On mobile atm but there’s the Princeton books on Computer Science

I see your concern for truth in any scenario, and I agree validity should be a constant consideration! However, bias and astroturfing are different. Bias is the lens that we use to look at reality. Astroturfing is forcing lenses onto many others without them knowing. It is a deliberate campaign.

I like the novelty/predictability ratio idea. There is also the idea of “create expectations and satisfy them”, which leads to a sense of stability. Our cultures and genres create expectations. Rhymes tied to a certain metric can become part of these expectations. Of course, you can also create expectations and frustrate them, which leads to a sense of instability. Searching for “fakeout rhyme” videos makes this evident. Pat Pattison, an expert in songwriting, could be a good source on this ☺️

There’s also some thinkers who say that thinking only ever happens through language, so talking could be more of a mapping of “thinking words” onto “communication words”.

Yes! Rhetoric, the study of the available means of persuasion! Lots of professions still do that today: speech writers, advertisement creators, academic rhetoricians, some linguists, some anthropologists or sociologists, some historians…

How does adding dairy to coffee increase sinus congestion?

The best habit perhaps is meditating daily and I developed it following Tiny Habits.

GTD is up there too!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CGQwqWqzkNA

I agree with you: the FSF can seem unwavering in their stance, even in the face of practicality. I'm really sorry for this incredibly nit-picky detail, but I think practicality is ideological too. For better or for worse, we can't escape ideas or be free from them, so we have to choose which we value. For example, while I tend to choose software freedom over practicality, I also have, at times, chosen practicality over freedom.

It depends on the author! Authors create symbolic universes and they get to choose the rules of those universes. You can read Robert McKee’s work for more on this.

I agree wholeheartedly. If you know how to build habits, habits can be fun and they can be tied to living a meaningful life! Tiny Habits, the book and framework, changed my life for the better.

I do see how the narrative in the headline could be a call to action, but the article doesn’t propose a solution behind which the audience can rally. At most, the article describes how Americans can interpret the inevitable defeat. Of course, this text doesn’t exist in isolation; other texts would have to do the heavy lifting so that Americans rally behind a war effort.

Stiglitz didn’t get the Nobel prize for claiming that neoliberal capitalism contributes to the rise of fascism. He got it for explaining how information asymmetries destroy the fantasy of perfect markets.

I appreciate your passion for scientific literacy - it's crucial for combating misinformation. However, I'd like to share some perspectives that might broaden our understanding of scientific knowledge and how it develops.

First, it's worth noting that the distinction between "theory" and "hypothesis" isn't as clear-cut as we might think. In "The Scientific Attitude," Stephen McIntyre argues that what truly defines science isn't a rigid set of rules, but rather an ethos of critical inquiry and evidence-based reasoning. This ties into the "demarcation problem" in philosophy of science - the challenge of clearly defining what is and isn't science. Despite this ongoing debate, science continues to be a powerful tool for understanding our world.

Your stance seems to align with positivism, which views scientific knowledge as objective and verifiable. However, other epistemological approaches exist. Joseph A. Maxwell's work on critical realism offers a nuanced view that acknowledges both the existence of an objective reality and the role of human interpretation in understanding it.

Maxwell defines validity in research not just as statistical significance, but as the absence of plausible alternative explanations. This approach encourages us to constantly question and refine our understanding, rather than treating any explanation as final.

Gerard Delanty's "Philosophies of Social Science" provides a historical perspective on how our conception of science has evolved. Modern views often see science as a reflexive process, acknowledging the role of the researcher and societal context in shaping scientific knowledge.

Larry McEnery's work further emphasizes this point, describing how knowledge emerges from ongoing conversations within communities of researchers. What we consider "knowledge" at any given time is the result of these dynamic processes, not a static, unchanging truth.

Understanding these perspectives doesn't diminish the power or importance of science. Instead, it can make us more aware of the complexities involved in scientific inquiry and more resistant to overly simplistic arguments from science deniers.

