaguely thinking "Worthless" core feeling might be involved) It's hard to tell as I've got deep emotional & cultural learning happening on many levels at once!
@Mappletons I had this as my twitter header for over a year:
Replying to @publius__2
@publius__2 I know haha! It's like "the map is not the territory"—one of those things that's really obvious while it's pointed out, but then people go back to thinking using constructs like "I just need to realize" or "why can't I just"
@QiaochuYuan @TheOrangeAlt @RoamResearch Yeah, this is on the roadmap. Here's me talking with @Conaw about it. It's one of my top feature requests as a roamblogger fosho.
@publius__2 Example in the wild (I ♥ Twitter) twitter.com/TheOrangeAlt/s…
Retweeted @CompliceGoals
Complice looks like a to-do list app You've seen many to-do list apps If you've seen lots of fish 🐟 You might see a fis…
Replying to @publius__2
@publius__2 Yup! It's one of my "words I take a second look at", with a page on roam here collecting thoughts on the topic. Gotta now link back to this thread from that roam 🖇️ roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo…
Metaphor Design has become a really vital concept for me lately. Read my latest writing on it: roamresearch.com/#/app/malcolmo…
Thread · Naming goals as a kind of ritual magic · 19 of 20 tweets
Realization: the way I relate to my goals on complice.co is… kinda like ritual magic. Basically by naming & enumerating the main careabouts I'm moving towards, I create affordances for invoking them as sources of motivation & clarity. 🧙♂️✨ Thread on naming goals 🧵
So @reasonisfun is checking out Complice, and messaged me today wondering about the word "goal", and the way the conversation went prompted some thoughts on my own goals. Here's what she said:
I sent her this definition of goals as one way to think about it, but I realized it was still missing something huge that I can illustrate by talking about how I relate to my own goals.
When @reasonisfun & I were talking about the idea of her interviewing me about Complice's design & philosophy, I thought "oh man, that would totally connect with my InterView goal" and then I'm like "huh, "InterView" doesn't really *sound* like a goal" 🤨
In particular, if you just saw the text "InterView", it probably wouldn't occur to you that that was the name of someone's personal goal. It probably looks more like a company or a software module. It doesn't express the end state like "debt free" or "release an album"
Yet I feel super clear internally what it's about, and have found it really motivating! So the name here is taking on some other role... 🤔 Something like reifying this thing I care about, so I can invoke it by its name in service of motivation! Sounds almost chaos-magicky 🧙
Let's take some other examples. A few years back I ditched my Writing goal & made one called "Semantic Design" which I think was an early teaser for the insight in this quoted tweet 👇 Writing's not meaningful, *meaning* is.
Other real goal names I've had that are quite evocative: - Habit-hacking (kinda meta & nice alliteration) - Tiger 🐯 (a fitness goal) - Global Network 🌐 (twitter, bay area friends etc) - Spinal Grace (towardsness re "posture") - Grok in Fullness (reading, notetaking, BASB, etc)
Talking with Lulie this morning & looking at the Complice goals/howto page, which is the first thing you see after you make an account, and it guides you to set your first goal, I'm seeing how inadequately that page expresses the power of [what I'm currently calling "goals"].
Today I started working on adding a definition to the page ("recognizable desired state in the future, that causes you to act differently in the present so as to realize it") But I'm realizing now that this is still not RELATIONAL enough. Same as this:
So it seems I'm currently in the process of doing foundation-layer metaphor design for Complice, and realizing that "goal" isn't an adequate metaphor in the same way that "todo" isn't.
"Purpose" seems substantially better, though can carry eternalist or other philosophical tones (see meaningness.com/an-appetizer-p…) Makes me think… "on purpose" vs "off purpose" 🤔 In 2017 I explored the idea of "shared purposes" on Complice that you could point your goals towards.
I like "project" in that it refers to projecting (Latin: throwing) something out into the future… but most people treat projects as much more concrete and (like "todo") external. I would totally say "InterView is a learning project" though.
Stepping back, thinking about Perceptual Control Theory brain model 🧠 (~= predictive coding with a figure-ground inversion)… fundamentally the entire PCT hierarchy is composed of nested [goals] in some sense, called "reference levels" or "targets" Hm. Not sure good words here.
Okay, but what really are these? When you're trying to enumerate your goals (eg in Complice) they can seem like "whats" (as tweet below) but on a day-to-day basis when you're picking tinier "whats", the goals are actually playing the role of "whys"! 🤯
Could I just call them "Whys"? That feels a little weird, but anything new is weird at first!
The homepage says "Progress towards what matters" & "Complice is for making meaningful progress every day." I think the first thing Complice needs to ask is not "what are your goals?" but "what matters to you?" Aha, here we go. I like this onboarding page much better.
At the top I billed this as a "thread on naming goals" and turns out that had 2 meanings! - what to name your personal goals - what to name the concept of "goals" itself And I think "whys" is closest. This redesign of the goals/howto page applies whys to both of those meanings!
The word "goal" shows up at least 500× in the codebase, so I'm… not gonna completely rename it today 😂 *And* I can at least reframe it for the initial onboarding experience. Page is now live! 🚀 If you haven't tried Complice, check it out here: complice.co/?utm_source=tw…
So @acesounderglass is doing preliminary research on role of trauma processing & learning @QiaochuYuan, @Aryeh___, @TheOrangeAlt maybe you have case studies for this. Or perhaps @DougTataryn, you might want to share this form with some of the people you've coached.
It's pouring rain here and I just walked out in my backyard in my shorts and started singing at the top of my lungs, iterating on a song I've been developing for a few months. Really rich experience of letting that all flow. Singing is such a vital part of my life—of life ❣️🎶
@Human__Age Not much! It largely consisted of reading while I had workflowy open and taking notes on what thoughts my readings inspire in me. Unlike the classic BASB progressive summarization, it's vital to me to write stuff down, not just highlight. Quotes are context for my live thoughts.
@victorbercaru Yup! Though atm they don't have nice share previews so I had to just pick an image and combine image+link, which seems kinda workable!
@ofmorningshift @natural_hazard @nibrasibn Yeah cringe seems sort of like it belongs in a 2×2 with contempt & pity and something else, none of which are things I want to embody. One axis power-over, idk other axis. Wait by "cringe" do you mean "things that produce cringe response" or "cringe response itself"?
@Elodes12 Oh interesting. As with most of Duncan's writing, I find myself with a lot of resonance & simultaneously a sense that my own perspective is a complete figure-ground shift from his. This excerpt 👇 reminds me of this tweet 👇👇
@vgr On longer timescales, we could have way way less crime, hence way less need for policing if we changed the underlying generators, both originating (cultural ~"lead in water supply") and reinforcing (eg prisons are basically recruiting events for gangs).
Retweeted @Aella_Girl
There's something about what's going on in the world that triggers something more visceral in me. I feel more afraid, angry…
@vgr But ofc that would put police out of jobs. So maybe the question is "how can we take the police officer role up a level of abstraction, so that they're incentivized for incidents of crime to actually go down, not for [# of criminals punished] to go up?"
creation connection power change ✨
Retweeted @DouglasKMurray
On the moment when ‘anti-racism’ becomes racism: unherd.com/2020/06/why-i-…
Replying to @sn_fk_n
@jondubin @rothosphere Wow nice. So simple, yet makes a difference. I know how much I appreciate when people get me to elaborate on what I'm saying. Feels less alone.
@rothosphere @jondubin took me a second take but
@Aella_Girl The way my sister got me interested in feminism 8 years ago was by pointing out ways in which the patriarchy sucked for *me*. Then it was easy to see "oh, ofc also sucks for women." Counterintuitive if you think making people feel bad helps, but what if it doesn't?
Retweeted @desirepaths_
am disappointed at this part of twitter that wants to talk about trauma and emotions and shadow selves yet seems to shy…
Replying to @desirepaths_
@desirepaths_ I think requires a certain critical mass of collective intelligence/consciousness in order to properly be collective introspection & collective shadowwork, rather than individual people pointing at each other. We're working on it.
@DanielleFong some people have done git repos of the constitution where each edit is a commit github.com/JesseKPhillips…
Retweeted @acesounderglass
Intuition: "Best X" lists with >3 entries are referral farming and of no value. X does not have 10 variants that need…
"Without feedback, any system goes insane."
"Without feedback, any system goes insane." — Gregory Bateson? (I've heard this attributed to him) (it seems like the sort of thing he would say, though I've been unable to find the source searching google & many of his books, and it may be a paraphrase)
Thread · Search engines with no way to give feedback
Just googled "7 things i teach students", seeking article "Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher". No leads. Then I recalled where I saved it in @RoamResearch Unnerving that google has no place to report "here's what I was looking for with this query". No learning.
The lack of feedback from users is a helpful but incomplete explanation for this 👇 (deeper issue is the things it *is* using as feedback, and gameability of those)
Of course, you can't simply allow me to declare anyone searching for "7 things i teach students" should get this article. That would be a race to the bottom faster than you could say . But I should be able to say "hey google, *I* care about this article and may look in future"
And moreover, when something like this 👇 happens, there's no way to tell the app that it is completely misunderstanding my query.
Guess I gotta vote with my feet. Got other engines? I've sampled DDG in Brave's incognito mode and its results are some okay, sometimes complete randomness.
Also while the exact title "The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher" should be enough to find you this article even with a garbage search engine, here's the link anyway. It's good shit. swaraj.org/multiversity/g…
Retweeted @CorieWhalen
Every time you make a law, you put a life in danger as a consequence of its enforcement. Consider this when you call for m…
Retweeted @localheinz
Retweeted @commandodev
Feedback == outside energy. Insanity == increasing entropy.
@Conaw @visakanv @QiaochuYuan @TheOrangeAlt @RoamResearch In the meantime, I think this is how to do it—make an evergreen tweet with a link to the page and a preview image that you like, and then when you want to link to the roam page, QT the tweet instead. Example:
@mormo_music @vgr I think you'd need to make a pretty solid case that "american health care insurance" isn't the appropriate reference class for this.
@diegocaleiro Yeah, hard to say. He definitely talks about feedback loops & insanity (also in the context of double-binds) Excerpt from essay called Pathologies of Epistemology, as published in Steps to An Ecology of Mind:
@JoametteGil Once in Berkeley I saw one man chasing another & threatening with a stick, and was like 😬 & tentatively called 911, knowing that might not help but feeling like assault in public is sort of the obvious case for police. It deescalated before cops arrived; not sure what happened.
@JoametteGil That's the only time I've called the cops in the USA. I'm Canadian. No memories of calling cops in Canada, though I vaguely feel I may be forgetting some minor incident that, as you say, could have been handled by someone unarmed or something.
@homsiT @metaLulie @nateliason @RoamResearch That seemed like an obvious move to me once I watched Nat's vids myself. Glad you're on top of it. I definitely want to beta-test that as well. Also the Android app.
@metaLulie @CompliceGoals @RoamResearch @readwiseio @reasonisfun @Conaw @homsiT @homsiT - nice to meet you! I'm fairly newly back into readwise, and stoked for the synergy with Roam
@homsiT @metaLulie @CompliceGoals @RoamResearch @readwiseio @reasonisfun @Conaw Totally. What tweets/threads of yours might I check out to get to know you better?
@homsiT @metaLulie @nateliason @RoamResearch Ah, sad to hear but glad to know the situation. And that makes total sense. I'm also prioritizing a Roam integration with @CompliceGoals quite highly over the coming weeks/months.
@TheOrangeAlt @nibrasibn @QiaochuYuan @m_ashcroft the only main messaging platform that would make any sense for me is fb messenger, where I'm malcolmocean & in any case easily lookupable by name I don't use whatsapp or telegram, and signal is only on my phone & mostly for texting 1-2 friends about logisticky stuff
Retweeted @callumflack
An intro to Whitehead’s Process Philosophy — “a mountain is a wave, given enough time” “we perceive reality because our p…
Retweeted @visakanv
one of my recurring talking points to anybody who's willing to listen: any small group of people loosely-but-truly aligned…
Retweeted @visakanv
@QiaochuYuan @Klockwerklime @bahstgwamt @AdmiralOPG @chaosprime @vinayaki_ @nuanceexists @selentelechia world: hi, welcome to…
@metaLulie @homsiT @nateliason @RoamResearch @CompliceGoals She was onto something important, just needed a major figure-ground inversion and a fuckton of trauma-healing.
Replying to @load_line
@aleksndr_r @homsiT Mmm it's like laying your soul bare but in a sort of safe way, in the sense that they don't need to lay out *how* the books blew their minds, just the existence of such a relationship.
@garybasin @homsiT Complice was ahead of the fad with dark theme bc I wanted it for myself, but since the beginning it supports: 🌜automatic darkening at night & lightening in the day🌞 which isn't something I've seen anywhere else & I would love it for roam, slack, etc. blog.complice.co/post/145832019…
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@garybasin @homsiT Complice was ahead of the fad with dark theme bc I wanted it for myself, but since the beginning it s…
@garybasin @homsiT I think in a relatively objective sense, light-on-dark is better at night, and dark-on-light is better during the day, because it allows for better contrast, shadows, etc. Our eyes are used to both modes, and to switching daily. stackoverflow.blog/2020/03/31/bui…
@homsiT The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGilchrist, which has key resonances with Beginning of Infinity but is also kind of like a total figure-ground inversion and thus says almost completely opposite things.
@homsiT @metaLulie @CompliceGoals @RoamResearch @readwiseio @reasonisfun @Conaw Oh yeah! This is great. Lots of resonance here 😊
@metaLulie @homsiT @nateliason @RoamResearch @CompliceGoals Figure-ground inversion eg "don't try to do too much" 🔀 "non-doing" "Margin: Do Less" is... onto something but has it backwards. —— Similarly Tiago saying "there is no such thing as time, space, self, reality" ... "nothing really exists" The flip 🔀
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@metaLulie @homsiT @nateliason @RoamResearch @CompliceGoals Figure-ground inversion eg "don't try to do too much" 🔀 "non…
@metaLulie @homsiT @nateliason @RoamResearch @CompliceGoals @everytstudies' post The Signal and the Corrective also points at how some perspectives are basically identical but appear to be in complete disagreement because one says "A, but B" and the other says "B, but A" everythingstudies.com/2017/12/19/the…
@metaLulie @homsiT @nateliason @RoamResearch @CompliceGoals @everytstudies Interestingly, just after using figure-ground inversion in relation to Rand, above, I made this tweet which described Iain McGilchrist's work as being a figure-ground inversion in relation to David Deutsch's.
@homsiT @garybasin Yeah, currently that's a bit of a mess... I tried making Complice automatically go dark if the user's OS or browser theme was set to dark, but (fun fact!) some users don't actually want that and reported it as a bug. So somehow we need more degrees of freedom or something.
@garybasin Note also sometimes they are being logical inside a world that is totally fucking bizarre compared to what seems to be happening for you. (Meanwhile, your world may be bizarre from their perspective).
Retweeted @meditationstuff
Once you get beneath language, all interactions, language-involved, or otherwise, can eventually become radically cont…
I have experienced moments of this and they are exquisite and ecstatic.
Don't think of dancing as learning isolated dance "moves". Even if you're watching a video to learn how to do the wave with your arms (as I have done) or twerking (this too) treat it as meta-learning & learning a new way to experience your body. Then it generalizes & integrates.
Replying to @ponekarl
@ponekarl Yeah. (wrote below tweet as a response but wanted to share it into broader public)
@QiaochuYuan @TheOrangeAlt parents as a concept
@QiaochuYuan @TheOrangeAlt obvs we'd need a new concept to replace it but I think that's fine
Thread · How to reward community contributions to a product · 6 of 7 tweets
@Conaw Yeah, #GameA's transactional relationship to money makes these convos hard. And hard to have at scale. One frame to consider is encouraging the people who design an alt landing page to do so only if they would feel it worth doing so even if no prize.
@Conaw That's not a complete solution, to be clear, but the thing it points at is that a lot of peoples' energy for designing new landing pages & stuff *is* already intrinsically motivated, and that intrinsically motivated work is often higher-quality than work-for-pay. And yet...
@Conaw ...sometimes people don't have the spare capacity to *do* that work, without funding (or without a realistic prospect of such a prize meaning that going a bit into time debt for the prize makes sense). So there's something to be said for having that available.
