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The quiet art of attention

billwear.github.io

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Re: The quiet art of attention

#71

Post by Lerc »

billwear wrote: post #7
bl0rg wrote: post #5

[flagged]

that's the point: sometimes there is no tl;dr.

There are however a great deal of things people can do to make the same information available to a wider audience.

Formatting, fonts, colours, structure of argument, visual aids.

Clicking [reader view] on this article aided me immensely in being able to take it in. As one of the many ADHD people who encountered this, the white on black, wide page, and a serifed font were all non-informational aspects of the page that made it difficult to take in.

You are wrong that sometimes there is no tl;dr In the absence of someone putting in the work to make content accessible the emphasis merely falls upon the dr of tl;dr.

No-one requires you to make things for everyone, but you cannot expect to reach everyone without consideration of them either.

Re: The quiet art of attention

#72

Post by alexashka »

> And it is then, perhaps, that a subtle truth begins to emerge: the only thing we truly possess, the only thing we might, with enough care, exert some mastery over, is our mind

Well, that's not true at all.

When people make sweeping simple statements about matters that can't possibly be trivial - it makes me wonder how much most people resemble LLMs.

I'm sympathetic to spiritual matters but the field is littered with people who are deeply confused.

Re: The quiet art of attention

#74

Post by zozbot234 »

vunderba wrote: post #63

It's a bit heavy on the purple prose (though I was guilty of a very similar writing style in my 20s, and as I got on in life the purity of the idea became more important than its surrounding ornamental structures). The gist of the article reminds me of a quote from the famous pianist Clara Schumann who would admonish her more virtuosic students for striving to play through passages as rapidly as possible. "Why hurry…

So you're saying that Attention Is All You Need? (badum tss)

Re: The quiet art of attention

#75

Post by fzeroracer »

I'm going to be That Guy and say I didn't particularly care for this piece. it reads like every single self-help or mindfulness book I've had the misfortune of skimming or having pushed down on me.

That isn't to say I fully discount mindfulness but rather the art of people being able to say a lot about ultimately nothing.

Re: The quiet art of attention

#76

Post by carrotpuncher »

I appreciate coming across writings like these. For me I easily forget to just chill out, one day I’m full of whatever mindfulness i gain from nowhere in a quick hit of inspiration then as quick as it came I’m back to step one lost, until I come across something like this.

Re: The quiet art of attention

#77

Post by imp0cat »

krzat wrote: post #48
d4mi3n wrote: post #13

[flagged]

Honestly the bigger problem is probably that creating lasting habits is hard. Everyone knows that exercise is important but how many people maintain a consistent routine? With mindfulness it's even worse because there is no way to track how strong your equanimity is. You can't know if you are making progress or just deluding yourself.

People are creatures of comfort. That's why I'd disagree with your first sentence. I think creating long-lasting habits can be easy, in fact sometimes you don't even realize it happened until it's too late.

Now getting rid of the bad habits and keeping only the good ones, that is the hard part.

Re: The quiet art of attention

#79

Post by youoy »

mistermann wrote: post #28

As much as I love the sentiment, these sorts of pieces (written or verbal) always contain contradictions, usually important ones relative to the claims.

For me contradictions are unavoidable when speaking about the mind. Usually the aim is not to give you specific objective truths, but to evoke something in your mind that feels evidently true to you. That is why usually the most effective communication tools that are used are metaphors. And communicating that way correctly is very very difficult. That means that most of these sort of pieces are going to be very bad... But I actually think that this one is not that bad

Re: The quiet art of attention

#80

Post by keybored »

vunderba wrote: post #63

It's a bit heavy on the purple prose (though I was guilty of a very similar writing style in my 20s, and as I got on in life the purity of the idea became more important than its surrounding ornamental structures). The gist of the article reminds me of a quote from the famous pianist Clara Schumann who would admonish her more virtuosic students for striving to play through passages as rapidly as possible. "Why hurry…

> It's a bit heavy on the purple prose (though I was guilty of a very similar writing style in my 20s, and as I got on in life the purity of the idea became more important than its surrounding ornamental structures).

I can see that.

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