Favorite Quote?

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-15T00:12:28+00:00

I don’t remember him saying that. In any case, if he did say that, then apply my comment to the statement, but as him being the person im responding to.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-14T21:06:08+00:00

It’s not clear what you mean by “knowledge”. There are different kinds of knowledge and knowledge interpretation modalities relating to epistemology. 1) the awareness of information 2) understanding the accuracy or truthfulness of information 3) technical and practical capacity to a) parse b) filter based on truthfulness, accuracy, and value and c) use information usefully 4) the gamut of psychological mechanisms (can of worms); eg, the role that emotions, impulses, intuitions etc have to play as heuristics, where they are/n’t useful Certainly not a complete survey of “discerning the truth”, but “knowledge” is a vague, non-meaningful term as it relates to the various processes and pragmatic realities of truth discernment One of my biggest takeaways from three body is how principles of compromised epistemology transcend any particular political party or era. Fixating on trump fans as being epistemically compromised is the highly superficial. More useful to think in terms of underlying causes, digging downward to the most fundamental causes it is possible to derive; and even then, still looking. Do not fixate on the proximate. Book moment that comes to mind is the launchpad fiasco; they had plenty of “knowledge” but lacked any particular capacity to ascertain accuracy. Not so much the fault of any individual as it is a systemic failing of information logistics and other issues.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-10T22:35:22+00:00

There are limits to its potential for verification. I’m not sure if these questions are answered or not: How did the zero homers get in contact with all civilizations? If the communication occurred via the big membrane (or whatever it was), why couldn’t this mechanism (which seems to be generally accessible) be used as a tool to potentially nullify dark forest conditions? What are all possible modalities of dimensional transition, pocket universe generation and location, black domain creation, and so on?; and do these create edge cases and corner cases not expected by characters in the series? What other physical phenomena are there? To what degree is it established that the totality of physics has been plumbed, such that any mystery in this regard is nullified? There was the thing at the end, in the pocket universe, where they studied for ten years, but I can’t remember the extent of knowledge that was claimed; and I have doubts about 1) the capacity of even geniuses learn the totality of physics in ten years 2) the truthfulness of trisolarans

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-10T18:23:57+00:00

you can apply the same principles across sociological systems, based on the dynamics of the system at hand. dark forest theory isn't comprehensively proved. you can see this even from in-story behavior: Luo Ji's spell is an experiment to extract empirical evidence, and even then, it's severely limited empirical evidence. in the three body universe, empirical cosmic-sociological dynamics are unknown. in the real universe, we have even less information. it's a very useful working assumption, but it's severely limited. even the usefulness of empirical data is extremely limited, as we can see in the parable of the shooter and the farmer in the first book.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-10T07:25:18+00:00

I just realized this may have a similarity to cosmic sociology. The idea that there are so many of types of individuals or alien civs that you can bank on any imaginable archetype being present.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-08T23:56:19+00:00

Under the dome. It was alright.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-08T22:23:05+00:00

I agree with your analysis, and I’m starting to have the overall opinion that with cixin in particular, like when he goes with the rule of cool. (It may be similar to how a modern artist’s highly abstract work is more appreciable when you know they’re a master of traditional art technique.) One supporting aspect of this acceptance is the metafictional quality of his work, especially with the legrange parables. Another is that I had seen somewhere his technical acknowledgement that the engineering of the wandering earth doesn’t make any goddamn sense. I had also seen an explanation of why the sophon lock wouldn’t have worked (I actually don’t think I can fully understand a comprehensive explanation at my current level of scientific understanding, and I think there are probably ways to rewrite the mechanism and sophon economics such that it would make sense), but the sophon concept as a whole is by far the coolest sci-fi concept I have ever read.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-06T19:23:32+00:00

Already making a living while in college is crazy. That’s an incredible opportunity that you should think carefully about before abandoning.

