These two books have helped me enormously in having transformative conversations:

• Never Split the Difference
• Crucial Conversations

And you can understand their way of thinking and how to communicate better ideas with

• Don’t Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff

My grandpa was born and raised in an industrial town that didn’t have access to pools or anything like that. He decided to learn to swim by reading a book and practicing in his living room. He would lay down on a bench or a seat and practice the motions. Every year, he’d go to a nearby town that did have a pool, and he’d sit for hours hearing how kids were taught to swim. He’d then go back to his living room and practice based on that.

So, how did he swim? Luckily, looking at him swim was something I could do with my own eyes. And just by the look of it, you’d never tell he learned on a bench.

After careful forensic analysis, I have concluded the entire thing was created by a single person. I call this the One Author Theory (OAT). Let me present to you OAT’s evidence.

First, notice almost every tally is similar to its immediate neighbors. They have the same color and the same thickness. This suggests the tallies were all made with the same marker and with similar techniques.

We can see similar techniques elsewhere. First, notice that each category has tallies. Then, within each category (for example shit), focus on the rightmost tallies. Notice that the tallies tend to curve in a similar way. This suggests those tallies were created under similar conditions, with a similar technique.

You may have noticed that the piss tallies are thicker and straighter than the jerk it tallies. This may suggest my One Author theory is wrong, but my theory does incorporate this fact. The fact is explained by a change in technique. Therefore, the OAT cannot stand on its own. It requires another theory to grab onto. This other theory is the Progressive Degradation of Commitment (PDC) Theory.

I will now give evidence for the PDC Theory. Notice the shit category. Its topmost row has a consistent left-to-right pattern. The tallies become smaller and smaller. They also become curved at the end. This suggests a consistent loss of commitment.

The PDC Theory appears to struggle with the jerk it category. After all, the bottom row starts with small tallies and progressively has its tallies grow tall and straight. This we shall call the Jerk It Anomaly (JIA). However, concluding that the JIA proves that the PDC Theory fails is incorrect. If one uses the PDC Theory correctly, it can actually explain the JIA.

How? First, we need to remember that the PDC Theory shouldn’t be limited to rows. We saw an example of this when PDC Theory explained piss’ thickness in relation to jerk it’s thickness. In other words, PDC Theory can scale. It can explain rows of tallies but it can also explain columns of categories. So, if we apply PDC Theory to the entire work, we can assume that the entirety of the last column (jerk it) was built with little commitment. The author could’ve been pressured for time. It is reasonable to speculate that the author felt a sudden urge to attend to his unfinished business, be it pissing, vaping, shitting, or jerking it. In either case, the PDC Theory comes out intact.

Ultimately, the OAT uses the PDC Theory to address validity threats like the JIA. The author may have attempted to dupe us into thinking the census was representative of a population. However, the One Author Theory lets us see that the author’s work is more representative of his purposes, capabilities, and proclivities.

It’s important to note that this does not necessarily reduce the author’s merit and the piece’s impact. Future studies could evaluate to what extent this apparent census creates a sense of community and connection in the bathroom-stall goers. I, for one, would appreciate going to the bathroom and finding this piece. I wouldn’t necessarily appreciate vaping or jerking it, but I would appreciate shitting or pissing next to it.

Hey. I hope you’re alright. I wrote a response to another thread, but I couldn’t post on it. I hope it’s alright if I post my response here. I hope it helps!

Good relationships have availability, responsiveness, and engagement. Why? The bottom of it all is whether someone will be there for us, whether someone will hold us.

You’d think that this means that someone needs to respond immediately to our text messages, but that is not necessarily true. Different people have different sensitivities. For example, some people have more sore spots than others.

What are sore spots? They are painful memories or thoughts of being rejected. They are wounds that we carry with us. Sometimes, when we are close to someone, our wounds are touched, and that can hurt. When our sore spots are activated, some people start demanding in all sorts of ways, yelling or being passive-aggressive. Others withdraw, staying quiet or sulking. Ideally, we can slowly heal our wounds by letting our partners see them and take care of them. This is very vulnerable, and it requires care.

When our wounds heal, we can re-calibrate our emotions. We no longer feel fear of rejection. We no longer demand or withdraw. We can hold each other tightly. We can feel very securely attached to our partner. We can spend a whole day without messaging and we still feel connected. Heck, our partner could go on a business trip, not message us, and we’d still feel safe.

Of course, wounds can sometimes open up again. We are vulnerable creatures. And that’s alright. As long as we know how to heal wounds, we are ultimately safe.

So, to answer your question your question, I’d say most healthy relationships don’t really leave partners on “read”. However, different people have different sensitivities, and what ultimately matters is whether we feel securely attached with our partners.

If you’re curious about this way of thinking and the research behind it, check out Sue Johnson’s Hold me tight.

There’s actually research on this. There are groups of people that donate more than others. There are two groups of people that really matter for this: people who have protection values and people who have democratic values.

