anyone know some great books about ancient greece stuff?
i'm reading this and it's mediocre. 60 pages in.
The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World
author is kinda dumb
he doesn't know when he's making shit up vs. reporting facts very well
he doesn't know when to quote or reference other authors
he doesn't know what quotes or facts to include or not very well
he knows some stuff about greece. he knows what lots of scholars have written. he's summarizing lots of ideas. there's something good about that
i think he actually sorta likes multiple conflicting opinions at the same time
and there's something bad about that
but it helps him report more than just his personal biases
controversies can be interesting but i don't think he understands when to reject stuff as bad vs. consider it reasonable alternative possibility
he's bad at speculating about the motives of ancient social change and says some modern trendy lefty shit
that's one of the sadder things. he has travelled aroudn greece, spent his life studying it ... and doesn't recognize how much he's projecting modern notions on them
something that stood out was the white pillars like for parthenon are europoean invention
from like 1800s when revival of greece and finding its art was popular in europe
revival of greece the idea, not greece the country
he said the greeks painted stuff
and the euro recreations made it white
the parthenon ppl visit is really inaccurate in other ways
so the ottoman empire controlled the area
and built a mosque and a bunch of other buildings
and then greek independence and they tear that down and restore/rebuild some greek structures
and they left the area sparse with a few temples
and the original in ancient greece wasn't just a sparse tourist monument to look at, it was a functional part of life and there was stuff all over
1999 book. there's no ebook (lame for that recent!) so it's slow reading :/
this review has some good points in it
ppl who buy and read a book like that, and it's not for a school class, are a pretty promising group for someone who could be my audience. there are a lot of ppl like that (tens of thousands?) even tho it's not a big portion of the population.
i think they are mostly older ppl
not so many 20yos inclined to read that book. or others like it. or FoR as i read when i was 18. but still some.
school reading is one of the big blockers. puts ppl off reading and uses up their patience for reading scholarly works.
social life is another issue
Messages (73)
> something that stood out was the white pillars like for parthenon are europoean invention
so are the white sculptures.
> school reading is one of the big blockers. puts ppl off reading and uses up their patience for reading scholarly works.
my son didn't go to school and i didn't force him to do academics, so what could be to blame for his lack of interest in reading, maths and learning in general?
doctors would say that his brain damage affects his cognitive ability.
another guess is that my own life wasn't very interesting and as such not much of an example for my son. he mostly saw me sitting at a computer. i was reading and typing but i didn't talk about those things to him. he mostly caught up on a casual interest in gaming from watching me. i got him normal kid toys and played with him sometimes. i took him to some homeschool groups infrequently because i disliked them. i think i expected that freedom would lead him to want to learn. but he didn't learn that learning is valuable.
what do you think?
> my son didn't go to school and i didn't force him to do academics, so what could be to blame for his lack of interest in reading, maths and learning in general?
many things, such as the 5000 ways you coerced him, and also he picked up many ideas from a culture full of people who dislike reading (partly due to school).
explaining what you're doing is important. another issue is your own seriousness about wanting to learn.
> many things, such as the 5000 ways you coerced him
what 5000 ways?
i was into TCS and didn't actively force him to do anything, so how did i coerce him?
> another issue is your own seriousness about wanting to learn.
why would this matter?
> i was into TCS
not seriously enough. correctly learning TCS would leave plenty of evidence online. lots of discussions, questions, essays, book reviews, etc, etc, etc
you, like many others, made some limited effort that was inadequate to understand TCS.
one of the reasons this happened is the standards required to learn TCS are much higher than the standards people are used to. they seem unfair, a huge ask, a big burden. they sound an extraordinarily energetic pursuit of TCS, like going above and beyond the call of duty. so people think, well, they aren't like that, they aren't a top expert on TCS who focused all their energy getting it right, but they're pretty good, they learned a bunch about TCS.
this perspective is culturally normal but a big mistake. one of the problems is it doesn't matter what is a culturally normal amount of effort to learn TCS. what matters is how much it takes not to coercive your kid. the proper standards for these things are objective – about what it takes to solve particular problems – not relative standards about what feels "fair" to ask people to do.
a boulder requires a very large (by the typical standards of human strength in our culture) amount of strength to push, and it doesn't matter that you're stronger than your neighbor. TCS requires a very large (by typical cultural standards today) amount of knowledge, learning effort, etc, to get right. it doesn't matter if you devote an amount of learning effort to TCS that is double what it'd take to be a great successful effort at something else. if it's not enough to solve problems (like not hurting your kid) then it's not enough. just like pushing the boulder twice as hard as your neighbor, but still failing to budge it, isn't hard enough.
> > another issue is your own seriousness about wanting to learn.
> why would this matter?
when you have anti-learning attitudes and a lifestyle of not learning much (which I can infer from, again, the lack of public evidence of learning philosophy, learning TCS, etc), then what do you expect to happen? your kid will observe your life, attitudes, etc, for guidance. it doesn't make sense to expect him to figure out a bunch of stuff you didn't and be way better than you. that happens now and then but isn't typical.
> not seriously enough.
isn't it a cop-out to say this? you can say this about any parenting ideas out there, because none can be practiced consistently.
> correctly learning TCS would leave plenty of evidence online. lots of discussions, questions, essays, book reviews, etc, etc, etc
and correctly learning it in theory would also mean practicing it correctly?
there are obstacles to learning TCS, one of them is that TCS has been dead since 2003. the founders themselves abandoned TCS. and TCS wasn't very good before you started discussing it. it was a badly explained mess.
who else but you has been taking TCS seriously, discussing it, asking questions, writing essays and books reviews? according to your standard, you're the only person who is seriously interested in TCS and has correctly learned it. am i wrong? or are there other people i am not aware of?
i think one of my flaws was actually spending to much time in front of my computer discussing online and too little living. and too much time questioning what i was doing and being afraid of doing harm instead of doing something. if i had done more conventional things with my kid, i would have done better. if i had sent my kid to school and made him do his homework, i would have done better.
> what matters is how much it takes not to coercive your kid.
do you mean "not to coerce your kid"?
...
in sum you are telling me that i didn't have a good enough attitude to learn TCS.
even if it's true, that doesn't change that it was a dangerous philosophy to try and put into practice. to deviate from convention trying to do a completely new philosophy, no matter how irrefutably good, without understanding it, is disastrous.
nobody warned me against that. nobody told me "be a conventional parent while you learn this philosophy, you'll do less harm." on the contrary. the pressure to be TCS was your kid was still a baby was immense, because well, if you start TCS later, it could be too late.
conventionally raised children that are coerced intentionally and were sent to school are perhaps not the exceptional people you seek, but they can relate to people, get a job, go to Uni and have a career they enjoy.
