jackstraw14

Buddhism originated from a man sitting very still under a tree for a while.

The core issue I think this article ignores, is a Western buddhist's need to identify their spiritual life with a specific geographic region across the globe. The goal of Buddhism is not to create an alliance to eventually rule the world and compete with evil Western forces, but to develop a way of life through personal enlightenment that allows a better world to emerge.

These constructs in between us and enlightement only have life because of the energy we give to them. When the Dalai Lama talks about ways of finding personal peace, that's because it's the key point that you need before you can even know if your calling is to put your energy toward saving the Tibetan Buddhists.

Time as a measurement is an abstraction.

Brave New Imperialism.

There are fleeting states of being content that do actually happen. It's up to each person in their own way to find out (or ignore) that those states are just a product of their imagination.

What matters, is what you do when you've passed through hell and seen it for what it is.

I haven't read the article yet, but this is why being "content" never seems that descriptive to me. It doesn't describe the situation in which one finds themselves, it's a statement on their reaction. Some people always fight, some people throw a fit like a child, etc. Some people are content.

It's essential to find a source of contentedness in life, but it can be easily manipulated to become complacency. Are these kids content about being content?

Agreed. Something significant is getting missed somewhere in the pipeline. But still, all of those brilliant people found something inside themselves to drive them. None are/were dependent on society beyond the knowledge that got them to the point where they broke away from the herd and pushed us further, and that's what makes them special.

And yet I think most of them miss something significant as well. It's pretty painful to read Feynman's thoughts on poetry, for example, but following his natural curiosity led him to a place that satisfied all/most of his psychological needs.

They are not illusory, but I think people run into problems finding a structure or deeper meaning that cements those good habits into their daily life. They just become more “to do” items on our daily growing list of shit to do.

What is illusory, is that something outside of human perception will “fix” a perception problem. Something like repetitive exertion, like exercising... that is not a solution if there is a core perception problem in that person’s lens. As long as a “fix” or “solution” is being sought, it will always be temporary unless it opens up something in the person that allows them to see the original issue. But most often that stuff is used like a multivitamin, and people forget the significance of the fragile foundations they’re laying down as stuff to make the “rest of their life” possible. And they just move their attention to something else, something like watching Netflix instead of thinking about why they have such a hard time getting up to exercise in the first place.

It’s a spiritual problem.

> Social media itself is fine.

This is debatable. A completely ethical social media service still has the ability to control perceptions and thus decisions on a large scale. I think the problem is that everyone can know this and still use Facebook multiple times daily. To know that they contributed to the election of Donald Trump simply by using Facebook, and then go on Facebook to complain about Donald Trump. Surely that must be the problem, whatever makes people knowingly contribute to their own destruction, somehow without ever thinking about it.

If they announced a totally different business model, you would trust them and go back? I’m just asking because that’s an interesting thought, making Facebook change. How can you trust them enough after quitting in protest?

If we expect to have any success, people need to remove this idea that they need social media in their lives. All this is hypothetical too — last I checked Facebook brought in more cash than the 15 lowest GDPs or something like that. Making Facebook change just isn’t realistic. When you quit Facebook, you join a protest against for-profit social media, and as long as Facebook is a blind money machine it will always be part of the problem.

I didn't see how terrible our system is until I moved to an area that is friendly to walkers, well friendlier than the giant pickup truck havens of the Midwest where I lived most of my life.

Someone above mentioned how this type of dependency problem has happened since the first tool -- I don't think so. The problems I deal with daily are drivers who are staring at their smartphone as they turn, or people simply trying to beat the pedestrian across the crosswalk. I've had moments where my life flashed before my eyes more than I can count, and every single time the driver waves their hand at me like it's my fault. I'd like for them to get out of their mobile uterus so we can discuss this like adults, but instead I'm left yelling at their big metal machine, and they're yelling at the interior. And this is in a "walker friendly" area.

