unrealp

this reminds me, there is a principle from the book - the courage to be disliked. its about task seperation. basically you do your task and let others do their task. you dont let others meddle in your tasks and you dont meddle in tasks of others. For a singer for example, the singer's task is to sing well, focus on improving their voice, style, learn voice related skills and improve them. The critic has the task to love/hate the singing, comment, praise, do marketing (good or bad). The singer shouldnt manipulate what the critic does, its the critic's task.

i think this applies to all art/expression. this manupulation pandemic and image management of today's world is making artists slaves of critics.

great paintings!

I think addiction is about meaning. Addiction activities are always meaningful activities. May not be pleasurable activities but always meaningful. To quit a meaningful activity, you need to replace with another meaningful activity. like exercise, help someone, do something good..whatever is meaningful to you.

I cant find the link sorry. Also what I could find, the results were inconclusive with new research. So probably doesnt matter yes.

also increased co2 in closed environment is bad too

I have tried going back to incandescent for the spectrum part. The main issue I faced was the number of light bulbs required to get sufficient enough lighting. At least the incandescents we get in my area, mostly werent bright enough.

The suggestion about low lighting in the article, I recently read that reading in low light is associated with myopia/nearsightedness in children so there is that angle too.

Doesnt even culture develop in isolation? take for example the aspect of language. Our world has so many languages, which developed at the time when there was very little communication. If communication was very smooth, like today, only handful of languages dominate. New languages are not evolving and older ones are getting diluted. If information flows smoothly, cultural trends spread very quickly. There would be small mini-trends which never get chance to evolve. Isolation would help people evolve and refine these mini-trends, evolving as cultural trends.

I am not a isolationist. Just stating observation.

1. Correlation does not necessarily mean cause and effect. 2. 'In older adults' - this could mean only a subset of depression spectrum. It is premature to generalise this to depression in general.

Not sure why this received so much flak. I have been soap and shampoo free for 15 years or so. Have seen no issues. I do use soap for washing hands after meals to get rid of oils and stuff. Its not like I have perfect skin or hair. Just average perhaps but not bad either. At 42 I have only 4 gray hair, probably its just genetics.

i see you follow gabor mate and i see lot of talk about trauma and understand people's need for processing it and so on. ptsd is real, not denying that. having said that, in the past years i have actually been moving in the other direction, that sometimes trauma narratives tend to keep people stuck in the past. it solidifies certain types of trauma, makes it part of a person's identity and hampers recovery for some. one trouble is trauma is associated with lot of meaning and we tend to stick to things that are meaningful. i understand that too much thinking in this direction isnt correct and the truth lies somewhere in between. just saw that you have been aligning too much towards one direction so couldnt help but mirror that.

> Affirmations do not work

it is about what story you are telling yourself. Its not the affirmations that work or not work. If it works, its the narrative/story that 'I am doing affirmations everyday and these will make me a better person' . If it doesnt work 'I am doing affirmations but hey whats the point this is silly'.

"having tech on board" - yea but it reveals that the probe came from intelligent civilization.

"expect it to slowly return to somewhere "civilized"." - this one looks good.

if an intelligent civilization needs to find if there is another intelligent civilization, it might send out an object like that. If the object gets trapped, someone intelligent is there so check it out. If not, its a pass. Its cheap. Its safer since it doesnt accept or deny that originator is intelligent.

I wrote a self help book about relaxation and want to make it better this year by adding couple of chapters on how to live a more meaningful life. and marketing of the book. thats the side goal for this year :)

on serious note, interesting. i have blind spots in the eye, due to an auto immune type condition. since the blind spots are near central vision, brain tends to 'fill' or predict whats there. so i tend to sometimes misread words.

You are not alone. I did the same for some unknown reason :D

You tried and failed. There are others who dont even try and live with regret. At least you have no regrets about not trying. Take care.

I think for me its a collection of small habits/changes in lifestyle. - Stopped caffeine few years ago and that helped a lot. - Waking up at the same time, even on weekends helps to not get the sleep cycle out of sync. - Daily exercise.

1) I wonder how it works. Is it possible that we have X capacity for attention and if we want to engage only X/2 capacity, we find it difficult? so if we engage X/2 (in meeting) and X/2 in crocheting, that engages X and so we function better?

2) Maybe unrelated not sure but I was reading about voice training in acting. One of the ways to free voice, it being busy in some kind of movement that takes up part of your attention.

Space ambiance! this is one topic that really interests me - how spaces create psychological states that are unique and satisfying. there is a similar set of spaces - liminal spaces (google image search this term to see examples) - these are similar spaces - like corridors which have a unique feel.