By embracing some psychological flexibility around terms like "theory" and "hypothesis," we're not opening the door to pseudoscience. Rather, we're acknowledging the nuanced nature of scientific knowledge and the ongoing process of inquiry that characterizes good science.

What do you think about these ideas? I'd be interested to hear your perspective and continue this conversation.

Isn’t BYD particularly safe because of their plank-like batteries that can be pierced or crushed without exploding? Wasn’t BYD in talks with Tesla a couple of years ago because the plank system is safer than the ‘big battery box’ system and Tesla wanted to use BYD’s technology (I don’t know what came of those talks)?

Thanks for the response. I guess I do see much of human behavior through a contextual behaviorist lens. Sorry if it seems excessive. I am not Hayes or Hoffman. It is just frustrating to see blanket explanations for human behavior, instead of understanding specific processes. I guess I really want to avoid the fundamental attribution error and reductionism, something contextual behaviorism deliberately aims to avoid.

While I recognize Emotion Focused Therapy is helpful to understand and, if possible, change social behavior (which is why I mentioned it previously), I maybe should have brought up Emption Construction Theory or even Sapolsky’s multi-lens framework, considering different timescales of explanation. Would you have suggested something different? When does contextual behaviorism fail?

Thanks for helping me potentially falling into reductionism. I wouldn’t want to fall in that trap.

Anytime we talk about human behavior, it is a good idea to learn and use the lens of behavioral contextualism. If and only if the contextual behaviorist analysis concludes that human connections is the issue, Sue Johnson’s texts will be great to understand your coworker. Otherwise, the contextual behavioral analysis will let you know what’s going on.

Edit: Removed excess text

Check out Christian Welzel’s work on how values have changed over time. The world is becoming more secular and more democratic. Secular in this context means that religion plays less and less of a role in every day life. Democratic in this context means that they believe everyone should be able to pursue their interests and we should have a system that increases all of our capabilities to pursue our interests.

An implication of adopting democratic values is that you understand that your identity is not defined by “white”, “able-bodied”, or whatever, but by the fact that we are aware. By doing this, you’re not giving special treatment to your in-group (whichever it may be), but you’re considering all of humanity (and all aware beings) as equals and as a group that you belong to. Cosmopolitanism is an example of this stance.

Something else that is happening is that the world is becoming more reflexive. Check out Anthony Giddens’ texts on this.

But, to answer your question directly, yes, grandparents and parents are generally less welcoming and less tolerant.

Sorry. I wondered out loud. However I do know some things: alligators were predators of our ancestors millions of years ago. I wonder if that remained so up until recently.

Alligators? Large felines?

This is accurate for neoclassical economics. However, I wonder how the comic would change with a nuanced understanding of how neoclassical economics differs from classical economics.

Steven Hayes’s A Liberated Mind goes into this a little bit. Basically, if you are psychologically flexible and your interactions target the psychological flexibility processes, you will create the best conditions possible for change. For example, if you notice they are adopting a conceptualized sense of self tied to failure, then you could point it out: “It sounds like you think you are destined to fail”.

If that book is too long or complicated, you can check out What Makes You Stronger, where the DNA-V model is laid out. DNA-V is a simpler and perhaps more intuitive way of understanding the psychological flexibility processes. Once again, you first want to psychologically flexible yourself. Then, you want to (tactfully and when appropriate) point out the advice your friend’s brain is telling them; have them notice their inner experiences and perhaps their outer experience; and establish what matters to them and how to explore/discover routes towards that.

Another book that touches upon this, but from a different point of view is Never Split the Difference. While it’s written from a bravado and a hostage negotiation point of view, if you read it with critical eyes, you can learn a lot from it. Being a mirror for others, addressing fears head on in a tactful and compassionate way, and asking calibrated questions can be helpful.

I’d say that, more important than applying specific change techniques, it’s most important for you to be psychologically flexible so that you can be present and compassionate with your friend. Only then can anything else flow.

Reading How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barret and A Liberated Mind by Steven Hayes will answer your question. More broadly, emotion construction theory and relational frame theory will answer your question.

