I suspect the answer will turn out to be the same for food and alcohol: have periodic breaks from both to allow the body to recover. In the case of food this is now called intermittent fasting but it applies to both. In particular to allow the immune system, which captures many incipient cancer growths, to reset. One of the reasons that smoking is so harmful I think is that people do it continuously whereas most drinkers don't drink every day.
>Some people are just attracted to the crazy unknown
Yes. "Find what you love and let it kill you" somebody said. And most people don't feel safe unless they're living fearfully close to the edge of what is possible for them. In the past men worked till they dropped dead in their 40s to keep their families alive through the winter; women had baby after baby until they died or couldn't otherwise cope.
The strange thing is that, absent those harsh historical conditions, people still want the feeling of an edge, an existential risk. So they gamble, they do drugs, etc.
But these aren't good edges to be on. There are many real, urgent problems the world faces that could benefit from obsessive, risk-seeking commitment to the 'crazy unknown'. Addiction-level commitment. It shouldn't have to be to drugs. How do we funnel ourselves towards these problems?
Yes, our understanding gets more refined the more we learn. It remains messy, error-prone and incomplete. So the solution can never be to learn things 'well' or get things right first time or produce perfect teachers/videos or something like that. The solution is to go on correcting misconceptions where we are interested. Ken Shirriff's blog, mncharity's website, comments here and so on simply are part of the ongoing spontaneous correction process. Like the contents of a cell, they may look crazy and disorganised but they get the job done.
Hi erasmuse, the Fallible Ideas mailing list (http://fallibleideas.com/discussion) would be a more fruitful place to discuss your ideas. There, openness to new ideas is valued, as is being willing to discuss disagreements persistently until resolution.
I doubt it. New ideas develop slowly and can't be communicated or explained until they are ready. If you look at creative intellectuals they work alone or, rarely, in pairs. Discussion to the point of resolution would be more like politics or opinion-leading; perhaps necessary for defence or for sorting out existing ideas but otherwise harmful to progress.
Work has multiple parts. Some work is done alone, some in pairs, and some in a public group. The public group part has value and importance: for example, getting more variety of criticism and other feedback such as what people don't understand. Work done in a public group also helps others learn, so that's good.
If, hypothetically, you should join the group, in what way could you find that out? What would change your mind?
Something like historical examples of fundamental breakthroughs in science or great works of art produced by committee.
Criticism is for stuff one doesn't like, which is why it belongs firmly in the public realm of news, politics, etc. A group isn't public. When it comes to your private work, ignore criticism and trust your intuition. Ideas need room to grow just like children do.
There's at least one thing about the film, though, that I find mysterious. It was given a 'U' rating in the UK (which means universal, i.e. suitable for all ages). Yet many people find it scarily unwatchable -- why?
SPOILERS. True, there's blood, which is unusual for a children's animation. The enemy warren, savagely run by General Woundwort, is terrifying. But I think the real objection seems to be the perception that vulnerable little rabbits are being picked off one by one as our group journeys across the countryside. Yet, if you look closely, you notice that only one member of the group, a minor character, is actually killed (Violet; by a bird of prey). Bigwig escapes from the snare, Hazel recovers from being shot, and so on.
UPDATE. I think I've figured it out. Because of the beautiful song 'Bright Eyes' (sung by Art Garfunkel), we have mourned Hazel even though he was only wounded. So it feels as if he has died, even though he hasn't.
Don't forget the scene where the rabbit warren is gassed. Imagine you are ~five and you see that for the first time:)
What really hit me was the haunting, archetypal imagery surrounding the rabbit mythology and the Black Rabbit of Inle. When you are a kid just figuring out that you and your loved ones will die and you see that kind thing it has an impact.
Honestly, the emotional music and expressionist death imagery combine to create almost an initiation-like experience for the unsuspecting kids who sit down to watch a cartoon about bunnies!
We want to explore the solar system... and there are these marvellous parcels of kinetic energy and expensive rare earth elements whizzing around the place. With built-in radiation shielding, too.
OK, at least one of the bigguns is pointing at Earth. But, you know what they say, every existential threat is an opportunity in disguise! In this case, potentially unlimited funding for the study and development of asteroid harnessing technology. That's before you sell the metals.
Indeed! The way I see it, identity derives from memory. So to the extent (if any) that they share identical memories they are strictly the same person. Beyond that I would guess there may be some (false) identification with behaviours of the other twin, in a manner redolent of Gazzaniga and Sperry's famous split brain experiment:
No no. The routine is a space for unstructured improvement. Nor is there such a thing as repetition in learning. Every attempt at gaining skill is at least slightly different and is made under at least slightly different conditions. Progress being the slow accumulation of mastery over many details. If it feels dull then either a plateau has been reached or the ambition itself is an unworthy one and should be abandoned in favour of something else.
I don't believe this is true, or at least it depends on the kind of thing you're learning.
For example, when you want to become an outstanding guitar player, you'll need to go through many, many hours of dull and definitely boring training in order to perfect your playing technique. Without that training, you can become a good or a creative guitar player, but not a genuine master.
I presume that it's similar with many other instruments and related skills like archery, gymnastics, dancing, or skateboarding.
