Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Here we go:
Quality Contributions to the Motte
Contributions for the week of January 30, 2023
Rowliphobia
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of February 6, 2023
Who Teaches the Teachers?
@gog:
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of February 13, 2023
Babies Everywhere
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of February 20, 2023
Battle of the Sexes
Battle of the Genders
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of February 27, 2023
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, and RSS.
In this episode, we discuss gayness.
Participants: Yassine, TracingWoodgrains, Sultan, Shakesneer.
Links:
Ezra Klein Interviews Dan Savage (New York Times)
Stonewall: A Butch Too Far (An Historian Goes to the Movies)
Mattachine Society (Wikipedia)
3 Differences Between the Terms 'Gay' and 'Queer' (Everyday Feminism)
Exploring HIV Transmission Rates (Healthline)
Boys Beware (PBS)
Recorded 2023-02-02 | Uploaded 2023-02-28
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
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In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
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On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Hello again Mottizans! I haven't been here much lately, but one of the reasons is that I've started a blog, Papyrus Rampant, where I blog on "story, history, and theory of story" - or, literature and history.
I've got a post this weekend which I think is rather appropriate here: The US Presidential election of 1800 as a perspective on political messes. It's posted today in honor of Presidents' Day, and also in honor of the anniversary of when the House of Representatives finally settled the election. The campaign, and people's fears about the contested election results, reminds me of modern elections in several surprising ways - and I think it can give us some perspective.
This week in 1801, on February 17th, the US Presidential Election of 1800 was finally settled. Thomas Jefferson would be President, in the first peaceful transfer of power between opposing political parties in the United States federal government.
As you can tell from how long it had been since Election Day, the election of 1800 was a mess. It was a mess in several ways, some of which sound surprisingly modern despite the country barely being ten years old at the time. But still - despite all the fears of people at the time, what actually transpired was nothing like what either side had feared. More than that, it was a triumph: the first transfer of power between opposing parties in the United States.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
There are three types of thing: physical, logical, and emotional.
There are three types of stuff: power, truth, and reasons.
There are three rule-sets: differentiation, interaction, and sequence.
There are three essences: What, How, and Why.
Nothing else can even be imagined by humans. Everything is constructed from these three.
I've always been fascinated with logic. I still remember reading about Boolean logic in a childrens' science encyclopedia, and thinking it was the most sublime thing ever. In high school, learning Pascal, and then C++, allowed me to interact with logic on a far deeper level than ever before. It was the perfect thing, the gorgeous and spiritual thing, the unsullied thing. I wanted everything to be as perfect as logic. But the people around me were illogical, and it turned out even I was illogical, ending up writing stories on my computer until all hours instead of doing my college classwork. It was as if my decisions had already been made for me, despite me wanting to do what was right. I fell out of college and landed a job as a dishwasher.
I applied my skills of logic to my own emotions, observing where they came from and what they made me do. I found interesting patterns, and found some solutions to my negative emotions. But one realization in late 2000 or early 2001 changed my life: logic and emotion are two entirely different types of things, in the same way the physical is completely different from logic. You can't freeze an equation into a plasma, or melt anger into a solid. They are made of different "stuff", to use a physical metaphor. And I couldn't think of any concept which didn't refer to something made of one of these three things: power, truth, or reasons.
I started applying this "three-thing" to everything I could think of, and found it was a key to understanding anything.
I applied the "three-thing" to the famous six questions of journalism, and they collapsed down to three categories:
-
"What happened?" Answered by a physical event, such as a wedding, or a car wreck.
-
"How did it happen?" This asks for the process, the logical interactions which led to the event.
-
"Why did it happen?" This asks for an emotional cause: "What was the motivation?" If it was an unmotivated event, in which something happened without someone deciding to do it, this is answered by the "how" above.
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"When did it happen?" This is a specific place, which is a physical attribute.
-
"Where did it happen?" This is a specific time, which is also a physical attribute.
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"Who was involved?" This asks for which person, answered by the physical fact of a specific person
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"Who would do such a thing?" This is a completely different question which asks for an emotional answer, a variant of "Why?"
I could now logically determine what kind of answer is requested by any question.
I applied the "three-thing" to the cultural dichotomy of Man, and found a trichotomy instead:
-
Men are from Mars: men instinctively think in terms of concrete actions and choices, and see other people as physical beings. For men, the physical reality is the basic foundation of all.
-
Women are from Venus: women think in terms of changing impressions and reactions, and see other people as emotional beings. For women, the emotional reality is foundational, and the physical is an expression of that.
-
Aspies are from Vulcan: People on the autism spectrum, like me, instinctively reach for logic when we don't understand something or want to solve a problem. I yearned to meet more people like me, people focused on logic and thought, and I found them on the Internet. (Oh, how the times have changed...) For me, logic and truth are the foundation.
I now had a basic map for dealing with people.
I applied the "three-thing" to ontology, the study of what types of things exist.
