🛠 Mindfulness Meditation
You can learn some mindfulness meditation techniques for thinking about the feeling, identifying it, identifying the physical sensations and thoughts that you interpret as "frustrated" (or whatever), and sort of "stepping outside" of your thoughts and just viewing them, instead of being carried away by them.
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There are a lot of different apps that can help you get started with meditation, with guided meditations. They are of varying quality – some aren't actually very good. One that I have liked is Waking Up.
I like this idea. Justin also said on Discord that he likes the Waking Up app.
I have two reservations:
- I find Sam Harris annoying on his podcast. Maybe I’ll be biased against him. I could try a different app or book or something. Or I could try Waking Up and see how it goes.
- I’ve tried meditation briefly a few times before and not gotten anything from it. Maybe I was doing a different kind. ingracke talks about thinking about feelings and stepping outside your thoughts, which seems like it could help people understand their feelings and thoughts better, which seems good. What I did before seemed like trying not to have any feelings or thoughts, which I didn’t see the point of.
I will give Waking Up a try. It’s got a free trial that covers some intro sessions and some audio essays.
I did the intro course and have been listening to daily meditations and stoic path lately
You can Google and see if it sounds okay compared to whatever you tried before
Sam Harris writes there:
This matches what I want to get out of it. It's not saying that thinking is bad. It's promoting awareness of thinking.
(Edit fixed a typo.)
I tried a bunch of meditation apps, and Waking Up was my favourite. I liked Sam Harris' beginner meditations (the Introductory Course) a lot. It was more to the point and had better explanation than most of the ones I listened to did. I have never listened to his podcast, so don't know if what the similarities or differences are.
I haven't gone through all the app content, but I can tell you that for meditations, I liked the Introductory Course and the Daily Meditations. I also think the Stoic Path is good (it's not by Sam Harris, and they aren't really guided meditations though: it's more like theory).
In the Theory section, I've listened to Fundamentals, Mind & Emotion, and The Illusory Self. I think all of those were good and worth listening to. I think there is value in thinking about the idea of "self" being an illusion. There are some bad ways of interpreting that, but I think that what Sam says is all consistent with a good way of interpreting it too.
BUT Sam Harris did talk about Free Will in one of the Mind & Emotion talks, and I don't agree with him about that. He has an entire section on Free Will, which I also suspect I would disagree with. So you could probably just skip that part. I just wanted to be clear that is NOT what I am recommending the app for.
ingracke wrote:
I'm trying to figure this out. I don't understand how they mean that the self is an illusion. I'm not asking you to say more on the topic, just pointing out that it's something I'm pondering as I listen to things on the app.
Meditation is not the ultimate truth to understand life. I don't think Harris claims that it is, though. Some more Eastern meditation stuff treats it more like an ultimate truth, but the more Eastern stuff is worse.
This is what I think now as well.
He wouldn't literally say this but something pretty close. He's said something like "this is all you need to know to be happy in this world". And (paraphrase) "You can be happy if you know this stuff even if you are in the worst possible imaginable conditions", he gives example of Buddhist Tibetian monks being tortured by the Chinese.
Sam also doesn't have to be a great intellectual, or be reasonable about capitalism or neuroscience, in order to do decent work re mindfulness meditation. If Dan can do it, why not Sam? You don't have to give Sam significant credit as an intellectual to think he did something useful – just don't automatically disqualify him from everything over his other, bad work (which isn't all bad but has large bad elements mixed in as themes).
Similarly, I think you'll find it unremarkable that Dan could be a social climber who is sometimes dishonest, but was still able to write a decent not-especially-intellectual book. Flawed people sometimes make decent stuff, and most decent stuff comes from people with tons of flaws. So if Dan can do it, why couldn't Sam do it too?
I didn't know that. I'm not that familiar with Harris. I think that's bad and is related to his intellectual arrogance that's seen in some of his other work (which he blocks error correction about while pretending to be open to public debate/criticism/etc).
That view is projection. It's about you and how you see the world. It has nothing to do with me. It's actually extremely foreign and unintuitive to me.
I've contradicted it routinely, e.g. by criticizing Popper on politics, Rand on induction, Deutsch on lots of things while still recommending his books, etc. Most stuff I like comes from people I disagree with about other stuff, e.g. I simultaneously think The Selfish Gene is a good book but that Dawkins has major flaws. Jonathan Stark, who I've recently been following and linking some stuff from, has a BLM banner on his website.
