AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

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jacob
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

zbigi wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 5:05 am
... Also, most people like the things that more money can buy (eating out, travels, bettter house, helping friends and family), so switching to alternative, potentially more interesting but low-paid careers, really hurts them there.

ERE seems to make most sense for people who are both very disciplined/driven/smart and also for some reason trapped in a low-to-mid-paying career. ...
The differentiator is whether one is satisfied never exploring beyond "what money can buy" (eating out, consumer electronics, TV, tourism, giving money away, ... ). If the answer is in the affirmative, then focusing on a career to maximize earnings in order to maximize shopping is the obvious strategy. Insofar one's interests in life doesn't go beyond eating out, traveling, or buying stuff, it would be silly trying to pay for this doing woodworking in the basement.

The renaissance aspect of ERE is not to diversify one's income streams. It's to be able to play one's life tune using more than the four simple notes available to vacationing full time workers.

However, since one essentially has to MAKE everything that goes beyond this, one does have to be self-driven to want this(*). ERE is more for those who find a life spent repeating one thing for 40-80hrs per week to make money in order to enjoy 3 or 4 different types of products or services ... to be somewhat limited and uninspiring.

(*) Basically, your standard worker-consumer has developed to a high degree in a narrow subject that basically nobody but their colleagues and employer cares about. Other aspects of their life are limited to the Copy and Compare level, e.g. which is the better restaurant? Which is the better flat screen TV? Let me buy a new one and Compare it to the one I already have. It's a very simple interaction.

But I think we've had this discussion before. There's a difference between having access for the first time to all the wonderful offerings that one can buy in a store. And then having spent a couple of decades shopping and ordering and eventually found it boring and unfulfilling.

The best way I can describe the latter feeling is as if one is being forced to repeat the 9th grade over an over in return for getting not 1 but 12 birthday presents per year. A 15 year old would find this to be a fantastic deal ... but after 5 years of doing the same kind of essays and math problems over and over and having exhausted their wish list with 60 consecutive birthday presents, the whole idea might have lost its luster to be replaced by a certain sense of meaninglessness and the desire to break out of 9th grade and see what's next.

zbigi
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by zbigi »

jacob wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 10:27 am

The best way I can describe this feeling is as if one is being forced to repeat the 9th grade over an over in return for getting not 1 but 12 birthday presents per year. A 15 year old would find this to be a fantastic deal ... but after 5 years of doing the same kind of essays and math problems over and over and having exhausted their wish list with 60 consecutive birthday presents, the whole idea might have lost its luster to be replaced by a certain sense of meaninglessness and the desire to break out of 9th grade and see what's next.
Relevant anectode: one of my younger relatives took his first job at his father's car repair shop. The business was not going too well, so the workshop didn't have all the specialized tools and often needed to improvise crazy solutions with what they had (customers also preferred cheap improvised solutions). After some time, the business became even worse and his father had let him go. Fortunately, the young guy landed a car factory job shortly afterwards. The position was strictly Taylorian - he was basically repeating the same motion every day. He was exctactic about the new job. "Finally, I don't have to look for the right tools or parts, think through a solution etc. Everything is prepared for me every day before I start the job, my work clothes are washed, the factory floor is cleaned". The repetition and lack of engagement were a MAJOR plus for him.

Most people are probably like that or, at best, the variety and exploration offered by their full-time jobs is enough for them. I don't hear many people complaining about boredom or repetition (I'm perhaps the only person complaining about this in my social circle). There are much more complaints about stress or being overworked or toxic people at work.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by oldbeyond »

Even for a normie professional, I’d say at least the aspiration is to have a hobby outside of work where there is skill involved beyond purchasing power and comparison shopping. Golf, tennis, gardening, running, cooking etc. Something to mention at your retirement party or in a profile on the company web site. So even the more successful careerist consumers seem to acknowledge the soullessness of ”work + spend and nothing else”.

I guess the ERE approach is more ”create a lush garden” (of skills and interests) rather than than the professional’s ”grow beautiful roses”.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by fingeek »

Indeed, "boredom and repetition" viewed through an alternative lens is "comfort and consistency" - It depends on what you are optimising for, what values you're living towards (and, of course, remembering that values change slowly over the course of one's life).