@Conaw In an ideal world, #roamcult members would do meaningful & valuable things to contribute to the success of Roam, and those who contributed vital pieces & needed more resources would get such, because obviously Roam would want to support those people. But how to account?
@Conaw This isn't an easy question to answer, and it might be that you want different answers at different scales: 🏆 prize for big things where one answer must prevail (like landing page or marketing page) 💸 credits to make win-win-wins with incentives (like @nateliason's course) ...
@Conaw @nateliason 🙏 donations - encouraging these to flow (like for the css styles) 🚀 platform ~ plugin app store where people can get $ from sales/subs etc 🤝 partnerships to coordinate with complementary systems
@Conaw @ec_anderson > And how roam is presented to different kinds of audiences I think you could have a dozen landing page competitions for each category, and then actually have a dozen different such pages. roamresearch.com/for/writers roamresearch.com/for/gtd /students /teachers /CEOs etc
@rrichrs @Conaw Roam's not just the features though, but the many different things that can emerge from combining them in novel ways.
@rrichrs @Conaw Yeah, not needed for pricing page. But honestly a list of features barely is either if there's only one product to choose (with subscription-duration variants)
@nibrasibn video from 2014 when I was learning haven't practiced that much lately but I've still kinda got it in me
@vgr resonant
> your abstractions are implied by the phenomenological boundaries you draw, not definitions the metaphysics is the message
@meditationstuff this 👆 resonates with 👇
Replying to @magghu
@magghu @nibrasibn surprisingly, conditional on you being able to do a handstand in a first place, upside-down twerking is in many ways easier than right-side up gravity just.... works for you in a different way
@nosilverv Yeah I've been trying to do this more with @CompliceGoals and so far twitter seems pretty into it. eg this thread from friday where I think out loud about the core ontology & metaphors of the app and whether they may need to change
Thread · Fragments extracted from longer works that stand on their own · 1 of 6 tweets
Me pulling half a sentence out of one of @vgr's threads
Thread · How to reward community contributions to a product · 1 of 7 tweets
@Conaw @nateliason One case study worth being aware of is Haier, a Chinese manufacturing company that is comprised of thousands of relatively independent microenterprises. Seems to strike workable balance between competition & collaboration. This thread worth reading 👇
Replying to @selentelechia
@selentelechia @visakanv Gotta post this classic essay by @kevin2kelly on scenius. I think we've seriously got something like that building on here, which is a remarkable event given the utter openness of twitter as a context. Tagging @QiaochuYuan who replied downthread
@selentelechia @visakanv @kevin2kelly @QiaochuYuan Also interesting to note that #roamcult seems like an adjacent but separate and much more loosely-connected scenius here on twitter.
"as" as "is" for people who don't want to confuse the map and the territory
Replying to @magghu
@magghu @nibrasibn @collinofzion you probably want to be aware of this thread
I want to do something like this for complice.co Complice users, if you were to write up a page detailing how Complice works for you and how it might work for people like you (however you might name such people) that would be 🔥 Would credit referrals to you (🤑)
@selentelechia @visakanv @kevin2kelly @QiaochuYuan Weird sun twitter was an early twitter-based scenius. Did a whole bunch of grammatical innovation, including prolific use of "as" instead of "is" as well as deploying sentence fragments with remarkable power.
@selentelechia @visakanv @kevin2kelly @QiaochuYuan WST was the inspiration for this tweet of mine, which I see as something quite profound:
@AdeleDeweyLopez From Donella Meadows' essay on Leverage Points people often are trying to push a leverage point in the wrong direction, creating the very problem they're trying to solve something something cops something crime something something donellameadows.org/archives/lever…
@selentelechia @visakanv @kevin2kelly @QiaochuYuan Almost phrased that as "which I think is something quite profound" but then I was like "what if I make that "is" an "as"?" and then I had to frame it in terms of my perception or interpretation, rather than in terms of some abstract think
Q @GretchenAMcC - is this subjunctive? The line "Show me love" sounds imperative (which it can double as!) But it comes after "Don't let me show cruelty..." "Don't let me show ugliness..." "Don't let me show evil..." ...which are subjunctive. Other egs? youtu.be/_2Nh-gbEs5o?t=8
@nosilverv @CompliceGoals I legit think that it's that obvious and that counterintuitive, as with the downbreakment of any dualistic delusion
I'm going to explore using white-mode twitter for a bit (usually use dim, not dark) because I don't really want to be using twitter at night and maybe this will synergetically help enact that.
@TheOrangeAlt @maybegray @QiaochuYuan @SarahAMcManus @Kirsten3531 Mostly <what QC said> but I'll give a shoutout for The Continuum Concept, which can dramatically expand your concept of what parenting/infanting looks like by illustrating other cultures. eg many cultures would consider having infants sleep alone to be cruel / emotional neglect
Thread · Songs about exes, mostly Jason Mraz · 3 of 7 tweets
@nicklovescode Hmmm... vaguely feeling like @jason_mraz has such a song but I'm not sure. Many songs from "Love Is A Four Letter Word" album evoke similar energy, but either not quite ex-y or still tryna get back... "In Your Hands", "Be Honest", "I Won't Give Up", "Hidden track"
@nicklovescode @jason_mraz Oh also a bonus track from that album: I Never Knew You "I would love the chance to love you like I never knew you" Singing about the pain that has arisen in the relationship that's made it hard for him to see how much he loves this person. youtube.com/watch?v=dv8Ql5…
@nicklovescode @jason_mraz "And it's okay if you had to go away... just remember the telephone they work both ways But if I never hear them ring if nothing else I'll think the bells inside have finally found you someone else and that's okay 'cause I'll remember everything you sang" youtube.com/watch?v=XnrQeG…
@nicklovescode Not active well-wishes, but not angst, just confusion/grief. > Has all the ice been broken, all our surfaces been scratched? > Have all the words been spoken, have we finally met our match? > Cause it's an awkward conversation, in a most peculiar way. youtube.com/watch?v=3gTV1i…
Thread · Songs about exes, mostly Jason Mraz · 4 of 7 tweets
@nicklovescode @jason_mraz More Mraz, grieving. It doesn't directly address the ex; honestly could actually be about like a company or some other relationship or "we", though that's clearly not the easiest interpretation. youtube.com/watch?v=vApON5…
@nicklovescode @jason_mraz Oh huh, looks like that's a Boyz II Men cover! They've got some beautiful songs; might have some others that fall into the category you're looking for. youtube.com/watch?v=oK9gLk…
@nicklovescode @jason_mraz Watching the Boyz II Men pour one out, I guess also this song could be about a loved one dying, not about a breakup. Pretty beautifully ambiguous song, in that way.
@nicklovescode @jason_mraz Here's another Mraz song, which is pretty weird in many ways, sort of like "please don't tell my ex I don't miss her because she'd be mad if she knew" which is... kind of wishing her well? but also full of snark. lol. youtube.com/watch?v=BKz2HU…
@nicklovescode Also: pettiest "f u ex" song I've ever heard. self-parody "I hope every soda you drink already shaken up I hope there's always snow in your driveway I hope you work at a Friday's that's always busy on Friday's I hope the zipper on your jacket gets stuck" youtube.com/watch?v=VRa_Pw…
Thread · Finding the level of abstraction where your pitch fits someone
"pushbutton coordination costs to 0" is your offering, @meditationstuff? This is like me at early stages of selling Complice (before app & name) to my friends. The pitch is literally "you achieve your goals sooner/better/etc". ie by definition, everybody wants this. Thread 🧵
If your pitch, expressed at one level of abstraction, is something obviously everybody wants, then that means you need to find a level of abstraction where it's an obvious fit to only some ppl. *That's* your actual offering.
Some general dimensions of this: - what does this cost in time, attention, etc, regardless of how much it costs in $? - to what extent do I actually think I'll get the result claimed if I do it? - to what extent am I unconflicted about what I'll have to do? will I actually do it?
More dimensions: - if I don't do it or it doesn't work, what then? will I have gotten enough dividends to justify the cost? ($ and time etc) - how long will it take to pay back, and can I afford to wait that long (for whatever set of reasons)
This is all esp. important for meta offerings / ones that involve relating to your own internal conflicts. Stripe has done more to help entrepreneur productivity than all todo apps put together, because it directly helps them solve an immediate problem.
These dimensions are part of why I emphasize to people the dividends that can come from trying Complice even if they don't stick with it.
Okay, so coming back to your specific thing: "pushbutton coordination costs to 0" This is sort of the holy grail. So what's the catch? Based on what you've written, seems to me the button takes 10k hours to push. So do I see dividends in the meantime, or am I out of order?
Meanwhile, how does it compare to the other ways I might spend those 10k hours? Are there some people who would be better off spending those 10k hours some other way? How would we find out? Would identifying such require experimentation, or could you tell via interview?
There's a bootstrapping challenge in your case, on multiple levels. 1. If you can get people to put in the investment and it clearly works, then those case studies could probably get you a couple high-paying high-touch clients.
2. Also if you can actually get a group of half a dozen people functioning in synergic mode together, you could easily (with ordinary amounts of other skills) start many other profitable businesses. Those bizzes could potentially train employees in meditation, & scale that way.
(I made this its own thread because I think my comments here while specific to Mark, are also usefully generalizeable to many other things that people following me might be working on)
@meditationstuff @nosilverv @m_ashcroft @RoamResearch I made a separate thread for some of my thoughts because they seemed to generalize somewhat
Omfg tfw when someone uses "natural" to complement you on a skill you trained hard at. After I facilitated BioEmotive: Person: "you're such a naturally empathic person" Me: "no actually I was a charismatic jerk and have trained for years to be able to show up like I did today" twitter.com/veryfeel_/stat…
Replying to @veryfeel_
@meditationstuff @nosilverv @m_ashcroft @RoamResearch +100 to self-obviation as teacher Humans in general learn ways-of-being way faster by being in close contact with other humans who embody those ways of being. Ideally many, not just one. So yes, open-access to source code, & also ever-increasing number of people to vibe with.
I have wanted for a long time to make an art piece that would illustrate something like this. Have been envisioning roughly the image below but with text in the boxes and HUGE visualization of unstated context on L & R side, showing how people are talking past each other.
@meditationstuff Wait maybe I'm confused. Can you say this again with different words and/or more words?
@diviacaroline I collect these under #Twiptych
Retweeted @nickredmark
I think one of the core insight of "sensemaking web" is that whenever someone loses in a conversation, everyone loses.
@meditationstuff Yeah, some sort of relationship offering: trailguide? This article by @Meaningness does useful work in extending the metaphor of "spiritual PATH" to talk about how literal paths save you work when hiking because you can see where to go. approachingaro.org/on-the-spiritu…
@QiaochuYuan whuaahhh I definitely got lost reading that
People often talk about "positive sum" when what they actually mean is "positively correlated outcome". If you put in 5 & I put in 10 and we generate 25 total, of which I keep 24 and you keep 1, that's positive sum but *not* positively correlated outcome. I think "PCO" too long
@meditationstuff Like badharting as the opposite of goodharting? hm,,,
@ghuubear See this tweet & surrounding discussion 👇
@rerarom @RojasGorky There are also negative sum games like war
@azlenelza Yeah I think that multiplayer roam will do this. I think the capacity to freeze roam blocks as being a particular utterance from a time and a person will be helpful for doing Glue-like workflows in roam.
@morgoe876 Well but then everybody is a natural everything...
@nerdette @inLaurasWords Appreciating your quest for better language—it makes a huge difference. I have a thread about why I talk in terms of dissolving the patriarchy instead of smashing:
@morgoe876 Ah, yeah, and empathizing is one of those skills.
@GretchenAMcC Those'd be subjunctive versions of the 2nd person imperative "show me love"… But *if* we were to assume that "show me love" is intended to be subjunctive & equivalent to "let ME show love", is there an English form of that? It feels vaguely familiar, from like… shakespeare?
@GretchenAMcC "be that as it may" [be] [that] [as it may]" "[verb] [subj] [obj]" "[show] [me] [love]" "show me love" tho that has "may", which is more obviously subjunctive then there's "so be it" but that's "O V S" 🤔
@GretchenAMcC Hm. Welp, I guess then my headcanon is gonna be that Hundred Waters is inventing a new subjunctive case for English. Exhibit me creative restraint in using it.
@JulieScelfo @nerdette @inLaurasWords Elaborating on the metaphor:
@QiaochuYuan Oh nice, yeah, I may want to explore this more soon too. I like how in the 3rd screenshot he just completely busts down the past-present dichotomy.
Thread · Running list of people doing deep design work · 1 of 14 tweets
Aaaaand @DavidCrandall_W goes on the Deep Design list too. Epic thread about Roam's platform possibilities. Based on my talking with @Conaw this is all on the actual roadmap; David's just seeing it before most people.
Thread · Line-by-line feedback on a diagrammatic notation explainer
@AdeleDeweyLopez Huh, as a non-expert but mathy person I felt lost on like diagram 2, as I didn't understand [A:= "have" multiple things] and whether those things had any relation. I just kept reading and eventually understood. I think whole thing would be better without diagram 2 at all
@AdeleDeweyLopez (There may be a way to salvage diagram 2 but right now visually you've actually introduced like 5 new things and none of them are relevant. You said "A in white bubble = have(A)" but now A is outside the bubble, and there are many things in the bubble, and there's a := etc)
@AdeleDeweyLopez After that, was doing pretty well for a fair bit. I think this section would do well to explicitly point out that given the diagram on the left, moving X *outside* is NOT a legal move.
@AdeleDeweyLopez oh, and this sequences *implies* that it's a legal move to cancel a white-on-black X out using a black-on-white X for any X *outside* the other one... ...but it doesn't explicitly state that. Probably worth doing so. Nice use of $ to make contract intuitive tho!
@AdeleDeweyLopez I would put this section later, which I think is hinted at by the fact that you have to tell us why it's useful before it's actually useful. Introduce it once it becomes useful.
@AdeleDeweyLopez This is beautiful. So beautiful. Not all tautologies are useful & beautiful, but the ones that are useful & beautiful are.
@AdeleDeweyLopez Didn't get this section the first time, but I think I sort of get it now? Issue with black bubble with nothing in it is that it collapses, leaving less-than-nothing—not even havingness-space. Although I sorta have no reason to assume yet that I can't eg wrap it in a white loop?
@AdeleDeweyLopez Okay, then this makes a little more sense than it did first run... it's like, if you had an A, then it would cancel out—wait, could? or would? could I choose not to cancel it? and moreover, how could I have A if there's no havingness space? now I'm confused again
@AdeleDeweyLopez Didn't initially realize this was a new scenario from the previous. Probably would helpful to switch from ABC to XYZ instead of ABC to ABX. Tiny thing but yeah.
@AdeleDeweyLopez I think this would be great with natural language explanations of each, above tautology. ~ 1. A fulfills a need for A 2. if I fulfill a demand for A, I will have A (the loan) 3. if I have A, I'll still have A if I fulfill this contract 4. if I need A in the future, could need now
@AdeleDeweyLopez this is great. loving the simple use of different colored arrows for "move" and "becomes"
@AdeleDeweyLopez uhhh I was vaguely confused when I first saw the red here, because... I was like "Wait does red go with white and cyan with black?" but then I looked above and I was like "oh no that's a totally separate thing" definitely could use metaphoric example here
@AdeleDeweyLopez okay... so something like the difference between an "OR" and an "AND", but not just like how (AB) means "I have A and B" but actually like "there are distinct conditions and I must... make them the same... somehow? 😬 still very confused on this one
@AdeleDeweyLopez this diagram seems like it should have an A on the right side
@AdeleDeweyLopez Separate thread from my "thinking out loud while going through the whole thing" This was neat! Not really sure what I learned but it's fun to play with stuff like this. It reminded me of this Brownian notation from Diamond: A Paradox Logic (these examples not paradoxy)
@AdeleDeweyLopez Here's the paradoxy extension of Brownian notation. i is the truth value of "this sentence is true" j is the truth value of "this sentence is false" I don't really understand these diagrams but I haven't looked at them very long. The book is fascinating though.
@AdeleDeweyLopez Book treats paradoxes not as things that ruin everything but as a natural part of reality that needs to be understood & modelled logically. First few chapters explore structural parallels between various paradoxes, and what those imply.
