In chess there's an idiom for this. "Long think, wrong think" because it's a quite common phenomenon that very good players will ruin positions by rather than playing with their good instinct, over-analyzing a position, there's a related situation of the hardest games to win being already won positions because there's so many ways to win that people will on occasion start doing something really stupid akin to the example of having too much choice in the article.
I think a nice collective analogue to this is Alfred Whitehead's observation that 'civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them'. Progress is being made by holistically integrating knowledge in a way that makes it sort of ambient.
It also reminds me of a slightly snarky article why all the people in the rationalist cult never seem to actually be successful at anything other than rationalism. It's precisely because consciously thinking is easy, it's the integration of knowledge into the whole is what's difficult but actually necessary.
“In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. Lord Takandobu said, “If discrimination is long, it will spoil.” Lord Naoshige said, “When matters are done leisurely, seven out of ten will turn out badly. A warrior is a person who does things quickly.
When your mind is going hither and thither, discrimination will never be brought to a conclusion. With an intense, fresh and undelaying spirit, one will make his judgments within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side.”
But taken from a site [0] I just found in the process that apparently has nothing to do with the OS and informs us that ;
"Ubuntu is a concept that we have in our Bantu languages at home. Ubuntu is the essence of being a person. It means that we are people through other people. We cannot be fully human alone. We are made for interdependence, we are made for family. When you have ubuntu, you embrace others. You are generous, compassionate. If the world had more ubuntu, we would not have war. We would not have this huge gap between the rich and the poor. You are rich so that you can make up what is lacking for others. You are powerful so that you can help the weak, just as a mother or father helps their children. This is God's dream.”
Ubuntu the operating system takes its name from the concept that you talk about here.
That is also why the logo of Ubuntu the operating system is three people holding hands, which kind of blew my mind when I first heard about it. Prior to that I thought the logo was just some lines and circles in a pretty pattern with no specific meaning.
"GNU is the operating system" only makes sense when speaking about GNU Hurd or Linux-libre. The kernel is part of the OS, so in the case of ubuntu GNU can't be the operating system. But if Linux is the kernel, and GNU is part of the operating system because the OS is more than the kernel, then why is the OS GNU/Linux and not Systemd/GNU/Linux? And on Ubuntu you install most stuff with apt instead of using gcc, and use most software with X.org instead of bash, so the OS is really apt/X.org/systemd/GNU/Linux. Of course that name quickly becomes silly, it's much more practical to just call the OS Ubuntu (as that expresses a specific package selection that includes GNU, linux, and a large number of equally indispensable parts, as well as their update cadence and methodology)
A GNU/Linux distro can be referred to as an operating system. Not sure if you are memeing or not, but in conversation going into specifics about the GNU/Linux, or GNU plus Linux as you might like to call it, distinction, is not relevant here.
And in fact, I would say that saying that “GNU is the operating system” is even incorrect. GNU plus Linux is the operating system. Neither part by itself is a complete operating system.
What about when there is a huge length of time between the plan and the final execution? Do you just not let yourself think about it after the 7th breath? In the context of the hagakure, I suppose it would apply to battle strategy?
It applies to the process of taking the decision (to execute), not the executing itself. After the seventh breath, you don't go back to pondering on yes / no, you just proceed as decided.
I suppose one can figure out exactly how you're supposed to handle what you decided you were going to handle afterward.
The "Hagakure" literally starts with something like "The art of the samurai lies in a way of dying. A samurai warrior enters battle as if already dead."
It also started 150 years after the last Samurai battle, during a time when the Samurai were a bureaucratic clerical class. A fantasy nostalgia written by a clerk who had never seen battle or a fight of any kind.
Given that Bakumatsu and Meiji restoration happened in the 1850s the “last Samurai fight” happened only much later. The period in question was an attempt to keep fighters in check and prevent Shogun to be overthrown.
Bushido was real, Hagakure was written by a scribe from discussions with a holder of Bushido because before that Bushido was mostly transmitted through oral tradition. That daimyo was one to challenge useless deaths such as junji, so it’s not like he was entirely a fan of the whole thing but he probably lived by Bushido very much to the core.
