LastThursday

There is a possibility that mathematics is so flexible that it bends itself to the patterns in nature. Anything with some sort of pattern, can be modelled by maths. Indeed maths has been invented just for specific physical theories such as quantum mechanics. There's also lots of approximations in mathematical modelling going on, take the Ideal Gas laws for example, which are statistical, there's plenty of that sort of thing. Mathematics isn't always about precision. There's also the question of calculation. Even if you get equations for something in nature, they can be intractably hard to either solve or plug real numbers into. How spacetime behaves around most types of black hole, has differential equations that are unsolvable. The three-body problem is unsolvable. But nature doesn't care about mathematics and just gets on with it. But, one link is that both idealism and mathematics are in a sense both about non-material Platonic forms - so they share that in common. @Lazarus93 do you have any ideas or thoughts about it?

Indeed. And the normals will call you insane or at least keep well away from you. Most can't bear the idea of that sort of separation from the flock. So they don't even start.

that was my point. Nice, making a point by stating it's opposite. Must be rhetorical or something...

I've been feeling a lot of stress lately and I'm concerned about its effects on my health and sleep. Anyone here now how to clear stress hormones quickly from the body, and how to reverse the bad effects of stress hormones?

These people are trained for their job, which is to be on TV. There is also bias because TV people are cherry picked to appear on there, so you only get the most articulate, most intellectual, most attractive, most funny etc.

You're born into a society and culture and indoctrinated from a young age. It's super hard to break out of that programming - even if you wanted to - everything is against you. Philosophy, epistemology and all that stuff is very hard to learn and understand, and most people don't see the utility of it, it doesn't help them survive. I wouldn't underestimate how indoctrinated you yourself are either, work on that, let others worry about themselves.

Romance and Truth are totally separate, you can chase both if you like. Romance isn't all consuming, you can have hobbies.

God(s) isn't rational, we are. Plurality or singularity are the same to God. Fundamentally what is being experienced is both irrational and arbitrary. There are patterns in that irrationality and order in the arbitrariness, so you could argue about why this and why not this for ever; there is no ultimate answer.

@Hojo maybe language has been directly altering my perception all the time, but I just haven't noticed before? My experience would seem to go against the idea that language is just "pointing", and more that language is strongly intertwined with perception.

It all happened a few years ago when I was listening to some hypnosis stuff on YouTube. Specifically one video that programmed my mind to "love the colour pink" - don't ask. But I probably listened to that quite a few times over months. Suddenly, one day when walking down the street I noticed that anyone wearing pink or anything with pink seemed to "pop out" in my vision. It's hard to describe but was something like turning up the saturation in Photoshop. The colour wasn't brighter, but somehow thicker and the effect was quite jarring. Over the next few days I noticed that purple (dark pink?) was also affected in a similar way. Eventually, the effect went away. However, being me, I tried to consciously mess about with this. I would pretend to have various "saturation dials" in my mind and turn up various different colours. Trying this over an extended time of months, eventually I was able to affect other colours in a similar way to pink. Again the effect went away again eventually, after I stopped messing about with it. I tried again recently, and for a week now my colour perception has been messed up. It mainly affects strong bold primary colours, and especially blues this time, more mute colours don't seem to be affected at all. Thing is, I seemingly have no way to "turn down" the effect, other than to just wait it out. My question: what's going on here? How does language affect perception directly?

That sure is a big vision. To do that you'd have to understand all the systems that make up Western culture. All systems have leverage points: places where a small change can tip the system into a new state. Think things like Covid stopping normal working practices, or the blocking the Strait of Hormuz stopping oil movement. The main problems are finding leverage points you can affect with a small number of people, and the other is the uncertainty of tipping the system into a new state, it's not deterministic. Every other revolution will take sustained effort and is most likely futile because you're working against billions of people's entrenched habits and world views.

@Carl-Richard a good unpacking of what I wrote there, thanks. Isn't most cognition of a narrative style? I mean, the whole of science is narrative, but it doesn't appeal to all minds. It's definitely more to do with the content of the narrative, and the most memorable, lowest common denominator content wins out, which is where conspiracies sit. People are extremely prone to believing stories of all shades. Most of them are harmless because people "know" they're just stories, but the dangerous ones are the ones people don't recognise as stories, but as "reality". I think even very sensible even-minded people can slip from one state to the other.

@Someone here a good unpacking and critique of my ideas by ChatGPT there: I would disagree strongly with ChatGPT about that point. Can something actually be true if no information about it was ever captured? How can truth be distinguished from falsehood if there is nothing to go on after the fact? In other words to validate truth, it must persist long enough to be validated. And validating truth requires phenomenology. Otherwise, absolutely anything could be true, but argue that we could have just forgotten about it. There's a deep point here. Either: truth sits as a one-time fact that holds forever (ChatGPT), or, truth is a continuous process that needs refreshing every time we dip back into it (me). In reality though, all truths have side effects in the world at large and are not forgotten. Most truths cast a shadow, and we look for the thing that cast it.

