Why do Anything?
mobile.nytimes.com
mobile.nytimes.com
The ideal is always a strange thing too. Mathematics works completely fine for most things, but the moment you start imagining "complete logical systems", "ideal programs" that halt when any program input to them halt, you find that your ideal can't exist. Yet, the Hydrogens still fuse, bacteria continue to multiple, fawns prance, ceiling fans spin, cement blocks, not sure what they do in verb form, but they remain heavy I guess...
I recently retook Myers-Briggs and it places me at an extreme intuitive person. MB has scientific issues, but forgetting that, that makes me more susceptible to big, abstracting thinking like this than polar opposite "sensing" people, more concrete thinkers are. However, I've had to learn as a physicist that at the end of the day, things do exist, move around, interact whether I care to ponder them or not, and that I have to sometimes cull my dreaming or ideals and what could be and to look around at what actually exists and think about that too.
How do you know? Maybe things out of your sight that you don't ponder about cease to exist for brief times.
I don't think George Berkeley would have attributed that to /the brain/.
If one is considering whether there are objects independent of the objects being perceived, I would think that doubting whether the brain is what facilitates(?) our perception would also be questioned.
Why? Meaningless test is meaningless. You might as well try to interpret your tarot cards
"How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? Lady Li was the child of a border guard in Ai. When first captured by the state of Jin, she wept so much her clothes were soaked. But after she entered the palace, shared the king's bed, and dined on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret their previous longing for life? One who dreams of drinking wine may in the morning weep; one who dreams weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night."
Nit, but this can certainly exist. "Accept program as input, run input program" is one such program.
You can always (eventually) halt and say "this halted" for any program that halts. The hard part is distinguishing "this will never halt" from "this has not halted yet", and that will always be impossible for some inputs.
Second of all, have you stumbled upon an increasing number of articles on this theme lateley?
Well that's because it's autumn. It is that season when nature starts its decaying cycle, and we as part of it, can't escape this process either.
About a week ago my mind simply stopped. I was working on something but it didn't matter. I woke up in this sort of a limbo state and I'm still in it. I feel like doing nothing, it seems that nothing really matters. I just sit and stare blankly for minutes. It feels like a part of me is not here anymore. I know it'll come back, it happened before, roughly in the same period. So I just sit, and I suppose this is a good thing. It's nature's way to remind ourself not to take everything too serious, and detach a bit, you know, breathe the air, smell the flowers, enjoy without worrying...
That's... very concerning. I know you may feel like nothing matters right now, but the things you do (and do not do) during this time will affect you dramatically in the future when things start mattering to you again. For the sake of your future self, I hope you're still sticking to your usual routines.
I think it's some manifestation of burn out for me, but if I take the cue and take it easy for a few weeks, the creativity and will to improve always comes back.
Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand."
from Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle)
In Western thought, these ideas are closely tied to Plato's Theory of Forms [2].
[0] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mysticism/#2 [1] http://www.esotericarchives.com/oracle/dionys1.htm#chap4 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms
> Since Ben-Shahar had come so far in the competitive world of squash and also in his academic career, he was able to glimpse what others call “perfection.” In the process, however, he realized that this goal was an illusion.
> “I have not reached perfection,” he admits, “as it’s unattainable.”
> What is attainable, he discovered, was the power to reframe experiences based on what he calls “optimal” outcomes. “Perfect is ideal, something that cannot be improved,” he suggests. “Optimal is the best possible [outcome] given the constraints of reality.”
> Ben-Shahar concedes that optimization is not always easy to achieve, either. He claims it can only be achieved by “learning to fail [and] by accepting painful emotions.” On the other hand, this new perspective ultimately leads to greater reward because it emphasizes the acceptance of all that is positive in one’s life.
> “It is about putting ourselves on the line, trying, falling down, and getting up again,” Ben-Shahar explains. By “getting up,” Ben-Shahar says that we end up higher than when we began, at least in terms of our own perspective.
> While optimization may be more attractive and attainable than perfection, Ben-Shahar cautions that its achievement involves challenge and potential pain. “It’s important to keep in mind that the change cannot happen perfectly,” he says. “There are inevitably ups and downs.”
