iovrthoughtthis

i didn’t want to imply there was no difference between the body and emotions. just that they are a integral parts of the same system.

> I’m not sure I understand you, it seems to contradict what you said earlier.

i did contradict myself because both are true at the same time. my example was one of malfunction, an over reactive warning systems. your example is one of, i assume, coping with unchangeable external stressors.

fyi, the later is a good example of how disconnected we can become. a migraine caused by stress (like any other painful symptom) is pretty late into the warning system that our emotions behave as. while breathing to reduce pain is a good coping tactic, as a long term strategy it isn’t removing the stressors and so only relieves that particular symptom. in that situation i would hope to align myself with my warning system and attempt to change my environment such that the stressor is removed.

if you’re in a situation where the you feel stressor cannot be removed, that is a different discussion.

in the situation where the stressor isn’t apparent then i would seek a therapist as perhaps there are past traumas that have been experienced which exacerbate your emotional response to some stimulus.

it’s not so clear cut, instead it’s very interlinked.

what you think effects your body, what you do effects your mind.

e.g. worrying will cause your heart rate to increase ad your breathing to quicken, breathing slowly will reduce your heart rate, a lower heart rate will reduce your sense of anxiety.

your body is a sensor, your mind is the computer. emotions are like the ships diagnostic warnings from star trek.

edit:

id add that this is why “mastering your emotions” using the control sense of mastering, doesn’t make sense.

you don’t want to control your diagnostics, you want to be great at reading them and making decisions from them, aligning with them if you will.

ah, i took moral discussion to be code for political discussion, not actually moral (good vs bad) haha.

in that case, yes. people get dogmatic about the strangest things. depending on my level of give-a-fuck i sometimes dive in deeper, “why do you think this is bad?” etc.

sometimes theres a decent learning opp either for me, discovering a new way that something can cause problems or for them, learning to apply some nuance to their beliefs.

i would love to read an example of a technical discussion framed in moral terms. if you’ve got any off the top of your head, i’d appreciate you commenting them.

i suspect, a lot like becoming conscious of the impact the food we choose to eat has on things external to our local context (climate, animal welfare etc), technology decisions choices could be seen through such a lens.

as Frederic Bastiat wrote, there is “that which is seen and that which is not seen”.

that isn’t really a problem with politics though is it?

it feels like a problem with the discussions participants listening and speaking skills.

if someone immediately jumps to a negative extreme then its likely they feel quite emotionally distressed about the topic. if you notice someone is emotionally charged about a topic (either yourself or a participant) then we should seek to discover the shadow conversation that is being had. what is the true source of the emotional distress.

instead we see it as weakness and press harder.

removing politics won’t solve that.

it’s wild how far we’ll try to go to reassure people we’re not having emotional problems.

even though emotions are physical, and he mentions developing ptsd.

his body (brain being a part of that) must having been telling him for ages that shit was going wrong but he’s so disconnected from his physical emotional experience that he just ignored it.

I wish that NAT wasn't a thing, then every computer could be a known entity on a web without technical setup.

I understand the security concerns (and they are many) but why can't my phone, which is almost always on, host and serve my content to the 20 odd people who care?

text based languages have two options for providing meta data to declared constructs.

1. syntax (explicit)

2. context (implicit)

i cant wait until we have some other dimensions to play with. bring me the weird text interface to a rdf graph / syntax tree database plz.

the sim city way.

country is a red flag here.

i don’t think there is a group of humans with a shared identity that is truly and completely welcoming to people outside of that identity.

which is why i don’t enjoy making country a part of my identity.

> I’m scared and I don’t know what to do.

I’m sorry. That really sucks.

It sounds like you could really do with some coaching.

I’m not the right person for that but perhaps if you asked for it, a better person would reach out!

heres some questions I would ask to gauge your interpersonal skills at an interview.

could you tell me about the last argument you had and how you resolved it?

where would you like to be in 5 years?

you had a strong opinion about a strategy for solving a problem and disagreed vehemently with a co-worked. it turns out, their strategy worked out great. what would you do next?

just an observation: a person who is technically capable but who is unfocussed and all over the place feels like an apt description for a lot neurodivergent behaviour in people.

