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Exit the Cave

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Re: Exit the Cave

#51

Post by ang_cire »

eutropia wrote: post #48
ang_cire wrote: post #28

> A writer needs readers. An entrepreneur needs customers. An athlete needs competition. A lover needs someone free to reject him. Any worthy pursuit needs a mat. Nah. I judge myself by how I progressed from yesterday, not by whether what I am or what I built is useful to others. Is keeping a diary pointless if you're not planning to make it a memoir? Is staying healthy pointless if you aren't using that health to co…

The mat is the objective (or at least distinct from your own personal judgement) measure of your goal. If your goal is important to you, an objective measure of your progress towards it is more valuable than your own flawed and biased opinion. The mat for the diary might be the times you consulted back to it for useful introspection and came out better for it, the mat for your health goal could be your blood test fro…

I get the intention, but this is still ultimately turning it into a sort of, "only progress towards a fixed goal matters, and progress requires metrics, ergo only things that require metrics matter" view of life.

Sometimes the process is the objective. Put another way, some goals are only achieved by not reaching a terminus.

But that aside, there's an even more important point:

> I would ask you: when you judged your progress from yesterday, was it with a mat - a brutally objective test

There is no such thing.

Even in the author's example of wrestling, their conclusion is incorrect (or at least, not supported by the data they have). Their circuit could have been far above the national average in participant skill, so losing there and concluding "I'm not skilled" is an assessment based on where they subjectively drew their line of comparison.

And given that they never actually gained their supposed "heart" they believe they needed, how do they even know that would have changed anything? They could have fixed their attitude and still always lost!

Anyone who works in IT knows that metrics and measures are anything but objective truth.

Re: Exit the Cave

#52

Post by SoftTalker »

svieira wrote: post #20

> A lover needs someone free to reject him As G. K. Chesterton said, > Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should decline. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1718/pg1718-images.html...

Marriage is good if you want kids. Otherwise, there's really no point to it and most people would be happier and better off single. It's also why a lot of married people divorce after their kids are grown.

Re: Exit the Cave

#53

Post by Nition »

jcalx wrote: post #13

Reminds me of a couple things: Nils van der Poel (Olympic speed skater record holder) and his How to Skate a 10k [0]: > It is not the one who suffers the most during preseason who prospers when the winter comes, but he who gets the most aerobically fit. and Tyler Cowen on Nervous Nellies [1]: > Yes. Because ultimately the nervous Nellies, they're not philosophically sophisticated, they're overindulging in their own n…

It reminds me of an old series of blog posts by Eliezer Yudkowsky[1] where he talked about how there's "doing your best" which is often more like just doing what's expected of you, and then there's really trying, like actually thinking hard about the best way to achieve something and carrying that out, and then even above that there are levels of effort that usually only come into play in extraordinary situations where you become willing to take desperate risks to achieve a goal.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/s/3szfzHZr7EYGSWt92

Re: Exit the Cave

#54

Post by SoftTalker »

samudrijan wrote: post #25
multisport wrote: post #2

> Better to be pinned in public with courage than to train endlessly in private like a coward. Ship that product Funny, I didn't read this as career advice, but social advice. Like, get off the apps, get off the couch, go sit at a bar alone, ask someone to hang out.

We should strive for somewhat higher than sitting at the bar alone.

Gotta start somewhere.

Re: Exit the Cave

#56

Post by SoftTalker »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #24
edg5000 wrote: post #6

There is a real tension. On the one hand, you need to grind to develop the horse power needed. Without the horse power, it's just not possible. On the other hand, your ideas need to meet reality for things to get steered and stay grounded. I started a business in 2022 and constantly got the advice to first sell, then build. It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. You can't sell something that's not good enough, but…

> you don't know if there is demand without selling. This is an awkward balance The answer is you start with the sale. Once you’ve sold it, you build it. Ideally, you sell it to customers first. Less ideally, to investors.

And hopefully you are honest with your customers that you are selling something that does not yet exist. That makes it even harder. You have to sell the idea of your idea.

Re: Exit the Cave

#57

Post by SoftTalker »

eutropia wrote: post #48
ang_cire wrote: post #28

> A writer needs readers. An entrepreneur needs customers. An athlete needs competition. A lover needs someone free to reject him. Any worthy pursuit needs a mat. Nah. I judge myself by how I progressed from yesterday, not by whether what I am or what I built is useful to others. Is keeping a diary pointless if you're not planning to make it a memoir? Is staying healthy pointless if you aren't using that health to co…

The mat is the objective (or at least distinct from your own personal judgement) measure of your goal. If your goal is important to you, an objective measure of your progress towards it is more valuable than your own flawed and biased opinion. The mat for the diary might be the times you consulted back to it for useful introspection and came out better for it, the mat for your health goal could be your blood test fro…

So, one thing I do that might be directly relevant to this analogy is to lift weights. My goal when I started was to get stronger. I measure that by whether I can lift more weight today than I did yesterday. The barbell doesn't lie.

Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. Sometimes I even regress a bit. But over time, I have gotten stronger.

Some people at my gym urge me to "compete" but I can't see a reason to do this. I am achieving what I set out to do, by objective measures. Why is what someone else can do in comparison at all relevant? I am stronger than some people. Maybe stronger than most people my age. But there are always going to be people stronger than me. It doesn't bother me, because my goal and motivation was never about that.

Re: Exit the Cave

#58

Post by asphodele »

idiotsecant wrote: post #47
Vakaiser wrote: post #29

'Putting yourself out there' is really only a necessity if the validation you seek through your pursuits is external in nature. Those who seek internal validation need not exit the cave, for it is not a coward's cage; it is merely another space to pursue one's own enlightenment and holds no power over its occupant.

Another word for 'cave' is 'echo chamber'. If you don't care much about whether what you believe is true or not, there's no need to test it, but in that case what's the point of believing things?

Another word for 'going outside the cave' is 'seeking external validation'. If you need other people to tell you if what you believe is true or not, do you actually believe anything?

Re: Exit the Cave

#59

Post by idiotsecant »

asphodele wrote: post #58
idiotsecant wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another word for 'cave' is 'echo chamber'. If you don't care much about whether what you believe is true or not, there's no need to test it, but in that case what's the point of believing things?

Another word for 'going outside the cave' is 'seeking external validation'. If you need other people to tell you if what you believe is true or not, do you actually believe anything?

Other people are one of many ways you can test what you believe to be true but, yes, sometimes other people might have figured something out that you haven't, believe it or not.

Re: Exit the Cave

#60

Post by BarryMilo »

SoftTalker wrote: post #52
svieira wrote: post #20

> A lover needs someone free to reject him As G. K. Chesterton said, > Marriage is a duel to the death, which no man of honour should decline. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1718/pg1718-images.html...

Marriage is good if you want kids. Otherwise, there's really no point to it and most people would be happier and better off single. It's also why a lot of married people divorce after their kids are grown.

hahah what a weird take! You don't have any biological imperatives for sex, and dare I say affection? Must be quite the peaceful life indeed!
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