"People never trust an accommodating man with important things. That may sound harsh and cynical, but check it up in your own experience. If you have a severe illness, for example, you turn to the busiest, most exacting doctor in town. The fact that he is busy and can’t be bothered by little things gives you confidence in his ability and judgment."
Well, there's also the fact that the best doctors are the most in demand, so a doctor who isn't busy isn't that in demand, which is a good indicator that he isn't the best.
and of course we all feel comfortable being helped by "the best" doctor after they had a triple 16-hour shift.
It's quite crazy how hard medical professionals are overworked. It's impossible there's not plenty of mistakes happening. Whether you'll ever hear it is something different.
Could be observing effect rather than cause. People that are very good at <whatever> get a lot of business. Which cuts into the time you have to be accommodating.
Some words of hard earned "wisdom": make sure the pendulum doesn't swing too far out in the other direction.
I went from being an accommodating person to an intense asshole - trying to dial it back now but it's hard, especially when you notice that people definitely respect you more for good or bad reasons when you're like that. Take it too far though, and it will of course go all the way around and bite you in the ass.
His entire lecture series, which is available on his youtube channel, is absolutely fantastic and worth every minute. It is probably one of the most engaging and enlightening bodies of work I have experienced in any format.
I would recommend starting with the 2017 semester of his Maps of Meaning course. The first topic is a discussion of the themes and philosophy of the story of Pinocchio. It's really good.
That was a solid, quick presentation of key ideas that could impact people a lot. Most psych links I see people post aren't like that. Great video! Thanks for sharing it.
For many people, it's not about detecting someone with bad intentions. It's about not liking conflict so much that they don't know how not to accommodate by default. Over accommodation of a good person you're close with can be just as detrimental as over accommodation of a shitty person.
I'll second this. If you're over accommodating with your partner, it's just as detrimental to your own mental health and the health of your relationship as it is with a shitty person. The danger here is that we tend to be more accommodating with people we like than those we don't and so we don't even realize we're doing it until it's too late.
Yeah. If two people ask for things that are mutually exclusive, there's a huge problem if you can't say no to one of them. If there's no concept of "no", then "yes" becomes much less meaningful.
In social dance contexts, I'm usually happy when people decline to dance with me. It's dead obvious when someone isn't enthusiastic about the dance, and much less fun than getting shot down. Similarly in business contexts - an unreliable "yes" is worse than a "no", because you can get burned relying on the "yes" you did get rather than trying elsewhere after the "no".
IMO, the trick is to have control over the level of accommodation you present to different people and different situations. The key quote from the article:
>I gave to them for years, at the expense of those who had a far better claim upon my generosity.
There's a life skill getting pointed at here. Specifically, comparing the demand to the level of obligation you want to fulfill, and reacting appropriately. There's another higher-level skill of figuring out what the results of different obligation levels are and strategically choosing them.
Basically, saying "yes" implies saying "no" to the alternatives, and sometimes those alternatives are far better.
"I went from being an accommodating person to an intense asshole "
I have gone through the same process. Maybe it's because I am getting old, meditation or I just don't care anymore, I have slowly learned what's really important to me. I am generally pretty accommodating but for some things I won't negotiate and just say "No" without any further explanation.
This seems to work reasonably well with most people.
I don't really know what I am trying to say but maybe it's to have your priorities figured out and be flexible with unimportant stuff but firm with important stuff. That is, stuff that's important to you, not somebody else.
To summarize the entirety of the lesson: Sometimes saying "no" is better than saying "yes". By saying "no" you give time otherwise wasted to things that are beneficial to yourself. When and how you decide to say "no" should be based on whether the person that is requesting is perfectly capable of doing the task themselves according to the nature of the article.
Very very true. The greater your ability to conceal your thoughts, especially in the case of escalating provocations, the more information your interlocutor will reveal until the strategic balance shifts.
It's like the good side of Zeno's Paradox. If you're alive at age X, your expected number of days to live is still significant. For US males, your life expectancy doesn't fall below one year until you're 113.
That's why one should exercise and eat right. There is a strong correlation between regular exercise/healthy body weight and a productive old age. It amazes me how cavalier people are about their bodies.
It's ok to be accommodating as long as you have learned to be introspective. We all have demands of our own time and money. Introspective accommodating people are able to help others in a generous way while protecting the time and resources they need to help themselves. It's a difficult balance to achieve.
Through experience, I've come to believe that this holds true in long-term personal relationships, too. While many will tell you that compromise is the key to a successful marriage, I think that standing up for yourself and who you need to be usually is more important.
There's a needle on the gauge of life that experiences pressure to move from both directions. When you are too accommodating or compromise unequally, the needle moves towards you and establishes a new norm for expected behavior. Your job should be to push back just enough to keep the needle balanced at a point where you retain a full sense of self and the space within which to exercise it. That requires a strong sense of introspection and can take years of adult life to develop.
"Introspection" is not usually associated with standing up for yourself or your needs. It just means looking inward, which does require that you not be run off your feet taking care of others, but I've never heard it used to refer to the tactics necessary to acquire that space. "Self-advocacy" is one phrase that might be close. Or assertiveness?
In my experience, it is easier to advocate outwardly for yourself than it is to look inward and evaluate what you actually need from yourself in order to be happy. In that sense, I meant introspection. I feel like the more able I am to understand the needs and desires that drive my self-advocacy, the more effectively I can find balance in life.
I agree, I don't think it has to be an either-or type of thing. I started out being too accommodating but have gradually learned to say no more and more. Sometimes it surprises people who are used to you being overly accommodating, but if you have enough self-respect and respect your own time the surprise usually doesn't last and typically results in . Someone who is too used to you being accommodating might escalate the situation and try to challenge you but that hasn't happened to me.
My new formula is to be accommodating when it doesn't negatively affect me and if it does, make it clear that some request will be effort and I'll have to consider whether I can accommodate it (which assumes of course that it isn't an official duty). Its not about trying to force people to respect me, if I respect myself enough (for valid reasons, this doesn't excuse baseless bravado or anything) it doesn't really matter, I won't allow myself to be taken advantage of and generally that means the same thing. In a relationship (new or old) it can be as simple as when asked to do something that isn't something you would be expected to do just asking more questions about the thing. When exactly is it? How long is it going to take? You aren't being a dick by trying to factor some request into your own time, you have other things you want or need to do and 99% of the time people will respect that. Just following a request up with questions about the specifics of the request shows more self-respect that immediately being like "sure I can do that, when is it and where?", which says that you'll work around their request rather than the other way around.
I've even applied this to how I drive - I used to be much more concerned with people who were in a Great Hurry in the left lane, I would find a spot to get into the right lane even if I had to slow down to do so (usually getting me stuck behind someone who then somehow seems to be going 10mph slower than I even realized). I did this partly out of politeness and knowing how frustrating it can be to be stuck behind people, but a fair percentage of the time the person in a hurry is going 20mph+ over the speed limit and I'm probably already going 10-15 and I am passing people on the right at a fair clip and chances are there isn't even much space ahead to take up. I used to be stressed by these situations when I was less secure but now I'm not going to put myself out and dodge in and out of traffic for someone who is driving unreasonably and it doesn't stress me out to have someone raging behind me because chances are that person is going to be raging at someone no matter what, might as well be me. I'll get over for them when its safe and convenient and let them by but not at my own expense. I know this is kind of a trivial situation but it was kind of a big realization for me when I got over being stressed out by having other people be displeased with me.
I don't think it is a trivial situation. I think you are being pragmatic moving over if some dude gets antsy behind you.
Road rage is serious business. I think intent is hard to guess and we err on the side of caution. You are right that you open yourself up to mistakes if you weave and dodge through traffic. Tough call sometimes.
You want to compromise on the stuff that other people find important and hold fast on the stuff that you find important. Goes for both relationships, friends, teammates, and business associates.
Most people come into the world assuming that their desires are everybody's desires. We live life by the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This obscures that there's often a wide variety in the things we would like others to do unto us, and that assuming everybody wants what you wants often leads us to do exactly what they don't want.
It was a revelation when my therapist told me "You need to show love in the ways that other people want to receive it, not the way you want to send it." It hadn't really occurred to me before then that things I considered really inconsequential - checking if she got home okay, or leaving the porch light on for her at night - might really matter to my girlfriend (now wife), or that things that I considered really important - like listening to my latest theory on reality, or showing enthusiasm when I show her my latest product demo - might be considered inconsequential by her.