That is certainly how, but why? What have they done that enables it to do that?

great post, this part

> For reference, a Python version of this same loop runs in 1 minute and 38 seconds … a dynamically-typed bytecode interpreter is not a good choice for heavy integer arithmetic.

made me wonder about other dynamic langs.

ruby (3.0.0) and lua (5.4.2) ran it in 1:30 and 1:03 respectively but node (12.22.0) ran it in 0:01. how is node so quick?

and here we see why css is often write only.

no one here can diagnose you. see a professional if you would like a professional diagnosis.

take some responsibility for yourself.

> Hey I never ran a day in my life. I found out if I take steroids I can jump start my running in 3 months. Turns out I’m a great runner, so I must have been a great runner all this time and just need a therapeutic dose of steroids to show that I had chemical deficiency that easily solved it. Now life is much more fair for me.

what is the purpose of this line of argument. do we agree that this is good? because this feels good.

> Look, once your life depends on a decision you know was a trade off (you feel entitled to whatever it is you don’t have from not putting in the actual work), it’s going to take intense mental gymnastics to feel sound as a person.

i struggle to understand what you’re saying here. could you provide a concrete example of a life depending on a decision that was a trade off?

i feel so much more sound as a person now that i can off load some of the guilt for being so bad at the simple things onto something else, i am infact much more sound than i have ever been. this doesn’t diminish my responsibility to change myself and my environment so that i can do those simple things, it simply changes my map and thus the strategies that i should use to accomplish my goals.

i’m sure you would agree that nothing comes for free. i am not saying that drugs will make me super man or that neurotypical people are super human.

though, to a person with glasses, 20:20 vision does seem pretty super human. as does the ability to do contact sports without massive preparation (goggles, contact lenses etc). in this metaphor the person with glasses is like the person with adhd fyi.

> But I can help you,

bold claims sir. given our conversation, i am doubtful of your ability to help anyone.

> repeat after me. This life wasn’t going great, so I made a decision. It’s better now, and I can live with it and fuck anyone else.

i’m not sure what this is supposed to do for me. do i say it into a mirror and Frederick Hayek will appear and save me from serfdom?

my life was difficult. i discovered that there are reasons a touch beyond my control that were causing that. i took medicine, adjusted my ways and asked others to help by adjusting how they help me. it is still difficult but i feel less bad about it. fuck anyone that tries to diminish the work it took to achieve that.

the map is not the territory.

> All I’m saying is, don’t you dare sell that confirmation bias back into the zeitgeist.

what confirmation bias? which zeitgeist?

> We can be friends, I’ve been there (probably still there).

i feel that, and beyond this ultimately stupid argument i hope stuff stays good for you.

> Certainly don’t try to sell it to the person that put in 3 years running, and the only difference between you and that person was an unprovable chemical deficiency.

i’m not sure exactly what you’re saying here. the person who ran for 3 years was me. i didn’t sell anything to them. now i’m less depressed and anxious about my life excersizing is much easier. i can strive now there is hope again. why do you thin the source of that hope shouldn’t exist (in the face of some pretty good science that says otherwise).

> The guy waking up everyday to run never felt like it was never going to amount to anything once, right? They just had it in them, just like you.

yes i did and yes i did!

> It’s all in you, like magic, just needs to brought out.

this i can get down with. totally true.

> Just own your decision in it’s entirety. No one is a saint here.

what decision? to take medication? i didn’t decide that, my doctor did.

Edit:

> > is not one of the greatest productivity strategies to break large complex things (passing an exam) into smaller, manageable tasks (a few hours of study a day). i do not buy this line.

> This retort is a dead give away of entitlement. Everyone breaks down studying like this, Jesus.

wait, so you’re saying that this is in-fact innate and doesn’t need to be taught?

> How special do some of you think you are? This is all supposed come freely to you?

no, i said that i had to explicitly learn it. it would seem that it is you who thinks it should come freely. i specifically stated that i do not think this practice is innate and that many of us need to learn how to apply it (i.e it is a skill). thus, it by definition requires work to learn, develop and apply.

is it special to hope that the community i exist in as a sentient being would teach me these learnable skills? i don’t think so but if that’s entitlement call me entitled and bring some more of it!

> Read a chapter a day,

before you can know how to read a chapter, you must know how to read a book ;).

to be explicit, you’ve got to be able to see a big thing and break it down first, before you can plan the execution. then you need to organize (combine resources and time) to execute the individual tasks. the organization part is the hard bit for people like me btw. can make a plan. can do a task. struggle to translate from the first to the later (get myself, the resource, to start the tasks at the appropriate times). i’m an asynchronous job queue with 1 worker and a queue size of 1, new jobs have the highest priority.