@AdeleDeweyLopez By the end of the thing, I actually know what all of those symbols on the right side mean, and also by that point I have in some sense implicitly learned that anything I can do with an A, I can also do with some more complicated structure. The diagrams speak for themselves!
@AdeleDeweyLopez In other words, that diagram 2 that I scrolled past because it was confusing, by the time I got to the end I think I basically understood it implicitly. So that reaffirms my sense that it's not needed. Maybe worth giving a complex example at the end to show how things interact
Yo @Conaw if you send me the source code for @RoamResearch's {{character-count}} plugin, I'll learn enough ClojureScript to write a {{tweet}} plugin that: - ignores the 9 chars in "{{tweet}}" - ignores  - counts links as 23 chars no matter how long (t.co shortening)
Retweeted @maybegray
I wonder how much people talk past each other on the “abolish police” thing bc in the lived experience of some ppl they have…
@maybegray @Aella_Girl this seems like your sort of poll, re people talking past each other due to different experiences (with in this case, police)
@colinmegill @BlakeAndOr @Conaw Yeah I had a whole rant about this on the roam slack that's now surely buried in the archives. Basically that tab-complete should be a thing, comparing roam to a dozen other apps. I agree there's also power in having it do something different than enter-complete.
Oh yeah, I have had one of these on ubuntu for years ("diodon") and I sort of forget about it except when I need it. Any other suggestions for simple life-changing tweaks to workflows?
Replying to @abhayance
@AbhayPrasanna @Conaw Yeah, we've been in some discussions. Probably multiple phases. Love the sidebar idea. Definitely want weekly reviews to integrate deeply with Roam, one way or another (have been wanting this since I started using Roam) Would love to jam with you about your dream integration 😊
Thread · Why "runway" is the wrong metaphor for bootstrapping a business
One thing most ppl don't realize about starting a small biz: Say you have $16k and need $2k/mo to live on. That's 8mo runway. Say that after 3mo, biz makes $1k/mo. Not sustainable yet, but now you have 10mo runway! ((16-2*3)/(2-1)=10) Not-enough revenue is still real money 🤑
Huh. "runway" is actually backwards metaphor for this thing, at least in a personal context (may be diff with "moon or bust" startups) Real runway is fixed distance, & certain speed needed for takeoff, but faster you go the SOONER you run out of runway! 🛫 All-or-nothing.
By contrast, as you get momentum going with a personal business, that actually buys you *more* time. I supplemented myself with a couple of 1-on-1 coaching clients during the early phase when @CompliceGoals was only making me ~$300/mo. But that $300/mo was still vital!
I'm now trying to design a better metaphor than "runway". "bootstrapping" gets part of it tho is also weird since literally pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is impossible. "bootstrapping" also doesn't afford the Q "how much runway do you have?"
"Mana", a game metaphor particularly from the MTG card game, captures some other elements. But doesn't capture the natural running-out-ness of the resource. Huh. "Slack" is kind of the thing, not with literal rope but in a systems sense. slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/12/stu…
Speaking of systems, I'm thinking about how slack in systems often takes the form of buffers.
Fuckit I am really tempted to just call this "runway"/"slack"/etc thing "upward spiral juice". Upward spiral juice is fuel for upward spirals, and if used effectively generates more of itself. Okay, now what is that? That's a "seed": Plant, water, wait→moar seed. 🥜🌱🚿⏳ → 🥜
"Seed capital" is a phrase. Maybe we can make it richer. There are some concepts of "don't eat your seedcorn" but ultimately if you're starting a 1-person business then your own need to eat is actually a major thing you'll need to invest your seed capital into! 🙃
@andy_matuschak Mmm, yeah! And there's a kind of nonlinear threshold thing, where as Revenue approaches Expenses, timeline goes to infinity. Given {$1000/mo expenses, $1000 capital} $800/mo rev = 5mo $900/mo rev = 10mo $950/mo rev = 20mo = 1.7y $990/mo rev = 100mo = 8y
@andy_matuschak Which is to say, doubling your timeline a second time only requires 50% more growth (0.5→0.75). A third doubling then only requires (16% more growth (0.75→0.875). Fourth doubling 7%, fifth doubling 3%. And meanwhile growth itself may be compounding.
@andy_matuschak Then ofc the thing to look for is where the growth will generate some sort of limit. @CompliceGoals revenue has been capped at ~$50k for a few years, modelled by users(T+1) = users(T)*retention + signups*conversion for constant R, S, C, users stabilizes
@andy_matuschak @CompliceGoals So in this case the limit is that churn is linear with growth (was actually kinda superlinear in the sense that it increased as I didn't have as close a relationship with users) and so unless something decreases it or increases influx, net growth plateaus.
@adamsears Ooooh interesting. Not a familiar metaphor for most people, but it's got something to it. So you'd say something like "how long is your free path?" which is similar to "runway", but with the additional thing (not obvs in metaphor) that wise moves will create superconductor.
@andy_matuschak @CompliceGoals I learned about this "plateau of doom" via this @bmndr blog post: blog.beeminder.com/three/ and they got it from @amyhoy, who, come to think of it, might find this whole discussion above about "runway" & "seed" interesting! stackingthebricks.com/help-my-saas-i…
Replying to @selentelechia
@eriktorenberg Oh man, this is tough. Depends on timeline but if I had awhile, maybe I'd fund research into scaleable therapies & cult deconversion tech that would be accessible to people who are stuck, then buy media companies & get them to broadcast such things. Trauma→panic→polarization.
Session Buddy! Very similar to clipboard saver actually in that you often don't need it but then when chrome crashes all of your tabs are right there *without* having to hit "Restore All" and freeze your computer again. chrome.google.com/webstore/detai…
Replying to @liminal_warmth
@liminal_warmth Yeah, there's some recent research that shows how feelings of scarcity generally makes people much worse at creativity etc
@liminal_warmth Yeah, based on reading the rest of the thread I'd highly recommend the Scarcity book to anyone who finds this thread interesting and wants to dig in deeper. These guys did a lot of original research in some really clever ways (video games, countries with different systems, etc)
@visakanv Yesssss so good. Part of what I love is how he doesn't use any words in explaining it.
@nicklovescode @sebastmarsh looked into this with nicotine. It's complex but there's maybe something there. Nicotine in particular seems to (I forget where I read this, years ago) not just produce a dopamine spike but also amplify the release of dopamine from other activities.
Retweeted @ESYudkowsky
It's weird to think some normies use the term "lived experience" to mean "undeniable truth" rather than "I am reporting my…
@DanielleFong Punishment mostly doesn't work. Inasmuch as it appears to work, it's mostly because: - it incentivizes people to not get caught - it's hard to actually track counterfactuals
Retweeted @iowahawkblog
Twitter is the wet market of ideas
Replying to @joyurge
@joyurge I see you ❣️ 👁️
@ofmorningshift I think I have enough social capital etc that I could start a substack or patreon and get $300 from it within a month at most, especially if I really tried.
Retweeted @rothosphere
Shaming tactics always run the risk of backfiring. Instead of getting what you want (compliance), you may simply anger the…
@meditationstuff current data is consistent with both of those possibilities unsure if future data will be consistent with either
@colinmegill @RoamResearch I've been doing this over at intertwingled.blog Here's a thread I have about roamblogs more generally.
Law Firm Name Idea, what do y'all think? Spam, Spam, Baked Beans & Spam & Sons …aaaand Stephen! , and Peggy.
@saltysalishsea Or assuming "biz makes $1k/mo" is net profit of biz, not revenue. I'm mostly thinking SaaS or things like coaching/consulting/writing, where operating expenses tend to be low, at least at first.
@colinmegill @RoamResearch Solved for a context where the content of the subscription is a static [blog post] or [marketing message] or whatever, but we might need something different for Roam where the updates might be nonlinearly spread across many topics. @azlenelza explores:
Replying to @actualhog
@actualhog @liminal_warmth Haven't looked in much depth, no. What's your favorite critique?
@MarcelChastain @eriktorenberg Yeah, tho inasmuch as there are cultural assumptions that are shared by mainstream democrat & republican & libertarian etc—assumptions that undermine broadscale collaboration—the leverage may be in collab-democrat converting warring-democrat to collab-democrat, not across camps.
@cortexfutura @nicklovescode @sebastmarsh @gwern Oh yeah! I recently converted that @random_walker article into a twitter thread, with some new graphs & suggestions.
@shawnpmurphy8 @Conaw @RoamResearch another datapoint: database was super confusing to me at the start. it's what these are on the backend atm (separate DBs) but not how they feel to the user
@Conaw @RoamResearch I skimmed all 8 options, didn't have a clear sense, then voted on Workspaces. Although on reflection I think Workspace is sort of appropriate while they're silod, but once they're interlinked Codex or Atlas would feel better. Don't steal the word Map from its other meanings.
Retweeted @visakanv
who is the top person that comes to your mind as "prolific, curious, hyper-threading"? [assuming you can't say @visakanv – I'…
Retweeted @shreyas
𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 in the non-preferred mode isn't that bad. 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 to the non-preferred mode is terrifying. Train yourself…
Retweeted @mechanicalmonk1
the purpose of UBI is not to solve inequality it's to solve that thing where you're not allowed to continue living un…
@mechanicalmonk1 The purpose of UBI is to solve the thing where most people have no runway to try out something new that isn't profitable yet.
@andrestaltz roamresearch.com, which all of you ClojureScript lovers will be excited to know is going to have a plugin system based on that language sometime probably this year
@choosy_mom @AdeleDeweyLopez I think I always assumed that both it and ∀ were produced by a 180° rotation, not a mirroring.
Thread · Reading Diamond: A Paradox Logic · 1 of 5 tweets
Analogy between certain paradoxes (eg "this sentence is a lie") & physical oscillating "buzzers". Goes back & forth: on implies off implies on, 1 implies 0 implies 1. Diamond: A Paradox Logic has more values than "true" & "false". Also has "true but false" & "false but true".
@meditationstuff @ponekarl @nosilverv @QiaochuYuan @m_altcroft Hmm, noticing a connection between the shaking described here and how Diamond: A Paradox Logic talks about how certain paradoxes produce oscillation, but that's real, not an impossibility:
Retweeted @CompliceGoals
People have been asking us to do this for years: to run sessions of our epic online goal-crafting workshops in the middl…
@MarcelChastain @eriktorenberg If you like this kind of thinking, you might dig Daniel Schmachtenberger's work, eg War On Sensemaking II: youtube.com/watch?v=9QGrff…
Retweeted @vgr
“I cut the cake, you pick your half” is basically the only good political idea anyone has ever had. Everything else is either deri…
@vgr Yeah, unfortunate thing about trying to apply the "I cut you choose" principle to things like gerrymandering is the nonfungibility of sections of (real life equiv of) cake. Which means it's possible to make an option that your opponent would have to choose but is still worse.
@NoiseGateStudio @RichDecibels @themarcusnewton DEFUND THE ONTOLOGY
Replying to @jdsimcoe
@jdsimcoe @Conaw @RoamResearch Also to anyone who is concerned about the weird plural of Codex into Codices, I think it's worth noting that lots of english -ex words now happily pluralize with a boring "-exes" and that works fine. "indexes" is the most common one, but also "annexes", "apexes", "duplexes"
@Jahakillen @webdevMason The rules of Mao as I understand them prohibit me from telling you any rules other than this one, but I will tell you that what you've described sounds incoherent & awful and I would not play it, but there's a version where rule-changing is different that's tons of fun.
@jdsimcoe @Conaw @RoamResearch Also people just absolutely get used to new words, and inasmuch as Roam is doing something new, might as well use a new word. There's plenty of momentum and it'll probably honestly help for people to not think they already know what something is.
@maybegray @m_altcroft @QiaochuYuan I need to get off twitter but here's a rabbit hole for you:
Retweeted @jim_rutt
Here's an excellent essay by Jordan Hall (@jgreenhall) on how society could take advantage of the "defund" meme in a truly g…
@andavargas @cognazor technodelic?
@rerarom @selentelechia Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?
@jondubin @nosilverv @xuenay I think I had a dream where this happened. Fun fact: the emotional brain can't really tell the difference between reality & imagination, so you can heal your trauma just by imagining yourself impressing your high school peeps, and you don't even have to travel to the reunion.
@reasonisfun Yeah, I feel like this is sort of the integration of your previous position on crying and the straw #SobSquad position
Thread · Naming goals as a kind of ritual magic · 1 of 20 tweets
Also we're running some goal-setting workshops in a few weeks, and probably not gonna rename the entire concept of "goal" there either (would have to rewrite a ton of content & reshoot videos) but again you can bring in the "why" idea from this thread:
Signing off twitter for the next 24h—deepwork coding complice.co Check out this workshop we're hosting at the end of the month. Linked tweet also has a bunch of threads of mine about how I think about goals, if you're not familiar (~= your "why" / inspiring purpose)
Replying to @publius__2
@publius__2 Is this Bruce Tift? It looks like Bruce Tift. Already Free is a fucking fantastic book.
@DougTataryn Yeah, this is why I have separate databases, one just fully public and the other fully private. Keeps it simple & clear, and I feel safe about the stuff in the private one.
@Aryeh___ @nibrasibn @jstanotherview @m_ashcroft Bruce Tift's book Already Free has a ton of really amazing beautiful stuff that integrates a lot of this. If anyone wants a textbook (sort of; it's lightly written) for what @Aryeh___ just wrote above, it's it. Amazon/audible: amzn.to/30ylvis
@Aryeh___ @nibrasibn @jstanotherview @m_ashcroft Reeeeeeelated. It me.
@Aryeh___ @nibrasibn @jstanotherview @m_ashcroft cc @QiaochuYuan
@meditationstuff @jondubin @nosilverv @xuenay Yeah, there's a separate question of whether you actually want to invest in the plane trip, but the point is that healing is possible without reconciling directly in the territory. Like similarly you need to be able to forgive your parents even if they're dead, etc.
I spent awhile trying to find a specific popular tweet, to quote there. Roughly: > Then the therapist said I need to be able to forgive my mom & let go, without demanding she apologize first. Because like, what would I do if she died? Tbh, that's been the hardest thing. Anyone?
@Conaw plz
@QiaochuYuan @Aryeh___ @nibrasibn @jstanotherview @m_ashcroft
"treating linking as a first-class operation" — @levity, talking about @RoamResearch
Replying to @robot__dreams
@robot__dreams Yes! Omg I fucking love twitter.
@robot__dreams I was so fucking close. Searched `hardest tbh` but ofc `tbh` isn't `tbfh` and searched `therapist mom died` but not `therapiest mom death` (which finds it immediately) Curious if you had it saved somewhere, or...
@stevensalka @levity @RoamResearch I would even just say more abstractly "relationships" as first-class, and that captures much of this
@Aryeh___ I found myself thinking the other day that it should be possible to make a twitter bot that soft-blocks (blocks & unblocks, forcing an unfollow) anyone who follows you (unless eg you already follow them) Similar to bots that auto-thank new followers, but way better.
Thing I want: a twitter-API-system for limiting follower count by automatically blocking then unblocking anyone who follows you (eg unless you follow them) I will pay $50 for a solution to this. Chime in if you'd chip in 👇
Some earlier ideation on conditions for this...
@Aryeh___ Spent a few minutes looking into this... looks like auto-thank bots that worked 2y ago don't anymore because Twitter changed API (from "Stream" to "Activity", whatever that means) But I still think this is possible. Gonna try crowdsourcing/crowdfunding:
I think you could basically adapt an old bot that auto-thanks new followers, and just change what it does it response. Twitter has changed their API a bit recently though and for that and a couple of other reasons I'm figuring I don't want to spend the time to figure this out.
For the $50 bounty, I will accept either of: - source code that I can run (open-source encouraged!) - an app where I auth my twitter and it handles it automatically (I'd still like to see source to ensure it's trustworthy) ...or some other solution that I haven't conceived of!
@JakeSteel Do you just mean the "protect your tweets" thing? That's not what I'm talking about. I want all of my tweets to be public, but to limit how much my account can become highly-followed. If you mean something else, lmk.
@JakeSteel Harder to QT private accounts is one thing, but also like, I like being able to share my twitter content via link. Taking this account private not an option. And yet the conversations will become different as my follower count 2×s & 3×s. Would like the option to slow that.