Many people have this intuitive idea that service & favors are a zero-sum game, but in actuality, some actions cost you a lot less than the recipient benefits from them, and some cost you a lot more than the recipient cares. It makes a lot of sense to perform favors that are cheap for you but benefit the recipient a lot. It's on you to figure out how much the recipient cares and how much time & energy you can spare for them.
>It was a revelation when my therapist told me "You need to show love in the ways that other people want to receive it, not the way you want to send it."
Similar - you can bet that most therapists have read that and incorporate it into their practice. My wife and I are fortunate enough to share the same primary love language, but like with most couples, there are a bunch of little things where we differ. This is why they say communication is key in a relationship - if you're not communicating, you never learn that the other person might come into the relationship with subtly different values or experiences, and then when they do things that make you feel ignored or hurt, you attribute it to malice rather than ignorance.
> We live life by the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This obscures that there's often a wide variety in the things we would like others to do unto us, and that assuming everybody wants what you wants often leads us to do exactly what they don't want.
>You want to compromise on the stuff that other people find important and hold fast on the stuff that you find important.
Isn't the definition of "important" what people disagree over when it comes to compromise? My girlfriend can say X is super important to her but in my eyes Y is more important than X and hence I will have to let go of X and hold on to Y. Convincing someone of why X or Y is more important than the other is where most of the conflict happens.
>"You need to show love in the ways that other people want to receive it, not the way you want to send it."
This is true and easy to follow but it doesn't capture my concern above which seems to be much more complex than this scenario.
In many cases you can have both X and Y, eg. if X is camping and Y is hackathons, go camping one weekend and go to the hackathon the next weekend (or have one partner go camping and the other go hacking, if you value the individual activities more than the time spent together). If X is a clean apartment and Y is more time spent programming, throw money at the problem and hire a cleaning lady. My wife and I had a fight early on in our relationship over whether the Brita should be cold or lukewarm, and we solved it by buying a $1.50 pitcher, putting my drinking water in the fridge, and putting hers on the kitchen counter. Or for a more complex example, if X is kids and Y is a startup, you figure out what else needs to change in your life to accommodate both (eg. pay money for childcare, set boundaries on work time, babysit the kid while answering support emails so your partner can take him when you have to do customer site visits) and make it happen.
There are some issues that really are mutually exclusive, mostly because they cut to the heart of what a relationship is. If one partner wants kids and the other wants no-kids, there isn't really a way to resolve that and still have what people would consider a marriage. If one partner wants to live on a farm but the other wants to live in the city, or one is a neat-freak and the other is a compulsive hoarder, you're headed for problems. If one wants the kids raised as Orthodox Jews and the other wants them to be fundamentalist Christians, this is probably insoluble within the conventional definitions of those religions. These are beliefs where you really want to make sure you match before you get married.
But even a lot of things that look totally contradictory at first can have solutions if you're willing to give up other stuff. I know couples that live in different cities and only see each other on weekends, or ones of different religions where they've just decided to mash their different cultures together and create their own religion for the kids.
Collaboration is value-generating. It takes more effort and yields more return. Rather than 'pushing back' you work together to understand what is important to each party and find ways to meet those needs. This must be built on an equal foundation - your needle in the middle - for most effective good-faith negotiation. Your partner needs to be reasonably intelligent and reasonable for this to work.
You need to teach people what's important to you, rather than expecting them to read your mind.
Highly recommend the negotiation book 'Getting to Yes' for a thorough treatment of these concepts.
If your technical decisions are black or white, you work on trivial problems - collaborate to tackle a bigger issue where you need to consider tradeoffs.
You talk about it. Either you reach a decision you both agree on or you don't. In the latter case, it's usually more important to keep the ship sailing than to have it your way, so one of you will have to give up. If you both can't, agree on a fair procedure - like asking a third party or throwing a coin - and stick with the answer. If you disagree with the decision, you can always say your disagreement explicitly and refuse to take responsibility for it, but that's totally orthogonal to supporting it when the decision has been made.
Your technical preference is a position you take to achieve your interests. To collaborate, you have to be willing to reveal and effectively articulate your underlying interests.
> Your partner needs to be reasonably intelligent and reasonable for this to work.
Most people are capable of being reasonable and behaving intelligently; they may just not be used to it. I figured this out some time ago. The way I do it if someone doesn't behave reasonably is to politely make it clear that working together on a problem is the only way they can get something from me.
"Getting to Yes" is a good book, I second the recommendation.
I'd argue being able to know what you need is actually the critical part of the marriage – standing up for it is only one route – but it's the self awareness (or lack thereof) that seems to drive so many relationships (marriage and business) into the ditch.
So, I think your point really was spot on. Introspection is critical.
Indeed, as Mark Manson puts it[1]: "For a relationship to be healthy, both parties need to be able to both give and receive rejection". Eye-opening for me, and explained many of the unhealthy relationships in my life (including employee-employer dynamics).
"Because when we give too many fucks, when we choose to give a fuck about everything, then we feel as though we are perpetually entitled to feel comfortable and happy at all times, that’s when life fucks us."[1]
Very strange! I recently read a similarly-titled book by a certain Sarah Knight! I think my friend meant to recommend Manson's book, and i ended up ordering and reading Knight's months ago, and only figured out now that there might have been a miscommunication. Haha, thanks HN.
> While many will tell you that compromise is the key to a successful marriage, I think that standing up for yourself and who you need to be usually is more important.
I think you may be taking about a situation in which there is compliance but not actual compromise. Compromise involves both coming to middle ground, whereas compliance meets the needs of one at the expense of another. So I think the saying actually supports what you say.
Being accommodating is not necessarily a black or white thing. For me, it depends. I generally consider myself to be a nice easy going person who tries to be accommodating as long as it doesn't hurt me or others. Notice the "me" in my last sentence. Yes, be selfish and then be accommodating. Now, I can be a real jerk if I come across one. Nothing wrong with that.
Might want to read the entire article, it discusses that. The original author was more charitable and more effective in his charity towards others in the end.
yep. it has become a weasel word where the speaker means to say "agreeable" but knows that "reason" has more social status than "agreement" in most contexts.
This comparison falls apart the moment you're talking about matters of moral, conscience, or basically anything that doesn't have an epistemologically solid answer.
People can debate these issues, arrive at different answers, and still get along at the end of the day.
When those issues are compared to math, where one side is automatically Right and the other side is automatically Wrong and you are Unreasonable if you don't agree... not so much.
A part of being a reasonable person is recognizing this and understanding that the process you went through to arrive at the opinion you hold is not even a little bit comparable to the rigor and certainty of the answer to a child's math problem. The comparison is inherently dishonest.
I've never had a job involving "moral, conscience, or basically anything that doesn't have an epistemologically solid answer" except the moral issues that were clear-cut. E.g. flat-out illegal. Nor have I ever had anyone use the word "reasonable" that way in such a discussion.
I'm the technical expert wherever I work, and yes, the situation is pretty clear-cut. The abuse of the word in such clear situations is why I used an arithmetic analogy.
Some of those things do have epistemologically solid answers, but our culture of 'agreeableness' has forced people to say otherwise for centuries on end, regardless of what the truth may be.
When you're trying that hard to please every trivial whim of anyone, regardless of the cost to yourself: what are you compensating? Who hurt you? Who lied to you? I mean, there's gotta be something that made you rate the approval by others so highly, and your approval of others so unimportant. Something or someone that stole you from you. Would you take 2 weeks of the life of one person to save another person 5 minutes? Unlikely, and it isn't so different when you are one of those persons.
We'd be super weirded out if someone in front of us in the queue in the supermarket committed suicide so we could pay faster. Apart from that probably increasing checkout times for everybody -- just imagine the chaos -- we wouldn't even appreciate "the thought", we'd be like "how DARE you use me for this?". Most of us don't mind being catered to or even pampered, but we don't want others to just throw themselves away for us. There are limits, even though it's kind of invisible most of the time, there is a line where hurting ourselves too much to help others a little bit actually hurts society, and offends others, correctly so.
Last but certainly not least: this over-the-top, dysfunctional selflessness in the sense of having no self (or rather, not respecting one's self) attracts not only knights in shining armour, but mostly baaaad types. You might say abuse breeds abuse in that someone who for some reason is playing doormat is emitting pheromones for people who like to trample on others. I really don't mean this to victim blame at all, but it's sadly true. And the less you let others violate your boundaries, the clearer your sight becomes for what you can freely give for mutual benefit. E.g. don't spend 2 weeks to save someone 5 minutes, but do spend 5 minutes to save someone 2 weeks.
