I was planning to stay on Tumblr until midnight, but actually, I’m really tired, and I’ve already written the three main effortposts I wanted to finish before disappearing. So I think I’ll head to sleep now.
I am hereby banning myself from the (social parts of the) internet until the end of July. I won’t be on IRC, Tumblr, Facebook, gchat, or anything else. If you want to get in contact with me, you can send me an email (or a physical letter).
(I’m not banning myself from my formal blog, so maybe I’ll post something there. No promises though.)
Anyway, I hope you all have an excellent month! I will miss this website, and I’ll miss everyone I interact with here. But I’ll be back soon enough, and I’ll see you all then.
I’ve been thinking, yet again, about existential questions and what I should do with my life. There are so many appealing options, and I don’t know which to choose. I could continue with grad school and become a professor of cognitive science. I could leave grad school and write novels. I could accept an ordinary but stable and lucrative job as a software engineer. Or I could abandon modern society altogether, and go to live in a remote location as a subsistence farmer. All these choices are appealing, and I think that, if I really tried, I’d have a shot at all of them.
But I’ve been coming to realize, lately, that one reason I’ve been having trouble choosing is… I simply haven’t accepted, at an emotional level, that I only have one life to live, and realistically, I can only devote it to one of these options. I’ve been trying to cram all of these things into a single lifetime, and then just sitting there confused because I don’t know how to do it. And I’ve been postponing the decision, assuming that eventually, I’ll figure out the magical solution that lets me do all these things at once.
That solution doesn’t exist. I only have one life. I have to choose.
And in some sense, my choice is easy, because these are all really good options, and I’d be happy doing any of them (with the possible exception of software engineering). I remember when I was searching for apartments, I saw two that I really liked. And a friend said to me, “Wow, you’ve got a tough decision.” But I said, “Actually, I have a really easy decision, because no matter which apartment I pick, I’ll be happy there.” (And I am.) I think the same principle applies to my choice of career. It doesn’t really matter which one I pick, because I’d be happy with all of them.
But I have to make a choice. I can’t be a subsistence farmer and a professor of cognitive science. It’s simply not possible. If I try to cram all these goals into one lifetime, I’ll end up flitting back and forth between them, never devoting myself to anything long enough to succeed in it. I’ll become a jack of all trades and a master of none.
Whichever thing I choose, I’ll be giving up part of my potential. If I become a cognitive scientist, I’ll be giving up my potential to become a novelist. And this frightens me. But if I make no choices, and keep drifting idly between the options, then I’ll be giving up all my potential.
I only have one life. I’m not some kind of superhuman who has multiple lives to live. I’m just like everyone else.
When I look at other people, I never think less of them for living ordinary lives. Someone has to drive the garbage truck; someone has to be a plumber. It seems good and honorable to have a profession, no matter what it is. I admire anyone who takes pride in their work and does it well. But for some reason, I hold myself to a higher standard. I feel like I’m more “special” or something, and I should be doing more.
But I’m not “special”, not in this sense at least. I, like everyone else, have a single life to live, and I must make the best of it.
I feel like it’s a curse of the modern age, that our vision is so wide but our reach is still so short. I can read about things that happen all over the world, but I have little power to affect them. And I can read about a thousand people’s lives, and experience a thousand careers vicariously, but when it comes down to it, I can only live one.
I think I’ll be a cognitive scientist. It’s tempting to run off into the woods and forget about society, and maybe that’s ultimately better for my health and for the environment. But I would miss the intellectual inquiry, the engagement with other minds. So I will stay in modern society; I will accept this ordinary life.
With this decision comes compromise. Cognitive science becomes my priority, at least for the next few years. I won’t have time to cook a perfect meal every night; I won’t have time to read all the books that interests me. But that’s ok, because I’m doing something worthwhile. And it comes with a sense of relief – I don’t have to cook a perfect meal every night; I don’t have to read every book. As long as I study cognitive science, I’ll be fulfilling the things I was supposed to do.
With this decision also comes determination. I was already planning to spend a month away from Tumblr this summer, but now I’m especially motivated to do it now. I want to devote my time to studying, to making progress on my projects, to actually accomplishing something in terms of research.
Maybe this enthusiasm will fade in a couple of weeks. Maybe I’ll change my mind again, and head off on some other path. But for the moment, it feels like something small has been resolved.
I think the recurring theme of my non-joke posts so far is the difference between individual and collective knowledge, and navigating our collective knowledge as an individual. Having accurate beliefs about the world can be extraordinarily difficult, even more so for a single person. People are good at forming beliefs about their peers and their immediate environment, little else. We are all short-sighted, biased, of limited intelligence, and able to grasp a minute fraction of humanity’s wisdom. Social processes such as science, math, and history considerably ameliorate these limitations by pooling information across time and space, and using tools for self-correction like experiments.
