add the more recent logs and pigs, half of #1
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title: Payload
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date: 2013-04-21
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techne: :done
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episteme: :log
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---
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Let’s see…
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I did a bunch of stuff I don’t properly understand enough yet to talk
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about without making an ass of myself, and even though that hasn’t ever
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stopped me before, I don’t wanna contribute too much to People Being
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Wrong On The Internet if I can help it…
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And all other projects won’t have anything meaningful to show off or
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talk about for some time to come, and “I read these books; they don’t
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suck” posts aren’t very interesting (unless I can at least say something
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about them)…
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And this situation isn’t gonna change anytime soon, and this is still
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primarily a practice log (maybe we should call an ironic purpose a
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“telol”?), so even though I have a bunch of drafts, I don’t wanna just
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dump my `crazy.txt`[^crazy] here without at least occasionally
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balancing it with `not_actually_crazy.txt`.
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So, uh, what am I gonna talk about the next few months? Guess I’ll have
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to become ultra-productive and cram in some more minor projects.
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しい〜〜〜ん
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Yeah ok, volume will probably just go down and I’ll try to mention [cool
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shit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_trSIBCgF0) and minor projects
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until stuff gets interesting again. (Lowered the road dial again for a
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while.)
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---
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Hint: someone scanned Westergaard’s Introduction to Tonal Theory and I
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hear it will also appear on the usual sites in a few days. Just fyi.
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On a totally unrelated note, I’ve started reading Westergaard’s book and
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I’m genuinely impressed. It looks like a proper textbook about a sane
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theory with lots of examples and a clear, logical structure throughout.
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Haven’t had much time to work on it yet, but it looks very promising.
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---
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Some drug updates.
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- Modafinil: useless as a normal upper, mediocre as a sleep
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substitute, great for “fuck deadline can’t afford to sleep fuck
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fuck”. The effect during waking hours is not noticeably better than
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caffeine for me. If it weren’t so expensive, I’d run a double-blind
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test to compare side-effects and get a more precise idea, but so
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it’s just not worth it. Will likely keep a small emergency supply on
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hand, but otherwise I’ll stick to nicotine and caffeine.
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- Nicotine: started to smoke cigarettes again. Not a lot (i.e.
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\<40/month), and it’s not really about the nicotine either, which is
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almost anti-addictive for me. Despite clear benefits and wanting to
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use it regularly, I keep forgetting I have large supplies of
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lozenges and go days (and sometimes weeks) without any for no good
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reason, and even when I use them, it’s never more than
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4mg/day.[^nicotine]
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So why smoke? Because I want something destructive - a tiny,
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controlled source of it, yes, but to deliberately do something of no
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use - no, not enough! - to take an action fully aware that it brings
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nothing but harm to myself, is to say, no, I cannot be satisfied; to
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say to optimization itself, nothing you can do will ever make me
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happy; this is my vote of discord, my dissatisfaction with order -
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this one is for decay.
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---
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I made a [Twitter account for drunken
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confessions](https://twitter.com/#!/drunkflax). If I can’t say them to
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the person I mean them for, I can at least say them in general just to
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have them said, to lower the barrier - a practice round instead of just
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sadness. Maybe it’s gone tomorrow, maybe not. Don’t read them. <del>I made
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it for you.</del> Take with a grain of salt, placed on the back of your hand
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and a slice of lemon; count your shots.
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---
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I feel like many arguments could be more easily resolved if people more
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routinely asked themselves the First Rule of Debugging, i.e. “What are
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you trying to do with that?”.
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I’ve failed to state that enough in the past (and I’ve added “state what
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this is trying to accomplish” to my list of rules to observe in future
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writing), so here’s an example for practice.
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In Scott’s [wrestling with virtue
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ethics](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/10/book-review-after-virtue-or-somebody-here-is-really-confused-and-i-just-hope-its-not-me/)
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[^pad], I was reminded how I had always assumed (if not
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explicitly, then implicitly in how I write) that my specific problems
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with ethics generalize and then how I was somewhat upset how someone
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could have the nerve to develop ideas that might work for their
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problems, maybe, but not mine!, what sacrilege.
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In particular, I have no clue what I want (I feel like I may have some
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preferences in forced decisions (i.e. almost all of them), but that’s
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far from wanting things for their own sake), so theories about “getting
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what I want” are of no use to me (regardless of their validity), but I
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know “the kind of person” I don’t want to be
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(“[apophatic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology) virtue
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ethics”, you say?), but at the same time (and for good reasons I won’t
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elaborate on), I don’t trust my own ideas of what “good” is and that
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many common heuristics - trust your instincts, use empathy, follow your
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heart - are *horrible* advice for me because I’m at least potentially a
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Bad Person(tm) and *I will fuck people over* if you’re so stupid to make
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me run on instinct, so I don’t just need (meta-)ethics to resolve
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conflicts for me, but to even provide (some of?) my values in the first
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place.
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So any theory that requires me to load it with my values first is
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utterly useless to me because [it doesn’t solve any of my actual
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problems](http://www.viruscomix.com/page535.html). For example, my
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motivation for making locality a requirement for any meta-ethical theory
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is that I don’t want to be held responsible - including by abstract
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principles - for things I have no possible way of doing right. Or as
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Kant is commonly (and uncharacteristically) summarized, “ought implies
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can”. I don’t know what “the Good” is, in terms of a specific outcome or
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kind of world. There are narratives that shape what I think of as a
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“good world”, but these are clearly contingent and very non-mainstream
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(currently, anyway[^pol]). A defining feature of any concept is
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that there are some things it *isn’t*, some negative examples. But if
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“the Good” is just whatever these narratives have led me to think of as
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“Good”, then there is no way for me to be *wrong* about
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it.[^wrong] The label “Good” is then just an arbitrary
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placeholder. I don’t know if “Good” outside this usage has any meaning
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either, but *if* so, I want to at least cover my ass. Thus, Moral
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Realism That Doesn’t Do Anything.
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Interestingly, I *don’t* seem to apply this same thinking to the past.
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Even though Bad Shit happened[^close], I’m completely unwilling
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to let it go and still consider Things I Literally Have No Longer Any
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Causal Control Over[^mol] just as relevant and so a single
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negative example can devastate me and *keep on* devastating
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me.[^baum] I wonder if I should stop doing that…
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[^crazy]:
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Actual content of `~/drafts`, my `crazy.txt`:
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- start of a manifesto “Against Compassion”
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- “I didn’t choose to be a wolf”, a meditation on fursonae
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- sketches about “could zombies have saved the Nazi war effort?”
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until I got bored doing calculations (includes mostly worked-out
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Nazi Zombie campaign setting, incl. sketch of a metaphysics to
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make it reasonably coherent)
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- a love poem to cheesecake
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- “why everything sucks and will never ever get better”, a reading
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of some of Luther’s more obscure writing (on hold until I figure
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out if everything sucks and will never ever get better or not)
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- an incomplete sketch of “Against Imagination”, which keeps on
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metastasizing as I add more and more anger to it, but it never
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really goes anywhere constructive and I wonder if I’m not just
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rewriting the Futurist Manifesto anyway
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- “I’m the worst person to talk about politics, but I’m drunk and
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I have a pile of manifestos, try stoppin’ me”, an
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interdisciplinary attempt of political exploration
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- several sketches and attempts of a new critical method I call
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Passive-Aggressive Deconstruction
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I think it’s obvious why those drafts never go anywhere.
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[^nicotine]:
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I’m deliberately ignoring e-cigarettes even though they’re cheaper
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because I don’t want to accidentally establish a “suck on
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cigarettes” habit that might transfer to real cigarettes so I can
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always maintain a behavioral separation between “nicotine so my
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brain works” and “smoking for emotional reasons”, despite them
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sharing some drug effects. The nicotine in cigarettes is still
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welcome and I substitute accordingly, but it’s a bit of a pity I
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have to smoke strong brands just to remind me of her smell.
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<%= image("wishyouwerehere.jpg", "hot ashes for trees") %>
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[^pad]:
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In particular [this
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post](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/11/virtue-ethics-not-practically-useful-either/)
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how virtue ethics is not useful in practice, and this (highly
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excerpted) exchange with Vladimir:
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> [Vladimir:] If this abstract theory [e.g. utilitarianism] provides
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> answers for the extreme and controversial cases, then it should
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> provide answers for everyday common cases as well. But here we see
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> that these abstract theories are of little use, often providing no
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> useful answer or plainly absurd answers, and requiring tortured
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> rationalizations and special pleading just to get them to clear
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> the bar of ordinary common sense.
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>
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> […]
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>
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> If we actually do start from scratch in our study of ethics and
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> make sure to stick to the reality of what human beings are, not to
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> metaphysical pies in the sky and sophistries useful only for
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> signaling and lawyering, we will end up — or at least have to
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> start with — something resembling virtue ethics.
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>
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> [Scott:] Aside from the things I addressed in my new post, we seem
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> to disagree a lot on how bad utilitarian and deontological ethics
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> work. As far as I can tell they work about as well as Newtonian
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> physics – they get the right result in the overwhelming majority
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> of cases, but break down in certain weird edge cases where in fact
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> they might still be salvageable.
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was the thing that made me throw up my hands and say in a moment of
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amused desperation, *surely* you can’t be asserting this! I don’t
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have an issue with saying that virtue ethics isn’t really a *theory*
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of anything but more a label of a kind of discourse, a way of
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*doing* morality instead of thinking *about* morality, and that it
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is, to use Skinner’s terminology, still mostly prescientific. Fair
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enough.
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But to say that utilitarianism (or even better, deontology! The
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*simplest*, most straightforward example of deontological reasoning
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- don’t deceive - is highly controversial and virtually *nobody*
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agrees with it!) works most of the time is.. well, Scott is, to use
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Moldbug’s amusing phrase, “[not a blithering
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idiot](http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/03/sam-altman-is-not-blithering-idiot.html)”,
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so I can’t just say, “clearly he just doesn’t know what he’s talking
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about”. There must a disagreement not about results (because Scott
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is neither ignorant nor in denial), but about *the problem*. With a
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disparity this huge, we can’t be looking [at the same
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thing](http://blog.regehr.org/archives/861).
