Any pursuit or attainment of enlightenment should be kept in relative place to everyday behaviour. Even the most holy of holy person (whatever your religion or creed) still has to attend to their basic needs.
Is that the point? Or is it that enlightenment is grounded in the every day. That monks and Buddhist masters can simply sit and do basic chores and that's it, enlightenment is grounded next to the most basic human needs of fire and water and food.
I agree with you, but I see our phrases as different ways of saying the same thing. When you can perform the same mundane tasks in a way that brings meaning to, and takes meaning from, them, then you have found enlightenment.
People set out pursuing enlightenment to try to find fulfillment or happiness, but enlightenment is realizing that fulfillment or happiness is entirely dependent on your attitude towards things.
Therefore, nothing changes from becoming enlightened, other than your decision to keep a positive attitude about the every day.
As they say, you can choose to be happy, and mind over matter...
> Somewhere in the ocean is a place called the "Dragon Gate". Any fish that swims through the Dragon Gate turns into a dragon.
However the Dragon Gate is invisible.
Also, when a fish swims through it the fish doesn't look any different afterwards.
And finally, after a fish has swum through the gate it doesn't feel any different, it just is a dragon.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." from Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn
Realising that honesty and candour is the root of all good things has made me a much better musician and, yes, programmer and businessperson! I don't try to appear impressive or sophisticated any more, just tell the truth and speak sincerely, and it makes life much more manageable
The way people treat you, has nothing to do with you. They are just living out their own stories.
Related idea: "You train others how to treat you."
Think reinforcement learning as applied to training a dog. (And I love dogs, have the deepest respect for them). The concept isn't that different when applied to our social interactions.
You'd be surprised how hard it is to internalize the first principle. The mind can become very attached to the feeling of being attacked / rejected / overlooked / snubbed / etc.
...And with abuse patterns a lot of us had that ingrained at a super young age as a control lever our parents/guardians installed.
I think a hard part of this is that people commonly abuse these mechanisms for control in social structures. I grew up with it, I experienced it in school, I've experienced it in relationships, and I've experienced it professionally.
In so many ways it's human social nature to subvert each other and I think that's why so many of us get attached to those concepts. It's really hard to not get bitter and still let the good in =(
That sounds really rough man, I'm sorry to hear that. I too have struggled with being on the receiving end of other people's power trips. My curiosity on "what's really happening here, at the level of the brain" lead to some interesting reads.
Chimpanzee behavior: when a higher ranked member is smacking and harassing a lower ranked one -- the higher ranked one is literally experiencing a rise in serotonin. Their dominance becomes a self-soothing behavior that relaxes them, makes them want to repeat the behavior. It's not hard to extrapolate this "very mammalian script" into whatever workplace situation where your counterparts are just lesser skilled at valuing the well-being of those around them.
I think part of the paradox here is your counterpart can both "be a huge asshole" and also just be a mostly helpless automaton of their own harmful behavior, applying a lack of critical thought or self-reflection about their own impulses and tendencies. It's not that you're trying to reframe the situation into one where you are better than them, or that you pity them. Rather, it's just to recognize the sharp qualitative differences between the state of their mind, and yours.
The Aurelius quotes:
"The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury."
and (more dramatic than appropriate here, but all the same):
"Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil." -- i.e. of course these default behaviors are a starting feature of the human animal.
I wrote a lengthier reply here, it may give you a possibly new way to reframe things:
I'd try not to read too much into chimpanzee behaviour. While they're genetically the most similar to humans, they have quite different behavioural patterns. IMO Orangutans are much more similar to humans behaviourally.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CPTSD/ is a support community for people who have experienced childhood abuse. It might be helpful for looking for examples.
From my personal experience, I've had:
- conditional parental approval based on performance
- teacher: "do what i say because i'm authority, I don't have to explain"
- More I can't remember or don't feel is relevant
The evolutionary biologist Diana Fleischman is currently writing a book (a bit tongue-in-cheek) called "How To Train Your Boyfriend". She's discussed the ideas in a few talks and podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jre_xN2HSrk
Be warned, there's a "woo-woo shit" risk factor here, which my skepticism keeps at arm's length. I'm more of a neuroscience / mindfulness meditation kind of guy. But I do cherry-pick from other areas, where my curiosity takes me. And the original quotes were good cherries.
Reframing the "nothing is ever personal" idea in more neuroscience terms:
some astonishing high degree of our neurological processes (90+% ?) are subconscious or preconscious. A similar percentage of neurons are formed before the age of 18. In many ways, the quest to improve ourselves reduces down to the skill of paying slightly more attention to the activity of our minds.
So when someone interacts with you in a way that causes you stress or hostility, you can choose to recognize the above facts as playing out in the arena of their brain, in the same way as they are playing out in yours.
This is not to excuse behavior, nor disregard the need for boundaries, protection, standing up for yourself, etc. But it does take the sting off. What's better for your own equanimity? Succumbing to a feeling of being singled out? Or recognizing your counterpart as being stuck in their own behavior loop, unaware that they're (arguably) in a state of some kind of suffering?
Socializing is our most complex and wonderful skill; there are a ton of attendant instincts that evolved with it: status signaling, negotiation and exchange; hierarchies for coordinating group actions; grudges and revenge as deterrents meant to preserve social harmony (see chimpanzee behavior; then see bonobo behavior for something more inspiring). All of this monkey software can be dialed down, even outright idled at times. Because nothing is ever personal.
These are some truly advanced and empowering concepts, so apologies if I'm probably not representing them properly.
And in the same breath, accepting that it's entirely natural / inevitable that others tend to operate as though the world revolves around them, and forgiving them for it (within reason). Carnegie's "How To Win Friends..." is corny and dated but still relevant.
I'm glad that I can recognize it for the corny and giddy book it is, because a few years ago I worshiped it. Many of its lessons regard selflessness, and fanning others' egos. It's like the fast food of social advice, 'let them eat cake.'