Put into context that looks suspiciously like an interview for historical records and persistence in writing of an oral tradition. I would not be surprised if it was published only after the daimyo’s death because he made a vow to keep this knowledge secret, which was still common up to last century (Katori Shinto Ryu was probably one of the first schools to officially break with that and share previously secret knowledge about fighting technique and philosophy)
Now, there is romanticisation of Bushido and Samurai, but mostly from 1900s imperialism and WW2 propaganda which taints our glasses very much.
The samurai died out though, where as Japan’s unchanging ancient businesses managed to remain. I wonder if quick thinking isn’t just what leads one to an early end, business, life, or otherwise.
I'm not an expert, but I've got the impression the dying out of the samurai class was pretty much because they weren't really needed any more, and such a special class wasn't really in line with the modernization and westernization efforts that were being made in Japan at the time.
Of course any endeavour can meet an early end due to carelessness or because of not stopping and considering whether what you're doing is actually a good idea. But carelessness would probably not have been held in high regard by the samurai, and I generally fail to see a simple connection between to the samurai class becoming outdated and a preference for "quick" thinking.
Modern fascination with samurai is less idolizing and more fetishizing. Plenty of people telling stories. Not a lot practicing the art. And those that do are (rightfully) snickered at for taking seriously something that is supposed to be mere quaint fascination.
I’d suggest that others simply have a different perspective and that your label of “quaint” is merely your own modern bias.
Edit: In other words, many people are dissatisfied with the contemporary world set up by merchants and bureaucrats. I don’t see it as misguided or quaint for them to look to the samurai ethic as a more appealing alternative. Its historical accuracy isn’t really relevant, as all history is story creation.
We don't have life all figured out in modern society either. Especially when it comes to dying (without it just being the end of a period of despair and depression), but also I'd say dealing with risk and difficulty generally.
Eastern cultures didn't really have religions universally promising to provide all the answers/solutions like western culture had, so they developed very interesting alternative ways of addressing these struggles in life.
Keep in mind the expertise required to build that intuition, though. The average person who merely knows how to play Chess should probably think before they move, or else blunder away the whole game by putting their queen on a square threatened by a knight they didn't look at.
That said, most people are probably "experts"--in the sense that their intuitions can often outdo their conscious trains of thought--in more than a few things. I'll bet that drivers in their 40's make better decisions with instinct than conscious thought. The same probably goes for middle aged home cooks. But teenagers should go over their driving lessons in their heads, and stick to the recipes.
Learning something new requires a lot of concentration and deliberate thinking and practice. When I learned chess I remember the friend I was playing with becoming a bit bored waiting for my moves but with time it became more automatic and only certain moves would make me think more and when not being able to evaluate or choose between alternative I'd go to gut feeling, possibly distilled from thousands and thousands of chess games played. At some point the tipping point leaned too much towards gut feeling and after some bluffing I decided to take a break from chess and moved on to something else. I think I got bored and my brain would jump to shortcuts. Then I discovered musical instruments
>Alfred Whitehead's observation that 'civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them'.
Reminds me a bit of a quote I heard recently: "Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back."
That's the modern justification. Surgery "in the middle of a desert in the insanitary conditions and no water" for "hygiene" is a very counter-intuitive practice, don't you think?
Wow, I never thought about this. It would be interesting to do a study to see what lead to more disease, child circumcision during that time, or hygiene complications later in life, not to mention and STDs that might be spread more easily. Fascinating new way to look at it.
Of course, sometimes the underlying problem has gone away entirely or been dealt with by a different solution. Then you run into traditionalists defending ridiculous things with arguments that make no sense.
> civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them
Interesting take. My first thought was that this relates to societal trust, a cornerstone of civilization. I can buy food from someone I've never met, and keep myself fed, 'without thinking'.
That’s an interesting point. Makes me think of the loops that are required to be jumped through to enable a trustless digital currency like Bitcoin. The entire network, with transactions of about 1kB in size, can do at most 7 transactions per second (3-4 orders of magnitude lower than Visanet, which itself is lower throughput than all the world’s physical cash transactions could theoretically do if everyone bought one or two things a day on average). That’s the same data throughput of a mid-1990s modem, but with power consumption of about 10GW to secure the transactions.