> when you have anti-learning attitudes and a lifestyle of not learning much (which I can infer from, again, the lack of public evidence of learning philosophy, learning TCS, etc)
why do assume there is no public evidence of me learning TCS? even if there isn't any right now, public forums get destroyed.
i think you say this because according to you, nobody but you has been doing these things. so it counts for everyone, right?
> your kid will observe your life, attitudes, etc, for guidance. it doesn't make sense to expect him to figure out a bunch of stuff you didn't and be way better than you. that happens now and then but isn't typical.
this is what i have said is part of the problem. but how could i make a life for myself if i was at home discussing parenting online and trying to be a good TCS parent?
schools were coercive, so i didn't even consider suggesting it to my kid. i talked about school, but not in a positive way. he would not chose to go the way i put it or the way you put it.
yet given my life circumstances sending my kid to school and getting a job would have been the right thing to do. i should also have stayed close to family instead of being an unwanted immigrant.
that's what kids need, a good example.
...
do you think you could help my kid if i persuaded him to email you?
> isn't it a cop-out to say this? you can say this about any parenting ideas out there, because none can be practiced consistently.
what should i say when it's the truth? TCS could be practiced, you just didn't learn how to. arguments that TCS is impossible have always been welcome and so far have always failed.
TCS has a meaning. you can evaluate whether someone practices it or not. if you shared a ton of personal details then i could point out tons of straightforwardly TCS-incompatible stuff you did.
i'm not trying to be picky and exclude people who were only 99% TCS or something. your parenting was not similar to TCS. i know this because TCS is unconventional and complicated, and no one gets near it without learning a lot about it (which leaves public evidence I would be aware of).
> do you mean "not to coerce your kid"?
yes that was a typo.
> there are obstacles to learning TCS, one of them is that TCS has been dead since 2003.
this is false, there's been a TCS list (where people can learn TCS) continuously to this day.
at all times since TCS began, either DD or me has been available to field questions.
TCS has only gotten EASIER to learn since 2003, not harder. because, as you mention below, *I* have made it easier to learn.
> and TCS wasn't very good before you started discussing it. it was a badly explained mess.
this is misleading.
some things were explained very well. *The Fabric of Reality* is an exceptionally great book which explains some major parts of TCS. Popper has good books too.
lots of things – be it epistemology or about brushing teeth, bedtime, carseats, leaving toystores, crossing the street, etc – were explained well enough that I and others learned a lot.
but just reading the topical essays like about candy and sugar doesn't make one capable of practicing TCS. one must also learn about epistemology and liberalism. and one must put everything together and figure out how to act in life situations and apply this knowledge. this is partly a personal process – one can't be handed everything. and it's partly a process of filling in blanks (while there was lots of helpful stuff written down, it could not be and was not complete about everything). this learning process requires things like discussion and asking questions.
DD was available to answer questions. I asked him a great many questions. Others could have too. If people didn't care enough about learning TCS to ask DD lots of questions, have lots of discussions with him, etc, that was their choice.
I learned TCS. Others could have (and, because of me, still could now). Mostly they chose not to.
> nobody warned me against that.
no warnings is false, e.g. DD wrote the *Is TCS Revolutionary?* article
> do you think you could help my kid if i persuaded him to email you?
depends. i can (and like to) help people who want to learn. persuading kid to email me doesn't require persuading kid to want to learn.
there are some traits involved with learning that are very important including initiative, persistence, being energetic and taking responsibility for one's own life. lots of people say they want to learn but they are kinda passive and helpless about it, which doesn't work well.
> who else but you has been taking TCS seriously, discussing it, asking questions, writing essays and books reviews? according to your standard, you're the only person who is seriously interested in TCS and has correctly learned it. am i wrong? or are there other people i am not aware of?
DD also learned lots of stuff but i don't want to discuss him personally. anyway, what's your point? most people prefer not to think much. so they don't do TCS parenting. they ought to change.
> conventionally raised children that are coerced intentionally and were sent to school are perhaps not the exceptional people you seek, but they can relate to people, get a job, go to Uni and have a career
so far i was agreeing with you but then you finished the sentence:
> they enjoy.
*lots* of them do not enjoy their careers (or marriages, or time in school). that includes many of the ones who say they do enjoy it.
> why do assume there is no public evidence of me learning TCS? even if there isn't any right now, public forums get destroyed.
i have the TCS archives and some other things, i have familiarity with the community and stuff. if you want to deny it, you're welcome to try it and do things like name some of the forums you participated at, some of the books you read and discussed (and indicate who you discussed them with and why them), and say what you did and didn't do on the TCS list. or, you know, you could just say you're name which could probably clarify matters quickly.
> i think you say this because according to you, nobody but you has been doing these things. so it counts for everyone, right?
something like that. but the stuff you've already said rules out you being a bunch of people. e.g. you're not Justin. so we don't have to worry about evaluating Justin's current attempts at learning. and anyway i'm confident he would deny his ability to be a successful TCS parent today. he knows enough to know of some things he doesn't know about how to practice TCS.
I think I know who the anon is. (I will not break the anon rules to say who it is)
Good to see that the person is back on FI.
> this is false, there's been a TCS list (where people can learn TCS) continuously to this day.
it has been dead since 2003. so has the website.
> TCS has only gotten EASIER to learn since 2003, not harder. because, as you mention below, *I* have made it easier to learn.
if it's easier to learn, then why aren't parents even considering it anymore?
maybe because you have not created a parent friendly environment for parents to learn TCS.
> some things were explained very well. *The Fabric of Reality* is an exceptionally great book which explains some major parts of TCS. Popper has good books too.
i have never read those. if reading those was necessary to learn TCS you are right i haven't learned TCS.
i thought that reading articles on the website, agreeing that coercion is bad and discussing parenting issues as they came up sufficed to learn TCS.
> lots of things – be it epistemology or about brushing teeth, bedtime, carseats, leaving toystores, crossing the street, etc – were explained well enough that I and others learned a lot.
i remember discussing those problems too, but finding that in practice they were left unsolved.
what others have learned a lot? if they learned a lot why did they abandon TCS? where are they now? why did the founders Kolya, Sarah and DD give up TCS? why did the parents who were so passionately involved with TCS disappeared?
> DD was available to answer questions. I asked him a great many questions. Others could have too. If people didn't care enough about learning TCS to ask DD lots of questions, have lots of discussions with him, etc, that was their choice.