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by chenda »

I’m almost 5 months into my newest job and I’m feeling a bit of euphoria since I think I’ve found the perfect job for me. Is it because it’s given me a sense of purpose? Or new challenges that give me interesting problems to solve? Or that I get a good feeling being able to help others through my work? Is it any one of those things people describe when they tell me why they like their job and won’t ever stop working? Nope. It’s because I was able to sniff out a position where I can get all my work done for the day in less than an hour, sometimes less than half an hour, and I’m free to spend the other ~7 hours/day doing most whatever I want, so long as I can do it at a desk.
http://lackingambition.com/?p=1427

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

zbigi wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 12:33 pm
Most people are probably like that or, at best, the variety and exploration offered by their full-time jobs is enough for them.
I agree.

Most individual expectations get fixated in the process growing up. The cultural upload from parents, society, and education. Is it "do what you need to take care of your family?" Is it "do your duty and work hard"? Is it "do whatever you want as long as you're happy and stay out of trouble?"

My sister and I were formed in the latter mold. My parents are a result of the middle mold. My grandparents fit the first mold.

It's supremely hard to let go of a given mold.

In the software field, you can often find 20 year olds with many years of informal experience programming already, because they started coding instead of swiping at age 12. I think I did that with consumerism. I got my first part-time job at age 12 (in 1987) stocking shelves at a mini-mart making about $500/month in 2022-dollars. As a result I could buy any shiny consumer good my teenage mind could imagine. And so I did. It only took me 13 years to realize that I was part of a cycle that didn't make me happy :-P OTOH, because I started early, I was only 25 when that happened. Consequentially, I got over consumerism before I was hooked with 30 year mortgage commitments or 6 year car loans. During that time, I was a grad student and later a postdoc flying around the world four times a year. Tourism was force-fed on me. Gag! Foodwise, I developed an interest in cooking when I moved away from home. I'd read cooking books trying many different recipes. Eventually I settled on a few recipes that I could make better than what I could buy.

As a result, I exhausted the limited offerings of consumer-society much much earlier than a few will ever do and most will never do. It holds little attraction for me. Been there done that. I explored the space when I was 10-20 years old and it didn't make me happy (my mold). Therefore I invented an alternative that did, ERE.

OTOH, I don't think I explored career-society as well. My mold here is "just work hard and you shall be rewarded", which is basically the mold of my parents' generation. This is definitely not how it works in the new world of "know and impress the people who pay the highest salaries". In the world of three horses---show horses, work horses, and horses' asses---I simply can't connect with the show horse world. The idea of "managing my own career and looking good" is alien relative to my mold. Again, inventing ERE was the way out.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by zbigi »

jacob wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 2:08 pm

Eventually I settled on a few recipes that I could make better than what I could buy.
Interesting. Do you beat $20/meal restaurants? $50/meal restaurants? They have people who are pretty serious about cooking in there :)
OTOH, I don't think I explored career-society as well. My mold here is "just work hard and you shall be rewarded", which is basically the mold of my parents' generation. This is definitely not how it works in the new world of "know and impress the people who pay the highest salaries". In the world of three horses---show horses, work horses, and horses' asses---I simply can't connect with the show horse world. The idea of "managing my own career and looking good" is alien relative to my mold. Again, inventing ERE was the way out.
That's an interesting point. I'm pretty sure that, if you switched to engineering, there are places who would love a guy like you and wouldn't require you to do the idiotic posturing that has become commonplace in many companies. Places like NASA, or (from field closer to my expertise), smaller software shops which work on math-heavy stuff such as video compression (i.e. fourier transforms) etc., routinely snatch talented physics PhDs. Of course, the significant part of the job is about "doing your duty" (engineering isn't all fun and exploration, somebody needs to do the boring bits of the work as well) so who knows how well you'd like it in the end. For me personally, doing the unglamorous, but necessary part can feel rewarding.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

The posturing and needing to cater to appearances within the corporate world is a big shift that is currently weighting me down. For instance, I recently got told by my manager that I need to turn my webcam on in every meeting. This is the most trivial hill to die on, and yet I am getting to the point in my life where even the most trivial micromanagement is liable to make me rage quit. It is not even that it is an unreasonable request, but I notice there is a certain race to the bottom where corporate does things to kill engagement (schedule pointless zoom meetings, ignore employee feedback, schedule meetings at 6am), and because responding to the problem directly gets you nowhere, employees respond by being passive aggressive Losers (at least, this is what happens to me.) And then management notices that no one is engaged, they respond with micromanagement, and thus one is expected to appear "engaged" in a system that is structurally designed to remove engagement.

