Post B7ekckpMaq31VO6Zoe by drq@mastodon.ml
 (DIR) More posts by drq@mastodon.ml
 (DIR) Post #B7dSCavSnAA0vxNIem by drq@mastodon.ml
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       One of the most important things I learned throughout life is that, whoever you are, you don't really know yourself. You think you do, you uncritically believe you do, but you actually don't. Not completely, anyway. It's an illusion. In essence, your mind is FULL of blind spots. There IS such a thing as trusting your own agency too much.It's impossible (not "hard", not "challenging" - impossible, mathematically) to track changes in yourself when you're alone, because they don't even register as changes - from your own perspective, they're just your current state. You've "always been like this", as far as you can tell. The observer can't be observed by the same observer. It's the classic problem of self-reference. And, by Murphy's law, a lot of those changes won't be for the better. That is the trap. That's the scary part.The good news is that other people are your mirror. If your friends start looking at you weirdly seemingly out of the blue, it's probably time for a reality check.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7da3PqRQ9Lzas9ymO by grishka@friends.grishka.me
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       Я тут недавно подошёл на несколько шагов ближе к отношениям с человеком, которого уже очень давно и очень сильно люблю, и оказалось, что да, я вообще эту часть себя не знаю. И, более того, оказалось, что она за последние годы достаточно неплохо прокачалась.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7dfjbGzovZOyHW080 by dside@mastodon.ml
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       @drq I like comparing reflective thoughts to operating with a debugger: it's much slower than normal operation, particular behavior quirks that happen without it may not happen at all, and even when they do, it's not often obvious which parts of the system cause them. And the debugger's UI you're seeing only presents you with a piece of the full picture, a pretty big one, that. You might need to place additional probes outside to see more.You'll accept the result if the picture you see matches what you want, but catching some unintended side effects later in parts you weren't looking at at the time is pretty common.I can't recommend this analogy to *everyone* because not everybody has that kind of debugging experience, but I know plenty of people that do.And it might be somewhat transferable to diagnostics of other complex systems. I remember watching Louis Rossmann's board repair streams before his RtR crusade, and I remember seeing very similar reasoning methods there.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7ekckbtOvGwpbnooq by destiny_m@shitpost.poridge.club
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       @drq@mastodon.ml [‐⚠️I’m being a smartass.‐]The observer can't be observed by the same observer.It can be observed by a very similar one, though. You²⁰²⁶ can observe yourself²⁰²⁵, and this observation will affect you²⁰²⁷. The three are different people in different circumstances, with different health and (in the best case) different views on life.By this procedure (if it includes properly ordered self-reflection) you can discover that you haven’t "always been like this". It becomes not as much a task of changing oneself, as accepting that changes have indeed occurred and tracking, studying them. In this sense, you can be (and are) your own "mirror". So, what I’m saying is, thoseother peoplefυςκ ’em.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7ekckpMaq31VO6Zoe by drq@mastodon.ml
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       @destiny_m *IF* you notice those changes to reflect and record them in the first place. Which you won't, because they're in your mind's blind spot.> fυςκ ’em.This is how you get the TADC ending.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7eui66xt2B2VPWaW0 by destiny_m@shitpost.poridge.club
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       @drq@mastodon.ml What changes are you talking about? I was talking about those you can notice, like weight loss (done with scales), wound healing (direct observation), attitude change towards whatever (keeping record of past attitudes, like a journal), etc.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7eui6MuviwBIszKNc by drq@mastodon.ml
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       @destiny_m I'm OBVIOUSLY not talking about the easy stuff like body weight.I'm talking about changes in your mind, you consciousness and personality. How you think and how you interact. The things you don't even realize are there. The hard stuff. Again, the philosophical definition of "hard". Like, "the hard problem of consciousness".
       
 (DIR) Post #B7ewBI50ZE7Tye5rRA by destiny_m@shitpost.poridge.club
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       @drq@mastodon.ml Changes in attitude that I mentioned, I believe, include the "hard stuff" -- not in any absolute sense, but in degrees. Self observation is indeed not an easy thing for many. You get more experienced if you start small and simple. Then in time and work the hard stuff gradually becomes easier.When I suggest to people that they date themselves as I breifly described, they usually react skeptically and disregard it as being 'too simple' and 'obvious'. They think, they already know, so they won't try. It took me years to make this practice beneficial in the hard stuff departments.On the other hand, I might be missing the entire fucking point again ​:neocat_heart:​.
       
 (DIR) Post #B7ewBIHlnmKOcE43KS by drq@mastodon.ml
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       @destiny_m You can't do "attitude" without other people because attitude IS how you interact with other people - either directly or indirectly. And you can't measure it without feedback, without new information from outside. Because without that, everything is just "normal". You've got nothing to compare your data with and verify against."Being high on the smell of your own farts", I think, is the metaphor for that.