Thank you for discussing this and all the other things with me. I appreciate it.
A chess coach once told me that if I got out a chess set and set up the pieces every day for a month, with zero days missed, then in the future I would reach chess master (2200 rating). He said I could practice/study after setting up the pieces but that was optional based on whether I wanted to that day.
Yes people do know that theyāre unsure/unclear about tons of stuff. They normalize and rationalize that in their minds and ignore it. They think having much higher standards would never work, so they keep doing stuff on top of a foundation that has many errors.
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Post some.
Tracinski (one of the more well known non-ARI Objectivists who blogs primarily about news/politics not philosophy) published a book on Atlas Shrugged in 2019. I just saw it exists:
I read the table of contents. I would not call it a guide. Itās an essay collection. It doesnāt guide you in how to read AS. And each essay looks roughly independent, so itās not very comprehensive, thorough or organized either. Itās nothing like explaining AS chapter by chapter.
I wouldnāt call my own text analysis a guide either, but itās more suitable for helping someone actually understand what AS says.
There are two character from AS who get chapters about them. Galt is in the title and gets two chapters. And James Taggart gets a chapter. Thereās also a chapter related to Dominique Francon, who is from a different book. Dagny Taggart, the main character, does not get a chapter explaining her in this alleged Readerās Guide. Hank Rearden, the clear second-most-main character, also doesnāt get a chapter.
The word ācabinā only has two search results via Amazon Look Inside (which appears to give the number of pages the term is on, not the number of times the term appears). (āquarryā has three search results despite being about a different book). The first result is about Franciscoās cabin at Galtās Gulch. The second result is about Dagnyās time at her cabin, but it hardly says anything about that long, important scene. E.g. there seems to be no discussion about Dagny telling herself to āstop itā multiple times.
Iāve been thinking about this frequently but am finding it hard. I think thatās probably due to a lack of structured practice. (Both not doing any and failing to allocate time to it.)
āHardā is a cop-out word: I mean that I would need to change things (how I structure my time and what I prioritize) and that Iām not changing those things.
If I did implement structured practice ā I have a plan wrt refreshing grammar, at least ā then I could post stuff easily (copy paste or link to a new page on the old max-learning-fi site).
I am practicing where itās low friction ā like with work stuff.
BTW, often I find I save time (or thereās only negligible overhead) using CF techniques; thatās a major reason I consider it ālow frictionā ā practicing them is often free or profitable. (Is there anything with less friction than what is profitable?)
e.g., yesterday I solved a major problem Iād had with a software implementation at work. Mostly using: idea trees, brainstorming non-suppression, planning out breadth first exploration + noticing errors early and many little yes/no evaluations as I went, and goldrattās inherent simplicity (probably more CF stuff, too). Basically stepping back and going at the problem from CF principles, including breaking it down, notes as I went, exploratory writing, etc.
Note: I guess that this type of practice, while convenient, is mb dangerous: thereās a lack of feedback outside colleagues; and thereās a lack of breadth without criticism, like I could over-specialize in on some topic/idea without realizing wider contradictions or criticisms with more reach (those particularly are powerful but might not be obvious).
The problem, ofc, is that work stuff isnāt very easy to share ā not ideal. Thatās one reason Iāve been focusing a bit on improving my self-error-spidey-sense feeling (Ć la Judging and Fixing Your Own Errors [CF Article]). (This is something I need to stay conscious of, which I havenāt been doing as much lately)
Iām not sure I want to add more atm, but practice and posting it is something Iām actively thinking about.
I want to add a little testimonial: I find CF stuff incredibly useful day-to-day. Iām far more capable with what Iāve learned than I was without it. Literally nothing significant in my life is untouched b/c of it, and I donāt think Iām worse off in any way that I value.
(I still feel this even knowing that Iām not making as much progress as I could ā I donāt think that should lesson my appreciation for all the good it has done me.)
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A rough rule of thumb is that between 20% and 80% of your stuff should be public. (It also works for private since itās symmetric.)
This is for adults not children. And itās kinda progress oriented. If someone isnāt trying to learn or do much, then ācapable of being publicā could substitute for āpublicā ā itās not necessary to share if you arenāt trying to do anything important and also arenāt trying to get feedback and improve. Not everyone needs a blog. But if you want to e.g. be an intellectual, then having a blog (or an alternative way to share stuff online) is good. Or if youāre an artist, you probably ought to be able to share 20% of what you make for feedback. Or if youāre an electrician, you shouldnāt mind having other people see and review your work sometimes, and if you care about your career you ought to post something online sometimes.
In other words, if nearly everything or nearly nothing is private, that indicates a problem.