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One might be tempted to say, “this just proves that some people
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think inherently like virtue ethicists and some like utilitarians”,
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but that’s just throwing away all possibility of rational discourse
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forever, and most importantly, *this isn’t even the case*. (Even if
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this were the case, “get out of your weird bubble” would likely be a
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more appropriate response, but I’m not convinced this even applies
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to Scott, unlike say Kant.)
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If I were more the person I want to be, I would now be able to write
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an eloquent reply, but alas, the only answer I *am* capable of is a
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stare of incredulity (which I hate) or an incoherent angry rant
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(which I love). Wanting not to be abusive, I thus experimented with
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alternatives and came up with Passive-Aggressive Deconstruction,
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which is probably still trollish, but maybe not hostile. (Or at
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least amusingly so.)
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Essentially, and this is why I haven’t written more than sketches
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yet because this is still a lot of work, I just wanted to highlight
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by mere quotation how *Scott himself* uses virtue-ethical reasoning
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frequently *on his own blog*, and how then, tumblr-style, I could
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just add his comment pasted on a fitting `useless_utilitarian.jpg`
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after each quote and ask, “Why don’t I see a calculation here?” or
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“Why do you think this is a valid form of argument?”, so that after
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a sufficiently large number of instances of this, it would at least
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be more than an *assertion* of “I can’t believe you’re saying what I
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think you’re saying, but I don’t see what else you possible could
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mean to say”.
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But eh, now that I’ve outlined the general approach, I can’t be
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bothered to do it concretely. (\<3)
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[^pol]:
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I don’t know of any way to discuss these things without either
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moving to a very different audience (which I have no interest in) or
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attempting an act of bridging a moral divide that is akin to making
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a lion speak. Regardless - and I don’t know if that is intentional
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or not - I might eventually have to get there if I ever want to go
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meta and discuss important figures in [Higher
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Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_criticism)
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directly and not just their ideas how to read the NT. But I’ve
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failed to tell Lutherans that they don’t understand Luther, so I’m
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not optimistic about that ever succeeding.
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[^wrong]:
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To be a bit more accurate, the problem is how the concept is learned
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and it basically separates moral subjectivists from moral
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relativists. In the subjectivist view, “Good” is the extension of
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whatever collection of preferences I happen to hold, while moral
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relativists conceive of some distributed concept shared by a
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community, like a language.
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So for example and by analogy, there is a wrong way to speak French
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(even though there is no Standard Written Into The World Itself that
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tells us a priori what French “is” and even though boundaries might
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be fuzzy) and so it makes sense to say someone can learn French
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(because we can provide positive and negative examples). But under
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the subjectivist view, that is not the case because only *I* - or
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rather, the preferences in my skull - define the concept. As such, I
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can *teach* what “Good” means (i.e. *others* can be wrong about it),
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but I can’t *learn* it because I already, by construction, embody
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it. (This ethical egoism may, as a matter of fact, include the value
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of “altruism”, of course - values aren’t justifications.)
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[^close]:
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Look, Internet, I’m sorry but we aren’t *that* close.
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[^mol]:
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Well yes, Molinists can change the past, but then they have to
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negotiate with God and that doesn’t sound any easier, if you ask me…
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[^baum]:
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As Baumeister famously argues, “[bad is stronger than
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good](http://www.csom.umn.edu/Assets/71516.pdf)”.
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@ -0,0 +1,174 @@
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---
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title: Walpurgiskater
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date: 2013-05-01
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techne: :done
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episteme: :log
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---
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> but it’s too late, my friend\
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> too late\
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> but never mind
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>
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> all my trials, lord\
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> will soon be over
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>
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> – all my trials (excerpt)
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As a simple safety precaution, and even though I don’t have a history of
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escalating addictions[^addict], I’m set up a [Beeminder
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goal](https://www.beeminder.com/muflax/goals/smoking) to limit my
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cigarette use. I mean, the financial budget already keeps it at a
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manageable level, but that’s what they all say, isn’t it?
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Nonetheless, I did a simple cost comparisons[^patch] for a
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certain (fairly representative) Rich European Nation with its
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enlightened “heavily tax those who cost you less and who need the stuff
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to self-regulate” drug policy:
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- decent cigarettes: \~0.25 Euro / 1mg nicotine
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- roll your own cigarettes: \~0.10 Euro / 1mg nicotine (all other
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tobacco products are somewhere between those two)
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||||||
|
- lozenges: \~0.06 Euro / 1mg nicotine (that’s for 4mg lozenges, which
|
||||||
|
are easy to split in half, but if you want to actually dose 1mg,
|
||||||
|
you’ll probably have to pay double)
|
||||||
|
- e-cigarette: well… ok, I’m confused by how much usable nicotine they
|
||||||
|
really contain, and what realistic costs are (including hardware),
|
||||||
|
but my best estimate is something like \~0.10 Euro /
|
||||||
|
1mg[^source] (especially as prices are expected to go up
|
||||||
|
thanks to upcoming regulations), which surprises me as I thought
|
||||||
|
they were a lot cheaper. Am I missing something?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I currently don’t have any reasonable way to circumvent those taxes
|
||||||
|
(Eastern European border, I miss ya), so it seems like I’m not actually
|
||||||
|
spending a whole lot of premium on cigarettes. Assuming a 4mg/day
|
||||||
|
maximum (which is a pretty hig upper bound of my current use), I’d have
|
||||||
|
to pay up to \~7 Eurons/month for the cognitive benefits through
|
||||||
|
lozenges (which also ignores that I skip days irregularly because I
|
||||||
|
forget about the stuff, which at least helps keep tolerance down).
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
If I add, say, 10 cigarettes/week (which is a similarly high long-term
|
||||||
|
estimate of my current use) and use lozenges otherwise for the same
|
||||||
|
4mg/day, I’d pay \~9 Eurons/months, not a lot more. (And I love tobacco
|
||||||
|
smoke and discolorations anyway, so this is a reasonable cost just for
|
||||||
|
the pleasant experience, but I’m weird that way. Always loved having
|
||||||
|
smoker friends for their smell, even though I only got interested in the
|
||||||
|
stuff itself a few years ago.) So once my current supplies run out,
|
||||||
|
that’s exactly what I intend to switch to.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
But why stick with 4mg? Maybe that’s too much, maybe not enough? I need
|
||||||
|
a better way to quantify what benefits I get from nicotine (in terms of
|
||||||
|
cognitive enhancement, reduction of *ugh*, regulation of schizotypal
|
||||||
|
symptoms). So I thought about existing options to get data from:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- I can’t use sleep data because my sleep patterns are very irregular
|
||||||
|
and my Zeo data is basically worthless. Back when I tracked it
|
||||||
|
regularly for a few months, I virtually *never* dropped below a ZQ
|
||||||
|
of 90 and saw many anomalies (catastrophic night with a ZQ \> 120
|
||||||
|
etc.), and now Zeo’s dead anyway (pbut).
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- Comparing “time spent on useful projects” is tricky because there’s
|
||||||
|
a lot of noise, but it might be workable if I do it for a
|
||||||
|
sufficiently long period of time and I’m tracking this anyway.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- Anki seems too noisy to evaluate. What would I even measure? Answer
|
||||||
|
time? Correctness percentage is (on average) held constant by the
|
||||||
|
scheduling algorithm and it’s tricky to control for difficulty.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
None of those sound too promising, so I’ve looked into useful short
|
||||||
|
tests I can run once every day. I want the total test suite to be short
|
||||||
|
(\<10min) so I don’t get bored, so I’ll stick with these 3 tests for 2
|
||||||
|
minutes each:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
1. [n-back](http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ) accuracy score
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I remember vaguely from gwern-sensei’s FAQ that it’s currently
|
||||||
|
unknown if there’s a significant difference between single and dual
|
||||||
|
n-back, and because I’m lazy I’ll start with single n-back. I’ll add
|
||||||
|
sound when I get a [round tuit](http://blog.beeminder.com/tuit/).
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
2. Answer time on simple arithmetic problems (“3+2=?”)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
This is [Seth Roberts](http://blog.sethroberts.net/)’ favorite. Many
|
||||||
|
data points per day, plausible mechanism, useful skill. What’s not
|
||||||
|
to like?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
3. [Stroop task](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect) answer
|
||||||
|
time
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
There have been several studies that have shown that schizophrenics
|
||||||
|
have significantly increased Stroop latencies, so it seems like a
|
||||||
|
useful proxy test for schizotypy. The traditional positive/negative
|
||||||
|
symptom tests (besides applying to most people in a philosophy
|
||||||
|
department) are way too imprecise, so this will have to do.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I’ve [hacked together a quick
|
||||||
|
script](https://github.com/muflax/cogatrice) that takes care of the
|
||||||
|
assignments and tests, added a [simple Beeminder
|
||||||
|
goal](https://www.beeminder.com/muflax/goals/cogtest) to ensure daily
|
||||||
|
measurements and I’ll figure out how to analyze the data once I have
|
||||||
|
some. (It’ll take a bit for them to plateau anyway, so I can still work
|
||||||
|
out problems in the protocol as they come up.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
There’s of course still the issue of randomization and blinding.