I asked myself what the difference was between being "right" in the sense of having the correct answer and being "right" as in choosing morally. I realized I already had a built-in map in my mind of the opposites of things: right/wrong, correct/incorrect, and so on, but I had simply not sought to articulate or formalize it before:
-
Moral: right/wrong
-
Logical: true/false
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Philosophical: wise/foolish
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Physical: changing/static
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Scientific: accurate/inaccurate
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Emotional: good/bad
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Psychological: thriving/perishing
I have since applied this to other philosophies, to value systems and economics, to psychology and the editing of the subconscious, to physics, to political tribalism and the Libertarian view of taxation, to Trinitarian theology, to music theory, and even (after watching Pixar's Ratatouille) to food theory. In each case, I've found answers readily available through Triessential analysis. I've seen rhetorical triads in anything about which people speak rhetorically, and they're usually Triessential. I have come to believe that this three-way categorization is how the human brain recognizes and categorizes the world, subconsciously or consciously.
I've seen books written with Triessential underpinnings, such as Arnold Kling's "The Three Languages of Politics" focusing on their differences and reconciliation, and Simon Sinek's "Start With Why" focusing on the sequential nature of motivation. I've seen how Triessentialism is the answer to Objectivism's missteps, and accounts for postmodernism's criticisms of modernism in meaningful ways. I've even seen it explain the rise of drag queen story hour at libraries.
Now I want to start producing content based on Triessentialism. I want to write a book, start a podcast, generate a wiki, do something to get this worldview out there and being talked about. I also want to talk about these concepts in a place I can refer back to, and analyze new things I haven't yet applied it to. So I finally made this post, partly to organize my own thoughts and brainstorm, but also to get reactions from smart and interesting people.
Ask me to elaborate on anything, or to analyze anything. Ask me to react to something. I'll do my best to apply Triessentialism so you can see how it functions.
On this day five years ago, Scott made a list of graded predictions for how the next five years would pan out. How did he do?
He correctly predicted that Democrats would win the presidency in 2020. He correctly predicted that the UK would leave the EU and that no other country would vote to leave. He seemed under the impression that Ted Cruz would rise up to take Trump's mantle, but to my mind the only person in the Republican party who has a meaningful chance of opposing Trump is DeSantis. I think a lot of the technological predictions were too optimistic (specifically the bits about space travel and self-driving vehicles) but I don't work in tech and amn't really qualified to comment.
Near the end of the article, in a self-deprecating moment, he predicts with 80% confidence that "Whatever the most important trend of the next five years is, I totally miss it". To my mind, the most significant "trend" (or "event") of the last five years was Covid, and I think he actually did okay on this front: the second-last section of the article is a section on global existential risks:
Global existential risks will hopefully not be a big part of the 2018-2023 period. If they are, it will be because somebody did something incredibly stupid or awful with infectious diseases. Even a small scare with this will provoke a massive response, which will be implemented in a panic and with all the finesse of post-9/11 America determining airport security.
- Bioengineering project kills at least five people: 20%
- …at least five thousand people: 5%
Whether you think those two predictions cames to pass naturally depends where you sit on the lab leak hypothesis.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
What is intuition?
Intuition is the result of a subconscious mental process
I came up with this definition by pure intuition, it seems right to me, but how do I know it seems right? I just do. OK, but maybe it's not a good definition, maybe there are better definitions available online, and because I'm writing this for other people to read, I probably should check before posting (wait... is it "probably should check" or "should probably check"?, I think most people say the latter, but grammatically the former seems better), but I'm going to resist the urge for now.
Initially I started to write this post with a few drinks and wrote whatever came to my mind as it came, and the problem is that when you are thinking about how you are thinking, you are suddenly aware of how often your thinking process is interrupted by a thought, which if you explore it, it will lead you to more thoughts that are going to be interrupted in turn... it's a mess.
This stream of consciousness quickly ended being much longer than I anticipated, but I wouldn't subject my readers to it, why not? Because I've been writing for more than twenty years and I kind of have a feeling of what people like to read. But perhaps I should, maybe more people would like my unfiltered consciousness rather than these structured thoughts, or maybe what I think are structured thoughts other people would see as ramblings--not significantly different from the unfiltered ones.
It is difficult to write. After thinking about the topic I've realized I have so much to say about intuition, but if I say it all will take me a very long time to write, and it would take a very long time to read, and perhaps because of that nobody reads it. I would rather say a little about intuition so that more people read it, and if they don't, well, at least I didn't spend a lot of time writing about it.
But at this point I haven't said much about intuition, have I? Let me try to connect what I've said so far with intuition.
The best example I can think of is when chess master players do a move they are not even consciously aware of. It's clearly an intelligent move, and they can tell if it's a good move, but they can't tell you why. If you ask them why they made certain move, they might come up with an explanation, but this is not necessarily why they did it.
Research shows that the subconscious mind makes decisions independent of what the conscious mind experiences. My favorite example is a task in which when the actions of participants were analyzed systematically, it turns out all of them did the same thing, but they all came up with different explanations of why they did it.
This is a deep philosophical issue, because it touches consciousness, intelligence, the sense of self, and even free will.
