Eliyahu Goldratt's philosophy, Theory of Constraints (TOC), is about how to think. He talks about concepts like goals, focus, bottlenecks, local optima, excess capacity and conflict resolution.
Tip: If you struggle with the section “Excess Capacity or Balanced Plants” just skip ahead. It’s the hardest and longest. There are a bunch of shorter, easier sections later. Also feel free to ask questions about it (or anything).
Can you have a goal and subgoals in them and both the subgoals and goals have individual constraints to work with? Can you accidentally focus too much on the subgoals that you miss out on working on the constraint of the big goal?
Is there a bottleneck in learning philosophy? Should one focus their attention on improving that? I have a few ideas of what might be the bottleneck when I try to learn philosophy(i think it’s prob motivation). I don’t know sometimes if I should be focusing on learning one thing or not.
I really like CF’s automatization ideas and improving on skills. I liked learning that I can improve on something if I focus my attention to it and form a habit. The problem im having now is what should I focus on improving? Making so many changes for what? It’d be nice to know.
yes
if you take a whole chain, it has a weakest link. then if you take a sub-section of that chain, the sub-section also has its own weakest link.
and the chain and single weakest link stuff is a simplified model to help understand the concepts.
Yes people have learning bottlenecks. But they’re different for different people. It could be motivation for one person but not for someone else. Motivation isn’t my bottleneck.
And the bottleneck can change as your situation changes. You should expect to have to improve a few main things to get good at philosophy, not just one.
Well, what are your interests and goals?
ahh ok the chain and its weakest link model does help. Like if I had a chain of L’s like this LLLLL and the first L was the weakest link and then I make a subsection of the last three L’s like this LLL then that subsection has a weakest link too.
Oh ok, I think when my motivation isnt the weakest link something else becomes it and I notice things seem too hard.
Video games:In general, play to get good
I like using practice and i think error correction to get better at Marvel rivals rn
My goals are to improve on the game but also use the game to better myself. Use the game to learn philosophy
BOI, FI, CF: i liked that BOI talked about how infinite progress is possible like in one’s life. Life doesnt just peak and then it’s over for us.
I liked FI when I first saw it cuz there was actually something tangible to practice instead of just reading a book
I like CF’s automatization and small skills ideas
My goals are to learn CF and help the world be in a better place. Other goals i have are knowing where to start, knowing how one subject actually helps me, be good at making decisions, being able to talk to my friends and family about philosophy, and make a living using it.
Video editing: goals are try it out to make video game guides and maybe irl guides like math or personal skills. Try to use CF philosophy in the vids to make them unique but also helpful
Music: goals are to try it out too but use a small skills approach to slowly get better and better
Do you like epistemology, logic, debate, science, political philosophy, or economics? Do any of them they interest you? Do you find any of them fun?
One place to start is reading through all the CF articles and discussing them. Have you tried that some and run into problems?
If your main blocker is motivation, why do you think you want to do this stuff? Do you have motivation issues with everything or is CF worse for motivation?
Why do you want to do that?
What software and hardware are you using for videos?
I like logic and science a little. Logic cuz you can be right about something and have a readable method for it. Used to like science a lot as a kid. Like it now cuz I like the facts from it like Venus is the second closest planet to the sun.
Logic n science interest me cuz one i want to know how to be right irl and two cuz if you’re able to get science ideas you must doing something right.
Right now i dont think so. I didn’t think before you had to have fun on them to do them.
Yeah i tried that a bit last year and i kind of dont remember the problems i ran into but some i think were I dont know sometimes if what i read is really a good idea or im just making myself like them.
Others are knowing how to make the ideas make sense into in my life like how can i start living the CF way today. And I think sometimes I just read things the wrong way like a sentence from an article or something from a discussion.
Because i dont like how people say do something like i already know how to get results and they just think it’ll work out fine. They dont even get whats happening under the surface. They dont get it.
I don’t like the other routes for being successful cuz it just feels so random and so painful. There’s gotta be another way to live ok.
i think with everything not just CF. i think the bigger the goal or task the worse it gets for motivation
I dont want to just help myself. It sounds selfish to not give something back to the world. Like if the problem is that the world sucks why not do something about it and make it suck less for the newcoming people?
imovie and 2019 intel mac. I think both might be outdated for the job
If you learned a bunch of philosophy but then failed at changing the world, would you regret it or would that still be fine? Changing the world with rational philosophy is really hard without getting lucky.
I think ill regret it actually. My sibling asked me the same thing once.