This is something I was thinking about as well, when the futility of ever trying to fully understand more than a tiny scrap of any particular field really hit me. If you accept that, I think proper intellectual virtues become less about knowing a lot of different facts, or even having a very deep knowledge of one particular area, and more about being a good node in the giant distributed intelligence that is civilization.
Some of those virtues might be:
- Epistemic humility (in- and outside views of how likely you are to be right about any given topic, asking for feedback from experts, etc.)
- Being able to accurately convey both what you know about a topic, and how it is that you know it. Avoiding acting more authoritative than you are to try to win an argument.
- Adding useful information to anything that you signal boost (if you mention an article about new research, dig up a link to the original paper).
- Correcting misinformation as soon as you see it (to prevent it from spreading), but doing it in such a way that people won’t get irritated (and thus cut you out of their information network).
- Being able to identify trusted and untrusted sources of information (signal-boosting the former, but still being willing to listen to the latter).
- Strengthening/incentivizing good discourse norms (charity, etc.)
Most of those I came up with off the top of my head, but it seems like a good start.
- Do not hoard information.
- Write comments.
- Write blog posts.
- Write papers, if you’re up to it.
- Share papers.
- Put your raw data out for others to use.
- Support establishing central information repositories.
- (Wikipedia is a start, but it‘s only one thing.)
- Write on wikis etc. about what you know, or understand, or have discovered.
have a nice july! I think I want to reply to at least one recent post of yours, but likely not today, so, I’ll be taking my time
Yay, I look forward to the response! (I will read all activity on my posts once I return in August.)
Alright, I am done driving, time to Tumblr furiously for 3.5 hours. =)
aprilwitching replied to your post:Ok, so I don’t normally talk about sex on Tumblr,…(speaking as someone who doesnt know that much about bdsm, but)– i had kinda been under the impression that the handcuffs had to do w evoking “punishment”/restraint by an Authority Figure(the dominant psn?), bc of how theyre used in arrests and all!
so i would figure that for someone who just likes being restrained during sex, handcuffs wouldnt be more appealing than other things. but they might be more atmospheric for people who do bondage as part of a d/s or roleplay or masochism thing?That makes sense; I hadn’t thought of that explanation.
Incidentally, I received another reply from someone, saying he associated rope with BDSM more strongly than handcuffs. So my examples there could be totally inaccurate. I do think there’s something to the general principles, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if the examples weren’t true.
Highly anecdotal, but I have strong anti-signaling/anti-ritual intuitions (at least when those things are part of a large enough “culture”) and the fourth category you mentioned, the associational category, is definitely what turns me off the most about BSDM/kink/whatever. (Really more like allergies than intuitions.)
That’s really interesting. I never associated anti-ritual intuitions with anti-signaling ones before, but that makes a lot of sense. There’s definitely a lot of things, in my life, where I’m really turned off by the associational/signaling aspects, and I just want to do things the simple practical way. There’s also a lot of things where I’m turned on (er, not in a sexual sense) by the ritual/association aspects, and that’s specifically why I want to do it. But the things I’m turned off by tend to be things that everyone else already does, and the things I’m turned on by tend to be unique to me or a very small group that I’m part of.
Like, I’ve participated in rituals basically all my life, but they were usually ones that I led, and up until college, I was averse to getting swept up in group energies. Non-coincidentally, college was the first time where I felt like I had an ingroup where I really belonged, and like I wasn’t an outsider clinging to the periphery of society. (Since college, though, I’ve been fairly happy to participate in rituals, and these days, my reaction to something like ritual-heavy BDSM would be “eh, might as well try it to see what it’s like”.)
[snip]
Notice that handcuffs have a stronger association with BDSM than rope does, even though rope is way more practical for restraining people.
[snip]
(caution: I know nothing about bdsm)
I’m not sure if either of these things are true - I think it’s actually probably pretty difficult to restrain someone with rope without knowing a lot about it. I wouldn’t know how to tie a knot securely, but in such a way that it’d still be comfortable/not cut off their circulation. Handcuffs, on the other hand, are designed to do exactly this. It’s a much more…turnkey solution.
And as a person not involved in bdsm, I have a much stronger association of it with ropes than I do with handcuffs. Handcuffs have been a fairly standard example of “very mildly kinky sex thing” for a long time, the kind of thing that would show up a sitcom on network tv (This happens in an episode of “Friends”, which is about as middle-of-the-road as it gets). But if someone is using ropes, that seems like they’re a lot more into the lifestyle part of it.