I'm working on theory that we all desire to be teachers, though definitely not teachers in a school classroom. I think the desire to share what we've learned is part of the process of learning, maybe a validation step. There can be lots of factors affecting one's situation, but for the most part life can be rearranged to accommodate things like teaching. Maybe the reason we don't run out and share what we've learned is because we adults don't feel like we know anything worth sharing.

Lately I'm reading the ancient philosophy texts and thinking about what it was like to learn back then. Plato had Socrates (who didn't believe in writing!) and he had to compete with other younger students for his favor. This meant not only participating in the conversations available but also making himself available to them. Can you imagine how different the learning experience would be if teachers just made themselves available from 9am-3pm every day, and students could choose to fill all or none of their time in their company? Like if spontaneous moments of brilliance came about when something like a high school german instructor bumped into a legendary cognitive science professor and together, they discovered a new idea at the intersection. And teachers and students (who made the effort to be there) could have been there to witness the whole thing. To see the joy of learning something new, on the two faces who only together made it possible. And to themselves learn something new from it. It's amazing stuff when we let it be.

The situation in which we find ourselves today, both ends of the dialogue are confused about what to do. The students aren't sure what to seek out, and they seem to rely more on luck and fate to assemble an understanding of the world for them. This makes me think no one is telling them what they're capable of, or about all of the lifetimes of enjoyment they can find in the world without spending a cent, only their time. There are millenia of human histories to explore and help them find their place, but the teachers on the other end are seeing the lack of interest in their methods and are taking it personally.

We need a much more flexible perspective on education, and I think a big part of that is becoming great teachers in our own lines of work like you're doing. We simply cannot put "learning" in a box and on a store shelf and expect the next generation to just pick it up. This is a life-long journey for all of us, and it can be a life-long joy if we help others see and feel the value of living!

I had a fallen arch on one of my feet for as long as I can remember, and doing mindful stretching daily is helping me fix mine. It's a really painful process, if this is anything like yours. Muscles were far too weak in the areas required to use my feet properly, all over my legs.

I'm not a healthcare professional but I would start with stretching your hamstrings like the article says and stretching your feet, getting to know the muscles that you have down there and how they work when you move your feet. You can follow a course or a guide, it may help, but know that every situation is different and you need to listen to your own body, experiment with some motions that you've never tried. Guidance might be good at first, but just don't stop listening to your body and try to avoid making it do something it doesn't want to do, but be aware of it. Unconscious avoiding of stiff or painful muscles gets you in this mess, so if you catch yourself mindlessly going through the motions (it does happen, often), take a moment to assess what kind of trouble you're in at the moment, muscle-wise.

Strengthening all of your leg muscles will help awaken the nerves in your legs. I can't remember the name, but it's a huge one that runs from your hip all the way to your toes that is the culprit of flat feet. Help your legs do work the right way, and then you'll start to see that you don't have to put much conscious pressure on the front of your feet at all to stay in balance.

I always thought "lifting with your legs" was just hamstrings and glutes, and it took like 3 months of daily yoga before I realized this all works quite a bit better if you use your upper back instead of lower back. Then I found out I have hip muscles, and life has been alright since then.

I don't know how many men age 20-50 that I've seen joke about "lift with your legs!" and then proceed to laugh as the subject just fumbles around worse than they would have, because they're not sure what lifting with your legs means either.

The really bad part about all this, is that without good posture and defaulting to "cashew-style," you're preventing your lungs from using their full capacity. Which I think makes people slightly oxygen-deprived, more sleepy and daydreamy, causing them to sleepily lean forward into their screen instead of taking a minute or two and finding some good posture.

I don't know how you can fix this either. Most Americans do destroy their lower back and then spend their rest of their life with a lopsided body, because they have no idea what good posture is, and it takes a long long time to actually fix the part of your mind that causes bad posture. You have to be willing to accept that your entire way of operating your body has been slightly off, for a really long time.

