= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
If only a small minority of people are consequentialists by default, then coldly calculated actions that have good consequences would more likely be a sign of callous character than a finely tuned moral compass, which in turn could lead to bad consequences in other situations. People might not be as irrational judging these example situations as it seems.
In response to
Open thread, January 25- February 1
I'm in art school and I have a big problem with precision and lack of "sloppiness" in my work. I'm sort of hesitant to try to improve in this area, however, because I suspect it reflects some sort of biological limit - maybe the size of some area in the cerebellum or something, I don't know. Am I right in thinking this?
You could try doing something that gives immediate feedback for sloppiness, like simple math problems for example. You might gain some generalizable insight like that speed affects sloppiness. Since you already practice meditation, it should be easier to become aware of the specific failure modes that contribute to sloppiness, which doesn't seem to be a well defined thing in itself.
In response to
Open thread, January 25- February 1
Is there a good way of finding what kind of job might fit a person? Common advice such as "do what you like to do" or "do what you're good at" is relatively useless for finding a specific job or even a broader category of jobs.
I've did some reading on 80000 hours, and most of the advice there is on how to choose between a couple of possible jobs, not on finding a fitting one from scratch.
I think for most people who ask this question, the range of fitting jobs is much wider than they think. You learn to like what you become good at.
If I were to pick a career right now, I'd just take a long list of reasonably complex jobs and remove any that contain an obvious obstacle like a skill requirement I'm unlikely to improve at. Then from what is left, I'd narrow the choice by some other criteria than perceived fit, income and future employment prospects for example and then pick one of them either by some additional criteria or randomly. I'm confident I'd learn to like almost any job chosen this way.
If you make money you can do whatever you like in the future even if you chose your job poorly in the first place. So please don't choose to become an English major.
In response to
Open thread, January 25- February 1
Does anyone else experience the feeling of alienation? And does anyone have a good strategy for dealing with it?
I think this feeling arises from social norms feeling unnatural to you. This feeling should be expected if your interests are relevant to this site, since people are not trying to be rational by default.
The difference between a pathetic misfit and and an admirable eccentric is their level of awesomeness. If you become good enough at anything relevant to other people, you don't have to live through their social expectations. Conform to the norms or rise above them.
Note that I think most social norms are nice to have, but this doesn't mean there aren't enough of the kind that make me feel alienated. It could be that the feeling of alienation is a necessary side effect of some beneficial cognitive change, in which case I'd try to cherish the feeling. I've found that rising to a leadership position diminishes the feeling significantly, however.
Today's magic number was 25. (I started a few days after New Year's.) 5x10 push ups seems rather out of my range just yet - but 5x5 was a massive improvement, pain-wise, over 1x25. My main thought at the end of those: "Oh, if /that's/ all it's going to hurt from now on, this is going to be /easy/..."
So even if no other suggestion helps much - this one particular comment could make the difference. I'd up-vote it more than once, if I could. :)
Glad to hear I could be of help.
There's no reason why you shouldn't apply this to your other exercises too if you want to progress faster and less painfully. You might want to experiment with the number of sets to see what works best for you or vary the figure simply to make things a bit less monotonic. It's still nice to have "challenge days" every once in a while to see how awesomely many repetitions you can do at once.
In response to
How to become a PC?
I used to be an avid strength trainer and enjoyed working out. Recently I was injured, and now my workouts for the forseeable future include the treadmill and only the treadmill, which I deplore. I've also had to alter my diet quite a bit to consume fewer calories to account for my change in workout routine. As a result of all this, I'm having perhaps my most difficult battle with the sort of situation you are talking about -- I'm having to do stuff I hate consistently in order to stay healthy and fit (though I don't care about cryonics...).
Here are some things that work for me:
Build a strong plan in order to make execution mindless. I fill out a 30-day whiteboard calendar with my workouts for a given month. Then I cross them out only after I complete the workouts. Then I do the workouts. My diet is of a similar strict, pre-planned nature in an effort the make day-to-day execution mindless. I have prohibited foods (fast food, alcohol, soda, dessert) & required foods (raw vegetables, raw fruits, 2 liters water, multivitamin) & a daily framework for my meal schedule. I find it help to separate the planning phase of diet and exercise from the doing phase.
Have medium-term requirement that relies on daily requirements. I add 1-minute of treadmill work per workout x 20 workouts per month. I am only allowed to add 1 minute after each completed workout, and I must get to the forecasted requirement for the next month. Day 1, Month 1 starting requirement was 20 minutes. Day 1, Month 2 requirement was 41 minutes. Day 1, Month 3 requirement is 61 minutes, though I'll likely max out at 60 minutes. This, in effect, is a 60-day ramp-up-phase that is (a) manageable & reasonable, and (b) forms a useful habit.
