I'm pretty sure I wouldn't escalate those signs above a rather low threshold given any observers, and my intuition tells me other people would be similar in this regard. So not observing flirting could just imply people don't flirt if you're in the conversation with them. As an extreme example, I've never seen anyone having sex, but it seems as if people do that all the time.
1Lately I’ve been trying to use Bayes’ Theorem in daily life — quick guesses, like someone’s nationality from a glance.
What I’ve noticed: my intuition does better when I don’t adjust for general priors. Corrections like “most people in Germany aren’t Russian” when someone looks vaguely Slavic often pull me further from the truth.
After five minutes of reflection, my best guess: explicit Bayes only really helps out-of-distribution, when we lack feedback loops — new domains, big decisions, reasoning about AI. That’s when 5 minutes of googling or reading a paper can give you better intuition than your System 1.
Is this roughly in line with the Sequences?
https://realityisdharma.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/focusing-eugene-t-gendlin.pdf
2nd part of the book
Or get a therapist if it's bad enough.
As a black tea enjoyer I would argue it’s practically non existent, no decaf black tea I’d ever tried even comes close to the best “normal” black tea sorts.
1There is “normal” love (with attachment)
There is higher (Christian / lovingkindness - like) love.
I think we still misunderstood each other on (3) - I was pushing back only on the part saying “some amount of negative feelings create a positive feedback loop making you more agentic”. I’m saying, less negative feelings, more intrinsic motivation, by any amount, is, up to sacrificing impact for personal happiness, always better.
1) I don’t know what kind of meditation you did, but for me, inner work and meditation tend to unlock more capacity for love. I can clearly see that I’d feel less pain if one of my closest friends left or died—and yet, I love them more than ever, with fewer contractions of insecurity or clinging, less of that sense that they’re the only thing standing between me and the abyss. That kind of love just feels better to me.
2) I love that you acknowledge feeling bad is okay. But one reads in III that you are still striving to not feel bad by considering stuff not going your way as a problem. I think, you’re walking along the same path as the Pali Canon, except solving your problems in an external way. Letting your inner desires out is undeniably great, at any rate, so I support not actively repressing your agentic side.
3) Where I’d also push back is on the assumption that feeling less bad when things go wrong would necessarily make you apathetic. My experience has been the opposite: intrinsic motivation works better for me, and Nate Soares makes a similar case somewhere in Replacing Guilt—that caring from a place other than guilt or pain can actually be more sustainable and energizing.
part 2 of “Focusing” by Eugene Gendlin is very good to read and it helps to start.
This next article is my favourite one on all of the internet:
The key is to approach Focusing with the mindset of relaxing, having fun, playing around and experimenting. It’s emphasised in the talks on this website: https://hermesamara.org/teachings/metta. That particular series about loving kindness is very good.
I think there’s enough material in my head about it for a whole post, so I might write one eventually.
I think this post being on LW calls for remembering the law of equal and opposite advice.
A good, concise one, still! Upvoted.
As said by @Mateusz Bagiński , normal smalltalk is +epsilon, but some more comparisons:
a short smile with a stranger or acquaintance is like eating a very tasty fruit.
90% percentile conversations are all with good friends and leave me high for a few hours. As good as a very good date. No non-social activities come close.
I don’t actually remember any best particular ones, but the best ones i can recall aren’t about conversations anymore but about presence, which isn’t conversation anymore, I think. They feel extremely nourishing and meaningful and my only comparison is a really, really good IFS or therapy session.