@chenda - It is funny you post that because that is something I have experienced as well. I enjoy my job most when I have time to pursue things other than work. Working from home is somewhat of a lifehack here in that you can do other things easily, but I am noticing that companies are realizing the longer leash working from home gives you and they are not happy about it. Anecdotally, I have several friends who have been dragged back into the office and are resentful about it because it is not needed, and I am noticing other remote employers are doing more to demand you prove you are "really working" 8hr/day.

And yet, studies show that the average office employee only really works 3hr/day on tasks. Trying to tack on tasks and meetings on top of this does not lead to higher productivity. Companies that have gone down to 4 day work weeks report the same productivity because so much of one's day is wasted in tasks that do not add value.

More than the work itself, being trapped within this system is the problem. I often think about my employer as if it were someone I were dating. If I were in a relationship where the other person was demanding I was there 8hr/day regardless of what I was doing, where they wanted me to constantly "prove" I am working even when I am finishing my tasks on time, and where the only response to my feedback was a canned response of why it does not matter, that would be a relationship anyone would tell me to end. And yet, when this happens at work, it is expected and tolerated.

I used to try and "have a good attitude" about work, but I have come to realize I was largely gaslighting myself about something I did not enjoy and then feeling it was a personal failure to live up to expectations that the system itself is designed to thwart. It is, again, this notion that I do not like who I become in this environment, and it is a sign that the environment itself is not a good place for me to be.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by chenda »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 2:55 pm
And yet, studies show that the average office employee only really works 3hr/day on tasks.
Yes that's been my experience as well, I only have 2 - 3 hrs of useful concentration per day for work related stuff. 4 hrs at a push. WFH has made that more readily apparent for many employees I suspect.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by candide »

zbigi wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 2:42 pm
Interesting. Do you beat $20/meal restaurants? $50/meal restaurants? They have people who are pretty serious about cooking in there :)
It's very easy to beat $20/meal per person restaurants. I know you were addressing Jacob, but if I can do it, then he certainly can. The most trivial way to do so is to find a way to serve fresh. Many yummy violatiles are released in cook processes and they break down or leave quickly. Any restaurant that lets any part of the meal sit under heat lights, even to get the other parts of order done so your whole ticket can get the meal out at once, is spotting a competent too much of an advantage. . .

My mental outline has me thinking of several recipes to illustrate, but I don't want to hijack the journal, so I'll write in my own journal and link. . .

[Update.] Here:
viewtopic.php?p=258094#p258094

I don't know much about the $50/meal per person level. If they organize by "course" then I probably would have a hard time beating them just on taste, but the that's a really high level of time, trouble, and expense. And to do that for two or three meals a day. . . That feels like a life under siege (though olive branch: cooking, and especially cleaning up after, all the meals can feel that way sometimes, too).

However, I have a feeling a lot of $50/meal per person would try to use plating and social proof to make up for sub-optimal work on taste. . . Probably what is called for to guarantee a consistent, every meal jump in quality is a personal chef.
Last edited by candide on Sun May 22, 2022 10:31 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

If you are healthy, it's not that difficult to have a sensualist lifestyle on approximately 1 jacob/year. For instance, if you have your own garden or forage, it's pretty easy to beat expensive restaurant in terms of novelty and freshness.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

zbigi wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 2:42 pm
Interesting. Do you beat $20/meal restaurants? $50/meal restaurants? They have people who are pretty serious about cooking in there :)
Fear not the man who has practiced a thousand different kicks once. Fear the man who has practiced one kick a thousand times.

If you control all the levers, you can also optimize the dish more to your taste, whereas a restaurant will have to make a best guess and hit whatever note the average customer prefers. (I will note that some home cooks pay zero attention to what makes a dish good. They don't play around trying to improve the dish but just follow the same recipe. That's not what I mean by practicing...)

