brute journal

Where are you and where are you going?
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Mister Imperceptible
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Re: brute journal

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

@Riggerjack

Thank you for clarifying. Striving after an external image of one’s self to meet internal ends.

Regarding your nasal tone, it’s often said that 50 Cent sounds more distinctive after getting shot in the face. I’m sure your singing will have a unique charm.

Family father
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Re: brute journal

Post by Family father »

Riggerjack wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2018 12:04 pm
Well, this gets down to happiness vs satisfaction.

Happiness is relatively easy to generate. Take any situation, add ice cream bars and go carts, and it's happier. This is a temporary fix. Happiness by it's nature, can't last long.

Satisfaction is more about a feeling of accomplishment. My quality of life has greatly increased as I have courted satisfaction rather than happiness as my muse. This can be little satisfactions, like changing out a light switch that is finnicky. Or bigger satisfactions, like laying a new patio, or changing an engine in the garden tractor. The determining factor is the challenge of the task.

None of these is fun, but all of them increase my "resting happiness rate". My general feeling of happiness is not tied to how much fun stuff I do, but how much difficult stuff I do.
I buy that, I'll give it a deeper dive...
Riggerjack wrote:
Tue Jan 09, 2018 9:38 am
BRUTE is content on his own, but less so when introducing himself to other people. So finding ways to be happier on his own is a waste of his time and energy. I would suggest that he spend time thinking of who he wants to be through the eyes of others. Then practice being that man.
I would suggest the other way around :oops:

Facts: BRUTE is very content doing the dishes, pretty content resting and not very content explaining himself to other people.

Few data, so big chance of missing conclussions (IOW too many different personalities could fit into those facts).

Projections:

1- Washing dishes is the kind of activity that allows you to be present without having your mind jumping around

2- Resting is a status in wich you either disconnect your mind (by switching on tv, for example) or you let your mind jump around

Suggestions (not that they have been asked for): follow a few of the zen monk living principles:

1- Do one thing at a time.
2- Do it slowly and deliberately.
3- Do it completely. Put your mind completely on the task.
4- Do less.
5- Put space between things.

These could be a coherent direction given the facts and assumptions..

P.S: You can read a good summary of those principles here: https://zenhabits.net/12-essential-rule ... -zen-monk/

classical_Liberal
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Re: brute journal

Post by classical_Liberal »

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Last edited by classical_Liberal on Fri Feb 05, 2021 12:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

Riggerjack
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Re: brute journal

Post by Riggerjack »

Building patios for food money that one knows will not be subsequently used fills the belly, but probably doesn't provide satisfaction. Building patios for free that will never be used is work for works sake.
You seem very caught up in this work for works sake thing. Which is a bit odd on an early retirement site. But we each have our own life story.

The relevant part of building a patio is the learning and the doing, and the repeating. Not whether someone else uses it. If you learn to build a fire by rubbing sticks together, is that an empty experience because the fire burnt up all your carefully crafted materials? Is it empty because of the invention of matches? Before that, I was someone who knew that fire could be started by rubbing sticks together. After, I was someone who COULD start a fire with sticks.

The fire is nothing special, but I am changed. What I am describing is a system for identifying the change to make.
1- Washing dishes is the kind of activity that allows you to be present without having your mind jumping around

2- Resting is a status in wich you either disconnect your mind (by switching on tv, for example) or you let your mind jump around
I will be the first to say that mindfulness and meditation makes no sense to me. Each time I hear somebody describe it, I seems I'm completely missing something, or missing everything. But for me, washing dishes (my least favorite chore) or resting (at the time I wrote that, I was specifically thinking of standing in my living room, looking out the window at nothing much) would be nearly the same line of thoughts. Neither requires my attention, so my mind wanders... But, some people think very differently when doing a task and doing nothing. I was hoping to catch the activity that leads to a wandering mind. That speculative mindset.

So, when you are freely speculating, how happy are you? If the answer is not as happy as you want to be, then you have to figure out why.

For me, it was that I wasn't who I wanted to be, that I hadn't done what I wanted to have done. So I started doing those things, and learning those things, and in the process, became who I am. I'm not done, but I am happy.

7Wannabe5
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Re: brute journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Riggerjack wrote:What I am describing is a system for identifying the change to make.
What I was suggesting is that there should be a metric which combines Complexity and Entropy to determine likelihood of Satisfaction from Work. The first time you build a patio, you increase Complexity in your brain, and in the environment. The second time you build a patio, you make the same increase to Complexity in the environment, but less of a change to Complexity in your brain. If you do no work, you will still convert complex food into less complex poop and heat, and you will not feel good because if a human did feel good when it did that, then humans would not have developed the capacity to create highly complex hive environments which greatly aid our survival. Then other creatures would have eaten us. Before humans started using fire, gnawed human bones were found in animal caves. After humans started using fire, gnawed animal bones were found in human caves. Therefore, BRUTE needs to at least do work that is as complex as is the work that would be required to hunt/forage and prepare the food he eats, if he LITERALLY wants to feel content/secure in his ability to experience SATISFACTION (root=sate) through the means of his work. Otherwise, he will retain a subconscious anxiety informing him that it is likely that the other members of his tribe will choose to eat him.

Fun Fact: Very young humans, pre-verbal-not-yet-acculturated, when given anything resembling a shovel and pail and a sandbox, will almost always choose to dump the sand out of the sandbox, even when repeatedly instructed to keep it in the box. It seems to me this is because it seems to them that they are accomplishing something when they dump it elsewhere. Babies aren't just cute. They are very interesting people to observe, because they have not yet entered "the cave."

classical_Liberal
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Re: brute journal

Post by classical_Liberal »

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daylen
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Re: brute journal

Post by daylen »

Riggerjack wrote:
Tue Jan 09, 2018 7:54 pm
I will be the first to say that mindfulness and meditation makes no sense to me. Each time I hear somebody describe it, I seems I'm completely missing something, or missing everything.
You may have already developed the abilities; many rationalist do.

