6 ms·

I've come across these kinds of articles before and they always seem to suggest that you rewrite the metaphorical firmware of your brain so that it operates in

I've come across these kinds of articles before and they always seem to suggest that you rewrite the metaphorical firmware of your brain so that it operates in a way that is advantageous to you. There's some notion of self discovery from first principles. I'm not convinced that this is generally a good idea. It makes a person unmoored and open to anything ("so open minded that your brains fall out"). It's also often amoral. The only metric that's maximised is utility regardless of other more subtle consequences. As I grow older, i think the human experience is more complex than can be captured by a few "hacks" like this.

card_zero 3y ago
Did you know, the brain is hard-wired to be suckered by self-help books? One trick that I personally find very liberating and enlightening is to make a big pile of such material and burn it. It gives me a sense of warmth and inner joy.
- noufalibrahim 3y ago
  Isn't the combustion external? Why would the warmth be internal?
  - ufocia 3y ago
    Semantics dear Watson: it's the inner joy that's internal.
    - noufalibrahim 3y ago
      Never let an explanation ruin a terrible pun.
  - gumby 3y ago
    “Burn” is a commonplace synonym for oxidization, that is, adding an electron. Likely the GP is “eating the books, and thus is warmed as a consequence of the Krebs cycle. We can be glad for GP that these days it is uncommon to encounter a book with a CD or DVD attached. I’m not sure those are safe to eat.
- dumpsterlid 3y ago
  [dead]
- jrm4 3y ago
  I so believe the opposite of this IF you come at the right ones the right way? Which is to say, once you read (or skimmed) enough of them, it's easy to get a sixth sense of the "intelligence" and "motivation" of the writer, and the sincere ones, even if not smart, are still pretty enjoyable if taken with many salt grains, and I'm a sucker for them (again, not in terms of following exactly what they say to do, but appreciating the motivation and good-intent of the author and possibly picking up something along the way.) They'll have names like PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS and just be like "try to be nice to people and sit down and be quite a few times a day." A sort of perfect example would be the fictional "The You You Are" from the TV Show Severance. I hope they actually write it, I know I'd LOVE it. https://severance.wiki/the_you_you_are_book https://severance.wiki/the_you_you_are_book
- nefrix 3y ago
  Your advice is superb. You can start writing self help books learning people how to make the fire in order for them to achieve the inner joy.
- knallfrosch 3y ago
  I enjoy reading them, thinking I'll change myself. Then I'm done, I don't apply anything and put the book on the shelf. It's its own kind of horror for these books.
  - maxverse 3y ago
    This is an interesting topic of its own, but there have been a few books/ideas that have made a significant difference on how I operate day-to-day. There are many more books and ideas I nod along to and never implement.
    - benoitmalige 3y ago
      You’ve touched on something profound here—our interaction with knowledge is dynamic, not static. A book that speaks to us today might whisper different wisdom 5 years from now, as we grow and our perspectives shift.
  - haswell 3y ago
    Transitioning to "I know these are good ideas" to things you're doing in practice is much harder than reading, but can happen. Over time, I've come to look at reading these kinds of books like planting seeds. They give my brain ideas and concepts to chew on. Options to apply to situations. I did wake up one day to the realization that I had up to this point not been willing to take the next steps and put insight into action. And when I realized that, it was like opening floodgates. I started doing the things I had learned about, and they started to change my life. But there is a pretty important and major milestone to make this transition. I don't think it's necessary or helpful to frame this as a kind of horror. I think it's more helpful to just change how you see the act of reading books. True change still has to start from within. Books in this context are just toolboxes. Toolboxes don't build anything by themselves either.
hartator 3y ago
Yes, it’s very like meditate your way out of pain to point you don’t feel when you are actually burning. Which actually happens IRL more often then what you would assume.
haswell 3y ago
My perspective on this is one of a person who underwent years of complex trauma in childhood and my stuck-ness was a series of overly sensitive protective mechanisms that had been built up by the experience. “The illusion of being stuck” also sounds a lot like “Learned Helplessness”, which is a maladaptive conditioning of the brain to strongly believe that not doing something is the best option because doing something won’t make a difference anyway, despite this not being true at all. Like drowning in two feet of water because it didn’t occur to the person to just stand up. The reason I’m pointing at trauma is that we all come from a wide spectrum of experiences, which result in a wide spectrum of stuckness (or lack thereof). The book “Learned Optimism” (written by Martin Seligman, one of the original researchers who discovered the learned helplessness phenomenon) first describes how animals (not just humans) arrive in these maladaptive states, and then provides worksheets to help people who are currently deeply biased towards a pessimistic world view learn techniques to reframe and ultimately rewire these biases, and I can attest to the life changing improvements this kind of work can bring without my brain falling out. More broadly, it’s worth considering the fact that we’re all running firmware that evolved during a very different era of human existence, and is often poorly tuned for modern reality. Using what we know about the brain and how it is conditioned to adapt ourselves to modern situations seems pretty critical. > I'm not convinced that this is generally a good idea. It makes a person unmoored and open to anything ("so open minded that your brains fall out"). It's also often amoral. The only metric that's maximised is utility regardless of other more subtle consequences. This seems like a pretty major jump to a conclusion that would require far more to back it up. I don’t think this is about mucking with firmware as much as it is about correcting model weights. Our firmware seems to be what it is. Our environment and conditioning is what embeds certain biases and resulting behaviors. Human experience is certainly more complex than just a few hacks, but I don’t think that discounts the value that certain kinds of exercises can bring. We’re continually working against our default modes of operation when we adhere to principles of rational thought and logic. Emotional responses like anger discard these higher modes of thinking. I see these “hacks” as something similar: methods of helping us move beyond the less adaptive parts of our brains based on a growing understanding of the world around us.
