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On Being Fruitful

stuff On working well and being satisfied

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Stress is a good thing before it’s a bad thing. It motivates us to act. We are scared of the f’s, but we don’t need to be. We should fight for things worth fighting for and fly from things that aren’t. Use the f’s as guides to action, not just things to avoid.

Giving in to Fight or Flight

Article

One particularly sticky idea is the idea of ‘fight or flight’ or whatever variation of “fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and sometimes f***”. As you might be able to tell from the slow accumulation of f’s, fight or flight is suffering from the chinese whispers effect that has us drawing wildly innappropriate conclusions from academic literature and the superficial silliness of many pop-psych ideas—where will the f’s end! So, let’s dust of the f’s and make them useful again.
Stress is a good thing before it’s a bad thing. It motivates us to act. We are scared of the f’s, but we don’t need to be. We should fight for things worth fighting for and fly from things that aren’t. Use the f’s as guides to action, not just things to avoid.
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betterment on-(un)happiness on-being-fruitful somatic-architecture

article

Bias reduces noise—if you know <em>roughly</em> what to expect, then being biased by those expectations means you won’t get distracted by less relevant data points.

Bias is good

Article

If you haven’t heard of System 1 and System 2, you’ve probably heard one of its analogues. People who say ‘don’t let your amygdala hijack your frontal lobes’, or ‘get out of the sympathetic and into the parasympathetic nervous system’, or ‘something something vagus nerve’ are using pseudo-brain science to get at the same thing. But the thing everyone seems to have taken away from this book is the thing we always take away—System 1 stuff, a.k.a. bias is a bad thing. This is not what Kahneman was going for. Kahneman was trying to show us how both System 1 and System 2 have their place.
Bias reduces noise—if you know roughly what to expect, then being biased by those expectations means you won’t get distracted by less relevant data points.
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betterment gratification on-being-fruitful on-thinking-and-reasoning somatic-architecture thought-architecture wealth-architecture

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The brain is an <em>integrator</em>. It takes in information from all over the body, and puts it together to decide how you should act. This messy integration acts as a bottleneck, forcing the brain to streamline as much as possible. Rarely does it try to ‘think’.

Brain structures and behaviour

Article

A lot of people like to talk about the role of various brain regions in human behaviour. Fewer like to talk about brain structures. But in many ways, looking at the brain structures rather than all the different subdivisions into regions tells a cleaner story about behaviour. Let me show you how.
The brain is an integrator. It takes in information from all over the body, and puts it together to decide how you should act. This messy integration acts as a bottleneck, forcing the brain to streamline as much as possible. Rarely does it try to ‘think’.
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betterment on-being-fruitful somatic-architecture

article

We usually complain about systems ‘getting in our way’, with arbitrary criteria that determine success. But this goes the other way too. Much of my success and that of those around me is similarly mechanical. Not luck, effort, or nepotism.

Mechanical success vs nepotism and luck

Article

People will often say something along the lines of: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Largely this is true. Nepotism is a very greasy grease. But I want to talk about some under-rated alternatives. An alternative that often looks a little like luck. Bad luck, to be specific. But we can flip it.
We usually complain about systems ‘getting in our way’, with arbitrary criteria that determine success. But this goes the other way too. Much of my success and that of those around me is similarly mechanical. Not luck, effort, or nepotism.
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betterment gratification on-being-fruitful wealth-architecture

article

The nervous system teaches us the most important lesson about human behaviour: the main thing our body does is transform the world into adaptive responses, and the nervous system is at the very core of it. But beyond that, it’s mostly just a mess.

Nervous Energy

Article

A very basic principle of living creatures is that they respond adaptively to the environment. It isn’t the only principle. But it’s really rather important. And more-or-less, this principle is what the nervous system does. But many people talk about the nervous system in mystical tones—the key to altering your maladaptive responses. Sadly, these people have no idea what they’re talking about.
The nervous system teaches us the most important lesson about human behaviour: the main thing our body does is transform the world into adaptive responses, and the nervous system is at the very core of it. But beyond that, it’s mostly just a mess.
Read this article

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gratification on-being-fruitful somatic-architecture
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