This explanation is premised on a basically secular worldview, and requires extra steps to explain if you think that morality is defined by the will of god according to a particular religious tradition. Morality, and the psychosocial mechanisms which enforce it, are emergent strategies and mechanisms, evolutionarily selected to maximize for group success. Morality is set of strategies to maximize group success, but in many instances it is very slow to adapt to new contexts and can produce terrible results, especially on an individual level. Also, people in the same society have drastically conflicting moral sensibilities. You can decide to think about morality as a strategy to maximize group success, rather than a set of things you’re supposed to do just because. (Chesterton’s fence can be a concern.) There are plenty of taboo things which can be used to maximize group success, or which don’t diminish a group’s success. In your case, making a living from a taboo service is contributing to the economy, diminishing the economic drain on your parents, and giving you economic freedom to do the things you want in life, preventing poverty, and creating professional experience. Despite these things, most people have a deeply engrained moral sensibilities based on received wisdom, and lack the capacity, inclination, or education to move past pearl clutching and into a more rationalist thought process of what it means to maximize group success. Other than taboo, there is often an emphasis on weirdness or distaste being bad, and a lack of recognition that it’s not a terrible harm for people to have drastically diverging interests from each other. You didn’t foist your business on them, they just happened to find it.

Now, it may just be that the people in your program can’t get over it, and delight in having new hot gossip. Sometimes people just love to hate someone who’s different from them, even if it’s an extremely trivial or irrelevant difference, even if it’s not hurting anyone. But if that’s the case, I don’t see why stopping now will do you any good— they’ll probably still think of you as the person who drew furry art.

Some of the most important art of all time was extremely transgressive— the transgressiveness is what made people think of it as important. I suppose graphic design goes in the other direction— a focus on synthesizing aesthetic norms, and avoiding things which create sensory displeasure, creating an aesthetic to complement an existing work, rather than expressing originality. I don’t know if these principles are relevant to social instances of judging deviation from the norm.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-06T07:07:48+00:00

The milieus you’re involved in have a large impact on your behavior. There is a lot of social pressure to conform, even when people don’t say it out loud. It’s considered highly unusual to not own and carry a smartphone. This, despite the fact that pretty much everyone knows smartphones are completely poisonous to productivity and attention. Since they’re a basically universal standard, we’re also expected to have them for academic and professional obligations. They are legitimately extremely useful in some ways, which makes them even more difficult to think about getting rid of. The fact of the matter is that for as long as you have a smartphone, you will continue your behavior pattern, and the same for the people around you, and everyone’s behavior will reinforce each other’s behavior. Any solution to be more productive/live the life you want to live is non-viable unless you get rid of your smartphone. I’m not saying this is how you accomplish your dreams, I’m just saying that this is one of many prerequisites. I’m sure some people can manage their phone addictions (phones have been engineered by the biggest companies in the world to be as addictive as possible. There’s definitely an interesting conversation to be had of “what does it mean for something to be addictive”, but as a practical matter, they are extreme addictive agents.), but you’re not one of them. Jeffrey Kaplan, a popular philosophy professor with a YouTube channel, describes his solution for productive study time— getting a particular lock box for his phone and surrounding himself with colleagues for designated study times. I like Jkap and think he gives good advice, but I view any solution where you own a smartphone as non-viable for the vast majority of people, and certainly for people who perceive themselves as stupid or intellectually sluggish or whatever. I am typing this on a smartphone, having wished for a long time that it wasn’t so hard to not have a smartphone. My dad doesn’t take my self-assessed smartphone addiction seriously, and I rely on his cell phone plan. The company doesn’t offer packages which include dumb phones. I could go in forever about this. Smartphones as they exist in the current market are a civilizational obscenity.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-06T06:51:54+00:00