DD wasn't available to everyone. he didn't answer to everyone. he answered your questions because he liked you.
> I learned TCS. Others could have (and, because of me, still could now). Mostly they chose not to.
i agree with you that you put effort where others didn't.
> no warnings is false, e.g. DD wrote the *Is TCS Revolutionary?* article
this was a hard one to find, i could only find a snapshot at tcs.ac in the wayback machine.
the article is not in DD's current website. he doesn't even mention any participation with TCS in his website.
quoting DD from said article:
> a rational family is one whose behaviour would be essentially unchanged if the tables were miraculously turned and the children had all the legal rights, economic power and physical strength on their side
isn't this anti-capitalism? the parents have economic power because they have taken responsibility for their own lives and have learned how to make money. adults have knowledge on how to live that dependent children don't have.
is DD suggesting that adults also lose all their knowledge and children have it miraculously? that they become dumb and dependent?
so children magically have all the legal power, all the money and also know how to pay their rent or their mortgage and their car insurance.
how is that changing anything?
then for several paragraphs he waffles on, taking the question seriously but not answering it. then after boring the reader, more concerned with showing off his skills with flowery language than being understood, he finally answers. Wait, no! Not yet.
> Before I address this problem,
He then tries to argue that mainstream education faces this dilemma as well. It doesn't because mainstream makes changes piecemeal as problems come up within the tradition of adults having authority over children.
> What does one do, in such cases, about the risk of losing vital knowledge as one abandons a failed set of ideas? One thing that one does not do is hesitate to argue against those ideas and in favour of ideas that seem better.
what does arguing for it have to do with what you are meant to do in real life as a parent?
also, he changed his mind about arguing for TCS. he doesn't do it anymore and didn't tell us why he doesn't do it anymore.
> First, we should always strive to use or adapt existing traditions, preferably ones that have evolved to meet independent criteria, rather than try to design something wholly new. In my opinion, TCS already does this very well. The sorts of behaviour that TCS advocates in place of conventional adult-child coercion are deeply rooted in other stalwart traditions of our culture, such as Enlightenment rationality, the autonomy of the individual, human rights, and (most important) many of the existing traditions of the family and of friendship between equals.
Then he finally answers with the same argument you make, which doesn't really solve the problem. TCS is parenting and cannot import from other traditions that contradict the parenting tradition without problems. by not coercing you are throwing away the inexplicit knowledge that parents teach children through coercion.
> My second suggestion is much harder to apply. It is that we should remain open to further change, and that we should not expect the new theory, in itself, to provide new, workable traditions. Those must evolve in the light of the theory — indeed they should co-evolve with the theory — and one of the main purposes of TCS is to promote their continuing evolution.
This is so abstract and unhelpful. What does this mean in real life, what is a TCS parent actually meant to do when faced with problems in real life?
> This task will not be easily or quickly accomplished, and there can be no guarantee of success, even in the long run, let alone for a particular family or a particular child. Undertaking it is risky. Not undertaking it may be even more so.
how it may be even more so? DD didn't explain, he told silly analogies with crashing planes to trick people.
end quoting DD.
...
btw, i've found this in http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/we_love_tcs while looking for the "Is TCS Revolutionary?" article. Quoting a commenter:
> The resulting mutual benefit, trust, love and kindness in my relationship with my children is truly out of this world, revolutionary, evolutionary, and something I revel in literally every day. Ironic and sad what those who don't understand TCS are missing.
did she understood TCS? she seems confused. where is this person who "understood" TCS so well is? why aren't her kids in your list pursuing excellence?
And another comment in the same page:
> The perfect parenting philosophy, but it does what I've always dreamed of, and that is leading the next big revolution for equality.
does this sound like a person who understood TCS?
Back to you:
> there are some traits involved with learning that are very important including initiative, persistence, being energetic and taking responsibility for one's own life. lots of people say they want to learn but they are kinda passive and helpless about it, which doesn't work well.
the problem is that the kid didn't grow up with these traits. can you help a person learn to value these traits? can you pick a person from where they are and help them like learning?
if you can't, what use is your philosophy? if it only helps those who already have the qualities you say they need to learn from you, it won't help anyone.
> *lots* of them do not enjoy their careers (or marriages, or time in school). that includes many of the ones who say they do enjoy it.
so? many are happy. many succeed.
> you could just say you're name
your name
why do you make so many common english mistakes when you're so precise with everything else?
my guess is you do not care if you make english mistakes. why not?
> something like that. but the stuff you've already said rules out you being a bunch of people. e.g. you're not Justin. so we don't have to worry about evaluating Justin's current attempts at learning. and anyway i'm confident he would deny his ability to be a successful TCS parent today. he knows enough to know of some things he doesn't know about how to practice TCS.
if not even Justin is good enough to be TCS, isn't that bad for TCS?
do you know enough to practice TCS?
what use is a philosophy that only you can practice?
TCS Warnings
#6851
>> no warnings is false, e.g. DD wrote the *Is TCS Revolutionary?* article
>this was a hard one to find, i could only find a snapshot at tcs.ac in the wayback machine.
Do you have an actual link? I couldn't find it in the Wayback machine either.
I don't see where you say whether the "Is TCS Revolutionary?" article actually contains a warning or not. You didn't say whether you now concede that "no warnings is false".
Regardless, and speaking for myself, I think I was warned. Or more accurately, I was cautious, sought out and found the warnings that were available. And I heeded the warnings. I have not tried to do TCS without learning enough of it to be successful.
And I haven't tried to learn enough about TCS to be successful, but that's a different issue. As is the issue of whether anyone other than Elliot has learned enough about TCS to be successful.
>what use is a philosophy that only you can practice?
one reason it's useful is cuz others can LEARN it and use it to make their lives and their kid's lives better. or are you suggesting that is impossible?
also, TCS is TRUE. how marvelous is that? :) ppl have created very insightful knowledge about parenting. that knowledge exists in books and essays and some ppl's minds. knowledge is AWESOME! minds figuring out true and better ideas is AWESOME!
but your TCS-dissing attitude is sorta like "oh, what's the use? it's too hard to practice. it's lacking."
are you dissing TCS cuz it allows you to feel better about yourself for not having understood it well enough?
>nobody warned me against that. nobody told me "be a conventional parent while you learn this philosophy, you'll do less harm."
doesn't it take a long time to actually understand TCS and epistemology? so then i don't understand how something like this would work. like once you understood a new TCS idea (and then another and another), how could you still parent conventionally?
if you know something better exists (TCS) and knew some of the ideas and why they were better, how can you SETTLE for the flawed shitty way kids are treated when parented conventionally?
