draconica | Entries tagged with expression

I'm approaching this blog as a Bad Blog — as in "write a bad blog; only nerds write a good blog". Writing a good blog is important for establishing a nerd identity, but if you have nothing to say, it's pointless to write a good blog, and if you have something to say, it's better to write a bad blog because good blogs are for nerds.

But who are bad blogs for? In the grand scheme of things, what is their sacred meaning? We need to construct a solid foundation by answering these questions because I'm a nerd now, and this is a good blog now.

Bad blogs are meant to be written, not read. Good blogs are meant to be reposted, not read. People don't read anymore. Those who do, they can't do it properly: they will understand the easy 20% of the text (words like "wow" and "astonishing") and kind of project their own thoughts as if they were the remaining 80% of the text. Yes, this is social critique now. I'm not here to propose solution but at least you know the problem now.

"Why write a bad blog though?" you may ask. In a way it's like writing a Bad Word Graffiti on the wall. People will pass and they will say "look at this Bad Word on the wall, insane!" And someone would have to clean that? In many cases no one ever does, so a graffiti will be a more lasting evidence of you, the living person, than your tombstone.

Life changes a lot when you have a partner. I can't behave the same way as when I'm alone. In a way this is good, as it keeps me up. On the other hand, it's exhausting, having this feeling that someone's around, and they may approach you any time, ask what you're doing, or announce they're doing something. I haven't always lived alone, naturally, I spend the most of my younger years with my family so someone always has been around. So it kind of feels like returning to that old state of being surrounded by people. And even before that I lived with a friend. I'm not new to this. But it's always so weird and exhausting. Being alone is also weird and exhausting in its own way, so it's not like I'm complaining (if I were to complain, it would be a complaint about everything and how all modes of being suck).

The primary challenge is the Watching Eye, where you can't just do whatever, the inappropriate things, you know. It's easier with a partner than with family or a friend because they will tolerate more of the inappropriateness. I'm fine with tolerating inappropriateness with others, I will not even make odd remarks and be weird about it, like, go ahead.

The most important thing is I can't be the same in various environments, and various environments affect me differently, and I have to adapt to changing environment, "being myself" is actually always "accommodating to the environment" because the feeling of self does not just come from within but is also informed by the environment.

Current Mood: drained

One thing you can do with digital notes that you can't do with hand-written notes is compacting your writing. On paper (n.p.i.), you may technically rewrite the same sentence more concisely, but the old text is still there, it's not gone, unless you physically destroy it. Digital data is much easier destroyed (unless it's already been published and redistributed), and that's its special superpower over physical writing besides the ease of copying. This allows dozens effortless ad-hoc approaches that will result in compact writing by iterating quickly. You can even unfold the entire sequence of iterations in the same paragraph and then swiftly delete all sentences you don't feel are right, if you feel like it.

Why even bother compacting your writing? The primary use case I had in mind is summarizing the writing of others. By compacting your summaries (removing redundancies, generalizing, maybe even replacing examples with your own instances you find easier to understand), you make it so much easier to 1. memorize the content of the work; 2. internalize it; 3. build upon the ideas you're summarizing. You read a sentence and the entire universe of associations and recollections arises - this is how reading a compact summary carefully written by yourself feels.

Current Mood: determined
Current Location: Determinizm

I'm approaching this blog as a Bad Blog — as in "to write one good blog, write 1000 bad ones."

The number of 1000 is of course a SigmaGrindset-esque exaggeration: truly I tell you, dear reader, that you will see great improvements in a selected creative skill much earlier than only after wading through 1000 attempts. If anything, at 1000 pieces written your skill will plateau so much your recent works will be roughly at the same quality level and you will be yearning for real improvement and have to try radical changes in your strategy which will bring the quality down, because the New is the Unknown, the Fresh is unexperienced: inexperienced. To grow beyond oneself is to become a nobody once again. You will not always write bad blogs, but you will always write a Bad Blog.

"To do the same thing over and over and expect changes" is called madness by the character Vaas from the 2012 video game FarCry 3. Personally I call this training, and everybody calls this training, we kind of expect that by repeating the same motions we get better at them, which is a change. We kind of expect that because it kind of actually happens, see figure 1 for an example from the Academic Literature.

