The author has reflected so much that they've created a bespoke system of abstract beliefs with catchy names and various example cases that they can summarize into a 5000 word essay and probably even extend into a book.

For a writer, that's a sneaky but effective way to do their thing. (Or alternately: for a compulsive contemplator, writing is a sneaky way to justify the contemplating.)

But for most people, reading something like this and reflecting on whether you also "gutterball" and also have "toothbrushing problems" is effectively feeding the beast.

Many many of us in this community carry an urge to intellectualize and systematize and engineer things, but if you're interested in "de-bogging" that urge itself might be the thing to look most critically at.

Edit: Reading even further, it's actually one of the best posts of this kind I've read in years. The author is spot in the behavioral patterns he's noticed. Damn.

"Often, when I’m stuck, it’s because I've made up a game for myself and decided that I’m losing at it. I haven’t achieved enough. I am not working hard enough and I am also, somehow, not having enough fun.

These games have elaborate rules, like “I have to be as successful as my most successful friend, but everything I've done so far doesn't count,” and I’m supposed to feel very bad if I break them. It’s like playing the absolute dumbest version of the floor is lava."

It’s probably a self-confidence thing, but so are most of the funny names in the article.

I should probably just focus on step one once I decide the end result is valuable.

Even your own comment, as valuable as it is for pointing it out, feeds exactly the same beast that it accuses the article of feeding. That's the real irony.

swatcoder, can you please tell me how you particularly manage to learn from your mistakes?

Some people create personal theories of how the world works, and then put their theories into action: A successful example is Charlie Munger and heres his talk explaining some of his excellent theories: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv7sLrON7QY

Some people overthink things and label things. That can be unhealthy, and Adam touches on that with his "Stroking the problem" section. But the opposite can be unhealthy too: not thinking at all and repeating over and over making the same mistakes.

> catchy names

Useful when communicating with others if it is an uncommon concept. I like to search for the perfect word or perfect catchphrase when thinking about a problem or solution because it helps my thinking.

> various example cases

How do you do it? Don't you look at specific issues you find in your own life? Examples yes? And then generalise from that?

I just don't understand what you're complaining about. The closest I can think is that you're anti-intellectual or you're a "Just do it" prosyletiser - the implication being that thinking is unnecessary and the problem.

Academic over-thinking is its own problem: is that your issue?

Like most things: we need to find the right balance. Thinking too little is bad in a different way from thinking too much.

> intellectualize and systematize and engineer things

I'm just gobsmacked at your choice of words: is systemizing and engineering bad? I define engineering as making good compromises. Maybe you could find some catchier phrases from what you are trying to say ;-). "intellectualize": is thinking good or bad?

I suspect I'm falling into the trap you mention - perhaps we both need to learn to write as well as Mastroianna!!

My father is very academic and he tends to start projects but not finish them. I also recognise the same fault in myself. But I've fought it hard and won a few times with some long-term successes (using a variety of personal strategies to avoid my unproductive tendencies).

We have many concepts related to what you are saying: analysis-paralysis, productivity porn, ivory tower, etcetera, etcetera.

I find the fields of psychology and philosophy are mostly tar-fields of unactionable thinking. Unfortunately I also find them interesting!

Finding the gems in the tar is hard, but Adam seems to find a few of them.

Here's another article of Adam's that seems relevant: https://www.experimental-history.com/p/excuse-me-but-why-are...

Ideas that track such progress:

--

1-3 high quality decisions per week (credits to Bezos, tho he does 1-3 per day).

--

1-2 important/not-urgent tasks per week.

1-2 small, not-important/(semi-)urgent tasks per day - these are also a form of "toothbrushing" that each adult has to do.

--

Bullet journal works well for both.

Anyway, can't recommend Adam's writing enough. Subscribed after his second post and have never regretted it. If you liked this, you should also read "You can't reach the brain through the ears", an excellent piece about failing to communicate.

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-br...

With diploma problems, if you blow it, you really blow it, with often irrevocable long-term consequences. All of your effort is building to a high stakes climax and if you miss your shot, that effort can all end up wasted. It's videogame permadeath mode for life.

But with toothbrushing problems, you can have an off day and usually make it up today. Of course, every day's effort does matter. You can't make every day an off day. But I find something very comforting about problems where some random variance in my output does smooth out to the mean over time.

I think I feel like I can’t let myself excuse any slack, because I’m worried I’ll just start excusing everything — one day off at the gym becomes a week off, becomes a month off.

But I guess the point is that no matter how much you have failed, the toothbrush problem is always best served by you starting again tomorrow, no matter how many tomorrows it takes.

That is to say, if all your problems are Toothbrushing Problems then you're doing pretty good! That means you're living. At that point you can do one or all of these things:

    * Complain about your Toothbrushing Problems (<- you are here, haha)
    * Bring NEW problems into your life
    * Work to make your Toothbrushing Problems a bit less troublesome

Most of the time I get so bored reading such long articles, like the New Yorker ugh. But this is the first time I've enjoyed such a lengthy read! I hope I can decrypt what the author is doing to make reading such fun.