> Because of our desire to get a project going, most of us have a tendency to overlook and downplay early resistance and skepticism. We delude ourselves into thinking that once clients get into the project, they will be hooked by it and learn to trust us. This can lead to our bending over more than we wish in the beginning, hoping that we will be able to stand up straight later on. This usually doesn't work. When we bend over in the beginning, the client sees us as someone who works in a bent-over position. When we avoid issues in the beginning, the client sees us as someone who avoids issues. It is difficult to change these images and expectations of us - particularly if the client wishes us to bend over and avoid issues.
> Flawless Consulting, A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used by Peter Block (2011)
I've worked with so many folks who take things personally and then I don't know if they realize it but all sorts of possibilities are closed off to them because of their response.
My career started weirdly but at one point I wasn't put off by a grizzly old guy at my first 'real' job. He was a wealth of technical information and etc, but could be kinda rough around the edges. He wasn't mean by any means, just not friendly in an office of really friendly folks who took things personally too often IMO.
So many folks were sort of scared / avoided him. I made it my job to watch for what he liked folks bringing him and what he didn't, made notes... and in a year or so we got along great.
After a while people who had a lot more experience than me would bring things to me ... to take to grizzly guy.
Technically I wasn't nearly as skilled as most folks (maybe all), but I just didn't take technical things personally as they did and ended up being this gateway that management recognized was ultra useful / valuable. Anyone could have done it, but for social reasons people just didn't.
For me, it was important to learn the converse, that other people will interpret my behavior in a situation as being about them. I have social anxiety and other issues that tend to create a strong undercurrent of aversion and discomfort in me in any social interaction. I realize now that a lot of people think I don't like them because when they talk to me they can read in my face that on a deep level I would rather not be interacting with them. I do my best to communicate enjoyment and interest, but in the context of evident discomfort, it can come off as fake. The onus is on me to minimize (ideally) or hide (when necessary) my social discomfort so people don't think I'm faking my appreciation of them.
True for about 90% to 95% of interactions but the reason I still find this idea very problematic as it is easily used an excuse by all sorts of sociopaths, narcissists and power addicts that their behavior is somehow ok because it's either "not about you", or it's your fault in the first place because "you asked for it".
Let me tell you, for these people, it absolutely is about you and it is personal. And the more you try to ignore it or brush it off or search the fault within yourself, the more they will see it as confirmation of their own behavior.
This is the most challenging edge case, for sure. But if I may proffer:
> the more you try to ignore it or brush it off or search the fault within yourself
It should never come to any of these things. "It's never personal" doesn't mean you put up with unacceptable behavior, nor blame yourself. If some sociopath decides to fling emotional abuse my way, he gets called out on it. Not because it's an attack and I will defend myself (both of which are true, at the limbic system level) but because in the end, my personal integrity requires it: I wouldn't treat others this way, I won't be treated this way, I wouldn't be an idle witness to somebody receiving similar abuse, there are healthy ways of resolving conflict, etc. In this way, it's fully de-personalized: it's not about him, or me, but the values which I'm always free to choose and reaffirm.
The fact that they may make it personal, make it about you -- that's a further reflection of how impersonal it is for them. The psych term is projection, but you don't need to concern yourself with their diagnosis.
There's a reason I paired the "it's never personal" quote with the "you train others how to treat you" quote. The latter is a reminder of your own agency.
Dealing with a sociopath or narcissist is, in some ways, easier. Their behavior is so uncooperative, they immediately forfeit the privilege of your empathy. They clearly have had a terrible emotional upbringing to even arrive at a point where they would so freely treat another person like this. And that's the point: it's not personal, they're just... a fairly broken human being.
People this broken, they can't hide broadcasting their brokenness from a mile away. It makes it easier for you to know who to keep at arm's length with minimal trust.
"My advice to you is to change your basic relationship to songwriting. You are not the ‘Great Creator’ of your songs, you are simply their servant, and the songs will come to you when you have adequately prepared yourself to receive them. They are not inside you, unable to get out; rather, they are outside of you, unable to get in."
That's interesting considering it sounds to me that he approaches songwriting like work rather than something he has a lack of control over: "He gets up early, goes to work in his office (a flat connected to his house in Hove), does an honest day’s work, returns home in the evening to his wife and kids, and starts out again the next day."[1]
Maybe the flowery words obscured the message for you.
If it helps, I first came across the quote in a blog post by Austin Kleon[0], an author, talking about people who say they have a book in them.
"I never feel like I have a book in me. I always feel like there’s a book around me. It’s like I’m a planet and there’s all this space junk orbiting me, and all the junk starts smashing together and forming book chapters. My job is to grab that stuff around me and shape it into something."
It might be more helpful to call it a metaphor. Metaphors can be powerful for reframing one's thinking, dropping limiting assumptions, even reorienting how the body relates to a habitual activity.
Thank you for conveying the power of metaphors. You did that very well. I’m familiar with this line of reasoning. I also happen to be autistic so, while I have no trouble with the semantics, these kinds of metaphors usually have little effect on me.
I think productivity rewards focus - deeper focus on discerning the fine details of a problem and actively diving and driving.
Creativity rewards sort of the opposite. It's like letting your gaze wander and see what's around you. Capturing the ideas that fly by like butterflies in a net, and being their steward.
Try doing a side-project based on a whim and then expand it as butterflies collect.
This reminds me of Sam Harris's guided meditation app. One of the common questions raised in the guided meditations is whether or not you can observe the part of your mind that is generating your thoughts. His suggestion is that you can't--the thoughts come into consciousness on their own; you can observe the thoughts as they come and go, but you can't observe where thoughts come from. Like the sensation of breathing, of temperature, or of pressure, thoughts enter consciousness as if they were an external stimulus.
Its like we don't have access to all the conscious regions of our brains. Who knows, what evolutionary pressure might have locked us out of there, who know
This can sometimes lead to burnout for me. When I blindly try to please no matter what, it also raises the bar of expectations. Sometimes people just want to feel superior and will take advantage, which can be hard to see in the moment.
