Oh, cool, thanks. That’s easy enough for me to get :)
I looked at every single brand in the grocery store, and they all had gums, so I had just given up on corn tortillas.
Incidentally, ConsumerLab.com did some tests of flax seeds, and found a lot of them had high levels of cadmium. One of the brands with low cadmium was Whole Foods 365 brand. I don’t know if you’ve tried it, but you can make keto or low carb flatbreads out of ground flax seed & water.
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A while back, I did a survey of tortillas without oils I didn’t want and found like 2-3. That was when I noticed the corn tortillas and their simple ingredients.
I tried to find almond flour tortilla recipes btw, but people kept saying to use xanthan gum.
I have not tried that but I may! Thanks.
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2023/03/wsj-the-unraveling-of-the-us-news-rankings.html
Lots of schools leaving US News rankings. This part jumped out
At a January presentation to law schools, Robert Morse, U.S. News’s chief data strategist, disclosed that he didn’t commit to a particular mathematical model until after receiving schools’ data, according to Ian Ayres, an economist and Yale Law School professor who attended the event. Once that information was in hand, Dr. Ayres said, the team ran simulations giving various factors different weights to see the potential outcomes before deciding on a final method.
Dr. Ayres said that approach violates fundamental social-science research standards in which the methodology is specified ahead of time to prevent anyone from reverse-engineering a preferred result.
EDIT: I should have said something more substantive initially, so, correcting that: I think the method described is really egregious. It also very vividly illustrates a point I recall Elliot making about how weighted systems are actually using some other criteria for judgment. In this case, the people are using existing intuitions about what the results should look like (based on prestige etc) to figure out … what the results should look like, lol.
I added the prompt “- Did you internalize your goals regarding anything in which the outcome is only partially up to you?” to my list of things to think about daily.
I’ve found the prompt “Did you distinguish between those things over which we have complete, some, or no control?” particularly helpful.
This is a checklist I made for breaking negative thought patterns using some ideas from Stoic thinkers (and adding some of my own points). I find the cancer one near the end pretty powerful for putting things in perspective.
- Stoic and stoic-derived tricks to break negative thoughts patterns
- Reframe hardships as tests from the (fictional) stoic gods to test your skill at remaining even-tempered.
- Ask if the current thing you’re upset about will seem so important when looking back at the end of your life.
- Ask if you are upset at something over which you have no control.
- Did it already happen in the past?
- Is the resolution of the issue, or some aspect of it, out of your hands for now?
- Ask what the worst that could happen is. Project worst case in (written) detail and analyze whether or not it’s actually so bad.
- JM: Ask if you are fighting with/resisting some aspect of reality. If yes, what?
- JM: Ask if your reaction to a terminal cancer diagnosis would be more or less severe (in terms of upsettedness, preoccupation etc) than your reaction to the current thing upsetting you. If you think you are reacting more seriously to the current issue than you would to a cancer diagnosis, ask if that is appropriate/makes sense.
- JM: Ask the extent to which your desire for a particular self-image is causing issues here.
In this sort of situation I often find it useful to think of it in terms of a new opportunity to learn and be better prepared for next time something goes wrong. I’ve sometimes found actual pleasure in reframing a hardship this way.
I find this works both with very serious/traumatic life issue stuff and with non-harmful stuff like getting rekt by an unfamiliar gaming challenge. I don’t know if that means anything; I thought it seemed odd.
Another way I look at past things that go wrong is thinking about what I would do different if I were in that situation again. I don’t think it’s helpful to think about what I should have done which I think is a fairly common way of looking at it - that’s going into the territory of something I don’t have any control over.
When I do this I also find it helpful to think about what I would do in the worst case scenario, e.g. if a career attempt or investment goes bad, what would my next best option be?
Is this meant to set “desire for a particular self-image” apart from other goals? Or to emphasise doing introspection specifically about this sort of goal?
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I rewrote it as “JM: Ask the extent to which not wanting to accept some personal limitation or lack of ability is contributing to your state of being upset.” and grouped it under the point about fighting with reality, if that helps clarify
I think that means it’s a powerful technique with application to a wide range of situations. And it makes sense to me that if it’s effective on the harder/more serious issues, it’d work for easier/less serious things too.
