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Mental Liquidity

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Re: Mental Liquidity

#41

Post by david_allison »

krm01 wrote: post #9

One of the biggest beliefs I keep struggling with is the need to be perfect. I've been jamming away for many many weekends on a side project that literally was done. I just kept adding tiny tweaks left and right, until I literally just now launched it ( https://amee.la ). Nothing ground breaking, and in the end nothing that needed to have so much perfectionism around. The belief of having to need something perfect is…

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Re: Mental Liquidity

#42

Post by xyzelement »

Mutlut wrote: post #40
xyzelement wrote: post #14

Perhaps unexpectedly, I find that thoughtful engagement with religion (Judaism in my case) has helped me become much more liquid on other topics. When you accept on faith a handful of principles that deal with an unknowable domain, it becomes much easier to be less attached to the other stuff.

You just might discovered yourself what others did without thinking: Following some given path to stop worring and using it as 'this can't be wrong because its old and others are doing it and enabling me'. Perhaps community fits even better. I personally am free enough to design my own life without boundaris.

Your current self-description and opinion of religion is where I was prior to moving onto my current state. Looking backwards, going beyond this represented breaking a boundary for me.

I am not trying to persuade you and I am holding back from expounding on what I mean at length here, just sharing the perspective.

Re: Mental Liquidity

#43

Post by xyzelement »

wwweston wrote: post #26
xyzelement wrote: post #14

Perhaps unexpectedly, I find that thoughtful engagement with religion (Judaism in my case) has helped me become much more liquid on other topics. When you accept on faith a handful of principles that deal with an unknowable domain, it becomes much easier to be less attached to the other stuff.

> I find that thoughtful engagement with religion (Judaism in my case) I've heard Judaism characterized as very accepting of discourse and reinterpretation of itself. Does this strike you as accurate? If so, it sounds like a kind of mental liquidity... > When you accept on faith a handful of principles that deal with an unknowable domain Sounds like mathematics, in which practitioners become used to both the process…

I agree with you on both counts.

For example, the study of the Talmud is an example of both mental training in debating an issue from several perspectives, and the installment of the idea that this is part of the religion.

You can also look up "Jewish responsa" on Wikipedia as a diving point into this.

Re: Mental Liquidity

#44

Post by chefandy »

zug_zug wrote: post #34
trentnix wrote: post #25

I've heard it also said "strong opinions, weakly held". Unlike "mental liquidity", it doesn't require explanation.

I disagree, I just heard this phrase from you the first time just now, and I don't think it's self-explanatory. It's unclear to me in what respect the opinions are "strong" if not one's conviction in them. To my mind a strong opinion is an opinion one is confident in. Also it's unclear to me if/how/why this is better than "less opinions". Like is it better to have a "strong opinion weakly held" on topic X versus "My…

I'm not interested in delving into pedantry, so I'll stop after this. My intuitive understanding of this phrase is that strong or weak opinions are generally a measure of magnitude more than stability, while strongly or weakly held opinions are a matter of stability rather than magnitude. Someone might have a milder opinion of something, like "Pepperoni pizza is fine" vs. a stronger stance, such as "Pepperoni pizza is the BEST pizza." How easily that opinion is changed does not necessarily correlate. Perhaps the person who thinks pepperoni pizza is the best has never tried salami pizza and will be an instant convert. Maybe they're the worlds BIGGEST pepperoni fan. Maybe the person with the weaker opinion on pepperoni might be very very unlikely to change it because they don't care enough about pizza in general to consider it much. Maybe they love pizza, but are one bite of pepperoni pizza away from saying "bleh, hand me a slice of mushroom."

Re: Mental Liquidity

#45

Post by xyzelement »

haswell wrote: post #19
xyzelement wrote: post #14

Perhaps unexpectedly, I find that thoughtful engagement with religion (Judaism in my case) has helped me become much more liquid on other topics. When you accept on faith a handful of principles that deal with an unknowable domain, it becomes much easier to be less attached to the other stuff.

I grew up under a toxic form of fundamentalist Christianity that left deep scars and made me pretty allergic to religion. For me, I’ve found success and deep value in exploring non-sectarian Buddhist philosophy, which points directly at the problems caused by attachment to ideas and things, and does a good job of deconstructing thought processes that most of us engage in without realizing. To me, this is less about c…

(I am the person you are responding to) I grew up completely ignorant of religion and my first foray into that was the study of yogic tradition. Once I got a taste of what exists, I was very lucky to realize my ancestral faith has incredible depth, beyond that which is even understood by those say they are kinda religious (ie, many people who say they are religion X don't know how much there is to X)

On the toxic part, sorry to hear that. I think anything can be toxic originally to the value of the concept. (ie someone may have a horrible experience with a coach but that doesn't take away from the value of fitness in general) but it sounds like you have a pattern that works well for you.

Re: Mental Liquidity

#46

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

> Changing your mind is hard because it’s easier to fool yourself into believing a falsehood than admit a mistake.

Different angle: it's not simply "fooling" oneself, but it's because ideas are one way or another built on top of an ideological foundation.

Einstein rejecting quantum theory on the basis the universe shouldn't have a random component to it is also rejecting the idea of having to re-examine all philosophy past Descartes and Newton, which aligned so well with society's viewpoint at the time - a deterministic, cause-consequence universe, where things have logical explanations and where hard work is rewarded.

Re: Mental Liquidity

#48

Post by turnsout »

Mental Liquidity is another way of thinking about "Psychological Flexibility," which is the subject of a huge amount of clinical research. There's an entire therapeutic framework called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which came out of this research.

Check out this article [0] for a description of ACT from a founder's perspective.

[0] https://every.to/no-small-plans/how-to-do-hard-things

Re: Mental Liquidity

#49

Post by interlinked »

david_allison wrote: post #41
krm01 wrote: post #9

One of the biggest beliefs I keep struggling with is the need to be perfect. I've been jamming away for many many weekends on a side project that literally was done. I just kept adding tiny tweaks left and right, until I literally just now launched it ( https://amee.la ). Nothing ground breaking, and in the end nothing that needed to have so much perfectionism around. The belief of having to need something perfect is…

Unsolicited feedback: * Your input box doesn't look like a text box * The 'enter' key doesn't work in the text box * 'Refresh' neither looks like a refresh icon, nor has a label * The fade on the right of the gallery implies you can scroll, but this isn't possible * The generated logo + icon pair wasn't immediately noticeable (the first image is the icon without text, and the first icon isn't guaranteed to be noticea…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opbF9Nz_Emg

Re: Mental Liquidity

#50

Post by theredfury »

javajosh wrote: post #32
kubanczyk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot say belief . Say hypothesis while leaving rest of your argument intact. If you value that kind of score in your life.

What is a belief it not the highest-ranked hypothesis of all possible options? Obviously beliefs are more complex than that, since we have a default set installed in us as children, and only a subset of humans are taught the rational methods of improving those beliefs over time. I consider myself a member of that subset. (Quoting Aristotle always puts me in the mood to rank things.)

I do believe a hypothesis to be different than a belief. A belief performs a different function than a hypothesis.

A hypothesis can be defined as a “proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth” (Oxford Languages definition). Typically a function you perform to unearth a truth.

A belief on the other hand holds some position on the spectrum of truth. To believe is to make an assertion about truth. A hypothesis is somewhat of a precursor to that.

But hey, regardless of our stance on the definitions of these words, I heavily jive with the idea that we should improve our beliefs over time and I have mad respect for Aristotle.

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