San Francisco: journal

Lately I moved to San Francisco. More on that later perhaps. I have also been writing a journal. Here is some of it, somewhat edited, mostly not written with public consumption in mind*:

Jan 22

An interesting thing that happened to me today: where I would usually be very encumbered around cooking things—and if anything, follow instructions awkwardly—I had an inclination to buy zucchinis and ginger and then to slice them and fry them up, with some old wedges, and salt, and then a bit of cream and white wine.. I did the whole thing in a kind of ‘mmm mmmm…and now a little bit of ginger… ’ way, not a, ‘Ok, I will read the recipe again. It says slice the zucchinis. I suppose that means I should locate a knife. Ok. Knife. Wait, let me read the recipe again…’ kind of way. And it didn’t take that long, and I enjoyed it, and the food was goodish. (I also added a salad of parsley and radishes).

I put this in a class of things where I have awkwardly done the thing in the past, and heard that it was good, and checked boxes, and been diligent, but where there is a different mode where the thing is ‘alive’ for you, and that is so much better, and makes it just happen.

What does this mean? I had thought it was to do with the end state being actually motivating. Like, I run because it really feels like it is improving matters. But another possibility is that the process itself is somehow better connected to your System 1. For cooking, it’s not clear that I’m more excited about the outcome in the new mode, or at least that doesn’t feel like the relevant thing. I think the relevant thing is more like: there is an intuition for the system that has the goal and the steps leading to it in. So perhaps more broadly, a sense that your current actions will lead to the good goal.

That sounds right in the abstract, but I would have agreed with it before. And proceeded to dutifully envisage meditation helping, or slicing zucchinis leading to a stir fry, but I’m not sure this would have helped find the thing I’m now trying to point at. It’s more like a visceral deliciousness in each moment perhaps? I’m not sure, it’s hard to tell the difference between my mind now and at other times, on this thing.

…

Today I felt like there was some relation between the thing where something hard cuts through something weaker or vaguer (e.g. reality destroying your notions, adrenaline destroying your sense of vague unease, a task at hand destroying your malaise, a point of focus or a sharp sensation cutting through your sensory overwhelm), and the thing where you make a judgment call, or otherwise add an extra step of deciding, rather than waiting for the world (wait, what was the other thing like that I was thinking of recently, before I decided that it generalized to everything? Maybe feeling fear? Or something like that.) Or was it a relationship between two other important things? I can’t remember, and I have trouble thinking about this now. They seem superficially similar, but not actually. They both have the sense of a sharp clear thing cutting off a vague interminable blech thing.

23 January

The thing that was similar to making a judgment call was perhaps the act of deciding to believe in a thing, instead of waiting forever for your System 1 to come around. This is not a well understood move for me, and I don’t mean the thing where you just force yourself to act in spite of not feeling it. More like, in the dance between explicitness and intuition, you can perhaps make an explicit decision that causes your S1 to be on board, or asks it to look for how the thing is true in each moment, rather than waiting for it to come around eventually. Like if you decide that a thing is safe, you aren’t just feeling like it is dangerous and acting otherwise, the decision in part orients S1, or collapses its vagueness on a particular idea.

…

24 January

A friend wanted wrapping paper, and I let her look in my art box and use some art, or some origami paper. She finds it pretty and is excited, and wants to take some of the art herself. This is pleasing to me. I wish she would take it all. But what is that world that I want? One where she does things that I don’t find worth doing? Perhaps one where it is worth doing for her, or where it is worth doing, but I don’t understand the value, because I am somehow blind, or incapable?

…

February 4

Being myself has been been different these past days. There is an idea of doing things, instead of not. There is a feeling that is a cousin to the sense of violin strings being played, and a friend to substantiveness. There is a choosing of one thing to do each day. There is a lack of shame for showing where I am. There is a new relief of not having to be selfish. There is a desire to write on the whiteboard. There is real thought. There is doing so in public, freely and rightly. There is debate. There are words on the whiteboard. There is a sense that I can gather up the parts, myself, and bring them into myself. There is the idea that one should cut through the dallying with getting the window hangings right, and at last do. At first, do. That one can have not forgotten what one came here for. There was a confluence of themes: one of not getting drawn into appraising the side tables that Wirecutter drove you to; one of ideas that bloomed directly in your mind, versus locally spoken notions of AI risk and intervention; one of liking from direct awe-filled appreciation, and liking from identification of broadly understood merit. Of some things coming from oneself, and some not. Some things being first seen clearly, and others just being thrust dead into one’s basket, not being rejected but never coming to life. And now the sense that one can look, and look again, and have one’s world filled with new unfolding—new pockets of the territory lit, perhaps.

February 6

…

So, with these kinds of thoughts in mind, what should I do? Take the best actions… but one needs a process for doing that. To build a good-action taking system, one needs to somehow contend with when actions can be taken, and what the alternatives are, and a selection process. I think I should think more about this, when I have the energy for it. At the moment, my attention is elsewhere. The ability to direct attention seems perhaps very powerful. But also it sounds a bit misleading, because when my attention is elsewhere, it doesn’t feel like I want to redirect it fully—part of the problem is that I want something else.

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*If you are reading this on LW and think that LW should not contain random personal journaling of no particular intellectual merit, the makers of LW seem to disagree, but I’m open to arguments that I shouldn’t put this here.