It raises more questions. You didn’t edit the post I originally replied to so I don’t know what you rewrote. It seems like maybe you rewrote some private version of this you have for you own use?
I could guess that your answers to my questions are “no” based on the rewrite.
Yeah that’s correct. I have a private file related to my Stoicism reading and thinking, and that is what I updated. Sorry for the ambiguity.
I liked this as a quote.
From:
If you want to work on a topic that you don’t know much about, you should set goals that you understand. Instead of succeeding at or within the topic, you can have a goal like exploring the topic. Then you can do some activities (like reading and watching things) and confidently evaluate whether you succeeded at your goal. If you read a few things and know more than before, then you succeeded at a generic exploration goal. You can also set more specific goals like to read a book (or better, to try reading it and finish it only if you like it) or to find out what a term means.
This reminds me of the idea of the Stoic archer. Basically, the archer does the best he can to hit his target, and that’s his goal: to do the best he can. His goal isn’t to hit the target, because that’s not something within his control (cuz e.g. wind might blow arrow off course, or target might suddenly move or whatever). If he defines his goals this way, he can always achieve his goals, and not get disappointed if he fails.
I want to explicitly connect the Stoic archer to the Elliot quote above. I think that succeeding at a topic involves a certain level of objective mastery over the topic, including the ability to discuss the topic with a high rate of accuracy and low rate of error. That is more like the archer wanting to hit a target, since the ability to do so (given some sort of constraint regarding, say, time) will depend on things like how much relevant skill and background knowledge you already possess, and that’s not something within your direct control. However, choosing to explore a topic is something within your direct control, since that only requires that you allocate some time in the present/future.
FWIW I’m really liking the Shorts series of articles on CF. I often find it hard to get through the longer pieces but the short ones are easy enough to read very quickly and still provoke useful thinking.
Continuing the discussion from ChatGPT and Current AIs Are Dumb:
Got curious about this since it’s professionally relevant and I didn’t super confidently know the answer. After looking into it, I think perhaps ChatGPT is “thinking” of a SEP-IRA but it misapplied that info to Trad IRAs & Roths
When must I deposit the contributions into the SEP-IRAs?
You must deposit contributions for a year by the due date (including extensions) for filing your federal income tax return for the year. If you obtain an extension for filing your tax return, you have until the end of that extension period to deposit the contribution, regardless of when you actually file the return.
Somewhat relatedly, it’s apparently very common for people to think that getting an extension to file their taxes also delays their obligation to pay their taxes. That is not how it works. You still have to pay your taxes by the deadline, even with an extension. There are separate penalties for failure to file and failure to pay.
On the general topic of software tools spitting out bad information, check out what Bing showed me for “sep ira contribution deadline with extension”.
Continuing the discussion from Bounded and Unbounded Emotions:
Precision is contextual. E.g. if an ordinary person takes some quick body measurements for clothes (once) and they’re not a tailor, you might expect a bit of error. If a tailor, less error. And there are contexts that involve extremely precise measurements on much smaller scales (such as engineering and physics).
With emotions, there are no objective measurements (can’t exactly use a ruler or other gauge to compare depth of emotional pain between two different people) and so any discussion of intensity or magnitude is inherently imprecise. In the context of the amount of precision we can achieve when discussing emotions, Roark could be speaking honestly and accurately regarding his emotions and it could still be compatible with what Elliot said.
Ayn Rand was very critical of second-handers and second-handedness (it’s a major theme in The Fountainhead). In the essay “The Argument From Intimidation” in The Virtue of Selfishness, she talks about what she means by second-handedness (using the equivalent term “social metaphysician”):
A social metaphysician is one who regards the consciousness of other men as superior to his own and to the facts of reality. It is to a social metaphysician that the moral appraisal of himself by others is a primary concern which supersedes truth, facts, reason, logic. The disapproval of others is so shatteringly terrifying to him that nothing can withstand its impact within his consciousness; thus he would deny the evidence of his own eyes and invalidate his own consciousness for the sake of any stray charlatan’s moral sanction. It is only a social metaphysician who could conceive of such absurdity as hoping to win an intellectual argument by hinting: “But people won’t like you!”