Counterpoint: I can’t imagine a guitar player, dancer, skater, basketball player, mechanic, or whatever, actually achieving greatness without having spent a significant amount of time ‘just playing around’.
I’ve heard plenty of guitarists and classical músicians who were extremely technically proficient with their instrument, but only other musicians would appreciate them.
If Joseph Campbell had not pursued this relatively ‘unstructured’ way of honing his craft, and stayed within the regimen of traditional academia, I highly doubt this thread would exist because Joseph would have only been known within the small academic circles. He transcended.
When you have put in the monotonous work of practice, playtime only gets more exciting.
Active engagement in what you are doing is a sign of arousal and dopamine release, which are critical in learning. If you're "going through the motions" or you're bored you are going to learn very slowly, if at all.
If you want to master the guitar, instead of boring repetition, you need to find ways to train your technique that engage you and are rewarding. People quote the 10,000 hours figure, as if you just needed to put in the time, but in reality those are 10,000 engaged, focused hours where you push yourself. It doesn't matter how many disengaged hours you put in, you'll plateau at "decent" and never become truly excellent.
Maybe that's your opinion and the perceived opinion right now, but your claims directly contradict what many successful teachers state. (But see below, maybe we don't disagree.)
In Germany, for instance, there used to be these little "ETP books" for guitar players called Tägliche Übungen zur Entwicklung einer Technischen Perfektion that involved lengthy and absolutely monotonous finger exercises that really had nothing to do with music. Everybody praised them and everybody said that these and similar exercises are essential to become a world-class player. There is hardly any way around it, they said, you cannot become that good by merely playing music. I still have no reason to believe they were wrong. It would be surprising if arguably harder instruments like classical piano didn't involve similar monotonous exercises and the same couldn't be said about ballet, world-class athletes, etc. A friend of mine is a professional jazz saxophonist and while he was studying saxophone he had to practice scales up and down for hours and hours every day.
You've got to put some serious effort into it, you agree with that, right? So maybe we agree in the end, because you use vague word "engage". Of course, nobody denies that you need to find a way to motivate you to get through these exercises or to stay "engaged". I didn't deny that. All I'm saying is that a lot of "mere repetition" is needed in many disciplines in order to reach a really high level while staying motivated.
Extensive practice is essential to getting one's self to the point where creativity can take over, where the muscle memory can 'meld' with one's expression of whatever emotions are being communicated via music.
There are certainly counter-examples, musicians who compose from day one, and don't really focus on melodic theory, running scales, and all of the other pieces of the neuro-muscular puzzle that go into making one technically 'good', and some of them do well.
There are those that allot all of their time to becoming technically proficient, pianists who spend endless hours working up Rachmaninoff's 2nd concerto, only to get so lost in the technicality of their discipline that they become cold and mechanistic, but, again, are so proficient that they find work their entire lives.
But true greatness needs both. You have to, as one artist put it, be able to 'forget' all that you have learned and compose and/or perform from the heart, letting all of that training do what it will naturally do, resulting in a transcendent expression of artistic grace.
That's what makes Campbell so accessible. He speaks and writes as though he is talking about the weather to his best friend, but his erudition provides such a solid foundation in the topics he expounds upon that one hardly notices that one is being educated.
Well, alternative medicine that actually works is usually re-labelled medicine. e.g. vaccines are thought to have had origins in China way before the scientific revolution.
An exception is the Alexander Technique (AT), which I think cured my RSI, despite medical doctors and physiotherapists being unable to help. AT hasn't been incorporated into mainstream medicine yet, presumably because nobody can explain how it works (though it doesn't make any obviously superstitious claims).
But this lack of good explanation goes way further, beyond alternative therapies and into the heart mainstream medicine. There is a problem with medical science, imo. Most 'testing' and clincical trial related-work is beset by empiricism, wherein many treatments are assessed without an idea of how they allegedly could work.
As I understand it, this is why a large proportion of medical studies can't be reproduced: we understand by now that theory without experiment leads nowhere; most of us don't yet appreciate that experiment without theory is equally useless.
This is why I see even Science in its present form as insufficient for medical progress.
Rather, solid engineering is the more reliable answer, which is essentially the approach of the anti-aging SENS Research Foundation. Our philosophy should be, as far as possible, to engineer and fix the body, repairing its accumulated damage and so forth before it gets ill or aged.
I don't think I agree with this. While medical diagnosis has often required some sort of overarching theory (which is usually advanced beyond our available treatment options), treatments (pharmaceuticals in particular) have most commonly been discovered empirically.
If we were to wait for solid theory before using such treatments, we'd probably still be living in the medical stone ages!
Fat, Animal fat, Plant fat. Fat and a little bit of protein.
There is no dietary need for sugar or carbohydrates at all, your body is capable of making the tiny amount it needs through the process of gluconeogenesis. Research the Ketogenic diet.
Humans mostly don't eat sweet stuff for calorific or nutritional purposes. Rather I think they enjoy puddings, cakes, chocolate, and so on, for psychological reasons (comfort, pleasure) as well as for cultural reasons. So my question remains. What should they substitute to maintain an even mental keel? What should should be served or otherwise laid on at social gatherings that yields equivalent cheer and can be passed down from grandmother to grandaughter?