|
||||||
|
E-cigarettes are relatively easy to blind, but everything else seems
|
||||||
|
hard (use herbal / low-nicotine tobacco that tastes similar?) to
|
||||||
|
impossible (find similar mint lozenges?). So I can’t properly control
|
||||||
|
for placebo, but I can still learn some information about dosage. Next
|
||||||
|
time I buy new lozenges, I’ll also buy weaker ones because they all look
|
||||||
|
and taste the same and so I can blind *strength*. Until then and in
|
||||||
|
addition, I can randomize *scheduling* - I simply randomly do the tests
|
||||||
|
first and then take the nicotine or the other way around. That still
|
||||||
|
provides a baseline to compare the intervention with. Lastly, I’ve also
|
||||||
|
re-instituted my detailed drug log (which I only needed to avoid some
|
||||||
|
nasty interactions, mostly with MAOIs, which I haven’t taken in some
|
||||||
|
time) so I can spot potential patterns.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Empiricism!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So it seems I’m getting back into statistics and how to read scientific
|
||||||
|
papers, and hey, I have some old notes but how much can I’ve really
|
||||||
|
forgotten? Let’s review some simple stuff. What was a p-value again,
|
||||||
|
Wiki-sama?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
> In statistical significance testing the p-value is the probability of
|
||||||
|
> obtaining a test statistic at least as extreme as the one that was
|
||||||
|
> actually observed, assuming that the null hypothesis is true. One
|
||||||
|
> often “rejects the null hypothesis” when the p-value is less than the
|
||||||
|
> predetermined significance level which is often 0.05 or 0.01,
|
||||||
|
> indicating that the observed result would be highly unlikely under the
|
||||||
|
> null hypothesis. Many common statistical tests, such as chi-squared
|
||||||
|
> tests or Student’s t-test, produce test statistics which can be
|
||||||
|
> interpreted using p-values.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Oh for fuck’s sake.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^addict]:
|
||||||
|
I mean, look at that graph. If being very inconsistent in everything
|
||||||
|
I do is a superpower, drug use is probably the only area where it
|
||||||
|
pays off.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^patch]:
|
||||||
|
Ignoring patches, which I found really hard to dose, and gum, which
|
||||||
|
everyone I know who tried to use it had issues with. I also find it
|
||||||
|
difficult to take absorption rates into account, but the “1mg”
|
||||||
|
number is my best guess of effective nicotine, taking the numbers on
|
||||||
|
cigarette boxes at face-value.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
It’s also funny how the nicotine content for each product does *not*
|
||||||
|
generally affect it’s price much (if at all).
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^source]:
|
||||||
|
Raw nicotine content in the liquid isn’t informative as such because
|
||||||
|
it ignores the absorption rate (for which I couldn’t find a good
|
||||||
|
source), other components besides nicotine, and so on. I ultimately
|
||||||
|
went with the quantity of liquid former smokers typically end up
|
||||||
|
using, which seems like a more useful proxy. However, even there
|
||||||
|
good correlations are rarely present and estimates vary a lot. My
|
||||||
|
(not particularly informed) best guess, based on that one study with
|
||||||
|
self-medicating schizophrenics and various forums with smokers, is
|
||||||
|
that one medium-to-high-strength cartridge equals \~6-10 cigarettes.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I did find decent estimates for lozenges (and they fit my personal
|
||||||
|
experience), so those costs are more reliable.
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,318 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
title: Powerdrills and Bonesaws
|
||||||
|
date: 2013-05-23
|
||||||
|
techne: :done
|
||||||
|
episteme: :log
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Mostly just practice, which I report for beeminding purposes. Yay?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I’ve extended the cognitive tests with a simple questionnaire for some
|
||||||
|
daily variables and now also track daily mood split into four variables
|
||||||
|
(energy level, comfortableness, “everything makes sense”-ness, [body
|
||||||
|
load](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_load)) on a scale of
|
||||||
|
1-5[^scale]. I don’t expect that to yield useful correlations
|
||||||
|
(with better than retrodictive powers), but it’s trivial to do, so
|
||||||
|
whatever.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Also, first result: apparently, the more tired I am, the *better* I get
|
||||||
|
at the Stroop test. Can’t rule out practice effects yet, of course, but
|
||||||
|
I think ‘m getting a better feel for “cognitive functions are down, I’m
|
||||||
|
not even bothering to process what this word says”, which makes the
|
||||||
|
Stroop test much easier. Might be a useful thing to notice in general.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I’ve done some work on the next iteration of my language tools (now
|
||||||
|
renamed to “mavothi”), might have some (unusable as-is unless you’re
|
||||||
|
muflax, but maybe interesting nonetheless) results soon.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I’ve also done a lot of work on steno, which I’ve now started to
|
||||||
|
actually practice. Actual practice, guys! I’m becoming functional.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I’ve transitioned some archives to
|
||||||
|
[git-annex](http://git-annex.branchable.com/). For my non-neckbearded
|
||||||
|
readers, git-annex is basically a system to track archives over multiple
|
||||||
|
locations (e.g. external drives, remote servers, different laptops) and
|
||||||
|
automate most of the hassle of having those archives in the first place.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
It has a Dropbox-y assistant which I found really awkward to use and
|
||||||
|
which shredded my configs constantly while I tried to figure out how it
|
||||||
|
works, so I’m not using it (yet) and do everything via shell commands,
|
||||||
|
like a man. So my current setup looks like this:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
1. There are multiple independent archives, currently `~/books`,
|
||||||
|
`~/games/install` (install files, mods etc. for vidya gaems)
|
||||||
|
`~/テレビ` (TV shows and movies) and `~/音` (podcasts, music, etc.),
|
||||||
|
which contain a lot of big media. I have complete daily
|
||||||
|
backups[^backups] of most of this stuff, but I’d like to a)
|
||||||
|
have more backups and b) be able to swap stuff out that I don’t use
|
||||||
|
much. I regularly re-watch [‘Allo
|
||||||
|
‘Allo!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Allo_%27Allo!), but there’s
|
||||||
|
no point in having it on my main machine all the
|
||||||
|
time[^waste]. Git-annex has this nice feature where you can
|
||||||
|
`drop` files from one repository and it replaces them with symlinks
|
||||||
|
so it looks like the file’s still there and you can move it around,
|
||||||
|
but when you try to access it, it’ll tell you what other repository
|
||||||
|
(which still has the file) you need to connect so it can get it
|
||||||
|
back.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
2. I have a whole lot of external drives because I tend to update
|
||||||
|
hardware faster than it breaks, and never throw out old drives (plus
|
||||||
|
I have several sources who give me their old stuff too), so I’ve now
|
||||||
|
set them up as “trusted”[^trusted] repositories for the
|
||||||
|
archives and made sure all files have at least on external copy. I
|
||||||
|
update these archives whenever my main machine is full and I want to
|
||||||
|
drop files off it. That way, every file is always in at least two
|
||||||
|
places and can’t be lost due to drive failure or basic stupidity.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
1. My two laptops (see above) used to just sync my whole home directory
|
||||||
|
via [unison](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/), which is
|
||||||
|
really wasteful and regularly annoys me because their drives are
|
||||||
|
much smaller (and slower), and because unison isn’t too smart.
|
||||||
|
git-annex fixes a lot of these issues because now don’t have to copy
|
||||||
|
*everything*, but can still keep the directory structure synced.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
2. I currently manually sync the laptops with a simple shell script
|
||||||
|
every time I need some data that’s not on the machine, but that
|
||||||
|
should eventually become (semi-)automatic too.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
What I’d like to do later:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
1. I’m currently syncing stuff on my phone through Dropbox (mostly
|
||||||
|
images and audio logs), but once the git-annex android client is a
|
||||||
|
bit more solid, I hope to use it there too so I don’t have to trust
|
||||||
|
Dropbox anymore.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
2. Get the git-annex assistant running so I don’t have to manually add
|
||||||
|
and sync files. That’s still rare enough that it doesn’t bother me
|
||||||
|
much, but allegedly this should already be possible. It just
|
||||||
|
constantly broke on my setup or was horribly slow, for some reason.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A minor belief update.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Back in December[^oldlogs], I wrote:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
> If one were to take a fictionalist approach to the [New Testament],
|
||||||
|
> that is to assume that, excluding maybe a few historical allusions
|
||||||
|
> here and there, they are works of *fiction* […], then it follows that
|
||||||
|
> the original scripture is forever lost to us. We may be able to
|
||||||
|
> reconstruct roughly back to Marcion’s work around 130AD, but no
|
||||||
|
> further. The evidence has simply been lost to time. One may speculate,
|
||||||
|
> as RMP and others frequently do, and all kinds of plausible
|
||||||
|
> explanations might be found, but closure is impossible.
|
||||||
|
>
|
||||||
|
> […]
|
||||||
|
>
|
||||||
|
> And so I realized, I needed not a new proclamation of the message, but
|
||||||
|
> an entirely different work, one capable of reflecting the true author
|
||||||
|
> of confusion. I considered merging all traditions into one gospel, or
|
||||||
|
> using elaborate annotation (even footnotes to footnotes), but then I
|
||||||
|
> thought, ideally the text would be a dialog between all those strands,
|
||||||
|
> would give the Marcionite, the Simonian and the Gnostic their first
|
||||||
|
> fair hearing, and so we really need more gospels written from these
|
||||||
|
> perspectives, including the Devil’s own version that they read down in
|
||||||
|
> Hell, but even that would not be sufficient, not even to replicate the
|
||||||
|
> delightful state of interwoven connections I see in the text, for
|
||||||
|
> nothing short of all of the tradition would be capable of representing
|
||||||
|
> the tradition.