Retweeted @michael_nielsen
Still, I'm optimistic we can solve these problems. Danny Hillis has observed that "there are problems that are impossi…
@JakeSteel Ah true, that'll help too! Maybe it'll be enough. idk, the incentives are complex
@krzhang my fav format is double-dactyl but those are HARD so hit me with whatchu got maybe a funner prompt is like, go hard on some internal rhyme / slant rhyme and don't worry about counting line length or consistent meter or anything like that
Retweeted @zooko
As a kid, I was awed by the story of the loss of The Library of Alexandria. The Library of Alexandria wasn't destroyed all at on…
@oneil_provost @ssica3003 I sleep 2 times a day! 😉😴 malcolmocean.com/2016/04/polyph…
@stevensalka @levity @RoamResearch Yep. This somewhat already exists via the explicit relationship that a bit of text creates: [[Malcolm Ocean]] talked to [[Steven Salka]] on [[June 11th, 2020]], via [[Twitter]] about [[Roam]] That's a bunch of relationships! Then that block itself can also be related to.
@jondubin @meditationstuff @nosilverv @xuenay Oh man, I mispoke. Healing doesn't happen "just" by imagining any more than it happens by "just" going to the highschool reunion. A bunch of other actual steps needed for the emotional reconsolidation happen. Point is that *one* step can be replaced by imagining.
@levity You might dig this thread, which talks about this and has some cool illustrations of the principle:
@david_perell kinda like @LambdaSchool too I guess 🤔
Retweeted @Aella_Girl
new blog post: knowingless.com/2020/06/12/rac…
Retweeted @krzhang
@Malcolm_Ocean quotients and totients fill my mind with decrees too much commotion and emotion and Notion in my feeds we motio…
@utotranslucence I design metaphors and instantiate them.
@visakanv Already Free by Bruce Tift. Picked that book up at the start of the year & thought "holy shit this book will change my life" and somehow I've been really slow going through it 🧐 Have been picking it up more lately & each page strikes deep.
Retweeted @AdeleDeweyLopez
existence isn't a property of things, it's a property of model-concepts actual reality doesn't exist, it simply *is*
@AdeleDeweyLopez Would love if you expanded on the first part! I've been starting to grok the second part over the last year of reading Iain McGilchrist: (This tweet 👇 in response to "there's no such thing as X, Y, Z. nothing really exists")
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
being taken over by an ideology for the first time is a lot like being in love for the first time. you don't know what it'…
Replying to @dispirateparts
@dispirateparts Doug has said you can do BioEmotive on dreams.... I think he said he does it with a bunch of symbolic dream analysis then reconstructed into a story that you then NEDER on, but I'm guessing you could just try it on the direct content of the dream and see where it goes.
Retweeted @literalbanana
If language is a grip on the world, then we shouldn’t be surprised if the grip is slippery and it’s hard to stay on for…
@utotranslucence Tru. I guess I might say "I make systems" instead of "I make apps"
@AdeleDeweyLopez ahh yeah, and it's in this sense that phlogiston doesn't exist, as well
@QiaochuYuan @visakanv I have you & that gradual progression in mind every time I mention the book in public 😉 (Guys, is that weird? QC and I are friends & go way back, so,,,)
Retweeted @Jeanvaljean689
@Malcolm_Ocean @stevensalka @levity @RoamResearch I might just shorthand this as "decentering": No particular place i…
@Jeanvaljean689 @stevensalka @levity @RoamResearch Yes! I've been reading Fritjof Capra's 1982 book The Turning Point, and he talks about S-Matrix theory, a then-promising meta-theory for modelling nuclear forces etc Non-reductionistic: multiple models that explain parts & need to be consistent w each other but non fundamental
@Jeanvaljean689 @stevensalka @levity @RoamResearch Even though S-Matrix theory seems to have fizzled out, the basic premise seems very meta-systematic: no "one system to rule them all" Curious what if anything @Meaningness knows about the history there.
@Meaningness I checked out the video where the electronic artist remixes the orchestral piece, and his approach is opposite! "So once I got the bass down, I moved onto the violins—*hits play* 🎶🎵—that doesn't sound anything like a violin! But that's not the point." youtu.be/Z0qLpl3VF5Y?t=…
"Feels like the most useful chat I ever had in my life." —actual quote from a past workshop participant 😮💬 Next ones June 27 & 28 🚀 In addition to the 5h of live chat coaching by 7-10 coaches at once, there's video content & tons of exercises to try: complice.co/event/gci2020m…
slack2roam is complete: github.com/malcolmocean/s… MUAHAHA! I have imported the entire history of 1300+ #media channel posts (3+ years of history) from my main slack, into our shared roam. @RoamResarch #roamcult
@Conaw (or anyone else w admin access to roam slack) 1. export all history here: roamresearch.slack.com/services/export 2. while it prepares, npm install slack2roam 3. unzip the export 4. in terminal, go to folder (with users.json, channels.json) 5. run slack2roam -o roam.json 6. import to roam
It's that fucking simple. Takes about 5 minutes (unless the export takes longer) I am never ever ever going to need to pay for slack, now that I can so easily import slack data into @RoamResearch.
Replying to @ix_cmh
> @ROWPublicHealth says a #COVID19 outbreak has been declared at a retailer in the region after three recent novel coronavirus cases were connected to the workplace. But no details about which retailer, which I can understand but also um CONTACT TRACING🤦♀️ globalnews.ca/news/7059060/c…
@roamtips check this out
Retweeted @yoshikischmitz
Hypertext is a medium for writing distinct from dead-tree writing. Like any medium, it has a special something -call i…
@VitalPixel @yoshikischmitz @frank_chimero @anthilemoon I host my hypertext writing in a roamblog here: intertwingled.blog Would love to see what @frank_chimero and @anthilemoon are up to 👁️
Before looking it up, guess what % of the global human population is estimated to be infected with the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. (Not all such people have the illness; many are asymptomatic)
Here is a thread for discussing this poll. I turned off replies for the original tweet to reduce spoilers.
Vote first 👆 Then discuss here 👇
Retweeted @AliceFromQueens
No coincidence that one of the only journalists on the left saying this out loud--plenty say it in DMs--is supported d…
Replying to @AnthonyBaker
@AnthonyBaker @fortelabs @brandontoner @Conaw Amazing. Umm... based on quickly comparing the voices, it's plausible but if so he's using a different mic or some audio adjustment, because Official Tiago™ has more bassy resonance than Anonym.s
@emareaf which artificial size restrictions? I was asking about this the other day
@_stevenxie Anything to report? 🙂
Retweeted @meditationstuff
If you cannot be weak you must be kind
@Aella_Girl the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity except it's not a judgment on people just incentives click through to original tweet
Retweeted @Aella_Girl
Revolutions often overthrow horrible things and get replaced with more horrible things. I deeply support the tearing down o…
@A_Niche_Tweets wasn't intending any; ended up on TB wikipedia page from reading about Simone Weil dying at age 34 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_We…
@HunterBergsma Original intent was just A (plus find out what fraction of other people would be surprised) but then when I went to tweet it I found myself noticing that the new tech enabled this kind of approach, and it was the perfect chance to try it. Seems to work quite well for no-spoilers!
@RoamResearch Let's get the roam slack into roam. It's about time!
Replying to @eigenrobot
Replying to @alt_visa
@alt_visa Never did this but did learn how to massage by massaging my parents, more like ages 10-16.
Retweeted @stewartbrand
Short thread: Are face shields better than masks? Are they more effective against Covid-19? Are they easi…
it's not that it is it's not that it isn't it's not that it both is and isn't it's not that it neither is nor isn't
@PashaKamyshev @eigenrobot there's a buddhist thing that's like
there's a common mistake cab drivers make which is to work until they make a certain amount of money, which means longer shifts when fewer customers (& vv) just noticed I was doing same thing w twitter 🤯 my timeline's meh today & I kept scrolling waiting for something engaging
Retweeted @mtaibbi
"We’re watching an intellectual revolution undertaken by a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts - Twitter Robespie…
Replying to @robot__dreams
@robot__dreams depends on it
@rasoolr very hard to not just immediately learn to ignore it, imx
@orpheaskk @meditationstuff I think mostly depends on what you mean by sense of consciousness 🤷♀️ sooo
@meditationstuff @rerarom Yeah this. I think original source I read had math & checks out.
@nibrasibn @qchurious Ahh I feel like seeing this tweet 👆 I now understand more clearly what you meant here 👇 it's not even so much about what's being said but about the embodied meaning being carried
@nibrasibn @qchurious realizing also that part of the challenge of the whole thing is to reconcile the abstract isms & structural power dynamics with the embodied reality for everyone involved including that lots of abuse involves abuser feeling helpless on the inside
@_stevenxie Love the name! Haven't had the chance to try it out yet. One suggestion, based on just glancing at what I see, is to make the rule function be an async function so you can make other calls (including to the twitter API) And ofc utility funcs will help with that.
weird that when screensharing on zoom with limited bandwidth, the image reloads every second or so but never gets higher-quality. would be very easy to detect "frame hasn't changed since sent the previous" and send high-res png instead (also png in first place would help)
> "A system is only alive if it can give birth to itself" Just found this image via a relatively unrelated google image search, and I really like it. thesystemsthinker.com/learning-organ…
Retweeted @roamtips
Basic Slack only saves your last 10K messages. Here’s a script to import everything to Roam so you have it forever. #roamcult…
@orpheaskk @visakanv @thepericulum @meditationstuff > strikes me as unlikely that you could wake up a *different* person if you possess the same body There's a deeply valid perspective from which you in fact never wake up as the same person.
@orpheaskk @visakanv @thepericulum @meditationstuff For a deep-dive into this, check out Iain McGilchrist's work:
@orpheaskk @visakanv @thepericulum @meditationstuff Then yeah, with any abstraction that allows us to say "same person" we have to ask "same for what purpose?" The context of the question actually matters; it's not arbitrary or fixed.
@orpheaskk @visakanv @thepericulum @meditationstuff Btw, totally with you re transcending regrets. Have written a post about this here, which people say is a really powerful piece of writing:
@calebmontiveros No, link?
@ssica3003 I don't have a specific one in mind but I feel like the answer to the second Q is just "no". Almost no genre names feel remotely adequate. This is part of why I want a music system w/ better tagging & intersections, so I can say "show me what I've tagged 'meaningful' & 'funky'"
@DFisman @RWhittall Can you make (/ do you have) a chart over time for just ON? (& other provinces)
Retweeted @anthilemoon
I see people around my follower count posting truism after truism, e.g. "work hard today be rich tomorrow" or "read books…
@uncatherio @RhysLindmark I love metaphors and love people who love metaphors @SarahAMcManus is quite a metaphor wizard Have also been thinking about the role of metaphors in design thinking.
@Mappletons > So far I've made over 150 of these things, and I'm almost beginning to think I know what I'm doing. Perfect timing for writing! twitter.com/sarahdoingthin…
Retweeted @Mappletons
Ever wondered how I make the egghead course illustrations? Here's Part 1 in a lengthy series of posts where I'll show exact…
@Mappletons Is only Part I up so far?? I'm stoked to read the later parts.
@DFisman @RWhittall Appreciate it :) I've been trying to figure out what's going on here and was surprised to see Ontario's R as low as 0.7 because it seemed we hadn't really declined much in the last few weeks. But I guess 0.7 still means really slow decline when lifecycle is weeks long.
Just saw this old tweet again, searching for something else and I cracked up.
@Morphenius you've been thinking a lot about autopoeisis lately
@orpheaskk @visakanv @thepericulum @meditationstuff ther not alowd
@orpheaskk @visakanv @thepericulum @meditationstuff not actually; haven't yet gotten something set up to keep follower count low, but someone replied to that tweet with a prototype!
Retweeted @AbraarKaran
THREAD 1/ To all my friends in their 20s/30s Even if you don’t care about spreading to others (grandma etc), the threat #…
Retweeted @DanielleFong
It is *as if* we are not sharing the same reality with "coronavirus denialists" but we are in fact sharing the exact same…
Thread · A running collection of delightful animal clips · 2 of 35 tweets
elephant hat trick twitter.com/backt0nature/s…
slipperi boi twitter.com/HPS_Vanessa/st…
@collinofzion @thom_ivy_1 It is imperative that you know about Vulfpeck. They're from Ann Arbor. Here's them doing a sold-out show in one of the biggest venues in NYC, with no label promoting it, just epic fans. They brought the furniture from the basement they jam in. youtube.com/watch?v=rv4wf7…
@collinofzion @thom_ivy_1 (I've listened to that concert maybe a dozen times in the last few months… it's fucking gold.) (Also we're gonna be sorta-neighbours! I'm in Waterloo, ON! Ofc that would require the borders to be open, hm. More of a long-term cool thing I guess!)
Retweeted @Jeanvaljean689
You can almost hear the elephant laughing to itself "Haha look at me, I'm a human, now, wearing a silly human-hat, ju…
@calebmontiveros Oh shit. That actually is pretty resonant with Diamond: A Paradox Logic, which @Morphenius referenced above.
@calebmontiveros @Morphenius Thought Diamond doesn't so much have "both" & "neither" but... some things can happily be either true or false ("this sentence is true") some things can't stably be either ("this sentence is false")
@calebmontiveros Oh! Yeah, I wasn't thinking of Graham, but I think I have actually read that essay, but like, quite awhile ago. And at any rate I was definitely thinking about the catuskoti thing / buddhism when made my tweet.
@_stevenxie Okay just tried getting set up. Typo in git clone instruction (steve instead of steven) npm install worked fine, but npm start gave errors... maybe need newer version of node? Hm no, still borks with v12.18.0 or v14.4.0
@_stevenxie oho, had to run npm install separately in server & client! then client/ npm start gives this error "System limit for number of file watchers reached"
@_stevenxie Confirming before I might accidentally delete my whole follower list: does it only apply this rule to new followers at the time they try to follow? or does it go through the whole list to prune?
@_stevenxie Okay, for now I'm just returning true always and console logging the follower object to see what's available. What I'd really like to see is how many mutuals we have. That would be a really really great metric, but I don't think it's directly.
Retweeted @EliNSavit
With daylight saving time kicking into effect this weekend—and all of us about to be grumpy tomorrow morning about losing an…
@_stevenxie Now getting "failed to list followers: Error: Rate limit exceeded" unfortunately. *sigh* Twitter used to have one of the best APIs. It was a fucking amazing platform, and it threw it all away so it could have more ad revenue. ppl don't realize the impact of ad-based bizmodels
@DanielleFong news that oozes
@_stevenxie Btw, I really don't know how I would be supposed to use the twit object inside this sync function, since its methods are all async?
@_stevenxie Looks like only one of these 5 is directly available ("I follow them already")
amazing #Twiptych if the twitter timeline algo pulled this off, it's reading the text out of the comic @tangjeff0 @DoqxaScott @publius__2
@ssica3003 @JimmyRis Fucking amazing.
@DFisman Exciting! So if Ontario stays at 0.54, that would suggest something like halving the number of new cases every few weeks? Still keen to see chart for ON, and no rush. Deeply appreciating the work you're doing 🙏
@nbashaw @RoamResearch There are also tools to generate the icons. I forget which one I used for @CompliceGoals but this one looks pretty good: appicon.co
Tiny oops 😅 Just pushed button to send out emails encouraging people who've signed up for the GCI workshops to invite friends to join, & didn't look at the email text til after… > Have a few people over to your place to do the workshop together 😬🤦♀️😷
(the text was written a couple years ago—I generally try to be very prudent about such things, and actively try to make my messages in Complice as context-aware as possible. covid has, oddly, made that easier, since it's a shared global context, which we usually don't have)
Really great thread about how to make schools places for learning. I feel encouraged seeing the conversations about policing making it to this deeply structural level. cc Qiaochu "Burn The Schools & Free The Children" Yuan @QiaochuYuan
@elzr @RoamResearch @Conaw @RobertHaisfield Ahhhhhhhhhh yes this is super super good.
