Jerry Seinfeld, Social Anxiety, and Meditation • Hacker News Board

Re: Jerry Seinfeld, Social Anxiety, and Meditation

#21

Post by namaria » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 1:49 PM UTC

serf wrote: post #16

yapyap wrote: post #4

> I see Jerry as a no-nonsense personality, one who’s reached the pinnacle of success in a competitive field That’s… generous

why? are there any other people that started in stand-up and ended up being worth over a billion dollars? sure we can rate what pinnacle of success means in comedy -- maybe he's not the funniest -- but generally we rate success in most of the West by pay rate and hoard.. my 2 cents: all the comedians that famously ran out of money entirely during their careers are funnier people. carlin, pryor, lewis , kinnison, roon…

Is this a general argument then? Should we date teenagers in our late 30s as well?

Or is this just ignoring survivor bias when it's convenient?

Re: Jerry Seinfeld, Social Anxiety, and Meditation

#22

Post by bzmrgonz » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 4:29 PM UTC

@1penny42cents, I think you may not be benefitting fully from your two session. From what I've read and from Jerry's own admission, his afternoon session was meant to re-energize the remainder of his awake hours. Perhaps you should split your wake hours and do an early am one to shed sleepiness and one in the middle to recharge mental battery. Wish you guys would share the mechanics of TM instead of just "referring" people to join TM, that's some borderline cultish practices.

Re: Jerry Seinfeld, Social Anxiety, and Meditation

#23

Post by ok_dad » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:53 PM UTC

namaria wrote: post #5

ok_dad wrote: post #3

Meditation, for me, is getting into a flow state doing just about anything I want to do. Sometimes I spend hours sim-racing, woodworking, or coding and after being in flow for those several hours, I feel exhausted from the mental and physical exertion, but I am also calm the rest of the day into the evening. It only works if I get into the flow state, but if I just sit there and fuck things up badly and never flow, t…

I think you're conflating 'flow state' with just being absorbed into something. Flow state is typically described by elite athletes when exerting at the edge of their skill and performing at a high level. It has little to do with doing routine stuff like cooking or very passive mind numbing activities like watching movies.

Elite athletes don’t own the idea of flow, flow is simply deep, deep focus on an activity that you are doing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Re: Jerry Seinfeld, Social Anxiety, and Meditation

#24

Post by ok_dad » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 5:59 PM UTC

namaria wrote: post #20

dartos wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be the same. You can get into a flow state when cooking or cleaning. The task just needs to be in a specific Goldilocks zone of demanding and feasibility. Cooking eggs, to me, might get me in a flow state, but probably not a trained French chef, unless they were pushing themselves to elevate the dish. Probably not when watching movies though, unless you were constantly analyzing the story… maybe in a mystery…

I mean, flow is either something special or trivial. If it's trivial as paying attention, why not discuss 'attention', which has a rich literature behind it? If it's something special, that demands skill and investment and yields better than average results, it's worth figuring out how to trigger it consistently. But then it's harder to argue I can achieve something like it by doing something so easy and trivial as c…

You seem to want to make this particular state of mind achievable only by the Gods or something, but being in a flow state isn’t hard, and you’ll know it immediately by the way it feels.

Edit: I might be overstating the ease of getting into flow for neurotypical folks, having just googled it I’ve found a few references to studies showing those with ASD get into a similar state of flow very easily.

Re: Jerry Seinfeld, Social Anxiety, and Meditation

#25

Post by namaria » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 7:15 PM UTC

ok_dad wrote: post #24

namaria wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, flow is either something special or trivial. If it's trivial as paying attention, why not discuss 'attention', which has a rich literature behind it? If it's something special, that demands skill and investment and yields better than average results, it's worth figuring out how to trigger it consistently. But then it's harder to argue I can achieve something like it by doing something so easy and trivial as c…

You seem to want to make this particular state of mind achievable only by the Gods or something, but being in a flow state isn’t hard, and you’ll know it immediately by the way it feels. Edit: I might be overstating the ease of getting into flow for neurotypical folks, having just googled it I’ve found a few references to studies showing those with ASD get into a similar state of flow very easily.

no need to put words in my argument... I'm merely saying, if flow state is just 'paying attention' than maybe it's not a special category... and if it's something that takes effort and yields better results than just doing things normally, then it's probably not something you do when 'frying eggs'.

Re: Jerry Seinfeld, Social Anxiety, and Meditation

#26

Post by dartos » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 9:25 PM UTC

namaria wrote: post #25

ok_dad wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to want to make this particular state of mind achievable only by the Gods or something, but being in a flow state isn’t hard, and you’ll know it immediately by the way it feels. Edit: I might be overstating the ease of getting into flow for neurotypical folks, having just googled it I’ve found a few references to studies showing those with ASD get into a similar state of flow very easily.

no need to put words in my argument... I'm merely saying, if flow state is just 'paying attention' than maybe it's not a special category... and if it's something that takes effort and yields better results than just doing things normally, then it's probably not something you do when 'frying eggs'.

It isn’t just paying attention. It’s a Goldilocks zone of difficulty of task and feasibility of it.

The researcher responsible for the term and idea wrote a book saying as much. https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-...

It’s great that making eggs is easy enough for you that it isn’t engaging, but that isn’t the case for everyone (I need to try to fry eggs over easy. I’m not a good cook) You can also trick your mind into entering this state with a wide variety of tasks.

Re: Jerry Seinfeld, Social Anxiety, and Meditation

#27

Post by namaria » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 1:25 PM UTC

dartos wrote: post #26

namaria wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no need to put words in my argument... I'm merely saying, if flow state is just 'paying attention' than maybe it's not a special category... and if it's something that takes effort and yields better results than just doing things normally, then it's probably not something you do when 'frying eggs'.

It isn’t just paying attention. It’s a Goldilocks zone of difficulty of task and feasibility of it. The researcher responsible for the term and idea wrote a book saying as much. https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-... It’s great that making eggs is easy enough for you that it isn’t engaging, but that isn’t the case for everyone (I need to try to fry eggs over easy. I’m not a good cook) You can…

Look fair enough, I did some research and the whole flow state idea lost a lot of cachet for me because I now realize it's just a piece of pop psychology while I had previously thought it had something to do with high performance athletics.

Re: Jerry Seinfeld, Social Anxiety, and Meditation

#28

Post by dartos » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 8:01 PM UTC

namaria wrote: post #27

dartos wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t just paying attention. It’s a Goldilocks zone of difficulty of task and feasibility of it. The researcher responsible for the term and idea wrote a book saying as much. https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-... It’s great that making eggs is easy enough for you that it isn’t engaging, but that isn’t the case for everyone (I need to try to fry eggs over easy. I’m not a good cook) You can…

Look fair enough, I did some research and the whole flow state idea lost a lot of cachet for me because I now realize it's just a piece of pop psychology while I had previously thought it had something to do with high performance athletics.

Two things can be true, but you do you.