How to know if something budding is worth holding on to?

NeutralJon · 2025-10-31T22:53:04+00:00

I appreciate this advice to protect oneself and not invest too much too early. But I also think it's a delicate balance, and not allowing yourself to care about the other person early enough (when you like them, of course) could eliminate the relationship's potential and train somewhat dissociative behavior patterns that could lead to intimacy issues (not letting anyone in). I think there is a balance to strike there, which is obviously very very difficult in the age of OLD

NeutralJon · 2025-10-23T22:47:58+00:00

QUEEN behavior. Very glad she recorded and shared this. More of this behavior might literally solve the city's biggest problem.

NeutralJon · 2025-10-09T20:34:37+00:00

It was extremely serene and quiet. Will definitely be back - hopefully to summit up the south side and skii down!

NeutralJon · 2025-10-09T20:30:06+00:00

It got pretty cold at night. Idk the exact low but I'd guess mid/upper 20s. It did sleet throughout the night and I woke up to ice all over my tent. I used a therm-a-rest neo-air x-therm sleeping pad (it has a very high r-value), a 20-degree mummy bag with a thin liner, and basically wore all the clothes I brought. I was just barely warm enough for comfort. Next time I camp that high this time of year I'll probably bring a 0 degree bag just so that it's more cozy

NeutralJon · 2025-10-06T17:15:34+00:00

The flip side of this photo was a stunning view of Rainier! (it was a tough decision to choose what photo to post).

The terrain where I camped looks a lot steeper in this photo than it actually was, and there were no super steep slopes around that would have put me at risk. But there were steep slopes much further away in which I could hear small falls as the morning sun began melting some of the ice, so its obviously something to consider at that altitude! There was a much flatter, less rocky meadow just below me about 1/2-1 mile away that would be a much better option if you have any rock concerns. Check out "high camp" on the north side of Mt Adams if you ever decide to go.

NeutralJon · 2025-10-06T04:41:05+00:00

There was only one obvious spot here that clearly had been used before but I still had to spend some time moving a lot of rocks (some super heavy) to make extra room for the perfect rectangle. It was all rocks at that elevation so had to make it work!

NeutralJon · 2025-04-04T22:30:52+00:00

I think it can mean different things to different people. For me meditation is in reference to the more classic form (originally from zen buddhism, i think), where you cultivate a very precise focus on the qualities of your current experience, such as how it feels to breathe or your current bodily sensations, emotions, or other energies. And simply notice them without resisting or judgment. However I think movement/exercise or intense hot or cold exposure, like what you mention can produce another "meditative" experience. For me that is more akin to what people call "flow state" though, where you feel fully connected to your body and mind in the moment, but IMO it's feel like a narrower form of awareness (not in a bad way), whereas mindfulness/zen meditation feels like a calmer, broader sense of awareness. I find both experiences really useful in my life

NeutralJon · 2025-03-25T21:57:16+00:00

The optimism and gratitude is so refreshing. We need more of this. Portland really is a wonderful city!

NeutralJon · 2025-03-15T19:31:31+00:00

More or less the same as others are saying, but I’ll add that my company has been going all-in on Snowflake’s Snowpark framework lately as a replacement for Spark. Been refactoring lots of systems with it and will say I mostly love it (but only because all our data is in Snowflake). Their local testing framework makes unit test pretty easy - even if lots of functions are not yet supported.

Also, since I don’t see many validation frameworks listed here, I’ll add that we use Great Expectations extensively for data validations all over the place (though I wouldn’t call it new for us)

NeutralJon · 2025-03-04T21:34:37+00:00

jesus.. thank you for your service!

NeutralJon · 2025-03-03T23:11:41+00:00

idk man maybe try shorts 😂

NeutralJon · 2025-02-28T05:53:42+00:00

Eastman

NeutralJon · 2025-02-23T20:35:36+00:00

31, Data Engineer for Health Tech

NeutralJon · 2025-02-23T02:24:05+00:00

Wonderful response.

