Ed Dowding

Category: Being Human

Happiness, Health, and Psychology

Begin.

The bank of the far shore is beautiful, but the turbulent river hides all but a few stepping stones. Courage. More will appear as you move. Ed Dowding, 18 June 2013

Procedural language: The importance of going through the motions.

In the film Arrival, the aliens basically see time as another dimension – there are no surprises for them since they see it all laid out in front of them. (Kurt Vonnegut does the same thing with the Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse Five.) This is why they can write semasiographically because the whole idea is fully formed ...

That’ll do.

At action, humans are satisficers.At profit, humans are optimisers.

Man’s search for meaning

After some light experiences with coaching and therapy style conversations, I have 2.5 conclusions: 1. It doesn’t matter much if you’re happy or sad, the key thing is to be doing something worthwhile. If you prioritise happiness, you’re selfish. If you prioritise money, you’re a fool. If you prioritise beneficial impact for others*, you’ll at ...

Use primary sources

It turns out there is little more likely to galvanise me to action than a bunch of people doing the intellectual equivalent of moaning about the long toilet queues without actually checking the cubicles. Life timestamp reminder: you’d just listened to Dangerous by Milo Y. 

Please stop misusing the word ‘survivor’

If we could please limit the use of the word ‘survivor’ to circumstances in which there was a reasonably high and realistic chance of your death, that would be great. Kthxbye.

71 words for love

There are apparently over 71 different types of gender. Yet we still have just one word for love. I suspect we’d be considerably less confused if there were 71 words for different types of love, and we remembered there’s just one species of human.

Do smart people change faster?

Is there a correlation between the adoption curve and IQ (or whatever measure of general intelligence / compassion / connection making etc you choose to use)? If this is true, new services start and seem interesting, but for every subsequent member that joins there is a fall in average IQ for for group. Adoption curve ...

The peace of the lobotomised or the peace of the contended?

That we’re getting better at not killing each other because of international trade co-dependence is a double edged sword. It brings a certain type of peace, but also eg economic sanctions which keep people incompetent. Peaceful, yes. Prosperous no. Not having citizens protest in the streets because they’re resigned to its futility is peaceful, too. ...

Now for some thoughts on sheep.

We are herd animals. We appreciate and value the safety, surplus, and sharing offered by the herd. But that can only happen if we remain as a definable flock – stray too far and we loose the benefits. When we’ve grazed all that can be grazed and some of the weaker ones are getting hungry, ...

Game of Thrones to become daily, global, theatre

Feel of Poppies.

I believe in dog. And other correlations.

No matter their gender or orientation, beer-lovers are 60% more likely to be okay with sleeping with someone they’ve just met. Do my date and I have long-term potential? Ask your date (and yourself!)… Do you like horror movies? Have you ever traveled around another country alone? Wouldn’t it be fun to chuck it all ...

This is a peaceful blue planet.

This 2 minute history of the world has been doing the rounds recently. There’s an awful lot of attention paid to recent events and big wars there. HG Wells, somewhat upset by WW1, and then WW2, wrote his history of the world not to identify an record periods of way, but to identify and champion ...

WebMind’s webpage to raise funds for his mission to civilise humanity

This is copied from WWW:Wonder because I liked the writing and have been working on something with similar ambitions:   Welcome to my website, thank you for stopping by. I’m trying to do as much as I can to help humanity, but I find myself in need of some operating funds to pay for equipment, secretarial ...

Someone forgot that we’re supposed to be amazing.

Ambition, 1961 I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; ...

Self-Discipline in 5 Sentences

Have a powerful reason — when things get difficult, “because it sounds nice” or “to look good” aren’t going to cut it. Start tiny, with a simple but unbreakable promise to yourself to do one small thing every single day. Watch your urges, and learn not to act on childish whims. Listen to your self-rationalizations, ...

If we can imagine it, we can do it. Right? Right?! RIGHT!

There must be lights burning brighter somewhere Got to be birds flying higher in a sky more blue If I can dream of a better land Where all my brothers walk hand in hand Tell me why, oh why, oh why can’t my dream come true Oh why There must be peace and understanding sometime ...

There is still time

via Ainda dá Tempo (There is still time).

What did the world do before capitalism?

I keep feeling the urge to make this point on various networks, so I’m just going to write it here and link to it. Before capitalism we explored the world, developed philosophy, had central heating and plumbing, invented mathematics, worked out the circumference of the world, evolved democracy, started medical practises, had universal education and ...

Great and glorious

Our solar system is very big. Voyager has taken some thirty five years to reach the edge of it, travelling at 10.5 mi/s. It’s now between solar systems, and will take 10000 years to reach the next one. In our galaxy there 200 billion solar systems. But ours is just one galaxy in a much ...