91–100 of 393 posts
This still haunts me https://www.nashvail.me/blog/stop-learning . You got to build stuff too, not just learn. Still, you also have to figure out if you're a builder or a "learner". I like to figure stuff out, once I know the solution, my interest is minimal.
I was raised in a Christian family, as most Brazilians are, but was never really into it. I don't remember praying after I grew up a bit (10+ years), and even before I was more saying the words than really meaning it.
Then my father passed away when I was 12 (he was in his 40s, died of cancer).
This led me on a few rabbit roles reading and talking about religion and the great questions of life. As I think many with a more analytical mindset, nothing really felt right, so I ended up being mostly atheist, with a few sparkles of buddhism and cristianity here and there.
Later in my 20s, I dated and later married an amazing woman who is a True Believer. She's the daughter of a shaman with a buddhist monk, and has been meditating since she was born.
Many more conversations ensued. I explored some of the "alternative" religions, and enjoyed especially the animist ones (Earth, Sun and Moon are pretty close to gods in my mind). I also tried mushrooms, which were amazing on breaking my usual brain paths and allowing me to see from a different perspective.
But it still didn't feel right. Again, I was trying to understand religions with an analytical mind, which can only get me so far. I felt I was missing on something big (I still do).
The world is too complex to be explained only with rationality and the scientific method, but at the same time explaining things based on dreams and our collective memory didn't seem much better.
It was around this time I read the "Religion for the Nonreligious" article.
There were no giant breakthroughs, and the text is somewhat reductionist. Still, it was one of the first times I read about religion in a way that really clicked (other times were reading about some parts of buddhism and meditation).
One of the things that religion provides to people is structure. The world is too complex, and the nonsensical things happening every day can weigh someone down. Religious people can go on with their days knowing that there's a bigger plan. I think this makes them more resilient to the life challenges that will appear, sooner or later (although this resiliency can disappear quickly, just see at the number of people that blame God after some disaster happen on their lives).
This text gave me some structure to think about where I am, where humanity is, and where I want to be. It made the world a little less chaotic, allowing me to see not only the little daily things, but also keep the bigger picture in mind.
It gave me some peace of mind and, after all these years since I first read it, I still think about it every week.
http://www.merlinmann.com/better/
Written in 2008, but still amazingly relevant today. The opening lines are eerily prescient about our current "everyone needs to have a take on everything" culture.
"Politics, celebrity gossip, business headlines, tech punditry, odd news, and user-generated content.
These are the chew toys that have made me sad and tired and cynical.
Each, in its own way, contributes to the imperative that we constantly expand our portfolio of shallow but strongly-held opinions about nearly everything. Then we’re supposed to post something about it. Somewhere."
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem is that FIRE has become a magnet for people who are miserable. This subset of FIRE people see their job as the source of all of their misery and have glorified the idea of FIRE as the only escape hatch. Frankly I'm amazed that there are people who don't see their job as their primary source of misery. I mean, I can understand it on a logical level, I just can't empathize. When I take time off I get up e…
> Frankly I'm amazed that there are people who don't see their job as their primary source of misery. Wow, what a gloomy outlook. Have you really never, ever enjoyed your work or workplace? Your coworkers? I certainly haven’t enjoyed every job or workplace, but I have a lot of fond memories of many workplaces and teams. I’ve had a lot of fun throughout my career and made some lasting friendships. I suppose I’m in the…
I enjoyed my part-time lab tutor job in college. I was paid $17/hr for Sadly, that job is not at all viable when one is no longer living with their parents and mooching off their healthcare.
I also liked the people I worked with at the school district enough to hang out with them after work, although we all did drink way way too much. The environment was terrible despite the people.
> I suppose I’m in the opposite mindset: I’m amazed that there are people (in tech) who haven’t ever been able to find enjoyment in their work. We literally grew up to get paid to play on computers all day.
Yeah, I have to wonder about people like you whenever I see a horrifically slow website laden with megs of javascript that is broken half the time. I don't get paid to "play" with computers at work, I get paid to keep infrastructure running and write programs that actually fulfill a business goal that isn't "farm users for ad revenue".
> There are plenty of opportunities out there to have a good time in this field
You wouldn't know it from reading the job ads. IT job ads make me want to kill myself.
It describes the concept of 'self-concept' and a, I guess, pseudo-treatment for addressing deep-set neurosis/anxiety caused by having one that is a little malformed. This post led (in a sort of roundabout way, hitting at a good time in my life and while I was already thinking in the direction of fixing this problem) to a sort of self-therapy where I snapped out of an unhealthy mental state I had been in for something like a decade. Probably good therapy could have had the same effect but I've always had trouble with that, and the ideas here led to a non-unsuccessful self-therapy. My issue was not at all related to the one he describes in the post, but the approach seemed to work anyway.
https://kajsotala.fi/2017/07/how-i-found-fixed-the-root-prob...
This still haunts me https://www.nashvail.me/blog/stop-learning . You got to build stuff too, not just learn. Still, you also have to figure out if you're a builder or a "learner". I like to figure stuff out, once I know the solution, my interest is minimal.
Aphantasia: How it feels to be blind in your mind By Blake Ross https://m.facebook.com/nt/screen/?params=%7B%22note_id%22%3A... Before reading this post I had no idea I had aphantasia and thought everyone else was the same as me, unable to see anything when they closed their eyes. This helped me understand myself and my relationships so much better than ever before. Thanks Blake!
If aphantasia is "internally blind", this one is "internally mute and deaf".
I wonder if anyone in the world has both conditions. That would be interesting to understand how they think.
Now Then by Adam Curtis for really reinforcing my suspicion that algorithms that feed me more of what I like prevent me from ever experiencing things I havent before. Tasting new flavors means ordering what I am least, not most, familiar with.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...
And although I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup by Scott Alexander gets very lost and fails imho to come to a useful conclusion, I do muse both on its modern forgiveness-v-tolerance definition schism and more generally from the dark matter parts that an almost Time Machine Eloi/Morlock divide has happened to language, where everyone in America THINKS they are speaking the same language. But really, there are red and blue Englishes that are prominent, using the same words but that mean very different things. EG: Blue defines racism as something that cant happen to a majority. Red doesnt. They dont really acknowledge that the other is using the word to describe something different, they just call each other the word used from their own understanding, and then call the other side stupid. Through whistles, code switching, and signaling, phrases are now so detached from their meaning, that not speaking the language is almost assuredly an inability to interact with parts of the tribe, in any capacity more than the most superficial. In groups can have conversations where it sounds like they are saying one thing, but under the surface is a completely different conversation. Just imagine what the phrase "covid isnt real" (or "black lives matter [too/more]") means to you. If you read it ultra literally, you probably arent quite understanding what the speaker means.
If you can accomplish that then you'll be a much happier person.
https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/life-is-picture-but-you-live-...