>And I heeded the warnings. I have not tried to do TCS without learning enough of it to be successful.
do you think a part of you sorta "likes" the fact that there are warnings about not doing the revolutionary thing when it comes to TCS and parenting? and how you need to understand it well in order not to fuck up worse than convention?
re: what i mean by "likes", i think for some ppl (who are resistant about changing this part of their lives), it provides a convenient excuse. i'm not intimating this is you; i'm just looking at the ideas.
if a part of you is like this, then it would explain:
>And I haven't tried to learn enough about TCS to be successful, but that's a different issue.
>so? many are happy. many succeed.
they're not actually happy. they are fooling you and fooling themselves.
succeed *at what*? by what standard are you measuring success?
PAS:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030620082503/http://www.tcs.ac/Articles/DDIsTCSRevolutionary.html
> Do you have an actual link? I couldn't find it in the Wayback machine either.
why don't want to put the effort in finding a TCS article you want to read?
and did Elliot help you and not me? I had to find it myself.
> why don't want to put the effort in finding a TCS article you want to read?
> and did Elliot help you and not me? I had to find it myself.
Why does that bother you?
Do you want everyone to have equal amount of help?
> are you dissing TCS cuz it allows you to feel better about yourself for not having understood it well enough?
oh, look who came back from the dead. you don't post in FI regularly anymore, do you? you need to be prompted by Elliot. he needs to poke you constantly if you are dead or not. poor Elliot, why can't he find better followers who actually care about TCS for real?
what makes you think you are any good at TCS yourself? do you think you are an exception?
does praising TCS makes you feel better about yourself for not having understood it well enough?
>> so? many are happy. many succeed.
>
> they're not actually happy. they are fooling you and fooling themselves. succeed *at what*? by what standard are you measuring success?
why do you think they are fooling me and themselves?
the standard is the interesting stuff they do.
Leonor is Banned
Leonor, leave and don't come back.
> Why does that bother you?
> Do you want everyone to have equal amount of help?
i want to know what is his reasoning for the different treatment. why did i have to look for it and why was PAS handed out the link?
> Leonor, leave and don't come back.
So she wasn't un-banned? (I thought she was back again)
Elliot forgot about the ban the whole time?!
> i want to know what is his reasoning for the different treatment. why did i have to look for it and why was PAS handed out the link?
What will you do with his reasoning?
He doesn't believe in equality!
i just want to know. i don't understand why PAS deserves the help. he hasn't learned TCS in years either. he has made no effort to understand TCS and also disses it without understanding. i guess Elliot likes him for other reasons, and that's why he hands him the link?
> i just want to know. i don't understand why PAS deserves the help. he hasn't learned TCS in years either. he has made no effort to understand TCS and also disses it without understanding. i guess Elliot likes him for other reasons, and that's why he hands him the link?
Maybe there is no reason.
Maybe Elliot felt like googling after PAS mentioned it.
"felt like" is not like elliot.
why didn't he share the link straight away?
i didn't find it by googling. if there is a way to find it that way i do not know it.
of course Leonor is banned. why would she be back? she did not solve the problems she causes.
> Elliot forgot about the ban the whole time?!
no. she didn't share her name.
---
#6866
god you're stupid and angry. PAS got a link because he *asked*. you didn't ask for the link. now fuck off.
> of course Leonor is banned. why would she be back? she did not solve the problems she causes.
It was super-easy to recognize her text.
Why didn't you talk to her about getting un-banned first?
I thought she was un-banned and allowed again.
I thought she solved the ban problem through Rami.
Elliot was giving lengthy replies to her.. I was happy reading geniuses discuss.
> It was super-easy to recognize her text.
maybe i'm not, and don't want to be, a specialist in figuring out who is leonor by writing style. maybe i don't pay much attention to her.
> Why didn't you talk to her about getting un-banned first?
i don't understand. she just snuck on here. she didn't talk to me.
in the past i, being so very kind and generous, spoke about something she could do to work on solving some of the problems and maybe becoming welcome again. it involved writing about FI on her own website (e.g. a blog) so she could engage with FI stuff without writing on my blog or list. then if people found value in her stuff they could engage with her and she could, on a voluntary basis of people choosing to interact with her, become part of the FI discussions.
initially she made a blog and wrote a few things relating to FI. then she made her whole blog private in order to prevent FI people from replying to it (not only in comments at her blog, but even offsite replies)
she's clearly not very interested in discussion or consent.
> I thought she was un-banned and allowed again.
entirely your imagination.
> I thought she solved the ban problem through Rami.
Rami said nothing to me about it. BTW Rami has not been participating in the FI community and has refused to discuss why.
> Elliot was giving lengthy replies to her.. I was happy reading geniuses discuss.
She's stupid.
> maybe i'm not, and don't want to be, a specialist in figuring out who is leonor by writing style. maybe i don't pay much attention to her.
If not the writing style.. The info she wrote about her also revealed it was Leonor Gomes.
She mentioned a lot of things that only she would say.
> initially she made a blog and wrote a few things relating to FI. then she made her whole blog private in order to prevent FI people from replying to it (not only in comments at her blog, but even offsite replies)
I liked reading her stories.. She blocked me from reading too.. I didn't criticize her story at all.
> Rami said nothing to me about it. BTW Rami has not been participating in the FI community and has refused to discuss why.
Rami must be very busy with his Vaporized business.
> Rami must be very busy with his Vaporized business.
no, if he cared about his business and about FI he'd ask questions relating to it on FI. he'd try to use FI to benefit his business.
he doesn't care about philosophy thinking. he doesn't value and respect FI. sometimes he lies about how highly he thinks of FI, but you can see he's *acting* like he thinks FI shouldn't be part of his life and isn't useful.
wasn't anonymous better than PAS in that he put the effort in finding the article without the need to ask for a link? elliot wrote that those who deserve help, help themselves. not only PAS hasn't learned TCS in years, he couldn't help himself find an article.
> wasn't anonymous better than PAS in that he put the effort in finding the article without the need to ask for a link? elliot wrote that those who deserve help, help themselves. not only PAS hasn't learned TCS in years, he couldn't help himself find an article.
Are you patting your own back?
> not only PAS hasn't learned TCS in years
Not learning TCS isn't a crime.
Elliot doesn't coerce anyone to learn.
Elliot has criticized PAS in a post for not studying TCS.
I couldn't find the post though.
>does praising TCS makes you feel better about yourself for not having understood it well enough?
praising TCS (and Oism and Elliot) is right because they are *good* in a world where there's not enough of that goodness.
it's a mistake to hate the good and want to tear it down.