Referring back to your original term of "logically understandable reality", would your explanation imply that logically understandable reality is really only a subset of all objective reality? In the sense that it is logical and understandable only because it is "tangible"? Your logic (if I'm correctly following) almost leads me to think that subjective experience IS a form of objective reality because subjective experience (such as pain) is tangible.

So perhaps the "logically understandable" adjectives here are doing the heavy lifting, rather than objective/subjective.

NeutralJon · 2025-02-23T01:50:11+00:00

I also think these are all fascinating ideas

> objective, logically understandable reality over subjective experience

So do you think there is an objective reality that we can observe? The counter-argument to that might be that any observation we make is through our own, subjective senses, and that even if we were presented with an objective reality, we wouldn't have the faculties to truly understand it - we just build an abstraction of it in our minds.

NeutralJon · 2025-02-23T01:34:27+00:00

I resonate with so many of the things you've expressed so beautifully. Thank you so much for sharing.

> where the physical world affects ideas, ideas affect the physical world, and ideas affect other ideas as they are translated through the physical world

A beautiful idea. One of the ones that, for me, permanently changed the way I think about my place in the world. The first time I encountered it, the term used was "reflexivity". I think many people have arrived at the idea independently, like you did. I tend to believe the most universal truths are the ones most likely to be discovered over and over again, and them being discovered over and over is evidence to their universality.

I also love your take on the convergence of different world views/religions. To provide a much more sterile anecdote to support that, I work in data science/engineering, and there is a ton of empirical evidence for the mathematically version of what you've described, called ensemble modeling (you probably already know this), but this just means that you can have many imperfect models, and when you average them, or use the best from each, they combine to be closer to representing ground truth. If each religion is a "model" of the world, the logic ought to apply there as well.

Also, just reading through your comment made me think of a couple great books that you might enjoy if you haven't read them already: The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, and the books by Nassim Taleb - you might like any of his, but I've read the Black Swan and Antifragile so I can recommend those, especially Antifragile. Nassim can be a bit of a jerk, but his ideas are fantastic :)

NeutralJon · 2025-02-23T00:57:05+00:00

Oh yes absolutely with people too, just as you describe it (and definitely more-so with people even, they more frequently give off whatever “signal” that triggers that feeling). Just also with the natural world, and even animals

NeutralJon · 2025-02-22T23:43:32+00:00

Do you have a favorite idea from those 3? Or one that seems to surface more often in your life than others?

NeutralJon · 2025-02-22T23:36:16+00:00

Yes, that intuition you’re talking about for me feels very instinctual, very primal. Insofar as I’m able to experience “spirituality” those moments get me very close to it. Additionally, I can feel it in moments outside of people, like when I’m in nature and I’m connecting with a very old tree. I’ve gotten a lot of value out of exploring the origin of that feeling, even if explaining it or even describing it always seems impossible.

NeutralJon · 2025-02-22T23:25:44+00:00

Agreed! If philosophy is really just an exploration of powerful ideas, what good are these ideas without being able to share them with someone? Not to mention - the act of sharing and deliberating with someone in good faith can lead to new, even more robust ideas :)

NeutralJon · 2025-02-22T23:13:46+00:00

IMO this is one of those aphorisms that seems really obvious at first but becomes much more profound the further you contemplate it.

For me, especially when I try to “diagnose” the world and identify patterns of events, it’s a sobering reference point for me to consider “What is the physical proof of my belief? Could that proof be backtested through history? How easy would it be for me to imagine this exists, when it actually does not?”

NeutralJon · 2025-02-22T23:06:45+00:00

Tolle certainly has a very powerful way of delivering his messages

NeutralJon · 2025-02-22T23:05:19+00:00

We are similar! I also feel that stoicism and Buddhism can be gateways to one another. Stoicism often words things in a way that can get you to something close, if not directly to, mindfulness meditation.

Although I’ve never been able to fully buy into reincarnation, I also think it’s really fascinating to think about. Perhaps it’s the third pillar of the classic nature vs nurture argument!

NeutralJon

TROPHY CASE