Pure trustlessness indeed has a massive computational and mental overhead. Some compromise (like the Lightning network, or even a central trusted banking institution) is essential to get anything done. (Even with Bitcoin, you’re trusting open source software, often an actual intermediary like Coinbase, etc... Try to do it without any crypto libraries whatsoever—writing it really from scratch—and it is an enormous project. How many people teach themselves Finite Field theory before doing Bitcoin because they take the trustlessness seriously?)
There are quite a few places in bitcoin where trust is required. For example, the software is developed by a relatively small group of core devs and 99%+ of bitcoin users will never read that code (and its dependencies) to see if it contains backdoors. We just have to trust the devs to "do it right" and not get compromised by either greed or blackmailed by external parties. If you presuppose a sophisticated enough attacker, the distribution methods could be MITMed so that the distributed binaries are not what is in the source code. The various miner pools could be compromised as well so that they run different software than the "main" bitcoin branch (but with a similar interface). If you accept that crypto exchanges are essential to bring down the barrier to entry, they need to be trusted as well. For any transaction also involving an exchange of goods or services not on the blockchain, you need to either trust the counterparty to actually fulfill their obligations, you have to involve a (trusted) clearing house or you have to trust the legal system to enforce the contract.
Tbh, trustlessness in payment systems is pretty much unachievable at scale. And if you are going to need trusted parties anyway, why have a blockchain in the first place? You can get a much better solution with a centralized database managed by the trusted party.
I agree. You have to write your own software (offline, perhaps), not use a mining pool, plus not use an exchange to be trustless. And you’re still having to trust the other end to actually deliver on what they’re paying for, although they don’t necessarily have to trust you. That last sentence is one of the few changes that Bitcoin makes: it moves power from the consumer (who has ability to charge back if the goods are not received) to the one accepting payment (who now cannot be charged back). I’m not convinced this is a good move.
And I agree with your overall point. The only issue is when you end up having unnecessarily high transaction fees, as we do now. Satoshi was trying to fix that part. But unfortunately, Bitcoin isn’t better on that front.
Bitcoin has high transaction fees because of the lack of scalability of the blockchain concept at scale while Visa has high transaction fees (although for most daily transactions, less than Bitcoin) due to network effects allowing them to charge near-monopoly rents.
What we need is government action to enable instant ACH/payments. And to make that common. Visa ought to be unnecessary.
So new taxes to support the infrastructure that allows feeless ACH/payments? Not saying I'm for or against, I'm just trying to understand your argument in full. It seems like the logical way that your idea would be funded.
The Nordic countries have instant payments. It doesn't actually cost anything extra (just the usual flat fee, maybe $0.20 to $1... although for smaller payments like for a candy bar, you could choose a 0.5% to 1% fee which might be cheaper...), except for companies that gain from rents they charge for wire transfers, etc. Here's an example from the Nordic countries: https://nordicpayments.eu/p27-the-payment-gamechanger/
Actual expert on the topic: "For truly "instant" clearing and settlement the main hope is the RTP network, which already has extensive coverage. (FedNow, its rival, is 3 years away). The Fed can also quicken payments by (1) having Fedwire and NSS operate 24/7 and (2) easing FinTech Master Account access."
https://twitter.com/GeorgeSelgin/status/1356937488871358465?...
Ahh, so transaction fees fund the infrastructure. Makes sense. I guess what do we do with any excess generated by those fees? Reinvest into the infrastructure? Have it in a safety box for a day when the fees can't cover the cost in the short term? Interesting things to consider I think, but that does flesh that idea out more. I wonder, do they also offer state run accounts instead of private banks holding cash?
But most people are noticeably stronger with longer time than with shorter time. You need merely play a long time control and not give yourself the benefit of using that time and see whether your rating drops.
I’m working on a video game right now and I’m having this problem with the story and dialogue. In the past my game design was in the realm of tabletop rpgs, so you come up with the idea, add some details, and then you run it right away. You see the player responses in person, face to face, learn whether you did well or not, and then move on to do even better the next time. It works great. In a video game, there can be months between conception and a player experiencing it, and you won’t be there to see most of them react, so you can second guess every single detail hundreds of times until it’s hard to judge things clearly. I’ve never been into heavy up front design before, but it might actually be helpful for this specific problem - ie, to just write it and then trust it later on
I was thinking about this the other day. When I was a kid I'd think 1-12 moves ahead, I'd obviously learned to prune bad moves and it worked pretty well for me.