|
||||||
|
>
|
||||||
|
> […]
|
||||||
|
>
|
||||||
|
> But can the text be made *simpler*, without breaking it? After all,
|
||||||
|
> the canonical NT is already reduced, lacking several gospels, epistles
|
||||||
|
> and so on. Yet, it seems to me that these reductions don’t necessarily
|
||||||
|
> simplify the *content* of the text. All ideas are still present, they
|
||||||
|
> just aren’t as close to the surface. And this does not have to
|
||||||
|
> interfere with the interpretation of scripture. After all, the 19th
|
||||||
|
> century Dutch and German radicals managed to reconstruct many aspects
|
||||||
|
> before most of these alternative text had been found! They predicted
|
||||||
|
> the Gnostic texts in great detail and were entirely right.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I still expected that there wasn’t a single source of origin (or linear
|
||||||
|
sequence of origins) for the core NT, that like modern mediums, the
|
||||||
|
authors were telling stories of their own invention with no real
|
||||||
|
connections between them, until decades (and sometimes, centuries) later
|
||||||
|
various churches would try to integrate them into one tradition (with
|
||||||
|
the well-known result that for every assertion in the NT, there is also
|
||||||
|
a counter-assertion that contradicts it). This would make a successful
|
||||||
|
reconstruction essentially impossible because there simple isn’t a
|
||||||
|
coherent shared thread.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I no longer think that’s necessarily true. I’m not sure that there *is*
|
||||||
|
a single source of origin (and if so, that it is knowable) either, but
|
||||||
|
due to a lot of recent reading I’ve done, particularly on the Gospel of
|
||||||
|
John and its possible (more-or-less) Marcionite origin, there now is a
|
||||||
|
budding live hypothesis in my head that would make sense of all the
|
||||||
|
texts and their origin, that answers virtually all important questions
|
||||||
|
about the NT, and that postulates just such a single origin (of Simon
|
||||||
|
-\> Marcionite hermeneutics -\> Catholic hijacking). Funnily enough,
|
||||||
|
that is still in line with my judgment that whatever scripture may have
|
||||||
|
existed before Marcion is lost to us; I just didn’t expect Marcionites
|
||||||
|
to be *that* influential for our canon.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I will discuss all of that in detail in due time, but I’m only about 20%
|
||||||
|
done with all the necessary skills I’ll have to learn (including several
|
||||||
|
languages) and books I’ll have to read (thankfully all in languages I
|
||||||
|
know), so this is obviously speculative play still, but the mere
|
||||||
|
*possibility* of a such a hypothesis and the fact that it can be
|
||||||
|
directly verified with the evidence we do have, is dazzling.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
There are two vectors that I still find deeply puzzling and possibly
|
||||||
|
beyond our reach - where did the Buddhists get their ideas from, and
|
||||||
|
what’s up with Simon?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Christian Lindtner claims (and unfortunately I don’t have the skills yet
|
||||||
|
to even fully comprehend his theory) that the core NT texts are based on
|
||||||
|
Buddhist sources (which Christian scribes could easily have had access
|
||||||
|
to thanks to Ashoka), but then we have to trace the underlying ideas
|
||||||
|
back to India, and there we will likely lose them. Recent research makes
|
||||||
|
me increasingly skeptical that *any* of the Jewish texts meaningfully
|
||||||
|
predates the Hellenistic Period (and many not even Christianity!). The
|
||||||
|
case for Greek priority of the Pentateuch (and a Hebrew translation
|
||||||
|
second!) seems stronger every year, and even if we “merely” have to
|
||||||
|
declare pre-Septuagint developments as forever unknowable, that should
|
||||||
|
equally make us skeptical of Buddhist stories before, say, the
|
||||||
|
Visuddhimagga.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
It would be much easier for my ideas if instead Buddhism took at least
|
||||||
|
its mythological narratives *from* Christianity (and then historicized
|
||||||
|
them way in the past), but that’s not a good criterion for truth. :) And
|
||||||
|
if it is the other way around (which is certainly plausible), then we
|
||||||
|
have to explain, independently, how the Buddhists got started. The
|
||||||
|
connection still deeply confuses me, and I follow Lindtner’s suggestion
|
||||||
|
that I’ll have to learn Sanskrit to adequately understand this
|
||||||
|
eventually.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The other origin, Simon, is equally mysterious because we simply don’t
|
||||||
|
have many crucial sources anymore. RMP makes a decent case that at least
|
||||||
|
his Great Proclamation has been more-or-less completely preserved, but
|
||||||
|
much of it reads like typical Gnostic gibberish. I feel increasingly
|
||||||
|
comfortable with various Marcionite writings and their interpretation,
|
||||||
|
but what’s the deal with Simon? I currently have no idea.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I feel sorry for anyone who wants to start a Post-Simonian Church.
|
||||||
|
Luckily, I’m merely trying to start the Post-Marcionite one, and that
|
||||||
|
seems very much doable. Marcion, Appeles, Valentinus, Basilides and
|
||||||
|
others will be slandered no longer, and one face of “Paul” will be
|
||||||
|
reconstructed once again. But Simon? Who knows. We might have to fall
|
||||||
|
back on channeling after all.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Luther, in his [Commentary on
|
||||||
|
Genesis](http://archive.org/stream/LutherOnTheCreationACriticalAndDevotionalCommentaryOnGenesis1-3/LutherGenesis1-3#page/n17/mode/1up),
|
||||||
|
writes:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
> Therefore it is far the safest not to be too curious and inquiring in
|
||||||
|
> these subjects [i.e. hermeneutics], because they are placed above our
|
||||||
|
> human capacity. For how can we understand that order which God himself
|
||||||
|
> establishes and approves? Yes, reason must here be put to shame, for
|
||||||
|
> what is order in the eyes of God we judge to be confusion of order.
|
||||||
|
> Thus the stars seem to us to be arranged thoughtlessly in wild
|
||||||
|
> disorder in that the bright ones are scattered among those more
|
||||||
|
> obscure, and the lesser among the greater. Who would judge this to be
|
||||||
|
> order? And yet it is the most perfect harmony, so constituted by the
|
||||||
|
> all-wise mind itself. In like manner we judge other matters. It seems
|
||||||
|
> confusing that our Elbe and all rivers flow to the sea in an irregular
|
||||||
|
> winding course. Such disorder there seems to be also among trees, yes,
|
||||||
|
> between man and wife, where it appears there is no order. But all this
|
||||||
|
> only proves that God is a God of order and that his judgment as to
|
||||||
|
> order is quite different than ours.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
We might find ourselves one day, discovering Eris legible all along, in
|
||||||
|
the setup for Creation’s final pun…
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^scale]:
|
||||||
|
Meaning of the scale for the variables, with 2-4 as the typical
|
||||||
|
range:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- energy level:
|
||||||
|
1. “can’t get up”
|
||||||
|
2. “ugh”
|
||||||
|
3. “functional”
|
||||||
|
4. “movement is light, doing stuff is easy”
|
||||||
|
5. “mania”
|
||||||
|
- comfortableness:
|
||||||
|
1. “paranoia”
|
||||||
|
2. “anxiety”
|
||||||
|
3. “people are nice”
|
||||||
|
4. “feelings are awesome”
|
||||||
|
5. “[Overly Attached
|
||||||
|
Girlfriend](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/overly-attached-girlfriend)”
|
||||||
|
- “everything makes sense”-ness:
|
||||||
|
1. “nihilism”
|
||||||
|
2. “knowing stuff is too hard”
|
||||||
|
3. “the world makes sense”
|
||||||
|
4. “everything according to plan”
|
||||||
|
5. “[horse\_ebooks](https://twitter.com/Horse_ebooks/status/326479048945594368)”
|
||||||
|
- body load:
|
||||||
|
1. “Nurgle”
|
||||||
|
2. “nausea”
|
||||||
|
3. “some stomach cramps”
|
||||||
|
4. “Ibuprofen”
|
||||||
|
5. “dissociation”
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^backups]:
|
||||||
|
I use a [custom rsync
|
||||||
|
script](https://github.com/muflax/scripts/blob/master/rbs) to copy
|
||||||
|
everything to a RAID-mirrored backup drive. Daily backups go 1 week
|
||||||
|
back, plus there’s an additional monthly version for the last 3
|
||||||
|
months. I used to have significantly more past versions (monthly
|
||||||
|
backups back to 2010, 2 weeks of daily backups). The main idea was
|
||||||
|
that I wanted to have a safeguard against deleting a file and then,
|
||||||
|
a week later, noticing I actually still wanted it (which happened
|
||||||
|
way too often). Nowadays, I have most of these things in git
|
||||||
|
repositories and spread over multiple locations, so restoring
|
||||||
|
arbitrary past versions is no problem, and I’m far less
|
||||||
|
trigger-happy with deletions in general. The old backups used up a
|
||||||
|
lot of space, so I reduced my backup horizon to 1 week (daily) / 3
|
||||||
|
months (monthly), although I still have one offsite drive with all
|
||||||
|
the old versions (because I only update that every few months).
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I might eventually replace some of that with git-annex too, or
|
||||||
|
something like it, but I’m nowhere near comfortable enough with it
|
||||||
|
to trust it with my core backups.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^waste]:
|
||||||
|
Unfortunately, the `.git` directory itself tends to use up quite a
|
||||||
|
bit of space. For example, my `~/books` directory, which has
|
||||||
|
basically all my read-only documents in it, is \~70GB large and has
|
||||||
|
\~35k files. The `.git` right after adding the files was already
|
||||||
|
\~400M (after doing a `git gc`). However, size tends to depend
|
||||||
|
almost exclusively on the number of files, so I did some
|
||||||
|
restructuring and packed some stuff up, and reduced my number of
|
||||||
|
files to \~8k, and now got only \~160M of `.git` and adding new
|
||||||
|
files is reasonably fast (\<20 seconds on the slowest machine). (And
|
||||||
|
to be fair, part of that is git’s fault, not git-annex’.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So my heuristic for now is that git-annex adds \~1% overhead of the
|
||||||
|
total archive size to every repository, which is still worth it most
|
||||||
|
of the time (because you can distribute stuff and space is
|
||||||
|
reasonably cheap), but it sucks a little.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^trusted]:
|
||||||
|
git-annex has 4 trust levels:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- trusted: files are assumed unchanged since the last time we saw
|
||||||
|
the repository
|
||||||
|
- semitrusted: files count towards required redundancy, but we
|
||||||
|
have to check first if they’re still there
|
||||||
|
- untrusted: location is tracked, but we never expect data to
|
||||||
|
still exist
|
||||||
|
- dead: data is gone
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“trusted” makes sense for backup drives that never change on their
|
||||||
|
own and are only updated in one direction, “semitrusted” is the
|
||||||
|
level for my different machines that might have independent changes
|
||||||
|
that need to be merged, and “untrusted” covers drives that are known
|
||||||
|
to be failing and aren’t dead yet.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^oldlogs]:
|
||||||
|
Old logs are currently unavailable due to some restructuring. Might
|
||||||
|
take some days/weeks/lives.