- noufalibrahim 3y ago
  That's a very nuanced take. I dont take offense to using "techniques" to fix "problems". I'm more annoyed by the usual phrasing of these things as life changing and revelatory.
rors 3y ago
Over the last few months I've been experimenting with Buddhist meditation, which leans heavily into this metaphor. They phrase the metaphor differently, with a focus on flattening of the grooves in your mind. I've found these ideas helpful, but they're hardly novel. The Buddha lived over 2000 years ago. One big difference the objective. Most of these blogs are about hacking your mind to be more successful, whereas religions aim to make you more comfortable with your life as it currently is. I think if you're going to experiment with upgrading your wetware, then you could do worse than look at Buddhism, or any other practice that encourages deep contemplation and promotes kindness. I have my issues with organised religion, but why not at least consider the thousands of years of prior art?
- noufalibrahim 3y ago
  I appreciate the point you're trying to make. However, my general experience of attempts to take "useful" parts of of religion and then sanitise them for secular mass consumption is that they're at best useless and at worst harmful. Sure, there might be some proximal benefits to (say) meditation but these are things that were done in a larger (often spiritual) context and I'm not sure that pulling them out of that is wise.
  - ufocia 3y ago
    Don't kill and don't steal seem pretty useful and are embedded within many if not all secular laws.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      Sometimes with massive caveats like stone adulterers and homosexuals.
  - praptak 3y ago
    Effects of meditation are there regardless of the religious context. Although you are right in that the deeper stages (say as described in "The Mind Illuminated") may not make much sense without at least some spiritual foundation.
rdsubhas 3y ago
You seem to have experience in this. Could you recommend or share any alternative approaches?
anon373839 3y ago
Honestly, the centerpiece of the article is this: > In plain, simple terms, you need to: do the uncomfortable thing. That’s what the advice boils down to, and it works, and it’s not a hack. It’s growth. There are lots of sophisticated techniques to help you actually do “the thing,” but if your best judgment is that the thing is the right course of action, then you ultimately do need to violate your feeling that it is wrong/dangerous/scary and let your feelings catch up later.
- charles_f 3y ago
  I think that's fair, but there's also value in describing what is being stuck. It's important being able to identify feelings and put words on it. It also helps to see this is something other people go through, so as to feel less alone
maxverse 3y ago
The difference between medicine in poison is the dose ("the dose makes the poison.") Good ideas taken to extreme are often Very Bad, but sometimes a little bit of the idea is exactly what you need. If you have social anxiety, talking to people through discomfort, or initially treating interactions as a game can help take the pressure off. Treating people as NPCs is unhealthy. Routine exercise is good. Becoming obsessed with how your body looks, living in the gym, taking steroids is bad. A sense of humility, purpose, and devotion in life is generally good. Religious fanaticism is bad. Confidence, which often involves a touch of self-deception, generally is good. Unchecked arrogance is bad. If I tell you to go for a run or do some push-ups, there's a risk that you'll become totally obsessed with exercise. But going for that run will also help. You need a moderate amount of my advice, not an extreme amount. This piece resonated with me. When you're stuck in a routine you dislike, being aware that your brain is optimized to stay in its current state (according to the cited research) is good. Going bananas and being "unmoored and open to anything", living every day without any sense of habit or purpose is bad. The dose makes the poison.
- soneca 3y ago
  I on the side that the complexity is even larger than this. There a lot of other analogies that could apply here, not just the dose/poison one. Some things are good in small doses on some occasions and in large doses on others. Some things are poison for some people but food for others. Some things are only medicine in very specific circumstances. Some things are placebo. Anyone can decide if a piece of advice is beneficial to them in what dose. But I agree with the GP that we are too complex for these hacks
faeriechangling 3y ago
>It makes a person unmoored and open to anything ("so open minded that your brains fall out") I agree with your assumptions, but not your conclusion. When I was at my very lowest I took pretty high doses of acid for my first time on psychedelics. The point was that I was starting from a long time experiencing daily mental anguish and physical pain being treatment resistant, ideating suicide but not completing it. I thought if I became more "open minded", either I'd get better or I'd off myself and I really preferred both over the status quo. The former happened. Being open minded is a bad thing only if you like how your mind how it is.
mistermann 3y ago
> I've come across these kinds of articles before and they always seem to suggest that you rewrite the metaphorical firmware of your brain so that it operates in a way that is advantageous to you. There's some notion of self discovery from first principles. > I'm not convinced that this is generally a good idea. It makes a person unmoored and open to anything ("so open minded that your brains fall out"). It's also often amoral. The only metric that's maximised is utility regardless of other more subtle consequences. I'd say you could benefit from a firmware rewrite yourself, because it isn't possible for you to know these things, because they are unknowable. > As I grow older, i think the human experience is more complex than can be captured by a few "hacks" like this. Or yours. As Terence McKenna liked to say: - Reality is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine. - What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination. (A bit off, but close enough.)