I am 42, single, similar situation. I was in a pretty dark place around 38 or so. I happened to read "man's search for meaning" by victor frankl and it honestly helped A LOT. When we are young and nature is working for our benefit, we should search for happiness. Beyond that, we need to search for meaning.

There are 2 meanings implicit and third one you can pursue. 1) Search for meaning is meaningful itself.

2) Human life has intrinsic meaning. I dont agree with nihilism that life has no meaning. Life has no 'given' meaning - correct. But since we are conscious, there is a living being going through experiences, there is intrinsic meaning to human life. Consciousness gives meaning to everything. In absence of consciousness, nothing has meaning. This intrinsic meaning is irrespective of life success. Even for a complete failure, since a real living being went through this life, the life still has meaning.

3) External meaning. This is related to success happiness relationships helping others etc. This is a bit fragile, since if you lose these things then you lose meaning. And if you are not successful, life might feel meaningless.

A healthy life is a balance of pursuing external meaning and accepting and giving value to internal meaning.

It is not happiness vs meaning. happiness is one of the things that gives meaning to human life.

Wish you all the best.

Regarding alternate uses, caffeine is also a natural pesticide.

Why should one want to be extraordinary? to feel validated? isnt that wrong solution to a right problem?

I think burnout is not about the amount of work, or conflicts at work. It is about lack of meaning in what you are doing that leads to burnout. We humans can do tremendous things if they are meaningful. In case the work is less, but its meaningless, can lead to burnout rather quickly. Doing meaningless work is basically not being mentally aligned with work.

The Dummies' Guide to Special Relativity

https://conduit9sr.tripod.com/

It was written like 20 years ago, quite nice.

this. one of the best things i ever did was quitting caffeine. the benefits started after about 3 months. better sleep, being energetic throughout the day, more focus.

This is one area thats very clear to me. You should search for not purpose but Meaning. Purpose is subset of the things that give meaning to life. Purpose is goal with meaning and is more action oriented. "man's search for meaning" by victor frankl is very good read in this area.

One should search for meaning and happiness will come as a by product. This is better than being hedonistic and searching for happiness.

There are 2 meanings implicit and third one you can persue. 1) Search for meaning is meaningful itself.

2) Human life has intrinsic meaning. I dont agree with nihilism that life has no meaning. Life has no 'given' meaning - correct. But since we are conscious, there is a living being going through experiences, there is intrinsic meanining to human life. Consciousness gives meaning to everything. In absense of consciouness, nothing has meaning. This intrinsic meaning is irrespective of life success. Even for a complete failure, since a real living being went through this life, the life still has meanining.

3) External meaning. This is related to success happiness relationships helping others etc. This is a bit fragile, since if you lose these things then you lose meaning. And if you are not successful, life might feel meaningless.

A healthy life is a balance of persuing external meaning and accepting and giving value to internal meaning.

note - This way of thinking is not happiness vs meaning. happiness is one of the things that gives meaning to human life.

"There are so many sites out there right now hosting free fiction that it’s hard for many to find readers, even if the work is released for free. Many authors I know spend more time on self promotion than in writing due to this: otherwise, nobody will ever read their work in the first place" - first hand experience very true. I saw with kindle self publishing that, when the book is published, in the first week you do see some uptick, probably because it gets shown in some 'latest books' list. After that it dwindles. Mine went to zero after a week. Sold 24 copies. Its hard to make a book visible in millions of others.

this. also for so successful medical trials for depression, they are always done with a psychologist to help assimilate and direct the experience. If it was just the substance, all party going mushroom popping teens would have gotten cured of depression. My overall view has been that narrative is important, therapy (meds or no meds) is mostly about what story we are telling ourselves. If the story is, i take this, have this mind opening meaningful experience and that will make things better, thats what works here.

- I help people in a mental health support group, (not a counseller, just informal). I see people aged below 25 going to therapists for advice that used to be given by friends in earlier era, some of the advice I saw was really common sense stuff. Indirectly it might be supportive of the statement that friendships are declining. - I wonder how much of increase in youngsters' mental health issues numbers is due to better reporting of data and better awareness of mental health issues in young people. - Friendships among young people are less confrontational and more supportive now. People want to say nice things even if they see oddities; people want to be politically correct. Previous generation used to get more honest feedback. For example, if someone doesnt want to socialize, now friends label the person as introvert and encourage acceptance of introversion vs previously friends used to encourage being social. I see the positive of 'acceptance of whatever you are' mindset, at the same time I think 'motivating to do something different' has reduced. I see positive/negative of both approaches.

This is recent video my Matt Parker who is science/maths communicator. The title of video seems a bit like clickbait, but probably just sarcastic humor. What I like is tech community people joining in to optimize and experiment on a problem that tickles the mind. Though the problem itself is not ground breaking, this engaging, open experimentation in online community is really cool for STEM communication.