My experience goes up to $150/meal restaurants (private room corporate quarterly reward type stuff). I don't know if there's another taste-universe beyond that (Michelin type restaurants?). If you judge what's served on its own merits, a $150 meal is better but it's not 3x better than a $50 meal or 7.5x better than a $20 meal. However, maybe I would have preferred the asparagus to be fried instead of boiled (to perfection) and maybe I prefer the asparagus that I picked out of my own garden 5 minutes earlier to whatever the chef picked up at the farmers market the same morning. It does not take much practice home cooking before the difference in personal preferences exceeds any marginal improvement of going to a fancier restaurant to eat something that's cooked to someone else's taste.
zbigi wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 2:42 pm
Places like NASA, or (from field closer to my expertise), smaller software shops which work on math-heavy stuff such as video compression (i.e. fourier transforms) etc., routinely snatch talented physics PhDs.
But that would feel like redoing 9th grade over and over although of course numerical recipes are more like repeating 15th grade or thereabouts. FWIW, I did my [job] work in exactly such places.

Consider this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_ ... complexity

The dreariness of repetition is getting stuck at an order or stage that's below where you normally perceive things. Lets say you're an engineer and used to think in terms of optimizing for one or a few variables at MHC11 or 12. But you're stuck in a job filling out spreadsheets (MHC10).

The challenge level relative to your skill level would put you in a state of mind where work is somewhere between relaxing, boring, and feeling apathetic about the whole thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Increasing skills ironically actually leads to work becoming more boring. This has been my experience with every single work type I've ever tried. It starts out with excitement ("arousal") and then traverses clockwise through the states until it gets boring or downright apathetic. This process takes about 1-2 years for me. If I was forced to work one job for the rest of my life, I'd probably pick something manual in order to reserve my creative focus for my own thoughts. I can hammer chains together for 8 hours straight no problem.

What I find is that institutions have little selection catering to MHC13 and above(*). ERE (WL7) caters to MHC13-thinking and as such does not get boring as quickly as coding Fourier transforms for NASA.

(*) Unless you run the institution, but that requires climbing a management ladder. IOW adding complexity goes via dealing with people ever more and people are not my strong suit.

As such, once MHC13+ is reached, it becomes very hard to work for someone else. They want you to fit inside their system, but you're by definition more focused on the whole system or beyond their system or even the paradigm the system exists within; and so being assigned to operate on a limited part of one system is uninspiring.That's a tough one to deal with mentally. As I said, it's like being forced to stay in 9th grade. No matter what, it's hard to make that interesting.

OTOH, not everybody likes "interesting". If work is more about "structure" or "colleagues", then Csikszentmihalyi's wheel does not turn inevitably. For example, DW (who is FI with ~90 years of savings) still prefers to work as a spreadsheet jockey in a low challenge/high skill area. She manages to stay in the "Relaxation"-mode of the flow chart and has little desire to leave that slice of the pie by skilling up.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Slevin »

zbigi wrote:
Sat May 21, 2022 2:42 pm
Interesting. Do you beat $20/meal restaurants? $50/meal restaurants? They have people who are pretty serious about cooking in there :)

That's an interesting point. I'm pretty sure that, if you switched to engineering, there are places who would love a guy like you and wouldn't require you to do the idiotic posturing that has become commonplace in many companies. Places like NASA, or (from field closer to my expertise), smaller software shops which work on math-heavy stuff such as video compression (i.e. fourier transforms) etc., routinely snatch talented physics PhDs. Of course, the significant part of the job is about "doing your duty" (engineering isn't all fun and exploration, somebody needs to do the boring bits of the work as well) so who knows how well you'd like it in the end. For me personally, doing the unglamorous, but necessary part can feel rewarding.
Not directed to me but I find cost vs quality of food to be very out of odds in my current niche (plant based). My favorite meals from restaurants can all be had for something like $20 or less, except one exceptional place that is more like $30/ head which my friends have said it was almost on the same level as a Eleven Madison Park at $500/ meal. That said I have done the same thing that Jacob has suggested above and now can make all my favorite recipes from these places more attuned to how I like them than the restaurant does. So I literally have no reason to eat out these days (we mostly go only on very special occasions to the $30/ head place)

Also just my experience but working with NASA (as a contractor) on human space flight software was the worst job I have ever had. So much micromanaging and stress because the consequences are very high, and someone was always on your back making sure you followed their processes exactly. Also 50+ hour work weeks were the norm, and I think my record week was somewhere in the 75-78 hour range.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 12:25 pm
@Jacob - I think the root of the issue is that we don't understand consciousness very well scientifically. Because we don't really understand it, the best we can do is NF-type exercises where we push the boundaries of our understanding of the self or reality in order to break out of the limited perspective waking consciousness imposes on us.
I'll offer another root(?) I think we don't even know what we mean (subjetice) or at least don't agree what we mean (intersubjective) when we say we "understand" something. What does understanding something really mean?