card_zero 3y ago

Did you know, the brain is hard-wired to be suckered by self-help books? One trick that I personally find very liberating and enlightening is to make a big pile of such material and burn it. It gives me a sense of warmth and inner joy.

noufalibrahim 3y ago
Isn't the combustion external? Why would the warmth be internal?
- ufocia 3y ago
  Semantics dear Watson: it's the inner joy that's internal.
  - noufalibrahim 3y ago
    Never let an explanation ruin a terrible pun.
- gumby 3y ago
  “Burn” is a commonplace synonym for oxidization, that is, adding an electron. Likely the GP is “eating the books, and thus is warmed as a consequence of the Krebs cycle. We can be glad for GP that these days it is uncommon to encounter a book with a CD or DVD attached. I’m not sure those are safe to eat.
dumpsterlid 3y ago
[dead]
jrm4 3y ago
I so believe the opposite of this IF you come at the right ones the right way? Which is to say, once you read (or skimmed) enough of them, it's easy to get a sixth sense of the "intelligence" and "motivation" of the writer, and the sincere ones, even if not smart, are still pretty enjoyable if taken with many salt grains, and I'm a sucker for them (again, not in terms of following exactly what they say to do, but appreciating the motivation and good-intent of the author and possibly picking up something along the way.) They'll have names like PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS and just be like "try to be nice to people and sit down and be quite a few times a day." A sort of perfect example would be the fictional "The You You Are" from the TV Show Severance. I hope they actually write it, I know I'd LOVE it. https://severance.wiki/the_you_you_are_book https://severance.wiki/the_you_you_are_book
nefrix 3y ago
Your advice is superb. You can start writing self help books learning people how to make the fire in order for them to achieve the inner joy.
knallfrosch 3y ago
I enjoy reading them, thinking I'll change myself. Then I'm done, I don't apply anything and put the book on the shelf. It's its own kind of horror for these books.
- maxverse 3y ago
  This is an interesting topic of its own, but there have been a few books/ideas that have made a significant difference on how I operate day-to-day. There are many more books and ideas I nod along to and never implement.
  - benoitmalige 3y ago
    You’ve touched on something profound here—our interaction with knowledge is dynamic, not static. A book that speaks to us today might whisper different wisdom 5 years from now, as we grow and our perspectives shift.
- haswell 3y ago
  Transitioning to "I know these are good ideas" to things you're doing in practice is much harder than reading, but can happen. Over time, I've come to look at reading these kinds of books like planting seeds. They give my brain ideas and concepts to chew on. Options to apply to situations. I did wake up one day to the realization that I had up to this point not been willing to take the next steps and put insight into action. And when I realized that, it was like opening floodgates. I started doing the things I had learned about, and they started to change my life. But there is a pretty important and major milestone to make this transition. I don't think it's necessary or helpful to frame this as a kind of horror. I think it's more helpful to just change how you see the act of reading books. True change still has to start from within. Books in this context are just toolboxes. Toolboxes don't build anything by themselves either.

