Girls today in the West are pretty clever. somehow their negotiating position regarding sex is “if you want sex, you're pretty much scum. i'll put up with you being a nasty objectifier and borderline abuser of women, but you will pay for it, heavily. you better be hella nice to me whenever you aren't using my body."
despite the fact that girls want sex too. and get it. tons of girls will go have casual sex with an alpha. then when they get into a long term relationship they find a beta and make him feel guilty for looking at her sexually, and take a very hard line about sex.
and at the same time, girls also managed to give out semi-free samples early to get guys more hooked. and say it's mutual attraction, they like the guy too, etc. and still then they manage to extract a huge amount of favors, sympathy, etc, for having sex with their partner.
contradictions? who cares. "i love you so much and sex is an expression of our love. as a girl. but as a guy, for you, wanting me sexually is evil, so you owe me big time."
and so many guys think relationships don't involve negotiation. you mutually support each other! so sweet! it's all win/win! we both get as much benefit as possible. negotiation is mean. she agrees with this. she said so.
then the girl, without calling it a negotiation, makes the guy be her bitch.
and then cuz he's her bitch, she stops finding him attractive. a real man wouldn't let her make him her bitch.
then, reasonably often, if she gets a good opportunity with an alpha, she cheats on him (note the stuff in the video is merely what they are eager to admit to in public, on camera. the reality is much worse). girls cheat more because they care more about emotions and less about logic. in our culture, cheating is considered bad logically, but sometimes a fun emotional temptation. guys are better at resisting that because they care more about doing the right thing logically, and less about feeling good in the moment.
most guys have enough trouble getting one girl to fuck them, so cheating isn't an easy and great option. a lot the guys with an abundance of girls do cheat, but they are the minority, and also some of the players don't cheat because they just don't agree to be monogamous in the first place unless they actually want to. but tons of girls easily have lots of guys who'd be eager to fuck them (and pay a lot of money for the privilege – indirectly of course because whores are evil or something).
sex itself is dramatically overrated, by the way, so it's not really necessary to learn these social dynamics, although it's a fun challenge. sex is basically like doing drugs – your body releases chemicals and you feel good. but for no reason, non-procreative sex is treated as a completely different category of activity – as something important instead of like sitting around wasting your life getting high.
wives are dramatically overrated too. most women today are not very smart or rational, so where is the appeal in that? especially if you actually try in life and make a ton of progress, because there's very few great women. today we have Ann Coulter and who the hell else? if you look at the interesting, cool, worthwhile, awesome, etc, people in history, it's very male dominated. that dynamic is still in place today.
women are not biologically inferior, but for cultural reasons they typically emphasis reason and thinking less, and are less willing to go to extremes or be an outlier. a lot more men are willing to aim high than women. if you aim high – and if you don't you're reading the wrong blog, lol – then odds are you're a man who won't be able to find a woman to match him. but may settle for less, make excuses, etc. even semi-notable semi-interesting men with a mere hint of greatness have a very rough time trying to find women to match them. so they marry a dumb bitch and then put her on a pedestal, and hold her to a different standard of intelligence than a man, and she uses social skills (the thing she worked on instead of intelligence) negotiates-manipulates a ton of concessions.
Elliot Temple
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Eugene Gendlin Philosophy Introduction
Introduction to Philosophy
The main question here is kinda silly. One can have partial knowledge of a topic, and already know something about it, and ask questions and try to know more. There isn't really a mystery there. This also gets into the issue of reach, where an idea you know about one thing may help lead to a new issue.
That's the end of the first section. My main comment so far would be this claims to be an introduction to philosophy, but so far it isn't. It's just talking a little about some specific philosophy problems, it's not giving an introduction to the field. I think a philosophy introduction ought to say things like what the purpose of philosophy is, why one would be interested in it, what problem(s) it can help solve, some indication of how one can learn about it, maybe some very brief overview of the history of the field, and maybe try to teach some especially important and general (but also simple) philosophical idea. Like fallibility is a pretty good starting point because it's pretty easy to understand and then it leads into other philosophical problems like, now that you see error is possible, how do you deal with error? That question of how to deal with error is a lot harder and more involved, but once you understand fallibility then you can see why it's important and valuable to you.
The Plato section starts really emphasizing words which I think is bad.
This part is really far removed from a good introduction to philosophy. A philosopher questions what everyone thinks they know. This, instead, takes for granted a bunch of vague common sense nonsense. A big part of philosophy is recognizing that some stuff people consider obvious is false, and trying to understand things better than the ordinary.
One thing the author is trying to do is show that life is complicated. Normally you would give someone their property back that you held for them. But then in some circumstances, maybe you shouldn't. So life is more complex than "always give back property" or "never give back property". Life takes more thought than that. And, the author says, Plato and other philosophers were good at asking questions to point out some issues in life. But the author doesn't really say this very well. You have to read between the lines a bit to get the point, which is especially bad for an introduction. And a fair amount of what the author writes, like the next paragraph, is rather confusing.
