How To Get Unstuck

i wrote this for an FI email. it's important and will apply to pretty much anyone reading this, not just the person i was speaking to:

how do you get started when you don't want to think/learn, and you're bad at thinking/learning? both of those get in the way of learning to want to think or learning to think better.

so what's the solution?

it depends on your situation.

you have to find some good things in your personal circumstances and use them. there's no generic solution. there has to be something good in your life to use as a starting point to build on. you have to find some things in your life to use as leverage.

hypothetically, let's say you really truly valued freedom. then you could find some things you like which contradict freedom and use the genuine really high valuing of freedom to drop the stuff that you find contradicts it. if you valued freedom enough, maybe it could inspire some intellectual honesty to allow for dropping (instead of rationalizing) some anti-freedom ideas.

i expect any real things that would work for you would involve some more parochial details of your life, and some more concrete and simple stuff, not an abstract philosophy theme. and it'd be a bunch of little things instead of one big one.

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Interests in Problems or Topics

people wanting to get back to the "main" topic they're interested in is a really common mistake i've noticed.

people are interested in X. X leads to Y which leads to Z. people are much less interested in Z than X, even though pursuing Z is the way to pursue X.

this is really broken. it gets in the way of making progress. it gets in the way of truth-seeking wherever it leads. it gets in the way of interdisciplinary learning. it means people want to learn only as long as the learning stays within certain boundaries.

here's one of my explanations of what's going on:

people want to work in particular fields rather than solve particular problems.

if your focus is purely on solving a problem (X), you'd be interested in whatever helps accomplish that goal.

but suppose instead your focus is on "i like woodworking. i want to work with wood". then you won't be interested in philosophy related to learning which could help with woodworking. cuz you want to do woodworking, not philosophy.

if your focus was on solving a really hard woodworking problem, then it'd lead you to philosophy and you'd be interested in philosophy because it helps with your problem.

i think a lot of people care more about what kind of activity they are doing – e.g. woodworking not philosophy – than they care about problem solving.

people have interests in topics (e.g. woodworking, dance, psychology, literature, architecture, programming, chemistry, politics) rather than having problem-directed interests.

another reason people lose interest is:

the more steps there are, and the more complicated the project gets, and the more tangents it follows ... then the more it's a big, longterm project. and they don't expect to successfully complete big, longterm projects. so what's the point?

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Dancing Sucks

our culture puts a huge amount of effort into teaching kids to dance. it's part of some static memes. dancing is related to sex and courtship. dancing is also related to emotions. and dancing is related to having "fun" and being unserious (and thoughtless).

dancing is all over TV. it's taught to kids at very young ages. it's also officially part of school curriculums.

for preschool in california there's a bunch of goals for what they want kids to do like:

http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/daprekindergarten.asp
1.1 Move in a variety of directed ways.
1.2 Imitate the movements shown.
:/

this one stood out to me:
2.3 Respond spontaneously to different types of music and rhythms.
this whole thing is planned, and the kid is required to learn to do it in a way his teachers approve of. it's not spontaneous, it's controlled by teachers. the people writing this document are lying scum.

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Good People

Where are all the smart, rational people interested in intellectual discussion?

Can anyone find some somewhere besides FI?

Or is the world just kinda full of fools?

Reply in the comments below.

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Simple Communication

i was watching McIntyre playing heroes of the storm with Wiz. (i've linked to the relevant timestamp.) Wiz is Korean and has limited English fluency. McIntyre answered a question from chat about how he talks with Wiz. McIntyre explained roughly:

wiz can understand certain important words well. but if i use full sentences, then wiz has a hard time with the words in between the key words. so it's easier for him if i just say more like bullet points or key words, not proper sentences.

this is wise :)

mcintyre gave an example. he says the sentence "hey wiz, can you come help me do top?" is hard for Wiz to understand. but if he just says "help top" then wiz understands.

after that i listened to him playing and talking a bit. so not intentional examples to answer the question, just talking.
one of McIntyre's sentences was "clone clone clone clone clone". this was much clearer than if he'd said, "hey wiz please clone me now so we can fight them".

another thing McIntyre said was, "care for boss". not, "hey please scout out the boss to make sure they don't do it cuz that would be bad for us"

this one may seem strange b/c "care for boss" is not normal english and would confuse a non-gamer b/c of the way the word "care" is used. it's gamer lingo that wiz would know but some native speakers might not. ppl say "care" to mean "be careful" and similar. Wiz understands it's a warning about a danger. and the danger is boss. and he knows what "boss" means – the threat of the enemy team doing the boss (an in-game concept).

i like this. it's good, simple communication. people should do this more when talking with native speakers, too. especially if they want to discuss philosophy (which is hard to communicate about)!

if people would pretend their discussion partners are non-native speakers with limited English vocabulary, i think a lot of intellectual discussions would go better. try it out!


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Mac Mail Bug

Today I found a bug in Apple's Mail program for Mac.

Select an email. Flag it with the yellow flag. Then give it an orange flag to change the flag color. Then click another email to unselect it.

The flag will display with a green color for about half a second. It fixes itself quickly.

I wonder if it's somehow using two colors at once and they mix to get green, or what. And I wonder why it fixes itself after that amount of time. Seems pretty strange. Software is hard!

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Alex Epstein's Pinnacle

Alex Epstein sent out a Center for Industrial Progress newsletter today. Unfortunately there's no web version of the newsletter to link to. When trying to spread ideas online and market them, it's important to have links people can share. I consider this careless and/or incompetent.

One reason this sucks is I can't quote part of the newsletter and give a link for anyone who wants to read the rest. If I just quote the important parts, most of my audience won't have access to the rest.

Epstein says, in full:

I’m testifying before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Wednesday at 9:30 am ET. You can view it live here.

Here’s more info about the hearing, which is called Examining the Role of Environmental Policies on Access to Energy and Economic Opportunity.

I will have five minutes to speak, followed by questions from Senators. Note that several of the Senators expected to be present, including Senators Whitehouse and Markey, are not only anti-fossil fuel but anti-free speech, calling for the criminal prosecution of those who challenge climate catastrophism.

I can promise you I will bring a case for energy freedom, including fossil fuel freedom, that has never been heard in a Congressional hearing. I very much hope that the Senators do their best--or their worst--to see how it holds up to scrutiny.

Please spread the word. And if you watch it, let me know what you think.

The anti-free speech link goes to an article which does not mention Whitehouse or Markey by name (it does name and discuss lots of other people). That's really bad and unreasonable of Epstein. He's making a major accusation, and giving a source, except the source doesn't say anything about the accused.

Big picture, Epstein is happy and sharing his success with his newsletter audience. He's reached a pinnacle. This is a high point for him. He wants to be influential. He wants to do activities like testify to the senate. No doubt he hopes in retrospect this will look small, and that he'll surpass it, but today it's big for him. He's achieving his goals!

And Epstein is, for those who don't know, an Objectivist. He used to work for the Ayn Rand Institute. Objectivist organizations write puff pieces for Epstein.

So: Epstein's big achievement consists of the privilege of speaking for five minutes to people who think he should be in jail for speaking his message.

(Or at least Epstein believes the jail thing. I didn't research it beyond seeing that his source was bogus.)

I think Ayn Rand would have mocked Epstein for this. Epstein is proud to participate in (what he himself believes is) a farce where anti-free speech people pretend to discuss and think. He's helping them pretend to be rational while knowing they aren't really listening (and, worse, they'll sit there wanting to use force against him, rather than merely tuning him out).


Elliot Temple | Permalink | Messages (6)