TL;DR: you can't be a good friend to others without being a good friend to yourself first.
Unsure why you're being downvoted; this is one of the best comments on the thread (and I remember this story from the last time it was posted).
You might say abuse breeds abuse in that someone who for some reason is playing doormat is emitting pheromones for people who like to trample on others.
This is absolutely true. Perhaps some readers were confused by your metaphorical use of 'pheromones' to mean signalling in general. A great example of this is griefing behavior in MMORPGs (and trolling in general, but in games it's already quantified and thus far easier to measure). Most games implement some sort of safe zone and/or NPC policing function to prevent griefers from hassling new players to the point of wrecking the game, which is the griefers' underlying and often unconscious objective (so as to 'own' the territory of the game space even if this is poisonous to the growth of the player pool).
Denied the ability to pick on newbies, griefers then usually collect in small packs and lurk around entry-exit routes to danger zones (whether from NPCs or territorial conflict) where there's a possibility to target outcoming damaged players or incoming ones pushing up against their skill envelope. Griefers like to think of themselves as apex predators, but typically lack the self-discipline and strategic vision required to organize as such, so more often than not they occupy the same environmental as scavengers such as hyenas, vultures etc.
I haven't kept up with the latest research on this, but I recall that EVE had an economist on staff several years ago and I'd imagine that the larger participants in that market are open to or already working with sociologists, game theorists, and other quantitative social scientists to better understand the dynamics of their virtual ecosystem.
For 'nice' players (in games and in life) who don't comfortably slot into large teams, the usual advice is to be more of an asshole. And while that's partly true, being an armored up lone wolf will only take you so far. Unless the system as a whole is dysfunctional, individual lone wolves are never competitive against anything bigger than a small-medium team. However, lone wolves can team up and be very effective; to do so they (obviously) have to overcome significant trust barriers, but can succeed by maintaining smallish flat structures and growing hierarchies below those.
Saying "no" sometimes (genuinely, everyone has shit to do) is the best way to know for sure who really enjoys your company and who just keeps you near for the easy "yes" you always carry around.
I was explaining this point of view to a good old aunt of mine one afternoon and she exclaimed: “But, Joe, it is so selfish for a man to put his work ahead of everything! It’s unchristian.”
“On the contrary, it is Christian in the very finest sense,” I replied. “What was it that Jesus said when his parents rebuked him for his failure to keep his engagement with them on that first journey down from Jerusalem? ‘Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?’ He demanded. He had work to do — great work and little time in which to do it. Even He was no exception to the eternal rule that achievement comes only through the subordination of every power to a great ideal; and that no man is really obliging who does not first discharge in full his obligations to his work.”
These types of arguments on whether something is or isn't Christian or so prevalent on my FB feed, especially in regards to current politics, even being posted by non-Christians trying to convince their Christian relatives and friends to renounce a policy or politician.
My take would be - this is arguing within a nonsensical framework, and we are prolonging the hopefully last stages of the superstitious demon-haunted world era of humanity.
Some of the greatest minds of all time have believed Christianity to be the only framework that works in the world. The materialistic worldview, on the other hand is pitifully inadequate and utterly unable to explain the most basic element of our reality - the existence of our consciousness. While we can point to neurons firing in the brain, there is no materialistic explanation for how that translates into my experience of reality.
You could make the greatest AI in the whole universe. So realistic that it screams in terror and begs you for mercy if you threaten to pull the power cord or wipe its hard drive. However it would only ever be artificial intelligence. No one would ever be considered a murderer for destroying their ai machine. The reason is because while it seems perfectly realistic, there is no conscious agent in it. It is all artificial, that is, fake.
There are gaping holes in materialistic theory, this being one of the most obvious. Of course Christianity accounts for the existence of a supernatural world, which your spirit is part of.
Don't call Christianity nonsensical, because it makes a lot of sense where other theories fail. Sure there are many difficult questions. However materialism cannot offer an explanation for how my experience of reality, which is not material, exists. So at minimum, in comparison to alternatives, it is actually pretty good.
Vouched so I can point out that yours is an obsolete line of argument; consciousness can be suspended, yet the organism retain intelligent function, by means of transcranial magnetic stimulation. Certain lesions and traumas can produce the same or a similar effect, but permanently - Cotard's delusion, for example, in which that part of the mind which calls itself "I" becomes unshakably convinced that it is dead, and assumes the body must be also because it cannot conceive of any distinction between the two. The materialist explanation of conscious experience, then, is quite straightforwardly that it is an epiphenomenon of some kinds of brains but not others, and thus in no way suggests or implies there's any sort of mystical business going on.
I can't recommend attempting to argue against materialism per se; systems of faith are so strongly and intimately cherished that this is as much an attack as is the attempt to argue you (or me) out of Christianity. The idea is rather to believe what we believe, have the other guy believe what he believes, and manage to get along nonetheless. Our errant brothers and sisters in the "progressive" heresy have largely lost sight of this. We need not live down to their example, and we must not lose sight of the fact that they are our brothers and sisters, who have merely lost their way. Anger and opposition are easy - are we here to do easy things?
All else being equal, it'd be nice if we were all on the same page so that we could get past extremely fundamental arguments such as "should we teach our children science in school, or theology". Because one of those is useful in making our citizens and country competitive on the world scene, and the other is useful in decreasing our reputation on the world scene.
Otherwise, yeah, I don't give a hoot what you want to believe, that's your right. Just don't impose on the rest of us.
The Scopes monkey trial was quite a long time ago indeed. If a peaceful modus vivendi were the goal, one might reasonably imagine that enforcement efforts, whether legal, judicial, or cultural, would end when teaching the theory and evidence of human evolution ceased to be illegal.
The attempt to dictate that that, and nothing else, be permissible - utterly without regard, in this nation of better than a quarter billion people, for anything so completely irrelevant to the question as whatever local opinion on the matter may happen to be - seems, if nothing else, curiously at odds with the ubiquitous contention that those who persist in the attempt wish merely that "live and let live" be the whole of the law.
That said, before I conclude here, I feel it incumbent upon me to note my appreciation for your having chosen to engage with my prior comment, rather than merely downvote it and move on. I can hardly but acknowledge that the substance of that comment is not merely heterodox in the extreme, but very likely to get right up a lot of people's noses. Such commentary invites downvotes, and those who engage in it have no excuse to find this upsetting - but I do always find it preferable when someone instead takes the time to engage, and I thank you very kindly for so doing.
The thing with what you seem to be saying (that the science camp is trying to drive religion out of schools despite their supposed adherence to "live and let live") is that public schools are a state institution, and separation of church and state is also incredibly important. You're perfectly free to set up religious schools (which exist), and also to home school your children (also common for the religious). What's explicitly not OK is trying to foist your specific religion in an institution paid for by public money. That's the entire distinction. Past that, "live and let live" is indeed the order of the day.
But then, I suppose you may view science as another religion, and I guess that's probably going to be a sticking point. I view it as mostly orthogonal except for the creationist stuff that has mountains of evidence against it, and requires rather convoluted reasoning about God putting the evidence there as a test of faith (my understanding of the reasoning, anyway)
I don't really think that either of us is going to convince the other on any subject of import; we just don't share enough priors - for example, I doubt you are very susceptible to conviction on the point of modern progressivism as an inherently corrupt Christian heresy, and while I did once share the same faith you expound here, it would take a book to explain how and why I ceased to do so. That book actually has been written - and in a pleasantly engaging and discursive style, yet - but it would be astonishingly presumptuous of me to require such a hefty prerequisite for mere conversation, and I will not do so.
I will, though, note that it's curious how you talk about public schools as though they were paid for with federal money - this being the usual meaning with which the phrase "public money", in this connection, is used. By the Department of Education's own accounting [1], the proportion of primary and secondary public school funding which originates in the federal purse is approximately eight percent.
Yet the federal regulatory apparatus insists on an approximately one hundred percent share of control over how all of these public schools, even the vast majority for which it does not pay, must operate. This is a remarkable disparity! In any other context, its mere existence, to say nothing of the desirability of its being suffered to continue, would require considerable justification. Perhaps I am a fool to wonder what makes this context so unique.
I didn't mention Federal money, I'm keenly aware that it's primarily funded at the local level, mostly via property taxes. I'm not sure how the funding source is relevant, though, it's still public funding one way or the other. Separation of church and state is a core American value, not only at the Federal level.