People with protection values care about themselves and their people (their family, their clan, their tribe, their religion, their nation). People with democratic values care about humans in general, regardless of their religion, nationality, what family they come from, etc.

So, who donates more money? People with democratic values.

You can check out Christian Welzel’s Freedom Rising for more on this :)

https://wmich.edu/writing/punctuation/hyphen

This would’ve helped

Ghosts are the creation of our minds. And it turns out that our minds are flawed machines. This was shown by someone and they won a Nobel Prize for it (Daniel Kahnemann). If we understand our flawed minds, we understand why ghosts aren’t racist.

When you think of something, you run a simplified simulation of it. When you run these simulations, you don’t think about other things. For example, when people fantasize about achieving something, they usually run the simulation of having gotten the job and the money or having solved the tough problem. However, they usually don’t think about the path to achieving that goal. This is called the planning fallacy. It’s also called the Motivation Wave in Behavior Design.

Another example of these simplified simulations is the halo effect. The halo effect starts when you notice something good about someone. Maybe they’re attractive. Maybe they’re on your same team or political group or religion or whatever. The thing is that you end up building a good preconception of that person. You assume they’re kind and smart and many other positive things. Again, your mind is running a simplified simulation. Even if you notice bad stuff about the other person, you may ignore it because our mind is a flawed machine and it’s stuck with the idea that the other person is good.

So, how do simplified simulations lead to non-racist ghosts? Well, we all share an idea of what a ghost is. We tell each other ghost stories or we watch movies with ghosts in them. All of that feeds the simplified simulations we run when we think of ghosts. And we don’t include racism in those simulations.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t escape simplified simulations. This is a tough problem that many people have tried to solve in many different ways. These attempts have resulted in an arsenal of methods: psychological flexibility exercises, mental contrasting, pre-mortems, the Delphi method, red team blue team exercises, weak signal detection, etc. Notice that all of these tools try to transform our preconceptions.

Of course, a very simple way of transforming our preconceptions is to prove them wrong. I suppose in the case of non-racist ghosts, it’s a matter of creating racist ghosts. This project, however, brings up the old adage: just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

If you’re interested in simplified simulations, I recommend Lisa Feldman Barret’s books. You can also check out Daniel Kahnemann, Gary Klein, and Dave Snowden.

Yeah. It did occur to me that I was downvoted because of the general AI hate in Lemmy (which isn’t out of place, considering how AI companies have loads of ethical problems). I also wonder if the post is simply not interesting. Or it could’ve been interesting but I didn’t know how to communicate it. Idk. Sometimes this happens and life goes on :)

I’m so sorry for the wall of text. I hope I can come back and clean it up and make it clearer:

How to work?

Use the Pomodoro technique: 25 minutes of work - 5 minutes of break

1. Set a 25 minute timer.
2. Remove all distractions, especially social media and notifications.
3. Work until the timer runs out.
4. Set a 5 minute timer. Take a break. Stand. Drink water. Don’t use your phone or social media. Repeat.

Make sure to celebrate (1) when you remember to do a Pomdoro, (2) while doing it, and (3) immediately after you finish it.

What do I mean by celebrating? Imagine you got an email telling you that you got the job you wanted. How would you react? Or imagine your favorite teacher/professor tells you they’re proud of you. How would you react? Try to generate those emotions to celebrate.

Why celebrate? Habits are not created by repetition. They’re created by emotions. Dopamine creates connections and fosters learning.

How to make sure that information sticks in your brain and that you understand deeply? Active recall. After you read something, close the book or your computer and try to explain it from memory. This doesn’t work if it’s not from memory. It doesn’t matter if you struggle. In fact, the more you struggle to remember something, the better you learn it.

I like to structure my active recalls with Visible Thinking Routines. You can search for them online. I particularly like See-Think-Wonder, Think-Puzzle-Explore, and Connect-Extend-Challenge.

Now, I’ll recommend some resources:

The single most useful thing you could do for the least effort is mindfulness. It’ll help you get out of mental ruts. You could use the Healthy Minds program. I donate to them. They’re wonderful.

Second most powerful thing you could do is work on psychological flexibility. You can check out A Liberated Mind by Steven C. Hayes. I cannot stress enough how important psychological flexibility is. It underlies everything we do.

If you want to learn about Visible Thinking Routines, there’s a book on it. I don’t remember the name, but the introduction is spectacular and gives a good sense of why we should focus on deeply understanding rather than rote memorization or mindless repetition. This technique (thinking visibly) is the single most important reason I graduated summa cum laude from my programs. I used to suck at studying. Now I am good at it thanks to visible thinking routines (and Anki).

I also recommend Make it stick the book. Additionally, I recommend Barbara Oakley’s Learn like a Pro, but I only do it if you first read A Liberated Mind, the book on visible thinking routines, Tiny Habits, and The Sleep Book. Why? Oakley’s book teaches a bunch of stuff that I think is straight up wrong and potentially dangerous, such as its recommendations for sleep and for habit formation.