Isn't that just pointless marketing that doesn't do anything for us as readers though? A few paragraphs isn't enough to depict anything accurately about ten silent years before a 180 degree life change. Let's get excited about his next book when it's here.

Well I think the reason I like his math book is because it's his typical style on a different topic, so it's a more relaxed read and not something like a hard math book. The first words of the book are something like "Unfortunately this is an introduction you actually have to read" which if you've read much DFW you just kind of settle in right away.

He does mention in the book that the only math classes he had any success with were AP classes. I think it's dedicated to his teacher. But really it makes no attempt to disguise that it's mostly the math angle of his uneasiness with the world and yep I agree with you on the 20 pages a day.

There's been plenty of time to decide whether to regulate this stuff. Loot boxes are fairly new but I was a Pokemon card addict like your friend's son, at age 10 in 1998. No one cared much back then, so now you have former Pokemon card addicts like me designing more elaborate game systems like this, and spending real money is like a bonus thrill in the game.

Ultimately people will make the decisions about what they do. Paid DLC is nearly loot boxing, but I guess the difference is there is more reasonable pressure when deciding whether to buy the DLC vs. a loot box? It's less pressure than a perceived threat in the game provoking your purchase, but it's funny how there is still a lot of pressure to buy DLC when you're simply on the Steam store page (giant green buy button, videos with 25% actual gameplay flashing at you, reviews urging you to buy the game, etc). But that's not a problem, it's only a problem when a real-money store is moved inside the game.

This is a really good point I think! Up until the last few months, I've avoided doing any math with my brain that I'm not required to do (so, no brain math since college). Just recently I've been picking up some books about the history and philosophy of math like Fermat's Enigma and Everything and More (I'm a sucker for DFW, so this was a no-brainer when math was back on my radar).

Now every evening I find myself saying out loud, "why the hell didn't the math teachers explain it like this." For example, we all learn about the Pythagorean Theorem, but why didn't we learn about the Pythagorean Brotherhood[1] a little bit? And feel just a little bit of the excitement that Pythaogoras did when he found an exposed wire of the universe and figured out how to work it.

Fun fact: Pythagoras had to pay his first pupil to listen to him. No one gave a shit, probably not too different than how kids don't give a shit today. But the kids we're teaching don't even get paid, they're told their true reward is something intangible or some vague math-fu. All this while they have a black hole for their mind in their pocket where at least the fall is comfy.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism

Exactly! I think the OP talking about emotional abuse is confusing actual emotional abuse with the simple absence of a well-developed cognitive structure, and the problems that arise when parents lacking this structure try to raise kids of their own.

If a parent could give their kid an exact copy of their good/bad mapping for the world, the result wouldn't be a copy of a well-adjusted parent. The result would be a child who, at best, is able to function one step from their own reality without too much chaos. But I think it's more likely they would lose their footing somewhere around college and go off the rails, an increasingly necessary process it seems. Hopefully they have enough self-awareness left at that point to figure out how to exist in their world, finally in their own way.

I’m not sure how your point relates to the shared experience of individual alienation, but is the child you speak of really free from their parent’s influence if they’re living their life via the same broken mechanism?

It's interesting that you pity our ancestors. They got you here.

I agreed to this deal and I feel like I do need to pay off the debt, but I'm lucky in that I have a job that will allow me to do it the normal way if the crypto market crashes (heaven forbid, plz). What about the 18 year olds whose helicopter parents never allowed them to imagine a filthy reality like failing to go to college?

Regardless of whether that kid should have been free-thinking enough to see outside their existence's bubble, it's irresponsible to exploit their ignorance for profit. Most of these kids haven't ever seen a debt-ridden life like they're signing up for. I grew up with parents who ranted and raged about debt, and I still did it. Are you sure the problem lies with the kids signing the papers (I guess clicking the "Get your loan here!" button these days)?