For the Aristotle section, you can now figure out the author is trying to show a progression of philosophy, something about how it was discovered and developed. He should have said something about this at the start, so you'd know what you were reading. In any case I think he's chosen poorly for a general introduction to philosophy that'd be useful and valuable to someone today.
Most of the Aristotle section is confusing. I think this kind of "introduction", which an expert can find confusing, turns people off philosophy. To a lot of people, philosophy is supposed to be confusing. You ponder and get kinda confused and call that a good day. But better philosophy explains itself better, and actually solves clear problems and is used in life. This author has vague answers to vague problems that largely aren't connected to his life or to my life.
And, as I've so often noticed after an "of course" or "obviously", this claim is false. Data doesn't say things. BTW the author should have been more suspicious because he was using a metaphor – he knows data doesn't speak literally. So what's the non-metaphorical version of his claim, and why didn't he say that? (He hasn't thought that through, and his position doesn't actually work.)
He is taking for granted the common misconception that rationality has to do with being right or intelligent or an authority. This position is vague and doesn't have a clear conception of what reason really is or how it works, and people who think this way don't use words like "rational" totally consistently.
There's also a vague premise here that all emotions and desires are irrational, and a fully rational person would be a kind of ivory tower monk with no personal preferences, and quite possibly no interest in material comforts. Ideas like this turn people away from reason. No argument is given here. And anyway if you want to call this "reason", my concept of "reason" would still be a separate concept and we could just name it something else and pursue it instead. That is, we could say something like, "reason2 means thinking using methods that are good at error correction – the better at error correction, the more rational2 the thinking". So having the dumb concept of reason, even if it was explained and argued about and fleshed out, still wouldn't be an argument that reason2 is a bad thing to pursue, or reason2 doesn't work how i think it does, etc
2+2 in general is dealing with abstracts, not physical objects that change over time. If you want to get into physical objects then the issue is computation. Saying something "unites" the first 2 with the second 2 and makes a "new unity" is a terrible vague nonsense description of how computers work with electrical currents, memory storage, NAND gates etc. When people do math, it's more complicated, but the stuff about uniting isn't helping anything.
The next section brings up some stuff from earlier. But also starts talking a bunch about rights. This essay tries to say way too many things and none are explained well.
It doesn't end with a summary or bring everything together. It's just talking about another specific topic and then there's no more text.
It still never tries to say what philosophy is, why to care, or other basic introductory stuff.
I think the concept is more like: philosophy is about stretching your mind with ideas you don't fully understand. So it shows you what that's like while going over some major historical examples (in the author's view, I'm not agreeing they are major). The author is satisfied with vague understandings of things, and expects his audience to be too. Not just satisfied but actually impressed. There is a common mistake, which Ayn Rand especially criticized, where people think if they don't understand an idea (and it's said by someone with some credentials or status, or appears to be. in this case even if you don't know who the author is, he writes with big enough words and names enough famous philosophers – like he's just repeating their ideas – to give enough sense of authority to the essay. and he actually does have a PhD) then it must be really important and above you. People sort of defer to what they don't understand and get impressed. Lots of philosophers write confusing on purpose. This is a good introduction to that, in the sense that it gives you a sample of it. If you didn't understand this essay but somehow liked it, then I guess you'd like a lot of other philosophy too. (But the good philosophers, like Ayn Rand and Karl Popper, are different. They write to be understood.)
[I wrote this post in one hour.]
Rather, he has a felt sense of the answer.This, in bold, pretends to be an explanation or important conclusion, but doesn't really say anything useful.
Earlier Meno had asked Socrates about the following puzzle: If we don't know something how can we even ask about it? We wouldn't know what we are asking about. But if we already know it, why ask about it? So it seems we cannot inquire into anything, since we must either know it or not know it. Socrates had answered the puzzle by saying that the soul has lived before and knows all things. We need only "recollect" them.Recollection is the wrong answer to knowledge creation. It's not quite as dumb as it sounds though. Where can new knowledge come from if you don't know about evolution? It could be created out of thin air magically. Recollection is perhaps a better answer than that – the knowledge already exists somewhere so it doesn't have to be created, you just kinda have to find it.
The main question here is kinda silly. One can have partial knowledge of a topic, and already know something about it, and ask questions and try to know more. There isn't really a mystery there. This also gets into the issue of reach, where an idea you know about one thing may help lead to a new issue.
The puzzle of either knowing or just not knowing is solved because we can think on the edge of what we know, and enter there.Thinking on the edge of your knowledge is a kinda OK way to put it. I think it's OK as a rough indication of the concept here, but when it gets taken more seriously in detail, and the essay tries to build on it later, I think that's a mistake. It's just a loose metaphor.
That's the end of the first section. My main comment so far would be this claims to be an introduction to philosophy, but so far it isn't. It's just talking a little about some specific philosophy problems, it's not giving an introduction to the field. I think a philosophy introduction ought to say things like what the purpose of philosophy is, why one would be interested in it, what problem(s) it can help solve, some indication of how one can learn about it, maybe some very brief overview of the history of the field, and maybe try to teach some especially important and general (but also simple) philosophical idea. Like fallibility is a pretty good starting point because it's pretty easy to understand and then it leads into other philosophical problems like, now that you see error is possible, how do you deal with error? That question of how to deal with error is a lot harder and more involved, but once you understand fallibility then you can see why it's important and valuable to you.