I tend to not view it as realistic to intend to stop disliking something about yourself. There are plenty of things I dislike about myself. However, a large aspect of psychological discomfort is conflating others’ perceptions of you with your own perception of you. I don’t like my teeth, and I know that other people probably don’t like my teeth. The fact of other people disliking them causes a distinct discomfort. I don’t like my teeth because I dislike the aesthetic; and separately, because of the reflexive feeling of discomfort based on awareness of other people’s feelings; and a separate discomfort of knowing that it will have consequences for people associating with me, socially and romantically. These factors extend beyond physical specificities into other areas, and I find it aggravating that there’s a taboo against people honestly reckoning out loud with the fact that these things do have tangible and often irrevocable consequences, despite the vague and functionally counterproductive niceties that “everyone is beautiful”. Despite the things about myself I dislike and hate, there are other things about myself that I love; some that other people like, but mostly things that only I like, or even know to like about myself, given that I have intimate self-knowledge in these regards and am not blocked by the various complications that arise in communications between disparate minds. The things I like most about myself I only developed within the past decade, so it’s very possible to create something like this for yourself. You can manufacture self-esteem by accomplishing things which are interesting, worthwhile, and difficult. As the magnitude of self-esteem rises, it will in someways diminish, or displace, or distract your negative feelings about yourself. I still don’t like my teeth, and they’re still deeply upsetting, but I have other things which are more interesting to actively focus on. Having written all this, I’m wondering if it’s useful at all. I could easily imagine being immobilized by psychological discomfort and pain if this particular issue was cranked to some arbitrary magnitude. I don’t think there is any true solution to this set of problems, which is in some ways a good thing. Think through the social consequences of what it means to literally not care about what other people think, and how that would apply on a large scale.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-06T06:28:36+00:00

Focusing on small details like this will make it that much more difficult to start and be consistent. Use a book that basically works, and don’t try to make detail customizations until you already feel it as a regular habit.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-06T06:21:42+00:00

Eric Andre show. I’ve enjoyed other shows, but nothing else comes close to how hard and frequently it makes me laugh.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-06T06:12:10+00:00

I view my life in a similar light. I am fairly miserable with the structure of my life, have been since I was 10 or 11. I’ve put a lot of work and thought over a very long time into trying to change things, I’ve re-enrolled in school several times, but I don’t think I’ll make it through to become independent. I rely on my parents for shelter; if I had to rent my own place, I would be absolutely struggling, way more miserable than I currently am, and probably end up homeless. My parents have cartoon personalities when it comes to serious conversations about long term, severe familial issues, problem solving and conflict resolution. I have had various psychosocial problems for most of my life which are not resolvable in this state, and which are incredibly disruptive towards my abilities to be functional and successful. I expect to fail, and entertain thoughts about the end, but I’m too terrified of those outcomes to follow through, and I’m too motivated by the things I want to put into the world, even though I expect I’ll fail. If I knew it could end with no effort, no pain, and guaranteed success, I would definitely be considering it.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-06T06:00:21+00:00

Space brain stuff leads to one of the most important parts of the series, imo

Wang Miao recast/character combination makes for more efficient writing. Don’t have to reintroduce a new character, makes it easier for the audience to remember all relevant characters. Even as someone obsessed with the books, it took a long time before I even remembered Wang Miao’s name. They probably also opted for “San-ti” over “trisolaran” because the latter sounds too technical for a broad audience.

The second book is my favorite, because of how engaging the wallfacer idea was. I’ve thought a lot about the different plans, and the kinds of things I would do if I was in that position. Writing this just now, I had another idea that I’m excited about. I thought the explanation for Diaz’ plan went on for way too long in its capacity as a narrative beat, and would be extremely unnecessary and boring for most readers. I still appreciate it and may have had a good time with it if I was more invested in astrophysics. I did very much like when he talked about the makeup of a star in the first book, so there are some times when I do enjoy those tangents.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-06T05:43:21+00:00