I think people of all sorts can have some knowledge and make some useful contribution. OTOH, I think I had a view of what meditation was trying to accomplish - be some sort of overall secret of truth or approach to life - that did not seem compatible with my understanding of things. If, however, one views meditation as a technique or useful tool with some knowledge and tradition behind it - if you view meditation functionally - then I think you can get something out of it even if you generally try to follow rational philosophy.
FWIW I think I didn't look into the Stoics much before because I encountered some good criticisms of them and prematurely rejected them, when in fact there is some stuff there that would be useful. I think prematurely rejecting stuff cuz it's not in some way perfect is a common issue I've had and that I suspect a lot of other people have. On the one hand, it's rational to prioritize your efforts where you think they'll be most fruitful, and if you spot a flaw in something that might be a reason to give it lower priority. OTOH, if you're looking at/interested in something anyways, it's worth giving it a serious chance and seeing what value you can get from it rather than just being like "meh, this lacks attribute X or has flaw Y, so I'm going to reject it entirely."
Makes sense.
To give more details: for example when I see a blog post titled "Eliezer Yudkowsky is a fraud" I'm like cool! One less stupid person I don't need to care about. It changes my plans like I'm not gonna listen to all the podcasts I had downloaded featuring him.
But now I wonder how much of the tribes stuff is just about not wanting to make much mental effort to engage with people outside the tribe and take their ideas seriously.
This changed my mind. I didn't even read the blog post. I just wanted to make quick judgements. Justin said it. Stuff about rejecting other tribe to save time.
2) "Going to Mars would've been delayed 10+ years if not for him." That's written as if we already went to Mars, or maybe at least were going to Mars soon - as if it's a sure thing. Did I miss some news?
Are you confident in your ability to judge and rank the top achievers of the human race?
What sacrificial journey?
Things he's good at include:
- getting government help for his businesses
- bullying his wife into signing a harsh post-nup without her understanding what it meant
- dressing and talking in a way that engineers are OK with, while also being able to talk with suits
- (maybe) some stuff about hiring nerds
His family and personal life are a horrible mess too. There's video footage of his second+third wife talking about routinely wanting to leave him, and this is while they're together and he's sitting next to her, and he's like "Really?" and then she's like "no not really" but she totally meant it – and said it in front of a camera – and he's super gullible.
He's really into making his women get blonde hair. He likes to hang out with celebs, go to elite parties and restaurants, hang around people where the women are all trophy wives (or trophy gfs) who are into cosmetic surgery but not thinking or talking, etc.
One of his wives reported a revealing incident where he was seeing a stylist (like to get fashionable clothing) and Elon said roughly "no you don't understand, i can't look too hip or the engineers won't like me". He's an intentional, knowing manipulator in major ways.
But he's no good at science, technology, etc. Lots of his big projects he talks about are idiotic from the pov of someone who knows science stuff. See thunderf00t's repeated debunkings on youtube.
https://discord.com/channels/304082867384745994/659937634369404968/710961866393911296
Yeah it's not a sure thing but SpaceX is transporting to ISS and orbit frequently. Based on that I would guess that going to mars would work as well. Elon says a rocket will land by 2024.
I didn't watch them properly. I also looked through comments to see what other people were saying. I was social reasoning. I mostly fail at most things you tell me to do. That doesn't have anything to do with you I guess. I fail at most things in general.
I've spent a considerable amount of time in forming a picture of human achievements so I think I pretty much came across all important people. I'm not sure how good that makes me at judging and ranking. I didn't come across Rand so I would guess I missed some pretty important people as well.
Have you read any anti-Elon stuff before forming the opinion that he's great? Or did you only look at one side of the story, one tribe's opinion?
Hollywood celebs have similar issues all the time but, afaik, intellectuals not so much. I think e.g. Sam Harris is famous enough for people to be interested in gossip about his personal life being awful (and it'd also be relevant to his claims about using meditation to be calm and happy and stuff).
Wow you're so arrogant.
I don't regard his statements as particularly trustworthy. My understanding is he's been lying about self-driving functionality and timeline stuff for years and also misrepresented whether he got some government approvals re: hyperloop, so I wouldn't put credence on his Mars timeline stuff.