The Plato section starts really emphasizing words which I think is bad.
For example, someone leaves a weapon with you for safe-keeping. Months later the person comes and asks you to return it. Is it fair and just to give it back? Yes. All right, but what if the person is obviously berserk and crazed with anger just now? If you return the weapon, you harm the person.Umm they might harm themselves with it, or might harm someone else they shouldn't. Or not. And people's mental states are not obvious.
This part is really far removed from a good introduction to philosophy. A philosopher questions what everyone thinks they know. This, instead, takes for granted a bunch of vague common sense nonsense. A big part of philosophy is recognizing that some stuff people consider obvious is false, and trying to understand things better than the ordinary.
One thing the author is trying to do is show that life is complicated. Normally you would give someone their property back that you held for them. But then in some circumstances, maybe you shouldn't. So life is more complex than "always give back property" or "never give back property". Life takes more thought than that. And, the author says, Plato and other philosophers were good at asking questions to point out some issues in life. But the author doesn't really say this very well. You have to read between the lines a bit to get the point, which is especially bad for an introduction. And a fair amount of what the author writes, like the next paragraph, is rather confusing.
For the Aristotle section, you can now figure out the author is trying to show a progression of philosophy, something about how it was discovered and developed. He should have said something about this at the start, so you'd know what you were reading. In any case I think he's chosen poorly for a general introduction to philosophy that'd be useful and valuable to someone today.
Most of the Aristotle section is confusing. I think this kind of "introduction", which an expert can find confusing, turns people off philosophy. To a lot of people, philosophy is supposed to be confusing. You ponder and get kinda confused and call that a good day. But better philosophy explains itself better, and actually solves clear problems and is used in life. This author has vague answers to vague problems that largely aren't connected to his life or to my life.
Galileo began the great advance in Western science by the radical -- seemingly insane -- concept that everything in nature is ordered by numbers.Introductions ought to be way more careful not to introduce very complex and controversial ideas – like what is "insane" – when it's unnecessary and they aren't going to discuss it. I think the author doesn't realize he said anything non-trivial. That's a really bad trait for a philosophy introducer to not know about what's messy or simple.
Of course sometimes the data just says "yes" or "no,"He shouldn't be saying "of course" in front of his claims, or thinking his ideas are obviously true. That's so contrary to the spirit of philosophy.
And, as I've so often noticed after an "of course" or "obviously", this claim is false. Data doesn't say things. BTW the author should have been more suspicious because he was using a metaphor – he knows data doesn't speak literally. So what's the non-metaphorical version of his claim, and why didn't he say that? (He hasn't thought that through, and his position doesn't actually work.)
In philosophy a human being was long thought of chiefly as a rational process. Emotions and desires were discussed, of course, but the human being was chiefly the source of the kind of connections which move from 2+2 to 4.Now he's decided to talk about whether humans are rational without talking about what "rational" is.
He is taking for granted the common misconception that rationality has to do with being right or intelligent or an authority. This position is vague and doesn't have a clear conception of what reason really is or how it works, and people who think this way don't use words like "rational" totally consistently.
There's also a vague premise here that all emotions and desires are irrational, and a fully rational person would be a kind of ivory tower monk with no personal preferences, and quite possibly no interest in material comforts. Ideas like this turn people away from reason. No argument is given here. And anyway if you want to call this "reason", my concept of "reason" would still be a separate concept and we could just name it something else and pursue it instead. That is, we could say something like, "reason2 means thinking using methods that are good at error correction – the better at error correction, the more rational2 the thinking". So having the dumb concept of reason, even if it was explained and argued about and fleshed out, still wouldn't be an argument that reason2 is a bad thing to pursue, or reason2 doesn't work how i think it does, etc
Kant pointed out that 2+2 is just 2, and at the next moment again 2, and then still only 2, unless there is a unifying continuity that keeps the first 2 and unites it with the next 2, and makes a new unity, the 4. The number series requires keeping and continuing.This is basically incoherent nonsense plus some kinda vague claim that without causality and continuity over time stuff would break (which could have been said better without the arithmetic – and which isn't a good summary of current physics with, as David Deutsch talks about, no flow of time).
2+2 in general is dealing with abstracts, not physical objects that change over time. If you want to get into physical objects then the issue is computation. Saying something "unites" the first 2 with the second 2 and makes a "new unity" is a terrible vague nonsense description of how computers work with electrical currents, memory storage, NAND gates etc. When people do math, it's more complicated, but the stuff about uniting isn't helping anything.
This view of humans has some great advantages. For example, it implies the inherent equality of all human individuals. You can see it in the inherent "unalienable" and "self-evident" equality in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. After completing this historical sketch, I will take up the question how we can preserve logic and equality within the wider order of experiencing ......This comes right after the Kant junk. It's a good example of how this whole essay keeps skipping around with very little attempt to explain what one thing has to do with the next. First it was geometry and squares, then metaphorical edges and words and changing concepts, and asking questions and noticing complexity in life, and then stuff about sounds with no one around to hear them for no apparent reason, and that's just the first 3 sections. It's really jumpy and doesn't even try to give an outline of the plot. It's in chronological order though, I think that was one of the main organizational tools.