As a follow on - my grandpa often said to "give each customer the best you have at that moment." Selling goods or giving attention, if every customer gets the best you have none will have reason to feel bad towards you.
I think many people go through life uncurious about why an idea occurs to them, why they have a certain preference, why something makes them feel a certain emotion.
The subconscious, for all its mysteries, offers the best chance of understanding the underlying forces that motivate our thoughts and behaviors. Realizing this and developing a curiosity about the reasons for my own thoughts and behaviors has totally changed my life for the better.
Not sure that's quite the right simplification of the appeal of passive income. Your time is fixed, the appeal of passive income for many is recovering more of your time. There's always more money you could make if you just get that next raise or promotion, so the most straightforward way to maximize your income/time is just to climb the corporate ladder and make more income.
An interesting issue with climbing the corporate ladder is that often your time spent actually increases. I've yet to find a role w/ seniority that is less than 40 hrs a week.
Some have even said that getting a promotion+raise can lead to less $ per hour because of a variety of factors such as more responsibility/time spent, increased requirement for dry-cleaning (suits or whatever)...
out of curiosity do you apply this into expenditures too? ie spending time when it's expensive or spending money when its time intensive?
Classic examples could be learning to do automotive work to save money and hiring out cleaning services to save time. (please ignore the specifics, but understand the concept).
You could increase your income to time ratio by getting a higher salary, no? Whereas passive income is about investing your income to make you money, which is agnostic of how much money you actually pull in due to salary.
Air Force Colonel John Boyd came up with the OODA loop as a simplified way to explain a very complex system of observability and feedback that he developed. I read about this in the early 2000s and ever since I've been totally obsessed with the concept of learning, iteration and optimization - and it's the prime mover in my research and work motivations to this day.
There are many parallel theories and concepts in Reinforcement Learning and Control Theory such as Sense Plan Act, but the fundamental system is the same.
The OODA loop is often abused and the depth of Boyd's contribution to decision science has been underserved in my opinion.
This has been the most profound for me in terms of decision making. It is just so applicable to most decision making situations. Also led me to expand my mental models so I can be more certain about my decisions before I act.
My favorite thing about "Finite and Infinite Games" by James Carse is you can yadda-yadda the whole book:
"There are two types of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. [...] There is only one infinite game."
Not familiar with the book, but a thing I heard recently that I think gets at the same idea and is one of those things that make you say hmmm was something like:
"Your heartbeat is just the latest heartbeat in an uninterrupted line back to the original heartbeat."
Doesn't really matter what spiritual or scientific tradition you use to define "original", and it doesn't mean that there weren't innumerable branches that ended up in a dead-end. But it gives a bit of perspective towards this infinite game.
Thank you for the quote. I get the point and it gives me something to think about as a gamer who often settles into the gamer equivalent of comfort food.
How could this possibly be true? I'm sure you could invent lots of non-isomorphic infinite games. In fact, couldn't just about any game be re-purposed into an infinite game by changing the win condition to "continue to play for an unbounded amount of time"?
Although I have slightly different takes from his and the level of avoiding the news might be different too, but the core idea that I follow these days is there.
I used to think following the news was a mix of my duty as a citizen and important for my life, personal and professional. Now I believe it's quite the opposite, I better understand the world because I avoid the news. These days I think it is as much entertainment as Netflix or comics.
I'd like to hear more about how you have implemented this. Do you not read any news? Some? How do you find out what's going on?
I've been dabbling with this too, and my current state is that I don't consume any news or social media (twitter) that I cannot consume via my RSS reader, which in practical terms means I don't subscribe to any major news outlets, but instead subscribe to a smaller newspaper in my country that sends out daily newsletters which I then forward to my RSS reader that then shows it along regular RSS content - it's a feature of feedbin.com and it's a great feature!. Then I follow a lot of personal blogs, lobste.rs and HN, and then a curated list of twitter accounts, all via my RSS reader. The twitter thing is also a feedbin.com feature. And then I try to read books about a lot of different topics according to my mood, obviously. I get the feeling that any news that is not relevant to me after a month, six months, a year and so on, is probably not worth my time anyways except if it touches me directly, in which case I'll know anyways, so by reading books about, say covid-19 in a few years instead of news now, I'll get a much better picture of the whole thing than if I was intensely following the news every single day doing the pandemic.
But fear of missing out does often present itself. It's a constant fight between my rational mind, and some kind of stupid, irrational thing that is also part of me.
It's not hard for me. I have a very low fear of missing out.
I do end up consuming news, but always either through some sort of filter or directly (rarely), but realizing the role of entertainment in whatever I am watching.
I use Twitter a lot, but I follow people who mostly don't replicate the news. I try to follow people that say interesting things.
I read Hacker News a lot, but there is the explicitly idea to not replicate mainstream news here, so another good filter.
I use Whatsapp a lot, but I am only in groups with friends and family, so another source of news, but filtered by people I care about. Maybe luckily, or even by my influence, these few groups are not just spamming news to me.
I am not against the news, I don't particularly "hate" the news.
I do inform myself through podcasts, a few that talk about books for example, so it is another filter to consume the news.
I would like to echo WhatsApp groups as a news source. I don't own a TV, don't do twitter and keep Facebook for the odd monthly visit. WhatsApp groups keep informed. The best group is my the one made up of people who went to same boarding school. What's great about this group is you get both sides of the story without anyone leaving in huff. Somewhere down the middle is the real news. I find you can't have similarly discussions out in the open.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, CNN was seen as somewhat skeptical of the rationale and purpose of the war, but the intro to each segment about the war was so thrilling: rousing, percussion-heavy music, tanks roaring over sand dunes, fighter jets banking in formation, night vision shots of anti-aircraft fire. Their primary, overriding mandate was to make people watch, so they made war exciting and attractive. What was said in their coverage made very little difference next to that.