Retweeted @DorianKBandy
Having now been inspired by @MatjazLeonardis to spend this morning reading poetry, I'm once again marveling at some of Jo…
@MatjazLeonardis allow yourself to be touched, to be moved, to meet the poem & poet as a living creature a mindset outside of analysis, criticism, or breaking the poem into parts to be dissected to explore where it will take you, on its terms, not on yours
Retweeted @Conaw
Can't believe I said this. Was so completely wrong. Most forceful apologies y'all, there are many other ways to improve. https:…
@meditationstuff answered 4 because seems closest. would probably say something more like "4 but probably still missing one or two key pieces, but ratcheting towards full 4" it's clearly more than *just* arhat/nonduality. clearly. but may not be 100% arhat and may not be full de-traumaing
Retweeted @utotranslucence
The other day I was explaining a, frankly quite mundane energetic/spiritual experience that happened to me a few month…
Replying to @m_altcroft
@m_altcroft de cabron isation eh?
@meditationstuff In particular, I have doubts about the level of de-traumaing that is possible without having a different cultural context emotional learning is learning what kinds of meanings make sense for a given cultural context most cultural contexts most people have access to are coercive
Thread · How retweets shape which ideas spread
How information flows. Your choices to tweet & retweet things are part of the collective human conversation that is making sense of what we collectively know & don't know.
Leverage Point #6 - who has access to what information academic paywalls are part of it but in order to access something you also need to know that it exists and how to find it in the first place!
Consider that if this applies to scientific papers it might also apply to the rest of memeplexes developing. Your tweets & retweets have a tiny but nonlinear impact on others' thinking, around the world.
You'll never know the impact of all of your actions. Sorry utilitarians. Things are way too intertwingled, and counterfactuals are inaccessible: can't rerun universe But you can consider what sorts of things your actions might be causing to evolve.
Memes are ultimately a long game, and involve both persistence & creativity on the part of the meme-spreaders, as well as quality of the underlying source. If underlying quality is high enough that many people become superspreaders (eg roam) then 🚀📈
Another example is Iain McGilchrist's work on 🧠, which now over a dozen people have engaged with due to my persistently talking about the value I get from it. And that's still growing!
@Morphenius @calebmontiveros Very curious to see this!
@yoshikischmitz @geoffreylitt @azlenelza @maxkriegers Oooh yeah. I am booked the next 2 weekends but could do first weekend in July. @nosilverv might also be into it.
@pvh @yoshikischmitz The issue isn't the centralization but the ad-based business model. They weren't creative enough to come up with a way for the app to be profitable as a platform. I actually think, ironically, releasing a twitter-app-store could totally work! Idk if that was true years ago.
Twitter app store: someone releases a plugin/client and is able to sell it or a subscription to it to twitter users, and some of the revenue goes to twitter, some to appmakers. Flips incentives completely opposite ads. Single payment like heroku. = what @RoamResearch is doing.
@pvh @yoshikischmitz Holy shit this is actually a great fucking idea.
This idea might actually dovetail with twitter's motions towards decentralization & platformization.
@pvh @yoshikischmitz Although re centralization, @jack has noticed the issue:
@meditationstuff Some questions I have for you (that could also fall under ad hoc biz advising) are like: - could someone have discovered your method centuries ago? if so, why didn't it happen / take off? if not, what has since changed?
I'm doing pomodoros in the Roaman Colosseum coworking room for the next few hours if you want to come work with me! #roamcult complice.co/room/roam
I did this as part of some deep processing last Dec and it was very powerful. Went through classroom by classroom, teacher by teacher. "I am free from that room." "I am free from that building." "I am free from those assignments." "I never have to go back there." "I am free."
That processing was part of a retreat I did with a friend holding space. Same retreat this insight came from:
Great thread that straightforwardly lays out the basics of emotional processing, and how experiencing unwanted emotion is an opportunity to find more aliveness in your life. #sobsquad 😭🔜😎
@divideby0zero Butterfly effect is misleading metaphor, since the "butterfly flapping wings causes hurricane" story is about randomness & chaos whereas a vital insight of what we're saying here is "your choices matter" (...which the butterfly effect *movie* sort of highlights, but it's weird.)
@Morphenius @calebmontiveros Huh, I am completely lost, but maybe you will explain this on a future call we have or something :)
You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop. — Rumi
@acidshill @maltybegray Oh totally. Yeah. I actually bought Jawid Mojaddedi's translation of Rumi's Masnavi book 1, after reading an article... maybe the one below? And the intro was cool & insightful; the verse itself awkward iambic pentameter and disturbing at times. newyorker.com/books/page-tur…
@acidshill @maltybegray (Not that Rumi wrote in iambic pentameter, but this guy trying to render the meter decided that was the best English way to do it.) Anyway, yeah. I think it's fair to say at this point that "Rumi", to the non-Muslim english-speaking world, is a spirit channeled by Coleman Barks.
@acidshill @maltybegray If I were citing something more true to the original I would probably attribute it to Jalal ad-Din Rumi
@atarrant Glad you appreciated that element of it 😂 That was on my mind as I tweeted it.
@acidshill @maltybegray Hmm okay so OT1H this writer is saying "Barks isn't even a translation of actual Rumi" and OTOH this writer is saying "Barks made money off Rumi". Can't have it both ways! I think the consistent position here is simply "Barks stole Rumi's name"
@acidshill @maltybegray Barks' Rumi is @Lin_Manuel's Hamilton
@SamHarrisOrg @JamesClear I recently added a streaks feature to my app complice.co and intentionally designed it to avoid certain drawbacks that streaks usually have, where they create midnight panic and downward spirals when you miss a day. Thread here:
"An act of genius is a genuine act." — James Carse (source: live, out loud, right now, on thestoa.ca)
"That's my view on authoritarianism. It's a dread of poetry." — James Carse (the quote makes a bit more sense in the context of what he means by poetry/poesis)
Replying to @javrodriguez_
@javrodriguez_ Have you checked out the app? complice.co
Thread · Ways of knowing, magic, and losing the muse to rationality
Excellent thread on the relationship between different ways of attending & knowing, four-leaf clovers, tarot, & how those interplay with materialism. And hemispheres of course 😉🧠 twitter.com/selentelechia/…
This tweet and the next one I'll quote resonate with some of my experience of getting involved with the rationality community. twitter.com/selentelechia/…
I used to write a lot of songs, and my muse started showing up less in 2013 when I was diving deep into CFAR & LessWrong. twitter.com/selentelechia/…
I still managed to write a few beautiful pieces that year, among them this one that is in part inspired by my experiences in the bay area & rationality community. youtube.com/watch?v=VkJe3W…
Here's a thread by me that talks a bit about integrating goal-orientedness and effective magic.
This is a vital piece to keep in mind with all of this. There's truth in almost every perspective; the challenge is understanding the limits of how that truth generalizes, where it's applicable, and what it means. twitter.com/selentelechia/…
If you want a physical analogy for that, check out this thread which explores unifying disagreeing perspectives through the lens of, well, literal perspectives of the literal lenses of your eyes!
Replying to @selentelechia
@selentelechia I made a thread inspired by yours & quoting 4 of your tweets 🙂 and talking about my experience with songwriting.
I found this thread thought provoking. Who owns what images? Serious (dark) metaphor design involved in the marketing of these products.
Retweeted @JakeAnbinder
imagining a bizarro world where the NYPD has to hold a series of public meetings every time it wants to arrest someone. m…
@jack_meditates @ConceptPointer @Meaningness writes about Consensus Buddhism in very much this sense Not sure what best starting point is... maybe the end. vividness.live/2015/10/25/con…
Retweeted @devonzuegel
If you care about the dynamics and evolution of online communities, BUY THIS BOOK! It is the best articulation of why I d…
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
@emareaf I really like this ^
Thread · What a goal doesn't need: due dates, metrics, finish lines
Last December, I broke down the vital ingredients in the goal definition we use at Goal-Crafting Intensive workshops. 🎯 Goal = recognizable desired state in the future, that causes you to act differently in the present so as to realize it. This thread 🧵 = what ISN'T required:
This thread is in large part about infinite games ♾ Goals are kind of like games you play with yourself. That sometimes includes finite, bounded games with wins & losses, but the whole thing is a lot more fun if held within a container of infinite games. From Carse's book:
I realized that while writing it, and went back up to add that ♾👆 tweet. I also realized that a lot of our confusions & hangups about goals come from schools. (Tagging @QiaochuYuan, @reasonisfun, @KevinSimler, @danlistensto, @diviacaroline, who all have deep interest in this.)
1📅 a goal doesn't need a due date Why do we think it does? We're used to doing work for other people, whether that's homework for a teacher or something for boss or client. Since we're used to this pressure, we find ourselves resisting when there's no pressure.
2📅 a goal doesn't need a due date How can due dates mess you up? We're almost always overoptimistic, so we stress out & cut corners trying to complete in time. Then the date passes & it increases our aversion to doing something now "late".
3📅 a goal doesn't need a due date When might you want one anyway? If perfectionism is making it hard to ship anything, committing to a deliverable date can help. Or if you have a real long-term deadline, short-term deliverables can help (eg @bmndr) Coordinating with others.
1#⃣ a goal doesn't need a numerical metric Why do we think it does? We learn our doing habits in low-trust high-legibility contexts like school & jobs, where there needs to be an objective measure for fairness. We don't trust ourselves not to cheat without a clear metric.
2#⃣ a goal doesn't need a numerical metric How can metrics mess you up? A numerical metric is *always* only ever just a proxy for what really matters. Easy to 💯 optimize grades & not learn or enjoy 💹 optimize GDP & destroy well-being & environment
3#⃣ a goal doesn't need a numerical metric When might you want one anyway? Metrics can help illuminate whether what you're doing is having any effect at all (& in what direction) Plus (if well-chosen) they can help curate focus. Ideally use multiple metrics & find win-wins.
1🏁 a goal doesn't need a state of finality Why do we think it does? We're desperate to finally feel like we've done enough and can rest. This kind of motivation vital when externally imposed, eg school. Examples: - final-state: "pay off loans" - ongoing: "financial abundance"
2🏁 a goal doesn't need a state of finality How can finality mess you up? As with metrics & deadlines, we can fixate on finishing. But also, we can end up feeling adrift when we finally achieve our goal and it doesn't solve some deeper problem we'd promised ourselves it would.
3🏁 a goal doesn't need a state of finality When might you want one anyway? It's fucking satisfying 😤 Milestones are motivating & satisfying, even if you then keep going. Reaching the peak of a mountain is meaningful. I remember when I hit breakeven 🎯 blog.complice.co/post/129788685…
I found myself writing this thread today because I wanted to direct more people to check out the workshops I'm running on June 27 & 28. As a case study, let's apply the 📅#⃣🏁 dimensions to my writing this 🧵 right now, towards my goal of getting more signups for this workshop!
📅 it has a real date! the event is happening and I can only get signups if I tweet *before* then 😆 #️⃣ signups in my spreadsheet (& revenue) tho I also care about *who* signs up, & I write with that in mind 👋 🏁 no particular final state! taking an infinite game stance here
In particular, elaborating on the infinite game thing… All of what I'm doing here is trying to point at a particular *stance* towards intentional action in the world, whether you use the word "goals" or whatever. In many ways, it's kinda the dao.
Anyway, here's the workshop sign-up link! Event includes videos & exercises expanding on the philosophy I've talked about here, plus hours of direct access to ask our coaches for their perspectives on whatever you feel stuck on—in the course, or in life. complice.co/event/gci2020m…
Also if you want to read the sister thread to this one, where I break down the 5 key ingredients that ARE required* here's your jumping off point 👇 *(required according to this specific model of goals; I'm not your boss, you can do what you want 😂)
dukkha is the finiteness of winning a finite game
Replying to @selentelechia
@selentelechia > asymmetry. like I can't get a "handle" on my left side. That is... huh! Idk, I don't have a good sense of how activity & inhibition are involved here. No handle on left side means something interfering with RH at a pretty low level. RH handles both left-body motor & wholebody.
@selentelechia Stimulants (except ~caffeine & ~modafinil) as you note, use dopamine; dopamine receptors are particularly found in the LH... Not sure what to say but I find the Mydayis meds side-effects you describe kinda disturbing as a thing to have happening longterm.
@selentelechia Feeling less disturbed reading what you're describing over here with @m_ashcroft. Would be intrigued to know what happens once you learn to do this while on the meds, then after that reorganization happens, try while not on the meds 🤔 twitter.com/selentelechia/…
@NoraBateson When I made this tweet 👇 I was mostly thinking of outrage-quote-tweeting, but I suppose it also applies to taking ideas you like and presenting them without attribution. Twitter's QTs are such a great feature for contextualizing!
@yashkaf @eigenrobot @lordcataplanga Can we find someone who has relatively little else they could possibly be cancelled for, and get them to loudly proclaim "fuck cancel culture" (probably with a bit more detail/nuance) and amplify that?
Replying to @selentelechia
@selentelechia @m_ashcroft Yeah, I know! I think there's a lot to be said for practicing skills in different states of mind, in order to robustificate one's internal organization around them.
Replying to @eigenrobot
@eigenrobot @yashkaf @lordcataplanga I don't recognize those names, which maybe proves your point.
@nosilverv Seems to me her issue is that there's value to knowing the context of someone's thinking, as part of seeing the memetic evolution and making it more conscious. It's not a plagiarism/IP thing. I resonate with this a lot tbh.
@vgr not sure, maybe fools and their money metaphors (re-read) oh, unless, no... um... more recently than that was #2 of your breaking smart re great weirding or something like that
@ssica3003 @QiaochuYuan @acidshill @mechanicalmonk1 @caesararum @the_aiju @liminal_warmth @pervexists69 @GeniesLoki @literalbanana @Timber_22 Huh, now wondering if I know banana from some other context and just don't know it (this turned out to be true with @selentelechia and I didn't realize until a couple months ago)
@Conaw @azlenelza @RoamResearch Fuckyeaaaaaaah I am stoked about this.
Retweeted @DanielleFong
"incels for intellectual intercourse"
Retweeted @DellAnnaLuca
No one begins smoking saying “I’ll smoke two packets a day” The toxic is welcomed at a dose in which its side effects ar…
Retweeted @RichDecibels
I want a word that is as popular as "sensemaking" but it means 'practicing how to not know'
@RichDecibels "question-holding", as described in this post ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/10/que…
@RichDecibels Or "boggling", another word that shows up in that post.
@RichDecibels "not knowing" is a phrase that gets used at @Liminal_Agency sometimes or like "sitting with the unknown"
@RichDecibels the phrase "surfing uncertainty" is already taken, unfortch slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/boo…
Thread · Why the Goal-Crafting Intensive workshop works
There are still tickets left for both sessions of our online make-sense-of-your-life workshop next weekend! Includes: 📺📄 high-quality content (videos & exercises) 🍅👥 structured co-working on goal-setting & planning 💬💡 live coaching—bypass blindspots complice.co/event/gci2020m…
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, both because there's WAY more than 5h of exercises to do, and because one's life situation changes and the coaching is always contextual to what you're stuck on. Here's one rave review:
We haven't overhauled the landing page in a few years, so it doesn't quite reflect the level of nuance & meta-systematicity that we bring to the table. Looks kinda pure-rationalist / orange meme on the surface, but goes way deeper, into emotions, relationships, meaningness, etc.
At some point we'll probably redo the landing page, but for now I'll just comment that the event was designed by me and is run by me 🙃 As a past participant noted "If I'd just seen the page… 🤷♂️but it was like “oh, if *this* guy is running this, that seems interesting!”
So! If you sense your upcoming months would go better if you took time to reflect on it, & 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/gci2020m…
@QiaochuYuan @everytstudies decided to put it back & forth multiple iterations, and it does weird shit to the jawbones/cheekbones 😂 twitter.com/everytstudies/…
@QiaochuYuan After first I thought it invented an earring for you in the left photo, but then I realized that wasn't ex nihilo but inspired by the hook on the wall.
@TheOrangeAlt Those, yeah. I've also see "edit", "rework", "improv", etc. depends on context
@meditationstuff On desktop, I use a different chrome* profile for each one, because switching between windows is way easier than using twitter's built-in switcher. *well, brave
@Ramtin_N Awesome! See you there 😊🚀
@DellAnnaLuca Thinking more about this today and realized that because anybody attempting to say "maybe this person doesn't need to be cancelled" is themselves subject to "if you're not with us you're against us" there's a natural runaway positive feedback loop in a very scary direction here.