hartator 3y ago

Yes, it’s very like meditate your way out of pain to point you don’t feel when you are actually burning. Which actually happens IRL more often then what you would assume.

haswell 3y ago

My perspective on this is one of a person who underwent years of complex trauma in childhood and my stuck-ness was a series of overly sensitive protective mechanisms that had been built up by the experience. “The illusion of being stuck” also sounds a lot like “Learned Helplessness”, which is a maladaptive conditioning of the brain to strongly believe that not doing something is the best option because doing something won’t make a difference anyway, despite this not being true at all. Like drowning in two feet of water because it didn’t occur to the person to just stand up. The reason I’m pointing at trauma is that we all come from a wide spectrum of experiences, which result in a wide spectrum of stuckness (or lack thereof). The book “Learned Optimism” (written by Martin Seligman, one of the original researchers who discovered the learned helplessness phenomenon) first describes how animals (not just humans) arrive in these maladaptive states, and then provides worksheets to help people who are currently deeply biased towards a pessimistic world view learn techniques to reframe and ultimately rewire these biases, and I can attest to the life changing improvements this kind of work can bring without my brain falling out. More broadly, it’s worth considering the fact that we’re all running firmware that evolved during a very different era of human existence, and is often poorly tuned for modern reality. Using what we know about the brain and how it is conditioned to adapt ourselves to modern situations seems pretty critical. > I'm not convinced that this is generally a good idea. It makes a person unmoored and open to anything ("so open minded that your brains fall out"). It's also often amoral. The only metric that's maximised is utility regardless of other more subtle consequences. This seems like a pretty major jump to a conclusion that would require far more to back it up. I don’t think this is about mucking with firmware as much as it is about correcting model weights. Our firmware seems to be what it is. Our environment and conditioning is what embeds certain biases and resulting behaviors. Human experience is certainly more complex than just a few hacks, but I don’t think that discounts the value that certain kinds of exercises can bring. We’re continually working against our default modes of operation when we adhere to principles of rational thought and logic. Emotional responses like anger discard these higher modes of thinking. I see these “hacks” as something similar: methods of helping us move beyond the less adaptive parts of our brains based on a growing understanding of the world around us.

noufalibrahim 3y ago
That's a very nuanced take. I dont take offense to using "techniques" to fix "problems". I'm more annoyed by the usual phrasing of these things as life changing and revelatory.

rors 3y ago

Over the last few months I've been experimenting with Buddhist meditation, which leans heavily into this metaphor. They phrase the metaphor differently, with a focus on flattening of the grooves in your mind. I've found these ideas helpful, but they're hardly novel. The Buddha lived over 2000 years ago. One big difference the objective. Most of these blogs are about hacking your mind to be more successful, whereas religions aim to make you more comfortable with your life as it currently is. I think if you're going to experiment with upgrading your wetware, then you could do worse than look at Buddhism, or any other practice that encourages deep contemplation and promotes kindness. I have my issues with organised religion, but why not at least consider the thousands of years of prior art?