I mentioned it but I should single out Tiny Habits. It’s a game changer. It will help you do anything in life.

You could do relational frame training if you want to increase the speed at which you understand things through relations. Check out Steven Hayes’ A Liberated Mind for more on this.

If Pomodoros are a struggle, you could try TimeTimers or similar products. Getting a good visualization of time helps people to auto regulate. I have used them with people with ADHD and they are better than digital timers or old-school clocks.

If organization is an issue, Getting Things Done (but first read A Liberated Mind, because GTD assumes some things about the mind that aren’t true. I’d also recommend Cynefin, the book, because the natural planning process is not universal and different contexts require different interventions). I’d also recommend Personal Kanban, if you’re organizing your study habits

Both pronunciations are okay :)

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/banal

This sounds interesting. I’m just not sure it’s a shower thought. Is it?

People do or don’t do things depending on three variables: motivation to do it, the ability to do it, and the prompt to do it.

• Motivation could be lacking in some cases. People need to understand the purpose of turn signals. However, I don’t think there’s an anti-turn signal discourse going around. At least as far as I know.
• I don’t think it’s ability, because activating turn signals is relatively easy for most people.
• I think prompts could also be lacking.

How do we change this?

The Behavior Design answer would be something like this: We need to patiently and kindly train people to recognize prompts to the turn signals. “When you get to the corner, put your left hand on the turn-signal control and move it up. Then turn right.” We also need to celebrate it the instant they do it. “Perfect”. Of course, you need to have a good relationship with whomever you’re doing this with.

Now, that is not the only solution; there are many. We might have one solution if we zoom in on one person. We might have another solution if we zoom out to a whole city or country.

In any case, if we want to solve the problem with Behavior Design, you could check out Tiny Habits.

Besides talking to a doctor, would she be against doing cognitive training? If she’s down, I can suggest some stuff :)

It seems like you really don’t like it. What makes you say that?

Interesting. I didn’t know that. So, just to clarify, her husband stopped her from paying her taxes?

Gotta ask if those hips are still avoiding paying taxes https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/shakira-stands-trial-spain-alleged-tax-fraud-2023-11-19/

Ah, this is why I love Lemmy.

The problem you’re describing (open sourcing critical software) could both increase the capabilities of adversaries and also make it easier for adversaries to search for exploits. Open sourcing defeats security by obscurity.

Leaving security by obscurity aside could be seen as a loss, but it’s important to note what is gained in the process. Most security researchers today advocate against relying on security by obscurity, and instead focus on security by design and open security. Why?

Security by obscurity in the digital world is very easily defeated. It’s easy to copy and paste supposedly secure codes. It’s easy to smuggle supposedly secret code. “Today’s NSA secrets become tomorrow’s PhD theses and the next day’s hacker tools.”

What’s the alternative for the military? If you rely on security by design and open security for military equipment, it’s possible that adversaries will get a hold of the software, but they will get a hold of software that is more secure. A way to look at it is that all the doors are locked. On the other hand, insecure software leaves supposedly secret doors open. Those doors can be easily bashed by adversaries. So much for trying to get the upper hand.

The choice between (1) security by obscurity and (2) security by design and open security is ultimately the choice between (1) insecurity for all and (2) security for all. Security for all would be my choice, every time. I want my transit infrastructure to be safe. I want my phone to be safe. I want my election-related software to be safe. I want safe and reliable software. If someone is waging a war, they’re going to have to use methods that can actually create a technical asymmetry of power, and insecure software is not the way to gain the upper hand.

Long ago I had a friend who claimed something similar. In front of the camp fire, he claimed he was feeing spirits inside of him and that he became possessed. He gained attention from the group for about a minute. At first they asked if he was okay. He continued to act possessed, so they stopped being kind. They yelled at him, made fun of him, imitated him….

I sat next to him and quietly asked if he was okay and needed anything. I didn’t really know what his reaction would be because I didn’t know him. He was a friend of a friend. Still, I told him that him and I could leave to take a walk and talk. He didn’t respond and simply stared at the fire. He ignored us for the rest of that night.

The following morning, he decided to act ignorant. “What happened? I don’t remember anything.” The group was pissed at him and barely talked to him. He hasn’t been invited to anything ever since.

This whole thing was very unfortunate. It’s a memory of mine that is painful. I understand back then we were teenagers. Teenagers explore their identities, sometimes in cringy ways. That’s normal. But still, the event isolated him from the group. And if I talk about this whole incident to anyone who was there that night, they still resent him.

I suppose this is a long answer to your question. If someone claimed they had a vision of the vehicle crashing/exploding and everyone dying, nobody would believe them and they’d be in for a tough time.

Already happening https://youtu.be/evSFeqTZdqs