Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)S

snek_boi

@ snek_boi @lemmy.ml

Posts
40
Comments
340
Joined
4 yr. ago

  • Why is kindness often viewed as a sign of naïveté?

    Jump

  • Here’s three ideas that come up:

    This reminds me of the Fool’s Choice: you either lie and keep friends or you tell the truth and lose friends.

    Similarly, I suppose that people who see kindness as a sign of naiveness have not learned how hostage negotiators do their work. A good hostage negotiator will act kindly, but they’re anything but naive.

    Finally, I suppose whoever is deciding to ‘walk over kind people’ has lots of fears and a fragile identity they need to protect.

    Let me know if you’re interested in learning about where these ideas come from.

  • It is linguistically impossible to behave anyone but yourself

    Jump

  • As in “nobody acts like you”?

    Or as in “nobody’s words but your own words can guide your behavior”?

    Or as in “nobody but you can describe your own behavior”?

    Something else?

  • Ouch!

    Jump

  • Oh I assumed it was a cocktail thing, but now I’m not so sure

  • How do you effectively counter serious cognitive dissonance in loved ones?

    Jump

  • These two books have helped me enormously in having transformative conversations:

    • Never Split the Difference
    • Crucial Conversations

    And you can understand their way of thinking and how to communicate better ideas with

    • Don’t Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff

  • Do you or don't you believe in comeuppance? If so why or why not?

    Jump

  • I’m glad we both want to see fairness and kindness in the world. I see you interpret cruelty, abuse, and dishonesty’s effects as respect. I see it a bit differently. When I see cruelty, abuse, and dishonesty, I usually see fear, terror, hiding, lying— anything but respect.

    If I see a serial killer who tortures people, I would never respect them. I’d probably fear them. But fear is not respect.

    To me, respect is deep admiration. It involves feeling aligned in values, feeling that someone is doing things right and well. If someone is doing things wrong and cruelly, I’d feel deep disrespect towards them.

    I suppose our cultures have wrongly conflated respect and fear. People don’t command respect. They deserve it and earn it. They deserve base respect for the mere fact of being human trying to be happy in a brutal world. And they earn admiration-like respect when their hearts are aligned with virtue.

  • "They're the same picture"

    Jump

  • Huh. I hope we can get to understand the post by talking about it. I'm not trying to be condescending or annoying. I'm trying to see what you see. What did you think at first the image showed and how did the comment about tankies lead you to second-guess?

  • Is possible to learn to swim, just by reading a lot about it?

    Jump

  • My grandpa was born and raised in an industrial town that didn't have access to pools or anything like that. He decided to learn to swim by reading a book and practicing in his living room. He would lay down on a bench or a seat and practice the motions. Every year, he'd go to a nearby town that did have a pool, and he'd sit for hours hearing how kids were taught to swim. He'd then go back to his living room and practice based on that.

    So, how did he swim? Luckily, looking at him swim was something I could do with my own eyes. And just by the look of it, you'd never tell he learned on a bench.

  • What are your approaches to donating?

    Jump

  • There’s actually research on this. There are groups of people that donate more than others. There are two groups of people that really matter for this: people who have protection values and people who have democratic values.

    People with protection values care about themselves and their people (their family, their clan, their tribe, their religion, their nation). People with democratic values care about humans in general, regardless of their religion, nationality, what family they come from, etc.

    So, who donates more money? People with democratic values.

    You can check out Christian Welzel’s Freedom Rising for more on this :)

  • Asking for a friend

    Jump

  • Why are ghosts never racist?

    Jump

  • Ghosts are the creation of our minds. And it turns out that our minds are flawed machines. This was shown by someone and they won a Nobel Prize for it (Daniel Kahnemann). If we understand our flawed minds, we understand why ghosts aren’t racist.

    When you think of something, you run a simplified simulation of it. When you run these simulations, you don’t think about other things. For example, when people fantasize about achieving something, they usually run the simulation of having gotten the job and the money or having solved the tough problem. However, they usually don’t think about the path to achieving that goal. This is called the planning fallacy. It’s also called the Motivation Wave in Behavior Design.

    Another example of these simplified simulations is the halo effect. The halo effect starts when you notice something good about someone. Maybe they’re attractive. Maybe they’re on your same team or political group or religion or whatever. The thing is that you end up building a good preconception of that person. You assume they’re kind and smart and many other positive things. Again, your mind is running a simplified simulation. Even if you notice bad stuff about the other person, you may ignore it because our mind is a flawed machine and it’s stuck with the idea that the other person is good.

    So, how do simplified simulations lead to non-racist ghosts? Well, we all share an idea of what a ghost is. We tell each other ghost stories or we watch movies with ghosts in them. All of that feeds the simplified simulations we run when we think of ghosts. And we don’t include racism in those simulations.

    This doesn’t mean that we can’t escape simplified simulations. This is a tough problem that many people have tried to solve in many different ways. These attempts have resulted in an arsenal of methods: psychological flexibility exercises, mental contrasting, pre-mortems, the Delphi method, red team blue team exercises, weak signal detection, etc. Notice that all of these tools try to transform our preconceptions.