noufalibrahim 3y ago
I appreciate the point you're trying to make. However, my general experience of attempts to take "useful" parts of of religion and then sanitise them for secular mass consumption is that they're at best useless and at worst harmful. Sure, there might be some proximal benefits to (say) meditation but these are things that were done in a larger (often spiritual) context and I'm not sure that pulling them out of that is wise.
- ufocia 3y ago
  Don't kill and don't steal seem pretty useful and are embedded within many if not all secular laws.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Sometimes with massive caveats like stone adulterers and homosexuals.
- praptak 3y ago
  Effects of meditation are there regardless of the religious context. Although you are right in that the deeper stages (say as described in "The Mind Illuminated") may not make much sense without at least some spiritual foundation.

rdsubhas 3y ago

You seem to have experience in this. Could you recommend or share any alternative approaches?

anon373839 3y ago

Honestly, the centerpiece of the article is this: > In plain, simple terms, you need to: do the uncomfortable thing. That’s what the advice boils down to, and it works, and it’s not a hack. It’s growth. There are lots of sophisticated techniques to help you actually do “the thing,” but if your best judgment is that the thing is the right course of action, then you ultimately do need to violate your feeling that it is wrong/dangerous/scary and let your feelings catch up later.

charles_f 3y ago
I think that's fair, but there's also value in describing what is being stuck. It's important being able to identify feelings and put words on it. It also helps to see this is something other people go through, so as to feel less alone

maxverse 3y ago

The difference between medicine in poison is the dose ("the dose makes the poison.") Good ideas taken to extreme are often Very Bad, but sometimes a little bit of the idea is exactly what you need. If you have social anxiety, talking to people through discomfort, or initially treating interactions as a game can help take the pressure off. Treating people as NPCs is unhealthy. Routine exercise is good. Becoming obsessed with how your body looks, living in the gym, taking steroids is bad. A sense of humility, purpose, and devotion in life is generally good. Religious fanaticism is bad. Confidence, which often involves a touch of self-deception, generally is good. Unchecked arrogance is bad. If I tell you to go for a run or do some push-ups, there's a risk that you'll become totally obsessed with exercise. But going for that run will also help. You need a moderate amount of my advice, not an extreme amount. This piece resonated with me. When you're stuck in a routine you dislike, being aware that your brain is optimized to stay in its current state (according to the cited research) is good. Going bananas and being "unmoored and open to anything", living every day without any sense of habit or purpose is bad. The dose makes the poison.

soneca 3y ago
I on the side that the complexity is even larger than this. There a lot of other analogies that could apply here, not just the dose/poison one. Some things are good in small doses on some occasions and in large doses on others. Some things are poison for some people but food for others. Some things are only medicine in very specific circumstances. Some things are placebo. Anyone can decide if a piece of advice is beneficial to them in what dose. But I agree with the GP that we are too complex for these hacks

faeriechangling 3y ago

>It makes a person unmoored and open to anything ("so open minded that your brains fall out") I agree with your assumptions, but not your conclusion. When I was at my very lowest I took pretty high doses of acid for my first time on psychedelics. The point was that I was starting from a long time experiencing daily mental anguish and physical pain being treatment resistant, ideating suicide but not completing it. I thought if I became more "open minded", either I'd get better or I'd off myself and I really preferred both over the status quo. The former happened. Being open minded is a bad thing only if you like how your mind how it is.

mistermann 3y ago

> I've come across these kinds of articles before and they always seem to suggest that you rewrite the metaphorical firmware of your brain so that it operates in a way that is advantageous to you. There's some notion of self discovery from first principles. > I'm not convinced that this is generally a good idea. It makes a person unmoored and open to anything ("so open minded that your brains fall out"). It's also often amoral. The only metric that's maximised is utility regardless of other more subtle consequences. I'd say you could benefit from a firmware rewrite yourself, because it isn't possible for you to know these things, because they are unknowable. > As I grow older, i think the human experience is more complex than can be captured by a few "hacks" like this. Or yours. As Terence McKenna liked to say: - Reality is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine. - What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination. (A bit off, but close enough.)