@Jeanvaljean689 @DrewCoffman Wow that looks awesome, wish it had an Android version. I've also been experimenting with songwriting in Roam and it's pretty cool. Can block-ref repeated lines, for instance. Minimal support for audio atm (via hiccup) but that'll change soon enough with plugins.
@uberstuber @stoopinbox gives you an email inbox optimized for newsletters stoopinbox.com
@cognitivepolicy @cognazor @spac3_flow3r @pjconnolly007 Hooray for context!
Random thought: if you know how to blow smoke rings, consider that if you make the same motion with normal air, you're still producing a trippy ring of air that floats away from you, it's just invisible.
@EzekielLucas_ See you there? 😀
@elzr @tomcritchlow @RobertHaisfield @fio_condutor @JupiterScrib @azlenelza @maxkriegers @codexeditor @Conaw @prathyvsh Would love to be able to import twitter threads, which I'm not currently seeing a way to do 🤔
@visakanv gut says: not taking on a big project & working through the discomfort (apparently 100 videos doesn't count as a big project to my gut)
Retweeted @AbraarKaran
THREAD 1/ A year & a half ago, I was (remotely) studying the #Ebola epidemic response in the DR Congo. Disclaimer: It was…
He tried to quit his position at the monastery, but they said that resignation requires two weeks' notice. But when he tried, he was only able to notice for a few hours at a time. Never made it to two weeks. 🤷
@salimmj4 A) Wikipedia says: > The smoke makes the ring visible, but does not significantly affect the flow. The same phenomenon occurs with any fluid, creating vortex rings which are invisible but otherwise entirely similar to smoke rings. B) consider,,, airzooka: youtube.com/watch?v=Jsjm0g…
@benschecter @rishi_tripathy_ @CompliceGoals @Conaw If you're looking for a life reset, we'd love to design one with you at this workshop coming up next weekend 👇
@QiaochuYuan @visakanv somehow not-ish? my impression was that the book was mostly assembling old tweetstorms
@EzekielLucas_ Sounds good! I'll save you a seat, so if it sells out lmk and I'll make sure you get in :)
Thread · Why race-and-IQ claims rest on shaky premises
@Aella_Girl It's misguided; not because race but because: 1. averagerianism is naive 2. intelligence tests aren't about intelligence 3. #2 aside, apparent intelligence of an individual is a function of not just genes but nutrition + personality compatibility w/ educational industrial complex
@Aella_Girl 1. averagerianism is naive The book "The End of Average" illustrates the history of taking averages of human beings and points out that it is very confused and comes from the same thinking that generated other outdated things like Taylorism
@Aella_Girl 2. intelligence tests aren't about intelligence They may be, for instance, about The Desire To Pass Tests: Implies that such quotients are less relevant in contexts that aren't about passing someone else's test, which might include business & innovation. hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/post/113360634…
@Aella_Girl 3. IQ from not just genes but nutrition + personality compatibility w/ educational industrial complex Haven't dug into this much but eg study on two genetic strains of mice with very diff maze perf in normal upbringing, showed way less variance in either extreme environment.
@Aella_Girl Long story short, as long as we know that our culture & education systems are fucking over the students (which seems very obvious to me) we can't conclude much of anything about what kind of intelligence is possible for anybody, and any correlations back to genes are irrelevant.
@Aella_Girl That's back to "genes"—already assuming you can figure out which genes to look at. "race" is very far from being an adequate set of categories for talking about genetic correlations for complex traits.
@fraserdeans Yeah, it's ditched the file-folder metaphor thoroughly. WorkFlowy sorta-did but stayed hierarchical. Roam names its core entities "pages" and "blocks". These names are not very metaphorically evocative but that's probably actually great as it leaves space for emergent relations.
@fraserdeans I found myself thinking that "cell" would be a better metaphor than "block" in that it's more organic, but unfortunately in an app it would evoke spreadsheet-cell instead. Huh, also, nesting cells isn't really a thing in nature, so that name does suit spreadsheets better.
Thread · Running list of people doing deep design work · 1 of 14 tweets
Obviously @tobyshorin & @tomcritchlow need to be on the Deep Design list.
@visakanv @QiaochuYuan okay that seems pretty dece. looking forward to collaborating with you on those dominoz
@visakanv @QiaochuYuan yeah I know, there's definitely a weird thing there. meta-aside-that's-sorta-relevant-to-main-topic-again... I found myself musing that you might get something useful out of the workshop I'm hosting next weekend, tho I'm not sure quite what
@visakanv @QiaochuYuan realized that neither session time works well for singapore timezone (unless you get up at 6am or stay up til 4am) but you could do what someone in India did once and attend the last half of the first event and the first half of the second event 😂
@patio11 Audio streaming services (Spotify etc) are hardly doing anything new, which is NUTS given that it's practically a commodity (they all offer roughly the same ~50 million songs) and the only way to differentiate is UI. Have been meaning to rant about how I'd do it but haven't yet.
@patio11 Tons and tons of to-do list apps all based on the same old GTD metaphors. Both incumbent and tons of startups. I'm doing something new with @CompliceGoals, and it has a similar sort of "this is a different approach and an app that supports that approach"
More case studies on radically new approaches:
@TurtlingB @GretchenAMcC @patio11 There's also something called OnlineTown, as well as rambly.app, and cozyroom.xyz
@csageland @rerarom @QiaochuYuan @tasshinfogleman @dthorson @Sophia_Aletheia it's actually an old zen koan twitter.com/danlistensto/s…
@favoredprisoner @Aella_Girl Sure. Point is that they designed cockpit for average pilots, and then were surprised to discover there were no average pilots, and that these non-average pilots were crashing as a result (of bad ergonomics). Our schools designed with similar averagist thinking. Kids crash.
@kcorazo timezones: moment.js plus this code to make it pretty when it spans different am/pm or different dates.
@kcorazo PWYW with stripe… we just have this page (well, separate one for each workshop; this is a generic one) and the user types in a number and hits a button and it generates a stripe payment flow with that number. Pretty straightforward 🙂 complice.co/event/gci/pwyw
@palashkaria @tlakomy Yeah I think I'll probably slow my growth around 5k (which won't be til late this year unless I have something go viral) and near-stop it around 7.5k. @_stevenxie has built a prototype for this, could pledge your 5 złotys to him finishing it!
@nosilverv Just want to point out that there are many places where men can't be hired with their natural hair grown out ("the gaudy plumage which is the birthright of his sex" as musical Hair put it in 60s) and this reality is so repressed they cut it unthinkingly youtube.com/watch?v=eRGeIr…
@m_ashcroft @joyurge! (you two would get along great I think if you haven't already met/interacted)
Retweeted @DFisman
Proposal: "I am a pediatrician and my friends are pediatricians and we are fine with kids going to schools" is the same leve…
Thread · Design rant: tags instead of playlists in music streaming
Design Rant time! Today: audio streaming services. Why are they all the same old boring things and stuck in the same old metaphors of "playlists" and "radio"? Virtual ports of old music-library managers. Lots of improvements to be made—in particular, tags! #ThingsIWantToExist
Here's my initial list of obvious things to add/improv: - sharing & collaboration features - listening history - search - discovery - zoom in / zoom out (preference exploration) - custom track metadata - artist monetization (will elaborate on each of these later in the thread)
Here's the killer feature tho: TAGS. There are at least 2 types of playlists: 1⃣ songs in a specific order for a specific context (eg "Halloween Party 2009" or "Focus Day Playlist") 2⃣ collection of related songs, grouped together by mood, theme, etc (eg "Chill" or "Uplifting")
The 2nd type shouldn't be a "playlist" AT ALL, but should be a TAG that can be applied to a song or a group of songs. This would allow many powerful new playflows (like "workflows", get it 😉) For instance: intersections, ie "play all songs tagged both #electronica & #sad"
Those intersections could be done based on exclusively songs you've directly tagged yourself, or could use some combo of machine learning (on lyrics & metadata, as well as the audio itself) and other-users-using-same-tags to generate larger source song sets to work with
Of course, in addition to intersections, you could also have unions: "play all songs tagged #funk or #horns or #electrofunk" You can kinda do this manually atm by like, shuffling playlists together, but it's awkward. Or subtraction: "#rock − #christian" if atheist friend over
Tags plus audio analysis would also allow algos to generate playlists that gradually transition from one tag to another, to sculpt mood ☕️ morning: café jazz→electrofunk 🕺 dancing: "5 Rhythms" [Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical, Stillness] 😴 bedtime: chillstep→ambient
If you allowed tags to specific whether they were about the lyrics or the genre, you could use ML on the lyrics too and have even more precise radios: - songs about a particular topic - songs that are particularly full of wordplay - could combine w genre for eg "chill love songs"
I seriously don't know why companies like Google Play Music, Deezer, Spotify, etc, aren't doing this. It would increase lock-in and create more value in the whole ecosystem because other users' tags add meaning. ALSO, it gets your customers to tag your ML data for free!
speaking of which, switch from just 👍/👎 to also have option "this track is fine but doesn't belong on this radio-station/auto-tag, in my opinion" I bet there are people who would be excited to be some of the first to listen to new untagged music and ensure it gets some tags.
(Though while I'm talking about 👍/👎, I really wish I could tell Google Play Music to NEVER play a song for me. I love @BT's ESCM album except the track Solar Plexus, which I have to remove/skip manually ever time I put the album on 🤦♀️…awful disempowered feeling.)
Time to elaborate on some of the things I described in the second tweet. I think why these "obvious things" haven't happened yet, is that the creators of these *apps* haven't escaped the old metaphors of "music library" & "radio", even tho new bizmodel.
In particular, the apps haven't really been redesigned to acknowledge the reality that they're a gateway into 40 million songs that you have access to on-demand: Playlists are for managing finite number of owned mp3s Radios = "I want <genre> music; don't bother me w details"
Obvs internet means: better sharing & collaboration features Little innovation on this since I first tried Rdio party playlists in 2012, & GPlayMusic is still worse than that. Ideas: - built in "name that song" - user-contests for recommendations - one curator, many suggesters
Listening History. Maybe other apps do better than GPlay here. But this could be really powerful, with audio & graph search features like "I heard it last week… at least 5 mins long, and had a kind of slow opening, and it was just before some Coldplay track"
Speaking of Search, why the FUCK can't I create playlists filtered by bpm? (ie beats-per-minute, aka tempo) It's super easy to calculate bpm of a song (for most genres) and this would be awesome for making running playlists or restricting chill playlists from getting too upbeat.
Or either in the form of search or as a radio filter, being able to force instrumental tracks only, or only ones with vocals, or no drums at all, or minimal heavy-bass (I mean, having built in equalizers would help with that, but still) or to search/filter by year/month released
Speaking of year/month released, better Discovery. GPM nuked theirs last year (I think tryna push ppl to YT Music) but it was also only like a 3/10 before, by my reckoning. Soundcloud is somehow like a 7 or 8/10. 10/10 would have a mix of precise tuning & feedback + magic
I think these services maybe focus on being able to provide you with an endless stream of music that you'll find "decent"—which is an amazing resource and not to be knocked, but! ADDITIONALLY we need modes where half are total meh and 5% are new fav songs/artists 🤩
Relatedly, the ability while listening to a radio or other discovery source, to say "this song is awesome, can you try more of this album/artist on me and see if I like it?" and it would sort of organically do that (in the current radio & later) and find out if you're into it
And, corollarily, to say "I really don't like this" and have it sort of zoom out and play less of that artist. Ideally even take direct feedback like "dumb lyrics" or "too harsh noises" or "too repetitive". (& this could be tagged with "never" vs "not in the mood atm")
Finally, track Metadata. Stick text on songs, both for later reference & search, and for social reasons. Could even do playful things like "show this comment to any friend who listens to this track 10+ times" and there'd be an "omg you love this too!" moment
Wait, one more: artist monetization! People want to support their fav artists, and let's face it: streaming services are shit for this. But they could help, without hurting their own bottom lines, by supporting ticket & merch sales, or… integrating artist patreon perks?
Are all of these good ideas? Maybe not. It would certainly be a lot 😂 But it's weird how few new ideas (good OR bad) we've seen from these companies offering music streaming services.
If you enjoyed this design thread, you may like my many other threads of #ThingsIWantToExist! Topics include e-readers, conversation-apps, podcast apps, crowdfunding, &+
@patio11 Okay, since 50+ of you liked this tweet, I decided to do my full-on rant about how I'd implement a modern music streaming service. (…that's a lie. I did it because I can't resist design rants and this comment from last night had me inspired 🚀)
@danlistensto Have now done this rant!
Thread · Things I want to exist: apps, tools, and funding mechanisms · 1 of 21 tweets
This Music-Streaming Services one has been building for awhile, at least a few months. Had something half-drafted in roam and was inspired by a recent @patio11 tweet to write it up in full for Twitter. Tons of gorgeous stuff here.
Retweeted @QiaochuYuan
just signed up for this as a participant after doing it as a coach twice lol
@m_ashcroft @QiaochuYuan Unfortch you're at different sessions 🙁 You'd have to stay up til 4am to attend session 1 from UK.
Replying to @jackbremer
@jackbremer @TurtlingB @patio11 @jackbremer's suggestions are pretty good. I'm particularly in to the "easy listen-together" and "full stats access" I take it mostly in a pretty different direction, in this thread 👇
@m_ashcroft @QiaochuYuan I suppose you'll get to hang out in the ongoing goal-crafters community of practice slack, that has weekly meetups where there might be overlap. Also ofc @m_ashcroft you'll see @metaLulie there 🥰
@favoredprisoner @Aella_Girl I actually don't see how that would be useful, even if it *were* true, unless it gives you a leverage point for designing something. Which switching out of averagerian thinking did for the air force here—they prevented a bunch of needless deaths by making the cockpit adjustable.
@SHL0MS @Phreekedelic Yeah these ideas are gold here. Talking on different levels of abstraction and detail, from "here's how this artist was influenced by Stevie Wonder" to "check out this sick drop at 1:22" Here's the thread I made:
@cxy @patio11 @CardioidFM Cool to see the "support" button there. Curious what it does. I thought a bit about that in my thread here:
@nsgrantham @SHL0MS Oh whoa, Playlist Machinery is super cool. I'm gonna check out Spotify more following writing this thread, as I've heard it's recently added (and is soon intending to add) a few things I've been asking for here. Makes sense it would be iterating more than Google Play Music
@QiaochuYuan Damn this social proof really helps! Half a dozen further signups seemingly mostly from this tweet of yours & this one below of @jonnym1ller's 👇 More than that tweetstorm got on its own prior to getting these QTs.
@QiaochuYuan @jonnym1ller I'm guessing the "this seems worth it as a participant even for me, someone who has coached there" is a pretty cool testimonial. Like it's clearly not just basics or fundamentals or something like that. I can think of many types of courses about which nobody would say that.
Excellent #Twiptych by @selentelechia, @publius__2, & @utotranslucence, definitely at least partially thanks to twitter's algorithms.
@ssica3003 I like how you do you.
@Conaw @RoamResearch Oh yeah, cool stuff. Would be fun to have [[roam/js]] page or something to manage this system though ofc that would have all sorts of other security concerns 😆
@nsgrantham @SHL0MS People are saying good things about Discover Weekly and a Spotify engineer who's an old friend of mine messaged me to tell me that other stuff that I'm asking for in my thread was in the works but said he couldn't comment much more/publicly
@utotranslucence I tried experimenting with something on Complice (around the time you and I met, in 2017, maybe we talked about it then) called Shared Purposes, which was trying to sort of do bottom-up coordination towards shared aims
@utotranslucence @ESRtweet's essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar talks about this in the context of open-source. Probably some of the other essays in the book by the same name are also relevant. I particularly like Homesteading the Noosphere Here's the one I mentioned tho: catb.org/~esr/writings/…
@Jeanvaljean689 @Conaw @RoamResearch @JoelChan86 @azlenelza @CatoMinor3 @kcorazo @RobertHaisfield Ooooh yess that is v good
Retweeted @Jeanvaljean689
@Conaw @Malcolm_Ocean @RoamResearch hey [[multiplayer Roam]] explorers! (@Malcolm_Ocean @JoelChan86 @azlenelza @CatoMin…
@RoamResearch @Conaw I didn't! Oh shit, this is cool stuff. Can probably build my tweet charcount plugin with this :plotting:
@maybegray I've been considering laser eye surgery but currently my corrected vision is way better than 20/20 and I'm afraid that LASERs might fuck that up… but have been seriously thinking in crazy societal collapse it would sure be nice to not have to deal with contact lenses / glasses
@alchemypwr @NotionHQ @RoamResearch I honestly think that this streaming app I'm describing might be able to be basically hacked together on top of roam lol (would need some other server for audio analysis, but just basic nonlinear song organization could be done, then plugin for playing thru in order)
Retweeted @reasonisfun
"Discipline is remembering what you want." When that works, it's not 'discipline'; it's getting less conflicted.