PAS, like Rami, and more or less everyone else, doesn't engage in a sustained way with discussion about his FI participation.
> praising TCS (and Oism and Elliot) is right because they are *good* in a world where there's not enough of that goodness.
how can you praise something you do not understand?
> it's a mistake to hate the good and want to tear it down.
how is not understanding something or criticism the same as hate?
> Not learning TCS isn't a crime.
but it's bad. and not making an effort to find what you want online is bad too.
TCS
#6855
>>And I heeded the warnings. I have not tried to do TCS without learning enough of it to be successful.
> do you think a part of you sorta "likes" the fact that there are warnings about not doing the revolutionary thing when it comes to TCS and parenting? and how you need to understand it well in order not to fuck up worse than convention?
I like reality.
It being better for me to not exceed the scope of what I understand well is reality.
So ya, I like it.
I don't like it as well as some other possible scenarios I can imagine.
I don't like it as well as the imagined scenario where I found TCS and learned a bunch about it before deciding to have kids.
>I like reality.
all parts of reality?
>It being better for me to not exceed the scope of what I understand well is reality.
yes. and you like that particular fact of reality. does a part of you like that particular fact more than other facts of reality?
like what about the fact of reality that if you prioritized learning TCS (i.e. epistemology/reason), then it'd greatly improve your life and your kid's life.
for most ppl there are some facts of reality they actually don't like very well. cuz those facts of reality ask too much of them. much more than they wanna give. more than they wanna change. some parts of reality are scary and would shatter misconceptions they've been enacting for decades.
so imagine someone has blocks like this. do you see how welcoming it could be to hear an idea that says, "beware. don't do the revolutionary thing and throw out helpful traditional knowledge."? they (mistakenly) allow it to become a convenient excuse which keeps them from changing to something better.
i don't think you actually like all aspects of reality. or else you'd be a lot better and you'd want to use FI to learn about TCS, ARR, Oism, epistemology.
but yet your response "I like reality." is about portraying yourself as rational (reality-focused).
> rational (reality-focused)
"rational" does not mean reality-focused.
#6885
>> It being better for me to not exceed the scope of what I understand well is reality.
> yes. and you like that particular fact of reality. does a part of you like that particular fact more than other facts of reality?
Ya, of course.
For example, I like it much better than the fact of reality that unless a bunch of major scientific and medical breakthroughs happen, I'm highly likely to die in the next 60 years.
So? What's your point?
> like what about the fact of reality that if you prioritized learning TCS (i.e. epistemology/reason), then it'd greatly improve your life and your kid's life.
I don't agree that what you claim is a fact of reality is actually a fact. Meaning: I don't know that if I prioritized learning TCS it'd greatly improve my life and my kid's life.
I have reasons to suspect that it might, like explicit arguments from Elliot.
I also have reasons to suspect that it might not, like lacking an explicit understanding of the mechanism(s) by which I would benefit.
And having a life (and kids) that are successful by conventional standards, which TCS makes no bones about upending. Unlike the inner city poors that Trump is trying to appeal to, I do have something to lose.
And other explicit and inexplicit stuff. Point is, if I already agreed that learning TCS would greatly improve my life, I'd do it. But I don't already agree.
What problems does prioritizing learning TCS solve for me, right now? What problems does prioritizing learning TCS create for me, right now?
When considered this way, the problems prioritizing learning TCS could solve for me seem vague, and unintersting, and they're mostly problems with solutions that are mostly acceptable to me already in place.
Whereas the problems prioritizing learning TCS would create are big & concrete, but also less interesting than other problems I'm interested in focusing on.
you should learn philosophy of ideas now
> I also have reasons to suspect that it might not, like lacking an explicit understanding of the mechanism(s) by which I would benefit.
you make mistakes. if you thought better, you could improve more of them. FI has knowledge about how to think which you could study (including references, e.g. to Popper books, not just original or unique work).
you've never made it clear specifically what you dispute. which is just the sort of sloppy thinking involved with making extra and worse mistakes in general!
> which TCS makes no bones about upending
this is misleading. learn one thing at a time. upend only what you want to upend, if you decide it's a good idea. (if you don't trust your judgement, then proceed with as much extra caution as you want. no problem. if that gets you stuck, that'd be discussable.)
> What problems does prioritizing learning TCS solve for me, right now? What problems does prioritizing learning TCS create for me, right now?
this question is unfair b/c you won't tell us much about your life. if you did, we could point out problems (or concede some stuff).
the impersonal case of how learning philosophy helps people's lives has been addressed with both principled arguments and examples.
if you want something else, ask for it. if you consider this inadequate, you could say why.
---
we aren't at an impasse here intellectually, you just don't take reasonable steps to pursue the matter. you could take many such steps in a small amount of time if you chose to.
>Point is, if I already agreed that learning TCS would greatly improve my life, I'd do it. But I don't already agree.
you not only don't agree, but you don't pursue the issue to figure it out. and you seem *satisfied* about your choice to not pursue the issue.
why do you find your choice to do this persuasive? cuz i don't find your choice at all persuasive.
and i think one idea that u use to try to convince yourself that you are making the right choice is this idea that you have too much to lose if you turn away from conventional parenting and mess it up.
but it's not like TCS says change everything at once or do stuff you don't understand.
yet you seem to cling to this reason. (this is what i meant by initially asking about you liking it). mb it makes you feel better about your choice not to learn about TCS.
> you not only don't agree, but you don't pursue the issue to figure it out. and you seem *satisfied* about your choice to not pursue the issue.
Kate, you know you do plenty of similar stuff? refused to discuss some things, dropped some topics, etc.
and, Kate, you haven't paid much attention to getting the basics right. like asking lots of questions about them until you can write your own basic summaries of main overall points (like whether and why you should learn what) that people think are true instead of having tons of crit of.
#6892
>> which TCS makes no bones about upending
> this is misleading. learn one thing at a time. upend only what you want to upend, if you decide it's a good idea. (if you don't trust your judgement, then proceed with as much extra caution as you want. no problem. if that gets you stuck, that'd be discussable.)
I think that's what I'm doing.
Sorry if I gave the impression that what I've done on FI in the last few years has had no effect whatsoever on my life.
It has.
I have learned things.
I have upended what I have wanted to upend.
RE: you should learn philosophy of ideas now
> you should learn philosophy of ideas now
I am.
The issue is:
(1) I still see some divide between "learn the philosophy of ideas" (which is more general) and "learn TCS" (which is parenting focused).
I put "learn the philosophy of ideas" at a higher priority than "learn TCS".