The effective test these days (ala Turing) is that A understands B if A can capture the pattern of B subjectively and simulate B well enough objectively that C can't intersubjectively tell the difference between A pretending to be B and B. That's the "transcend and include"-approach the underlies how we think of increasing complexity: Next level complexity has to include previous complexity and by doing so it increases its stage.

I think this approach is almost reflexive. Humans are linear thinkers. Always looking for a cause ... and than a cause for that cause... and so on back to the prime mover. It's extrapolating our "monkey see, monkey do" tendencies.

However, another way of understanding crazy complex things are recursion. I think the root is that humans don't understand recursiveness very well.

Disclaimer: I'm terrible at recursion so I may be projecting a bit in claiming that humans are terrible at recursion ... and due to [humans] being terrible at recursion(*), we may be overlooking a simple solution to the meaning of "understanding".

(*) Really, the standard example is always in computing N! This the best we can do? During my quant years, I programmed a decision tree with recursion. Somehow programming languages include the "self-referential ability", but how many programmers spontaneously use it? I don't. There are three ways of thinking about programming. Functional, OO, and LISP. LISP seems other-wordly in many ways.

The 2/3s problem backs me up though. https://earlyretirementextreme.com/theory-of-mind.html When faced with a problem like that, our "understanding" is either too dumb or too smart. Humans simplify in order to grasp big concepts. It's either all or nothing. Either The One or The Many. Not the 42 or the 525,000. Consider how mathematicians got over dealing with the concept of infinity: Basically for any n there's an n+1. This avoids recursion and exchanges it for a simple operational proof.

What if "experience" is not a result but a process? The robot mapping is not a finished result but a process that only goes a few levels down. The failure to go further results in too high of a neurotransmitter demand. This is felt like frustration (transmitter resource shortage) much like a kind of pain.

The frustration of this "failure to resolve" is the limit of the Te-consciousness.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by zbigi »

jacob wrote:
Mon May 23, 2022 12:09 pm

(*) Really, the standard example is always in computing N! This the best we can do? During my quant years, I programmed a decision tree with recursion. Somehow programming languages include the "self-referential ability", but how many programmers spontaneously use it? I don't. There are three ways of thinking about programming. Functional, OO, and LISP. LISP seems other-wordly in many ways.
Proper functional programming (i.e. programs operating on immutable values only) uses a lot of recursion. It becomes more natural after you've done it for a couple of years - but I'd say nowhere near as natural as the standard (procedural) approach, at least not to me.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Western Red Cedar »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Fri May 20, 2022 2:50 pm
I've always had it in the back of my mind that I would pursue art or writing more seriously if I quit. I have no idea if I have what it takes to be an actual writer or artist, but at least those hobbies do have avenues toward tasks that can make up a "career" outside of corporate.
I'd suggest all it takes to be a writer or artist is a regular practice of your craft.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

My brain was thinking about how recursion applies to sex. Eggs within eggs within eggs. So, then I searched for "evolution" and "recursion" and came up with this paper which I can't "understand", but maybe some of you can.

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... cious_self
6. Memory of selfLet (ct)t∈Tbe a computation and fix a t∈T. The history of ctisdefined to be the sequencect17→ ct27→ · · · 7→ ctn=ct,where ct1=c∅is the root of the tree, and for every i < n, cti+1 is achild of cti.(Notice that ctitself is contained in this sequence). Belowwe denote by hist(ct) the history of ct.Given a state-code c=c∅,acomplete memory self-editing computa-tion, is a tree (ct)t∈Tsuch that for every t∈T,im-suc(ct) = step-alg(ct)(hist(ct)),i.e. every state-code ctcomputes its children by applying its algorithm,not only on its code, but on the entire sequence of its history.
Let us assume for the moment that ‘ego’ (the greek and latin wordfor ‘I’) can be defined as the part of ourselves that experiences emo-tions. Notice that among them pleasure and dissatisfaction are themost central. It is evident, both by the way we use education and byour experience, that both these emotions can be used to accomplishlearning functionalities. So, one can conclude, based on the above def-inition, that ‘ego’ (i.e. the self-referential part of ourselves) is exactlythe part that is intended to accomplish the functions of exploration and learning.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by daylen »

Also relates to mathematical induction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_induction
Mathematical induction proves that we can climb as high as we like on a ladder, by proving that we can climb onto the bottom rung (the basis) and that from each rung we can climb up to the next one (the step).
The method can be extended to prove statements about more general well-founded structures, such as trees; this generalization, known as structural induction, is used in mathematical logic and computer science. Mathematical induction in this extended sense is closely related to recursion. Mathematical induction is an inference rule used in formal proofs, and is the foundation of most correctness proofs for computer programs.

