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All of bugsbycarlin's Comments + Replies

Here's the exit.
bugsbycarlin7-4

The truly interesting thing here is that I would agree unequivocally with you if you were talking about any other kind of 'cult of the apocalypse'.

 

This has Arrested Development energy ^_^ https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FUHfiS7X0AAe-XD.jpg 

 

The personal consequences are there. The're staring you in the face with every job in translation, customer service, design, transportation, logistics, that gets automated in such a way that there is no value you can possibly add to it

...

2-3 Years ago I was on track to becoming a pretty good illustrator, and

... (read more)
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2Donald Hobson
There are specific technical arguments about why AI might rapidly kill everyone. You can't figure out if those arguments are true or false by analysing the "death cult vibes".  Now you can take the position that death cult vibes are unhealthy and not particularly helpful. Personally I haven't actually seen a lot of death cult vibes. I have seen more "fun mental toy from philosophy land" vibes. Where total doom is discussed as if it were a pure maths problem. But if there are death cult vibes somewhere I haven't seen, those probably don't help much.
Here's the exit.
bugsbycarlin1810

A helpful tool on the way to landing and getting sober is exercise. Exercise is essentially a displacement, like any of the other addictions, but it has the unique and useful feature that it processes out your chemicals, leaving you with less stress chemicals in circulation, and a refractory period before your body can make more.

Almost no matter your physical capabilities, there is something you can go do that makes you sweat and tires you out... and breaks the stress-focus-stress-focus cycle.

 

Edit: btw, this is great stuff, very good for this communi... (read more)

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bugsbycarlin10

This is closer to what I expected for myself. Do you feel a similar pressure to move to the next activity when doing other types of meditation?

Edit: my being stuck in a car might have had something to do with it. Not much to move on to :-)

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2Qiaochu_Yuan
Yeah, sometimes. Looking back, I think I often don't set a strong enough intention to meditate.
bugsbycarlin20

Forgive my asking a somewhat rude question. I wouldn't ask it except in the context of this sort of "how you learn" discussion. Was "The Mind Illuminated" valuable to you because the scientific material helped break down some kind of pre-existing emotional resistance to a subject which seemed hokey? Is it possible that you previously had trouble meditating because the whole thing seemed made up or poorly justified and a piece of you wasn't willing to try until someone attached it to a science?

Also, how long have you been assessing (weeks, years, etc), and during your assessment phase, have you continued the practice you learned in that first week, or did you fully stop to assess?

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6Kaj_Sotala
Here's one more person whose meditation practice was really helped by The Mind Illuminated. For me, what you describe was definitely not the case. Rather my problem was that previous meditation instructions had taken me to a stage whose challenge (subtle dullness, in TMI's terms) I didn't know how to overcome, and then I ended up doing the wrong things over and over, blocking my progress. TMI gave me concrete instructions for what I should be doing to overcome that challenge, I followed them, and have been getting much farther since.
9moridinamael
Your questions aren't addressed to me but they might as well have been because I went through the same process as wunan. I started out using vague online instructions and then the app Headspace. There was no real sense of progress with either approach. Headspace makes no real effort to teach you the theory of what it's trying to accomplish, and the session lengths are probably not long enough to make progress anyway. In retrospect, Headspace is in some sense the exact wrong approach if your goal is meaningful progress in training your attention and coming to better understand your mind. It's analogous to a music teacher instructing you to just sit down and play some notes, any notes, for twenty minutes. It would be amazing if you made progress that way. Like wunan, I read TMI and started actually making progress. Changes could be observed in and out of meditation. I backed away from meditating for a period of time because I became uncomfortable with some of the changes to my cognition. Eventually I re-read The Mind Illuminated and understood that I had been doing some things wrong, fixed that problem and resumed meditating, and the practice has been nothing but positive since then. I also took the step of consciously choosing, from the outset, not to advance beyond Stage 8 of the progression outlined in the book, unless I reach that stage and then it seems really compelling that I ought to proceed. Everything up to Stage 8 seems desirable, while the stages after 8 seem to include some self-modifications that I wouldn't willingly choose, at least from where I'm sitting now.
3wunan
No problem, I don't think the question is rude. No, I didn't view it as hokey. I was actually very enthusiastic about it right from the start, but never made any progress. TMI was valuable to me because it provided much more granular instructions. I stopped to reassess about 2 months ago and have not been meditating in that time.
bugsbycarlin40

To your and habryka's comments:

I should probably not steal the pre-existing word "focus". I figured my meaning fell somewhere within the smear of existing meanings, but it sounds like it didn't, and we should use a different word.

The post neither pre-supposes an interest in meditation, nor supplies a convincing argument for its benefits. To me the tone of the piece indicates a sort of subtext: "if you feel like reading or trying, then read or try. If not, then don't." In my mind it's meant to offer the interested but... (read more)

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6gjm
To paraphrase your third paragraph: Try or try not. There is no "do!". (Sorry.)
bugsbycarlin10

I had to think about this, so thanks!

I should have specified that deeply miserable was more of a short term judgement, specifically on a people dimension. If your interactions with people are causing you to be deeply miserable, it's probably a good idea to retract.

But, to me, a really high level of short term comfort in people space indicates a position which is short term good and long term very bad. This isn't always the case, but as a first pass, it sets off alarm bells. It's like the social equivalent of too much candy. "This tastes... (read more)

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4abramdemski
I, too, am uncomfortable with the "too comfortable" heuristic. Social comfort doesn't seem like the problematic thing here. Here are several alternate warning signs for being in too much of a filter bubble: * Are you getting accurate feedback on what matters? The way I interpreted Cheat to Win was that you're trying to surround yourself with people who value the things you value, so that the feedback you get on what you're doing is meaningful to you. Feedback from others may just be on an irrelevant metric of quality. But, perhaps there are some things which you can't just rely on close allies for. If you are trying to write a novel to be a nationwide best seller, you might not be able to get the feedback you need from your pre-existing fans. * Are you ignoring some potential consequences of your actions? Maybe you're trying to revolutionize 3D printing, and you only hang out with guns-rights activists who think giving everyone the ability to print a gun is pure upside. So ask yourself: do your actions only effect you and your group of supporters? If no, have you thought seriously about who else is being effected and whether you might be ignoring negative effects? * Is there a group of people who seriously disagree with some assumptions you make? Would you know if there were? (Have you checked?) If there is, have you engaged with their concerns to the point where you're satisfied? Is it possible you'll be kicking yourself years later for not engaging more?
2Said Achmiz
You’re quite welcome. Follow-ups: What is “short term comfort”? If I am comfortable, how do I tell whether that is “short term comfort” or “long term comfort” (whatever that is)?