If your workspace is inflexible then I would say making some changes to your commute asap might be important for your well-being.

Chit chat at work wasn't always annoying and disruputive. Well maybe to some it always was, but the workplace is usually an intersection of some interesting parts of your personal community, ie the mutual suffering everyone else goes through for whatever reason, to be here in this office 8+ hours a day. Sitting around all these people existing in chairs, who in their digital worlds totally forget about the noises they're making in the real world.

Your work chit chat is what you make it, is what I'm trying to say I guess. If your office is totally extroverted and won't give anyone any peace, look around for other people who aren't into the prescribed "work culture" and work together to make one of your own. At least your work days might be better.

My work days and quality of life in general improved dramatically when I stopped driving and started taking the bus. Two hours total round-trip each day, plus walking about 2 miles to/from bus stops, but I can't imagine ever wanting to drive to work again. Let someone getting paid to drive handle the stress of the road, don't put that shit on yourself. Public transport can be stressful in its own ways, but at least you have some free time to think about how to improve your outlook. When you're driving, you might accidentally cause a pile-up if you do that.

And the lack of ability to "get around" all day is a benefit, let me tell you. Your mind would be thrilled if you said "no, I can't do that" more often. It sounds like your workspace is pretty noisy but your rush-hour commute might be contributing to your bad days more than you think.

Start with basic yoga and find the stuff that needs work!

I wonder why you think that we've reached this point of progress? It seems like every day we're learning more about how consumer tech is killing us mentally, physically, and emotionally.

> People aren't taught well what it is, how to produce it and how to hang on to it when it's most needed.

I don't know about you but I don't see many signs of unselfish faith anywhere these days, at all. I think where I get hung up on what exactly faith is, is somewhere around when someone says it's some "something" that can be summoned, and when I look it up on wikipedia it's something produced on demand by enlightened individuals who catch on at some point.

There's one problem that's been fairly rampant in America for over a century: no one is enlightened anymore, and no one can give any convincing reason that their vision of faith, or just simply what got them through the hard times, is useful to you. Is today's world anything like what the people who built it intended when they set out a few decades ago? Are their sources of faith still useful, and if they're not, well then who's selling the faith fodder these days?

i.e. if faith is what everyone needs, then you have to look first at why it's fallen out of favor to the point where it needs a sales pitch. Why people give a shit about more things than ever before, and why none of them involve the fundamental component to doing the hard stuff: a good reason why.

I think this is pretty cool and thanks for making it. I bus commute 2.5 hours per work day and my job is 98% alone time, so it will be cool to see what other people in this boat do with that time.

Maybe it's all the HN posts about loneliness like another person noted, but does anyone else have a job like this? I'm really curious to hear about any long-term experiences with significant alone time. Seems like 100% remote folks might deal with this level of aloneness too. I'm realizing after a year that all the alone time really weighs on my psyche if I don't organize it somehow, so I've got five journals that I carry every day just to organize my thoughts. Curious what systems and strategies others have for structuring alone time.

Just wanted to say thanks for the links to your docs. Games like Michael Brough's (Imbroglio, 868-HACK) and Hoplite have really shifted my videogame-playing interest to turn-based stuff lately, and being a bored dev I'm naturally thinking about what's possible with these frameworks. I'm grateful for devs like you who take the time to write about the stuff you've learned. We're all learning and it's so much more fun to find documentation of how similar stuff has been implemented. Seems like it more seamlessly syncs up with the excitement and motivation when you find something like Boardgame.io. Anyway I really appreciate it!

Who is accepting deposits, and why tens of thousands? Real money is deposited into exchange accounts to buy crypto assets. No one is making fiat deposits into an IOTA organization.

You should examine your reality if you think developers of alpha software have any obligation to provide non-technical folks with a way to use it. It's open source, nothing is stopping you from building your own wallet if you want something better. But they don't owe you anything on the basis of the protocol simply existing. Ask yourself, why do you expect that?