These two are more life-advice-y, but he also does some fairly deep dives on various problems he sees with scientific research (and psychology in particular), and his writing is no less entertaining.

In fact, one of his posts is actually about how he thinks scientists should make more effort to make their papers fun to read!

It’s fantastic, and I also hope to emulate it.

> Terrible situations, once exited, often become funny stories or proud memories. Mediocre situations, long languished in, simply become Lost Years—boring to both live through and talk about, like you're sitting in a waiting room with no cell reception, no wifi, and no good magazines, waiting for someone to come in and tell you it's time to start living.

It really resonates with me. During my life it did happen a couple times that I found myself "stuck in mediocrity" as the OP puts it. "Waiting for someone to come in and tell you it's time to start living" is a great analogy of how it feels when you finally realise it's time for a change

There is a bog -- a swamp -- that covers the known world, and this bog is treated in a religious way by the author as the embodiment of nature, of the fertility of the world. The bog also spawns a bog monster, who may have been the first living creature.

"In the beginning, there was the Bog. And the Bog covered the world and the Bog was the world and the world was the Bog."

I kinda think this is a genetic thing. My father is like that too -- he is never happy, rarely content with himself, even when he already achieved a lot.

I found this an unpalatable paragraph in an otherwise insightful article.

It seems to be, I don't know, recursive? Like saying "one reason you may be stuck in the bog is that you're stuck in the bog," and ignoring the reasons people believe they don't have an out even with the ingredients for a "good" life. Drilling down into those reasons would, I think, result in exactly this same article...?

If I had to fill one in, I'd say that people often blame the external world for not providing the ingredients necessary for happiness, when they actually do have them on hand already. What they are lacking is choosing to compose them into a meaningful whole, which requires effort on their part.

(Another commenter there mentions a quote recommending books - great literature I'm pretty sure in that context, not "self help" books... I guess I should hurry up and read Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being already ?)

Agree. Also, in that end, there's hope, even if the characters are still flawed, they have been forced to confront their issues and illusions, and (finally) are set on a realistically human path of growth.

> The 1.11, 2.22, 3.33, and 3.0+1.0 rebuilds were much, much better in my opinion.

Disagree, because of the above. Sure, plenty of eye candy (of both kinds), but it's gratuitous in Rebuilds. The "biblical" (mid-)themes are even more confusing. The character growth is only kind of earned if you actually watched the originals (with maybe the (tragic) exception of latest Rei and "dad", who finally does get a redemption arc). And even there, at a cost, as all the suffering of old Asuka (and our whiplash of empathizing with her) has basically been erased along with her original, all the while the new pilot, Mari, is never fleshed out, so her being there at the end doesn't feel earned, with her having been all along weirdly untraumatized and also hot for Shinji (gratuitous again). Many main characters literally get wished into a fairy tale ending.

He could of had a normal life, but the show sets him up to be trapped in hyper emotional relationships, influencing him to make irrational decisions all the time.

He's a high school guy being manipulated by everyone around him, to fight battles he doesn't understand.

Second step is to examine the separable components of said statespace. Is one increasing while another decreases? You're about to make a big life decision! Are they all meh? Well fuck.

Uh I mean, decompose them further and repeat. Eventually you'll find a meta level where the components of the meh are divergent vectors that sum to zero, and there's your buried n-lemma.

If everything's truly flat and boring for long enough, eventually you'll dig down to causal bedrock where the quantum noise will create signals for you whether you want them or not. Doesn't matter, because at this point, does anything? So just do the thing, you have nothing to lose.

Deconstructing capitalism but preserving the state = purging millions of people?

Preserving capitalism and the state = killing millions of poor people?

Preserving capitalism but deconstructing the state = killing millions of poor people, but cyberpunk?

You barely need to start reading to understand what the author meant.

Quite a few knights in the day were nobles who had large landed estates to manage but were expected to impress their peasants in time of war. They were lucky enough to go to war with heavy armor and mounted on a horse whereas the peasants might get some weapon that is easy to handle without a lot of training like a spear.

I mean, "experimental history", so I don't expect real, academic history... that said, yeah, that was an insane analogy to make. Knights weren't, as a rule, wandering monster-slayers - anywhere or ever, as far as I know.

Knights' bravery was tested on the battlefield, where they would have a very good expectation of survival until approximately post-Agincourt (where it became more socially acceptable to execute wealthy enemies instead of capturing and ransoming them). But that's also an extremely high-level description which may be so generalized as to be inaccurate.

That is a loose pop historical way of describing the chivalric tradition, but it did exist in some fashion. The dragon reference also exists in a passage that is being airily allegorical, you're all being overly anal about accuracy.

"17 ways you get stuck in a bog (in 3 categories) (and also: what is a bog) (and also: what it means to get unstuck from the bog)"

Seems a pretty shit listicle; maybe it should be a full article :)