The next section brings up some stuff from earlier. But also starts talking a bunch about rights. This essay tries to say way too many things and none are explained well.
It doesn't end with a summary or bring everything together. It's just talking about another specific topic and then there's no more text.
It still never tries to say what philosophy is, why to care, or other basic introductory stuff.
I think the concept is more like: philosophy is about stretching your mind with ideas you don't fully understand. So it shows you what that's like while going over some major historical examples (in the author's view, I'm not agreeing they are major). The author is satisfied with vague understandings of things, and expects his audience to be too. Not just satisfied but actually impressed. There is a common mistake, which Ayn Rand especially criticized, where people think if they don't understand an idea (and it's said by someone with some credentials or status, or appears to be. in this case even if you don't know who the author is, he writes with big enough words and names enough famous philosophers – like he's just repeating their ideas – to give enough sense of authority to the essay. and he actually does have a PhD) then it must be really important and above you. People sort of defer to what they don't understand and get impressed. Lots of philosophers write confusing on purpose. This is a good introduction to that, in the sense that it gives you a sample of it. If you didn't understand this essay but somehow liked it, then I guess you'd like a lot of other philosophy too. (But the good philosophers, like Ayn Rand and Karl Popper, are different. They write to be understood.)
[I wrote this post in one hour.]
Elliot Temple
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RSI
computers are very important but using computers all day can hurt your hands and wrists (and eyes, neck, shoulders). this is called RSI (repetitive stress injury).
it’s VERY VERY important to a good life to understand how to deal with RSI. there is a lot of information about this, but i wanted to add my emphasis to how important it is. and i noticed a lot of the information is lacking in the stretches and squeezes area – it will list several and leave out a ton of others. so making a better list there is my main motivation for writing this.
RSI can absolutely cripple people's lives and doing some stretches and squeezes can make a huge difference in staying healthy.
here are some of the most important general things:
do not wait until you have a problem and then learn about RSI afterwards. by then a lot of damage is already done and it will be much harder to manage and you might not fully recover ever.
take breaks. regularly. seriously, do it.
if anything hurts, that means you should have taken a break BEFORE IT HURT. you need to stop immediately, but more importantly take a break sooner next time. never ever ever ignore pain.
you should type with your wrists straight. whatever you do, DON'T put your palms on the table at the base of the keyboard, then bend your wrists up to type on the keyboard.
using a trackpad a lot can hurt your index finger which does most of the work. laptop users should seriously consider using a mouse part of the time. (mice are also better input devices – faster and more accurate. if you don’t experience it that way, that’s due to a lack of skill with a mouse which is completely fixable. also having acceleration enabled can make a mouse a lot worse to use.)
if you use a trackpad a lot or have issues with a mouse, you should learn to use trackpad and/or mouse left handed in addition to right handed. you'll be slow at first but you can learn it. then switch off sometimes. if you use your left hand a quarter of the time, that's a lot less work for your right hand.
trackpads and mice are harder on your hands than a keyboard. learn keyboard hotkeys/shortcuts and create new ones.
get a keyboard which requires a low amount of force to press keys down. apple's recent keyboards (with the very thin keys) are good here. there are other good ones too. if you have an old keyboard with full size keys (like half an inch tall) it's probably really bad. type with a light touch.
also a lot of mice really suck – they have problems like weighing too much, requiring too much force to click, having too much traction when you try to move them, and being imprecise. get a mouse that you can use with a light touch. also you need a good surface, probably a mousepad, so it actually works well (mice work poorly on most desks). Razer makes good mice. Apple makes bad mice (i tried an apple wireless mouse several years ago and it was heavy and the bottom had a ton of friction with the mousepad instead of sliding easily, and it took more force to click than a razer mouse and it wasn't very precise.)
get a good chair. and think about the arm rests. i use an Aeron chair with a pillow over the arm rests which creates like a big arm rest accross my entire lap. (i like this a lot but you need the right kind of pillow in terms of size, shape, softness. most pillows wouldn't work very well. i don't know where to buy a good one, sorry). i used to use a cheap office chair that was good too, but a lot of the cheap ones suck.
eyes: staring at a screen can hurt your eyes. look away and focus on distant objects sometimes. close and squeeze your eyes shut hard sometimes. massage your closed eyes with your palms sometimes. look into Flux and Gunnars.
google information about monitor height, keyboard height, chair height, etc. i won’t go into details on that for now except to mention that by attaching the screen to the keyboard, laptops make good ergonomics impossible without an external keyboard and/or external display. a good computer setup has the keyboard lower than the screen. it’s fine to use a laptop in your lap or in bed sometimes, part of the time, but using it like that all the time is a bad idea.