Rolf Dobelli [0] wrote a few columns on Avoiding News Consumption and will publish a book later this year with the title Stop Reading the News: How to cope with the information overload and think more clearly.
In 2011 he wrote an essay Quit the News in Dutch NRC Next newspaper[1]. The next day the withdrawals poured in :-)
There is a paradox here that while it's not important for you to know about 99.99% of the things that happen and are reported in the news, the fact that people are paying attention disincentivizes people in government from doing bad things in the extreme.
So it's not the news that you consume that improves your life, it's the news you never have to consume that improves your life.
I'm mixed on Tim Ferriss, but he also advocates this. His take is that if it's important enough news, then you will hear about it from your friends. Hearing about something a day or a few days later usually doesn't make a difference. I believe he also advocates trusting your friends' opinions when you need to vote and make political acts. However, this essentially is a selfish position that only works if a few people do it.
I once met someone who had notifications turned on for CNN's "Breaking News" (which is rarely urgent). I couldn't believe someone would think allowing interruptions multiple times a day with things that are likely to make you angry or sad is a good idea.
News is best consumed in one-week chunks. Read a newsmagazine for the summary; dive deeper into particular topics.
Taught me the logical impossibility of the stock market to go up by x% per year, forever.
Taught me that getting better today (however small) can give resources to getting better(er?) tomorrow.
Taught me that many "experts" just say whatever to get voted in or to get a budget without regards to the absurdity of their own statements, and that many people eat up this kind of absurdity without fact checking / validating it.
For me, this type of thinking does the exact opposite in that it has a chilling effect on finding solutions and correctly assessing reality.
While some of what Al Bartlett says is true, that unfettered exponential growth can't go on forever, other statements are misleading or outright false.
He has a soapbox about limiting population growth now (in the US) [0], tied in to concepts of peak oil and other "dark green" talking points. This type of thinking misses the larger picture. The irony is that exponential growth happens all across the board, not just in population growth and energy usage but in innovation for more efficient energy usage and in finding alternative energy sources.
Al Bartlett builds a straw man argument, saying "technological optimists assure use that technology will always solve all of our problems ..." [1] but this isn't true. The argument against Bartlett's statement is that we haven't hit the ceiling on energy that's available to us. This is one of the first issues I have with this thinking: if we were to take his argument at face value, limit population growth, turn down our energy usage and try to live with what we have, then we're setting ourselves up for failure as every other country on the planet shifts to solar because it provides cheaper energy (yes, even to coal) and will only get exponentially cheaper for a good period of time [2] [3].
Here's some simple arithmetic [4]: The average US household consumes 30kWh of energy a day. The available energy falling to the surface of the earth is about 700 * 10^12 kWh per day. That means, at US levels of consumption, the ceiling on just using the sun for our energy needs is 23 trillion people. The earth's population is 7.6 billion now. Even taking Bartlett's estimate of population doubling every 40 years, that's over 400 years of growth.
This is zero-sum thinking and leads to all sorts of "us vs. them" mentality. My first thought is that these are the proto arguments for new forms of eugenics and other oppressive behavior. It also ignores the complexity of the situation of population in the US. I think it's pretty conclusive that strong public education and financial freedom lead to less children. In the US, we already are at sub-replacement but for immigration that boosts our population [5].
I would suggest you take Al Bartlett's advice and not let other people do your thinking for you [6].
I agree that the limits maybe inconceivably high from here. But disagree they'll always grow. When populations are doubling you'll only at 50% before you're 1 doubling away from collapse / exhaustion.
>That means, at US levels of consumption, the ceiling on just using the sun for our energy needs is 23 trillion people. The earth's population is 7.6 billion now. Even taking Bartlett's estimate of population doubling every 40 years, that's over 400 years of growth.
I think we're starting to see the that the current limiting factor is not the inputs on earth's energy balance, but on the outflows. If we do not reflect a good portion of that energy, but instead utilise it (w/ a good portion being converted to heat) we'll eventually cook ourselves.
Isn't this all obsolete thinking? America (and nearly every other nation in the world) is at replacement population, or nearly. The idea of geometric population growth is some 1950's meme that won't die.
He uses population growth as an example, but the big point is anything that grows geometrically has a doubling rate, and when you're at 50% consumption your only 1 doubling away from catastrophe. Or if you want to talk about summations, If you want to double the availability of something (say houses) you have to repeat the entire time series of production thus far (not counting removals, like demolitions)
Same with the stock market. A stock is basically priced based on it expected future income flows compared to other investment options like bonds. Most things being equal, you need to build an entire whole new business of equal size if you want to double your share value (without dilution i might add).
This task of doing the whole sum again sounds (doubling) much more difficult than "oh just grow at 6% per year for 7 yrs" (rule of 42).
I want to point out the primary indices like the Nasdaq and S&P500 kick out poorly performing companies.
So they very well could go up x% per year if their managers felt like it. It doesn't really bound to the marketcap of its components, just their relative marketcap amongst each other.
If you assume we've only tapped 10% of the planet's economic capacity (raw materials, energy, human support capacity) then we're only about 30 yrs from exhausting this planet. To continue doubling we'll need a new _a new earth_ every 12 years to continue it's growth rate.
This is the point of the video, that when you're consuming a finite resource, you cannot have infinite growth and when you're 1 doubling away from complete exhaustion you'll only have consumed about 50% of those resources ... if doublings are 12 years apart that means the span between rapid growth and halted growth could be as small at 12 years.
I understand that talking point and that's not the point of my response.
The "stock market" - particularly the indices that are improperly used to show the health of the market - can indeed continue going up to infinity for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with physical production of physical goods.
If that rocks your world so much and would like to know more then let me know
I definitely would like to hear about how there can be a real valuation approaching infinity barring playing numbers games like currency/denomination manipulation[1] or artificially inflating share price extrapolated to the whole business[2].