But then thinking about it, this is exactly the wrong way to train your brain. It's job isn't to evaluate every single position, but rather to train it in the form of a "neural network" to institutionally recognize good vs. bad positions, and to expand on that.
Looking at some high ranked players online, this seems to be the way they recognize positions and possibilities.
That's completely different, and not wholely beneficial either. The piper's due is merely deferred until the last of the original abstractor's guard dies, then everyome who relied on it has to rederive the fundamentals, or stagnate.
This is wholly untrue. It is very possible to maintain a subset of the population to guard the knowledge of the fundamentals so that the rest never has to worry about the abstraction failing in any real sense. For example, humanity has abstracted away the vagaries of internal combustion engines for car propulsion through a standardized interface and the "last of the original abstractor's guard" for combustion engines died several decades ago.
I don't think this proves anything other than there are often contradictory idioms in chess, here's one attributed to Larsen: "If you find a good move, look for a better one".
> very good players will ruin positions by rather than playing with their good instinct, over-analyzing a position
I wonder if this is due to errors happening and getting mixed into the search. Computers pretty monotonously improve with thinking time, and the algorithm is pretty simple once you have good intuition to guide it. However, a single memory error down a line will turn the whole thing to mush.
Even disregarding the errors, when "overthinking" is easy t go deeper in some branches than in others, without a very good probability estimation (which something the computer can do more easily: weight the branches).
The "intuitive" approach is not that deep, but the depth is more even.
This is true at every level of chess. The thinking optimum is somewhere between "playing without caution" and "over-analysing". Over-analysing is theorically the best but because we're not computers there are mistakes in our resulting assertions.
Being already known by my friends and family to be an "overthinker" and prone to "analysis paralysis", I sometimes wonder why I'm still a SWE. I've slowly started to realize over time that my profession is filled with overthinking and over-engineering, and that our interview process can even select for it. IMO its hard to be the person that aces the technical interview gauntlet then walks out of the building and turns the analytical skills off.
Many interview processes seem to favor how well a candidate can enumerate edge cases and problem spaces over effective risk assessment and cost management. They're both important to evaluate but often in practice the dumb solution is what my team ends up using because can be more maintainable, cheaper to build, easier to reason about, etc. Today my aim is to get my requirements, write as few lines of quality code in as short of a time as possible, test it, ship it and be done.
Narrow focus and the ability to scope things down to what exactly what matters helps a lot. I defeat over-analysis by meditation, intentional dumbness/willful ignorance, and flow state.
As someone who's been programming for years, one of my biggest complaints in software is over-engineering. It's so universally prevalent, I literally expect to get downvoted for even making this comment. I strongly advocate for simplicity in software implementation, allowing for maintainability and flexibility... the cleanest solution that reaches the goal and doesn't lock us too far into a narrow approach that may be difficult to deviate from. Sometimes that's not realistic, but it's actually feasible a lot more than people seem to believe.
It's a weird term, "over engineering". Think about over-engineering a bridge. What does it look like? Huge and bulky, way too expensive, able to hold much more weight than it should, lots of walkways and access points and design features that nobody really wants? But wait: "any fool can build a bridge that doesn't fall down. It takes an engineer to build a bridge that just barely doesn't fall down." The whole point of engineering is to figure out exactly what the bridge needs to do and make it do only that. So the "over-engineered" bridge is actually under-engineered -- they haven't thought enough about the actual problem. So too is most code that is called "over-engineered" -- it's far more common that people haven't though enough about the problem than that they've over-thought it.
In this example, it's black and white obviously over engineered. The reality is, in an application of moderate complexity, whether or not it is indeed over-engineered is a far more subjective calculation.
E.g., >90% of engineers would agree enterprise-fizz-buzz is over-engineered.
But perhaps ~50% of engineers agree my SaaS app is over-engineered.
> he whole point of engineering is to figure out exactly what the bridge needs to do and make it do only that. So the "over-engineered" bridge is actually under-engineered -- they haven't thought enough about the actual problem. So too is most code that is called "over-engineered" -- it's far more common that people haven't though enough about the problem than that they've over-thought it.