Figure 1. Evolution of reaching trajectories in infants. At 5 months it's wonky and unstable, in adults it's straight and elegant. [Konczak and Dichgans, 1997]

This phrase by Vaas about madness has been memed on so hard for many years that I wanted to talk about it. The thing about Vaas is that he's an anti-growth person, he doesn't believe in growth, he believes in a fixed hierarchy where every person belongs somewhere by default and yearning to change things is considered madness in his eyes. It was so easy for him to fall into this trap because he lived in the isolated community where he killed everyone who disagreed with him. So I don't know, maybe Vaas is wrong?

Personally, I'm a pro-growth person. I like writing a Bad Blog again and again, because every once in a while I feel "ooh, this one wasn't that bad actually" and I'm proud of myself and I experience bliss. Not madness. What's the point of being mad at anything? "Aaaah im so mad im not good enough" holy crap, kid, now that's the real road towards insanity.

Also, did you know that properly adding paragraphs in Dreamwidth is done by pressing Shift+Enter? If you just use Enter for this purpose, the rich text editor enters a short-lived psychotic episode each time. But Shift+Enter works like a charm.

References

[Konczak and Dichgans, 1997] Konczak, J. and Dichgans, J. (1997). The development toward stereotypic arm kinematics during reaching in the first 3 years of life. Experimental Brain Research, 117:346–354.

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: Optimal control problem
Current Music: Cars outside

I'm pretty good at expressing myself, something I used to be pretty bad at.

Like many, I tried to construct a persona and maintain it. A tedious and pointless activity, because what you truly should do is not to construct a persona, but deconstruct it.

Why constructing a persona doesn't work so well? There are several reasons:
1. You have to keep your constructed image of self in mind. This increases cognitive load.
2. Any discrepancies triggers anxiety and a desire to remove oneself from the situation that unveils discrepancy. This mostly applies to perfectionists (I am a perfectionist btw).
3. People in general have a smell for a "fake persona" and they will generally be drawn away from fakers and favor authenticity.

Me personally, I just don't want to hang out with people who build a self-image so obviously, so blatantly that it seems you're getting drawn into a theatrical show. The worst part of being involved is that you are not supposed to break their role, or you're the bad person; everybody should be allowed to save their face because it's a moral thing to do. Morality-shmorality, am I right? Why can't I just yell "FAKER" at them and go about my day? Because I could be wrong?.. Well that's also partly true, so you can see why it's generally awkward to be around the persona builders.

In a way, we all are persona builders. Even if we don't construct an image we blindly follow, we at least have an image of Better Self in our heads that we aspire to be or even think that we partly possess the qualities of Better Self even if others would not agree. That's very natural, just as natural as imagining a house you want to build even before you lay the foundation. Actually you have to know what you're building before you start the foundation, or you may end up with something you don't want.

So to Build a Self is to Build a Self and not Build a Self — yet another manifestation of Dao. Have I told you about Dao before, dear reader? It's the school of thought where you allow these kind of paradoxes to shape your existence. In Dao, non-action means "action without thought", but not really without thought, it's just you don't act on your thought, but on your guts, but not really. Dao is a very cool and unorthodox way of thinking without thinking, and I invite you to try it.

Now let's talk about the Authenti City, the Capital of the Soul, which is the province of the Body. In this city live all the things that you truly are. They shine through you so brightly that people will notice if you try to be something that's not these things. That's why you deconstruct yourself first to figure out what shines brightly within you and then build upon that. You are a product of your internal factors as much as you are a product of external factors, and these must coexist in harmony, or your Authenti City collapses. It's not like the whole city gets destroyed, it just becomes an unwelcoming ghetto where everyone is paranoid.

I didn't want to write this blog post, but I wanted to finish it very badly so I could write something else, that's why it may seem a bit exaggerated and jumpy. On the other hand, I told here a lot of things I wanted to tell. According to Dao, your silence speaks, and your speech is mute. You must give a shot at Dao, dear reader, it's so much fun.

Current Location: Dao
Current Music: Oda

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Encylopædia Draconica

Who's the anarchist in charge?

Entries tagged with expression

Bad Blog Part II

Fleeting Sense of Feeling Self

Note-writing as compression

A Bad Blog

Authenti City, the Capital of the Soul

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March 2026

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