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You are how you act

boz.com

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Re: You are how you act

#121

Post by swiftcoder »

KaiserPro wrote: post #63

I do love when Boz espouses opinions. He has got better them over the years, this one is much less teenager trying to sound clever. Which is great, I love to see people grow. The problem with this is that in my professional dealings with him, he has two modes: empathetic & arrogant dick. At his worse he was fighting in the comments section of workplace, telling employees that they are wrong. At his best he is warm an…

> this one is much less teenager trying to sound clever

On the other hand, it's very much freshman-who-misunderstood-philosophy-101-and-integrated-it-into-his-worldview-anyway...

Re: You are how you act

#123

Post by triceratops »

KaiserPro wrote: post #63

I do love when Boz espouses opinions. He has got better them over the years, this one is much less teenager trying to sound clever. Which is great, I love to see people grow. The problem with this is that in my professional dealings with him, he has two modes: empathetic & arrogant dick. At his worse he was fighting in the comments section of workplace, telling employees that they are wrong. At his best he is warm an…

> this one is much less teenager trying to sound clever

I read the blog post without knowing who this person is. I genuinely believed the author was a young person, maybe someone in their early 20s, just figuring some stuff out. "Do good things" isn't exactly a deep philosophical or moral insight. I've read the same thing on Cracked for chrissakes.

Re: You are how you act

#124

Post by sxndmxn »

gchamonlive wrote: post #20

We all talk a lot about the mind over the body and emotions, so you can act stoicly regardless of your internal experience and how your body feels, and it's all fine, but it's important to make a point that your mood is more dependent on your body health than you think at first. How depressed you are can for instance be linked to the last time you went to the loo and how great your turds look ( https://www.frontiersi…

Gut mind connection

Re: You are how you act

#125

Post by theptip »

some_furry wrote: post #64
shandor wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> concordance of action and "intention" .... must be united in ethically good action Yeah, I had to disagree with how TFA brought "fake it till you make it" into this very discussion. Yes, one can have "faking" that ultimately ends up creating the thing it promised....but I fear that for each such benign or constructive "fake" there are so many cases of Theranos et al that I could ever remove what you called intentio…

The most charitable thing I can offer here is: Alice is a horrible sociopathic monster that fakes being good because of the social utility it provides. Bob is authentically, genuinely a "good" person (however you define it). If the two are indistinguishable from an outsider's perspective, and arrived at a similar level of social status and "success" (intentionally vaguely defined), the path they got there may not mat…

This exact problem comes up in AI alignment. It’s not enough to just look at the legible outputs.

If you are going to trust someone with important responsibilities, you want them to “show their working” and convince you that that are not faking it.

The difference of course is what Alice and Bob do when the mask is off, when no one is looking.

Re: You are how you act

#126

Post by ptx »

> Faking it long enough is making it. The repetition of behavior, not the sincerity of belief, is what shapes character. You become the kind of person who does the things you repeatedly do.

OK, sure. And if you are faking it, the behavior you are repeating is to fraudulently misrepresent your work to other people, creating undisclosed risks for those who rely on it. The kind of person you become is a liar and a scammer. If you make it in the end, the price for your success is paid by those you deceived on the way.

Re: You are how you act

#128

Post by pgspaintbrush »

A friend once told me that virtue is like going to the gym. You practice daily, start with smaller weights (virtuous acts), and review how well you did on a regular basis. You ask "am I getting better at this?" rather than "am I morally perfect?"

If you aren't on the level of the moral greats, you start small and try to build up, the same way you'd start by running a 5k before running an ultramarathon.

I hope others out there find this viewpoint as helpful as I have.

Re: You are how you act

#130

Post by patrickmay »

hippich wrote: post #2

> You can’t always change how you feel, but you can always decide what to do next. Unfortunately, in my experience, how I feel does affect what I decide to do (or not do) next. But I certainly like to think I have agency, so there is that..

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom". -- Viktor Frankl (maybe)
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