No real solid advice as such, but I have some experience in managing teams. It looks like you might already know what needs to be done, since you mentioned your old manager dropped the ball. Half the job is then just to constantly keep on top of the logistics and the non-people side of things: managing stock, deliveries, selling etc. i.e. the mechanics and admin of the position. The fact that your boss has confidence in you is a very good sign, and you can use them as your ally if difficult situations crop up. The other half of the job is the people side of things, and this is where most managers trip up. It's a matter of approach. First is to respect the people around you at all times, even if they're difficult or disrespectful themselves, and treat everyone equally and fairly. Second is to listen to the people who do their particular jobs day in day out, they may have good ideas for improvements, take them seriously and take action on them. Third, act on any transgressions or bad behaviour as quickly as possible, and discipline if necessary (in private), or at the very least be firm about what is not acceptable. Fourth, trust people to do their jobs without constant supervision, delegate when possible to show people you trust them. There is a more psychological side in terms of perception and keeping your distance. You should aim to pitch in with the people you manage when it's necessary, i.e. be seen to do things that are not strictly your role from time to time. You should be punctual for meetings, and early to arrive and late to leave. You should avoid being mates with people you manage, because this makes it very hard to treat everyone equally, and can lead to favouritism and make it hard to discipline them. You should bring on side the "troublemakers" as soon as possible, by listening to their ideas and showing them trust. The age thing I wouldn't worry about too much, if you're a decent manager, people will accept you for who you are and not worry about your age. As a manager there will always be a mix of people younger and older than you. Good luck!

I'm not sure I believe that a supernaturalist tendency makes you more prone to be a conspiracy theorist. I think anyone can be drawn to it, and even change their minds over time. I think most of it comes down a confluence of things, such as how naturally paranoid or anxious one is, or how much one believes what others tell them. Also, it comes from ignorance of how things actually work in real life; conspiracy theorists are uninformed in many different areas and so draw wrong conclusions. There is often an esoteric or weird vibe to conspiracy theories, in the same vein as folk tales, and that does make them stick in the mind more. In other words it's survival of the fittest conspiracy theories, the ones that stick around are the most memorable, weird and wacky.

Your hair like the dark of the night, Your skin like the light of the moon, Your eyes like the stars that twinkle, Your five o'clock shadow like...

You could just as well say you incarnated as everything. It's a matter of framing. If you take the literal sense of the word as being "in the flesh", then you have to ask the question, why have you incarnated as an entity that only believes their flesh is what they are?

Depends on the situation. But whatever the situation you're just exchanging information through chit-chat and getting those small dopamine hits. If you're looking to pull, then both parties need to exchange just enough information to say "yes" or "no", and then escalate the situation quickly, if it's all systems go. A lot of that exchange is non-verbal, so self-confidence, energy, interest, laughter, touch, smell and a million other non-verbal things come into the mix, some of which you can control and improve on, some of which you have no control over.

Truth requires some amount of persistence of some aspect of experience. Persistence is just a kind of memory. A truth which is always persisting is an absolute truth, by some measure of "always". A lot of what can be understood in experience are constructions (or interpretations) in experience: chairs, people, sky, air, food, self. The constructions are a kind of truth by virtue of the fact that they are a kind of memory. I understand a chair, and chairs exist, because the chair construction persists as a form of memory, and that construction is applied whenever something in raw experience matches the "template". Constructions are fluid and so don't persist absolutely: chairs are not absolute truth. Constructions given to you by other people, are not absolute truth either. To get at a different truth then, you have to deal with the non-constructed parts of experience. One such thing is that experience exists all the time, it's hard to deny that something is there, something is happening; it is an absolute truth. I would say it is potentially impossible to know if you're dealing with a construction or not, maybe everything in experience is a construction, it's hard to tell. Is the colour red a construction or not? Certainly the word "red" definitely is, but is the direct experience of it a construction, where does red start and end in experience? What about, nearly red? Anything that delineates reality, is almost certainly a construction of some type. But isn't reality just distinctions?

That is also an identity. I have nothing against people using their brains and having their own concepts, I applaud it, we need more of it. What irks me is people who don't bother to explain what their new concepts are, and then use obscure word salad to make it sound fancy or mysterious or intellectual. It's a lot more overt in America than in the UK for sure. We're hugely more tolerant of diversity here, however, there is a strong underlying tension against that diversity in many places, especially outside of major cities. Brits are obsessed with "migrants" and always have been, but we do live on an island. We are even wary of Europeans, hence the whole debacle with Brexit. I'm sure they're either confused or just roll their eyes at us or just shrug their shoulders and just carry on without us. Race is strongly tied to Western imperialism. Imperialism requires a strong sense of identity so that you can justify subjugating anyone you come across who you want power over. The Nazis misappropriated Darwin's theory of evolution to "prove" their theories about race - and ever since race has been talked about in the same breath as genetics. People are still confused. But I'll say it again for effect: race has nothing to do with genetics.

Racism has absolutely nothing to do with genetics. But it is all to do with identity. And, identity is purely an artificial construction, whether consciously done or not.