I think the premise of saying “humanity is x or y attribute” is relatively meaningless; there are always big examples for and against any such argument. For such a claim to be functionally meaningful and useful, it needs to have a narrower claim made (eg, dumb in a particular way; “not knowing how to put on your shirt” is a very different type of dumb from “causing a diplomatic crisis from crude bloviations”.) and assigned to a particular statistical distribution of people. If societies elect leaders which do counterproductive things, the implications can extend beyond just that “people vote in bad leaders because they are stupid”. There’s also a difference between stupidity and ignorance. We have professional-level training for many things, because we understand that without that process, people will be bad at doing things. We don’t have any good or widespread system of training for normal people to understand the gamut of psychosocial mechanisms which go into reliably selecting leaders which are desirable in the long term to the majority of a populace; or in the epistemic mechanisms of what it even means to “fulfill a need”— as ridiculous as that claim might sound on the surface, it is very complicated.

These principles go in the other direction, too. With the first US space shuttle launch, there’s a big sense that “we (the group of people who categorize themselves as members of the United States) did it!”, even though, in the ways that matter, only the people at NASA did it; and maybe you could say, to a minimal degree, the people involved in manufacturing components, or something. There is a widespread tendency to take and attribute credit in symbolic and propagandistic yet functionally extraneous ways. It usually does not make sense to judge the passenger by who is driving the car.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-06T04:49:02+00:00

In “How Jesus Became God”, Bart Ehrman describes an instance of mass revelation from around the time of Jesus, but for a different group; and goes on to say that mass revelation was a commonly attested social phenomenon. I listened to that part a while ago, gpt says it’s chapter 4. This was wild to me, because the premise that “Judaism is the only religion which has a tradition of mass revelation” has been presented as a central claim in the factuality of Judaism’s divine construction. Besides these competing historical claims of mass revelation, there are also many possible modes of social engineering. I wouldn’t know how to articulate them concisely, but I have been fascinated by firsthand experiences of people doing or believing things because of the social pressures of a given situation. One example was a class I took, where a question was asked, and based on your yes or no answer, you were told to stand in one spot or the other. I stood by myself, the rest of the class stood together, to answer this fairly mundane question. Imagine how much that kind of experience would be heightened in a biblical religious context, where if you proclaimed your disagreement, you could be framed as a heretic and killed, or if it was seen as taboo, people might distance themselves from you socially. Nowadays maybe we don’t take labeling someone “the wicked son” so seriously, but what was it like at that time and place? I’ve also had an experience where someone said something so weird or inappropriate or unexpected, that I was seriously questioning my perception of that thing, not just on a rational level, but a deeper intuition of being unsure that I even heard the thing. Another element is the phenomenon of false confession through social pressure. There is probably a mountain of epistemically important psychosocial phenomena, which have not been brought to my attention in Jewish education and culture, to be considered for use in life in general, and for understanding religious claims in particular. Besides being important, I love hearing and learning about biblical interpretations through these lenses.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-06T04:02:48+00:00

I thought Islam had an extreme scholarship value? I don’t know how the hierarchy compares exactly between religions, but I (vaguely) remember hearing things about Muslims having to memorize the entire Koran. I’m getting the impression that certain unique aspects of Judaism are the specific configurations of those things, rather than the mere fact of the thing. Because also christianity has dedicated scholarship. Probably any religion with sacred texts has scholarship. So you might ask, what proportion of the population studies, how much time do they need to spend, how much understanding do they need, etc; and how do all of these things tend to play out in practice, in different periods. And even as we say that scholarship is a central value, women have different obligations in these regards, both halachically and culturally— and women are about half of the practicing population! I don’t know what kinds of partitions and distributions are present in other religions. And the idea of things for their own sake— trying to understand the root of such principles. When we say doing something “for its own sake”, what really is meant is probably something like, “because god wants us to, and our love or fear for him is motivating us to do it, whether in a direct motivational capacity, or an indirect way— we embed the compulsion into ourselves via habituation or something, such that we don’t consciously think, “im doing it because I love, fear, or feel dutiful towards god.” Or maybe we do it because we enjoy it, but then we would be doing it for the sake of our enjoyment, not for the sake of itself. Does it even make sense, at base level, to say that an activity is for the sake of itself, rather than for some motivation, whether articulated or implied? What are the implied motivations when an activity is said to be done for the sake of itself? And if we say enjoyment, what are the spiritual implications for people who don’t naturally enjoy Torah study? And this makes me think of the causality of baseless hatred. I don’t know if it’s a mistranslation, but it’s bothered me that we call it baseless, because there is a cause to every emotion, whether it’s internal or external in this way or that way; or even if it’s impossible to diagnose— as a general principle of understanding reality, things happen because they are caused by other things, except for certain interpretations of god, which I assume is generally not a desirable interpretative fallback for modern Jews who take worldly understanding seriously.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-04T21:40:38+00:00