I think if your human achievement survey methodology missed the most important thinker of the 20th century you might wanna be a bit more humble
He pretty much put all his money in both his companies in 2008 when the financial crisis was happening. He was ready to be give it all up to accomplish something he believed in.
the double qualifier ("might" + "a bit") is a social dynamics autopilot
He wasn't in danger of being poor. You're just impressed by his propaganda.
I later added that I missed Rand so that makes me think that I might be wrong. Isn't that not arrogant?
Looks like it.
You wrote the sentence. If you don't mean it, write it differently. Don't write the wrong thing, expect people to read it, and be like "nvm j/k" in later text.
Looks like it finally might be coming but it was delayed a lot. He made a lot of people pay for it since way before.
Yeah that's bad. Sorry. Didn't even know I did it. My poor reasoning powers are failing me.
As in the tech makes mistakes which killed people?
the lies are both from Tesla, who misnamed some features on purpose, and from Musk. also if Tesla was an ethical company, besides communicating about the features differently, they would detect if anyone is in driver's seat and pull the car over if it's self-driving with no one there. cars already can and do do similar detection, e.g. to enable or disable passenger airbag based on detecting a person there.
yeah that's pretty revealing. changes my mind. it's kind of weird that I saw him as not being able to do social well and be a savant types
Edit: genius savant types
yeah that's some really stupid thing. they can easily put weight detection sensors to know if someone is in the driver's seat. they don't even have that
one tribe only. he's considered god in silicon valley I guess so that convinced me. a VC guy who is a friend of elon told a story that Larry Page once told elon's friend that larry is inspired by what elon has achieved and thought about wanting to give all his (larry's) money to elon
Edit: people driving not people driver's
I don't get this. Defense as in legal defense during legal proceedings of their divorce?
specially about arrogant stuff
why might? I thought you considered all environmental stuff negative that will cost trillions of dollars
I got some clarity now and this is what I am thinking: Calling someone stupid is belittling all their accomplishments. I agree when you call musk stupid for doing social stuff. So this is what I am thinking. You say 'Elon is stupid' I take it to mean that all that elon has accomplished is senseless and wrong because he built things based on wrong ideas. And he had wrong ideas because he is stupid.
I think this is a mistake I am making. Did I spot it right?
I felt that you are upset with me now or disappointed or think little of me. Another thing I thought you might be thinking: This guy was once making some progress but is now back to square one. Making the same stupid mistakes.
You have it all wrong in many ways.
I have > 100x the conversation experience that you do. I don't really care. This conversation doesn't stand out. I'm not being reactive to it. It isn't occupying a big place in my mind. It just blends in with all the others. It seems like a big deal to you b/c it's a much larger portion of all your conversations (plus newer ones get weighted more heavily).
I am not going through a rollercoaster of overestimating you then being disappointed. I did not lower my opinion of you from this conversation. I wasn't getting something wrong yesterday that I have to now revise. My opinions of people are more stable than that. I don't get all emotionally excited about new people and think they'll be amazing and then get emotionally disappointed. I'm not emotional about you. I never have been.
Currently, I happen to be extremely tired, not focusing well, and extra tuned out and distant as a result. I was having this conversation today partly because it's really easy and low stakes for me. I can't do a lot of other stuff atm cuz too tired, but this is something chill I can still do.
Another reason I felt so was because the frequency of your replies decreased and Justin left too. I thought I did something wrong.
I considered that I wasn't giving any substantial arguments anymore so you both didn't see anything to respond to. I also considered that you might have chosen to reply later. This was in line with your policy of interacting which is a bit unconventional. I am starting to understand it and see value in it.
I'm getting out a lot more than I am putting in. There's just a bit of fear in the start like jumping out of airplane but afterwards the return is a lot higher.
Elliot wrote:
Don't most people choose their clothes based on social factors? Don't most people use clothes to try to get others to view them in certain ways?
Maybe many people do it without being conscious of it.
Even if they are conscious of it, they might not say it out loud like this.
I have some doubts about this.
I think Ingracke can decide whether they want to reply or not, and you can also just ask questions generally of anyone without specifically directing them to ingracke.
So far, I think the point is to