Essentially, meditation and mindfulness are intended as a set exercises towards disassociating from your thoughts and feelings. Once you start to do this instinctively you can move on to various meta-cognitive techniques which allow you to not only observe your stream of consciousness but to alter your thought patterns. Once you master meta-cognition you can reprogram your mind however you want. :D

rref
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Re: brute journal

Post by rref »

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suomalainen
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Re: brute journal

Post by suomalainen »

A recent post to @brute’s point above about mmm being more a cult of personality compared to the ere approach.

https://www.caniretireyet.com/mr-money- ... more-10527

#19

Riggerjack
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Re: brute journal

Post by Riggerjack »

Essentially, meditation and mindfulness are intended as a set exercises towards disassociating from your thoughts and feelings. Once you start to do this instinctively you can move on to various meta-cognitive techniques which allow you to not only observe your stream of consciousness but to alter your thought patterns. Once you master meta-cognition you can reprogram your mind however you want. :D
Uh huh. And what are you dissociating your thoughts and feelings from, exactly? And how exactly does that differ from a zombie? I've never been able to really, deeply, become one with the broom while sweeping, mainly because I was just sweeping. Adding more intensity makes it more difficult, without improving the job I'm doing. I just don't understand what the goal is.

Also, WTF would you want to reprogram your mind?!?

daylen
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Re: brute journal

Post by daylen »

Riggerjack wrote:
Wed Jan 10, 2018 2:11 pm
Uh huh. And what are you dissociating your thoughts and feelings from, exactly?
From your identity, beliefs, motivations, and so forth (all the subjective stuff). Some people don't do this automatically.
Riggerjack wrote:
Wed Jan 10, 2018 2:11 pm
I've never been able to really, deeply, become one with the broom while sweeping, mainly because I was just sweeping. Adding more intensity makes it more difficult, without improving the job I'm doing. I just don't understand what the goal is.
Why would you want to become one with the broom? Where did that come from? What does that even mean? :lol:

Look up metacognition on Wikipedia if you want to know what I am talking about. Why wouldn't you want to have more control over the most vital system to your own existence?

Riggerjack
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Re: brute journal

Post by Riggerjack »

Ok. I'm still confused. Bewildered. I looked up metacognition, it seemed slow and clunky, like showing my work in trig. I completely fail to understand the need or the appeal.

And I could probably go on not understanding for way too long to be sidetracking BRUTE's journal. I'll start a new thread, so I can tax many people's patience, and stop derailing this thread. I'll post a link here when I have it.

And here it is:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9588

bryan
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Re: brute journal

Post by bryan »

Riggerjack wrote:
Wed Jan 10, 2018 2:11 pm
Also, WTF would you want to reprogram your mind?!?
I think that's the craziest thing I've seen you write on the forums! There's innumerable reasons why one would want to "reprogram" oneself.

Riggerjack
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Re: brute journal

Post by Riggerjack »

I'll take your word for it.

My mental image of this looks like a guy with a fire ax and a hammer telling me how these are the right tools to reprogram my PC.

So, no. It's not that I can't see the appeal of reprogramming or optimizing. It's that our understanding of the mind and the tools, is so far from where I would need it to be before I started crowbarring, it's not even worth considering.

Or maybe I just think the reward is just too small and risk too great.

bryan
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Re: brute journal

Post by bryan »

You can reprogram yourself with, again, innumerable tools/methods. So it sounds like you are just suspicious of meta-cognition/meditation/mindfulness/etc (whereas you said "WTF would you want to reprogram your mind")? I don't do any of that but still reprogram myself (says me, at least) regularly (usually with something like a book/movie).

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jennypenny
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Re: brute journal

Post by jennypenny »

I would use the word 'rewire' instead of 'reprogram'. It's not changing your mind, but helping it function better.

bryan
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Re: brute journal

Post by bryan »

Well it's true I don't know much about how the brain and bodily networks actually work (for instance, is it more akin to a PLC or the internet or fungus or ??).. but reprogram seems to make good sense (since we are doing it from a higher level than whatever actual alleged rewiring might happen). Both could be correct. I grant that the brain is not structured or works exactly like a von Neumann CPU+memory: a configuration that most people might think of when you say "reprogram". I suppose "machine learning" may be the most analogous to human learning?

Of course in computing you have different philosophies and paradigms, just like in other subjects. Apt is the "code as data" thing.

Writing a human program (so far) happens inside a previous human (first compilation too?) and the assembly/linking probably happens inside the womb. Humans seem to be quite flexible after birth, so I think they are constantly reprogramming themselves as well. Or at least it is a good analogy until we better understand human biology etc.

BRUTE
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Re: brute journal

Post by BRUTE »

Riggerjack wrote:
Tue Jan 09, 2018 3:01 pm
This is about being the man I wish to be.
how does Riggerjack know what kind of man he wants to be?

7Wannabe5
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Re: brute journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

What differentiates an animal from a rock is that if a rock is rolling down a mountain towards you, it is in your rational self-interest to not ascribe it with any internal systemic motivation, but if an animal is running down a mountain towards you it is in your rational self-interest to ascribe it internal systemic motivation. What differentiates Riggerjack from any other animals currently inhabiting this planet is that he has the ability to name, and thereby objectify, his internal systemic motivations.

IOW, Riggerjack knows the qualities of the man he wishes to be by the same process that he knows the taste of the animal he hunts and roasts prior to placing morsel in mouth.

BRUTE
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Re: brute journal

Post by BRUTE »

5 years of expenses

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