Aha, that’s interesting! The first paragraph makes a lot of sense from a practical standpoint; I hadn’t thought of that. And your second paragraph makes sense too, and seems to both confirm and deny my theory at the same time.
(speaking as someone who doesnt know that much about bdsm, but)– i had kinda been under the impression that the handcuffs had to do w evoking “punishment”/restraint by an Authority Figure(the dominant psn?), bc of how theyre used in arrests and all!
so i would figure that for someone who just likes being restrained during sex, handcuffs wouldnt be more appealing than other things. but they might be more atmospheric for people who do bondage as part of a d/s or roleplay or masochism thing?
That makes sense; I hadn’t thought of that explanation.
Incidentally, I received another reply from someone, saying he associated rope with BDSM more strongly than handcuffs. So my examples there could be totally inaccurate. I do think there’s something to the general principles, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if the examples weren’t true.
Ok, so I don’t normally talk about sex on Tumblr, and I’m not about to start describing my own sex life, but I had a really interesting conversation the other day, and I wanted to share it with you.
A friend and I were talking about BDSM, and about the different accoutrements that are involved (e.g. rope, handcuffs, whips, leather, etc.). And we divided them into four categories: objects used for B/D (e.g. rope, handcuffs), objects used for D/s (e.g. collars), objects used for S/M (e.g. whips), and objects that are used to signify that you are doing the ritual of BDSM (e.g. leather clothing).
Obviously, the categories overlap (restraints that are specifically designed to be uncomfortable, etc.). But what really interests me is that last category, “objects that signify that you’re doing the ritual of BDSM”. Because I mean, there’s all sorts of straightforward, utilitarian ways to tie someone up or inflict pain, and yet people continually choose very specific methods like handcuffs. One explanation for that is just lack of creativity: if everyone else uses handcuffs, and people constantly talk about them in connection with BDSM, then they’ll be one of the first things you reach for when you want to restrain someone. But another explanation is that… handcuffs feel more BDSM-y, and so they help people get into the mindset of doing BDSM. That’s what I mean by “signify that you’re doing the ritual”. People have these associations built up between handcuffs and BDSM, so handcuffs help them get into the proper ritual headspace.
Notice that handcuffs have a stronger association with BDSM than rope does, even though rope is way more practical for restraining people. I think this can be explained as follows: people have lots of occasion to use rope in everyday life, so it doesn’t get associated as strongly with the sexual context. Like, a friend and I recently used rope to secure some furniture into the back of a pickup truck. And rope is a standard piece of equipment when you go camping. So if I see someone carrying rope, I don’t automatically think there’s something sexy going on. Whereas, if someone who’s not a police officer owns handcuffs, I figure it’s almost certainly for sexual purposes.
Basically, the fewer associations something has, the stronger each of those associations can be. Rope is used for so many different things that it doesn’t immediately get you into the BDSM headspace. But things like handcuffs and leather collars do, since their primary association is BDSM. That’s why such items are useful.
In general, the more accoutrements you use at once, the stronger the effect will be; a BDSM dungeon evokes the ritual context a lot more strongly than just using a piece of rope in your living room. (Of course, if you always do BDSM in your living room, and you never do it in a dungeon, then you’ll probably have stronger associations with your living room. But I’m talking about settings where there’s no prior experience.)
I guess there are two overall points to this post. One is: specific settings evoke specific states of mind, and that’s important for ritual. The other is a point about semiotics: objects take on meaning based on the contexts in which we use them; the stronger the association between an object and its context, the stronger the meaning will be (ML people will recognize this as how the EM algorithm works).
I’m sure I could have made these points with a different example that wasn’t about BDSM. But this is the example I already had in mind, so, uh, oh well.
I’ve been thinking lately about where cultures come from. That is, there are many different cultures in the world, and I’ve wondered: why did they form and how do they perpetuate themselves?
I think for most of my life, I’ve operated under the idea that cultures are basically random. Cultures are passed down from generation to generation; the children observe their parents performing the culture, and try to mimic their behaviors. But there’s noise in this transmission process, and the child will internalize a slightly different version of the culture than their parents have. Over time, the culture changes dramatically. And if two populations from the original culture get isolated geographically, then they’ll evolve in different directions, just because random chance is unlikely to mutate them in the same ways. Also, if a culture is spread out across a large geographic area, then the populations at the edges might mutate until they’re mutually unrecognizable, even if there’s a continuum of cultures from one end of the region to the other. Also, cultures may be influenced by contact with neighbors, since they might pick up ideas or habits from the surrounding cultures. (I think I just took the standard story of linguistic evolution, and assumed it applied to cultures as well.)