I didnt think u had to be lucky. I thought people would see how good it really is and would make an effort cuz there would be no other way. Like they had to do rational philosophy or else life would really suck.
I don’t think the world is very merit based in general. I don’t think intellectuals have good Paths Forwards. Certainly you’d need to do something better than me, or get lucky, since I don’t have a lot of fans.
For me, doing philosophy is a higher priority than changing the world. I like it and want to know things.
Do you lack motivation for improving at video games?
Have you read through AS and FH?
Yeah but sometimes i dont have to deal with it and it’s nice
Yeah i only understood a little bit of it. I saw how in AS the creators wanted out of society. They shrugged
What does the world even want then if not truth or other merits(cant name them off the top of my head)? I dont get it.
I think so too tho in a way that the world isnt merit based. Like social status or what others think is more important than truth
I think sometimes that some of us that do want to change the world delegate to much work to you. Like how are we gonna expect a different outcome if we dont ourselves improve.
I see thats good.
I dont even know about changing the world. On the one hand, it sounds nice to live in a better place. But on the other hand it just sounds hard. I think i wanna find something i like first before thinking about that stuff.
Do you feel indebted to the world? Has the world given you a lot? Has it given more than you could reasonably expect to be given charitably without expectation of payback? Just asking cuz curious.
They had already given more to society than they had gotten back. In fact society was leeching off them.
Idk actually I think sometimes the first question and third question yes. I do sometimes feel indebted to the world like it’s mean to not give some back.
Sometimes it looks like others suffer as bad as me and i want them to know how to make it better. I notice im wrong sometimes tho like some things dont actually bother people at all.
Oh ok that makes a lot of sense I would not like being leeched off by society
I think that if you’re suffering then you shouldn’t think much about giving back. Fix yourself first and then you’ll be able to help others more efficiently. You already think this though? Since you want to learn philosophy to help the world.
So you wouldn’t think of yourself as an altruist? You would like a fair and equal trade?
The stuff that is considered high status, which social climbers and office politics participants do, is a lot of what the world wants, values and rewards.
Some other stuff many people like:
Some things have changed a lot since people executed Socrates, but some haven’t. More recently people drove the genius war hero Alan Turing to suicide.
yeah, if i don’t manage to change my fans much, then i’m not going to change the rest of the world much either
If you just want a nice life, it’s definitely way easier to change your life than the broader world.
Yeah, I agree. Something doesn’t sound right to me about not figuring my own stuff out before helping others. Like how many of the common errors that I make actually affect my thinking about things in general? I know fixing errors won’t stop but it’s not good i think to try to play savior rn.
Yeah, I want to boost my standards way up
Yeah, I forget a little what that word means, but that’s like when people think they have obligation to give back?
Yeah, actually. It’s not right that the creators give so much for them to not get back.
Here’s what I have in mind:
A synonym is selflessness. You can take that as describing people who “have no self.” The best example of selflessness, in the sense of not having a self, is Peter Keating. People wouldn’t call Keating an altruist though. He’s cutthroat and unscrupulous (not fully though, he shows guilt many times). From the outside it looks like he’s only concerned with his own interests. But he’s selfless because he has almost no genuine interests of his own. His interests lie within other people. He wants fame. He derives his self-esteem not from actual achievements that he values himself, but through others perception of his achievements. Achievements that are valuable according to them. The few genuine interests he had, he sacrificed in order to live up to the values of other people. You can only be happy if you achieve goals that are in your interests. Keating couldn’t be happy because he sacrificed his interests.
I reread Selfishness Without a Self from PWNI after writing this (bold added by me):
The clearest symptom by which one can recognize this type of person, is his total inability to judge himself, his actions, or his work by any sort of standard. The normal pattern of self-appraisal requires a reference to some abstract value or virtue—e.g., “I am good because I am rational,” “I am good because I am honest,” even the second-hander’s notion of “I am good because people like me.” Regardless of whether the value-standards involved are true or false, these examples imply the recognition of an essential moral principle: that one’s own value has to be earned.
Keating is a second-hander, his standard is other’s people’s judgment. That’s still lacking a self. Rand brought up James Taggart in the essay, who might be a better example of selflessness than Keating.
When I think of the opposite of altruism, selfishness, I think of both prioritizing your own interest first, and having your values come from your own independent judgment.
Rand wrote a lot about what altruism means:
It would also be good to hear the definitions from defenders of altruism such as Comte.
But Hank was rich. He already had more than he needed. Why shouldn’t he help others who needed the money more?
If I was as rich as Hank Rearden, I would give some money to all active posters of this forum. They’d need it more.