[1]: massive devaluation of currency or a currency split can change the "valuation" in absolute count of the currency, but it wouldnt buy you any more real assets (bread, land, tanks, gold)
[2]: Start a business with a trillion shares, convince a friend to buy 1 share for $1. You're now a trillionaire on paper.
The stock market indices are abstractions of real world value, as in it is impossible for them to represent real world value, and they absolutely can go up to infinity. The S&P500 is printing the value 2,881 at time of writing, and it absolutely can print 1,000,000 and beyond.
When people think about stocks going up forever, they are referring to these indices. Many people are married to one or two particular stocks that they also hope to go up forever with no particular price point in mind. All of that energy is funneled into the indices, as this is what is seen as the lifeblood of economies, it is what the governments react to and the business cycle reacts to.
These are inefficiencies, as these are not the proper things to react to, but it is the best that exists.
All the major indices, for example in the United States: S&P500, Nasdaq, Dow Jones, Russell 2000, are all calculated in different ways.
The S&P500 is a weighted average of certain variables in their component companies, Nasdaq of different variables, Dow Jones of different variables.
These indices usually are attempts to solve problems of prior indices. So the Dow Jones being the most simplistic of them all, but novel at the time.
As I mentioned earlier, the indices also are not containing the same stocks as they did 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. So it does not represent the market cap growth or contraction that is actually occurring, specifically the actual money or supporting liquidity sustaining the stock prices of the individual companies that are part of the index.
Finally, currency "manipulation" is absolutely a factor. You can't "barr" it, what you described in your footnote is not the currency manipulation that happens. Inflation happens, this is continual devaluation and that is how fiat money works. There is an unlimited supply of money for a limited supply of assets.
The standard you created to support your main thesis is unfortunately divorced from the world. Market capitalization has nothing to do with real productivity. The talking points come from the critics of capitalism in general, yes, there are unhealthy incentives for appropriating the resources of the planet, pointing out that limitation does not have anything to do with what is happening in market capitalization and the role of fiat currencies. It greatly weakens your argument to try to conform things to that position.
Only thing I would add for now is that the major company components of the major indices are not producing real physical goods. Their revenues come from ephemeral intangible resources. These are tech companies using cloud platforms, where the entire platform exists in massive virtualized computational instances that are sharing resources over physical hardware, people are exchanging infinite money for an infinitely scalable resource. In this paragraph, infinite is hyperbole for an unknown maximum, where the point is that it is counterproductive to try to rationalize what the limit is in the entire supply chain of physical hardware just to say "see there is a limit".
You have to look at macroeconomics, and study it like a capitalist, and then have real applicable criticisms which people study to improve the system, compared to trying to dismantle it.
Spaced repetition. It's a method of learning where you only get a reminder of material when you're about to forget it. I've found a way to use spaced repetition to self-learn maths without forgetting processes between obsessive cycles. I memorize names, birthdays, dates, locations, and anything else I want to remember much easier than before because of it.
Oh man, so true, realized this when I became 25. Nowadays I talk to my grandparents about these things and they say "grandson, when I was your age I never thought about how it was to be 80 years old or any other age for that matter."
I sometimes wonder how it is to be older. I also venture back to younger ages, and of course think about my current age.
Applicable to programming, applicable to life. Covers everything from device convergence to PR reviews to retirement planning.
I discovered that spending less on personal happiness brought me more personal happiness. Try it sometime, give yourself permission to give away half of your stuff and see if you don't feel better.
“The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead.”
I guess that the bleakness is the point, but I prefer a more optimistic spin on the same thing: the key to happiness isn't a search for meaning, because the universe has none to offer. It is the creation of meaning for yourself—what you do has the importance you attach to it, neither more nor less.
It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be taken to be good without limitation, except a good will.
> Permaculture is a set of design principles centered on whole systems thinking, simulating, or directly utilizing the patterns and resilient features observed in natural ecosystems. It uses these principles in a growing number of fields from regenerative agriculture, rewilding, and community resilience.
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 624 ms ] threadhttps://twitter.com/orangebook_/status/1257710884719333376?s...
Some gems in there.
People set out pursuing enlightenment to try to find fulfillment or happiness, but enlightenment is realizing that fulfillment or happiness is entirely dependent on your attitude towards things.
Therefore, nothing changes from becoming enlightened, other than your decision to keep a positive attitude about the every day.
As they say, you can choose to be happy, and mind over matter...
> Somewhere in the ocean is a place called the "Dragon Gate". Any fish that swims through the Dragon Gate turns into a dragon. However the Dragon Gate is invisible. Also, when a fish swims through it the fish doesn't look any different afterwards. And finally, after a fish has swum through the gate it doesn't feel any different, it just is a dragon.
then it is not a mountain,
then the mountain is a mountain.
https://terebess.hu/zen/qingyuan.html
After I learned the art, a punch was not longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick.
Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch and a kick is just a kick"
- Bruce Lee
Realising that honesty and candour is the root of all good things has made me a much better musician and, yes, programmer and businessperson! I don't try to appear impressive or sophisticated any more, just tell the truth and speak sincerely, and it makes life much more manageable
https://www.scribd.com/doc/15437251/Emerson-on-Beauty
The way people treat you, has nothing to do with you. They are just living out their own stories.
Related idea: "You train others how to treat you." Think reinforcement learning as applied to training a dog. (And I love dogs, have the deepest respect for them). The concept isn't that different when applied to our social interactions.
I think a hard part of this is that people commonly abuse these mechanisms for control in social structures. I grew up with it, I experienced it in school, I've experienced it in relationships, and I've experienced it professionally.
In so many ways it's human social nature to subvert each other and I think that's why so many of us get attached to those concepts. It's really hard to not get bitter and still let the good in =(
Chimpanzee behavior: when a higher ranked member is smacking and harassing a lower ranked one -- the higher ranked one is literally experiencing a rise in serotonin. Their dominance becomes a self-soothing behavior that relaxes them, makes them want to repeat the behavior. It's not hard to extrapolate this "very mammalian script" into whatever workplace situation where your counterparts are just lesser skilled at valuing the well-being of those around them.