> and if some of you truly exhibit the impulsivity of dogs (the wind can distract you apparently), then read a page a day, and if you can’t do that, read a word a day. This is how people do it. Bunch of hidden brainiacs think they can just take a book and place it near their forehead and instantly absorb it and then cry foul when it doesn’t happen.

just lol. people with adhd aren’t dogs, come on. that straw man you constructed is so absurd. im not saying neurotypical people can magically consume the information in a book (though who doesnt want that power right!!!) and meds wont magically enable me to.

i don’t actually have much of a problem with reading tbh. it’s not stopping reading. my problems are not around attention and tasks that can be done in flow. i would just like to be able to stick to a multi day plan without waking up tomorrow and being totally unable to do so.

> And the last thing I want to add is, you won’t have fun doing any of the above stuff. It’s never going to be fun and it never is fun for anyone. The only joy you’ll get is at the very end when you succeed.

if nothing is fun, what is the point? im lucky, i found the hyperfocus on my studies super fun! so fun i sort of burned myself out on them (less fun).

the way i see it, success is either now or never because there is no end state. we live and we die. you either enjoy living or don’t. you can trade time now for time later, sure but that’s a gamble and like i mentioned, i don’t like gambling.

> Yep, classical delayed gratification. Now we get closer to the truth, yeah?

you’re about as far from The Truth (tm) as we can get though i think you’ve shown us you truth.

> I generally believe that the way behavioral patterns emerge is not instant,

not everything is a habit, some behaviours are impulsive or context driven. lets say that habits take time to form though.

> and therefore the way you get out cannot be instant.

this is only true if breaking a habit, is also a habit. i don’t not certain this is always true.

lets ask, what is a habit? since this is an async convo i will answer myself. i think a habit is a behaviour that you repeat based on some trigger (time of day, previous activity etc). based on that we could call a “routine” a series of habits (or habitual behaviours). we do them, one after the other, in sequence (generally).

yeah i agree, these take time to build! how do you maintain them? because i spent 3 years working on running everyday and then i was ill for a week and immediately stopped. i broke my habit (or routine) that took 3 years to build in 1 week. are you wrong or am i broken?

> In other words, the only way out of the darkness is walking backing through the exact path you came from.

more generally i would say, the only way out of “the darkness” (which i will use to mean a period of time in my life where i am incredibly unhappy) is to deal with my trauma and accept all parts of myself (probably with the help of a therapist). i’ve not found ruminating over the past to be a successful strategy for creating light in my life.

> It takes a long time of not focusing on daily practice and discipline to get to the point where you don’t realize you need to put in at least a few hours of studying per day.

i honestly don’t understand this line. is the realisation that small iterative steps are required for study innate? is this your experience? i had to explicitly learn it. is not one of the greatest productivity strategies to break large complex things (passing an exam) into smaller, manageable tasks (a few hours of study a day). i do not buy this line.

> If you go years and years of studying the week of or the day before the test, you will become a certain way.

what certain way is that?

> I’d wager most Americans do all their major class work last minute since they were kids.

it would be interesting to see a survey of this! i won’t join this wager as i don’t like gambling.

> Along with that, they spend hours and hours playing video games and watching YouTube/Netflix/social media since childhood.

what are you claiming video games, youtube and netflix cause here? I’m not saying they each don’t have they negative aspects! especially youtube, just enough dopamine to keep you watching, so easy to waste a bunch of hours.

> By the time you are 25, you probably have a solid 20 years of insane habits.

i too thought i was late all the time because of the template my mum handed down to me(shes late all the time too). you know what else can be handed down though? heritable traits.

i still object to modelling all human behaviour around habits. the scope is much larger and the insanity is often a lack of behaviour (e.g not washing your butt).

> What few people will admit here is what they did for most of their life. Okay, so you realized you can’t read a textbook in college. Can you describe to me how you passed the time over the last 18 years?

read interesting books? played games? made music? rode bikes? went to parties. i’m not sure what you are attempting to get at here.

>I’m sure you managed to fill the time. You didn’t stare at the all for 18 years.

see above.