Self awareness can be seen as set of relational frames. Relational frames are things like "equal" and "opposite", "I" and "you", "here" and "there", "now" and "then" "more" and "less"… Each of relational frame (like "I", "equal", "here", "now") is like a Lego piece that you can combine with other relational frames ("I am here now"). Piece by piece, frame by frame, thought by thought, you build a sense of self! This is also roughly how feelings are built. Interestingly, your sense of self is not necessarily the same thing as self-awareness; people can believe all kinds of things about themselves and not be aware of them!

You can use self-awareness to examine emotions (e.g. “I notice that I am sad”). You can also create emotions based on your sense of self (e.g. “I failed, and therefore I am sad”). Sometimes, someone's sense of self does not accept certain emotions (e.g. "Real men don't cry"), and this rigid and skittish sense of self will do all kinds of things to escape self-awareness. One of therapy's goals is to shine a light (the light of self-awareness) onto the sense of self, so that people can become psychologically flexible and resilient.

I don’t get it. Can you give context?

On Christmas 2023 I was given an Anker charger. By March 2024 it stopped working…

Or GMB or any other mobility-oriented practice!

To err on the side of caution, maybe mark this as NSFW?

Hey! I’m also dealing with that right now!

I'll tell you a bit about my journey:

TL;DR

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) have been fundamental for me. The single best resource for ACT is A Liberated Mind. Scrum has been my sharpest tool to get stuff done when the pressure comes up. Getting Things Done and Bullet Journaling are both good productivity/organization systems. Procrastination.com has good stuff too (although its theory of motivation is a cartoon of reality). Essentialism and The One Thing suck, with the exception of The One Thing's focusing question and the idea that not everything is equal (Pareto principle and structural analysis). Tiny Habits and APA's Procrastination are beautiful little books! The ACT Map, the Matrix (especially if using the "survival-vitality" horizontal axis), and The Choice Point are all incredibly powerful to become aware of a reality you live in and change it. Value Stream Mapping is something I want to test, so that I can see what are the sources of value in my life and prioritize those. At the same time, I'm worried that Value Stream Mapping is overkill… any suggestions?

The tools

At first, I thought I didn't have the right tools and systems, so I learned Procrastination.com, Getting Things Done (GTD), and Bullet Journaling. All three have good interfaces. I define "interface" here as the things you touch and do to say that you're 'doing GTD' or 'doing Bullet Journaling'. Ultimately, I stuck to Getting Things Done because it was much more comprehensive than Procrastination.con and because I cannot rely on a physical journal (I could easily lose my stuff at my job). However, my roommate's brother, who recently went on a similar journey of self-management of sorts, decided to get organized after he decided to get medicated for ADHD and settled on Bullet Journaling. He swears by it.

Now, my problem with GTD was exactly what you're describing: my Someday/Maybe list got insanely large. This problem seems to be addressed in Bullet Journaling by the process of "migration", so Bullet Journaling could be a quick and easy solution for you and I. However, not only do I want to make GTD work for me, but I also believe there could be a third path, one that teaches me how to prioritize well regardless of whether I use GTD or Bullet Journaling.

Essentialism… ugh…

I looked online to see if other people had my "massive Someday/Maybe list in GTD" problem and someone mentioned that, every year, they re-read GTD and Essentialism. I was like "alright, let's give it a shot".

Essentialism was a surprisingly lukewarm experience. On the one hand, I agree with lots of what the book says, but it has an awful theory of human motivation behind it and an awful interface. To understand how awful Essentialism's theory of motivation is, you can read about Behavior Analysis in the context of contextual behaviorism or functional contextualism. Heck, even learning Acceptance and Commitment Therapy shows that! You can also go about this by reading Tiny Habits and understanding the Fogg Behavior Model; there are many ways of seeing how ignorant and awful Essentialism's theory of motivation is.

