abnormaniac

[abnormaniac @abnormaniac]

@michaelshermer @RubinReport Musí jebať Michael. Best in the business...

[rachael 💫 @witty_genstein]

Babies are easy because when they are upset it is one of three easily verifiable things (hungry/tired/poopy).

Toddlers are hard because when they are upset it is because you disrupted some perceived esoteric order to the cosmos that is nearly inscrutable. Like “you can’t put the green crayon next to the purple crayon because banana goblins”

[Aaron Stupple @astupple]

It's my life work to contribute to a lack of discipline.

Discipline is fear of your own ideas.

[𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖋𝖊𝖗 @LucifersTweetz]

My favorite part of the Bible is where God sacrifices himself to himself to save you from himself.

[Siddhant Adlakha @SiddhantAdlakha]

May you all have a Sensei Sergio to stop you from going dark

[Joe Hudson @FU_joehudson]

The question I get asked the most is easily "How did you raise your daughters?"

People who meet them are deeply impressed and always want to know what "technique" we used.

The simple answer is that my wife and I never dealt punishment.
And if we ever shamed them, we apologized immediately.

Our parenting principles:

1. Non-punishment

Punishment doesn't teach accountability. It teaches your kids:

1. That you punish yourself to get things done
2. That what you say to do has to be forced
3. That they will have to punish themselves to get things done
4. That they aren't inherently good.

That's why we didn’t use timeouts, we didn’t take things away, and we didn't raise our voices at them.

2. Trusting their inherent goodness

The only way we could parent this way was to trust in our daughters and their desire to be connected to themselves and us.

Rather than trying to scare or threaten them into being better, we simply focused on staying connected with them, especially in hard moments.

This doesn’t mean we never got angry. But there’s a big difference between owned and disowned anger.

Imagine a 20 foot tall giant yelling at you. If your anger is AT your child, it’s punishment. But if you own your anger + your kid knows they're safe, it's not punishment.

3. Consequences

"Okay, but what about teaching consequences?"

I get this as a follow up question very often. People wonder how we helped our kids learn without teaching them consequences through punishment.

Two answers: Life as a teacher, and boundaries.

A] Life as a teacher.

We knew that life would deal out the grand majority of natural consequences. This was a huge part of their learning. We did not protect or shield them from the consequences of their own actions.

B] Boundaries

We set clear boundaries well in advance so they knew what would and wouldn't work. And boundaries meant what WE would do. Not what we would do TO THEM.

Here's an example of what I mean by that:

“It’s time to brush your teeth.” If they cried, screamed, or threw a tantrum we would stay close and wait with them until it was done. We didn’t force them, but the outcome was not a question. If we had to punish them, it just proved that we were overwhelmed and couldn’t be trusted.

4. There is no perfect

God knows I missed up too. Plenty.

When my eldest was in high school, she was struggling with something in her relationship, and I realized it traced back to a mistake I made and behavior I taught her.

I told her: This pattern comes from the way I raised you. Then I apologized to her and took full responsibility.

It was one of the most profound moments of our relationship.

I never knew my mistakes with her could be so meaningful.

[Vijay Sarathy @canvasoul_]

image soup for october

(1) josef koudelka
(2) antonio turok
(3) masahisa fukase
(4) a photograph by me

[Vivid Void @vividvoid]

With respect to Scott, there is nothing insecure about asking someone you love to change their behavior. People are perfect as they are and could also do with a little improvement. It's very often the needs of our relationships that demand personal growth; love is among the oldest and most reliable vehicles for maturity that the human race has got.

In this case, insecurity would be ignoring difficult feelings, trying to paper over confrontations, or using manipulative strategies to get the behavior change that you're looking for. In a secure attachment, you could communicate how the behavior is affecting you, get curious about what's causing it and make a clear request for collaboration on solving the problem, up to and including asking your partner to change.

It's not a pathological, codependent violation of your personal sovereignty to be told that you're being annoying or that you're hurting someone you love. Nobody is crossing your boundaries or making you unsafe by telling you what they need from you, asking you to be courageous or gentle, or insisting on your best. In fact, these confrontations and requests are profound acts of love. They're saying, "You're important to me. This relationship is important to me. I want to find a way to keep growing with you."

There is no long-term relationship worth committing to that won't permanently and inalterably change you - which is to say, that you won't permanently and inalterably change yourself for. That's the price of belonging. If you sit quietly and listen, you'll find that being challenged and changed by love is actually one of the deepest desires of the human heart, far truer and more profound than the shallow cravings for a life lived without obligation. To prize freedom and personal power above all other things is to throw out every relationship that places demands on you, to walk away from every situation that fails to conform to your narrow expectations, to lead a life that is wide open, perfectly free and totally, totally alone.

[scott 🌞 @scottdomes]

following your authentic desire is very different from doing whatever you feel like... and is a much more challenging path to uncover & follow

[scott 🌞 @scottdomes]

in the past I was obsessed with figuring out what my “core problem” was

aka the main issue separating me from the life I wanted

to my analytical, overthinking brain, the process was simple: figure out the core problem, solve it, and all would be well

on my quest to do so, I jumped from epiphany to epiphany: “ah that’s my issue… wait no, THAT’S my issue.. wait no it’s THIS…”

each fresh redefinition of the central problem brought with it a surge of excitement & relief. “this time, I have it…”

but what I now realize is that my core problem was never that hard to identify. nor was it unique.