    Of course, a very simple way of transforming our preconceptions is to prove them wrong. I suppose in the case of non-racist ghosts, it’s a matter of creating racist ghosts. This project, however, brings up the old adage: just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

    If you’re interested in simplified simulations, I recommend Lisa Feldman Barret’s books. You can also check out Daniel Kahnemann, Gary Klein, and Dave Snowden.

  • What game changing item*s can you buy for $100 or less?

    Jump

  • Ah that makes sense. Maybe it's a European/US difference, but it could be just a Time Timer thing. My air fryer is from an American company and it has the same timer as you (wind it up clockwise, then the hand moves counter-clockwise).

    I wonder if both types of timers (wind up clockwise and wind up counter-clockwise) seek to distinguish themselves from normal clocks in different ways:

    • Wind up clockwise timers (like your stove and my airfryer) let you know it's not a normal clock by flowing counter-clockwise.
    • Clockwise timers (like a Time Timer) let you know it's not a normal clock by having a red disk slowly become smaller.

  • What game changing item*s can you buy for $100 or less?

    Jump

  • Earplugs come in different sizes. Maybe it's a matter of experimenting?

  • What game changing item*s can you buy for $100 or less?

    Jump

  • Ah. To set up the timer, you do pull the hand counter clockwise, as if you were pulling a spring-loaded car backwards for it to move forward on its own. After you release the Time Timer, its hand will move forward on its own, normally, clockwise.

    It is a bit unusual, but the point of the timer is to see how much time you’ve got left. It’s like a battery charge percentage. You know that when the battery reaches zero, you’ve got to charge it up again.

    I hope the explanation helps. If not, feel free to ask or to check out the videos in the Time Timer website. After all, it is a strange product.

  • What game changing item*s can you buy for $100 or less?

    Jump

  • A Time Timer.

    They're not cheap, especially for a timer that's bare bones (~20 USD).

    But it has changed my work life.

    1. People who want to interrupt me while I'm working can now see how long until I have my next break. So I am interrupted less.
    2. Now I self-regulate a bit better, so I'm able to work longer without destroying myself in the process. I take breaks that help me with repetitive strain injuries and with feeling like I'm a human being and not just a machine.
    3. Now I remember to actually start timers when I start working. I know this is a bit silly, but I was having trouble creating a habit of stopping for breaks. I tried to solve this by setting timers on my phone, but I constantly forgot doing it. Now I'm reminded to start a timer by something that I see on my desk.

  • How do you get over information paralysis?

    Jump

  • I’m so sorry for the wall of text. I hope I can come back and clean it up and make it clearer:

    How to work?

    Use the Pomodoro technique: 25 minutes of work - 5 minutes of break

    1. Set a 25 minute timer.
    2. Remove all distractions, especially social media and notifications.
    3. Work until the timer runs out.
    4. Set a 5 minute timer. Take a break. Stand. Drink water. Don’t use your phone or social media. Repeat.

    Make sure to celebrate (1) when you remember to do a Pomdoro, (2) while doing it, and (3) immediately after you finish it.

    What do I mean by celebrating? Imagine you got an email telling you that you got the job you wanted. How would you react? Or imagine your favorite teacher/professor tells you they’re proud of you. How would you react? Try to generate those emotions to celebrate.

    Why celebrate? Habits are not created by repetition. They’re created by emotions. Dopamine creates connections and fosters learning.

    How to make sure that information sticks in your brain and that you understand deeply? Active recall. After you read something, close the book or your computer and try to explain it from memory. This doesn’t work if it’s not from memory. It doesn’t matter if you struggle. In fact, the more you struggle to remember something, the better you learn it.

    I like to structure my active recalls with Visible Thinking Routines. You can search for them online. I particularly like See-Think-Wonder, Think-Puzzle-Explore, and Connect-Extend-Challenge.

    Now, I’ll recommend some resources:

    The single most useful thing you could do for the least effort is mindfulness. It’ll help you get out of mental ruts. You could use the Healthy Minds program. I donate to them. They’re wonderful.

    Second most powerful thing you could do is work on psychological flexibility. You can check out A Liberated Mind by Steven C. Hayes. I cannot stress enough how important psychological flexibility is. It underlies everything we do.

    If you want to learn about Visible Thinking Routines, there’s a book on it. I don’t remember the name, but the introduction is spectacular and gives a good sense of why we should focus on deeply understanding rather than rote memorization or mindless repetition. This technique (thinking visibly) is the single most important reason I graduated summa cum laude from my programs. I used to suck at studying. Now I am good at it thanks to visible thinking routines (and Anki).

    I also recommend Make it stick the book. Additionally, I recommend Barbara Oakley’s Learn like a Pro, but I only do it if you first read A Liberated Mind, the book on visible thinking routines, Tiny Habits, and The Sleep Book. Why? Oakley’s book teaches a bunch of stuff that I think is straight up wrong and potentially dangerous, such as its recommendations for sleep and for habit formation.

    I mentioned it but I should single out Tiny Habits. It’s a game changer. It will help you do anything in life.

