Some of the best books I've ever read I didn't like at first. Love in Time of Cholera was an absolute slog for the first 89 pages, I didn't actually get through those pages the first time I tried to read it. It's one of my all time favourite books. First 30 pages of Dune were similar. Found the same with another book by Dostoevsky.
So much process. People think there's a formula, not well known, that greatly raises the chance for "success" however defined, for everything. Nope. IMHO the key to "anti-mimetic"[0] living is to cultivate your inner bullshit detector. My friends have a fully functioning one; people who turned out to be false do not; I have no idea how to nurture one for anyone else. There is no process, other than get as broad non-digital experiences as you can and use those to learn to think for yourself. I have no idea how you can do that, because apparently no-one who is not my friend appears to think doing this is sane.
[0] This Rene Girard stuff, fueled by lavish attention from Peter Thiel and his acolytes, is bullshit. Think not? Well a while ago, I thought it might have some validity, but then I read the review by Joshua Landy in my previous HN comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21955489#21956253
The child comments are interesting too. A moral of the story is that my bullshit detector initially failed me, but eventually, with more experience, I got it straightened out.
The bullshit detector is usually intuition and, very rarely, is what's called 'wisdom'. Intuition is what I'd describe as "the right feeling" - ability to "hear" truth, in a sense. Wisdom is "the right knowledge" - ability to see the truth. Intuition is related to emotions, and can be improved by straigthening up one's emotions. An uncontrolled storm of emotions obscurates intuition, and hatred burns it. That's why, I think, a known occult aphorism says: "a moment of hatred erases eons of achievements". Wisdom is similarly related to thoughts and words, and so straightening up what one says and thinks, allows the wisdom to show up. The " all seeing eye" is the typical symbol of wisdom. Afaik, only few top scientists had it, and they attributed their ability to see truth to luck and lots of read books.
I believe that most people out there give in to emotions, those gradually turn into something more sinister - hatred fueled by vanity, that burns their intuition to the ground and from that moment they're unable to feel what's right and what's wrong.
Careful there. In many domains our intuitions are notoriously unreliable, given they're informed by our culture, upbringing, past experiences, genes, etc.
Many groups have a vast vested interest in convincing people of obvious falsehoods. The phrase used is “Diamonds are forever” rather than the more honest “Diamonds are flammable.” Simply repeat it often enough and it’s the falsehood which sticks around like a lesser form of brainwashing.
The flammable thing is relevant because gold, platinum, or silver can be recovered after a fire, but Diamonds can’t be. It’s a real risk. Large ones regularly get chipped and their all susceptible to a range of chemicals including some acids etc.
Add it all up and nationwide Diamonds get destroyed on a very regular basis.
PS: And yes as you referenced they do decay at standard temperatures and pressures but reasonably slowly. Still diamonds last 1,000 years if well preserved just don’t have the same ring, paper can do the same. The simple fact the average stone is more stable feels like a slap in the face.
When Facebook was first getting popular it triggered my bullshit detector.
I smelled bullshit because the underlying mechanism was social coercion to join, followed by social comparison to make everyone miserable.
It wasn't bullshit because it was bogus, it was bullshit because it stank.
My friends all have similar bullshit detectors for the spammy, the scammy and the coercive. If I knew how teach it, I'd be surprised if anybody who didn't already have it would even want to learn it.
Sitting alone in your room looking through old photo albums isn’t social, but somehow going through other peoples photos is? Calling Facebook a social network is such a bold faced lie I am somewhat shocked anyone can say it with a strait face let alone honestly believe it. But it gets worse, calling clicking a like button on a news article “social” is such double think you almost wonder if these people are speaking the same language.
If I’m reading for enjoyment, there’s plenty I can read. If I’m reading to learn, that’s why I’m here on HN. I have the next batch of acoup.blog and a 1890s textbook on ship handling on my eink tablet. Should keep me busy for the next month. :)
It wasn't really fun to read. But like all russian novels, it's very long, devoid of adventure, full of characters you forget constantly. You read them to experience the russian soul, not to have fun. The best Dostoievsky for me is "The Player", one of the shortest and one whose lessons I constantly quote, especially around a horse race or a casino lol.
If you want enjoyable classics, Alexandre Dumas or Theophile Gautier are my go to but Im French so maybe the anglo world has some authors too as brilliant as Dumas but I doubt it. The best russian classic is Master and Margherita, it's a bit less slow than average but Boulgakov is special (a bit their Kafka).