That simple model can be modified to include sociological concerns. I saw a Tumblr post, recently, that took the standard story of linguistic evolution, and augmented it with sociolinguistic concerns: dialects form (or at least diverge much more rapidly) when two groups of people actively want to distinguish themselves from one another. (Sorry, I have no idea who wrote that post! tropylium? severnayazemlya? Whoever wrote it, if you send it to me I’ll link it here.) Anyway, the same idea can easily be applied to culture: people start acting different to distinguish themselves from another group that they don’t like.
But anyway, recently I’ve been considering some very different models of how cultures form and perpetuate themselves. The models I just described assume that all cultures are equally good, so there’s no selection pressures shaping their evolution. (And that’s usually what’s assumed for linguistics, too, right? Everyone assumes all languages are equally expressive, so linguistic change cannot be a matter of degradation or improvement?) But the functionalist / “social technologies” view of cultures says that cultures aren’t random at all; they’re vital mechanisms for keeping a society functioning. So of course selection pressures will apply to them. And there’s no one-size-fits-all culture that works for every society; different cultures work better in different environments.
So, for example, people on IRC have been saying that latitude influences time preference in a culture. In tropical cultures, where food is available year-round, people have near time preference. But in northern climates, where the growing season is short and food needs to be stored for the winter, people have developed a far time preference.
And a long time ago, I heard there was a distinction between “desert cultures” and “forest cultures”. Forest cultures live in harmony with the land, understanding that they shouldn’t take too much, or else they’ll disrupt the balance and the herds won’t return the next year, or the plants won’t grow. Desert cultures, on the other hand, live in a world of scarcity; they take all they can from a place, and then move on to strip the next location of its food and resources. And supposedly, the Abrahamic religions are all desert cultures, and that’s why we’ve been so disrespectful to the earth.
I don’t know if either of those things are true. But they’re examples of the sort of ideas one might investigate in this framework. One also might look into the population density, or the number of people in the culture. A city of 100,000 people is going to necessitate very different social norms than a village with 100 people.
Another possibility is that different populations have very different genetic traits, so cultures evolve to accommodate this. Everyone likes talking about racial differences in IQ, and if that’s true, then it’s certainly important; but I’m also very interested in racial differences in personality. How does a culture evolve to accommodate increased neuroticism or decreased conscientiousness?
So anyway yeah, these are some things I’ve been thinking about. I don’t know enough about genetic differences between populations to have an opinion there, but I definitely think that cultures evolve to suit the people’s environment. This is something I hope to learn more about in the future.
So! I decided at the beginning of my summer that, at sometime during the break, I was going to take an entire month off from Tumblr and other social parts of the internet. And it seems like July is a good time to do that. So, starting tomorrow, I’ll be away from the internet for an entire month.
Let’s see how much I can post on Tumblr in my final day here!
What interests me about the post I just reblogged is… these are direct first-hand experiences, they aren’t myths or legends that have gotten distorted by the exaggerating processes of storytelling. The people quoted actually saw and witnessed ji.
These people are describing an experience that is totally unheard of in the Western world, something that defies our current models and explanations. And unless all those people are outright lying (which seems unlikely), it seems that we’re left with two possibilities:
(1) ji is real, meaning the world is a much stranger place than our current models predict, and we should lose confidence in our Western worldview; or
(2) there’s no such thing as ji, meaning the human mind is easily deceived by its worldview, to the point where perceptions get screwed up and people see things that aren’t there; in which case, once again, we should be less confident in our worldviews and perceptions.
It seems people avoid this difficulty by insisting that we, in the modern world, are more rational and scientific than past civilizations, and that gives us exclusive access to the truth. But I don’t have that much confidence in reason/science, and if you take the outside view, it seems like every culture has some argument for why it has exclusive access to truth (word of God, magical divination abilities, whatever).
In my opinion, (1) and (2) are both correct. Our worldviews shape our perceptions, and actual reality is perhaps beyond our perception, but at the very least is stranger than we currently imagine.
