My grandpa was born and raised in an industrial town that didn’t have access to pools or anything like that. He decided to learn to swim by reading a book and practicing in his living room. He would lay down on a bench or a seat and practice the motions. Every year, he’d go to a nearby town that did have a pool, and he’d sit for hours hearing how kids were taught to swim. He’d then go back to his living room and practice based on that.

So, how did he swim? Luckily, looking at him swim was something I could do with my own eyes. And just by the look of it, you’d never tell he learned on a bench.

There’s actually research on this. There are groups of people that donate more than others. There are two groups of people that really matter for this: people who have protection values and people who have democratic values.

People with protection values care about themselves and their people (their family, their clan, their tribe, their religion, their nation). People with democratic values care about humans in general, regardless of their religion, nationality, what family they come from, etc.

So, who donates more money? People with democratic values.

You can check out Christian Welzel’s Freedom Rising for more on this :)

Ghosts are the creation of our minds. And it turns out that our minds are flawed machines. This was shown by someone and they won a Nobel Prize for it (Daniel Kahnemann). If we understand our flawed minds, we understand why ghosts aren’t racist.

When you think of something, you run a simplified simulation of it. When you run these simulations, you don’t think about other things. For example, when people fantasize about achieving something, they usually run the simulation of having gotten the job and the money or having solved the tough problem. However, they usually don’t think about the path to achieving that goal. This is called the planning fallacy. It’s also called the Motivation Wave in Behavior Design.

Another example of these simplified simulations is the halo effect. The halo effect starts when you notice something good about someone. Maybe they’re attractive. Maybe they’re on your same team or political group or religion or whatever. The thing is that you end up building a good preconception of that person. You assume they’re kind and smart and many other positive things. Again, your mind is running a simplified simulation. Even if you notice bad stuff about the other person, you may ignore it because our mind is a flawed machine and it’s stuck with the idea that the other person is good.

So, how do simplified simulations lead to non-racist ghosts? Well, we all share an idea of what a ghost is. We tell each other ghost stories or we watch movies with ghosts in them. All of that feeds the simplified simulations we run when we think of ghosts. And we don’t include racism in those simulations.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t escape simplified simulations. This is a tough problem that many people have tried to solve in many different ways. These attempts have resulted in an arsenal of methods: psychological flexibility exercises, mental contrasting, pre-mortems, the Delphi method, red team blue team exercises, weak signal detection, etc. Notice that all of these tools try to transform our preconceptions.

Of course, a very simple way of transforming our preconceptions is to prove them wrong. I suppose in the case of non-racist ghosts, it’s a matter of creating racist ghosts. This project, however, brings up the old adage: just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

If you’re interested in simplified simulations, I recommend Lisa Feldman Barret’s books. You can also check out Daniel Kahnemann, Gary Klein, and Dave Snowden.

Ah that makes sense. Maybe it’s a European/US difference, but it could be just a Time Timer thing. My air fryer is from an American company and it has the same timer as you (wind it up clockwise, then the hand moves counter-clockwise).

I wonder if both types of timers (wind up clockwise and wind up counter-clockwise) seek to distinguish themselves from normal clocks in different ways:

• Wind up clockwise timers (like your stove and my airfryer) let you know it’s not a normal clock by flowing counter-clockwise.
• Clockwise timers (like a Time Timer) let you know it’s not a normal clock by having a red disk slowly become smaller.

Earplugs come in different sizes. Maybe it’s a matter of experimenting?

Ah. To set up the timer, you do pull the hand counter clockwise, as if you were pulling a spring-loaded car backwards for it to move forward on its own. After you release the Time Timer, its hand will move forward on its own, normally, clockwise.

It is a bit unusual, but the point of the timer is to see how much time you’ve got left. It’s like a battery charge percentage. You know that when the battery reaches zero, you’ve got to charge it up again.

I hope the explanation helps. If not, feel free to ask or to check out the videos in the Time Timer website. After all, it is a strange product.

A Time Timer.

They’re not cheap, especially for a timer that’s bare bones (~20 USD).

But it has changed my work life.

1. People who want to interrupt me while I’m working can now see how long until I have my next break. So I am interrupted less.
2. Now I self-regulate a bit better, so I’m able to work longer without destroying myself in the process. I take breaks that help me with repetitive strain injuries and with feeling like I’m a human being and not just a machine.
3. Now I remember to actually start timers when I start working. I know this is a bit silly, but I was having trouble creating a habit of stopping for breaks. I tried to solve this by setting timers on my phone, but I constantly forgot doing it. Now I’m reminded to start a timer by something that I see on my desk.

People do or don’t do things depending on three variables: motivation to do it, the ability to do it, and the prompt to do it.

• Motivation could be lacking in some cases. People need to understand the purpose of turn signals. However, I don’t think there’s an anti-turn signal discourse going around. At least as far as I know.
• I don’t think it’s ability, because activating turn signals is relatively easy for most people.
• I think prompts could also be lacking.

How do we change this?

The Behavior Design answer would be something like this: We need to patiently and kindly train people to recognize prompts to the turn signals. “When you get to the corner, put your left hand on the turn-signal control and move it up. Then turn right.” We also need to celebrate it the instant they do it. “Perfect”. Of course, you need to have a good relationship with whomever you’re doing this with.

