You know that David Foster Wallace speech about fish? Two young fish swimming along, older fish passes and says "Morning boys, how's the water?" The young fish swim on, then one turns to the other: "What the hell is water?" That's the point. We don't notice what we're swimming in. The Furniture We Sit In … Continue reading Why Fish Don’t Know They’re Wet
Tag: worldviews
Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens
"Abstract Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy must include the competence of critical … Continue reading Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens
How to Admit You’re Wrong
Related to yesterday's post, where the ideas are of a piece: "Kathryn Schulz loosely defines being wrong “as a deviation from external reality, or an internal upheaval in what we believe” — with the caveat that wrongness is too vast to fit neatly into either category.......“We’re highly motivated to reduce that uncertainty,” Fetterman says. “Oftentimes, … Continue reading How to Admit You’re Wrong
The Free Energy Principle, Minimizing Surprise
"The concept of free energy itself comes from physics, which means it’s difficult to explain precisely without wading into mathematical formulas. In a sense that’s what makes it powerful: It isn’t a merely rhetorical concept. It’s a measurable quantity that can be modeled, using much the same math that Friston has used to interpret brain … Continue reading The Free Energy Principle, Minimizing Surprise
The Understructure of Thought
Language imposes limitations. When we reason, we use language, whether symbolic or natural. But, our understanding, or, perhaps it is better to talk about it as an intuition, runs deeper than our reason. A common example can be found in a terms like "creepy", "janky", etc. We use these terms when there is uncertainty, when … Continue reading The Understructure of Thought
World Views & Alternative Realities
I keep seeing a disconnect between how I view and how other people view the world. For example, there are members of Republican Party in the state and local governments that think that the coronavirus pandemic is largely over and that we are about to see a huge economic resurgence that is going to sweep … Continue reading World Views & Alternative Realities
Horses, Not Zebras
"'If you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras,' Mom liked to say, drawing from her wisdom as an emergency-room nurse that cautioned against wild medical diagnoses...But I wonder — in our walling off what we can talk about and what we cannot, in our work to accept each other despite our conflicting views of the … Continue reading Horses, Not Zebras
Book Review: Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson
tl;dr: The eight-circuit model of consciousness: survival, emotions, reason, society/reproduction, body connection, imprint selection, connecting to life, and connecting to everything. If this all sounds like some New Age bullshit to you, then you might want to try some of the exercizes at the back of each chapter, e.g., "Try living a whole week with … Continue reading Book Review: Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson
Changing Reality Tunnels
Open Question: How does one cultivate the skill of evaluating our world view, assessing its strengths and weaknesses, and changing it when our situation changes? "Every kind of ignorance in the world all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles. We believe what we see and then we believe our interpretation of it, … Continue reading Changing Reality Tunnels
Openness & Discernment
"The undiscerning mind is like the root of the tree, it absorbs equally everything it touches, even the poison that would kill it."—Kung Fu (television series) Recently, I got into an online discussion where someone was trying to convince me that I should listen to some podcast that explained some current conspiracy related to the … Continue reading Openness & Discernment
cafebedouin.org 