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An Unreasonable Amount of Time

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Re: An Unreasonable Amount of Time

#71

Post by brewtide »

mcdeltat wrote: post #67
treetalker wrote: post #2

This was a pleasant surprise and a pleasant read. Its message reminds me of the words of Shunryu Suzuki: > As to progress -- we don’t know how much progress we made, actually, but if you practice it you will realize -- some day you will realize that our progress is not -- it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, you cannot actually make progress. The progress you make i…

I can't help but feel like our modern society has sadly become the opposite of what this quote is talking about. Rather than slow and accepting, we're all about doing things fast and efficiently and betterment at all costs. The growth mindset, get up and grind, etc etc. Can't you practice faster? Learn faster? Put in more time? Even the most a human can reasonably do is never enough nowadays. High achievement is the…

I'm fortunate enough to live in kinda nowhere land considering, so this is from the perspective of nowhere land (people with space and nature etc).

I was hoping that the large COVID response in this country at the start of it all would finally get people to breathe, slow, and all that you mention. For a while , around my location, you could see life almost returning to a more connected to life, life.

When things settled down, nothing much seemed to stick. The rat race restarted the grid is good to go, and the pace ever more frantic.

People can, will, do, and should do whatever it is that makes them live their fulfilled life, 100%.

I just hope they do it for themselves, not for others. Would be a shame.

Re: An Unreasonable Amount of Time

#72

Post by LeftHandPath »

treetalker wrote: post #2

This was a pleasant surprise and a pleasant read. Its message reminds me of the words of Shunryu Suzuki: > As to progress -- we don’t know how much progress we made, actually, but if you practice it you will realize -- some day you will realize that our progress is not -- it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, you cannot actually make progress. The progress you make i…

Wow. The fog example is fantastic.

...Reminds me of how I ruined my old wallet, hiking thirty miles on a foggy day in Algonquin Provincial Park.

Re: An Unreasonable Amount of Time

#73

Post by danwills »

arizen wrote: post #45
danwills wrote: post #4

I have invested quite an unreasonable-amount-of-time rendering fractals, (just on 1 node so far) myself, mostly only at 2k (square) pixels but really quite a few at 16k (16384x16384 pixels) and I'm also hoping to figure out how to do some magic with these images one day!

Mind sharing some of your results?

Certainly, the best way to browse these days is on Flickr I think:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/57934548@N02/

There's also this old blogger blog where I waffle-on about them:

https://ultraiterator.blogspot.com/

And here's one example of a 16k rendering:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g1B6pVennldNsswyiiA2qOsy2Nv...

If anyone wants to do a print of any of these, definitely let me know (email on profile)! I will be happy to do a 16k render too if I haven't done the one you like at 16k yet!

Re: An Unreasonable Amount of Time

#74

Post by JackFr »

8490109481 wrote: post #24

I don't know, having spent a third of of my life on a single project almost daily, not all that time deliberate and most of it ADD-driven problem avoidance, I ended up inflicting upon myself a personal hell I have only begun to comprehend the depths of. When the interest finally waned I didn't feel I had enough to show for it and every other aspect of my life suffered in ways that will take years to make up for. At t…

My daughter went from being a walk-on novice in a sport to being selected to a US national U23 team. 1) the amount of time and effort she devoted to training was simply astonishing to me as a veteran of Div III and club sports. 2) but along the way she had the benefit of very, very good coaching.

The effort it turns out is only part of the equation. Directing the effort into the most productive avenues is seemingly nearly as important.

Re: An Unreasonable Amount of Time

#75

Post by atulatul »

treetalker wrote: post #2

This was a pleasant surprise and a pleasant read. Its message reminds me of the words of Shunryu Suzuki: > As to progress -- we don’t know how much progress we made, actually, but if you practice it you will realize -- some day you will realize that our progress is not -- it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, you cannot actually make progress. The progress you make i…

I did not post this earlier because what the post says and what I am going quote are not exactly same. Time on Progress-craft/ Problem Solving. But maybe at some level of abstraction, the idea is same.

