Disqus - Latest Comments for divia

Re: The Quickstart Guide to Fasting

divia — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 16:43:06 -0000

Oh, and last time I reviewed the literature, it said that pregnant women shouldn't fast but that breastfeeding women could.

That said, my experience with a day-long fast nursing a newborn was that I got a much lower blood sugar than I ever had fasting previously, which seemed like a bad sign.

I've fasted for a day nursing a toddler though, and that seemed fine.

Re: The Quickstart Guide to Fasting

divia — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 16:41:15 -0000

I sometimes drink lightly salted water when I fast. It seems to prevent dehydration better than plain water.

Re: Appreciating Contempt

divia — Sat, 17 Oct 2015 21:45:31 -0000

I think you're awesome! And I liked your comment too :-).

Re: New Perspectives on IFS

divia — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 00:41:33 -0000

Thanks. I have chatted with Jasen some about coherence therapy, but not looked into it deeply. Though I don't feel particularly inclined to use coherence therapy for the same reasons I don't feel particularly inclined to do IFS. And I do trust my intuition about how much to muck around with my mind in which ways during this phase of my life.

(I'm am going to Aletheia http://integralcenter.org/a... this weekend, which feels different because it's more of an interpersonal thing.)

Re: SXSW PanelPicker

divia — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 20:30:11 -0000

I'm excited about this talk! I do think combining data science and visualization is the best way to take advantage of data sets. It's easy to tease out some relationships by running the numbers, and other ones become more obvious when presented visually. Our eyes are pretty good at parsing certain types of patterns! I've seen Joanna speak before too, and found her to be quite engaging.

Re: Your Past is Never the Reason

divia — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 16:05:50 -0000

Good point about the biological determinism. I agree with the point I think you sort of made about how deterministic explanations of behavior are counter to a growth mindset, which usually I'm looking for in conversation. But if I were talking to Will about what future kids of ours were likely to be like when deciding how many to have, for example, the biological determinism would be a big part of what we discussed. The Judith Rich Harris (and Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids) stuff interests me a lot, and I also think if the goal is becoming calmer, happier, and "looser", that can probably be optimized for separately.

Re: How to Build a Tribe

divia — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 18:42:48 -0000

After we formed it, we got some questions from people about joining, but they understood when we explained that we weren't sure we could preserve emotional intimacy while growing the group. We've encouraged other people to start their groups, using the process described above.

Re: Feeling Better than Other People

divia — Sat, 19 Oct 2013 20:01:54 -0000

Have you read Julian Jaynes? I ask because his model of things relates to what you're saying about guilt.

Re: Feeling Better than Other People

divia — Sat, 19 Oct 2013 20:00:19 -0000

Yeah, mine used to go funny when thinking about these things too.

If you want to be able to think more clearly about your intelligence, I recommend having a couple of frank conversations with people who won't be offended by the subject. I think that could defuse the funniness pretty quickly.

Re: Musings on Nihilism and Metaphysics

divia — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 17:53:13 -0000

Good question!

In the non-nihilistic frame, I think that some hypothetical smarter wiser future me would advise me to become the sort of agent who tries to make the world a better and more likely to survive place. I believe that if I somehow got to remember the life experience of being both a more goal-directed world saver person and a person who only cared about enjoying life then I would definitely pick the first option, including because I should expect it to be a longer life.

Nihilistic me isn't convinced of the above-described point.

Thanks for encouraging me to pin this one down :-).

Re: Musings on Nihilism and Metaphysics

divia — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 02:45:45 -0000

Fair enough. I do think the facts of what I said amount the LW consensus and the frame does not preclude compassion, joy, and happiness. But the idea that nothing matters seems nihilistic to me, and that can get in there too.

Re: Relationship Tests and How to Respond

divia — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 18:06:51 -0000

Let me try! I'm a bit worried these aren't central examples, but they're examples, anyway:

1. He asks how I'm doing and I say "fine" in an upset voice. Passing could be noticing that I'm actually upset, and failing would be continuing to go on talking as though everything is fine.