Another way of saying this: I don't think the things I post about on FI are off-topic for learning the philosophy of ideas. But they are mostly oriented around subjects other than parenting, because I'm more interested in ideas about those subjects.
(2) I don't prioritize it as high as some recommend and I don't pursue it systematically.
>> I also have reasons to suspect that it might not, like lacking an explicit understanding of the mechanism(s) by which I would benefit.
> you make mistakes. if you thought better, you could improve more of them. FI has
> knowledge about how to think which you could study (including references, e.g. to
> Popper books, not just original or unique work).
> you've never made it clear specifically what you dispute. which is just the sort of
> sloppy thinking involved with making extra and worse mistakes in general!
What I dispute is that I'd benefit from taking a substantially different approach to FI than I do today.
BTW, at times in the past that has not always been the case. Some examples of things that were suggested I should change about my approach, I agreed I'd benefit from, and did change:
- be more humble / neutral when you don't have detailed knowledge of something
- don't post from the gmail web client
- ask more questions
- read for more precision instead of a "general gist"
- write shorter and simpler (still working some on that)
It's possible - I'd guess likely - that I'll be convinced to change things about my approach to FI in the future. And when I am, I'll change it.
yes i know i've made plenty of similar mistakes.
regarding the basics, can you give me some examples of what basic topics you have in mind?
'No warnings' is false.
In #6852 I wrote in response to Anonymous:
> I don't see where you say whether the "Is TCS Revolutionary?" article actually contains a warning or not. You didn't say whether you now concede that "no warnings is false".
Then in #6857 the link to the article was provided (thanks):
> http://web.archive.org/web/20030620082503/http://www.tcs.ac/Articles/DDIsTCSRevolutionary.html
Which contains:
> there can be no guarantee of success, even in the long run, let alone for a particular family or a particular child. Undertaking it is risky.
That seems like a pretty clear and fair warning to me. I agree with Elliot that "no warnings is false".
The context is, of course, that the author (DD) thinks TCS is worth the risks, and thinks the risks of not doing it are (or at least may be) greater.
But that's something each individual has to judge for themselves, and ought to know they have to judge for themselves. And even if they didn't know they need to judge that themselves, it doesn't make the warning into some kind of non-warning.
#6897
I get that but i think there's areas where you could get a lot of value but you avoid it. like you've never really focused on actually learning epistemology. i don't think you want to read the books and deal with dense material, but you could approach it writing only short posts (shorter than your typical current post) and going one step at a time and *persisting*. but you don't.
> (1) I still see some divide between "learn the philosophy of ideas" (which is more general) and "learn TCS" (which is parenting focused).
who cares, let's just focus on philosophy of ideas for now. it's like step 1 of learning TCS anyway.
> I don't think the things I post about on FI are off-topic for learning the philosophy of ideas.
i wouldn't claim they are off topic or useless or anything like that. but they don't do things like try to understand what epistemology is, what the basic problems are, what the answers are, etc, in an organized way.
other people suck at this too. but it's very important. you don't have a good framework to put the specific topics you discuss into. you don't have the right structure and perspective for your thinking. you don't get the big principles that enable the rest. it's more efficient to work on this earlier. there can certainly be some variety and coming at things from other angles, but this should be one of the angles getting substantial attention.
what is FI about? why? what further issues does that lead to, and what's the answer to those? you should be trying to understand basic important stuff in short, simple terms. it's not really avoidable, but your understanding of it is a disorganized mess and lots of it is inexplicit. it doesn't have to be some perfect formal structure but there's a lot of room for improvement here.
another thing that's important is pursuing *problems* rather than *discussions*. that means e.g. you would keep posting about a topic even if no one replied b/c you're still trying to figure out the solution to a problem you care about. i wrote something to justin about this on list recently.
@kate the basics of anything. epistemology, tcs, ARR, capitalism, etc. you haven't gone through any of it in an organized way or in a way that starts at the beginning. you jump into the middle of stuff without a clear idea of what philosophy problems you're solving or how. (you may, in some cases, know some concrete problem from you're life you're trying to solve.)
BTW i think both of you (and others) would benefit from using curi blog comments somewhat more over FI. because it's easier to write quick, short comments. one of the main differences is in comments you quote lightly b/c the comment goes on a page that includes what you're replying to above. this is different than an email which is standalone by itself so needs to quote fully enough to be self-contained.
#6890
> And having a life (and kids) that are successful by conventional standards, which TCS makes no bones about upending.
What is a life successful by conventional standards?
Are you saying you used coercion and it worked to raise successful kids by conventional standards?
Do you perceive that there a difference between conventional standards and what FI/ TCS would consider success?
> which TCS makes no bones about upending.
What does this mean? Do you think FI/ TCS won't disagree that your kids are successful?
Could you be fooling yourself and could your kids be fooling themselves that they are successful?
Maybe you are thinking something like:
"Well, I fucked up my kids, they will never pursuit excellence or be geniuses like Elliot. But who cares? At least they can get good grades, have a career and pay for their own living. And I see no TCS genius kids out there anyway. So I made a good choice to not risk TCS. And now why even risk learning TCS? If it was a mistake to not pursuit TCS, it's too late now."
> @kate the basics of anything. epistemology, tcs, ARR, capitalism, etc. you haven't gone through any of it in an organized way or in a way that starts at the beginning. you jump into the middle of stuff without a clear idea of what philosophy problems you're solving or how. (you may, in some cases, know some concrete problem from you're life you're trying to solve.)
What beginning do you suggest? The Fallible Ideas website? In what order?
People don't know how to organize their learning. At school they were told what to learn and in what order. Left to their own devices they don't know what to do with themselves.
If there are basics and a certain order and organization to learning philosophy, maybe you could design a philosophy course.
I think your learning needs to be centered around *your* problems, interests, priorities. So I don't think it would work for Elliot to create a curriculum for people to follow, like school.
but let's suppose u are interested in TCS (or ARR or Oism or whatever). one thing to try is to not only solve specific concrete and abstract problems associated with your interest, but also ask questions to learn about the overall structure of the topic. Create a framework for those ideas so that it's organized in ur mind.
and then even place that whole framework into an even greater framework of all of your ideas so you can better understand the connections between everything.
have you read "Understanding Objectivism" by Peikoff? he talks about something similar to this. about understanding the context and overall structure and then knowing *where* you are in that broad philosophical framework as you are working on specific problems.
> What beginning do you suggest?
like you could wonder what knowledge is, what an idea is, what a problem is, how learning works, why people dislike criticism, whether capitalism is mean and how to analyze that, whatever. if you wonder if capitalism is mean, you might next wonder what methods exist for answering such a question, and so on, and quickly get to some of the more basic questions.