you should stretch sometimes. with skill, you can tell when you need it, when stuff is tight, etc. if you don’t have a lot of experience and understanding of this, do it regularly. you can stretch when away from the computer, e.g. when waiting in line, when waiting for your microwave, while walking to another room, while on the phone, etc
lots of websites and videos with information about stretches are way too incomplete and leave out a ton of great hand stretches (and often all the squeezes and all the shoulder/neck stuff too). here is a better list (soon, below):
note that in general anything done with one hand should be repeated with the other, and all stretches should be held for a few seconds. that can be 15 seconds or 30, it depends what you’re comfortable with. at first you should do ALL of these things (it really doesn’t take that long once you’ve done them a few times and remember everything). as you get more experience with them and get a better understanding of your body, you can get a sense of which are most helpful to you.
you should read a bunch of different guides on this stuff and learn a lot about it. my above information is pretty quick just to give a general idea. learn more. now here are stretches and squeezes which i will be more complete with:
push the other way, on the back of your hand, to bend the wrist the other direction. and repeat without using the second hand to push.
pull your thumb back with the other hand.
put your two flat hands together (palms and fingers aligned). press downward so your wrists bend back.
rotate your wrists both ways and push gently with the other hand.
grip around your wrist and the area behind it with your other hand and twist the skin both directions. then move your hand up your arm a little and repeat. this massages it. also squeeze and slide your hand instead of twist to massage more.
put your hands on your hips with the thumb separate from the other fingers and press in to stretch the thumb away from the rest
spread out all your fingers. push them all outwards and backwards. (with their own muscles, not your other hand)
bend fingers over and under the next finger over. index to middle. middle to ring. and ring to pinky.
squeezes (it’s very important to do squeezes and use your muscles, not just stretches): make a fist, squeeze hard. bend just the tips of your fingers in and squeeze. make a fist with your thumb inside it and squeeze. grip one forearm with the other hand and squeeze. also get one of those balls to squeeze in your hand if you want.
put your left hand flat with fingers facing up. then grip it with your right hand, so your palms are together, but your hands are rotated 90 degrees to each other, so the fingers on your right hand will point left or forward. you should have your left thumb, then right thumb, then left 4 fingers, then right 4 fingers, in that order, counter-clockwise. then bend in your fingers and squeeze. and repeat with the other hand facing up.
interlace your fingers so they alternate one from each hand. with your palms together, squeeze – press in with all your fingers.
fingers still interlaced, put your arms at full length, palms facing away from you, and press outward.
shoulder and neck rotations (both directions) and stretches (move or turn head or shoulders in each direction they go to the max and hold it a bit)
yes, try ALL of these stretches and squeezes. over time you can learn to feel which ones your body needs when and see which are most valuable to you. you should still do ALL of them sometimes, but you can adjust the frequency and amounts for different ones.
it’s VERY VERY important to a good life to understand how to deal with RSI. there is a lot of information about this, but i wanted to add my emphasis to how important it is. and i noticed a lot of the information is lacking in the stretches and squeezes area – it will list several and leave out a ton of others. so making a better list there is my main motivation for writing this.
RSI can absolutely cripple people's lives and doing some stretches and squeezes can make a huge difference in staying healthy.
here are some of the most important general things:
do not wait until you have a problem and then learn about RSI afterwards. by then a lot of damage is already done and it will be much harder to manage and you might not fully recover ever.
take breaks. regularly. seriously, do it.
if anything hurts, that means you should have taken a break BEFORE IT HURT. you need to stop immediately, but more importantly take a break sooner next time. never ever ever ignore pain.
you should type with your wrists straight. whatever you do, DON'T put your palms on the table at the base of the keyboard, then bend your wrists up to type on the keyboard.
using a trackpad a lot can hurt your index finger which does most of the work. laptop users should seriously consider using a mouse part of the time. (mice are also better input devices – faster and more accurate. if you don’t experience it that way, that’s due to a lack of skill with a mouse which is completely fixable. also having acceleration enabled can make a mouse a lot worse to use.)
if you use a trackpad a lot or have issues with a mouse, you should learn to use trackpad and/or mouse left handed in addition to right handed. you'll be slow at first but you can learn it. then switch off sometimes. if you use your left hand a quarter of the time, that's a lot less work for your right hand.
trackpads and mice are harder on your hands than a keyboard. learn keyboard hotkeys/shortcuts and create new ones.
get a keyboard which requires a low amount of force to press keys down. apple's recent keyboards (with the very thin keys) are good here. there are other good ones too. if you have an old keyboard with full size keys (like half an inch tall) it's probably really bad. type with a light touch.
also a lot of mice really suck – they have problems like weighing too much, requiring too much force to click, having too much traction when you try to move them, and being imprecise. get a mouse that you can use with a light touch. also you need a good surface, probably a mousepad, so it actually works well (mice work poorly on most desks). Razer makes good mice. Apple makes bad mice (i tried an apple wireless mouse several years ago and it was heavy and the bottom had a ton of friction with the mousepad instead of sliding easily, and it took more force to click than a razer mouse and it wasn't very precise.)
get a good chair. and think about the arm rests. i use an Aeron chair with a pillow over the arm rests which creates like a big arm rest accross my entire lap. (i like this a lot but you need the right kind of pillow in terms of size, shape, softness. most pillows wouldn't work very well. i don't know where to buy a good one, sorry). i used to use a cheap office chair that was good too, but a lot of the cheap ones suck.