It is the privilege - in the denotative sense, the private law - of power to identify one's own faith so perfectly with the right ordering of things that you need not recognize that the distinction you cherish, between church and state, does not at present exist, and has not existed in living memory.
I should not like to see my own church take charge of the nation. I don't like that yours has done so, either, at least not now that I've become an apostate of it. Before that happened, I would've been fine with the idea, but, like you, failed to recognize the fact of it - not that that's any excuse.
> consciousness can be suspended, yet the organism retain intelligent function
If what you are saying is true, you have just pointed out that consciousness is separate from brain function, which materialism is unable to explain
>Cotard's delusion
Interestingly wikipedia states that something like 50% of these people also think they are immortal. These people are very confused about their consciousness. However, that doesn't mean that they are not conscious.
>The materialist explanation of conscious experience, then, is quite straightforwardly that it is an epiphenomenon of some kinds of brains but not others, and thus in no way suggests or implies there's any sort of mystical business going on.
Could you please offer some evidence or explanation for how this works? This is completely a conjecture, and there is no known scientific mechanism for how it works. Simply saying "It arises from the brain" is another way of saying that "it arises from material processes", which is merely circular reasoning, unless you can provide some support for it.
Please, if there is any good explanation for how consciousness works, post it here! But simply saying "scientists believe that it arises from matter in the brain" is not a good explanation. My point is that there is not one single good explanation from the materialistic camp for how it works. And actually, given a materialistic worldview, it is literally impossible for consciousness to exist. The reason is because Consciousness has no material component. My perception of pain may perfectly coincide with my neurons firing in my brain. However, my perception of pain is something completely different.
What point in a response which merely says "you're wrong"? I believe I covered the substance of the matter adequately in my own prior comment, sibling to yours; I must confess I fail to see what worthwhile contribution to the discussion you intend to make here. Perhaps you'd like to elucidate?
Even when ignoring the weird claim about materialism unable to explain consciousness, what makes you think that Christianity is the answer and not some other non-materialist view?
You seem very secure in the belief that, once the "demons" of which you speak are gone, naught but pure cool reason will replace them. One can only assume such optimism stems from a complete ignorance of history.
One can be secure in the belief that a battle is worth fighting, even if nobody has ever one one before. Our future is not determined only by our history.
Whence came you by this remarkable idea that the battle against religion has never been won before? - not permanently, to be sure, but nothing else ever ends, and why should this?
I find little in the results of past such victories to recommend the conflict be reopened. Should you care to take the time, I'd be interested to hear what leads you to view the matter so differently.
I didn't say it hasn't been won before, only that it doesn't matter whether or not it has.
Anyway, what leads me to view the matter differently is that I do not simply look to the past to inform me of what will be effective tomorrow. I also look to the potential that flourishes in microcosms of today. And to the increasing efficacy of our culture's ability to promote and propagate the valuable ideas of individuals and small groups. How we communicate today distinctly different than in the past, and it opens some doors in a big way. And it is far too soon to say whether this is a good or bad thing, so we may as well do what we can to ensure it is a good thing.
You might believe war doesn't ever change, but it can change quite quickly when a new weapon is developed. More importantly, even if the victory is temporary, the results of a temporary enlightenment can guide the development of society for ages after the war has been lost. Greek democracy failed, but still lessons where learned. Enlightenments wane, but the world is a brighter place even so.
Yet the belief persists that there can be such a thing as a single, unitary culture, somehow satisfactory to all. But perhaps you're right that this idea actually is amenable to simple reason and persuasion, and it's a mere accident of history that, in every prior case where it's been at issue, the issue has eventually been decided by means of force.
Well, firstly, the ability to make rationally optimal decisions is not merely a matter of cultural preference. Promoting the ability to make decisions which marginalize errors generally - under arbitrary goals - does not inhibit anyone from having a satisfying culture. Rationalism doesn't choose your goals, it determines the optimal way to achieve them. Now, it does inhibit people from participating in a culture which promotes their death as some 'ideal' state of being, as most religions that promote an idyllic afterlife do.
I mean, if you put me on a raft out in the ocean and ask me whether we should shoot and eat the Christian or the Atheist, I'm going to ask "which one of them asserts their death will result in a state of unending glory and euphoria while preserving the 'existence' of their mental state?" Because that's the one that should be killed. And these kinds of biases pile up over the long term, leaving a distinct mark of fragility and unnecessary risk on the entire culture. You have ability to choose that, but I cannot advocate that you ever should.
Secondly, it is not a historical accident that this issue has been decided by force. It is not even really true; far more violence has been carried out in the name of spreading religion than has been in the name of eliminating it. And again, this is of little relevance anyway, because the past has been more violent in general, and we have better understood and more widely available means of achieving goals through peace today than any time in human history.
> if you put me on a raft out in the ocean and ask me whether we should shoot and eat the Christian or the Atheist, I'm going to ask "which one of them asserts their death will result in a state of unending glory and euphoria while preserving the 'existence' of their mental state?" Because that's the one that should be killed
See what I mean when I talk about progressivism? Heretical it may be, but the truth of God shines through nonetheless. For all the wrong reasons, from all the wrong priors - you misunderstand the nature of death and that which follows after, and the nature of life and what it means to follow Christ - yet we still come up with precisely the same answer: "This is my body, which is given for you."
>Three things were very clear to me in that night of self-examination five years ago. First: A man’s chief loyalty must be to the woman who has joined her life to his; to the children who call him father; and to the business which feeds and clothes and houses them all
No. A man’s chief loyalty must be to himself. This guy didn't take the lesson to its final conclusion.
The man in this story is the central nervous system for a family unit. The wife and children are, in essence, an extension of himself. He knows his genes will die, but a portion his human body, in both flesh and spirit, will live on in his children. Thus, in order to promote self-preservation, his wife and children must be attended to. This is biological reality.
Couldn't help but recall Peter Thiel's ideas on competition and why it's good business to avoid it. The author's father was stuck in competition and it drove a lot of what he did.
The idea in the article was that the competition was "imaginary" as in the salesman across the street didn't bother to try to do everything for everyone correct? Maybe the lesson is more about ignoring what others might be doing and focusing on what you need to do for success yourself. EDIT: mistake was as suggested below.
As someone who trends towards heavily accommodating, I often seem to find my actions that I judge as selfish or arrogant are the ones that I get respect for. Definitely a phenomena I don't understand, but its real so it should be very valuable to learn where to draw the line.
Put it in the context of dominance and submission among apes and it becomes clear. The one who does nice things for you is displaying a submissive posture and trying to win your favor. They are probably your social inferior: beneath you in the hierarchy, or at most, a peer. The one who doesn't care about you and does what he wants, shows that he's above you in the hierarchy. And some people just can't resist their internal ape tendency to think "wow that's sure an impressive alpha ape right there." But some, who consider themselves alphas themselves, will take it as a challenge. Etc. etc. etc. All somewhat dreary thoughts in the light of soaring techno-optimist talk about the glory of the human spirit, but I think we're all still apes and I've said so, enough times on HN, that I'm at risk of becoming known as the "ape guy."
Manners are in fact detailed prescriptive means & methods for being submissive, or rather for sending submissive signals, as the default behavior in societies where there are more humans living together than normal, i.e. anytime after 1800 when the population really started to shoot upward and to urbanize. It ends up being very practical to train people to be submissive in an urban industrial society, because if you have a thousand supposed self-declared alpha-apes constantly fighting it out "out there," things become a mess very quickly.
Edit: to the respondents, I am intentionally keeping morality out of it (decency and so forth), because a strictly moralistic right/wrong judgment-based view didn't seem to be enhancing the parent's understanding. But dominance & submission, like morality, is just another narrow rubric for viewing the world, doesn't describe the whole world, and isn't the only way of describing the world. So it's best not to take it too far beyond a blurry big-picture view!
Nice perspective. Also an ape guy (love reminding telling people we are just silly monkeys), and I think there is probably a lot of truth to looking at it this way.
Some distinctions need to be made here about manners, I think. Manners is largely social grease to keep interactions working smoothly; it is supposed to be about acknowledging the other person and treating them with some basic and fundamental respect. Real manners, in other words.
The manners you speak of are the hypocritical sort - e.g. calling Trump "Mr. President" even though he deserves no respect in any sort of situation, just because he is "the President". It is this sort of manners where people (i.e. the talking chimpanzees) get upset because social protocols are being violated - the social protocols used to enforce submission, dominance, and status. These social protocols are used to cover up all the bullshit talking chimpanzees like to get up to.