Mary Mary you're so lairy How do you think I know? With gold bling and tatoo-ing You pretty maid, it shows...

I've just gone out and touched grass myself. I think I was being more casual in my wording, maybe embarrassment was closer to what I was awkwardly referring to 😳. I was trying to get at why shame (clinical definition) arises in the first place. One of the sources could be by repeated social embarrassment - and by extension humilitation - by parents or people in authority. Neglect being another for example. So it starts off externally (behaviour based), and over time gets internalised, and then finally becomes identity. What do you reckon? I would agree 100%, a lot of cognitive disonance, avoidant behaviour, social anxiety, and self-sabotaging stem from it, I would say. And I can definitely see it in myself too, although awareness is curative supposedly or its a start in "fixing" myself.

@Cred no problems I understand where you're coming from. Even most normies love repetitiveness and routine. I think by "loosening" I really meant the choice to take on new patterns if desired, or basically just having a choice at all. The way I see it self-development is all about giving you choice about new patterns of behaviour - but not excluding the patterns you already had. Given a choice of two competing patterns you will take the more beneficial one. Although if @SmartMonkey means something else by "loosening patterns", then it would be good to hear it.

I don't think I've talked about mastery in depth too much before. Specifically the way I approach certain activities. May as well get straight into it, and you'll get what I mean by the end. Driving Most people experience driving a car as a utilitarian activity, purely to get from A to B. Off the bat if I'm driving by myself, I will always listen to music on my iPod with in ear wired headphones (give me a break I know what cassettes are and how to use them). I generally can't stand listening to the radio, and personally prefer silence with a passenger, but I won't tell them that. This is contrary to when I run, when I never listen to music. I like driving on the whole. I tend to gamify the activity if I can. For example can I drive without using the brakes? On roads I know well, I'll practise getting the perfect speed and gear change. There's a particular stretch I know with a long straight up a middling hill, then a short straight down after the brow, and a sharp bend at the bottom, that can only be done at 50 mph max. So 60 until about 20 metres shy of the brow and coast off the accelerator. That sort of thing. How smoothly can I clutch and change gears? Can I anticipate traffic and keep distance so I don't brake at all if I need to slow down? Can I beat the Google Maps estimated time? All while listening to "Weird Fishes". Running I've talked about running before on here. But again I like to compete against myself and gamify it. Can I run that bit further than last time? What is the perfect pace to start and then ramp up to (6 minute kilometres for half marathon). If I stop for a rest, what is an optimal amount of time? How can I move so my running feels smooth? How can I run so I don't feel pain in my joints? How can overcome fatigue? Playing Piano I've played most of my life, but never had formal lessons. I'm a middling piano player, which given the amount of time I've been doing it, is not great. However, I never really tire of playing the same things, because I hear and feel the improvement in playing over time. I like to practise passages over and over until I get the rhythm and mechanics of it as perfect as I can. It's such a pleasure finally being able to play a piece after earning it. And there's always more discovery to be made in how to play. I generally play classical because it suits my logical brain, but throw in ragtime occasionally. Writing I really like trying to get a good rhythm in my prose, and to make the reading flow. I have a decent vocabulary but I abhor jargon, and so, much prefer every day language for getting things over. I'm a stickler for spelling and grammar, but my London English does influence how I write. Many many times if you see "Edited" in my posts it'll me correcting my spelling! I'd say my writing is a bit more flowery than the way I normally speak, and there's a part of me I can express in writing better than I can with speech, I'm a slow-ish thinker. I'm always looking to find the best construction to convey my ideas, like, I like the rhythm and aliteration of "best construction to convey". I'm naturally a short sentence writer, and I've been trying to get longer, so it feels less staccato. I've also being trying to practise writing in a more casual way. But I will fit my writing to the occasion. There's constant improvement. Badminton This is the only sport I've really done long term. I'm not a Badminton bro, so I don't play in leagues and so on. Badminton's an interesting case, because (like running) I enjoyed it at school. But back in the day in a inner London comprehensive, you were never pushed if you had aptitude, it all had to be self-driven and as a teenager that wasn't going to happen for me. So when I took up again about six or seven years ago, I realised how much I had to learn. But I get so much out of running about like a loon for a couple of hours each week - aside from the exercise. I do like to pretend to be quite casual about it, and because of that I tend to get teamed up with all sorts of levels in class. The competitive types hate that, but I know that proper mastery comes from exposing yourself to all types of situation, and Badminton is no different. It takes control to play against someone with less skill than you (and be humble) and then to crank it up on the next game against someone with more skill. Often when driving to Badminton class, I do visualisation exercises, and have a word with my "unconscious mind" to play well, find good placement, play well with a partner etc. Visualising and priming are important for mastery. Hiking Probably the only activity were I don't gamify, try to master, or anything else. Except for emptying my mind when I feel like it, or else very light almost dreamlike thinking. If anything I'm trying to master being present, being aware of my surroundings, discovering new places along the way. For me it's meditation. The thing that ties all these activities together is flow, smoothness, improvement, competing against myself, and gamification. And what really ties them together is a love of mastery for its own sake.