(this comment is copied to the other essay as well)
I respect the attempt, here, and I think a version of the thesis is true. Letting go of control and trying to appreciate the present moment is probably the best course of action given that one is confronted with impending doom. I also recognize that reaching this state is not just a switch one can immediately flip in one's mind; it can only be reached by way of practice.
With these things in mind, I am still not okay. More than anything I find myself craving ignorance. I envy my wife; she's not in ratspaces whatsoever and as far as I know has no... (read more)
It's the "Boy who cried wolf" fable in the format of an incident report such as what might be written in the wake of an industrial disaster. Whether the fictional report writer has learned the right lessons I suppose is an exercise left for the reader.
My advice would be this:
Trying to meet people for the sole purpose of dating them is a spiritually toxic endeavor, with online dating being particularly bad. I had a handful of girlfriends before meeting my wife, none of whom came to me through online dating or trying to get dates with people I didn't know.
I contend that the best path to a relationship is through community, broadly defined. What you want is to be around people with whom you can cultivate compatibility. The online dating/cold approach model relies on being able to quickly discern compatibility, which I think most people are kind of bad at.
My definition of community in this context is... (read more)
You're not wrong. Learning to crimp really does enable climbers to perform feats that others cannot, and plenty of them suffer injuries like the one I've linked to and decide to heal and keep going. My addendum isn't "never do something hard or risky," it's "pain is a warning; consider what price you are willing to pay before you go pushing through it."
Addendum: Crimp grips are a major cause of climbing injuries. It's sheer biomechanics. The crimp grip puts massive stress on connective tissues which aren't strong enough to reliably handle them.
The moral of the addendum: choose your impossible challenges wisely; even if you can overcome them the stress and pain might have been a warning from the beginning. If nothing else it should be a warning to get some good advice about prevention or you may find yourself unable to pursue your goal for weeks at a time.
It's going to be tricky. You may already be too close to the situation to judge impartially, and a case study is going to be difficult to use as evidence against population-level surveys of well-being, especially for your implied time horizon. You could attempt to benchmark against previous work, e.g. see what the literature has to say about the effects of poverty on diet, educational attainment, etc. in first-world cities, but your one new data point still won't generalize and it wouldn't be doing the heavy lifting in your argument for localism at that point.
Unless I'm very much mistaken, emergency mobilization systems refers to autonomic responses like a pounding heartbeat, heightened subjective senses, and other types of physical arousal; i.e. the things your body does when you believe someone or something is coming to kill you with spear or claw. Literal fight or flight stuff.
In both examples you give there is true danger, but your felt bodily sense doesn't meaningfully correspond to it; you can't escape or find the bomb by being ready for an immediate physical threat. This is the error being referred to. In both cases the preferred state of mind is resolute problem-solving and inability to register a felt sense of panic will likely reduce your ability to get to such a state.
I think I see your point but I'm not sure how to answer the question as you posed it so let me make an analogy:
Imagine I come to you and say "I have a revolutionary new car design that will revolutionize the market and break the chokehold of big auto! Best of all, it's completely safe; the locks are unpickable and the windows are unbreakable, so no one will ever be able to mug you in your car!"
You would be wise to ask "Okay, but what about in a crash? Is it safe there?" and the truth would be no, not really. Actually people who get caught in crashes with this car... (read more)
I'd say that's a good point but perhaps doesn't exhaustively cover all the problems. The way I've come to think about crypto which I think is roughly congruent is that the things crypto is good for (decentralization, security against hacking) are not major vectors of attack by bad actors under the status quo, and the things it isn't robust against definitely are. (social engineering, obfuscation of value)
I live in a relatively small and out-of-the-way city in Canada. My geographic region only has a few dozen confirmed cases of Covid-19. Nonetheless, we are bracing for impact.
Suppose I or someone close to me becomes a confirmed case. If epidemiologist types come asking, how much would it help for me to have a list of everyone I've associated with on each day starting now?
(this comment is copied to the other essay as well)
I respect the attempt, here, and I think a version of the thesis is true. Letting go of control and trying to appreciate the present moment is probably the best course of action given that one is confronted with impending doom. I also recognize that reaching this state is not just a switch one can immediately flip in one's mind; it can only be reached by way of practice.
With these things in mind, I am still not okay. More than anything I find myself craving ignorance. I envy my wife; she's not in ratspaces whatsoever and as far as I know has no... (read more)