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ChristianKl comments on Open Thread, June 2-15, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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You can't control whether or not the girl will hit or insult you. As a result hoping that she would do one of those things goes against stoicist ideals.
It's much better to seek out-of-comfort zone experiences where you can control that you have the experience. Instead of depending on the bully in the bus to provide an experience in which you can grow you can go and have fun dancing in the bus.
A year ago I was in a personal development seminar that's partly about improving one's charisma and finding the courage to do what one likes.
At the end of the day there's live music and most people just sit there listening and watching the musicians. I went and danced in alone in front of >200 people because I felt like dancing. I got a bunch of positive social feedback for it.
Stoicism doesn't have to be about having no fun and doing nothing. It's rather about reducing negative emotions.
It seems like the actual correct play would be to go and DO HARD THINGS. Those will naturally more negative emotions and also be more useful.
Hard things where you are still in control.
But the amount of hard things that you can effectively do during a short bus ride is limited.
I personally like standing in the bus without leaning on anything and read a book. All stability that I need gets provided by standing on my own feet.
I've done this fairly often (I wouldn't call it particularly hard, but I'm used to reading and walking at the same time, so I suppose that probably functions as practice,) but I don't think it functions as useful practice for doing anything else that I might plausibly have reason to do.
It's not super hard but it's harder than what most people do when they travel via a bus. I would guess that it's harder than what most LessWrong readers do when the travel via a bus. Realistically I don't think I will convince people on lesswrong to go dancing in a bus in public transport.
It's an exercise that trains physical stability. I myself could see the difference in my salsa dancing after doing it for a month. At the same time I find that the physical activity makes my mind more alert and I can put more cognitive resources the book better than I would by sitting down in the bus.