we all have the same core problem: we’re afraid

more specifically: we’re scared of uncertainty, lack of belonging & love, and death

all my problematic behaviours could (and can) be traced back to those core fears

and so the solution is also very simple: be less afraid

if my fear vanished, so would my problems… but of course, easier said than done

so we need a strategy for reducing fear

and the simplest strategy is this: you cannot be having an experience of fear at the same time you’re having an experience of love

they are distinct states, distinct in the mind and the body, and mutually exclusive

(sometimes they seem tangled together eg “I love you so much I’m terrified to lose you”, which is fear springing FROM love, but in any given moment, it’s one or the other)

so if we are afraid, the best thing we can do is cultivate love towards our fear

and the moment we do that, we shift from fear to love

that’s all we need to do

is it easy? no, it takes practice. does it always work? no, sometimes the fear is beyond our capacity. but our capacity can grow

the core problem: I am afraid
the core solution: be less afraid
the core strategy: meet my fear with love

in any given moment, you can give it a try:

> ask: what am I afraid of?
> ask: where do I feel that fear? What’s the accompanying sensation?
> say to that fear: “I see you. I welcome you. I love you.”
> keep repeating those words until you start to feel love in your body
> surround the fear sensation with the love sensation
> stay there as long as you can

your choice now is whether you continue thinking yourself in circles over what “the issue” is…

or whether you start to cultivate the experience of love within you 🌊

[scott 🌞 @scottdomes]

commit to processes, not outcomes

we often commit to outcomes (e.g. I'm going to write this book, I'm going to build this app) as a way to force ourselves to follow through

we know we have a tendency to give up too easily, so we try to "trap" our future selves in a place where they can't escape, through commitment to a particular outcome

while this can be helpful & effective, it does require a certain amount of self abandonment. we are saying to ourselves, "I am going to make you do this, whether you like it or not"

(and then we're shocked when there's internal rebellion: procrastination, resistance)

but the outcome emerges from a process, and we can choose to commit to the process instead

rather than committing to writing a book, I can commit to writing

rather than committing to building an app, I can commit to coding

here, the commitment is a lot lighter: "I will stick with this as long as it is joyful & expansive"

... but also with added responsibility: "and therefore, I will work to make this as joyful & expansive as possible"

we are no longer solely focusing on getting to an outcome: we're focused on building the most beautiful process

and maybe, what makes the process more beautiful IS commitment to the outcome... but letting that be an emergent effect, rather than a cage we put ourselves in

ask: what processes in your life do you want a deeper relationship with? which processes give you the most energy & joy?

what do you want to commit to?

[dead on the concrete @sxlxntshxdxw]

ghost of eden. || s i l e n t _ s h a d o w

[abnormaniac @abnormaniac]

@morgansajer @AmberAmbitions @DerpRoflcopter But we are not like other animals. We have culture and ability to choose how to act. Violent acts of men are choice because of beliefs or not having knowledge how to deal with emotions. That is learned trait, not destiny.

[soli @solisolsoli]

The Apache's Supper, 1901, by Louis Legrand

[Gracia Ventus @the_rosenrot]

Kosmos Bomber: his and hers

[Vlad Vexler @VladVexler]

Trump is incapable of arriving at a stable understanding of any major issue. The idea that he’s “progressing” misunderstands who he is. He doesn’t grow - he relives the same day over and over, hunting for narcissistic supply.

[abnormaniac @abnormaniac]

@rivatez Saying humans are animals explains nothing. Same with “we're made of water, so the Moon affects our mood” — that's bad epistemology. Mapping your mood onto NASA data? You’ll find patterns anywhere if you look hard enough. Explanations > analogies.

[Robin Hanson @robinhanson]

.@DavidDeutschOxf, @DanGMartin1 & I discuss possible problems with our system of cultural evolution:
https://t.co/t9lJWoespe

[Joe Hudson @FU_joehudson]

A great decision isn’t one where you avoid the bad outcomes and get the good outcomes.

It’s one where you are who you want to be, no matter the outcome.

[Deutsch Explains @DeutschExplains]

––Charlie Barnett: "Consciousness and the computability of it. It sounds like, or at least in the past, that you've implied that consciousness is computable. Some, like Roger Penrose, have argued the opposite, and he's argued that consciousness is non-computational, and he uses Gödel's incompleteness theorems to argue that the mind can see truths that a purely algorithmic system can't derive, and therefore the brain must be using some kind of non-computable process when it comes to consciousness, something beyond what machines can do.

What would you say to a view like that?

@DavidDeutschOxf: Yet again, it is using an impossible conception of what knowledge is. So Penrose thinks that when we see a proof of a mathematical theorem, we are touching certainty, we are god-like entities when we're mathematicians. But that's not true.

Our mathematical knowledge is conjectural, just like our knowledge of physics. It's even more removed from our senses, because it's not true that the interior of our brains and the interior of our thoughts is more accessible to us than the world we perceive through our senses, or the world that we perceive through our theories, the center of the sun. We know lots about the center of the sun, even though no one has ever perceived it, and perhaps no one ever will.

So mathematical truths are based on conjecture. What Gödel showed is that there is no firm ground underneath mathematical theories either. There's no way of proving that the standards of proof that we currently use are perfectly rigorous.

And there have been cases in history where they have shown not to be rigorous. I think Pernot, who was the first to axiomatize the principles of the natural numbers, his first attempt at that was wrong. And it's interesting that he did not say, well, I've axiomatized them, therefore there's nothing to them other than my axioms.

No, he said, oh dear, my axioms don't correctly represent the real number, the natural numbers, so I have to change them. So he was grasping, conjecturing for a reality, an abstract reality, just like scientists try to grasp physical reality. So the same epistemology applies to mathematics as it does to science."