> If there are basics and a certain order and organization to learning philosophy
didn't say that.
> At school they were told what to learn and in what order. Left to their own devices they don't know what to do with themselves.
then they won't learn much. i can't learn fro other people. people do their own learning. essays and videos and whatever can only help a bit.
your comment is a mix of anti-school and pro-school kinda thinking. i don't really get it.
i don't think Kate gets it or does it either. she talks about TCS but no one starts there. they start with interests like being nicer to their kid, say. and then they, hopefully, soon develop some interests like "What is an idea?" because they realize their kid has ideas and the treatment of their kid's ideas – by himself, by the parents, by others – is a big deal. and so on.
i think part of the problem is people have low standards for thinking they already understand stuff. but if you ask them to write it, then you get admissions of weakness and ignorance. but then somehow a bunch of questions aren't forthcoming.
what about the concept of going deep with an idea. staying there for awhile. exploring it in detail. trying to step-by-step understand how to reach a conclusion and why it makes sense. thinking about how it connects up to other stuff. putting it in a structure where you see it's relation to other ideas.
is this close to what you are talking about? and are you saying that doing something like this will then lead to some basic issues?
and with "basic", specifically are you referring to epistemology concepts?
> What is a life successful by conventional standards?
> Are you saying you used coercion and it worked to raise successful kids by conventional standards?
> Do you perceive that there a difference between conventional standards and what FI/ TCS would consider success?
it means they can have friends, get married, have a family, get jobs, not be poor, be reasonably respected in the community rather than be considered fools/failures, not be homeless drug addicts, etc
but they don't have much interest in joining FI and thinking. and their conventional lives have a bunch of badness that's considered normal (breakups, divorce risk, job boredom, stress, bad days, social pressures resulting in possible mid life crisis, substantial risk of spending some time being fucked with by a psychologist or psychiatrist and thinking that's good, substantial risk of being fooled into some bullshit like global warming or voting for hillary or trying to beat the stock market, etc)
#6897
> BTW i think both of you (and others) would benefit from using curi blog comments somewhat more over FI. because it's easier to write quick, short comments. one of the main differences is in comments you quote lightly b/c the comment goes on a page that includes what you're replying to above.
I like this format less than either FI or chatrooms.
One reason is there's no "reply" button to a particular comment. Some blogs have that. It allows you to have subthreads. But this blog doesn't. I have to enter the comment number I'm referencing to maintain any semblance of threads.
One reason is there's no persistent authorship (I have to type "PAS" every time or it shows up as Anonymous).
One reason is that quoting isn't automatic (I have to manually copy/paste then insert quote marks).
For these reasons I don't find it easier unless the comment has no quoting at all and doesn't reference any previous comment. Which is rare.
the things you bring up are a smaller burden than trimming quoting on FI and also fixing the attribution line at the top in Apple Mail which you often use.
you could fix persistent authorship with a browser extension, apple script, or other code.
it wouldn't even be difficult to write all your comments in whatever text editor you want and have a script send the http request to post it.
IMs don't have replies either. or permalinks.
who you're replying to is usually clear if you give a short quote.
in #6922 you give both a comment number and a quote. the comment number isn't necessary because people can find the comment you reply to via the quote. because finding the previous post being replied to is a rare activity, there's no need to put effort into making it take 2 seconds instead of 4 seconds.
Reply to #6911
> I think your learning needs to be centered around *your* problems, interests, priorities. So I don't think it would work for Elliot to create a curriculum for people to follow, like school.
Is this what you have been doing, centering your learning around your problems, interests and priorities? How has this worked for you? Not very well according to Elliot. He keeps telling you that you fail at the basics. So what are you doing wrong?
You answer like you know what you're talking about, yet you are being criticized as one of the people who has been around for years and hasn't put any genuine effort in learning. What is stopping you?
Reply to #6913
>> What beginning do you suggest?
>
> like you could wonder what knowledge is, what an idea is, what a problem is, how learning works, why people dislike criticism, whether capitalism is mean and how to analyze that, whatever. if you wonder if capitalism is mean, you might next wonder what methods exist for answering such a question, and so on, and quickly get to some of the more basic questions.
What should I read first to help me in all that wondering? Should I just ask questions here? I could ask a question "What is an idea?" and then make a guess at an answer. And you could criticize my answer.
Is that a good start?
>> If there are basics and a certain order and organization to learning philosophy
> didn't say that.
That's what I understood from what you said. What did you actually say and why did I fail understanding it?
In #6902 you say:
> you should be trying to understand basic important stuff in short, simple terms. it's not really avoidable, but your understanding of it is a disorganized mess and lots of it is inexplicit. it doesn't have to be some perfect formal structure but there's a lot of room for improvement here.
You say it doesn't have to be a perfect formal structure, but you suggest some structure. You suggest starting by understanding the basic stuff in simple terms. You then criticize people for being disorganized. So to me this suggests there's an order and organization to learning.
Back to what you said in #6913
> your comment is a mix of anti-school and pro-school kinda thinking. i don't really get it.
I'm not defending school as an institution. School, at least for children, is about forcing them to learn whatever it was deemed of benefit by authorities that they should learn against their will. I was agreeing with you that learning needs to start with the basics and be organized. If that's what you said, it seems I have misunderstood you.
I guess there is pro-curriculum thinking in my comment. I did suggest a FI curriculum. Is a curriculum harmful if a person pursuits it freely?
#6915
> it means they can have friends, get married, have a family, get jobs, not be poor, be reasonably respected in the community rather than be considered fools/failures, not be homeless drug addicts, etc
>
> but they don't have much interest in joining FI and thinking. and their conventional lives have a bunch of badness that's considered normal (breakups, divorce risk, job boredom, stress, bad days, social pressures resulting in possible mid life crisis, substantial risk of spending some time being fucked with by a psychologist or psychiatrist and thinking that's good, substantial risk of being fooled into some bullshit like global warming or voting for hillary or trying to beat the stock market, etc)
Why is this is better than being a homeless drug addict?
It seems to me you are concerned with what society considers a good standard of living. Yet you have been around in FI for years and see can its value and can see flaws in the conventional standards.
You had difficulties in learning TCS and putting it into practice and gave up.
> You answer like you know what you're talking about, yet you are being criticized as one of the people who has been around for years and hasn't put any genuine effort in learning.
wow, hold on. disagree. i did **not** say no "genuine effort" from Kate.