Pay limited attention to medium-term results; pay no attention in the short-term. Learn some good fundamentals on weight loss and fitness, build a strong plan you can follow, then just do it for 90 or 180 days, weighing in monthly. Weighing in (or comparing other fitness benchmarks to your starting condition) more often can be useful only if (a) you recognize how much this stuff tends to flucuate daily and (b) how much cumulative effort is needed to see significant improvement. In most cases, people weigh themselves obsessively early in a diet, lose 5 lbs after starving themlselves for a week, gain 2 lbs back after two weeks and then give up because they are hungry and discouraged 'cuz 3 net lbs wasn't worth that two weeks of hungry, cranky hell. Instead, build the good, strong plan, mindlessly and blindly execute for 90 days, then check and (perhaps) adjust accordingly.
Wow. That's some heroic effort you're going through.
Can't you use that treadmill time to read, watch or listen to something? Or meditate, you referred to buddhism in our other discussion.
If you haven't done so already, you could automate things further via a smartphone or a computer. There's software for almost any purpose. For example, my smartphone does my exercise plans for me and keeps track of progress and adjusts the plans accordingly, reminds me when to exercise and when to eat, reminds me to weigh myself in the morning and draws a prediction graph of my weight based on the last 7 day measurements and calculates how many extra calories have gone in or out based on the progress.
You get a nice high off exercising
Correction; /you/ get a nice high off exercising. /I/ have yet to get a runner's high, or anything of the sort. (Imagine trying to keep up an exercise program if you /didn't/ get that nice high; how would you motivate yourself?)
To fix your life, fix your emotions, at a deep level. You need to train your lizard brain to prefer what your ape brain prefers, and train your ape brain to prefer what your conscious human brain prefers.
I'm willing to give it a shot. Got any specific suggestions on the how?
I get the high only from strenuous exercise that lasts about an hour or more, like soccer for example. Half hour runs or weight lifting do not have such an effect, and I don't find the reward worth the pain in those activities which means I do them in a more reasonable pace.
This suggests you might have to reach a certain level of fitness to be able to strain yourself enough to get the high and this level varies between activities and people. There are activities like swimming that don't give me the high at all no matter how hard I try, but oddly enough swimming is my favorite form of exercise.
I'm not having any problems with jumping jacks, toe-touches, squats, or sit-ups, and if that sort of thing was all I was doing, I think I'd have few-to-no problems with keeping myself on the routine of doing them.
The first day I started this 'get up and go' thing, I did one push-up; the next day, two; the next day, three; and so on. I'm currently in the twenties. I'm reasonably sure that what I'm experiencing is the 'burning sensation' you mention, though I'm not getting any sort of endorphin rush from it. And on the plus side, I actually /can/ do twenty-odd push-ups now, which I wouldn't have been able to when I started. (I know what that says about my physical state when I started.)
I've skimmed what free manuals and guides I can find, watched a few Youtube videos, and so on; short of buying a gym membership for professional advice, I think I'm doing things as closely to 'right' as I can manage. It just hurts, each day that I do n+1 push-ups compared to the previous day's n. (And, similarly, for holding the plank position for a couple seconds longer.)
Have you you tried doing shorter sets like 5x10 push ups with a minute of rest in between for example? You'll get much more push ups done this way, will progress faster and experience less burn. Try adding 1-2 push ups to those five sets every time you do push ups. If you reach failure point at any time, you're doing too many of them. Doing them every day might get counterproductive at some point, your muscles need rest to grow stronger. If you're already in pain when you're starting, you haven't recovered from the previous exercise.
you may also want to pay attention to the unspoken, automatic thoughts you have when you are losing motivation. Try to articulate them in sentence form so they can be interrogated.
As best as I can recall, they're roughly along the lines of "This is gonna hurt" or "Ow" or "Yep, that was painful". (Mostly during push-ups and planks.)
(Though at one point, I wondered if I could make a Super-Happy's head explode by presenting them with the idea that I was deliberately and voluntarily choosing to engage in an activity that caused me pain...)
There doesn't seem to be much there to respond to, other than whatever motivations I can convince my brain to believe that the eventual rewards are worth the present-day pain.
If it hurts consider that you might be doing something wrong. If it's just the burning sensation, although this sensation is usually followed by a rewarding endorphin rush, consider that you might not have to strain yourself that much to get the most important benefits from the exercise. I exercise regularly, make progress, and it almost never hurts. If you do bodyweight exercises for example, you don't have to exercise to the point of failure to make progress, in fact that might even slow your recovery.
View more: Next
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Do you mind if I ask which app(s) you're using?
Reminders1, reminders2, body weight exercises, cardio, weight management.