“Do not speak to the infant loudly or it will lose its bla (soul),” is commonly heard in Siyuewu. There are no specific symptoms associated with bla loss, nor are there rituals to call back the bla. ji refers to the visible soul whereas bla is invisible. Lost ji must be found and put back in the body, but nothing can be done to call back the ji. Those who lose their ji become ill or progressively weaker until they eventually die. In the same way that bla can be lost, the ji can be lost from a sudden fright, or when alone, afraid, and thinking that something bad will happen. The accounts below are of ji loss:Account One. Gnas pos (b. 1947), a retiree of the county electricity management office:
It has been almost thirty-five years since I saw someone’s ji. It was during the time of the Commune System in the 1970s, when we attended meetings almost every night, walking five kilometers to the meetings and returning at night. I was a boy and represented my family. As usual, Bso pa, some neighboring villagers, and I went to the meetings together. We were on our way home after a meeting, swapping stories about bears and leopards all the way. Bso pa led us holding a firebrand to light the rugged path. A dim moon shone on old tree-stumps. Dbang rgyal was walking behind us and called, “Look, is this yours? Take it quickly!” I turned and saw a sky-colored thing swinging left to right. It seemed alive. It could be held in one cupped hand and was shiny. I had heard my father say we could lose our ji and if we did, we needed to go back to the place where we were frightened, otherwise we would go mad or have hallucinations of ghosts and evil spirits. I picked that shiny thing up and rubbed it on my chest but it spilled everywhere, sticking on my hands and chest. This time it was brighter than before, like the shining stars. It felt cool. I called out to Bso pa, because I thought it must be his. He stretched his hand out and the ji became like beads. It went into his hands and disappeared, including what had been stuck on my hands and chest. I told this to my mother and she told me that I had seen ji, and that Bso pa would be fine and not become sick, since he got his ji back.
Account Two. Bai Yun (b. 1966):
When we were younger, some villagers and I went to watch movies in the neighboring village. 46 There were about ten of us and we needed to walk through a dense forest where people believed the ghost of a woman murdered by robbers still wandered. We finished watching movies and returned home on that path. Suddenly, Smon lam cried out, “What is this?” “It’s ji. My mother told me about it. You can lose your ji if you are frightened,” I said, walking to the front of our group. I asked, “Is this yours, Smon lam? Try to pick it up.” “Maybe it’s mine,” said Smon lam trying to take it, but it went right through his hand. Then, I picked up the ji and it entered my hand as soon as I touched it.
Account Three. Yid bzhin lo (b. 1920):
I stayed in my aunt’s home for some days. One day I was helping my uncle feed livestock on the ground floor. A notched log led to the second floor. The first floor was very dark. I had finished feeding the livestock and was going up to the second floor, holding a wood feeding pail in my hand. It was really dark. I could feel someone staring at me. Uncle shouted worriedly when I had just about reached the second floor. “You’ve lost your ji . You must have been afraid of something. Come take it, otherwise you’ll get seriously sick!” He told me he had tried to take it but it had slipped between his fingers. I could see a bright thing moving back and forth. I was a bit afraid, wondering if it was mine or a ghost’s. Finally, I closed my eyes and stretched out my left hand. I felt I had touched butter that had just been taken out from milk. It had vanished when I opened my eyes. I was thinking about what it was and could not sleep the whole night. It seemed I could still feel that ji in my hand. I felt OK after that night.
ji loss stories are common. Locals say you can get your ji back if you lose it. Once, however, a man lost his ji and did not notice. He went mad, and spoke a language that no one understood. After three years of madness, he killed himself by plunging a sword into his stomach. He smiled as he died.
how do i become better at turning people down, this is kind of becoming an issue
i have been informed that the script for getting out of a social situation is to make an excuse to leave briefly and then never come back
what else
Make plans for all your time a week in advance. Turn things down by saying you’ve already scheduled something for that time. For example anyone who wants to do anything with me today has to accept that im scheduled to go on tumblr and masturbate
You don’t even need to have anything specific scheduled. “Sorry, I can’t make it” (or “Sorry, I’m really busy these days”) is an excuse that’s basically ironclad, and everyone is _supposed to know to read it as “no, thank you.” Some people are awkward and don’t pick up on that. But either way you’ve gotten out of whatever the thing is.
What do you do if someone always says they’re busy but also says to keep inviting them? Is that another layer of bullshit I should interpret as lack of interest or what?
That’s trickier. My general rule is that “Sorry, I’m busy” with no followup is actually a no; but “Sorry, I’m busy. How about (blank)” actually just means they’re busy.
Basically, if they want to hang out with you they’ll give you hooks, and if they don’t they won’t give you hooks. But in general I would assume that if they say “but keep inviting me!” then you should feel free to keep inviting them, up until the point where you get sick of it doing the asking.
Basically, if they give you more hooks you should feel free to take advantage of them. Usually. The thing that’s supposed to be a “no” is a blank “sorry, I’m busy” with no details. If they want to see you there will probably be some added “but we can hang out next week when I’m freer” or something.