This equating of manners to a submissive posture is odd to me. One wonders what is meant by "manners". Saying yes, please, thank you, and holding a door are by no means submissive acts. Table manners, or not acting boarish while dining, is not submissive. Conducting oneself in a respectful, cordial manner is not submissive.
However fawning and currying favor may indeed be submissive, but are not proscribed by any idea of "politeness" I am aware of. Excessive accommodation to the detriment of yourself and your interests would also be submissive in my view.
This equating of manners to a submissive posture is odd to me. One wonders what is meant by "manners". Saying yes, please, thank you, and holding a door are by no means submissive acts. Table manners, or not acting boarish while dining, is not submissive. Conducting oneself in a respectful, cordial manner is not submissive.
I disagree, I think it is more submissive than doing the opposite. But that's not a bad thing - people who are never submissive don't fit into society. They have terrible manners and drive dangerously, like you point out.
A certain amount of strength is admired, but too much and you're almost unilaterally rejected.
Yes. Always and never submitting will both cost you your freedom. If you always submit you'll never get to to do anything you want, if you never submit you'll literally go to jail.
But some people might be so submissive by nature that "Never Submit" is good advice for them, because in those situations where they really should submit it will never even occur to them not to.
Have you heard Apeman by The Kinks? I think you would enjoy it! Its the same sentiment in musical form, always really resonated with me because its so true.
I think it explains a lot of things nicely, as a good theoretical framework should. But I'm also a little cautiously skeptical about it, because you're working backwards, without benefit of any real-time experimental data, so it's almost impossible to keep "present-day bias" out of it.
Manners are also a way of preventing two dominant individuals from coming into conflict over irrelevancies. And, if you don't think manners can be used aggressively...
I often seem to find my actions that I judge as selfish or arrogant are the ones that I get respect for.
A lot of timid people are attracted to strong people. You say the things they wish they had the bravery to say, and they respect it. It's aspirational.
If you have a strong bias towards accomodating, then the rare instances where you choose a different approach are presumably ones where it is strongly called for. It would make sense that you get respect for taking the right course of action.
Someone who is almost always selfish may find they are the most respected when they accomodate.
I think it's probably related to the fact that, for most people, there's a right amount of selfish and that amount isn't anywhere near 0. People would much rather get a no than a reluctant yes, even if they themselves don't realise this.
This reminds me a lot of the posts by burnt out open source project maintainers, like the one about turning off github issues that was on the front page just recently, or one from a while ago about ignoring most github notifications and marking old repos as unmaintained.
>Read the life of a great scientist like Agassiz. Was he forever at the world’s beck and call? Not for a single day.
Agassiz refers to "Louis Agassiz" a creationist scientific racist that believed the races had been created by God in separate events. Not the best example to use.
Edit: He believed this in the late 1800 and the author of the submitted article apparently considered him a "great scientist" as late as 1922.
Agassiz had a complicated life and career with plenty of lasting accomplishments, but his shortcomings do seem relevant to the piece; by the end of his life he was most famous for refusing to accommodate Darwinism.
Agassiz, who is still remembered for his contributions to geology & fossil taxonomy, can't possibly be a great scientist as he committed wrongthink over a century ago.
Eventually, the only great scientists will be ones who are still available to have their opinions policed by modern progressives.
He believed creationism and even went so far as "creatively" interpreting religious documents to support his own biases.
All this in the late 1800s.
I'm not usually on this side of the debate but here I think it's safe to say that his non-agreeableness and personal biases led him to the wrong conclusions and that is very relevant to this submission.
The more I read about his work the more I reach the conclusion that this was a man that achieved social and academic success but was a failure as a man of science.
Those things might be related through. A person being "not be diverted even for an instant" from what he wants for himself, because he considers himself above everyone else probably is related to the same person being attracted to theory that pseudo-scientifically strokes his own ego at expense of somebody else.
Both things might be results of the same personality trait. On personal side, if your personal wishes are really over everything else, you are likely to go further in your personal interests - however your family will be harmed in the process. On political and pseudo scientific side, you will be attracted to more cruel self serving theories.
Hey, man, if you want to believe in frauds, go right ahead. Discrimination between useful hypotheses and rubbish ones is how knowledge advances. If you want to hold up losers as your heroes, don't be surprised when no one follows.
Unfortunately for you, Agassiz's hypotheses about a great many things were useful and correct.
But look on the bright side, if a putative belief in creationism would prevent anyone from hearing about a given researcher's other & more defensible work; we would all be laughing at that silly creationist Issac Newton.
Hey, I can use his results while still decrying him. And I intend to. I call it standing on the shoulders of giants while chipping off their faces.
Seriously, though, you're right. One shouldn't dismiss all of people's work just because they were wrong about some things. But whether someone is a 'great scientist' is a bit unimportant in that sense.
> Eventually, the only great scientists will be ones who are still available to have their opinions policed by modern progressives.
Progressives have historically believed in government transparency, and modern ones generally support infrastructure investments, but there isn't really any social agenda. You may be thinking of liberals.
He was the first person to (formally) propose the idea of an ice age, and find evidence for it. That's pretty impressive. I don't see how what you pointed out about his beliefs detracts from the point the author was trying to make by using him as an example of a driven individual. Does the fact Newton spent many years practicing alchemy detract from his achievements? It's not about whether or not they were right or wrong in hindsight.
This was really good and most of it held up really well. I too was far too accommodating and when I thought I had it licked I got brought back in. It's a tough thing to avoid. In some ways you want to help everyone. In other ways that hurts yourself and, depending on how bad it is, maybe your family or career (like in this story).
People should certainly try not to be accommodating to everyone. It's something I still struggle with but no longer being a part of a start-up with unrealistic expecations has certainly toned down this significantly for me.
A little here and there can still be good, however.
A lot of the points touched on in the original article and this thread are conducive to deeper, creative and more meaningful work in general. You should say no to meaningless distractions. I just finished reading this book about it, so, good timing... https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted-...
I'd consider myself accommodating and people often come to me for all sorts of advice. Or help with their new amazing idea. It's nice having a reputation of being able to do a wide variety of things, including building companies which many people fantasize about. I have a successful SaaS with a partner that brought me an idea/opportunity because I had built a reputation as collaborative/knowledgeable/accommodating. I'll invest my time and expertise to explore opportunities and people know I'm candid.
However, I get ideas brought to me from everywhere, incl. friends of friends of friends. I'm happy to provide detailed thoughts and notes but now I make sure to challenge the person and the idea.
If it's a good idea, I want them to do some work upfront before I put anything else into it. Sad to say that most people start really excited about their idea, then I'll note that there are companies doing the same or nearly the same thing already, that they need to differentiate, what it's going to take to compete, etc and they will get completely deflated. Most of the time there's no follow up. That's why most people can't be entrepreneurs.
I've helped out way too many people in the past only to have them give up so easily. So if you're in this camp - I'd recommend challenging those that want your help - it's a great filter and also a way to say yes and no at the same time. You'll end up wasting less time and you'll still be open to great collaborations and more rewarding experiences from helping others out.
I've been using this to great benefit also - require the person to put a decent amount of effort into the idea first. Some people resent you for it, but those that are destined to succeed and are able to make it will keep persevering.
I used to not do this and wasted a lot of time in the process. Do you find it hard to shake the reputation you had from before? I know I do.
Yeah it's definitely hard but what helps is to really be upfront and candid about how limited my time is from the beginning.
So if someone refers someone to me, I'll tell them that I'm happy to assist however I can at this point but that my time is limited for the foreseeable future. You can do that directly or just by letting them know what you're currently working on. I want to keep the opportunity open while being honest about how I might be able to assist. Down the road it may even make sense for me to shift my time from one of my other projects/companies to the new opportunity that was cultivated from the reputation.
If it's an area that I'm not interested in, I'll say that too - "the restaurant (tech) business is tough and I don't have expertise in that arena so it's not for me". But I'll usually provide some strategies and let them know that the dialogue is always open with me.
You have a point there. Using money removes the arduous pontification of whether the favor was worth doing, aka "helper's guilt".
Especially when both parties enjoy some sort of prior established trust (long friends or acquaintances), it's even easier to use money even if it won't compensate for a comparable market rate service.
E.g. "Would you mind helping me with X, Y or Z and I'll buy you lunch(es)?"
Something I have concluded: Genuine respect is a two way street. People expecting things they won't equally do in return are not expecting you to respect them. They are expecting you to kowtow to them and be their bitch.
