“You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.” adapted by Mark Epstein (from Thoughts Without a Thinker) --- Credit for the excerpt https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/q42omi/the_glass_is_already_broken/ --- Personal thoughts: This is similar to a good relationship advice: "your partner is not yours, it's just your turn" that helps you to not be possessive and allows you to enjoy every moment with them. I've successfully used this philosophy to calm myself regarding various anxieties: getting old, losing job due to poor performance, being likeable, etc. If I really believe this job is already lost (even when it hasn't) I tend to be more focused on working to solve it instead of sulking.
professor_entropy 1y ago • 100%
Thank you for sharing your insights. It's good to hear a different perspective.
What I believe is that these studies tell you the general behaviour of people and need not necessarily apply to all of us.
If focusing on positive outcomes helps you, may be it's because your baseline is to be on the opposite end by default in a way that being extremely positive helps you be balanced? Just a hypothesis.
Personally, I get anxious if I try to suppress negative thoughts and focus only on positives, instead I try to use the Buddhist technique of "The Glass Is Already Broken" which helps me be calm and disciplined.
professor_entropy 1y ago • 87%
FWIW It's not clear cut if AI generated data feeding back into further training reduces accuracy, or is generally harmful.
Multiple papers have shown that generated images by high quality diffusion models with a proportion of real images in mix (30-50%) improve the adversarial robustness of the models. Similiar things might apply to language modeling.
professor_entropy 1y ago • 100%
10239 post score 540 comment score https://old.lemmy.world/u/awesome_person@lemm.ee
professor_entropy 1y ago • 100%
Now that you mention it, I do face the problem of being in my head too much while conversing. That often leads to problems. I guess I just need more practice controlling it like you said.
professor_entropy 1y ago • 100%
Very well written. Thank you!
professor_entropy 1y ago • 100%
Good news everyone!
Excerpt from "59 seconds: Think a little, change a lot" by Richard Wiseman --- In one study, conducted by Lien Pham and Shelley Taylor at the University of California, a group of students was asked to spend a few moments each day visualizing themselves getting a high grade on an important midterm exam that would take place in a few days’ time. 1 They were asked to form a clear image in their mind’s eye and imagine how great it would feel to make a high grade. The study also involved a control group of students, who went about their business as usual and were not asked to visualize doing especially well on the exams. The experimenters asked the students in both groups to make a note of the number of hours they studied each day, and monitored their final grades. Even though the daydreaming exercise lasted only a few minutes, it had a significant impact on the students’ behavior, causing them to study less and make lower grades on the exam. The exercise may have made them feel better about themselves, but it did not help them achieve their goals. In another experiment, Gabriele Oettingen and Thomas Wadden, at the University of Pennsylvania, followed a group of obese women taking part in a weight-reduction program. 2 During the work, the women were asked to imagine how they might behave in various food-related scenarios, such as going to a friend’s house and being tempted with tasty pizza. Each of their responses was categorized on a scale ranging from highly positive (with, for example, someone stating, “I would be a good person and stay well away from the cakes and ice cream”) to highly negative (“I would be straight in there, consuming both my own and other people’s portions”). After the women were tracked for a year, the results revealed that those with more positive fantasies had lost, on average, twenty-six pounds less than those with negative fantasies. --- The author recommends a "doublethink" approach instead, where you visualise both the positive outcomes and the negative ones, asking questions like what your plan of action would be on failure while simultaneously thinking about the benefits of success.
professor_entropy 1y ago • 100%
Quick reminder that all futurama episodes are available for free on archive.
I'll start. No more Mr. Nice Guy had the biggest impact on me, especially learning about covert contracts and how to avoid making those.
I re-discovered my old habit of talking to myself recently. I talk to myself in second person and try to dissect why I'm feeling the way I feel. I encourage myself and go into lengthy discussions. It helps me clear my head of negative thoughts. It helps me plan. I get motivated because I often realise there's a solution to the problems I thought were impossible to solve because of various wrong assumptions. It's almost like writing in a diary, but it's faster and laziness doesn't hinder it as much. Not a panacea, it has its own problems. Your blindspots may still remain and it's better to talk to someone else too. It's also not a replacement of writing, it's complementary to it. Does anybody else do the same? Do you view it positively?
professor_entropy 1y ago • 100%
I think we should've vote on how the comments should be moderated.
It's just not possible for a community to survive by allowing anything and everything. It's very easy to get people rallied by spreading fake information especially those which are false in subtle manners and are suggestive of ill will.
But more importantly, mods have huge power in shaping the direction of the discord.
For example /r/India and /r/IndiaSpeaks are opposite leaning in most of the type of posts that are discussed and both sides feel disgusted with the other. The only difference between them is the moderation and the kind of posts that are allowed, correct me if I'm wrong.
I'd hope for a community that is:
- Scientifically oriented.
- Rationally minded.
- Wants to grow at individual level and at community level holistically. Ranging from intellectual growth to personality and behaviour improvement, with aim to increase life satisfaction.
- Open to all ideas without belittling those of different opinion. At the same time if enough evidence is present, support the thesis with confidence.
- Has healthy amount of self doubt and doesn't judge absolutely unless supported by hard facts.
I'd suggest the non-goals be:
- To be so India specific that things which aren't directly related to India gets deleted even if the community is interested in discussing it.
- Put rules above the wishes of community. For example, deleting a post because it's somewhat related to a megathread that was posted a day back.
- Allow everything in the name of free speech. Facts and evidence (data) win over opinion.
- Be a link aggregation community rather than discourse oriented community. (E.g., Titles should encourage discussion and it should be OKAY have title be different from the article title.)
Indians best identify with the other Indians, hence my choice of posting these ideas on here.
/end of opinion
professor_entropy 1y ago • 100%
What are you going to do differently than /r/India mods?
I used to get my posts and comments deleted citing some weird rules which are open to interpretations. It's run like a dictatorship.
professor_entropy 1y ago • 100%
I want to like kbin.social but the mobile website's UI isn't there yet. It's unintuitive and frustrating at times, I can't find logout button for instance.
professor_entropy 1y ago • 100%
Good point but the community I like may be on another instance which would prevent similar community to grown elsewhere. If I get invested in it I run the risk of losing access to it.
professor_entropy 1y ago • 36%
Why does Lemmy make it look harder than it is? It's not a massive load compared to what modern servers and applications are designed to handle.
I couldn't sign up on beehaw and lemmy.ml after multiple tries. It feels worse than a simple centralised platform one can build in a month.
Is there alternative to reddit for people like me who don't need this kind of decentralisation (Lemmy feels like centralisation, just multiple number of it, if any instance can cut off like this.) but likes the (text heavy)interface of Lemmy?