Retweeted @StephenPiment
Reddit warnings have changed into banning. For upvoting. reddit.com/r/WatchRedditD…
> My take is that Twitter is a coordination game. My goal is to find my people and talk to them, with most of the rest of the site playing interference. — @yashkaf
@made_in_cosmos Hard to tell these things without seeing a larger pattern over time 🙃
@DanielleFong figured you'd want to know about this if you didn't already
You know how someone sees a thing on twitter, and is like "oh, @Person needs to see this" and tags them? For what sorts of situations/topics/etc do you wish your peeps would tag you in more? (Can be "I already get some X tags, would love more" or "nobody knows I ♥ Y")
Retweeted @TheOnion
Facebook Announces Plan To Break Up U.S. Government Before It Becomes Too Powerful bit.ly/3ep3NSp …
@Morphenius @Aella_Girl this seems like your sort of poll 👆 "Have you directly experienced that you're not your mind?" (Also lmk if you'd prefer less of me sending you polls to amplify or whatever 😅)
Replying to @RebeccaRHelm
@RebeccaRHelm @utotranslucence this is a weird animal but also kinda cute
@jameswjesso @zoom_us I think @cognazor and @JaredJanes have something they use for this; I forget the name
@krzhang You might value @DavidDeutschOxf's models (eg in The Beginning of Infinity) around how these are parasitical anti-rational memes that are optimized for propagating independently of them containing any accuracy or benefit to the people holding & propagating said "wisdom".
@krzhang @DavidDeutschOxf @QiaochuYuan and I have a twisty thread exploring the topic here 🕳️🐇 👇
@maybegray ❤️💞
Retweeted @yashkaf
Just came up with a weird theory. There are ways of engaging in argument: sincere and truth seeking, bad-faith and power seek…
@maltybegray I am firmly against framing ADHD as a disorder. It seems very clearly to me to be a *different kind of order* it's just a kind of order that's less compatible with a lot of expectations people have by default in schools & workplaces these days
@maltybegray framing it as a disorder is an error made by people assuming that eg school should work for everybody normal and that anyone for whom it doesn't work has a pathology @alt_visa may have further comments
@maltybegray @alt_visa I possibly could be modelled as having ADHD (according to this entertaining youtube quiz) but I don't take it too seriously, just as kind of a helpful lens similar to enneagram type youtube.com/watch?v=iozAFI…
Retweeted @sepiatonal
Actually, science has it reversed; chemical reactions are just love.
Love this #Twiptych by @sepiatonal & @NeoSomaliana (unlike most of my twiptychs, here I used my recently reinstated artistic license to delete a tweet between these two)
@DanielleFong @2050Andy @learning20201 @n0x00 @Pravduh15 > for a virutal community I want to connect to the actual physical communities we create with Haven elaborate?
@charlieatempo @visakanv For my sake can one of you quote in the dril tweet?
Retweeted @visakanv
Meditated on it and I still find it funny Disagreeable people come at me and try to get me to agree with them that disagreea…
@visakanv Partner with @MyReplika to generate a VV bot based on millions of your replies over the years, to scale your capacity to help people make sense of things via DM.
@jondubin ongoing process, not a specific event
@learning20201 Hmmm neat. I like the dual forcing functions. I've recently been thinking about the role of having multiple forcing functions for steering complex systems, and have gotten a lot from the concept of Self-Organized Criticality here. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-orga…
@learning20201 @DanielleFong @2050Andy @n0x00 @Pravduh15
@DanielleFong @learning20201 @2050Andy @n0x00 @Pravduh15 You might dig Joanna Macy's book Mutual Causality. It's been blowing my mind and it's what I was reading at the point when I had the insight that society is like a sandcastle in this model, ie built up higher than natural, and destined to collapse
Replying to @sonyasupposedly
@sonyasupposedly Aella has an active poll on exactly this:
@sonyasupposedly to which I replied (click through for elaboration on each of these points)
@DanielleFong boptimization
@utotranslucence Insight kind of ineffable apparently, but my new partial answer is "read Mutual Causality and understand the intertwingled nature of self and other"
@maybegray @sepiatonal @NeoSomaliana @nosilverv Haha yeah "This Twiptych brought to you by @maybegray and @nosilverv"
@learning20201 @DanielleFong @2050Andy @n0x00 @Pravduh15 Important thing is that marketization trends towards atomization, which is unhealthy. This is something that your system would need to solve, & I'm not sure how it would. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, see this amazing thread I need to re-read
Retweeted @incertaspecie
Tongue flicking choir sweet dreams xo
@Conaw @itsarnavb @SarahAMcManus @Beehtrix - I mentioned this tweet on our phone call just now
Retweeted @Beehtrix
Allow me to understand what I'm about to say...
Retweeted @cognazor
I don't consider nor have I ever considered myself part of the rationalist community, and have never read much of SSC, but wh…
Retweeted @everytstudies
I've just sent this to the @nytimes (a bit long-winded, I know, but I can only struggle against my nature so much). I ho…
Retweeted @nosilverv
First they came for TLP, and I did not speak out— I was not a reader. Then they came for SSC, and I did not speak out—…
Some people collect mental models. For me, the fun is in creating them.
@learning20201 @HiggsbosonW @Pravduh15 @KarlHeinzHasliP @DanielleFong @2050Andy @n0x00 Important to understand Moloch here, and the need for an anti-Moloch Excellent video on this: youtube.com/watch?v=hKvVdG…
@RichDecibels @sepiatonal @NeoSomaliana Thanks
@itsarnavb @Conaw @SarahAMcManus @Beehtrix Haha yeah @Beehtrix and I were up super late on the phone last night. Similar experience of discovering we're both in Ontario! Something juicy possible here maybe...
@DaniConnorWild @joXn_fuzzies @SarahAMcManus the baby versions of the red squirrels don't make such awful noises! or at least they're quiet, idk
@uberstuber I posted this rant about music streaming service design and had an epic 3.5h phone call with someone who reached out to me because they're building something in that space.
Noice art thread. Someone recently commented that Beethoven & Mozart were making their music for general peoples' enjoyment, not just for esoteric art-nerd appreciation. Somehow feels relevant.
@harveykrishna_ Latest big one is Metaphor Design
Retweeted @eriktorenberg
The irony & challenge of protesting subscription-based media companies is that, if you unsubscribe b/c they are being to…
@JasnaTod 👋🌊
@learning20201 Haha yeah I nearly muted it lol. Will have a look.
@TaylorPearsonMe Depends on the quality / options you're looking for. Zoom can work but my friend who has a podcast says it's not adequate. Guessing that it only works if both sides have very high-quality internet.
@jameswjesso @zoom_us crosspollination of questions & answers
@ikirigin @haddartha Multiple cultures on twitter. Some are generative.
Retweeted @NateSilver538
One of the dilemmas that should be self-evident but doesn't get articulated clearly enough is that you can maintain lock…
Yeah I'm feeling like Ontario would be better off with restaurants etc still closed for another month or so. We're so close to actually nixing this thing, why make a mess of it?
@learning20201 I think I basically don't understand what you're doing with this analogy here!
Retweeted @harmonylion1
2/ In a marketplace, the winning move is to bet on the underdog. Find value and double down on it before others catch up…
Retweeted @tszzl
NYTimes would've doxxed Locke and Demosthenes :(
@harmonylion1 also in addition to being fractionally right, ideas can have idea sex and combine together
@harmonylion1 Thread re combining multiple perspectives into something greater, rather than arguing
@simonsarris @BretWeinstein Also interested in this question.
@TylerLaRiviere Leverage Point 6: structure of information flows
Replying to @eigenrobot
@eigenrobot Yeah here in Ontario many municipalities list cases & deaths from outbreaks in such facilities separately from ones in the rest of the populace. Which makes a lot of sense in terms of giving an accurate impression of the priors on getting sick or dying for most people.
@VitalPixel @yoshikischmitz @frank_chimero @anthilemoon @Beehtrix @Conaw @utotranslucence this Frank Chimero essay is relevant to your respective projects. In summary, all of you are profoundly rethinking old questions & answers for the new medium of screens. frankchimero.com/blog/2013/what…
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@VitalPixel @yoshikischmitz @frank_chimero @anthilemoon @Beehtrix @Conaw @utotranslucence this Frank Chimero essay is re…
Retweeted @maybegray
If you are pro-striving, how do you reconcile this with the reality of death? that no work will save you? If you are anti-s…
@Nsousanis There's a sequel to unflattening coming? 🤩
Replying to @m_altcroft
@m_altcroft how is benefit?
Thread · How threats of punishment choke information flow in groups
I once took a Male Allies Against Sexual Violence course, and they cautioned us against saying to female friends "if a guy ever assaults you, lmk and I'll fuck him up" because they'd observed this usually seemed to lead to *not* speaking due to not wanting to instigate violence. t.co/MX5k8opegU
Key implication: extreme punishments lead to lack of information flow, which destroys the ability to collectively make sense of things together, and to piece together small experiences into whole picture. (Many other factors impede info flow too, incl skepticism towards sharer!)
Diminished information flow makes it hard to pick up on many things, from benign: • eg "Allon has awkward quirk but would be receptive to feedback, let's tell him so he can adjust." …to insidious… • "Bort has been subtly threatening whole office, not just me. Needs to leave."
If you can't talk about your messy situations in a relatively relaxed & open way with other people involved, then it's… A: hard to detect those situations in the first place B: hard to tell whether someone is: • clueless • egoic but open to change • utterly sociopathic
This stuff is hard. There's no easy answer. Lots of information flow gets stifled for various other reasons and this is just one factor. It's important to be aware of though. More generally, to be aware that any system of punishment creates incentives to distort information.
I have a whole other not-yet-published rant about how the graspy way that many people treat "confidentiality" also disrupts information flow and undermines peoples' capacity for building self-trust & other-trust, and learning tact… ~=this 👇, generalized
Can't resist some Donella Meadows Leverage Points links here. Naturally this tweetstorm is about #6: Structure of information flow…
…but it's also, in particular, a great illustration of why her list of 12 leverage points is ordered as it is, with certain levels downstream of others. Here the punishments (#5) incentivize certain information flows (#6)…
There are of course a few much more powerful yet leverage points related here. I particularly want to mention mindset/paradigm. What's needed is assumptions that encourage & protect high-quality complex conversation.
@MarcoViappiani Yeah someone shared this with me, which seems to have a lot of stuff like this. playlistmachinery.com
@_exoconnor @SarahAMcManus I'd start with something practical, which could mean NEDERA course or even just some simple instructions 👇 as step 1, if they work for you. UtEB is great but very theoretical & hard to self-apply for multiple reasons. & better read once more experience twitter.com/FioraAeterna/s…
@_exoconnor @SarahAMcManus One important thing to note is that making space for resistance is vital. Since crying quite repressed for you, could both mean NEDERA is quite challenging, and quite rewarding. Next time something active, maybe go to a comfy/safe space and try saying aloud "I don't want to cry"
@Nsousanis Apparently this is the first one I've seen. Was thinking the other day I wanted to re-read the original. I don't imagine you have a shortage of people interested in beta-reading, but I'll happily add myself to such a list! Good metaphor design practice!
@_exoconnor @SarahAMcManus And focus on illuminating whatever meaning is present regarding crying such that it doesn't feel accessible. Could be some other phrase resonates more than "I don't want to cry." Maybe "It's not safe to cry" or "It's not okay to cry" or something. See if any memories/images arise
@_exoconnor @SarahAMcManus Goal here is not to get yourself to cry, but to explore your relationship with crying, and to explore why it might feel unsafe and whether that still feels true, particularly in your adult alone context. Might try completing sentence stems many times: eg "If I cry, then…"
@_exoconnor @SarahAMcManus If some muscles are tensing up, you might say to them "thank you for holding this for me… would you be open to letting go so I can take it?" and maybe they will and something will flow, or maybe you'll experience some felt sense of meaning of why that would be bad
Replying to @selentelechia
@selentelechia Huh, like there might be a parallel with the layers that @meditationstuff describes?
@remiolutimayin Wow, I missed this at the time (twitter needs better QT notifications) but hugely appreciated! 🙏 It took me maybe 6-7 hours and a lot of deep thinking. I also realized many ways in which I didn't understand certain layers prior to making the tweetstorm, so it helped me learn 🙃
Retweeted @remiolutimayin
Do you appreciate how much genius is needed to distill this much genius into a thread? Do you know how well you have do…
@asglidden @selentelechia Implications often buried in the frame, so you can end up with something that's true within the frame but the frame itself has issues that can't be pointed at while decoupled. eg response to "Is it acceptable to study racial differences in intelligence?"
Retweeted @asglidden
Idea: what if instead of paywalls, we had escrow? Before reading an article you post a bond of $0.50. At the end of the arti…
@Conaw One thing: bikeshedding 🚲 Two thing: I think your original "the 50 people who care about this" encouraged me to heart it to let you know I was someone who cared. If you sarcastically dismissed people wanting query blocks, maybe you'd get a similar outpouring 🙃
@_exoconnor @SarahAMcManus Yeah. I'd say do your best to just spend some time exploring this and feeling into different emotional spaces as your system allows. Point is to really respect the resistance, because it's carrying something important and isn't just gonna magically vanish
Replying to @m_altcroft
@m_altcroft Hm. For some people that could be a life sentence, either logistically in terms of getting momentum with side project, or emotionally in the sense that it would always feel like "not quite the right time to quit"
Was going to go to bed, but instead stayed up (apparently) so I could find & share this latest #Twiptych (Today's sponsors are @danlistensto & @maltybegray) @SamoBurja & @liminal_warmth on the same wavelength here:
Last chance if you want to join our online workshop this weekend! Just a few spots and <24h left 🚀 Includes: 📺📄 high-quality content (videos & exercises) 🍅👥 structured co-working on goal-setting & planning 💬💡 live coaching—bypass blindspots complice.co/event/gci2020m…
@HiNaryan Sensemaking = Making sense Embodied cognition = Situated cognition Subject-object = Seeing your own eyeballs Decentralized decisions = Bias to action Meta-strategy = Strategy-strategy Authenticity = Real talk
4h left and we just had a couple of cancellations so there's one space left for each workshop. Want to spend 5h this weekend going meta with us?
Retweeted @DRMacIver
Talking about feelings is important, but people need to be able to present feelings to you as information without creating a…
Retweeted @literalbanana
You may think a tweet is screaming at you, but when we interviewed a sample of tweets, most of them reported that they w…
Replying to @eigenrobot
@eigenrobot this is some spiderman shit right there
Aaaaaaand sold! Sign up for the Complice newsletter to find out about future events :) complice.co/newsletter
@RichDecibels This seems like a vital & underappreciated part of the thing, but far from all. Also "you just need to cultivate and nurture relationships" as if that's something people know how to do already in the way one needs to do it to make the kind of difference we're talking about here
@RichDecibels (The word "just" has a warning tag next to it for me, for this reason. I might even say that using the word "just" in this way is the antithesis of systems thinking, because it implies an absence of cybernetic structures creating the *current* behavior) twitter.com/publius__2/sta…
@Austen @CompliceGoals coworking rooms aren't like chill-style hanging out, but they're "we're both on our laptops doing work in the same room, chatting periodically" style hanging out. Background vibez: - small video - no audio (just chat) complice.co/rooms
Replying to @alt_visa
@alt_visa make a tweet asking for interesting compliments, or even something like "describe me in weird imagery" or something
Retweeted @BretWeinstein
The day before Evergreen melted down I presented this model: the population is made up of four types of people: A small…
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@RichDecibels (The word "just" has a warning tag next to it for me, for this reason. I might even say that using the wor…
Replying to @actualhog
@actualhog Yeah we've run it every new years for the last few years, and that shows no sign of shifting :) Considering running one in a couple months.