#6937
what are you doing here?
write a *short* answer to that. then ask a question about some part of the answer. then write a *short* answer to that. try to get stuff right. expose it to criticism. ask questions when you get stuck and don't know something. try to get some organized overall concept of what you're learning about, and why. what ideas are you working on and what problems do they solve and why do those problems matter to your life? knowing that context makes discussing individual issues better.
> So to me this suggests there's an order and organization to learning.
organization and structure and order matter, but that does not mean there is *one* *single* correct or optimal one-size-fits-all order, structure or organization.
#6938
>Why is this is better than being a homeless drug addict?
Some reasons:
- Sleeping in the rain sucks.
- No safe place to store stuff sucks.
- No electricity to charge up computers sucks.
- Coming down off a drug high sucks.
> It seems to me you are concerned with what society considers a good standard of living. Yet you have been around in FI for years and see can its value and can see flaws in the conventional standards.
I am concerned some about what society considers a good standard of living. The traditional knowledge in society about what is a good standard of living is better than something random, or something society considers bad (like homeless drug addict) without specific arguments that survive strong attempts at criticism.
I agree there are flaws in what is traditionally seen as a good standard of living. Where I have found alternatives to tradition that survive my best criticism, I implement them.
"I don't know how to do this well enough to be successful" is a criticism against me implementing something. It's a criticism I take seriously.
> You had difficulties in learning TCS and putting it into practice and gave up.
I never tried to put TCS into practice, so no, I did not have difficulties with that.
There are some things TCS advocates that are different from tradition, that I have put into practice. Some of the things I had already done before I ever heard of TCS. And some came after, because of some things I learned from TCS. But even the sum total of deviations from tradition that I have implemented are not TCS (nor have I ever intended them to be).
I did try to learn some of TCS, and have difficulties, but I have not given up. I have not pursued learning TCS with the urgency and organization that some (like Elliot) recommend.
Value of learning epistemology
#6902
> I get that but i think there's areas where you could get a lot of value but you avoid it. like you've never really focused on actually learning epistemology.
I don't understand the value I'd get from actually learning epistemology.
A few years ago I learned that knowledge evolves by guesses and criticism, instead of being justified true belief. I think this was a big deal in epistemology terms; a huge difference.
But it really didn't seem to give me much value. I wasn't able to learn a bunch of new stuff that I'd previously not been able to learn.
Point being, for such a huge shift in epistemology, the results in terms of value were kinda...meh.
One possibility is that the value comes from changing my inexplicit epistemological ideas, not my explicit ones. But in that case it seems I should focus on getting my inexplicit ideas in line with the explicit epistemological ideas I already know (like guesses & criticism vs. JTB) rather than learning more epistemology.
One possibility is that epistemology isn't very valuable once you get past certain basics I already had. Stuff like that reality is objective, knowledge of that reality is possible, truth and falsehood, and that true knowledge makes your life better. In that case I shouldn't expect to get a lot of value from learning more epistemology.
Maybe something else is going on. What do you think?
> Point being, for such a huge shift in epistemology, the results in terms of value were kinda...meh.
You learned a *summary* of a major point of epistemology. That's superficial. Had you learned more epistemology, you would have learned why this is inadequate to accomplish much of anything, and how and why to go further. Epistemology is literally the field that addresses the complaint you're making here and explains what to do. (You do know, and indeed mention, some of this in the rest of your comment. That is, you have been learning something about epistemology and made it enough a part of your thinking to come out in your comment.)
> in that case it seems I should focus on getting my inexplicit ideas in line with the explicit epistemological ideas I already know (like guesses & criticism vs. JTB) rather than learning more epistemology.
That would both constitute learning more epistemology and also involve learning more epistemology in the sense you meant (big picture new ideas).
Integrating ideas into your life and thinking is a crucial part of actually learning them. If you aren't using them to solve problems (both big problems and also daily life stuff), you don't know them in a useful way. The gaps in your knowledge ruin them.
You have a narrow conception of what epistemology is. It's the philosophy of ideas. It covers dealing with inexplicit ideas, learning ideas in usable and effective way, etc, etc
#6902
> another thing that's important is pursuing *problems* rather than *discussions*. that means e.g. you would keep posting about a topic even if no one replied b/c you're still trying to figure out the solution to a problem you care about.
I'm not finding a useful intersection of problems that I care enough about with problems I think I can do enough about and FI could help with.
Examples of problems I care a lot about but don't think I can do enough about:
- Aging and dying
- Politics and government
- Pace of technological advancement
Examples of problems I can do a lot about but don't care enough about:
- Making money differently than I do today
- Changing how my personal relationships work
- Getting better / quicker at reading books
There's more examples. Point is if I knew of a problem I cared enough about and thought I could do enough about, I'd pursue it. But generally, I don't.
So sometimes I think of a problem & care enough about it right then to ask FI. Or sometimes someone will say something on FI that prompts me to think of something and ask about it. But there's nothing I feel driven to pursue to resolution.
Despair
Despair sucks.
To concretize, I had a discussion with Aubrey de Grey. It didn't work out in terms of some big goals (many small positive things were accomplished). But it was worth a try. You should try things too.
Trying stuff is fun. All life is problem solving. That's what life is about. Even if you don't solve the whole problem.
Note *pessimism is the issue in both cases, not just with the big stuff*.
You think you can't solve aging, politics, etc, so you *do nothing*. Big mistake. They are good problems to work on even if you don't solve the whole thing.
And you aren't motivated about the money, relationships and speed reading because you despair of *efficiently* making practical progress in excess of the input effort.
If you were confident of quickly and cheaply making improvement on those problems significantly in excess of the resources used, you would pursue them.
The reasons you can't make progress cheaply enough include:
- bad methods (epistemology)
- underestimating the direct benefits of solutions
- underestimating the indirect benefits of solutions and indirect benefits of the problem-solving process (which involves both topical learning and learning about epistemology)
>Examples of problems I can do a lot about but don't care enough about:
> - Making money differently than I do today
> - Changing how my personal relationships work
> - Getting better / quicker at reading books
and
>But there's nothing I feel driven to pursue to resolution.
so change what you care about? and change how you feel about stuff?
how to do that --> philosophy, specifically epistemology (which includes stuff like preferences and emotions).
>A few years ago I learned that knowledge evolves by guesses and criticism, instead of being justified true belief. I think this was a big deal in epistemology terms; a huge difference.
Why do you think you learned that?
And if you did learn it, why don't you apply it by doing IRL common pref finding (aka TCS)?
Note: cp finding applies to interactions with not only your kids, but also yourself, spouse, friends.