2. I ask him to buy me a pony (insert more relevant expensive item). Passing could be laughing. Failing could be distress that he couldn't afford it or anger that I would suggest such an insane idea.

Note that "passing" responses would depend on the person. If I were currently working on being direct and he knew that, passing #1 could look more like noticing the incongruity, but not responding empathetically until I said what I actually meant. Complicated :-).

Does that help at all? I can give more.

Re: Relationship Tests and How to Respond

divia — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 17:48:08 -0000

Interesting stuff! Thanks for the link.

That definitely lines up with my experience, so it's good to have that as an explicit part of my model.

Re: Why Don’t We Empathize First?

divia — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 17:43:10 -0000

Fair point. Let me try that!

A first pass seems to turn up internal confusion about how close I want to be to various people. I feel angry at a perceived obligation to connect and worried that my own time and emotional energy will be used up.

(Those were some concerns I got more in touch with at Burning Man, and that seems to relate.)

Not unlike what I said above, but right now, thinking about those issues, I don't feel much judgment about my current level of empathizing with other people.

So that was helpful, thanks!

Re: Recognize Your Partner’s Child

divia — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:05:02 -0000

That makes a lot of sense, and seems to be a distinct situation from what I was trying to refer to. If you pick a happy time and aren't triggered when you bring it up, I'd expect it to go just fine. Does it usually not?

Re: Do You Feel Like an Adult?

divia — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 21:03:25 -0000

How does she react when you do that? Could be it's working for the two of you, but my heuristics mostly point towards trying to have at least one "adult" around when one person is triggered. I could say more if I had more context. How does this usually play out?

Re: Feeling Overwhelmed While Working?

divia — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 16:50:06 -0000

So, what are you afraid would happen if you let yourself feel good while working on the most important thing when you're behind schedule? Are you using feeling bad under those circumstances to disincentivize future procrastination? If so, is it consistently working as a disincentive?

And in the second case, are you afraid the person who wants you to be working on something else would notice that you weren't feeling bad and judge you more because of that? What bad outcome would come from being happy as you work, despite the other person's worry?

Re: How I Think Pathological Guilt Works

divia — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:09:56 -0000

I'd try asking yourself what the earliest ones are, but I do find that getting myself into a curious introspective state first is important.

Re: Attachment as Internal Bureaucracy

divia — Wed, 11 May 2011 14:00:43 -0000

Let's make the Singularity happen so that everything gets aligned!

Re: A Lot More to Find Out: via www.nanowrimo.org

divia — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:59:22 -0000

Thanks! This one would need a lot of editing before I'd be willing to show it to anyone--I'm almost even scared to reread it myself. I think there are some okay bits in there, but lots of stream of consciousness rambling designed to increase my word count. There was also really only one character in it who wanted to the story to have an actual plot, and he wasn't terribly successful in his endeavor.

Re: A Lot More to Find Out: Industrial mercantile societies (such as our own)...

divia — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:01:40 -0000

Heh. Fair enough. I don't necessarily agree with his overall point myself, but thought it was an interesting perspective, and I do think in some ways at least our current society is somewhere between hunter-gatherer and agrarian.

Re: A Lot More to Find Out: Researchers have found that nodding can be used to...

divia — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:02:53 -0000

Yeah, I think I do too, but this makes me want to try some triple nods just to see what happens.

Re: Blog Nice or Leave - “The Way” Fastball #1 on Billboard’s Modern Rock...

divia — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:19:51 -0000

I love 90's alt-rock, I love one hit wonders, and The Way is possibly my favorite song ever. My friends from music camp and I have been talking about making exit to eternal summer slacking shirts for years.

Re: A simple weblocks application

divia — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:18:49 -0000

Thanks so much for posting this! I tried to work through the blog tutorial before, but had some trouble understanding what was going on. This is very helpful.

Re: A Lot More to Find Out: Not much of a captcha.

divia — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:47:44 -0000

Thanks? I guess I think of this blog as more for me (arguably not the point of a blog) and tend to post things about random stuff probably only I'm interested in, like the programming language Lisp :-). Of course, you could also start watching Gossip Girl and become obsessed with Chuck Bass, and then you might find something amusing every once in a while.