Quoting from 'The Road Less Traveled' by M. Soctt Peck.[0]

Section on Problem-Solving and Time:

> At the age of thirty-seven I learned how to fix things. Prior to that time almost all my attempts to make minor plumbing repairs, mend toys or assemble boxed furniture according to the accompanying hieroglyphical instruction sheet ended in confusion, failure and frustration. Despite having managed to make it through medical school and support a family as a more or less successful executive and psychiatrist, I considered myself to be a mechanical idiot. I was convinced I was deficient in some gene, or by curse of nature lacking some mystical quality responsible for mechanical ability. Then one day at the end of my thirty-seventh year, while taking a spring Sunday walk, I happened upon a neighbor in the process of re-pairing a lawn mower. After greeting him I remarked, "Boy, I sure admire you. I've never been able to fix those kind of things or do anything like that." My neighbor, without a moment's hesitation, shot back, "That's because you don't take the time."...

> The issue is important, because many people simply do not take the time necessary to solve many of life's intellectual, social or spiritual problems, just as I did not take the time to solve mechanical problems...

> And this is precisely the way that so many of us approach other dilemmas of day-to-day living. Who among us can say that they unfailingly devote sufficient time to analyzing their children's problems or tensions within the family? Who among us is so self-disciplined that he or she never says resignedly in the face of family problems, "It's beyond me"?...

> Actually, there is a defect in the approach to problem-solving more primitive and more destructive than impatiently in-adequate attempts to find instant solutions, a defect even more ubiquitous and universal. It is the hope that problems will go away of their own accord.

>Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Tr...

Re: An Unreasonable Amount of Time

#76

Post by Jun8 »

jimmydddd wrote: post #70
DavidPiper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've definitely heard it too - the only place I can think of is an interview Penn did with Tim Ferriss ( https://tim.blog/2020/01/09/penn-jillette/ ) but my scratchings from that episode don't include this particular anecdote so maybe it wasn't that. The way I heard him describe it was "To any normal person this would seem like a totally unreasonable amount of time, EXCEPT to a magician [because that's their job]", o…

I think I recall reading about this concept in a magazine article written by Teller. He was describing a trick performed on a talk show (maybe Letterman?) that included releasing cockroaches. He described all the research and testing they did to find a type of cockroach that would move at the correct speed (not too fast or too slow). I think about this when I read about how tricks are done. Like when a girl is instan…

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/teller-reveals-h...

Re: An Unreasonable Amount of Time

#78

Post by svieira »

treetalker wrote: post #2

This was a pleasant surprise and a pleasant read. Its message reminds me of the words of Shunryu Suzuki: > As to progress -- we don’t know how much progress we made, actually, but if you practice it you will realize -- some day you will realize that our progress is not -- it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, you cannot actually make progress. The progress you make i…

After the magnificent concert one patron of the arts gushed to the virtuoso "oh, I would gladly trade half my life to play as well as you could!" The virtuoso replied after a moment's thought, "that's precisely what it cost!"

Re: An Unreasonable Amount of Time

#79

Post by robocat »

soulofmischief wrote: post #58
bennythomsson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having burried a bunch of boxes with cards inside is art? I can see the artistic value of the full magic act, but does that make a tool used in the act to itself be art on its own? Is the bow used by a violin player in itself a piece of art? Perhaps it could be. But if it's burried?

It's art if the artist decides it is. You don't have to agree with them, but art is not some objective form you can define, it's entirely subjective. > Is the bow used by a violin player in itself a piece of art A pencil is a work of art.

It's art if the viewer decides it is

What the artist thinks or desires is often irrelevant. (Edited)

Re: An Unreasonable Amount of Time

#80

Post by Mistletoe »

>Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.

This is kind of my secret to everything I do. I'm not super skilled in anything short term. My main talent is just the endurance to do something and concentrate on something for a long time. Running, Elden Ring, investing, gardening, my former career as a scientist. You can get pretty far with just grit, and it is more rare than you would think.

https://www.nosmallendeavor.com/angela-duckworth-is-grit-the...

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