Those people can go to hell. They will never give back. They do not for one minute believe in a social contract where both people invest in the relationship. They are just using you. Doing anything for them just signals that it is okay for them to use you. This is a terrible social contract to make.
You can still do nice things for other people because it serves something you believe in. Just don't agree to be anyone's bitch, ever, for any reason.
This rings a bit hollow to me, kind of reminds of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" -- a moral play, a fictional story passed off as autobiographical. Aimed to enforce our self-doubting instinct that we are somehow being a chump and letting society take advantage of us. Taking this literally is a path to regrets.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 288 ms ] threadIt's quite crazy how hard medical professionals are overworked. It's impossible there's not plenty of mistakes happening. Whether you'll ever hear it is something different.
Also: the busiest doctor in town is the one who did not said "no my schedule is full" despite being overworked already.
Some words of hard earned "wisdom": make sure the pendulum doesn't swing too far out in the other direction.
I went from being an accommodating person to an intense asshole - trying to dial it back now but it's hard, especially when you notice that people definitely respect you more for good or bad reasons when you're like that. Take it too far though, and it will of course go all the way around and bite you in the ass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVMvQhxN_M8
selfauthoring.com
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAT-0aSPq-OK...
what people tend to respect innately is a genuinely nice person who can instantly turn into a no-holds-barred asshole if bad intentions are detected.
Not really, the "trick" is actually contained within the wisdom of the last paragraph of the piece.
In social dance contexts, I'm usually happy when people decline to dance with me. It's dead obvious when someone isn't enthusiastic about the dance, and much less fun than getting shot down. Similarly in business contexts - an unreliable "yes" is worse than a "no", because you can get burned relying on the "yes" you did get rather than trying elsewhere after the "no".
>I gave to them for years, at the expense of those who had a far better claim upon my generosity.
There's a life skill getting pointed at here. Specifically, comparing the demand to the level of obligation you want to fulfill, and reacting appropriately. There's another higher-level skill of figuring out what the results of different obligation levels are and strategically choosing them.
Basically, saying "yes" implies saying "no" to the alternatives, and sometimes those alternatives are far better.
Exactly.
I have gone through the same process. Maybe it's because I am getting old, meditation or I just don't care anymore, I have slowly learned what's really important to me. I am generally pretty accommodating but for some things I won't negotiate and just say "No" without any further explanation.
This seems to work reasonably well with most people.
I don't really know what I am trying to say but maybe it's to have your priorities figured out and be flexible with unimportant stuff but firm with important stuff. That is, stuff that's important to you, not somebody else.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4969041
Well, the age of the document is showing.
"You're 38, half your life is behind you already"
Through experience, I've come to believe that this holds true in long-term personal relationships, too. While many will tell you that compromise is the key to a successful marriage, I think that standing up for yourself and who you need to be usually is more important.
There's a needle on the gauge of life that experiences pressure to move from both directions. When you are too accommodating or compromise unequally, the needle moves towards you and establishes a new norm for expected behavior. Your job should be to push back just enough to keep the needle balanced at a point where you retain a full sense of self and the space within which to exercise it. That requires a strong sense of introspection and can take years of adult life to develop.
My new formula is to be accommodating when it doesn't negatively affect me and if it does, make it clear that some request will be effort and I'll have to consider whether I can accommodate it (which assumes of course that it isn't an official duty). Its not about trying to force people to respect me, if I respect myself enough (for valid reasons, this doesn't excuse baseless bravado or anything) it doesn't really matter, I won't allow myself to be taken advantage of and generally that means the same thing. In a relationship (new or old) it can be as simple as when asked to do something that isn't something you would be expected to do just asking more questions about the thing. When exactly is it? How long is it going to take? You aren't being a dick by trying to factor some request into your own time, you have other things you want or need to do and 99% of the time people will respect that. Just following a request up with questions about the specifics of the request shows more self-respect that immediately being like "sure I can do that, when is it and where?", which says that you'll work around their request rather than the other way around.
I've even applied this to how I drive - I used to be much more concerned with people who were in a Great Hurry in the left lane, I would find a spot to get into the right lane even if I had to slow down to do so (usually getting me stuck behind someone who then somehow seems to be going 10mph slower than I even realized). I did this partly out of politeness and knowing how frustrating it can be to be stuck behind people, but a fair percentage of the time the person in a hurry is going 20mph+ over the speed limit and I'm probably already going 10-15 and I am passing people on the right at a fair clip and chances are there isn't even much space ahead to take up. I used to be stressed by these situations when I was less secure but now I'm not going to put myself out and dodge in and out of traffic for someone who is driving unreasonably and it doesn't stress me out to have someone raging behind me because chances are that person is going to be raging at someone no matter what, might as well be me. I'll get over for them when its safe and convenient and let them by but not at my own expense. I know this is kind of a trivial situation but it was kind of a big realization for me when I got over being stressed out by having other people be displeased with me.
Road rage is serious business. I think intent is hard to guess and we err on the side of caution. You are right that you open yourself up to mistakes if you weave and dodge through traffic. Tough call sometimes.
Most people come into the world assuming that their desires are everybody's desires. We live life by the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." This obscures that there's often a wide variety in the things we would like others to do unto us, and that assuming everybody wants what you wants often leads us to do exactly what they don't want.
It was a revelation when my therapist told me "You need to show love in the ways that other people want to receive it, not the way you want to send it." It hadn't really occurred to me before then that things I considered really inconsequential - checking if she got home okay, or leaving the porch light on for her at night - might really matter to my girlfriend (now wife), or that things that I considered really important - like listening to my latest theory on reality, or showing enthusiasm when I show her my latest product demo - might be considered inconsequential by her.
Many people have this intuitive idea that service & favors are a zero-sum game, but in actuality, some actions cost you a lot less than the recipient benefits from them, and some cost you a lot more than the recipient cares. It makes a lot of sense to perform favors that are cheap for you but benefit the recipient a lot. It's on you to figure out how much the recipient cares and how much time & energy you can spare for them.
I'm curious, was it along the lines of this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages
That's a brilliant insight. Thanks for sharing!
Isn't the definition of "important" what people disagree over when it comes to compromise? My girlfriend can say X is super important to her but in my eyes Y is more important than X and hence I will have to let go of X and hold on to Y. Convincing someone of why X or Y is more important than the other is where most of the conflict happens.
>"You need to show love in the ways that other people want to receive it, not the way you want to send it."
This is true and easy to follow but it doesn't capture my concern above which seems to be much more complex than this scenario.
There are some issues that really are mutually exclusive, mostly because they cut to the heart of what a relationship is. If one partner wants kids and the other wants no-kids, there isn't really a way to resolve that and still have what people would consider a marriage. If one partner wants to live on a farm but the other wants to live in the city, or one is a neat-freak and the other is a compulsive hoarder, you're headed for problems. If one wants the kids raised as Orthodox Jews and the other wants them to be fundamentalist Christians, this is probably insoluble within the conventional definitions of those religions. These are beliefs where you really want to make sure you match before you get married.
But even a lot of things that look totally contradictory at first can have solutions if you're willing to give up other stuff. I know couples that live in different cities and only see each other on weekends, or ones of different religions where they've just decided to mash their different cultures together and create their own religion for the kids.
Here's a sample model: http://righttojoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Assertive-v...
Collaboration is value-generating. It takes more effort and yields more return. Rather than 'pushing back' you work together to understand what is important to each party and find ways to meet those needs. This must be built on an equal foundation - your needle in the middle - for most effective good-faith negotiation. Your partner needs to be reasonably intelligent and reasonable for this to work.
You need to teach people what's important to you, rather than expecting them to read your mind.
Highly recommend the negotiation book 'Getting to Yes' for a thorough treatment of these concepts.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/a0032e/a0032e0w.jpg
Your technical preference is a position you take to achieve your interests. To collaborate, you have to be willing to reveal and effectively articulate your underlying interests.
Most people are capable of being reasonable and behaving intelligently; they may just not be used to it. I figured this out some time ago. The way I do it if someone doesn't behave reasonably is to politely make it clear that working together on a problem is the only way they can get something from me.
"Getting to Yes" is a good book, I second the recommendation.
So, I think your point really was spot on. Introspection is critical.
[1] https://markmanson.net/books/subtle-art (quasi-NSFW)
This is the best thing I've read for a long time:
"Because when we give too many fucks, when we choose to give a fuck about everything, then we feel as though we are perpetually entitled to feel comfortable and happy at all times, that’s when life fucks us."[1]
1. https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck
I think you may be taking about a situation in which there is compliance but not actual compromise. Compromise involves both coming to middle ground, whereas compliance meets the needs of one at the expense of another. So I think the saying actually supports what you say.