Just to give you an example, Essentialism tells the story of a company that didn't hire an otherwise amazing candidate because, at the end of their 'building interview' they didn't orderly put away the building tools in the toolbox… Imagine being an amazing builder and you're told "you're not a good fit" just because someone ignorantly and presumptuously interpreted something contextual and specific as fundamental about your values or worldview! Appalling! Ignorant! So incredibly frustrating! Does this company not understand continuous improvement? Does this company not understand how behavior works and how to change it? If we adopt the same fixed mindset as them, we can come up with ignorant questions too: can you really trust a company with building complex structures if they cannot improve how one worker stores their tools— can you trust them with improving anything at all? Will they adapt and improve when something tough comes up? Or will they be all like "Oh, no. Sorry. We only ever work in perfect conditions"? And, apparently, this company's ignorance and presumption is a wonderful example of essentialism (at least that's what the Essentialism author says)… Gross… Ugh… I hated that…

Another example is how he talks about Learned Helplessness. Sure, someone who disengages from the job could have learned helplessness, but someone who is a manic overachiever? The author should actually read Learned Optimism and see how Seligman equates Learned Helplessness with depression. For Seligman, Learned Helplessness is depression, and it is accompanied with a lack of desire to even try. Once again, behavioral contextualism, the Theory of Constructed Emotion, or the Fogg Behavior Model make it all clear.

Anyway, I know this is a rant, but I really want to be clear about the problems in Essentialism.

The One Thing

After that lukewarm experience, I went on and read The One Thing, which seemed like a book with a better interface. Unfortunately, this book also had a terrible theory of human motivation regarding willpower and other topics (again, understanding contextual behaviorism, the Fogg Behavior Model, or the Theory of Constructed Emotion makes it clear). At least the book was good at One Thing ™️©️®️, and that is the focusing question: "What is the one thing I can do such that, by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” By understanding that not everything is equal (you can get at this idea through the Pareto Principle or structural analysis), you can learn to prioritize the things that most matter!

Tiny Habits

So, I now had the focusing question under my belt. I then made small detour in Tiny Habits land. What a wonderful little book. Please read it. It might seem as if it doesn't directly address your question, but it has taught me that I can be strategic about how to achieve any goal, including how to prioritize my list. It has made me more relaxed, because I know what matters and what doesn't really matter. What matters are my high-impact behaviors; those I want to make habitual. The rest doesn't matter as much, at least for now.

Value Stream Mapping

As of now, I am playing with the idea of using something like Value Stream Mapping/Management for different areas of my life: work, studies, relationships, family, physical health, leisure, etc. My aim is to see how the things that I do in my life contribute to my values or not. The Value Stream begins and ends with me. I have lots of values in my life, and I want to see how my projects/products/stuff-I-do contribute (or not!) to my values. My hope is that I will be able to prioritize the things that are most valuable in my life!

ACT Tools

Just so you know, there's also the ACT Map, as described in A Liberated Mind. It's comprehensive, but I have struggled to prioritize stuff within the ACT Map itself, because I write so much in it! There's also the ACT Matrix (especially if it's modified into the "survival-vitality" horizontal axis), which I love to use for context-specific problems or situations that I want to evaluate. There's also The Choice Point, which also helps for context-specific problems or situations, but emphasizes behavior more than internal experiences. I should make a shoutout to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Combined with prioritization and a bit of reframing, it has been the single largest source of well-being for me in a long time.

APA's Procrastination book

Also, there's this beautiful little book Procrastination, published by the APA. I have just started reading it and it has been amazing so far! Even if you don't consider a book about procrastination something that you need, it could help with fundamentally changing your stance towards to-dos! As John Hattie in Visible Learning (The Sequel) shows, our fundamental beliefs are perhaps more important than the specific strategies that we use.

WOOP and Coherence Therapy

There's something I need to mention here! If you read Gabriele Oettingen's book on positive thinking, you'll learn how to do WOOP! WOOP is incredibly powerful to align your motivation vectors. It's a dangerous tool, because you could unconsciously conclude that you can't do stuff that you can actually do and therefore disengage (it's important to understand things like the Theory of Constructed Emotion to see how this is possible, as well as Tiny Habits, Visible Learning, and Scrum to see how to iteratively and progressively do things that are hard). Conversely, your motivation vectors could align towards doing the thing, and you'll be unstoppable.