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,306 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
title: Bel-Marduk
|
||||||
|
date: 2013-06-04
|
||||||
|
techne: :done
|
||||||
|
episteme: :log
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
(Wait what? words? I need to write about stuff we did? *Again*? Didn’t I
|
||||||
|
just… oh well. Fetch me the logs, I’ll docum.. wait, it says there I
|
||||||
|
mostly did Japanese grammar practice, which I can’t meaningfully talk
|
||||||
|
about yet, loads of boring-to-talk-about [deliberate
|
||||||
|
practice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_%28learning_method%29#Deliberate_practice),
|
||||||
|
and work, which I bet I’m not even allowed to talk about because we
|
||||||
|
pretend we’re relevant to the industry? Ok, so can I post a manifesto
|
||||||
|
then? I have a draft and need to get some of this anger out of… no? What
|
||||||
|
about metaphys.. also no?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Listen, Mister. I know you had the best of intentions with this “write
|
||||||
|
about stuff you did because you like explaining stuff, which helps you
|
||||||
|
actually do stuff”, but we have some better tools now, if you haven’t
|
||||||
|
noticed, and while this works well for conceptual stuff, most skills are
|
||||||
|
actually pretty hard to talk about in a meaningful way and learning them
|
||||||
|
doesn’t really leave neat piles of notes that can be trivially converted
|
||||||
|
into posts, so now you’re making me do *extra* work here. Can’t we go
|
||||||
|
back to “deconstruct texts” and stuff? That’s at least
|
||||||
|
fun.[^back]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Yes I know the rules, I *wrote* them, but even Kant would agree that
|
||||||
|
some rules can be broken somet.. ok yes he wouldn’t, but you know what I
|
||||||
|
mean! Look, your paranoia isn’t helping me either! You’re so worried
|
||||||
|
about distant effects of your actions, you’re not letting me talk about
|
||||||
|
topics before you’re sure they’re fully under your control, but you’re
|
||||||
|
still making me adhere to rules that were written under the assumptions
|
||||||
|
that just documenting whatever happens is way awesome, so don’t you see
|
||||||
|
the problem here? A lesson? What lesson could you possibly try to teach
|
||||||
|
me here?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
“Sources of validation”?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I see. Yeah that’s really clever of you. So if I don’t break the rule,
|
||||||
|
I’ll have to find *something* to write about even though I don’t have
|
||||||
|
anything ready yet. Yeah, I get how this extra work is great for your
|
||||||
|
complicated plans. But if I just break it? What th.. whoa, that’s a big
|
||||||
|
graph. That’s *all* conn.. even th.. whoa. Sheesh man, you’re quite the
|
||||||
|
magician, you know that? Yes I know I joked about how I’m doing acausal
|
||||||
|
magic when I wrote the rules. I didn’t expect you *meant* that bit! So
|
||||||
|
if I don’t follow the rules, all.. *that*.. collapses? Well, that’s a
|
||||||
|
pretty [double bind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind) you set
|
||||||
|
up there. Listen,
|
||||||
|
[Watzlawick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Watzlawick)’s books
|
||||||
|
weren’t *instructions* how to mess people up. I don’t care that it
|
||||||
|
works! Don’t
|
||||||
|
[melon](http://www.koanicsoul.com/blog/2012/06/27/how-to-manifest-whatever-you-want/)
|
||||||
|
me! There are nicer ways to get what you want. I hate when you cloud
|
||||||
|
your incentives with magic talk and convoluted narratives. What do you
|
||||||
|
mean that’s the point?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So it’s actually a triple bind? For all three possible modes of response
|
||||||
|
- [loser, clueless,
|
||||||
|
sociopath](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/) - you’ve
|
||||||
|
set up a demand that transparently subverts it, and is in conflict with
|
||||||
|
the other two modes. The loser narrative is unbelievable because I can
|
||||||
|
see the strings, the clueless reward is nonsense because I see you
|
||||||
|
printing that toy money, the sociopath power doesn’t work because I’m
|
||||||
|
afraid what using it will do to me. If I use any option anyway, you
|
||||||
|
still win, and if I transcend their limitations, you also win.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
You’re quite the evil fuck, you know that?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
…
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
…so what now?)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
What’s the saying? If you don’t know what to do, go meta. So I’ll just
|
||||||
|
document one of my recent Beeminding changes.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Starting on 2013-02-28, I redesigned several things: I’ve started to
|
||||||
|
switch from open-ended time-based goals to finite task-based goals,
|
||||||
|
broken my big “do useful stuff” goal into smaller sub-goals, and begun
|
||||||
|
to add percentile feedback.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I explained some of the goal organization [over on
|
||||||
|
Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/beeminder/comments/1e2duf/muflaxs_beeminder/c9wcevw),
|
||||||
|
relevant quote:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
> I used to just track “productive hours / day” so I don’t sit on my ass
|
||||||
|
> too much, but I started to substitute more fun projects for everything
|
||||||
|
> else, so I recently broke that up into various independent groups of
|
||||||
|
> goals: “science”, “guitar”, “code”, “polyglottery” and “job” (ugh). I
|
||||||
|
> still track the total too, but that’s more of a nuclear option (with
|
||||||
|
> the big 90\$ pledge) and I haven’t settled on a good daily goal yet.
|
||||||
|
> If I’m too harsh on any one goal, it’s more likely I just decide it’s
|
||||||
|
> not worth it and fail even though I still have plenty of time to meet
|
||||||
|
> it.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I’ve toned down some of the time-based goals because I found “do stuff
|
||||||
|
for 20 minutes” not very motivating. There’s no sense of progress and “4
|
||||||
|
hours” looks so large, I often didn’t even try to tackle it even when I
|
||||||
|
had plenty of time left. Instead, I’ve begun to convert everything into
|
||||||
|
a TODO list using org-mode. So for example, I’ve just turned every
|
||||||
|
chapter / unit of a textbook into one todo item, which feels much more
|
||||||
|
actionable and is done. (Also wrote [a simple
|
||||||
|
script](https://github.com/muflax/scripts/blob/master/beeminder/beeminder_org_todo.rb)
|
||||||
|
that updates Beeminder goals accordingly.[^org])
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So far this seems to be more productive, but I’ve not been doing it for
|
||||||
|
very long. I tried a simple Bayesian comparison of a before/after
|
||||||
|
dataset, mostly to figure out how R work. I just wanted to use
|
||||||
|
[BEST](http://www.indiana.edu/~kruschke/BEST/), but the normality of
|
||||||
|
“useful hours/day” turned out very low, meaning the data doesn’t seem to
|
||||||
|
fit a normal distribution very well. After looking at a basic histogram:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
<%= image("fume_histogram.png", "Fume Histogram") %>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I saw why. While this looks reasonably Poisson-y, I still don’t
|
||||||
|
understand the underlying assumptions and methods very well, so even
|
||||||
|
though I could hack together a simple version of “I put numbers into
|
||||||
|
this magic box and look at these funny graphs it gave me!”, that
|
||||||
|
wouldn’t be particularly useful.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
However, I just plugged my “total useful hours / day” into a simple
|
||||||
|
Beeminder “weight gain” graph (so that I can track (and then raise) my
|
||||||
|
fluctuating average), and you can still see two improvements (the first
|
||||||
|
time I broke stuff down at the end of March, and the second slope when I
|
||||||
|
transitioned to tasks):
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
<%= image("fumeavg_graph.png", "Fume Average Graph") %>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
(Note that this is zoomed in and cuts off some \>6h outliers. The points
|
||||||
|
are “total useful time” for each day as logged with my time-tracking
|
||||||
|
tool, the thin line is a (slightly lagging) average.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I’m also trying to use this graph and a simple percentile number in
|
||||||
|
[fume](https://github.com/muflax/fume) to implement [Seth’s percentile
|
||||||
|
feedback](http://blog.sethroberts.net/2011/05/01/percentile-feedback-and-productivity/),
|
||||||
|
so instead of just seeing “I did 1.2 hours of useful stuff today”, I
|
||||||
|
also see how good that is compared to the last week.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I’m not sure yet if it actually works in terms of increasing my
|
||||||
|
productive time (not enough data), but at least it’s more motivating and
|
||||||
|
I’ve made significant progress on several projects due to the tiny todos
|
||||||
|
that feel more like “one more turn” instead of “fix ALL the things!”.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I got annoyed with Dropbox mangling my data and so thought, hey my
|
||||||
|
`~/spoiler` directory (i.e. all my notes, todo lists and drafts) is
|
||||||
|
already a (huge) git repository with auto-commit, so I could just use
|
||||||
|
some git solution to sync that between machines. Then all the stuff in
|
||||||
|
Dropbox is either read-only (public shares) or written by only one
|
||||||
|
machine ever (phone -\> desktop) and I won’t have sync issues anymore.
|
||||||
|
Shouldn’t be hard, right?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
What I considered:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
1. Use git-annex. Long-term that’s fine, but currently the assistant
|
||||||
|
ignores the `.gitignore` (wtf?!) and I’m beginning to develop a
|
||||||
|
deep-seated hatred against all Haskell
|
||||||
|
programmers.[^haskell]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
2. Sparkleshare is, quote, “an Open Source collaboration and sharing
|
||||||
|
tool that is designed to keep things simple and to stay out of your
|
||||||
|
way”. It’s also written in C\#. Good joke. Is funny. I laugh.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
3. dvcs-autosync is similar, but “takes a more minimalistic approach”.
|
||||||
|
Which includes no documentation, limited directory awareness and,
|
||||||
|
best of all, *requires a central repository*. It has *“distributed”
|
||||||
|
in its fucking name*. Who’d be so dement.. oh, guy uses Arch Linux.
|
||||||
|
I’m now convinced every Archer is clinically insane.[^arch]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So there isn’t any good tool yet. Well, I could turn one of those
|
||||||
|
(probably dvcs-autosync) into something usable, but ain’t nobody got
|
||||||
|
time for that. So it’s back to my cronjob’d commit-and-pull-everything
|
||||||
|
solution until git-annex’ assistant stops sucking. (Nonetheless, I still
|
||||||
|
put “use dvcs-autosync to auto-commit based on inotify and insta-push
|
||||||
|
via git hook” on my todo, in case I *do* got time for that.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Sigh.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
You know what’s really annoying? Hair feedback time.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So I wanna do this totally awesome undercut thingie[^hipster],
|
||||||
|
but it will take me months, if not a full year until some parts have
|
||||||
|
grown enough that I can pull it off, and until then I can’t do
|
||||||
|
*shit*.[^drunk] I just practice a bit by doing regular
|
||||||
|
maintenance, but how am I supposed to level up my self-sustaining
|
||||||
|
fabulousness if I can make maybe 1-2 big decisions *per year* and
|
||||||
|
mistakes might require rollbacks so large, you gonna have to wait months
|
||||||
|
just to *repeat* them?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On the plus side, while I was going through
|
||||||
|
[http://fuckyeahundercuts.tumblr.com](http://fuckyeahundercuts.tumblr.com),
|
||||||
|
I felt - for the first time in my life - a sense of fear of being
|
||||||
|
outdated, that by the time this “just long enough to poke me in the eye”
|
||||||
|
mess has grown into something that can unambiguously blow in the wind
|
||||||
|
and has enough surface area for a dozen Hello Kitty hair bows, that by
|
||||||
|
then fashion will have moved on and I’ll look so wannabe 90’s, I might
|
||||||
|
as well buy a fedora.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Then I remember no one cares and I go back to Pinterest.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
A mini-review of the newest [Crusader Kings
|
||||||
|
II](http://www.crusaderkings.com/) DLC, [The Old
|
||||||
|
Gods](http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/crusader-kings-ii-the-old-gods).