"4+4=11"
"No, 4+4=8"
"Oh, c'mon, Joe, don't be difficult."
"4 and 4 is 8, 11 isn't correct.
"Be reasonable here. OK, let's compromise on 9.5, OK?"
People can debate these issues, arrive at different answers, and still get along at the end of the day.
When those issues are compared to math, where one side is automatically Right and the other side is automatically Wrong and you are Unreasonable if you don't agree... not so much.
A part of being a reasonable person is recognizing this and understanding that the process you went through to arrive at the opinion you hold is not even a little bit comparable to the rigor and certainty of the answer to a child's math problem. The comparison is inherently dishonest.
I'm the technical expert wherever I work, and yes, the situation is pretty clear-cut. The abuse of the word in such clear situations is why I used an arithmetic analogy.
Therefore my opinions are correct and yours, to the extent that they differ, are wrong.
We'd be super weirded out if someone in front of us in the queue in the supermarket committed suicide so we could pay faster. Apart from that probably increasing checkout times for everybody -- just imagine the chaos -- we wouldn't even appreciate "the thought", we'd be like "how DARE you use me for this?". Most of us don't mind being catered to or even pampered, but we don't want others to just throw themselves away for us. There are limits, even though it's kind of invisible most of the time, there is a line where hurting ourselves too much to help others a little bit actually hurts society, and offends others, correctly so.
Last but certainly not least: this over-the-top, dysfunctional selflessness in the sense of having no self (or rather, not respecting one's self) attracts not only knights in shining armour, but mostly baaaad types. You might say abuse breeds abuse in that someone who for some reason is playing doormat is emitting pheromones for people who like to trample on others. I really don't mean this to victim blame at all, but it's sadly true. And the less you let others violate your boundaries, the clearer your sight becomes for what you can freely give for mutual benefit. E.g. don't spend 2 weeks to save someone 5 minutes, but do spend 5 minutes to save someone 2 weeks.
TL;DR: you can't be a good friend to others without being a good friend to yourself first.
You might say abuse breeds abuse in that someone who for some reason is playing doormat is emitting pheromones for people who like to trample on others.
This is absolutely true. Perhaps some readers were confused by your metaphorical use of 'pheromones' to mean signalling in general. A great example of this is griefing behavior in MMORPGs (and trolling in general, but in games it's already quantified and thus far easier to measure). Most games implement some sort of safe zone and/or NPC policing function to prevent griefers from hassling new players to the point of wrecking the game, which is the griefers' underlying and often unconscious objective (so as to 'own' the territory of the game space even if this is poisonous to the growth of the player pool).
Denied the ability to pick on newbies, griefers then usually collect in small packs and lurk around entry-exit routes to danger zones (whether from NPCs or territorial conflict) where there's a possibility to target outcoming damaged players or incoming ones pushing up against their skill envelope. Griefers like to think of themselves as apex predators, but typically lack the self-discipline and strategic vision required to organize as such, so more often than not they occupy the same environmental as scavengers such as hyenas, vultures etc.
I haven't kept up with the latest research on this, but I recall that EVE had an economist on staff several years ago and I'd imagine that the larger participants in that market are open to or already working with sociologists, game theorists, and other quantitative social scientists to better understand the dynamics of their virtual ecosystem.
For 'nice' players (in games and in life) who don't comfortably slot into large teams, the usual advice is to be more of an asshole. And while that's partly true, being an armored up lone wolf will only take you so far. Unless the system as a whole is dysfunctional, individual lone wolves are never competitive against anything bigger than a small-medium team. However, lone wolves can team up and be very effective; to do so they (obviously) have to overcome significant trust barriers, but can succeed by maintaining smallish flat structures and growing hierarchies below those.
“On the contrary, it is Christian in the very finest sense,” I replied. “What was it that Jesus said when his parents rebuked him for his failure to keep his engagement with them on that first journey down from Jerusalem? ‘Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?’ He demanded. He had work to do — great work and little time in which to do it. Even He was no exception to the eternal rule that achievement comes only through the subordination of every power to a great ideal; and that no man is really obliging who does not first discharge in full his obligations to his work.”
My take would be - this is arguing within a nonsensical framework, and we are prolonging the hopefully last stages of the superstitious demon-haunted world era of humanity.
You could make the greatest AI in the whole universe. So realistic that it screams in terror and begs you for mercy if you threaten to pull the power cord or wipe its hard drive. However it would only ever be artificial intelligence. No one would ever be considered a murderer for destroying their ai machine. The reason is because while it seems perfectly realistic, there is no conscious agent in it. It is all artificial, that is, fake.
There are gaping holes in materialistic theory, this being one of the most obvious. Of course Christianity accounts for the existence of a supernatural world, which your spirit is part of.
Don't call Christianity nonsensical, because it makes a lot of sense where other theories fail. Sure there are many difficult questions. However materialism cannot offer an explanation for how my experience of reality, which is not material, exists. So at minimum, in comparison to alternatives, it is actually pretty good.
I can't recommend attempting to argue against materialism per se; systems of faith are so strongly and intimately cherished that this is as much an attack as is the attempt to argue you (or me) out of Christianity. The idea is rather to believe what we believe, have the other guy believe what he believes, and manage to get along nonetheless. Our errant brothers and sisters in the "progressive" heresy have largely lost sight of this. We need not live down to their example, and we must not lose sight of the fact that they are our brothers and sisters, who have merely lost their way. Anger and opposition are easy - are we here to do easy things?
Otherwise, yeah, I don't give a hoot what you want to believe, that's your right. Just don't impose on the rest of us.
The attempt to dictate that that, and nothing else, be permissible - utterly without regard, in this nation of better than a quarter billion people, for anything so completely irrelevant to the question as whatever local opinion on the matter may happen to be - seems, if nothing else, curiously at odds with the ubiquitous contention that those who persist in the attempt wish merely that "live and let live" be the whole of the law.
That said, before I conclude here, I feel it incumbent upon me to note my appreciation for your having chosen to engage with my prior comment, rather than merely downvote it and move on. I can hardly but acknowledge that the substance of that comment is not merely heterodox in the extreme, but very likely to get right up a lot of people's noses. Such commentary invites downvotes, and those who engage in it have no excuse to find this upsetting - but I do always find it preferable when someone instead takes the time to engage, and I thank you very kindly for so doing.
The thing with what you seem to be saying (that the science camp is trying to drive religion out of schools despite their supposed adherence to "live and let live") is that public schools are a state institution, and separation of church and state is also incredibly important. You're perfectly free to set up religious schools (which exist), and also to home school your children (also common for the religious). What's explicitly not OK is trying to foist your specific religion in an institution paid for by public money. That's the entire distinction. Past that, "live and let live" is indeed the order of the day.
But then, I suppose you may view science as another religion, and I guess that's probably going to be a sticking point. I view it as mostly orthogonal except for the creationist stuff that has mountains of evidence against it, and requires rather convoluted reasoning about God putting the evidence there as a test of faith (my understanding of the reasoning, anyway)
I will, though, note that it's curious how you talk about public schools as though they were paid for with federal money - this being the usual meaning with which the phrase "public money", in this connection, is used. By the Department of Education's own accounting [1], the proportion of primary and secondary public school funding which originates in the federal purse is approximately eight percent.
Yet the federal regulatory apparatus insists on an approximately one hundred percent share of control over how all of these public schools, even the vast majority for which it does not pay, must operate. This is a remarkable disparity! In any other context, its mere existence, to say nothing of the desirability of its being suffered to continue, would require considerable justification. Perhaps I am a fool to wonder what makes this context so unique.
I should not like to see my own church take charge of the nation. I don't like that yours has done so, either, at least not now that I've become an apostate of it. Before that happened, I would've been fine with the idea, but, like you, failed to recognize the fact of it - not that that's any excuse.
If what you are saying is true, you have just pointed out that consciousness is separate from brain function, which materialism is unable to explain
>Cotard's delusion
Interestingly wikipedia states that something like 50% of these people also think they are immortal. These people are very confused about their consciousness. However, that doesn't mean that they are not conscious.
>The materialist explanation of conscious experience, then, is quite straightforwardly that it is an epiphenomenon of some kinds of brains but not others, and thus in no way suggests or implies there's any sort of mystical business going on.
Could you please offer some evidence or explanation for how this works? This is completely a conjecture, and there is no known scientific mechanism for how it works. Simply saying "It arises from the brain" is another way of saying that "it arises from material processes", which is merely circular reasoning, unless you can provide some support for it.