eyes: staring at a screen can hurt your eyes. look away and focus on distant objects sometimes. close and squeeze your eyes shut hard sometimes. massage your closed eyes with your palms sometimes. look into Flux and Gunnars.
google information about monitor height, keyboard height, chair height, etc. i won’t go into details on that for now except to mention that by attaching the screen to the keyboard, laptops make good ergonomics impossible without an external keyboard and/or external display. a good computer setup has the keyboard lower than the screen. it’s fine to use a laptop in your lap or in bed sometimes, part of the time, but using it like that all the time is a bad idea.
you should stretch sometimes. with skill, you can tell when you need it, when stuff is tight, etc. if you don’t have a lot of experience and understanding of this, do it regularly. you can stretch when away from the computer, e.g. when waiting in line, when waiting for your microwave, while walking to another room, while on the phone, etc
lots of websites and videos with information about stretches are way too incomplete and leave out a ton of great hand stretches (and often all the squeezes and all the shoulder/neck stuff too). here is a better list (soon, below):
note that in general anything done with one hand should be repeated with the other, and all stretches should be held for a few seconds. that can be 15 seconds or 30, it depends what you’re comfortable with. at first you should do ALL of these things (it really doesn’t take that long once you’ve done them a few times and remember everything). as you get more experience with them and get a better understanding of your body, you can get a sense of which are most helpful to you.
you should read a bunch of different guides on this stuff and learn a lot about it. my above information is pretty quick just to give a general idea. learn more. now here are stretches and squeezes which i will be more complete with:
STRETCHES AND SQUEEZES:
make one hand flat (with the arm straight), gently push on your fingers with the other hand to bend your wrist back. also repeat the same thing without using your other hand – just using the muscles in the first hand instead of pushing on it. and anything that’s for one hand, repeat it with the other hand after.push the other way, on the back of your hand, to bend the wrist the other direction. and repeat without using the second hand to push.
pull your thumb back with the other hand.
put your two flat hands together (palms and fingers aligned). press downward so your wrists bend back.
rotate your wrists both ways and push gently with the other hand.
grip around your wrist and the area behind it with your other hand and twist the skin both directions. then move your hand up your arm a little and repeat. this massages it. also squeeze and slide your hand instead of twist to massage more.
put your hands on your hips with the thumb separate from the other fingers and press in to stretch the thumb away from the rest
spread out all your fingers. push them all outwards and backwards. (with their own muscles, not your other hand)
bend fingers over and under the next finger over. index to middle. middle to ring. and ring to pinky.
squeezes (it’s very important to do squeezes and use your muscles, not just stretches): make a fist, squeeze hard. bend just the tips of your fingers in and squeeze. make a fist with your thumb inside it and squeeze. grip one forearm with the other hand and squeeze. also get one of those balls to squeeze in your hand if you want.
put your left hand flat with fingers facing up. then grip it with your right hand, so your palms are together, but your hands are rotated 90 degrees to each other, so the fingers on your right hand will point left or forward. you should have your left thumb, then right thumb, then left 4 fingers, then right 4 fingers, in that order, counter-clockwise. then bend in your fingers and squeeze. and repeat with the other hand facing up.
interlace your fingers so they alternate one from each hand. with your palms together, squeeze – press in with all your fingers.
fingers still interlaced, put your arms at full length, palms facing away from you, and press outward.
shoulder and neck rotations (both directions) and stretches (move or turn head or shoulders in each direction they go to the max and hold it a bit)
yes, try ALL of these stretches and squeezes. over time you can learn to feel which ones your body needs when and see which are most valuable to you. you should still do ALL of them sometimes, but you can adjust the frequency and amounts for different ones.
Elliot Temple
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Suffering
To suffer, you have to prefer X and then something contrary to X happens. If everything that ever happens matches your preferences, you’d be pleased with it.
If you do prefer X and things go another way, then consider:
What kind of preference is it? Is X a “nice to have”? A vague dream? An aspiration? Or a must-have?
And, specifically, either you are OK or NOT OK with not getting the X preference met. There’s only two possibilities there.
If you prefer X, and consider no X to be NOT OK, and X doesn’t work out in reality, then you’d suffer – you are NOT OK with how reality is.
There’s no other way to suffer.
And even if you get this kind of situation, you can think “well, this is a problem to be solved. so i’ll temporarily be OK with no X while looking for a solution. maybe i can find a different way to get X, and the delay would be OK rather than NOT OK. maybe i can find out X isn’t so great after all and genuinely lose interest in it. i’ll take a look.”
So suffering also requires that attempts to do rational problem solving like this fail.
If you do prefer X and things go another way, then consider:
What kind of preference is it? Is X a “nice to have”? A vague dream? An aspiration? Or a must-have?
And, specifically, either you are OK or NOT OK with not getting the X preference met. There’s only two possibilities there.
If you prefer X, and consider no X to be NOT OK, and X doesn’t work out in reality, then you’d suffer – you are NOT OK with how reality is.