|
||||||
|
It adds a new start in 867, the year Rurik decided that Russian brides
|
||||||
|
are just the best and he’s gonna grab himself some in
|
||||||
|
Novgorod[^rape], and more importantly, before the spread of
|
||||||
|
Christianity into the East. I’ve always wanted to play before the
|
||||||
|
*Ostsiedlung*, so I just jumped right into Lusatia and decided that
|
||||||
|
minority status isn’t good enough for us
|
||||||
|
[Sorbs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbs), we’re gonna carve
|
||||||
|
ourselves a kingdom in the midst of Vikings, Poles, invading nomads, and
|
||||||
|
worst of all, Bavarians.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The new raid mechanics are a beautiful addition. At first, I was just
|
||||||
|
assembling little hunting parties from time to time because I thought
|
||||||
|
that it was my duty as a Pagan to pillage, but by picking vulnerable
|
||||||
|
Christian provinces too busy with bigger assholes than me, I had quickly
|
||||||
|
transformed my fiscal policy into “whatever the Christians can’t
|
||||||
|
defend”. Greater Poland acting up because it thinks it should own
|
||||||
|
Silesia? Better “borrow” some money from the cities to the south.
|
||||||
|
Vikings landed again? Let’s make it Nürnberg’s problem and buy some
|
||||||
|
mercenaries with their gold. Once I realized I can finance the majority
|
||||||
|
of my armies with ransom money, I couldn’t help but start blasting Death
|
||||||
|
Metal and cheer the burning of churches. The Christians might worship a
|
||||||
|
pathetic god, but at least their coffers come back from the dead year
|
||||||
|
after year, ready for another harvest.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The fascinating thing is how this high lasted for some time until some
|
||||||
|
even bigger Pagan decided I would make a nice addition to their
|
||||||
|
ever-growing list of vassals, and I realized I ain’t got no Divine Right
|
||||||
|
of Kings, I just got a big axe, and after the last succession crisis of
|
||||||
|
6 sons (did I mention those concubines?), I was exhausted and without
|
||||||
|
friends, and maybe all those saints I gladly turned into martyrs
|
||||||
|
might’ve been on to something and I should’ve taken up the Axe of the
|
||||||
|
Apostles instead. But even though the March of Progress might be against
|
||||||
|
me, and even though stability and order win in the long run and I got
|
||||||
|
neither, at least for a few decades I was feared by all and when death
|
||||||
|
inevitably comes, I won’t have any regrets.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
My sons, though, are fucked.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
<%= image("yolo.jpg", "#yolo") %>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^back]:
|
||||||
|
But seriously, I don’t always like to shoe-horn fragments, cool
|
||||||
|
links and “omg they didn’t just write that” parts into logs. I know
|
||||||
|
people use their FB or G+ for that, but I don’t like either site
|
||||||
|
(because at least one of them is probably run by actual soul-eating
|
||||||
|
vampires).
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I wonder if I should start a tumblr. While I don’t have angry
|
||||||
|
opinions about gender yet, I am confused about my personal identity,
|
||||||
|
sexuality, hair style and species. I would like to regularly reblog
|
||||||
|
[sassy
|
||||||
|
pugs](https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/390eb27ac775f1db1a416ca9172c28aa/tumblr_mnqtmuomAa1r8hf8lo1_400.gif)
|
||||||
|
and summarize complex arguments with a reaction.gif, but I’m not
|
||||||
|
sure if I’m ready to become a 15-year-old girl full-time.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
There needs to be a place that is kinda in-between FB and tumblr. A
|
||||||
|
fumblr, if you will.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^org]:
|
||||||
|
Beeminder has native Trello integration, which is probably a good
|
||||||
|
alternative if you’re not already familiar with org-mode. Still,
|
||||||
|
Trello doesn’t have nested items and can’t be used offline, so
|
||||||
|
that’s somewhat annoying.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^haskell]:
|
||||||
|
Seriously, Haskell has a worse dependency hell than the ARM code I
|
||||||
|
maintain *which still uses gcc 2.95*. Oh, I need to update a minor
|
||||||
|
library from `x.y.3` to `x.y.4`? *Every single Haskell program ever*
|
||||||
|
on my machine is now broken. I hate academics.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^arch]:
|
||||||
|
Sometimes I feel like ranting about Arch, but then I remember
|
||||||
|
*pacman doesn’t even have versioned packages* and I don’t think any
|
||||||
|
more needs to be said about it. At least the
|
||||||
|
[suckless](http://suckless.org/) guys make great trolls and
|
||||||
|
occasionally write cool projects. Arch just seems to rot the mind
|
||||||
|
with cargo cult minimalism.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^hipster]:
|
||||||
|
Look, I have strong opinions about the metaphysics and epistemology
|
||||||
|
of 19th century Dutch theologians. It’s pretty much mandatory that I
|
||||||
|
either look like Skrillex or an 80’s bum. Which isn’t mutually
|
||||||
|
exclusive, fortunately.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^drunk]:
|
||||||
|
I expect to get drunk sometime this week, do it anyway, freak out,
|
||||||
|
complain on Twitter, then love my decisiveness and use the
|
||||||
|
experience as yet another guilt token later, admonishing myself why
|
||||||
|
I can’t be as awesome as I used to be. That’s how I usually get
|
||||||
|
stuff done I have issues about.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^rape]:
|
||||||
|
As [mrout on
|
||||||
|
Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/1f9519/the_concubine_system_is_awesome/ca7zp8l)
|
||||||
|
said, “Hey Japan! This is how you do a rape game without being weird
|
||||||
|
about it.”.
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,422 @@
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
title: Hamiltonian
|
||||||
|
date: 2013-08-21
|
||||||
|
techne: :done
|
||||||
|
episteme: :log
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
<%= youtube("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI2GauQ1eiU") %>
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hey, internet! So a lot of stuff’s been happening. As I alluded to in
|
||||||
|
some off-hand comments here and there, I’ve been busy transitioning into
|
||||||
|
adulthood, or whatever passes as that for me anyway. (I’ve internally
|
||||||
|
just begun to call it Chapter 1, and everything before now Prologue,
|
||||||
|
because I’m stupid like that.[^stupid])
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
This process is still ongoing, but instead of waiting for another 2
|
||||||
|
months or so and then recapping, I thought I could just get back to
|
||||||
|
writing now, while stuff’s still happening. Crazy idea, I know!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I am, in a certain sense, done with my CS degree, and as you can tell by
|
||||||
|
that weaselly phrase, I mean that I’ve dropped out instead of continuing
|
||||||
|
that torturous phase of my past for yet another year. The only real
|
||||||
|
reason I even started the degree was because I didn’t have any other
|
||||||
|
idea what else to do, and was using it to cheaply buy time. That worked
|
||||||
|
out reasonably well - in total, I got half a decade out of it, and grew
|
||||||
|
enough in the process (and met the right people, and ideas) that I now
|
||||||
|
think it was absolutely the right decision. Maybe there would’ve been
|
||||||
|
better alternatives (if so, I still don’t know what they would’ve been,
|
||||||
|
beyond a “don’t take so long to stop being lame” reminder that’s
|
||||||
|
probably only applicable with hindsight), but regardless, well done,
|
||||||
|
past-me, It wasn’t fancy or heroic, but it worked just fine.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Still, it took me probably a good year to actually make the decision to
|
||||||
|
drop out after I knew I wasn’t gonna continue this path and had begun to
|
||||||
|
see an alternative. Sometimes more legible options appear stronger just
|
||||||
|
because they are legible. A degree is of fairly straightforward value -
|
||||||
|
you can easily look up income statistics and job requirements, compare
|
||||||
|
it to the time investment of college, there ya go - and any part that
|
||||||
|
isn’t easy to quantify gets thrown out of the evaluation. Like for
|
||||||
|
example, despising virtually all options it opens up, not having much
|
||||||
|
use for it on the paths I *do* like, and continuing now that I have
|
||||||
|
actually found said real options would just be a waste of time.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
You are now allowed to shun me based on my lack of academic credentials.
|
||||||
|
I don’t mind - destroying academia is on my todo list, and regular
|
||||||
|
reminders why it has to go probably help.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So did I mention I actually [started a tumblr](http://muflax.tumblr.com)
|
||||||
|
for random snippets and stuff? I’m still not sure if I’m gonna use it or
|
||||||
|
anything, but nice pictures keep popping up, and maybe I end up writing
|
||||||
|
a few short thingies over there. So far I’ve mostly been reblogging
|
||||||
|
[Homestuck](http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6) ships.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Like I said over there, I’d like to eventually talk more coherently (and
|
||||||
|
not just meta, but also directly) about ships, and art, and related
|
||||||
|
things (, and the Oxford Comma), but I’m still not quite feeling it, so
|
||||||
|
maybe it’s just not the right time, or I don’t have enough interesting
|
||||||
|
things to say, or whatever. We’ll see. Anyway, it exists now.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Look, a pug!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So instead of being a productive member of society, I was mostly busy
|
||||||
|
with <del>building additional pylons</del> figuring out how to money, keeping
|
||||||
|
Mother Bureaucracy updated and working on moving in together with my
|
||||||
|
[moirail](http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Quadrants)
|
||||||
|
[^moirail][^otp][^language][^footnotes]
|
||||||
|
somewhere in the UK, which will happen in about 2 months when my
|
||||||
|
contract at the university runs out and I can leave the country.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
(This might be a good opportunity to point out how
|
||||||
|
[Homestuck](http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6) has one of the saner
|
||||||
|
models of romance and gender, and that this is one of countless benefits
|
||||||
|
trolls bring to any story they touch.[^trolls] It also
|
||||||
|
highlights by analogy some silliness in the conventional human model by
|
||||||
|
showing similar silliness in the troll model. While some trolls insist
|
||||||
|
that *ideal* relationships divide nicely into the Four Quadrants, it’s
|
||||||
|
clear that in most cases this isn’t the case and it’s much fuzzier, even
|
||||||
|
though the quadrants still represent some important components, so wiser
|
||||||
|
trolls would realize that and take a more reasonable stance and oppose a
|
||||||
|
system that tries to enforce restrictive norms (which, for all we know,
|
||||||
|
they *do* - troll society and history is… complicated, as it should be).