How do I choose to write what I write? I don't truly know. I intuit that some things are better options than others, but how? Where do these thoughts come from? And if I didn't consciously choose these thoughts, then who is ultimately writing?
The truth is that intuition is a mystery.
I feel like I have made a "good" point, but I also feel like there's two important points I can make related to ChatGPT and Nassim Taleb. Should I stop now? I'm not sure.
Can intuition be wrong? Well, if it's a "mystery" one would be tempted to say intuition is just intuition, but I believe there's bad intuition, and this comes from understanding what an expert is.
When one starts to learn chess there are some mechanical things to remember: how each piece moves, what's the relative value of each piece, etc. The more one learns, the more these things become embedded on one's mind, so you don't have to think about them, you just intuit that a certain move is good because it leaves you with a material advantage. But then you learn that even if a certain move is advantageous in one turn, the opponent can answer in a way that leaves you in a disadvantage. So your intuition was not good enough, and you need to learn more. After countless hours of playing your intuition becomes top-notch.
But if intuition could be wrong, what alternative is there? Presumably the alternative is analytical thinking. Aha! This sounds like Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. Intuitive thought is System 1, analytical thought is System 2.
After hours of thinking about this topic and this relationship honestly just came to my mind.
Why didn't I initially thought of this? This is like asking a chess player why didn't he see a particular move... I cannot think what I did not think.
OK. But I haven't made my point yet, and now I have to consider explaining System 1 and 2 for people who are not familiar with them. Or maybe I should just assume everyone knows that, but no, because I remember the writing advice of Steven Pinker, beware of the curse of knowledge, except this is going to be read by mottizens and if I explain something that is so basic they might conclude that I am basic. Screw it.
I believe everyone thinks analytically (System 2), the only difference between an expert and a novice is that the expert has internalized so much analytical thinking into his intuition (System 1), that whatever the novice has to think slowly about, it comes naturally fast for the expert, leaving his analytical thinking free to do much more complex analysis.
So analytical thinking is nothing more than the process through which we build our intuition. The more analytical thinking we do, the better our intuition becomes.
I didn't connect this to Nassim Taleb, but the inspiration came from him, essentially: analytical thinking is overrated.
OK, now I really feel I have to make the next point.
Recently I've seen ChatGPT everywhere, after toying with it substantially and discussing what I've found, I'm pretty sure what I see and what other people see is quite different.
The argument that I've seen a lot of people make is basically "it's just a bot", whatever miraculous answers it provides are nothing more than a simulacra of an intelligent being. It's not "truly" intelligent because it cannot do analytical thinking.
The point that I think everyone is missing is that intelligence itself is a mystery.
I don't know how I am deciding the next word that I'm going to type. It depends on my current mental state, which itself depends on the entirety of what I've read in the past, and what I've written.
But I've reread what I've written five or even ten years ago, and it's not as "good" as what I can write now. It makes sense because now I've read more, and I've written more.
My intuition about what to write next is better now.
And this is exactly how language models work. The more data you feed into a model, the better it becomes at writing a response that is deemed "good" by its readers.
Pessimists say that even if ChatGPT generates something truly marvelous it's still just a bot, it doesn't actually know why it wrote what it wrote. But guess what... Neither does a human.
If I ask you: what is 8 + x = 10? You are probably going to come up with an answer immediately. Do you know how you arrived to that answer? We know that a toddler cannot answer that, so some training is necessary. The more training, the more automatic the response will be. ChatGPT also generates an automatic response based on its training.
I feel there's so much more to write about this, but I want to conclude on the basis of two propositions.
I could write a whole essay on free will, but let's suppose that it doesn't exist, also suppose that the true nature of humans is misguided, and we are nothing more than a consciousness. I believe these two things are true, but I don't have the space to substantiate them here.
Grant me those two suppositions. What follows is that we don't know what's going to come next from our subconscious mind, you don't know what I'm going to type next, but neither do I. My conscious mind is as much a passenger in this stream of consciousness as your conscious mind is (assuming it's still following). I'm just witnessing my intuition doing its thing, but in truth that's all I can truly do.
I still don't know if my definition of intuition is close to how a dictionary would define it, but it still feels true. And that's probably what all my knowledge is: whatever feels true. My intuition of what feels true comes from all the analytical thinking I've done in the past, and this is probably what a language model considers knowledge too.
Or maybe I'm confusing what intuition is with how it manifests, just like people in the past concentrated on how heat manifests, not on what it truly was.
Maybe intuition is the encoding of analytical thinking, which we only see when a decision has to be made.
Intuition is encoded analytical thought
Either way, I had never thought of intuition in this way before (I hadn't actually given it much thought), this insight wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't sat down and written about the topic in the first place. All my intuition was already there, I just had to play it out, and as I was writing, I was genuinely surprised by the thoughts that were popping out in real time (why didn't I think of that before?).
My intuition also tells me that my insight is not something trivial that other people have already expressed many times over, but I know I've had insights in the past that I consider non-trivial only for other people to shit on them, so I shouldn't let my hopes up. Worst-case scenario this intuition about intuition might feed future insights.
The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).