There’s no other way to suffer.
And even if you get this kind of situation, you can think “well, this is a problem to be solved. so i’ll temporarily be OK with no X while looking for a solution. maybe i can find a different way to get X, and the delay would be OK rather than NOT OK. maybe i can find out X isn’t so great after all and genuinely lose interest in it. i’ll take a look.”
So suffering also requires that attempts to do rational problem solving like this fail.
Elliot Temple
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Missing Parts of Books
i stop listening and think about other stuff when listening to Atlas Shrugged sometimes
i don’t pause or rewind. i just tune back in later. i know the book well enough it’s not a problem. i know what’s going on where i pick up.
i do the same thing, sometimes, with books i’ve never read before. if that’s how it’s convenient to read, so what? why try to get every detail out of the book? if it’s so great, read it again later in the same low-burden way.
figuring out what’s going on after missing some is interesting anyway. both with books about ideas and books with plots.
and it’s actually not fundamentally different than reading without skipping anything – where you also have to make guesses and use creativity to figure out what’s going on. all novels give incomplete information about the plot and leave you to try to figure some things out. all philosophy books try to explain a lot but can never do all your thinking for you.
i don’t pause or rewind. i just tune back in later. i know the book well enough it’s not a problem. i know what’s going on where i pick up.
i do the same thing, sometimes, with books i’ve never read before. if that’s how it’s convenient to read, so what? why try to get every detail out of the book? if it’s so great, read it again later in the same low-burden way.
figuring out what’s going on after missing some is interesting anyway. both with books about ideas and books with plots.
and it’s actually not fundamentally different than reading without skipping anything – where you also have to make guesses and use creativity to figure out what’s going on. all novels give incomplete information about the plot and leave you to try to figure some things out. all philosophy books try to explain a lot but can never do all your thinking for you.
Elliot Temple
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Feminist Refuses Discussion
I spoke with a Feminist on Twitter.
So first she accused me of not being open to discussion, then she ambiguously accepted my invitation to discuss. Then she didn't come have a discussion.
I'm not surprised. It's sad and pathetic though. Someone who is unwilling to discuss uses accusing other people of being closed to discussion as one of her main tactics.
I was going to follow up after a week and give her the benefit of the doubt, but I noticed her tweets were gone. Her Twitter page is now private. This hid all her tweets from the discussion above. Maybe she was embarrassed. Fortunately I had screenshots which preserve the record of her irrationality.
Although she won't listen, I still wanted to share a few of my thoughts on the subject. Some of the things I would have told her, if she was open to discussion.
The point was not to defend fat shaming. I think fat shaming and fat-shamer shaming are both bad. (I do not think all criticism of fatness is fat-shaming though! There are legitimate criticisms of being fat, both in terms of health and beauty.)
I value diversity of thought and opinion. I think most feminists do not.
Roosh is an asshole (so what?). I only followed him on Twitter recently and already complained about several of his tweets to my friends. He's interesting though for being willing to say some unpopular things, some of which have truth to them. Unpopular truths are very valuable, even if someone isn't right about 100% of everything. Also I don't think he's trying to be mean and hurt people, whereas many feminists seem to actually want to hurt their opponents.
I think PUA has a lot of good points. I particularly like Mystery. I read some of his old Usenet posts, watched his TV show, and watched some of his PUA training DVDs, so I'm familiar with his ideas. This certainly doesn't mean I automatically like everything else vaguely in the same genre as PUA.
I often follow people on Twitter to see if I like them, and I'm very willing to unfollow. I was (and still am) giving Roosh a chance – he's in the undecided category. In general, I've noticed I find the anti-feminist Manosphere type people insufficiently PUA and dislike that. Plus they can be mean. PUA isn't mean! But on the other hand, there's a million things wrong with feminists, so sometimes I do agree with anti-feminists.
Anyway I think diversity of thought is a good thing. There are mistakes being made on both sides, so attacking Roosh and shutting him up isn't the solution. Feminists should try harder to get their own house in order.
And also, insulting Roosh won't shut him up. He retweets people flaming him. He likes the attention. He likes that people are reacting to him. The strategy of irrationally flaming him is only going to make him more confident that the feminist side is stupid, and he'll have fun with it. He won't be hurt.
Strategically, giving Roosh more stuff he likes to retweet is not how you fight him. That's absurd.
And shaming people is not how to deal with shaming. If you think shaming is bad, don't do it. Being inconsistent and contradictory is the wrong approach. Look at this deleted tweet by another feminist:
In their (purported) crusade against meanness, they can sure be mean.
Shaming and being mean also isn't truth-seeking rational argument.
I realize they've found being really mean works well to bully some other people. But it's absolutely not going to work on Roosh, who enjoys it when his opponents act like this. So it's inconsistent and it's terrible tactics.
I have plenty more to say on this if any feminists actually want to have a discussion. How about you join my discussion group and say hi, and we can talk about it? Any takers?
So first she accused me of not being open to discussion, then she ambiguously accepted my invitation to discuss. Then she didn't come have a discussion.
I'm not surprised. It's sad and pathetic though. Someone who is unwilling to discuss uses accusing other people of being closed to discussion as one of her main tactics.