> If you literally stared at the wall, fine, here is a prescription to whatever drug you want.

so only if i did absolutely nothing in response to not being able to do something else, do i qualify for medication? i guess no one with any executing function disorders should get anything because sitting still is a real pain. sorry we’re not performing disorder well enough for you, i’ll get all the adhd peeps into a workshop perhaps you could join since you know exactly how someone with a disorder would perform. we really need those meds so any help you can offer is welcomed.

> If you managed to do all of the other bullshit I described above, then please take some responsibility on developing better habits.

man, f*k you. i’ve been taking responsibility for my actions for 30 years. you don’t know me.

> It’s the intellectual version of becoming obese. You know what you ate for the last several years.

so we have resorted to fat jokes. well, i’m not sure what i had hoped for tbh.

tl;dr you don’t believe in this ADD-whatever the fuck and people should grow up and act like ever other adult.

idk if you are a boomer but you should get checked out for alzheimers because your ideas are old as fuck.

NOTE: i had a nice, emotional description of my experience but i forgot how people here like to argue (stupid me), so i took responsibility for my actions and took apart the argument line by line instead.

this seems incredibly related https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histone_code

i’m not surprised that a mechanism like this is involved in memory storage/retrieval.

im left with questions about the heritability of these epigenetic parts of memory.

i am so surprised that, for a community of people that see themselves so rational, there are so many who effectively deny the existence of adhd.

i cant help but observe that this might be because it flys in the face of the common western ideal of “anyone can do anything if you just work hard enough” and that many of our identities are tied to that shared belief.

it’s super clear you’ve struggled through a lot. i hope one day you get the help you need.

maybe you didn’t need to struggle so hard friend.

i know you worked hard to get where you are but wouldn’t it be better if there were a way for people after you not to have to struggle like you did?

is it not unfair that you had to work so much harder than your peers to achieve something comparable?

did you ever think that it wasn’t meant to be that way?

maybe zero discipline and/or work ethic are disorders?

do you believe in the concept if mental health at all?

sorry you had to go through that.

ssris are often used to treat anxiety alone in the uk.

i personally found that aswagandha helped a lot in reducing my anxiety enough to start to handle it. it also totally destroyed my motovation to do anything (i took too much too often for too long). now i take 500mg ever 2-3 days but i started on 500mg a day.

you’re insinuating that adhd (or, executive functions disorders) don’t exist.

1. there is lots of evidence showing that “something” is wrong with lots of peoples executive functions and that this observed problem is hereditary.

2. this is pretty insensitive.

everybody does have these symptoms to some extent as you executive functions can’t be running 100% all the time. just like everyone has varying degrees of sight. it’s only a problem when it negatively impacts your life.

for someone with an executive function disorder the symptoms happen often enough and with enough severity to materially impact their ability to; do work, have friends, be organised etc.

not like, oh i forgot the milk (though, that happens) but like: “oh, i forgot i was brushing my teeth and now i’m searching for rubber gloves to replace the ones with a hole in from the kitchen, where did i leave my tooth brush?”

the meds impact people with an executive function disorder little differently too, they return executive function to normal. so, while you maybe amped up on amphetamines to some degree your head is clear , your ability to pick which questions to answer, which rabbit holes to explore, to maintain more than 1 thing in your head at a time is restored. for 4-8 hours a day you get to be somewhat like your peers.

it removes the separation between your structure and your styles so you can style as you go.

this sounds wrong because “separate responsibilities!” but in reality structure and style are so interconnected, for html and css, that you’re often changing one with respect to another so why not colocate the info.

also, managing a large css stylesheet is often terrible and it becomes write only as a result. it is easier to add new styles that override than attempt to find out which styles impact your target elements and change then. this is again due to the way that structure and style are intimately linked for html and css.

its better than writing raw styles on the html because that is rather obtuse, tailwind shortens many of the common style attribute names. e.g background-color: #efefef becomes bg-gray-50. this links into then named color palette that tailwind gives you.

also, *everything* is configurable.

the problem was never remote vs colocated. it was commuting.

offices are fine (though not required). travelling for > 15-20 mins to and from work is what sucks the most.

we need local office hubs. work around your local community for your employer near your home.

Rationality and emotions are not apposed.

I hate this requirement (and other similar ones). They force the crystallisation of architecture long before the concepts they model have them selves had time to fully crystallise.

You inevitably end up having to shotgun edit a bunch of files (that could have been one file) to re-architect stuff when it changes.