I think part of the paradox here is your counterpart can both "be a huge asshole" and also just be a mostly helpless automaton of their own harmful behavior, applying a lack of critical thought or self-reflection about their own impulses and tendencies. It's not that you're trying to reframe the situation into one where you are better than them, or that you pity them. Rather, it's just to recognize the sharp qualitative differences between the state of their mind, and yours.
The Aurelius quotes: "The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury."
and (more dramatic than appropriate here, but all the same): "Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil." -- i.e. of course these default behaviors are a starting feature of the human animal.
I wrote a lengthier reply here, it may give you a possibly new way to reframe things:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23093457
From my personal experience, I've had:
- conditional parental approval based on performance - teacher: "do what i say because i'm authority, I don't have to explain" - More I can't remember or don't feel is relevant
Be warned, there's a "woo-woo shit" risk factor here, which my skepticism keeps at arm's length. I'm more of a neuroscience / mindfulness meditation kind of guy. But I do cherry-pick from other areas, where my curiosity takes me. And the original quotes were good cherries.
Reframing the "nothing is ever personal" idea in more neuroscience terms: some astonishing high degree of our neurological processes (90+% ?) are subconscious or preconscious. A similar percentage of neurons are formed before the age of 18. In many ways, the quest to improve ourselves reduces down to the skill of paying slightly more attention to the activity of our minds.
So when someone interacts with you in a way that causes you stress or hostility, you can choose to recognize the above facts as playing out in the arena of their brain, in the same way as they are playing out in yours.
This is not to excuse behavior, nor disregard the need for boundaries, protection, standing up for yourself, etc. But it does take the sting off. What's better for your own equanimity? Succumbing to a feeling of being singled out? Or recognizing your counterpart as being stuck in their own behavior loop, unaware that they're (arguably) in a state of some kind of suffering?
Socializing is our most complex and wonderful skill; there are a ton of attendant instincts that evolved with it: status signaling, negotiation and exchange; hierarchies for coordinating group actions; grudges and revenge as deterrents meant to preserve social harmony (see chimpanzee behavior; then see bonobo behavior for something more inspiring). All of this monkey software can be dialed down, even outright idled at times. Because nothing is ever personal.
These are some truly advanced and empowering concepts, so apologies if I'm probably not representing them properly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI
> Flawless Consulting, A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used by Peter Block (2011)
My career started weirdly but at one point I wasn't put off by a grizzly old guy at my first 'real' job. He was a wealth of technical information and etc, but could be kinda rough around the edges. He wasn't mean by any means, just not friendly in an office of really friendly folks who took things personally too often IMO.
So many folks were sort of scared / avoided him. I made it my job to watch for what he liked folks bringing him and what he didn't, made notes... and in a year or so we got along great.
After a while people who had a lot more experience than me would bring things to me ... to take to grizzly guy.
Technically I wasn't nearly as skilled as most folks (maybe all), but I just didn't take technical things personally as they did and ended up being this gateway that management recognized was ultra useful / valuable. Anyone could have done it, but for social reasons people just didn't.
Let me tell you, for these people, it absolutely is about you and it is personal. And the more you try to ignore it or brush it off or search the fault within yourself, the more they will see it as confirmation of their own behavior.
> the more you try to ignore it or brush it off or search the fault within yourself
It should never come to any of these things. "It's never personal" doesn't mean you put up with unacceptable behavior, nor blame yourself. If some sociopath decides to fling emotional abuse my way, he gets called out on it. Not because it's an attack and I will defend myself (both of which are true, at the limbic system level) but because in the end, my personal integrity requires it: I wouldn't treat others this way, I won't be treated this way, I wouldn't be an idle witness to somebody receiving similar abuse, there are healthy ways of resolving conflict, etc. In this way, it's fully de-personalized: it's not about him, or me, but the values which I'm always free to choose and reaffirm.
The fact that they may make it personal, make it about you -- that's a further reflection of how impersonal it is for them. The psych term is projection, but you don't need to concern yourself with their diagnosis.
There's a reason I paired the "it's never personal" quote with the "you train others how to treat you" quote. The latter is a reminder of your own agency.
Dealing with a sociopath or narcissist is, in some ways, easier. Their behavior is so uncooperative, they immediately forfeit the privilege of your empathy. They clearly have had a terrible emotional upbringing to even arrive at a point where they would so freely treat another person like this. And that's the point: it's not personal, they're just... a fairly broken human being.
People this broken, they can't hide broadcasting their brokenness from a mile away. It makes it easier for you to know who to keep at arm's length with minimal trust.
"My advice to you is to change your basic relationship to songwriting. You are not the ‘Great Creator’ of your songs, you are simply their servant, and the songs will come to you when you have adequately prepared yourself to receive them. They are not inside you, unable to get out; rather, they are outside of you, unable to get in."
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/do-u-have-any-spare-lyrics/
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/feb/23/popandrock.fea...
In the linked article, he goes on to say that songs "are attracted to an open, playful and motivated mind". To cultivate that, you need to show up.
And I’m both religious and a film major/screenwriter.
If it helps, I first came across the quote in a blog post by Austin Kleon[0], an author, talking about people who say they have a book in them.
"I never feel like I have a book in me. I always feel like there’s a book around me. It’s like I’m a planet and there’s all this space junk orbiting me, and all the junk starts smashing together and forming book chapters. My job is to grab that stuff around me and shape it into something."
[0]: https://austinkleon.com/2019/06/06/its-not-inside-you-trying...
Creativity rewards sort of the opposite. It's like letting your gaze wander and see what's around you. Capturing the ideas that fly by like butterflies in a net, and being their steward.
Try doing a side-project based on a whim and then expand it as butterflies collect.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqdX-aglsXU
Changed everything.
Advice I got from a born-low-class turned upper class -- richest man I know (and father of a highschool friend).