Please, if there is any good explanation for how consciousness works, post it here! But simply saying "scientists believe that it arises from matter in the brain" is not a good explanation. My point is that there is not one single good explanation from the materialistic camp for how it works. And actually, given a materialistic worldview, it is literally impossible for consciousness to exist. The reason is because Consciousness has no material component. My perception of pain may perfectly coincide with my neurons firing in my brain. However, my perception of pain is something completely different.
I find little in the results of past such victories to recommend the conflict be reopened. Should you care to take the time, I'd be interested to hear what leads you to view the matter so differently.
Anyway, what leads me to view the matter differently is that I do not simply look to the past to inform me of what will be effective tomorrow. I also look to the potential that flourishes in microcosms of today. And to the increasing efficacy of our culture's ability to promote and propagate the valuable ideas of individuals and small groups. How we communicate today distinctly different than in the past, and it opens some doors in a big way. And it is far too soon to say whether this is a good or bad thing, so we may as well do what we can to ensure it is a good thing.
You might believe war doesn't ever change, but it can change quite quickly when a new weapon is developed. More importantly, even if the victory is temporary, the results of a temporary enlightenment can guide the development of society for ages after the war has been lost. Greek democracy failed, but still lessons where learned. Enlightenments wane, but the world is a brighter place even so.
I mean, if you put me on a raft out in the ocean and ask me whether we should shoot and eat the Christian or the Atheist, I'm going to ask "which one of them asserts their death will result in a state of unending glory and euphoria while preserving the 'existence' of their mental state?" Because that's the one that should be killed. And these kinds of biases pile up over the long term, leaving a distinct mark of fragility and unnecessary risk on the entire culture. You have ability to choose that, but I cannot advocate that you ever should.
Secondly, it is not a historical accident that this issue has been decided by force. It is not even really true; far more violence has been carried out in the name of spreading religion than has been in the name of eliminating it. And again, this is of little relevance anyway, because the past has been more violent in general, and we have better understood and more widely available means of achieving goals through peace today than any time in human history.
See what I mean when I talk about progressivism? Heretical it may be, but the truth of God shines through nonetheless. For all the wrong reasons, from all the wrong priors - you misunderstand the nature of death and that which follows after, and the nature of life and what it means to follow Christ - yet we still come up with precisely the same answer: "This is my body, which is given for you."
No. A man’s chief loyalty must be to himself. This guy didn't take the lesson to its final conclusion.
You mean less, right?
> "the lesson is more about ignoring what others might be doing and focusing on what you need to do for success yourself"
Manners are in fact detailed prescriptive means & methods for being submissive, or rather for sending submissive signals, as the default behavior in societies where there are more humans living together than normal, i.e. anytime after 1800 when the population really started to shoot upward and to urbanize. It ends up being very practical to train people to be submissive in an urban industrial society, because if you have a thousand supposed self-declared alpha-apes constantly fighting it out "out there," things become a mess very quickly.
Edit: to the respondents, I am intentionally keeping morality out of it (decency and so forth), because a strictly moralistic right/wrong judgment-based view didn't seem to be enhancing the parent's understanding. But dominance & submission, like morality, is just another narrow rubric for viewing the world, doesn't describe the whole world, and isn't the only way of describing the world. So it's best not to take it too far beyond a blurry big-picture view!
The manners you speak of are the hypocritical sort - e.g. calling Trump "Mr. President" even though he deserves no respect in any sort of situation, just because he is "the President". It is this sort of manners where people (i.e. the talking chimpanzees) get upset because social protocols are being violated - the social protocols used to enforce submission, dominance, and status. These social protocols are used to cover up all the bullshit talking chimpanzees like to get up to.
However fawning and currying favor may indeed be submissive, but are not proscribed by any idea of "politeness" I am aware of. Excessive accommodation to the detriment of yourself and your interests would also be submissive in my view.
I disagree, I think it is more submissive than doing the opposite. But that's not a bad thing - people who are never submissive don't fit into society. They have terrible manners and drive dangerously, like you point out.
A certain amount of strength is admired, but too much and you're almost unilaterally rejected.
But some people might be so submissive by nature that "Never Submit" is good advice for them, because in those situations where they really should submit it will never even occur to them not to.
A lot of timid people are attracted to strong people. You say the things they wish they had the bravery to say, and they respect it. It's aspirational.
Someone who is almost always selfish may find they are the most respected when they accomodate.
Agassiz refers to "Louis Agassiz" a creationist scientific racist that believed the races had been created by God in separate events. Not the best example to use.
Edit: He believed this in the late 1800 and the author of the submitted article apparently considered him a "great scientist" as late as 1922.
Eventually, the only great scientists will be ones who are still available to have their opinions policed by modern progressives.
He believed creationism and even went so far as "creatively" interpreting religious documents to support his own biases.
All this in the late 1800s.
I'm not usually on this side of the debate but here I think it's safe to say that his non-agreeableness and personal biases led him to the wrong conclusions and that is very relevant to this submission.
The more I read about his work the more I reach the conclusion that this was a man that achieved social and academic success but was a failure as a man of science.
Both things might be results of the same personality trait. On personal side, if your personal wishes are really over everything else, you are likely to go further in your personal interests - however your family will be harmed in the process. On political and pseudo scientific side, you will be attracted to more cruel self serving theories.
I think that's becoming less and less true. I'd say we've already reached the nadir of progressivism in the west.
But look on the bright side, if a putative belief in creationism would prevent anyone from hearing about a given researcher's other & more defensible work; we would all be laughing at that silly creationist Issac Newton.
Seriously, though, you're right. One shouldn't dismiss all of people's work just because they were wrong about some things. But whether someone is a 'great scientist' is a bit unimportant in that sense.
Progressives have historically believed in government transparency, and modern ones generally support infrastructure investments, but there isn't really any social agenda. You may be thinking of liberals.
No. Not at all.
But it might show that non-agreeableness might have some downsides.
People should certainly try not to be accommodating to everyone. It's something I still struggle with but no longer being a part of a start-up with unrealistic expecations has certainly toned down this significantly for me.
A little here and there can still be good, however.
However, I get ideas brought to me from everywhere, incl. friends of friends of friends. I'm happy to provide detailed thoughts and notes but now I make sure to challenge the person and the idea.
If it's a good idea, I want them to do some work upfront before I put anything else into it. Sad to say that most people start really excited about their idea, then I'll note that there are companies doing the same or nearly the same thing already, that they need to differentiate, what it's going to take to compete, etc and they will get completely deflated. Most of the time there's no follow up. That's why most people can't be entrepreneurs.
I've helped out way too many people in the past only to have them give up so easily. So if you're in this camp - I'd recommend challenging those that want your help - it's a great filter and also a way to say yes and no at the same time. You'll end up wasting less time and you'll still be open to great collaborations and more rewarding experiences from helping others out.
I used to not do this and wasted a lot of time in the process. Do you find it hard to shake the reputation you had from before? I know I do.
So if someone refers someone to me, I'll tell them that I'm happy to assist however I can at this point but that my time is limited for the foreseeable future. You can do that directly or just by letting them know what you're currently working on. I want to keep the opportunity open while being honest about how I might be able to assist. Down the road it may even make sense for me to shift my time from one of my other projects/companies to the new opportunity that was cultivated from the reputation.
If it's an area that I'm not interested in, I'll say that too - "the restaurant (tech) business is tough and I don't have expertise in that arena so it's not for me". But I'll usually provide some strategies and let them know that the dialogue is always open with me.
Especially when both parties enjoy some sort of prior established trust (long friends or acquaintances), it's even easier to use money even if it won't compensate for a comparable market rate service.
E.g. "Would you mind helping me with X, Y or Z and I'll buy you lunch(es)?"
I've seen two cultures:
- In one it works the way you describe it and it's considered odd if the favour were not 'compensated' in some way
- In another, the question of 'compensation' of a favour is an insult and seen as a statement of no investment in the relationsip
When people from one culture go to the other, it's bound to cause discomfort. I've experienced this and also seen it happen to others.
Those people can go to hell. They will never give back. They do not for one minute believe in a social contract where both people invest in the relationship. They are just using you. Doing anything for them just signals that it is okay for them to use you. This is a terrible social contract to make.
You can still do nice things for other people because it serves something you believe in. Just don't agree to be anyone's bitch, ever, for any reason.
Of course, this is a lifelong and error-prone process :)