Although its name may suggest otherwise, mathematical induction should not be confused with inductive reasoning as used in philosophy (see Problem of induction). The mathematical method examines infinitely many cases to prove a general statement, but does so by a finite chain of deductive reasoning involving the variable n, which can take infinitely many values.
Mathematical induction involves self-reference when plugging case n into n+1. I remember having to wrap my head around this sort of proof during my number theory and abstract algebra courses.

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induction_puzzles for examples of the reasoning and further relations to multi-agent games with shared knowledge.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Building a social life, part five

I have come to a profound realization lately about how I was interacting with others, where the root of that style of interaction had come from, and what I must do in order to change the current dilemma I find myself in with respect to social interaction.

For a great deal of my life, I have been plagued with this sense that all social interactions required me to mask and that I needed to act as others expect me to, not as I wished. I would often feel I was stuck observing myself acting and calculating what I need to do in a given social situation while other people simply got to live their lives. This lead to me assuming every social interaction would be draining of my mental energy, and I would not get anything from it. At best, I would need to simply perform for others, and at worse, people would be actively hostile toward me. My belief in this stemmed from previous negative experiences as well as the fact I grew up Mormon, which was extremely socially repressive.

Not only is this belief untrue, as most people do actually tend to like me, but I could never quite figure out what it was, exactly, I was trying to mask. This is something I have been struggling with for most of my life, this sense I am masking but cannot figure out what it is I am masking, and it has lead me to withdraw from others and avoid most social interactions. This lead to a profound sense of alienation that made the problem worse.

After pondering this problem for some weeks, I had a realization. The root of my issue is that I am expecting other people to be my friend but I am not expecting myself to be a friend to others. That is, the root of relationship is not what you receive from the other person, but what you can give to them. Do not think "people are friends with me," but rather, "I am friends with others." The first leads one to act passive, hopeless, and utterly at the whim of others while the later gives you the freedom and empowerment to choose who you interact with.

The key here is to discover the self that you enjoy being (what some may call the "authentic self"), then find a way to selflessly give that self to others. Rather than force yourself to act like the person everyone expects you to be, be the self you want to be then find other people you can give this self to. This gives you the freedom to discover the niche you want to fit into, and giving that niche to others in a way that encourages their flourishing is a way to bring value to you both. This perspective makes social relationships win/win rather than lose/win.

It can be difficult when you are non-normative in multiple ways because many of the social life scripts for purpose and identity don't fit you. It can make it difficult to interact with other people because you always feel on the outside in terms of your life experiences and desires. You feel like you are always having to translate or mask while other people simply get to exist.

But to be is a verb. It is not that one has a self but that one creates a self by interaction with the Other, be that other people, the physical environment, or the natural world. If you are non-normative, you have to find a way to create this interaction, as it will not come as naturally to you as it does to normies. But there is still this human need for interaction with the Other, as it is interaction that creates the Self. Rather than assume one is simply defective and therefore unlovable, one needs to learn to love rather than to be loved.

Implementing this insight into my behavior may take some time, as this has been a deeply internalized limiting belief for most of my life. Still, it will be helpful for me to begin to frame my interactions with others in this manner. What is the Self I want to be and how can that self serve the Other?

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mountainFrugal
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by mountainFrugal »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Mon May 30, 2022 11:12 am
Do not think "people are friends with me," but rather, "I am friends with others." ...

Implementing this insight into my behavior may take some time, as this has been a deeply internalized limiting belief for most of my life. Still, it will be helpful for me to begin to frame my interactions with others in this manner. What is the Self I want to be and how can that self serve the Other?
Something to try.... I keep a friend call/text list handy. Basically you initiate checking in with folks at random intervals. A random call from an old friend is usually shocking because people think something is wrong. Haha. Unscheduled calls keep it fresh. Most likely you can just leave a message that you were thinking about them and wondering how they were doing. With a few friends, we just exchange a few images via text once a month as a way to keep up, rather than each of us knowing every meal we ate via instagram.

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