I was going to follow up after a week and give her the benefit of the doubt, but I noticed her tweets were gone. Her Twitter page is now private. This hid all her tweets from the discussion above. Maybe she was embarrassed. Fortunately I had screenshots which preserve the record of her irrationality.
Although she won't listen, I still wanted to share a few of my thoughts on the subject. Some of the things I would have told her, if she was open to discussion.
The point was not to defend fat shaming. I think fat shaming and fat-shamer shaming are both bad. (I do not think all criticism of fatness is fat-shaming though! There are legitimate criticisms of being fat, both in terms of health and beauty.)
I value diversity of thought and opinion. I think most feminists do not.
Roosh is an asshole (so what?). I only followed him on Twitter recently and already complained about several of his tweets to my friends. He's interesting though for being willing to say some unpopular things, some of which have truth to them. Unpopular truths are very valuable, even if someone isn't right about 100% of everything. Also I don't think he's trying to be mean and hurt people, whereas many feminists seem to actually want to hurt their opponents.
I think PUA has a lot of good points. I particularly like Mystery. I read some of his old Usenet posts, watched his TV show, and watched some of his PUA training DVDs, so I'm familiar with his ideas. This certainly doesn't mean I automatically like everything else vaguely in the same genre as PUA.
I often follow people on Twitter to see if I like them, and I'm very willing to unfollow. I was (and still am) giving Roosh a chance – he's in the undecided category. In general, I've noticed I find the anti-feminist Manosphere type people insufficiently PUA and dislike that. Plus they can be mean. PUA isn't mean! But on the other hand, there's a million things wrong with feminists, so sometimes I do agree with anti-feminists.
Anyway I think diversity of thought is a good thing. There are mistakes being made on both sides, so attacking Roosh and shutting him up isn't the solution. Feminists should try harder to get their own house in order.
And also, insulting Roosh won't shut him up. He retweets people flaming him. He likes the attention. He likes that people are reacting to him. The strategy of irrationally flaming him is only going to make him more confident that the feminist side is stupid, and he'll have fun with it. He won't be hurt.
Strategically, giving Roosh more stuff he likes to retweet is not how you fight him. That's absurd.
And shaming people is not how to deal with shaming. If you think shaming is bad, don't do it. Being inconsistent and contradictory is the wrong approach. Look at this deleted tweet by another feminist:
In their (purported) crusade against meanness, they can sure be mean.
Shaming and being mean also isn't truth-seeking rational argument.
I realize they've found being really mean works well to bully some other people. But it's absolutely not going to work on Roosh, who enjoys it when his opponents act like this. So it's inconsistent and it's terrible tactics.
I have plenty more to say on this if any feminists actually want to have a discussion. How about you join my discussion group and say hi, and we can talk about it? Any takers?
Elliot Temple
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John Taylor Scholarship Fail
https://twitter.com/DrJohnLTaylor/status/584802877882904576
#IAMAPhilosopherBecause the unexamined life is not worth leading.So he both misquoted Socrates (it's "living" not "leading") and omitted the quote marks when using a famous quote.
Elliot Temple
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David Deutsch's Mistaken Philosophy and Scholarship
https://twitter.com/DavidDeutschOxf/status/590279039170043904
jfc
Once upon a time, DD promised me he’d write a good book about TCS before he died – I raised the issue because he intentionally left out major important TCS type ideas from FoR and BoI. He lied to me.
also DD misquoted Popper (C&R p95 for me in paper, i checked both paper and ebook, his text does not match popper’s text. it’s chap 2, section III, near start). and dropped italics which isn’t OK either. and DD’d replaced “which arise” with “[from]” just b/c of tweet length limit. (actually just to fit italics he’d have to drop the period on the end, no problem, and the space after the colon, ugh lol. but he still should have done that)
https://twitter.com/curi42/status/590295170651791360
get an ebook and stop inserting typos into what are supposed to be exact quotes. (Popper: “philosophize”. DD supposedly quoting Popper: “philosophise”.)
DD also omitted the quote source. presumably cuz of tweet length limit. it's still his responsibility.
One should study philosophy only if addressing an originally non-philosophical problem forces one to.Stay the fuck away from philosophy unless forced.
jfc
Once upon a time, DD promised me he’d write a good book about TCS before he died – I raised the issue because he intentionally left out major important TCS type ideas from FoR and BoI. He lied to me.
also DD misquoted Popper (C&R p95 for me in paper, i checked both paper and ebook, his text does not match popper’s text. it’s chap 2, section III, near start). and dropped italics which isn’t OK either. and DD’d replaced “which arise” with “[from]” just b/c of tweet length limit. (actually just to fit italics he’d have to drop the period on the end, no problem, and the space after the colon, ugh lol. but he still should have done that)
https://twitter.com/curi42/status/590295170651791360
get an ebook and stop inserting typos into what are supposed to be exact quotes. (Popper: “philosophize”. DD supposedly quoting Popper: “philosophise”.)
DD also omitted the quote source. presumably cuz of tweet length limit. it's still his responsibility.
Elliot Temple
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