In my view, WOOP exploits memory reconsolidation, which I learned from in Coherence Therapy. If I'm right, this explains why WOOP is sometimes not as effective: you need to assure that you exploit the memory reconsolidation mechanism.

Scrum

Oh, and before I end! When I need to just get my shit together quickly, I basically do Scrum: I make a quick post-it backlog, prioritize it, and start whacking. If I the list is too large, I do Fibonacci point estimation. I dislike how ad hoc this "when in doubt, Scrum" approach is, because it is not strategic at all. The backlog is built in the moment, with no long term plan. It's just to complete the tasks right in front of me. But it works. Time and time again. I have had so many coworkers and friends telling me they were pleasantly surprised by my approach to work, which, again, is basically Scrum.

Conclusion

While it may seem that I have read lots and have my shit together, it's a constant struggle! If someone has something that could help me prioritize in such a way that I connect what I value with what I do, please let me know! Maybe Value Stream Mapping is too overkill for this, but it seems comprehensive enough…

Ultimately, yeah. The article points out that the way they want to do it is with unique designs, carbon neutrality, and transparency in the production chain.

I agree that we shouldn't jump immediately to AI-enhancing it all. However, this survey is riddled with problems, from selection bias to external validity. Heck, even internal validity is a problem here! How does the survey account for social desirability bias, sunk cost fallacy, and anchoring bias? I'm so sorry if this sounds brutal or unfair, but I just hope to see less validity threats. I think I'd be less frustrated if the title could be something like "TechPowerUp survey shows 84% of 22,000 respondents don't want AI-enhanced hardware".

I remember reading that class is/was/has been one of the largest predictors of relationships lasting long.

I MISSED THE EQUIVALENT OF PLACE IN LEMMY? Does anyone have context?

Ah! You're getting at something interesting in human psychology: the existence of knowledge ('knowing') versus being able to use that knowledge across situations ('transfer'). Do you know the phases of learning, sometimes simplified as superficial (knowing-that), deep (knowing-how), and transfer (knowing-with)? If you do, how does that apply to this situation? If you don't, I linked to a video but I'm happy to explain it 😊

Thanks for the tl;dw!

Thanks for your reply. It's down to earth, compared to my speculation 😅 . I checked the DKIM signature (as well as the rest of the header) and it appears to be a genuine Microsoft message. Now, as to the old account theory, it might not be true, because I tried logging into Microsoft and was told there was no account associated with my email address. I suppose this also reduces the probability of the confused/mistyped address, since that person would've gotten the same 'No account associated with this email address' message.

That is why I lean toward the spearfishing campaign. Of course, I could be missing something and I just haven't noticed…

Dead Cells! Made by a worker cooperative 🥳

I agree that avoiding Microsoft is a good measure. However, my fear was that someone had successfully hacked my email or had somehow set up a Microsoft account 'on my behalf'. If someone opened a Microsoft account with my email and impersonated me, I wouldn't be able to safely ignore the emails 🥲 But I get and agree with the broader point that we should stay away from Microsoft!

Agile is indeed more of a mindset than a rigid system. In my recent experience helping a tabletop game team, we applied Agile principles to great effect. Rather than trying to perfect every aspect of the game at once, we focused on rapidly iterating the core mechanics based on player feedback. This allowed us to validate the fundamental concept quickly before investing time in peripheral elements like the looks of the game.

This approach embodies the Agile value of 'working product over comprehensive documentation' - or in our case, 'playable game over polished components'. By prioritizing what matters most to players right now, we're able to learn and adapt much more efficiently.

Agile thinking helps us stay flexible and responsive, whether we're developing software or board games. It's about delivering value incrementally and being ready to pivot based on real-world feedback.