211–220 of 782 posts
I watched a piano/music teaching video from the 60s yesterday that made it all "click" [1] Most modern music chords patterns are easy to find out on piano. Start on any of the white keys, and play 7 white keys left to right. That is called a mode: a series of notes separated by certain intervals to compose a song. Different modes have different vibes. Atmosphere of the song ( sad or happy) is directly correlated by h…
Look at your choices and try to find an independent entity making a decision.
You will likely notice your conditioning and preferences, beliefs, emotions, thoughts, physiological and psychological state in the moment, your environment, habits, trauma patterns, all collaborating toward one thing or another.
“Free will” is a shortcut for all these forces we have mo control over. Even when we explicitly feel we’re in control - usually the goal this control serves is not in our control. We don’t choose our preferences, tastes, morality, desires, or thoughts.
Paradoxically, in this complete absence of “choice” as we understand it, lies freedom.
What we call “free will” consists of a multitude of forces we have no control over. Look at your choices and try to find an independent entity making a decision. You will likely notice your conditioning and preferences, beliefs, emotions, thoughts, physiological and psychological state in the moment, your environment, habits, trauma patterns, all collaborating toward one thing or another. “Free will” is a shortcut fo…
> command line trick 1. "cat foo.json | python -m json.tool" pretty print on console. 2. "cal" pretty prints current month on console. "cal 2022" pretty print current year. > interesting to you 1. Bank of England one of the earliest banks to issue paper money was establish to finance war expenditure. 2. Federal reserve is holding (and hence funding) ~$2.7T worth of mortgage backed securities[1]. It started out as a s…
* cal -3 shows the previous, current, and next month
* ncal -C shows the current month with today’s date highlighted
* ncal -C3 is equivalent to cal -3 with highlighting
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have experienced this several times and almost never have a headache. I definitely can't read what's beyond/obscured by the scotoma. The first time it happened was during a test in high school and the splotch grew until I was forced to read the questions in my peripheral. I have an anecdote that corroborates your observation that cognitive experiences are more complicated then assumed: I was once very, very sleep d…
Do me a favor some time and try to read through the scotoma, if you remember to. I think that I would have just assumed I couldn't do it if I hadn't been reading something really interesting when the scotoma started. It's only because it came on while I was already reading that I discovered that I was able to continue. If you remember to try it, the results will be interesting no matter which way they turn out.
What we call “free will” consists of a multitude of forces we have no control over. Look at your choices and try to find an independent entity making a decision. You will likely notice your conditioning and preferences, beliefs, emotions, thoughts, physiological and psychological state in the moment, your environment, habits, trauma patterns, all collaborating toward one thing or another. “Free will” is a shortcut fo…
I think of it as we have free will, bound by the entity that we are.
I've described this on HN before; forgive me if you've already seen it. I have chronic migraine. It sounds worse than it is; I rarely suffer attacks anymore, and when I do, they're usually mostly harmless, as in the case I'll describe below. Contrary to popular belief, migraine is not a headache. It's something a little more like an epileptic seizure. Intense headaches are one common symptom, but there are a lot of o…
I have migraines fairly often and had a similar experience during a job interview. It was bizarre and troubling because at first I thought it was a floater, then I realized it was in the same place in both eyes! It grew over the course of a few minutes until it completely surrounded my visual field, then it faded away.
I have tinnitus. Before I had tinnitus I could simply use earplugs. Problem when I sleep: when I use earplugs it presses in my ear and it aggrevates my tinnitus. Solution: - Bose QC 35 - Earplugs Now the earplugs don't get pushed in and don't aggrevate the tinnitus. The bose QC 35 gets pushed onto whatever is directly outside your ear, which is a bit uncomfortable but fine. This is my new earplugs setup and it works.
I've described this on HN before; forgive me if you've already seen it. I have chronic migraine. It sounds worse than it is; I rarely suffer attacks anymore, and when I do, they're usually mostly harmless, as in the case I'll describe below. Contrary to popular belief, migraine is not a headache. It's something a little more like an epileptic seizure. Intense headaches are one common symptom, but there are a lot of o…
I normally just take a break from whatever I'm doing and go for a walk. The first time it ever happened to me was the first day of a literature class--that was an awkward event, explaining to my teacher that I couldn't read at the moment.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scintillating_scotoma.gif
Quantitative easing (sometimes mistaking called "money printing") isn't directly inflationary. Because when central banks buy bonds, they do not pay with normal money. Instead, they pay with a special type of money that can never enter the real economy (as to not create inflation). This special type of money are called "bank reserves". And bank reserves can only be used to 1) settle interbank transfers and 2) buy mor…
I think QE usually doesn't lead to inflation if your employment drops at the same time or your population size is shrinking (i.e. Japan). In such a situation consumer demand decreases, balancing out the additional money supply. As evidence of this notice how QE in the US did not lead to high inflation until employment started picking up.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/the-fed-s-corporate-bond-portfo...