> Optimizationalists focus more on the ups and do not get as distracted or discouraged by unavoidable “failures.” Ben-Shahar has been able to formulate this idea in a way that works for modern Zen masters like fellow professor Jon Kabat-Zinn (whom Ben-Shahar quotes liberally in his book) and college freshmen alike. No wonder, then, that Ben-Shahar’s lectures regularly set attendance records and have encouraged even the perfection-seeking students of the Ivy League to reconsider their lives and how they evaluate them.
http://www.jpost.com/Features/In-Thespotlight/A-former-Israe...
I'm sure there are many underlying causes of procrastination, but this is mine. I have worked around it by simply doing something to get from A->B knowing it is okay to go back and clean up the path. Abstract work is really the perfect job for me because it is so easy to go back and change things.
I still struggle with some procrastination on physical things like fixing my deck or remodeling the bathroom (I say some because both of those did get done this summer), but I just remind myself that even then I can always rip it up and do it again.
Arthur: "And are you?"
Slartibartfast: "No. That's where it all falls down of course."
I get it, though. In my teens and 20s, procrastination was the closest thing I had to meditation or serenity. This is the case when you are very, very anxious all the time, and your head is full of "I should do this," "I should do that" -- tyrannical dictates that won't go away, but at least you can ignore them for periods of time and try to nurture your authentic self a bit. However, I would not praise this situation for being more dramatic (more glorious!) than true calm.
Get out: For most of us, there was something toxic about our home or school environment. It might be obvious, or it might be something you have to dig out. You may still be in a toxic environment, where people undermine your sense of who you are and discourage real growth. (In fact, most school and work environments have this quality, but it makes a big difference how you take it and what you're doing with the rest of your hours.) For me, I had to get some serious distance from my parents and get out of grad school. Get out, and you'll begin to heal, which is a process that takes years.
Grow up: Take ownership of your body, your living space, your time, and so on. Clean your apartment. Go to the gym. Get a real job. Enjoy hard, meaningful work. Have real responsibilities. A lot of people seem to want to avoid growing up. Have friends and hobbies. Stop coasting on the advantages that launched you into the world (money, grades, connections, accomplishments, etc.).
Letting things go: Every once in a while, you'll be relieved to find you just don't care about something anymore. This is a known side effect of getting older and could be biological. You don't care as much what people think of you. You don't care about some old grudge or embarrassment you've been clinging on to. You don't care what you thought your life would be. You just live for now.
We don't need to always be achieving something or working toward something, or putting something off. That thing we think we should be doing? Well, if you leave it till the last minute it will only take a minute to do.
Yeah sure, hand in the assignment on time, fix the leaking roof, but it doesn't all have to be done right now.
Severe acute? Probably.
It's the severe chronic you need to look out for.
As is the custom on Hacker News, I thought I’d comment on the design of the page. This is the first article I’ve read from the mobile version of the New York Times website – and I love it. Firstly, it works really well with my 9 year old laptop (running Lubuntu with Firefox and NoScript). It’s so elegant in its simplicity and lack of clutter. The typography is beautiful and refined (with proper em-dashes and typographic quotes). The width of the column of text is ideal for reading. The links are underlined blue. Jakob Nielsen would approve.
[0] http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2010/10/wester...
-- Sakari Maaranen
It just depends how much you are willing to lose.
This line of thinking presumes far too much rationality in this process.
Politically idleness it not acceptable yet.
So, bands like Donnie K'Bob and the Shawarmy Gyroes, Fat Man and the Little Boys, Messmaker, Paper Jam and Proper Fucking English will just have to live in my mind. Sorry to disappoint all you thronging millions out there. That doesn't stop someone else from coming along and ruining those ideas of course, but I'M not gonna be the one!
Edit to add: Rickety Chair and the Loose Stools
i.e. "pre-revenue" :)
If I find anything "incomparably worse than death" is the constant whining of Cioran -- the original inventor of "first world's problems" so to speak, who had critical admiration and a cushy life on top.
I'm all for pessimism and even people contemplating the meaningless of life, nihilism, suicide, etc. But Cioran was such a bore at that...