Now, that is not the only solution; there are many. We might have one solution if we zoom in on one person. We might have another solution if we zoom out to a whole city or country.

In any case, if we want to solve the problem with Behavior Design, you could check out Tiny Habits.

Besides talking to a doctor, would she be against doing cognitive training? If she’s down, I can suggest some stuff :)

I’d say the fight against entropy is an attempt to retain specific expressions of energy in the system. The expressions of energy are assemblages that have created order. And yes, as you said, the creation of order has a cost: greater global entropy.

In case you’re interested, this way of looking at entropy and life comes from Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker.

After reading what I have posted, it’s totally fair to believe that I do not find beauty or inspiration in nature. However, I can give you some reassurance.

How? Well, I actually I find the battle against entropy amazing and inspiring. A while ago I was sipping tea while my dog nestled next to me, and I was moved thinking about how we make each other so happy. I am also moved by people, people who look beyond their belly button, people who are kind, people who are good at what they do.

It’s not just that we’re doomed to accept brutality and appreciate tiny slivers of beauty. There’s actually steps that we can take to support life. For example, we can become a part of an assemblage that we like. Sometimes that assemblage is a group of friends, a political group, or an organization. You know you’re in the right place when your incentives align with that of the group. There’s an alignment around shared values, shared goals. Your atoms are keeping your structural integrity. Your cells are keeping you alive. Your thoughts are aiding you in problem solving and connecting with others. And your friends are connecting with you.

There’s quite a bit more to this, so if you’re interested in this way of understanding the world, you can check out Prosocial by evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson and psychologists Paul W. B. Atkins and Steven C. Hayes.

How so?

Cordyceps fungus

Holy crap. This gave me the creeps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis This opened the door to the broader category of parasitoids https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitoid

Prion diseases

Truly scary stuff. I vaguely knew that genetic problems are a thing, but I didn’t know the specifics. Thanks for sharing this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion

I agree that there’s a layer of human subjectivity in this whole discussion. Within that layer, I think it’s okay to get a gut sense that nature is brutal and grotesque. My goal is to avoid romanticizing nature.

Once we’re able to avoid our human bias of romanticizing nature, we can take the discussion to another layer, a layer that could be called more objective.

For example, we could talk about entropy and evolution’s attempts to fight against it. We could talk about evolution occurring at multiple scales and dimensions simultaneously, such as atomic structures, cells, and multicellular organisms. These are examples of assemblages, and they expand the possible behaviors of the parts. In other words, assemblages make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

So, how does entropy, evolution, and assemblages connect with our discussion? Well, brutality and grotesqueness can usually be translated into the language of entropy and assemblages. Killing someone destroys an assemblage and increases entropy. Torture and trauma reduce the probability of an organism exhibiting variation in their behaviors. They reduce the emergent properties of the assemblage.

Is it always better to choose the language of entropy and assemblages over brutality and grotesqueness? No. Context matters. Again, if the goal is merely to avoid the romanticization of nature, the brutality and grotesqueness layer is appropriate.

Ouch. Looked it up. Its brutal. https://enviroliteracy.org/do-lions-eat-their-prey-alive/

TIL lions eat some prey alive because it saves the lions energy. They avoid spending too much energy killing a prey that is difficult to kill. Instead, they incapacitate (but not kill) a prey and start eating right away.

I agree. The boundary can easily become diffuse or even silly.

However, there’s a reason I asked what I asked. My ultimate purpose is to show that existence is not perfectly designed, that sometimes it is brutal and grotesque. Unfortunately, people often retort saying nature is brutal and grotesque because of humans. So, by focusing on non-human nature, I’m sidestepping the retort.

Pinecones are indeed beautiful. However, they are decidedly not one of the greatest arguments for the existence of an intelligent higher power. In fact, the whole claim about pinecones having the Fibonacci sequence is false https://youtu.be/1Jj-sJ78O6M

Additionally, I wouldn’t think that cones having nice shapes are an example of nature being brutal and grotesque. But I suppose you wanted to make the opposite argument: that nature is perfect and beautiful.

Ouch. Rape. Sometimes gang rape. Bloodied female. Sometimes drowned female. https://misfitanimals.com/ducks/how-do-ducks-mate/

Awful.

Here’s some I know:

• Dolphins rape other dolphins https://theconversation.com/dolphin-sexual-politics-gets-the-tabloid-treatment-6063
• Praying mantis females often eat the head of males they have sex with. Some spiders do that too, like the appropriately named black widow spider. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_cannibalism
• Mass extinctions have occurred in the past, way before humans existed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
• Genetic mutations often lead to inviable offspring or awful conditions (I don’t know specific examples off the top of my head)
• Parasites can take control of insects and lead them to drown (also don’t know examples off the top of my head)

Others have talked about the ultimate measure: your GPA. However, for you to get that high GPA it can help to:

• Train your relational frame skills.
• Develop good learning habits through Tiny Habits or something like that.
• Develop a good relationship with your thoughts and emotions through something like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or the Healthy Minds Program or any program designed to improve your relationship with your thoughts.
• Internalize something like Make it Stick or another book that teaches how to learn quickly and well.
• Internalize habits of mind such as Harvard’s Project Zero’s Visible Thinking Routines.