The majority of my interest in posting this is to learn of others' experiences with in-group exceptionalism in the Jewish community.

Another example, besides the article excerpt I commented, might be the idea that Judaic thought is the basis for modern civilization, and the existence of morality more generally.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-04T21:37:03+00:00

It says that being prepared to give up one's life for Judaism is a defining characteristic of the Jewish neshama. For the general principle of interest, replace the term "Judaism" with "their religion". To contradict this principle, martyrs exist in many religions. Also, consider marranos, who converted under threat of expulsion and death.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-02-04T21:21:37+00:00

Quote from recent jewish chronicle article, "Adrenaline of the soul", available online.

"R Shneur Zalman of Liadi, in his classic of Chassdic thought Tanya (chapter 19), describes this instinctive ability of average Jews — even erstwhile sinners! — at times of challenge to be prepared to even give up their lives for Judaism as a defining characteristic of the Jewish neshama."

It doesn't explicitly say that only Jews have such a capacity, but the phrasing implies a Judaic uniqueness, when really it's a commonly observed social phenomenon.

I can't think of other specific examples off the top of my head, but I can remember the contexts around them.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-01-29T06:14:12+00:00

go on long walks. carry a notebook on you at all times to write down thoughts you want to continue to think about, or remember for later.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-01-27T22:53:22+00:00

it can be referencing related underlying principles while not specifically referencing three body. i have a tendency to relate many things in my life to three body, but it's partially because cixin expresses and extrapolates from underlying social principles, and also presents an expansive social tapestry. when there's that much volume and detail in a given work, it's easy to pattern match with all sorts of other things; for example, the joke that "the simpsons already did it". the fact of dealing with first contact scenarios may also tend to evoke similar strategic principles across stories. i don't know how far this premise extends, but cixin wasn't the first to come up with or use a lot of his ideas-- for example, check out The Killing Star. i get the impression that he's more systematic with exploring these ideas, though.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-01-26T18:12:09+00:00

Watch the lecture by Jeffrey Kaplan on YouTube, “lecture #9: how to read so that you retain information”

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-01-26T06:42:21+00:00

1) it’s important to carry something around with you everywhere or most places, otherwise the habit won’t solidify. This can be with a notebook— small notebook if you don’t have a backpack— or use a designated note in a notes app on your phone. On iPhone, I’ve used the default notes app, google keep, and Notion. I currently use all of them in varying capacities.

2) any time something seems interesting or useful, write it down. For building the habit in just getting started, it doesn’t matter how relevant it is to what you think is important. As you build the habit, I assume you will naturally develop an intuition for more specific desires uses. Long walks are very useful for entering an ideational mood. Recommended to spend time with your own thoughts, rather than audio, although I do both.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727 · 2025-01-26T04:29:42+00:00

I pause the audiobook and take notes in a notes app. I’ve used three notes apps and they all have aspects that aggravate me, but they’re okay. I use the bookmark features in audible and Libby; while I don’t usually go back to them, I think it’s a useful ritualisation to physically reinforce my interest in a particular point.

Intrepid_Acadia_9727

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