In this case, one problem to consider is work/life balance. Are over 80% of your intellectual activities either at work or work-related? Is work getting over 80% of your mental energy?
PS The specific numbers are debatable, e.g. maybe the good range should be 10-50% public ā avoid near-zero public and avoid sharing over half your life with others. However, it depends so much on how you count/measure that I donāt think the specific numbers are very important.
I had an idea tonight; i think this is related to oism (pretty sure I learned some of constituent ideas from Elliot, though, so mb thereās a bit extra ā ofc this is just my take atm, I donāt want to imply Elliot shares any of my views.)
basically: keeping commitments shows that you have control of your life ā and this is a good thing to have a track record of and seek a track record of.
Iāve been thinking about the idea of having control over your own life lately (unrelated to Ukraine). Like with work choices, or personal/life stuff, or even just every day common stuff like social commitments.
Outside oneself, who do you deal with? business-wise, socially, etc. For most ppl: you have to choose them (or get to choose them) at some point, in some way.
I think itās important that ā if you have control over your life ā you maintain that by moderating your relationships with other ppl. donāt become over invested in ppl that are unreliable, or are consistently a drain. (mb others too, but those are two major groups)
āunreliableā is meant mb more broadly than typical: someone can be high-capacity but unreliable, and they can be delivering on other things (for other ppl) but not on stuff they agreed to you about (thatās still unreliable as far as youāre concerned).
so in that case itās like theyāre contextually unreliable. whoās context? yours.
If you know someone whoās like this, calling them out or being combative shouldnāt be the main goal: your own life (and itās stability / your control over it) should be a bigger goal. I think in lots of cases being combative or trying to help them is probably a self-harmful idea. Not all cases, but itās hard to tell what boundary might be there.
where this comes back to the topic line is:
the stability of your own life (which is good) is dependent on relationships with other ppl (else you live in the woods mb?). but you canāt make new relationships in a super ad-hoc way, you need to have some planning, and distribute that over a period of time.
so, itās important to avoid really unreliable ppl/relationships; itās probably good to have a little lee-way but not too much; and then one should cultivate relationships with ppl that are reliable. Note: reliability implies accuracy ā here, itās meant in a holistic sense: does someone fulfill commitments they make?
If someone canāt fulfill commitments, then theyāre not reliable.
If theyāre not reliable, then how can they rely on themselves?
If they canāt rely on their own judgement, they canāt be reliable.
If theyāre not reliable, then they introduce variance into your life.
If thereās variance in your life, then you canāt keep control of it.
So itās like a bad feedback loop of non-control.
a note about oism and cf relevance:
thinking about this reminds me of two things:
- the absolutely uncompromising control over oneās own life that the strikers at GG had (and presumably many other unaffiliated strikers wanted / sought out / created).
- In all my appointments with @Elliot ā not once was he ever late. Every commitment to me he made, he kept (beyond appointments ā generally). I donāt think Iāve never known anyone else like that ā where their word is just their word, consistently.[1] (At least, none come to mind. Iām excluding trivial examples like acquaintances and other short term examples.)
Anyway, on the one hand I worry that Iām becoming contemptuous about this stuff ā that makes me unsure of the ideas, or at least unsure of acting on the ideas. I think being conservative here is good ā if I acted too readily on contempt then that would make my life less stable, so itās worth taking my time.
But on the other hand, I canāt help but feel that the topic idea is, on the whole, right. both as a goal and as a way to judge someoneās reliability and/or potential risk.
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this is only meant to be a statement of facts. itās praiseful, but itās not meant to be praise, just testimony. ā©ļø
Choosing a good peer group is also important because they will influence you a lot without (and with) you realizing it.
I donāt think showing up on time to scheduled appointments is all that remarkable, particularly online (no travel time adding variability). Other people can do that, right? Not everyone but maybe like 10% of people? Or is my intuition about that wrong? I donāt actually have a lot of experience with this and realized that my intuition isnāt trustworthy and the world could be worse than I thought.
You should be extra careful judging people, let alone become contemptuous, because you donāt have a substantial objective track record of success. Nor have you demonstrated great Paths Forward in case you make mistakes. You shouldnāt be arrogantly thinking youāre way better than most people. Focus more on yourself and self-improvement.
It depends. In my post I was thinking pretty broadly, and including stuff like if someone says theyāll call you later, and then donāt. Itās an issue of reliability but not a big one. (Note: this isnāt the sort of thing that Iām contemptuous about ā will reply separately about that)
Hmm, I remember hearing that Stripe records all their meetings company-wide; I wonder if anyone has used that to measure meeting reliability.