The subconscious, for all its mysteries, offers the best chance of understanding the underlying forces that motivate our thoughts and behaviors. Realizing this and developing a curiosity about the reasons for my own thoughts and behaviors has totally changed my life for the better.
Doing the selfish thing, even if I'm justified, even if it makes sense, ultimately never leads to getting what I want.
Not sure that's quite the right simplification of the appeal of passive income. Your time is fixed, the appeal of passive income for many is recovering more of your time. There's always more money you could make if you just get that next raise or promotion, so the most straightforward way to maximize your income/time is just to climb the corporate ladder and make more income.
Some have even said that getting a promotion+raise can lead to less $ per hour because of a variety of factors such as more responsibility/time spent, increased requirement for dry-cleaning (suits or whatever)...
Classic examples could be learning to do automotive work to save money and hiring out cleaning services to save time. (please ignore the specifics, but understand the concept).
Because I'd rather have 5 years of $20k passive income than $100k in 1 year.
Well, I guess in SV it wouldn't matter, but in Amsterdam it does ;-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sH3Y_-Hxh_Q
Air Force Colonel John Boyd came up with the OODA loop as a simplified way to explain a very complex system of observability and feedback that he developed. I read about this in the early 2000s and ever since I've been totally obsessed with the concept of learning, iteration and optimization - and it's the prime mover in my research and work motivations to this day.
There are many parallel theories and concepts in Reinforcement Learning and Control Theory such as Sense Plan Act, but the fundamental system is the same.
The OODA loop is often abused and the depth of Boyd's contribution to decision science has been underserved in my opinion.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
"There are two types of games. One could be called finite; the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play. [...] There is only one infinite game."
"Your heartbeat is just the latest heartbeat in an uninterrupted line back to the original heartbeat."
Doesn't really matter what spiritual or scientific tradition you use to define "original", and it doesn't mean that there weren't innumerable branches that ended up in a dead-end. But it gives a bit of perspective towards this infinite game.
It's World of Warcraft, isn't it? :)
Thank you for the quote. I get the point and it gives me something to think about as a gamer who often settles into the gamer equivalent of comfort food.
How could this possibly be true? I'm sure you could invent lots of non-isomorphic infinite games. In fact, couldn't just about any game be re-purposed into an infinite game by changing the win condition to "continue to play for an unbounded amount of time"?
Originally by Aaron Swartz http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
Although I have slightly different takes from his and the level of avoiding the news might be different too, but the core idea that I follow these days is there.
I used to think following the news was a mix of my duty as a citizen and important for my life, personal and professional. Now I believe it's quite the opposite, I better understand the world because I avoid the news. These days I think it is as much entertainment as Netflix or comics.
I've been dabbling with this too, and my current state is that I don't consume any news or social media (twitter) that I cannot consume via my RSS reader, which in practical terms means I don't subscribe to any major news outlets, but instead subscribe to a smaller newspaper in my country that sends out daily newsletters which I then forward to my RSS reader that then shows it along regular RSS content - it's a feature of feedbin.com and it's a great feature!. Then I follow a lot of personal blogs, lobste.rs and HN, and then a curated list of twitter accounts, all via my RSS reader. The twitter thing is also a feedbin.com feature. And then I try to read books about a lot of different topics according to my mood, obviously. I get the feeling that any news that is not relevant to me after a month, six months, a year and so on, is probably not worth my time anyways except if it touches me directly, in which case I'll know anyways, so by reading books about, say covid-19 in a few years instead of news now, I'll get a much better picture of the whole thing than if I was intensely following the news every single day doing the pandemic.
But fear of missing out does often present itself. It's a constant fight between my rational mind, and some kind of stupid, irrational thing that is also part of me.
I do end up consuming news, but always either through some sort of filter or directly (rarely), but realizing the role of entertainment in whatever I am watching.
I use Twitter a lot, but I follow people who mostly don't replicate the news. I try to follow people that say interesting things.
I read Hacker News a lot, but there is the explicitly idea to not replicate mainstream news here, so another good filter.
I use Whatsapp a lot, but I am only in groups with friends and family, so another source of news, but filtered by people I care about. Maybe luckily, or even by my influence, these few groups are not just spamming news to me.
I am not against the news, I don't particularly "hate" the news.
I do inform myself through podcasts, a few that talk about books for example, so it is another filter to consume the news.
In 2011 he wrote an essay Quit the News in Dutch NRC Next newspaper[1]. The next day the withdrawals poured in :-)
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolf_Dobelli#Avoid_News_Cons...
[1] https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2011/09/01/weg-met-het-nieuws-1203...
So it's not the news that you consume that improves your life, it's the news you never have to consume that improves your life.
News is best consumed in one-week chunks. Read a newsmagazine for the summary; dive deeper into particular topics.
There is no such thing as rationality of belief, only rationality of action.
both by NN Taleb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY
Taught me the logical impossibility of the stock market to go up by x% per year, forever.
Taught me that getting better today (however small) can give resources to getting better(er?) tomorrow.
Taught me that many "experts" just say whatever to get voted in or to get a budget without regards to the absurdity of their own statements, and that many people eat up this kind of absurdity without fact checking / validating it.
I mean, it's just a number, at ofc it can go up x% every year. For example, consider the case where the currency gets aggressively devalued.
Thanks you so much.
While some of what Al Bartlett says is true, that unfettered exponential growth can't go on forever, other statements are misleading or outright false.
He has a soapbox about limiting population growth now (in the US) [0], tied in to concepts of peak oil and other "dark green" talking points. This type of thinking misses the larger picture. The irony is that exponential growth happens all across the board, not just in population growth and energy usage but in innovation for more efficient energy usage and in finding alternative energy sources.
Al Bartlett builds a straw man argument, saying "technological optimists assure use that technology will always solve all of our problems ..." [1] but this isn't true. The argument against Bartlett's statement is that we haven't hit the ceiling on energy that's available to us. This is one of the first issues I have with this thinking: if we were to take his argument at face value, limit population growth, turn down our energy usage and try to live with what we have, then we're setting ourselves up for failure as every other country on the planet shifts to solar because it provides cheaper energy (yes, even to coal) and will only get exponentially cheaper for a good period of time [2] [3].