This org "FIRE" is doing some organizing on college campuses around free speech & cancel culture. These people have been tracking the trends for years. Seems like important work, and worth spreading the word about.
Seems like one vital piece that might help coordinate more of the larger group of people who don't want to go along with the hunts yet are afraid of being tagged as witches if they oppose them.
Replying to @benlidgey
@benlidgey @pixlz Fixed this issue (error when unable to find user associated with message) in v0.1.1, download latest from github or npm now. Not sure if @pixlz issue was the same.
Replying to @magghu
@magghu Just feels like awayness/blankness/nopenopenope to me, mostly. Not sure if that's a layer on top of the shame.
@visakanv Haven't read it yet but this just came up in my feed and seems like a decent candidate for good nerd shit.
@visakanv On a different note, Diamond: A Paradox Logic is worth reading the first few chapters of.
@eriktorenberg I think Iain McGilchrist is a decent example of someone who managed to develop a powerful model only because he had 2 decades to puzzle about it rather than having to publish every year. (His side-gig; was working full-time as a psychiatrist at the time)
Retweeted @literalbanana
Education (as we know it) seems to be grounded in the idea that valuable knowledge can be transmitted mostly in words, d…
@collinofzion The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGilchrist. Unfortunately not read by him... his voice is so soft and lovely.
Replying to @m_altcroft
@visakanv @TuckerMax Did this happen? I would watch. CC @utotranslucence
@levity @s_r_constantin There's something beautiful I've come to appreciate about this too, which is that I don't HAVE TO untangle any particular past karma on any particular day. It'll still be waiting for me later if I don't do it today, but I do genuinely have the choice whether it's time to face it.
Retweeted @Malcolm_Ocean
@levity @s_r_constantin There's something beautiful I've come to appreciate about this too, which is that I don't HAVE T…
Retweeted @MattPirkowski
"Yes, of course I realize that I'm part of a feedback process driving escalating levels of polarization, violence, and t…
Replying to @keendisregard
@KeenDisregard Also just because you can diagnose the problem in a way that sounds accurate does not mean that you actually have a workable solution AT ALL.
Retweeted @DanielleFong
Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19 (PNAS) Our analysis reveals that the…
Last week @PublicHealthON or maybe @ROWPublicHealth dropped off a pamphlet on our door, and it had a bunch of recommendations, and masking up wasn't one of them. Turns out that's not just one key element but maybe the MAIN key element. Come on guys! Better info for the people!
Replying to @keendisregard
@KeenDisregard Great example. I'm working on a post or tweetstorm on this topic and I'll include that. Would love more examples if you or others have them, whether from health or other contexts (politics, interpersonal dynamics, design, etc)
Me re 👁️👄👁️ #JOMO
#ThingsIWantToExist - tiny idea 💡 An app for music while running, that measures bpm based on phone gyroscope/accelerometer, and uses it to pick songs. Could even potentially use it to speed up songs in real-time to match pace.
Thread · Roam, notetaking ontology, and what software is for
Thoughts while reading this article by @danshipper about the notetaking cold war
> You’ll notice that there’s no great debate about the best way to organize the information inside of a CRM. It’s fairly obvious how to do that: a CRM should be a long list of customers. Nope! #roamcult actually thinks a CRM should also be intertwingled:
Hmm… looking at Essentialism ↔ Pragmatism debate… I would say the @RoamResearch side is better framed as "Relationalism" or "Contextualism" or something. It's taking more of an active stand than simply "instrumental value". Dan's description of P resonates with that:
> notice something really important about software: all software does the same thing. > Software lets us record information, store it, transform it, and then retrieve it at an appropriate point in the future. …not false, but this frame seems both too narrow & too abstract.
Like I find myself wanting to say "sure, technically, but that doesn't highlight the limitations nor possibilities of software compared to other tools or techniques. Tools are relational. They let us have certain kinds of experiences of ourselves while we're using it.
I find myself wanting to say "Roam is a notetaking app, but it is not a notes app". It doesn't have "notes". Its metaphor isn't totally clear (I've been musing about this) but it's clearly different from notes/notebook (essentially file/folder analog)
Hmm… yeah, some interesting stuff here about the nature of structure for a given type. Ontology. Is structure of information explicit & predefined, or implicit & emergent? Roam will powerfully queer that distinction. Talked w @Conaw last year about this.
Aaaaand I have hit the paywall. Hm, I'm curious to read the rest of this, but not $20 worth of curious. 🤷♀️
Replying to @magghu
@magghu Hard to say how it feels in body except "away" As Robert DeLong puts it "I wanna be anywhere but here" Thus it's only even been recently that I've started to notice feelings like shame, because previously I would usually go somewhere else immediately. youtube.com/watch?v=KDcGsZ…
@meekaale @Conaw Yeah, totally! I'm familiar with one kind of explicit & emergent structure from building @CompliceGoals using @MongoDB, which has very flexible schemas for database objects that make it fairly easy to adapt structure.
Replying to @Virtual1nstinct
@Virtual1nstinct @mechanicalmonk1 @TheOrangeAlt @natural_hazard @rerarom @QiaochuYuan Noice. I have a couple of blog posts on related topics. The most like... explicitly related one, maybe, is this one, simply called "Mindfulness Field Training II" I thought Brienne quoted it somewhere but can't find said quote. malcolmocean.com/2014/04/mft-pa…
@Virtual1nstinct @mechanicalmonk1 @TheOrangeAlt @natural_hazard @rerarom @QiaochuYuan The other is called Building self-trust with Self-Referential Motivation, and goes into a lot more depth about how to employ self-referential techniques. This is distinct from the Löb hack, but I'm not sure how to succinctly articulate how. malcolmocean.com/2017/11/self-r…
Replying to @m_altcroft
@m_altcroft @qchurious said something similar. My response: Have you tried like, childhood dreams? Plus like, idk, writing out eg dreams you had in grad school even though you know you've moved on Can help flush the cache I had shit like "file a patent", when I first did the exercise
@m_altcroft @qchurious Something satisfying about writing those out so you can consciously acknowledge you're not choosing them.
Retweeted @noahlt
@startuployalist just now I forgot your name (please forgive me) and remembered it by repeating "the diamond age" in my head un…
Thread · Returning to a practice after falling off the wagon
Lots to say to @m_ashcroft's question here. First thing is that you've already taken 2 excellent steps! 1⃣ notice you're off the wagon & want to get back on 2⃣ make that into an opportunity (in this case, for me to write about what to do here publicly, & for all to learn) 1/🧵
Turning unwanted situations into opportunities is a really valuable move to make, because it interrupts the downward spiral that can occur there and turns it into an upward spiral instead. "we can build on this!"
Another vital distinction to note is the difference between being able to get back on the wagon once vs ongoingly. If you get back on with "this time, I mean it, I won't miss a single day", that may work great… …til you *do* miss a day, and then it'll be *harder* to return.
Similarly, if you feel inspired this time to get back onto Complice by going and filling in a bunch of past days as best you remember, and doing your weekly review… …be careful you don't set yourself up to feel like you *have to* to that every time to get back on!
That is: what makes sense one time may not make sense later. In this sense, Tom here is kinda onto something, except that most people will hear the "just" as implying it should be easy. If it required no reorganization, you'd already be doing it.
Instead I'd say something like: 1. Ask yourself: what will it take to get back on the wagon this time? 2. Answer the question. Not with words, necessarily: enact the answer to the question. (I'm sure you grok a lot of this stuff from your Alexander Technique experience!)
On a much more content level, cleaning out anything that feels stale can help, and starting small. Just sign on and set one intention that's important for today. Maybe 2-3. @AbhayPrasanna's suggestions are great: twitter.com/AbhayPrasanna/…
While I'm here, I find myself musing about the "fall off the wagon" metaphor *googles* Seems it's short for "falling off the water wagon", ie drinking alcohol after abstinence. Framing of addiction-to-sloth isn't uncommon, but probably not ideal.
Instead maybe a metaphor drawn from meditation or similar practices 🧘♀️ How can I return my attention to what I deeply care about (on the level of goals, or values) when I discover that it has strayed? 👁️ Similar to returning attention to the breath, or:
Might do a longer write-up at some point, but that'll suffice for today's thread! If anyone reading this is curious about the app I built inspired by some of the principles in this thread, you can learn more about the Complice philosophy here: complice.co/philosophy
@m_ashcroft @CompliceGoals Did a thread! Loved that you asked about this publicly. I think my thread will be useful for other people even though it's very my addressed to you personally 🙂🙏
@TheOrangeAlt I used to have almost the opposite! In middle school I had a strong sense of self-worth, but felt like other people couldn't see my value… I felt shy and awkward and didn't know how to connect with people, but had a sort of refrain "they don't know what they're missing"
Thread: Metaphors Matter I'll be adding to this over time, mostly with examples/discussions of specific metaphors, but let's start with a link to my writing on Metaphor Design:
As I said to a friend once "sure, that metaphor kind of captures your situation, but it also implies your situation is completely hopeless. can we find a metaphor where you have more agency?" "wave" metaphor for covid implies letting it run its course
@jondubin Hm. McGilchrist talks a bit about how we underappreciate the extent to which nearly all of our thinking is in some sense metaphorical and based on our embodied relationship to reality, even though the left hemisphere likes to forget that that is so. twitter.com/chumulu/status…
@generativist Yeah, this wasn't always so, as counterexamples demonastrate. My guess is that upwards of 99% of <=4 letter screennames are taken, so they are effectively saying "don't waste your time trying to find one that isn't"
Retweeted @cognazor
The latter is the solution to the former, as people tend to forget twitter.com/ameskousing/st…
Retweeted @julianweisser
Do things that enable you to say, “Even when I lose I win.” h/t @visakanv
sleep deprivation as a psychotechnology
Just found this @jsomers article "Semantic Notes", which uses textual analysis to map different pieces of writing in a vector space. Could make a cool plugin for @RoamResearch at some point, to supplement the explicit linked & unlinked references! jsomers.net/blog/semantic-…
This story gets to a crux I hadn't fully appreciated before, of why robot soldiers are in a weird ethical zone even if they're being controlled remotely. The rules of war are weird, but much better, I suppose, than having war with no rules. Hm.
@Jeanvaljean689 @ifIknewIdtellya @TheHatefulDead In Canada (or at least NS where I took driver's ed) last I checked it was illegal to drive if you'd been up for more than 24h straight. Not sure exactly how they measured this sort of thing, but it's a heuristic I've found helpful.
@norris_capital idk what to do with your message. not sure what it's in response to like whether you think there's something I don't understand, or more like a particular opportunity for synergy based on what I've said or... yeah
@m_ashcroft Oh yeah?! Well, then... ...you might like this piece I wrote for ribbonfarm a few years ago about questions: ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/10/que…
@norris_capital s'all good. should'll do that to ya youtube.com/watch?v=JrvFM5…
@norris_capital Hm yeah. I don't know exactly what I need in terms of meditation. I've found the lack of stimulus inside silent meditation to often mean I'm really mostly lost for a long time, barely able to remember I even have an intent, and it feels like on net I end up training mindwandering
Kudos for public "I've made zero progress" (apparently free of shame!) Here's a thread for posting a thing you've been meaning to do for months or years, have made zero progress on, and still would like to do. For me... hard to find "zero". But ~"record a second album" 🧑🎤🎶
Replying to @nathanwaters
@nathanwaters Similar concerns re Ontario/Canada here.
Retweeted @IntuitMachine
Every duality is actually a part-whole relationship where the parts are confused with the whole. Prove me wrong!
@itsarnavb @eriktorenberg I saw a presentation by a guy* who would learn to speak new languages without an unnatural accent by listening to a ton of rap in that language and learning to reproduce it, to get the vibe down. *(I forget his name but he was touring with @sebastmarsh in 2014)
Retweeted @Yascha_Mounk
It's amazing how long it has taken for people to feel comfortable saying the obvious: White Fragility is a terrible, terr…
Retweeted @utotranslucence
Fuck absolutely everything that has ever made a single person feel unworthy, lazy, or not enough
Replying to @utotranslucence
@utotranslucence If you want it laid out like... really... explicitly. Then. Well. There's this. youtube.com/watch?v=lFl_lz…
@QiaochuYuan Fine, I'm patiently dribbling
@tasshinfogleman Spent 5h distilling a classic article into a tweetstorm. Got minimal reception at first but it's evergreen and I keep mentioning it so now it's got most RTs for me this year so far.
@tasshinfogleman Minimal reception except this guy:
@tasshinfogleman best… depends on the direction, but maybe this juxtaposition here: (I think you'll like it, also)
@literalbanana "yes" also got "down" as in "I'm down"
Retweeted @davidgraeber
The first major activist movement in the US after independence were the Abolitionists & I wonder sometimes if they set th…
@squaredanscloud @The_Kobot @mkobach yeah sounds like selling out to me 🤷♀️
Me: "Google photos just updated its logo, *again*. Come on guys, the old one was fine. Picasa was fine. Actually build something new, don't just rebrand." @SarahAMcManus "…brand obsolescence."
Retweeted @RichDecibels
When ppl say 'the world is getting more complex' I mentally replace it with 'the simplified simulations of the world we u…
Replying to @cwdaniels
@cwdaniels @parkerjpalmer Mmm reminds me of this article I wrote, which you might dig! ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/10/que…
Cool thread about questions. I would call some of these kinds of practices "holding questions" rather than asking them. (Article about that distinction: ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/10/que…) twitter.com/cwdaniels/stat…
Trying out @heyhey; honestly I'm so 😩 at how many emails are coming into my gmail that I almost didn't even want to forward them at all, and just start fresh. But then I'd barely get hey mail, so I'm trying it out and I'm just gonna be really aggressive with screening I guess.
@TheRoyalTbomb @heyhey lol some of them are a bunch of alerts (errors, warnings, etc) from my own app, which I'm currently setting up so they get sent to rollbar instead could unsubscribe but there's just so many, idk
Okay @heyhey, here's something I don't get. Why are these separate steps? • screen [yes/no] • put in paper trail vs elsewhere Aha, wait, answered my own question. P hotkey screens straight into Paper Trail. Great. You guys are savvy.
Uhh the E hotkey to screen into Feed isn't working though.
Also @heyhey Screening a mailing list email into Feed should put the list into Feed, not the sender I'm on various lists with friends. Seems clear to me that those lists are Feed but if the friend emails me directly then it should go to Imbox.
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
okay okay okay apparently it's time to start a thread of metaphors for emptiness & form so far mostly featuring thing…
Retweeted @SarahAMcManus
Update! Someone who is approximately not on Twitter (lmk if you want to be cited) pointed out that the Daodejing uses t…
I think a random neuron of mine died last week because I've been making way more hear↔here typos than usual (3+ in one week, compared to zero) (I'm very curious to here others' hypotheses for why this might be. Probably not "neuron died" but idk what.)
"Perfect is the enemy of the good" is the enemy of the perfect.
I like how they're rooting for her.
@QiaochuYuan they try, it sorta works eventually maybe
Replying to @actualhog
Replying to @abhayance
@AbhayPrasanna @jimrandomh Hm, seems plausible... would guess it happened at the point where I had made the error *twice* in a couple days just by random (which is likely to happen for SOME word ever) and then I did the conscious attention disruption thing.
Retweeted @edelwax
Tomorrow the Social Design Club kicks off! @Malcolm_Ocean will be presenting some social features for working together and thi…
@benstukenborg @CompliceGoals Oooh, yeah. Nice. I would guess that's related to @RoamResearch's recent success: it has a very open-ended sandbox vibe. Steep learning curve but also you can climb it slowly (/ at an angle) so it's okay
@dannhiday I consume substantial amounts of caffeine (pills, not coffee) at most once/week, either just before or just after my nap
@dannhiday (just before my nap = "take pill, lay down, wake up very energized")
Retweeted @adamludwin
Sitting in 45 min of traffic to go to an office for 8 hours is insane Working from home with your kids screaming in the ne…
@maxkriegers @ctbeiser @meekaale You might dig my presentation on The Stoa tomorrow! Not sure exactly what it's gonna be on yet but probably various coordination features I've thought about in relation to complice.co
Thread re [[therapy]] and [[atomization]] and [[emotional labor]] twitter.com/cybersygh/stat…