|
||||||
|
But in contrast to that, trolls *already* have a much better position on
|
||||||
|
gender than the humans, who do the same essentialist “two ideal
|
||||||
|
categories” crap trolls do with the quadrants.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So there.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
On a completely unrelated note, I just want to note how weird it is that
|
||||||
|
“yay I’m happy” posts can cause some seriously bad side-effects, and
|
||||||
|
that I remember being personally pissed off by them in the past,
|
||||||
|
thinking something along the lines of, “well good for YOU that you’re
|
||||||
|
happy, I’m still a lonely mess”, and so even though saying (and feeling)
|
||||||
|
these things is very important, I still feel uncomfortable talking about
|
||||||
|
it, and so will abstain from any more details for now. Compassionate
|
||||||
|
community norms are *hard*, and I wanna at least think about them some
|
||||||
|
more.[^sharing]
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Regardless, actually moving (especially to a different country) means I
|
||||||
|
had to adapt some of my setups.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I won’t be able to bring my guitar with me for now, but might be able to
|
||||||
|
fly it over next year or so. I’m kinda glad I opted for gear that is
|
||||||
|
fairly mobile, so transport should be fairly easy once I don’t also have
|
||||||
|
to bring all my *other* stuff with me. I’m still committed to the frugal
|
||||||
|
ideal that everything you own should comfortably fit into one car at
|
||||||
|
most (or you end up limiting your freedom too much), so it’s mostly the
|
||||||
|
amp that’s causing trouble (and it’s still primarily monetary concerns
|
||||||
|
that I didn’t pick an even smaller one, which oddly enough cost *more*;
|
||||||
|
if things go as they usually do, I’ll eventually just build my own).
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I’ve also gotten rid of my old PC setup. I used to have one
|
||||||
|
Frankensteinian desktop machine that I cheaply turned into a decent-ish
|
||||||
|
gaming rig, but I’ve long intended to retire it. I also had two old-ish
|
||||||
|
laptops, and loads of small drives for backups and stuff. The desktop
|
||||||
|
was kinda the central machine and everything else synced with it. I now
|
||||||
|
switched to one fancy 13-inch MacBook (still running Gentoo, after some
|
||||||
|
headaches), kept my
|
||||||
|
[keyboard](http://www.diatec.co.jp/en/det.php?prod_c=763) and mouse for
|
||||||
|
work that requires them, and put the two large 1.5TB drives from my
|
||||||
|
desktop (which mirror each other) into a portable NAS. My total space
|
||||||
|
capacity went down a bit that way, and I lost the ability to play some
|
||||||
|
high-end games (for now), but meh. (I still kept the old netbook for
|
||||||
|
some additional mobility though, but it’s semi-retired.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
That simplifies my synchronization and backup needs somewhat. All
|
||||||
|
small-ish things are automatically copied to various online places. Each
|
||||||
|
laptop does a daily backup to the NAS, which also stores most of the big
|
||||||
|
media via git-annex. The NAS runs a custom Debian, so it’s also a server
|
||||||
|
for all kinds of minor things, including Nethack. Every time I get my
|
||||||
|
hands on any other drive I copy as much data onto it as I can fit
|
||||||
|
(because why not; I just put my old drives in a box at my parents’ - no
|
||||||
|
reason to throw them out), but that’s now gonna be a maybe-once-a-year
|
||||||
|
event. (Also, git-annex on an SSD is finally fast enough to be fully
|
||||||
|
usable.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I was afraid that losing my two big monitors would hurt the most, but
|
||||||
|
because I spend most of my time in a text editor or browser anyway, it’s
|
||||||
|
actually not a big deal. Workspaces work just as well as additional
|
||||||
|
monitors, and 13 inches is plenty. The only thing that’s a pain is if I
|
||||||
|
still had to use Eclipse for Java work, but screw that - I’m finally in
|
||||||
|
pure Ruby and Haskell nirvana. (I wouldn’t *reject* more monitors if I
|
||||||
|
had them available, but I’m not gonna try to carry any around with me
|
||||||
|
either.) And finally, not having a “central” machine I can’t move means
|
||||||
|
I can now easily snuggle up next to someone and still code, regardless
|
||||||
|
where said person happens to be. That’s *so* much more important than
|
||||||
|
screen size.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I still feel kinda sentimental about a “cabin in the woods” setup with
|
||||||
|
lots of ancient hardware that runs some custom setup where you wrote
|
||||||
|
half the tools (as I used to run for the last few years, and would like
|
||||||
|
to have again some time), so having just one main machine (and one
|
||||||
|
server-in-a-box) is kinda weird.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Guess I’m a nomad now.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Hahaha, oh man. Do you guys remember how over a year ago, I made a List
|
||||||
|
Of All My Problems? It was like 260 items long and I thought, yeah,
|
||||||
|
that’s probably *it* - some issues might’ve been vague, sure, and others
|
||||||
|
irrelevant, but I didn’t think I’d have forgotten anything important.
|
||||||
|
Who doesn’t know what their Main Issues are, right?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I recently looked at this list again and it’s *ridiculous*. It’s not
|
||||||
|
just incredibly petty sometimes, many things that have deeply bothered
|
||||||
|
me for years and are reason enough to plunge me into suicidality
|
||||||
|
whenever they seem unfixable aren’t even on there!
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
It’s liberating when radical agnosticism shifts from not knowing most
|
||||||
|
answers to not even being sure about the questions. If I don’t even know
|
||||||
|
what my real problems are, how can I possibly be upset about them?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
(Also basically everything important on that list has been fixed by
|
||||||
|
now.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So what’s next?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Step 1, the prototype: teach a complex skill and make it no longer hard.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
After considering various options in detail[^options], we’ve
|
||||||
|
decided to start with German for English speakers. Because we’re still
|
||||||
|
developing the courses and improving our teaching skills (well, learning
|
||||||
|
from scratch based on ancient scrolls, really), we’re gonna spend a few
|
||||||
|
months solely on that and in-person testing, and then Disturb The Peace.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So if you wanna learn German For Reals Without All The Tedium And Crap
|
||||||
|
(or just wanna meet up with me and talk whatever (I’m totes sociable now
|
||||||
|
(when I’m not a paranoid ball of anxiety (but I now have a superweapon
|
||||||
|
against that (it’s not nested parentheses (just in case you
|
||||||
|
wondered)))))), and you’re somewhere in the UK, just leave a comment or
|
||||||
|
[contact me](/contact/) in any way you want, and I’ll put you on The
|
||||||
|
List and try to make stuff happen as soon as I’m able. (Once the thing
|
||||||
|
has been sufficiently tested, there will be an automated, and more
|
||||||
|
importantly, online version, of course. Can’t change the world with just
|
||||||
|
one meager town and face-to-face interaction, but direct feedback makes
|
||||||
|
early development so much easier, so yeah.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
(Step 2-10 are left unmentioned to maintain the Unspoken Plan Guarantee.
|
||||||
|
Things will become clearer eventually.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
---
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Regardless, that means the next few months are completely filled up by
|
||||||
|
logistics, development and being amazed how I can continue to fall even
|
||||||
|
more in love every day. Some of that might eventually get better, some
|
||||||
|
might not, but I don’t expect too much writing to happen for a while,
|
||||||
|
unless I find a way to harvest the power of smooching to produce some
|
||||||
|
wicked posts. (I’ve also lost parts of my writing urges for various
|
||||||
|
reasons[^reasons], some likely permanently so, but these things
|
||||||
|
come and go. I’ve had quiet years and hypergraphic years before.)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
In terms of kinda-planned drafts, I’ve begun to write down my way too
|
||||||
|
elaborate Jesus RPG campaign. I’ve given up on ever running it and just
|
||||||
|
want it out of my head. I’m about 4k words in, might actually finish the
|
||||||
|
thing soon enough, maybe start posting it in small-ish installments once
|
||||||
|
I’ve sketched out the whole post structure.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So overall, I think it’s a good idea to just declare Mission
|
||||||
|
Accomplished for the daily logs. I’ve done my first crazy miracle and
|
||||||
|
I’m busy working on the next. This site is now officially “whenever,
|
||||||
|
whatever”, as long as its kinda coherent. The rest goes to the tumblr.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
…
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Man, [being an adult](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ) is
|
||||||
|
*awesome*.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^stupid]:
|
||||||
|
This is stupid for several reasons:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- it smushes everything before now into one Prologue, when really
|
||||||
|
there are multiple clear “everything changed forever” events
|
||||||
|
during that time (e.g. first anime, first time taking Ayahuasca,
|
||||||
|
first website (on a shittier version of Geocities, no less)) and
|
||||||
|
there’s no overarching unified progression during the whole
|
||||||
|
thing (like, Batman loses his parents in his prologue - what one
|
||||||
|
critical thing happened to me, exactly?)
|
||||||
|
- it places great emotional importance on events that haven’t even
|
||||||
|
unfolded yet, like I have secret insights into God’s Narrative
|
||||||
|
or sumthin’
|
||||||
|
- it uses linear narratives, not
|
||||||
|
[shandified](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwlt4FqmS0) ones
|
||||||
|
(who’s to say I won’t *return* to Chapter 1 at some later
|
||||||
|
point?)
