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Comment by 082349872349872 | Hacker News Reader

> All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. —BP

All of social engineering and electric boddhism aims to get humanity into a room to be content with a slightly glowing stone..

> humanity into a room to be content with a slightly glowing stone

best get used to it

not much else to do in-between here and Alpha Centauri :)

This is absolutely true, though perhaps hard to understand just put simply like this. Sitting in silence is not the solution, but it will cause a solution to occur within you.

Sitting quiety will make you self-reflect. Self reflection will reduce stress and fear. Reduction of stress and less fear is a reduction in problems caused by human error, and negativity towards eachother (due to fear).

> Self reflection will reduce stress and fear.

People will say things like this, and then miss how many people immediately become uncomfortable with sitting quietly lest they face the risk of self-reflection, and how many social tools for avoiding it we have.

This is true. I practice it for a long time now, and still struggle a lot. How well it goes depends totally on the context of my life. It's hard, and honestly led to being very depressed a long time. But now I do feel like a better person, a lot of insecurities are gone, and with that, a lot of things that i did which were ultimately negative, also are gone (mostly). (lot of things still to work on :D).

I did go to therapy after a while for a few sessions, that's definitely something i'd recommend when depression hits. it's totally worth it, to get some confirmation or guidance on psychology.

One of the things for example for me that was an issue: I became super indoorsy after a bad injury. That also caused me to excersize less. This both led to a loss of anti-cortisol production, which is a hormone that reduces stress. That ultimately meant, that no matter how long i'd sit in silence, i'd still be stressed because my physiology lost the ability to produce that by itself. Now i go for lots of walks outdoors, and do some minor excersize. It helps a lot to reduce stress again, but I do still need to meditate / sit in silence to reduce fear.

There's always therapy

Nitpicky, because I get what you mean, but "self reflection will reduce stress and fear" is by no means always true and I'd argue it's probably not really true for most people in practice. Epictetus said (paraphrasing!) that people are rubbish at self-reflection and you need to practice it to be good at it, like anything else. Lots of people approach it in terrible ways and it leads to really bad outcomes - giving up immediately, doom loops, too much self-criticism - so it really does need to be done (to use a more modern reference) mindfully.

Seconded. I hear a lot from psychologists that some people are so afraid to be alone for even short amount of time and self-reflect, that their whole lifes are chasing activity and partners

i do agree. it takes a lot of practice. i got guidance by someone who was already practiced and i can highly recommend. its a personal experience though, so its hard to find someone who fits your inner.

for the record. i am really bad at it still. learning every day :)

I agree, however why is that small issues are so large when trying to sleep at night? A little thought we can reflect on becomes a big problem late at night while trying to sleep.

This immediately brings to mind the Seinfeld episode where Ellen's boyfriend stares blankly at the back of the airplane seat in front of him on a long international flight.

That being said, I generally agree with the sentiment.

I heard this is a new found again trend amongst some youtubers.

I have this talent.

Blaise Pascal

My brain immediately went to British Petrol

You're excused. After all, the original comment failed to use the correct SI unit (BPa).

I'd go one step farther and say all of humanity's problems stem from humanity existing and needing resources to exist.

> In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. —DNA

The older I get, the more I agree with this.

Also solutions.

good faith or bad faith, doesn't matter; as long as we have the faith that can get skeptics to rewrite their firmware without actual violence

--not DXP

If you open the window some flies will get in

--DXP

> If you open the window some flies will get in

If enough flies get in, the housecats will be more interested in them than in the pigeons outside?

My certitudes ATM say..

Not much, but Kurt had a thing for amoebas, roughly like beetles in your model??

Then maybe approximate flies as amoebas?

Nice, nice, very nice!

> good faith or bad faith, doesn't matter; as long as we have the faith that can get skeptics to rewrite their firmware without actual violence

I prefer my faiths justified, but if you lack that constraint, the wheel in the sky keeps on turning, and so the Age of Aquarius ought to be rolling around within your ~250 year timeframe?

E.g. this.

It's unfortunate that he spoke in terms of absolutes with this quote.

Yes, there are a number of problems that can be solved by sitting quietly, but there are many more problems that cannot.

- A fire

- An angry girlfriend

- Racism

- A border dispute

- Monopolies

- Corruption

- War

This is such an Internet response. Perhaps a bigger problem than not being able to sit alone is not being able to cope with a single sentence that doesn't cover every contingency in the universe.

Of the list isn't all but first one caused by inability to sit quietly in a room?

And even for fires good amount of fires is caused by that...

No. And that's the entire problem. People use this quote as some kind of truism, and since you couldn't ever get all people to sit alone quietly in a room, it also cannot be disproven (much like my anti-meteor stone that I carry with me).

It then gets dressed up as some kind of mystical wisdom when it was never intended to be that big. It's become an easy way to believe oneself wise without having to actually think.

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