    You could do relational frame training if you want to increase the speed at which you understand things through relations. Check out Steven Hayes’ A Liberated Mind for more on this.

    If Pomodoros are a struggle, you could try TimeTimers or similar products. Getting a good visualization of time helps people to auto regulate. I have used them with people with ADHD and they are better than digital timers or old-school clocks.

    If organization is an issue, Getting Things Done (but first read A Liberated Mind, because GTD assumes some things about the mind that aren’t true. I’d also recommend Cynefin, the book, because the natural planning process is not universal and different contexts require different interventions). I’d also recommend Personal Kanban, if you’re organizing your study habits

  • When were you wrong about something?

    Jump

  • Driving through Nebraska twice nearly broke me. The people who live there must be among the hardest motherfuckers alive.

    Jump

  • This sounds interesting. I’m just not sure it’s a shower thought. Is it?

  • Are most people who avoid turn signals do it to feel more normal? (Imitating their parents, avoiding perceived stupidity of using turn signals when it seems useless, etc)

    Jump

  • People do or don’t do things depending on three variables: motivation to do it, the ability to do it, and the prompt to do it.

    • Motivation could be lacking in some cases. People need to understand the purpose of turn signals. However, I don’t think there’s an anti-turn signal discourse going around. At least as far as I know.
    • I don’t think it’s ability, because activating turn signals is relatively easy for most people.
    • I think prompts could also be lacking.

    How do we change this?

    The Behavior Design answer would be something like this: We need to patiently and kindly train people to recognize prompts to the turn signals. “When you get to the corner, put your left hand on the turn-signal control and move it up. Then turn right.” We also need to celebrate it the instant they do it. “Perfect”. Of course, you need to have a good relationship with whomever you’re doing this with.

    Now, that is not the only solution; there are many. We might have one solution if we zoom in on one person. We might have another solution if we zoom out to a whole city or country.

    In any case, if we want to solve the problem with Behavior Design, you could check out Tiny Habits.

  • How good are amphetamines for brain fog?

    Jump

  • Besides talking to a doctor, would she be against doing cognitive training? If she's down, I can suggest some stuff :)

  • Showerthoughts @lemmy.world
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    Algebra in school is like a compiler with shitty type inference: you rarely have to write type annotations and you can easily end up with impossible states.

  • Showerthoughts @lemmy.world
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    Young people, known for new slang/words, are also a group of people that are taught how to use already-existing language. New and old, creativity and tradition, concentrated in a group.

  • Showerthoughts @lemmy.world
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    Evolutionarily, at some point we were similar to rodents, nocturnal so that massive reptiles wouldn't hunt us. It's ironic that millions of years later we had a TV show called The Crocodile Hunter,

  • You Should Know @lemmy.world
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    YSK how to use your mental brakes to avoid mental breaks (through an evidence-based theory and therapy)

  • Asklemmy @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    What's the best joke you can come up playing with (1) economic dependency theory and (2) program dependencies?

  • Showerthoughts @lemmy.world
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    There are behaviors we stopped doing because of speciation. For each of those behaviors, there is a day in history in which one of our ancestors did it for the very last time.

  • Showerthoughts @lemmy.world
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    The reason the internet can hook us more than a book is that the internet responds to us. If we get tired, we can dumb down our surfing, but dumbing down what you're reading is harder.

  • Free and Open Source Software @beehaw.org
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    How can I share an event as easily as possible only through a URL? Ideally, they just click and their calendar app adds the event. Second best is downloading an .ics file. Who hosts such a service?

  • Showerthoughts @lemmy.world
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    Given that we vote for entire comments, we don't expect people to split their comment into many sub-comments.

  • Lemmy @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    With its chaos, self-reference, kindness, and lack of advertisements, Lemmy feels like a community. I feel surrounded by goofy and reflexive friends. Love it!

  • Privacy @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    My wish: a website with a no login and no friction chatbox that directly sends me messages to my Matrix (or otherwise E2E chat) account

  • Asklemmy @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    In a group of friends, what has been the greatest damage you've seen caused by a misunderstanding? Have you seen something being interpreted as an insult when it arguably wasn't so?

  • Privacy @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    I don't want my browser add-ons to make my fingerprint unique. How risky is it to add a password manager browser add-on? I've got Firefox and KeepassXC. Should I add the KeepassXC add-on to Firefox?

  • Lemmy @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    Thanks, Lemmy, for being a place for educated, empathetic, and principled people

  • Open Source @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    Matrix 2.0 will be at least 24x - 1400x faster depending on what you're measuring because of a Rust reimplementation, and better chat loads and room joins. Mobile, VoIP + video, and 3rd Room improve.

    matrix.org /blog/2022/08/15/the-matrix-summer-special-2022
  • Asklemmy @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    If you were an NSA agent, what would your NSA agent name be?

  • Lemmy @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    Are Lemmy posts crawl-able by search engines?

  • Programmer Humor @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    A frightening clash of cultures

  • Memes @lemmy.ml
    snek_boi @lemmy.ml

    Lemmy be like