IME WRT scheduled meetings: (rough numbers so take it with a grain of salt)
Say \ge 5 minutes late is ālateā: lots of ppl are 50% reliable, and some are 90% reliable. Ppl are usually better with regular easy/short things (like standups), and can be 95%+ reliably for those specific things some of the time. I think Iām 95-98% reliable getting to my morning standup within 2 minutes.
However, for some people, being 10-15 min late is more common than not. it depends on the person (and their priorities) and the purpose of the meeting; the same person can be v reliable with important stuff, and way less reliable with like āregularā stuff. (I think this two-tier thing is pretty common.) Systemic lateness is more common with managers and higher-ups IME, but not always.
My impression is that online helps a bit but hasnāt changed major trends ā travel time wasnāt the bottleneck for them before covid, so going online doesnāt help much.
Note: I ran some numbers. statistically: Iām 95% confident that youāre 95% reliable WRT appointments; and 80% confident that youāre 97.5% reliable. Probably a little higher than those numbers, but I only have ~70 data points (tutoring + cf course). Calculated via binomial survival function.
One thing I didnāt mention was that the feelings of contempt arenāt about small things or being late to meetings ā itās more about bigger stuff where ppl promise something and donāt follow through, or consistently provide excuses, or changing goal posts. Or where thereās an expectation but their actions arenāt consistent with following thru on that.
I think mb the contemptuous feelings come up when there is a problem that is not getting addressed over longer periods of time. Or if I try to bring something up and the person is evasive or doesnāt want to admit the problem (multiple times). Neither case is immediate.
I think itās worth saying here that you do that too. So look to yourself and self-improvement first.
I think this was a bit dishonest of me to say. Part of the reason that itās dishonest is because it is true but itās also not the whole story. I still have some desire for validation / approval / etc. I think that my saying the above is like sorta social hedging. I donāt understand it though.
I want to mention that Iām not ignoring this. I just didnāt have much to say at the time (and still donāt). I thought about posting something in agreement, but I think thatād be being dishonest about the agreement. I hadnāt thought of it before you said it. Reading it did cause me to slow down, though, and be even more cautious about being judgey than I already was (which was a good thing for me to do). I agree that ā[I] do that tooā, at least partially. (Not just that I used to do that, but am doing that still, tho hopefully less so.)
I also had some āundendorsementā thoughts, too ā like that Iād been unreliable in the past but now that Iād read Atlas Shrugged I was taking things more seriously. Iām again grateful for the earlier discussion about the link between unendorsement and unflawedness. I do think that Iāve gotten somewhat more reliable after reading AS, but my first reaction was still to think that I was ādoneā now (which is problematic, but I liked that I noticed and could think about it more).
This is a quote of me from Academic Epistemology - #34 by Max criticizing one part of RPās paper. The broad context is that itās a bad epistemology paper.
I used the word āadducingā there half automatically. When I used it, I noticed that I had and I knew why I had (or why I wanted to keep it, at least).
I think RPās paper was the first time that Iād read that word (I had to look it up at the time) and I criticized RP for using it somewhat incorrectly. I donāt think itās a bad word ā it seems to fill a niche ā but it is fancy. Although the word fits the context, I questioned whether to keep it in.
I kept it in for two reasons:
- I thought it was a bit funny, and particularly because it was funny at RPās expense (a little bit of ātwisting the knifeā if he were ever to read it); and
- I noticed my motivation (point 1.) and I thought it was a bad motivation ā but, keeping it in means I can quote myself and discuss it (I donāt want to suppress/avoid it and then make the mistake elsewhere, if it is a mistake).
I think making jokes while doing philosophy is usually harmful to the work. Most of they time jokes arenāt going to make communication clearer, and theyāre distracting for the reader and author. Also, making jokes at someones expense is mean.
I actually did this once before in that thread, too:
(The joke being that one of āredundant and superfluousā is redundant/superfluous.)
Thereās more that is wrong with both of these, too (besides being distracting and mean): Iām doing something social, like making an appeal to intellectual superiority / cleverness. Itās condescending and communicates something like: āLook at me, Iām better than X, and Iāll prove it by making puns while offering criticism. Iām so smart.ā
I donāt like the idea of doing that, and I donāt want to do that.
I think, on the whole, Iām improving in this aspect, but I am not really doing much to make progress besides noticing and reflecting once in a while. (Itās not really a priority atm and I donāt think itās a big factor in my life.) When I write particular things, I do consciously try not to engage w/ those memes, but I know that theyāre still there.
(This post is related to Objectivism because it is practicing the idea of not faking reality. Itās more generally related to CF in a few ways: social dynamics, static memes, non-suppression and pro-discussion, and more. I thought it might be good to occasionally leave a little explainer about my motivations for posting and how I see the post relating to learning CF ā so Iām testing the idea out, here.)