How should one go about becoming less second-handed, though? I’ve found some tips in some modern (non-Objectivist) books. An aside is that I think organized Objectivism should spend more time producing content with this sort of advice and way less time on politics.
From Stephen Guise’s How to Be an Imperfectionist:
The logical way to overcome the need for approval is to do things that others don’t approve of. No, you don’t have to break the law or do anything terrible to people. Rebellion is often associated with parties, illegal substances, and irresponsible living, but that’s a specific type of rebellion—rebellion against authority. As kids, we’re constantly under someone’s immediate authority, being handed off from parents to teachers to coaches, so we tend to associate rebellion with authority.
Rebellion is broader than that.
You can rebel against your typical way of living.
You can rebel against societal expectations.
You can rebel against peer pressure.
You can rebel against any standard or expectation.
Guise recommends specific exercises, like posing confidently in public, singing in public, or lying down in public for 30 minutes.
From A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine:
Another way to overcome our obsession with winning the admiration of other people is to go out of our way to do things likely to trigger their disdain. Along these lines, Cato made a point of ignoring the dictates of fashion: When everyone was wearing light purple, he wore dark, and although ancient Romans normally went out in public wearing shoes and a tunic, Cato wore neither. According to Plutarch, Cato did this not because he “sought vainglory”; to the contrary, he dressed differently in order to accustom himself “to be ashamed only of what was really shameful, and to ignore men’s low opinion of other things.” In other words, Cato consciously did things to trigger the disdain of other people simply so he could practice ignoring their disdain.
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Note that I found out about Stephen Guise due to this post on the CF website, Overthinking and Perfectionism, so thanks to Elliot for that.
I think it’s difficult to talk about emotions in degrees and compare degrees of emotions, a good measure may be created some day but I’m guessing there’s no way of measuring that wouldn’t cause a lot of inaccuracy with big assumptions. But comparing kinds of emotion or categories of an emotion is not so difficult.
I don’t think what Roark said is about degree of emotional pain. I think he’s saying that there is part of him (“a certain point”) that is unaffected by it, so it’s something like “only 80% of me can be in pain” rather than “my pain can only reach level 1000” which I think is a different kind of pain (or pain management/thinking about pain). So e.g. the 80% of him could be on pain level 1,000,000 but the 20% of him would still be unhurt, and so the pain wouldn’t matter very much because that 20% is the most important part (“most important” is a guess I’m making about what “a certain point” refers to).
Whether this is a correct interpretation of what Ayn Rand meant or not, I think it’s an interesting way to think about pain and relates to being first-handed/egoistic. Something like: the 80% that can feel pain is stuff like what you want to do in the world, plans you make to build things, what you want to do tomorrow, people you want to talk to. The 80% can be stopped by other people or by disasters. The 20% is stuff like resilient character traits, honesty, integrity, determination. Total second-handers don’t have a 20% like that, they’re 100% subject to the actions of others.
(n.b. I’m using 80% and 20% non-literally, it’s a reference to the Pareto principle)
I broadly disagree. My theory is that the intensity of emotional pain is directly related to the amount of “you” it affects and how much it interferes with your life. E.g. a very mild emotional pain might be something you can shrug off in order to get through your work or other activities; a moderate emotional pain might cause you to become preoccupied even while trying to do important stuff; if you’re in intense emotional pain, you might have a hard time doing anything.
I can come up with something along the lines of what you’re talking about if I think about doing some sort of emotional compartmentalization, especially over the short term. I think that for a little bit, and especially for some emergency, and especially if they’ve had some sort of training (I’m thinking of like soldiers and emergency personnel) people can have parts of them screaming inside and just push that to one side and just carry on with their work for a few hours or days. I don’t think that’s sustainable in the long term, though, and I also don’t think it’s the sort of thing that Roark was talking about.