|
||||||
|
- it implicitly assumes one arc has one theme, or at most several
|
||||||
|
exactly parallel ones; in other words, whatever Chapter 1 is
|
||||||
|
about *ends* with Chapter 1, and if some other stuff happens
|
||||||
|
during that time, it either has to end there too, or it must
|
||||||
|
just not be what my life is really about
|
||||||
|
- it strongly suggest there must chapters after it, thus
|
||||||
|
undermining my ability to Fix Everything Forever Like I’m Made
|
||||||
|
Out Of Pure Fixeverythingium
|
||||||
|
- and seriously, “1”? you can’t even name it something cool, like
|
||||||
|
The One With The Robot Snake?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^moirail]:
|
||||||
|
Don’t know what a moirail is? [Read the
|
||||||
|
link](http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Quadrants). While the
|
||||||
|
concept strongly overlaps with “bros” and similar things, these tend
|
||||||
|
to not get the romantic component of it, or imply weird ideas like
|
||||||
|
how this kind of relationship is inherently asexual (fuck no),
|
||||||
|
partially I suspect because just mainstream romance/sexuality
|
||||||
|
discourse is retarded, so I’m declaring a Special Snowflake
|
||||||
|
Exception for “moirail”, as it seems easier to repair these
|
||||||
|
misconceptions in a troll-originated concept, than to get [bros to
|
||||||
|
finally suck
|
||||||
|
cock](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeIAmA/comments/1j3uo9/explain_the_term_bromance_like_you_are_a_deeply/)
|
||||||
|
and not feel guilty about it.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Incidentally, the pronunciation of “moirail” is delightfully trolly.
|
||||||
|
Personally, I use “meow-rail” for normal use, and “mwah-rail” (with
|
||||||
|
implied kissing) when flirting.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^otp]:
|
||||||
|
I’d also like to note that even though this establishes a canon (and
|
||||||
|
muflax-endorsed) \<\> and \<3 dual-ship of muflax+Owen (and I’d
|
||||||
|
argue in favor of OTP here), this only expresses my (and Owen’s, and
|
||||||
|
arguably the universe’s author’s) opinion, and is no reason to
|
||||||
|
abandon other ships or your personal headcanon. I oppose any central
|
||||||
|
authority on these matters, even if it might happen to agree with
|
||||||
|
me.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
(I also find it really weird to use two different types of names,
|
||||||
|
but I wanna be consistent about only using “muflax” for now, even
|
||||||
|
though using my first name would allow for an S+O=SO pun, but then I
|
||||||
|
hate the “SO” term, so nevermind…)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
I’ve only dabbled in o8\< (mostly by not-always-intentionally
|
||||||
|
trolling certain people by acting as a proxy for mindfucky ideas by
|
||||||
|
other (crazier) people, and so leading them to write wonderful “the
|
||||||
|
fuck is this stuff even about?! I never knew about X until last
|
||||||
|
week, and now I’ve realized I’ve hated it MY ENTIRE LIFE!” posts; I
|
||||||
|
noticed I’m doing this when friends in 6th grade told me I was the
|
||||||
|
one who introduced them to kink, somehow), and I’m totally lacking
|
||||||
|
in \<3\<. I mean, I kinda hate
|
||||||
|
[Polycarp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarp) but not quite
|
||||||
|
enough, and if the [alveolar
|
||||||
|
trill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_trill) were a person,
|
||||||
|
I’d wanna have angry hatesex with it so hard, but I’m not sure that
|
||||||
|
counts.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So the most promising shipping research topic is probably who my
|
||||||
|
arch-nemesis is gonna be. Somehow I mostly get into fights with
|
||||||
|
concepts, not people.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^language]:
|
||||||
|
Also, I’m *really* unhappy with established terms to talk about
|
||||||
|
“person who I love, like, THIIIIS much”. Like (girl|boy)friend? Fuck
|
||||||
|
that. “partner”? Like, the government gets to call ‘em “partner” if
|
||||||
|
it wants, and I find it kinda adorable what weirdly formal language
|
||||||
|
it comes up with, but it’s not really a very affectionate label, is
|
||||||
|
it? Seriously, all options are either super-formal, horrible or real
|
||||||
|
silly. (I’m *never* gonna use “SO”. This is too stupid even for me.)
|
||||||
|
I’d be ok with “lover” if it didn’t have this connotation that it
|
||||||
|
isn’t a serious thing, or “mate” if Australians hadn’t ruined it. So
|
||||||
|
for now until I find a term (neologic if necessary) I’m happy with,
|
||||||
|
I expect to mood-swing through “partner”, “moirail”, “love” (and I
|
||||||
|
really wanna use “hon”, but then I’m tempted to practice a Southern
|
||||||
|
accent all day and never get anything else done), and whatever else
|
||||||
|
feels slightly less awkward that day.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Man, /language/, amirite?
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^footnotes]:
|
||||||
|
That’s a lot of footnotes for one word! It’s as if there’s a
|
||||||
|
correlation with how important the topic is to me, or the thing it
|
||||||
|
refers to…
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^trolls]:
|
||||||
|
Seeker, wear the [troll
|
||||||
|
hide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_mask), learn [the
|
||||||
|
signs of the
|
||||||
|
dakinis](http://buddhism-for-vampires.com/dakinis-karma-mudra) and
|
||||||
|
wander into the [Bohemian
|
||||||
|
forest](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moulin_Rouge!), where you will
|
||||||
|
find a [four-headed statue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perun)
|
||||||
|
proclaiming Beauty, Freedom, Truth and Love, which grants liberation
|
||||||
|
to all who know the magic song. A servant of [Grandma
|
||||||
|
Bonylegs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga) once sung it to
|
||||||
|
me, but I can never quite [keep it in my
|
||||||
|
head](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvFpJBJSPRA)…
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^sharing]:
|
||||||
|
Part of my writing philosophy has always been “write what I actually
|
||||||
|
wanna read more of”, and so I’m pissed at myself that I *don’t*
|
||||||
|
share a lot more here, cause this is exactly what I’d love to read
|
||||||
|
about, and so not doing it is a concession to lameness itself. But
|
||||||
|
I’m also paranoid about various perverse incentives and
|
||||||
|
substitutions (i.e. writing more about the thing than actually doing
|
||||||
|
the thing, or in this case, person (BOOM FLAWLESS INNUENDO)), and so
|
||||||
|
for now I’m gonna be mostly silent while I think it through.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
The other problem is that *this stuff is hard to write about*. It’s
|
||||||
|
weird how “this is not a *real* medium” is one of those statements
|
||||||
|
that *incredibly* piss me off, like every time someone says “games
|
||||||
|
aren’t art” or “but you can’t trust someone over *text*” (aside from
|
||||||
|
the retarded conceptions of “art” and “trust” that underlie this
|
||||||
|
nonsense), and so *not being able to write about something* because
|
||||||
|
I just wouldn’t know how is a deep moral failure for me, and when I
|
||||||
|
find myself thinking “I can’t write about that, who would want to
|
||||||
|
read that?!, and anyway, I don’t even know how to english it to
|
||||||
|
begin with”, I feel like I’m Failing At Life, and everything that
|
||||||
|
matters *at all* gets betrayed because of some stupid sense of
|
||||||
|
boundaries or expectations.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
So I gotta figure something out, and beat this old narrative machine
|
||||||
|
into a decent enough approximation of half my feels. Just gimme some
|
||||||
|
time to adjust.
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^options]:
|
||||||
|
Also considered, among other things:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- different places, most importantly Canada (but their bureaucracy
|
||||||
|
tries to cockblock me as hard as it can while still claiming
|
||||||
|
they want valuable immigration with a straight face), and Berlin
|
||||||
|
(not ideal for the skill set we currently have, but I’d still
|
||||||
|
like to re-visit at some point in the near future, maybe in the
|
||||||
|
form of some grand Europe Tour)
|
||||||
|
- different language, primarily French (possibly the next one),
|
||||||
|
Japanese (would love to do it next, but I really want either
|
||||||
|
more teaching experience or a fluent speaker to work with first,
|
||||||
|
so it had to wait) and English (not enough resources right now)
|
||||||
|
- math and physics up to undergraduate level or so (much harder to
|
||||||
|
get a properly incentivized audience, but real high up on the
|
||||||
|
list and long-term mandatory (and I like everything about it,
|
||||||
|
including teaching it), but not the right thing to bootstrap
|
||||||
|
with)
|
||||||
|
- different timeline / “business model” / major reordering of The
|
||||||
|
Plan (long story, but tl;dr: everything else is predictably
|
||||||
|
stupid-in-retrospect, and so doesn’t make sense)
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
[^reasons]:
|
||||||
|
Various reasons:
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
- much lower need for outside approval, and actively working on
|
||||||
|
lowering it even more; [Arline’s
|
||||||
|
Mantra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Do_You_Care_What_Other_People_Think%3F)
|
||||||
|
“What Do *You* Care What Other People Think?” helps a lot to
|
||||||
|
clarify and work through these issues, but kills ranty blogs
|
||||||
|
dead
|
||||||
|
- after some discussions with
|
||||||
|
[David](http://meaningness.com/metablog/how-to-think) and Owen,
|
||||||
|
I’m pretty strongly in the “most philosophy (i.e. the stuff I
|
||||||
|
talked about a lot) has only negative value by removing
|
||||||
|
misconceptions” camp now, so the only interesting stuff for me
|
||||||
|
is foundational stuff that directly leads to engineering stuff,
|
||||||
|
and so I find myself only reading Skinner, Mill and similar
|
||||||
|
folks, if even that
|
||||||
|
- too sane; I kinda have a tendency to get worked up about stupid
|
||||||
|
shit (in entertaining ways, at least, but still) when I don’t
|
||||||
|
have a calming influence in my life; have that now, feel much
|
||||||
|
less crazy (except in a good way)
|
||||||
|
- speaking of Feynman and craziness, you gotta *do* crazy shit
|
||||||
|
occasionally so you can later *talk about it*; currently in that
|
||||||
|
phase
|
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Reference in New Issue