Here's some simple arithmetic [4]: The average US household consumes 30kWh of energy a day. The available energy falling to the surface of the earth is about 700 * 10^12 kWh per day. That means, at US levels of consumption, the ceiling on just using the sun for our energy needs is 23 trillion people. The earth's population is 7.6 billion now. Even taking Bartlett's estimate of population doubling every 40 years, that's over 400 years of growth.
This is zero-sum thinking and leads to all sorts of "us vs. them" mentality. My first thought is that these are the proto arguments for new forms of eugenics and other oppressive behavior. It also ignores the complexity of the situation of population in the US. I think it's pretty conclusive that strong public education and financial freedom lead to less children. In the US, we already are at sub-replacement but for immigration that boosts our population [5].
I would suggest you take Al Bartlett's advice and not let other people do your thinking for you [6].
[0] https://youtu.be/O133ppiVnWY?t=4042
[1] https://youtu.be/O133ppiVnWY?t=3640
[2] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/renewables-cheaper-than-75-perc...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swanson%27s_law
[4] https://youtu.be/O133ppiVnWY?t=4070
[5] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_01-508.pdf
[6] https://youtu.be/O133ppiVnWY?t=3332
>That means, at US levels of consumption, the ceiling on just using the sun for our energy needs is 23 trillion people. The earth's population is 7.6 billion now. Even taking Bartlett's estimate of population doubling every 40 years, that's over 400 years of growth.
I think we're starting to see the that the current limiting factor is not the inputs on earth's energy balance, but on the outflows. If we do not reflect a good portion of that energy, but instead utilise it (w/ a good portion being converted to heat) we'll eventually cook ourselves.
Same with the stock market. A stock is basically priced based on it expected future income flows compared to other investment options like bonds. Most things being equal, you need to build an entire whole new business of equal size if you want to double your share value (without dilution i might add).
This task of doing the whole sum again sounds (doubling) much more difficult than "oh just grow at 6% per year for 7 yrs" (rule of 42).
So they very well could go up x% per year if their managers felt like it. It doesn't really bound to the marketcap of its components, just their relative marketcap amongst each other.
This is the point of the video, that when you're consuming a finite resource, you cannot have infinite growth and when you're 1 doubling away from complete exhaustion you'll only have consumed about 50% of those resources ... if doublings are 12 years apart that means the span between rapid growth and halted growth could be as small at 12 years.
The "stock market" - particularly the indices that are improperly used to show the health of the market - can indeed continue going up to infinity for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with physical production of physical goods.
If that rocks your world so much and would like to know more then let me know
[1]: massive devaluation of currency or a currency split can change the "valuation" in absolute count of the currency, but it wouldnt buy you any more real assets (bread, land, tanks, gold)
[2]: Start a business with a trillion shares, convince a friend to buy 1 share for $1. You're now a trillionaire on paper.
When people think about stocks going up forever, they are referring to these indices. Many people are married to one or two particular stocks that they also hope to go up forever with no particular price point in mind. All of that energy is funneled into the indices, as this is what is seen as the lifeblood of economies, it is what the governments react to and the business cycle reacts to.
These are inefficiencies, as these are not the proper things to react to, but it is the best that exists.
All the major indices, for example in the United States: S&P500, Nasdaq, Dow Jones, Russell 2000, are all calculated in different ways.
The S&P500 is a weighted average of certain variables in their component companies, Nasdaq of different variables, Dow Jones of different variables.
These indices usually are attempts to solve problems of prior indices. So the Dow Jones being the most simplistic of them all, but novel at the time.
As I mentioned earlier, the indices also are not containing the same stocks as they did 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. So it does not represent the market cap growth or contraction that is actually occurring, specifically the actual money or supporting liquidity sustaining the stock prices of the individual companies that are part of the index.
Finally, currency "manipulation" is absolutely a factor. You can't "barr" it, what you described in your footnote is not the currency manipulation that happens. Inflation happens, this is continual devaluation and that is how fiat money works. There is an unlimited supply of money for a limited supply of assets.
The standard you created to support your main thesis is unfortunately divorced from the world. Market capitalization has nothing to do with real productivity. The talking points come from the critics of capitalism in general, yes, there are unhealthy incentives for appropriating the resources of the planet, pointing out that limitation does not have anything to do with what is happening in market capitalization and the role of fiat currencies. It greatly weakens your argument to try to conform things to that position.
Only thing I would add for now is that the major company components of the major indices are not producing real physical goods. Their revenues come from ephemeral intangible resources. These are tech companies using cloud platforms, where the entire platform exists in massive virtualized computational instances that are sharing resources over physical hardware, people are exchanging infinite money for an infinitely scalable resource. In this paragraph, infinite is hyperbole for an unknown maximum, where the point is that it is counterproductive to try to rationalize what the limit is in the entire supply chain of physical hardware just to say "see there is a limit".
You have to look at macroeconomics, and study it like a capitalist, and then have real applicable criticisms which people study to improve the system, compared to trying to dismantle it.
https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition
[0]: https://apps.ankiweb.net/
0: https://github.com/ashlinchak/mdanki
Confucius
I sometimes wonder how it is to be older. I also venture back to younger ages, and of course think about my current age.
Applicable to programming, applicable to life. Covers everything from device convergence to PR reviews to retirement planning.
I discovered that spending less on personal happiness brought me more personal happiness. Try it sometime, give yourself permission to give away half of your stuff and see if you don't feel better.
Thanks Mr.Peanutbutter
First paragraph from wikipedia article:
> Permaculture is a set of design principles centered on whole systems thinking, simulating, or directly utilizing the patterns and resilient features observed in natural ecosystems. It uses these principles in a growing number of fields from regenerative agriculture, rewilding, and community resilience.