It is different in the physical world where materials are a big factor and engineering will definitely not make free use of them. There are inefficiencies here and there but they're largely reduced. In the digital world of programming accidental and intentional complexity often slips through without anybody noticing and that is for many reasons. It's a relatively new field and is still quite inefficient. I worked in many places whose codebases are a giant maze designed with no clear architecture and sometimes I suspect this complicated mess of intentional moat building engineering.
I think that in a way that view is like the entry level engineer's lie. It makes it seem like the engineer is there to make shoddy things, always a hair's breadth from failing.
What an engineer is actually there for is to run the numbers and predict behavior without having to go through the mess or expense of doing it any more than absolutely necessary. To plum the depths of our collective technical knowhow to drive a project that makes all the right tradeoffs.
It's not about making a bridge that can hold a semi out of matchsticks and bubblegum. It's about knowing it won't work without having to do it to find out.
I like to call it "poor engineering"
and there are many forms of poor engineering I've seen. Following the analogy... painting the bottom of the bridge in same color as the terrain. Then repainting because there were color differences.
Spending time and money looking for lighter materials even when the bridge is designed to support a lot more weight than traditional time tested materials. Justification : "Maybe cars will get heavier, and bigger saving 3 pounds is a good pursuit"
I like to believe that experience will eventually drive people towards using scientific parsimony when creating solutions to engineering problems.
I don't think over-engineering is the only problem: shiny-new. Shiny-new syndrome wherein the typically junior programmer cannot help but jump from one new thing to the next, advocating that some new system must use the new tech that they recently discovered. While the enthusiasm is ok, working with people like this can be a drag.
Another problem: we are facebook too! In the sense that small companies heartily believe that they actually have problems at the scale of a company like facebook (or will ever get to that level). Again, hearing someone say, "We should do xyz because Netflix does it!" makes me want to give up on this profession.
> Another problem: we are facebook too! In the sense that small companies heartily believe that they actually have problems at the scale of a company like facebook (or will ever get to that level).
Precisely! It's tiresome how many people setup Kubernetes for a network of 2-6 computers.
I was with you once, but last year's I got tired when people set up networks of 2-6 computers with daemons that run in a wildly different ways, and it's not clear how to fix their failures, where configs and metrics and logs are. I'd honestly prefer overengineered kubernetes setup nkw, only for some more standard way of doing things between projects.
That's a false dichotomy though. Having a standard way of doing things between projects does not require running a complex distributed system with dozens of pieces all engaged in constant chatter. It's a testament to the failings of our profession that we apparently cannot agree on a sane baseline toolset less complicated than Kubernetes.
Infrastructure as code is much easier to handle than full backups of the configuration of your mutable machines, even for 1 machine.
The only problem it has (and why I don't use stuff like kubernetes at home) is that the configuration formats aren't stable and thus require a lot of ongoing maintenance.
"over-engineering" is a fuzzy term though. For someone, using a third-party service to handle users auth flow is a time saver, and building the whole flow themselves would be over-engineered. For another, using a third-party service for auth would be adding layers of complexity on top of a simple db request, and would thus be considered over-engineered.
Largely agree, but I've found distilling complex requirements down to a simple implementation takes effort, and sometimes longer than the more circuitous route.
A coarse rule of thumb from a few decades of my own experience in software development is that version 1 will be quick, dirty and (in retrospect) naive. Version 2 will improve it with what you learned the first time around. And version 3 tends to be the clean, solid, polished winner. I've learned to expect and encourage refactoring to arrive at this point.
"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."
In my experience, you often start with a somewhat over engineered solution. Then you take the (long) process of really understanding it and slowly distill it down. This is true for a new feature and also the whole codebase.
Yeah, that's a great point. The final code I submit is often 2/3 the size of what I initially got running (perhaps less, even). I'm always happy to see a code review that is removing more code than it's adding, haha :) I like to use the phrase "measure twice, cut once" in regards to shipping code. Take the time to pare it down to the truly essential functionality, trimming away extraneous stuff that complicates things and may even be premature optimization. It's certainly a skill that takes time to improve at, haha
Wholeheartedly agree. The best system is no system at all - problem is it doesn't really satisfy any requirements. Anything added beyond that is extra room where fragility creeps in & the tradeoff shouldn't ever be taken lightly.
In my opinion over-engineering is a symptom of not enough thinking. Complex, over engineered solutions don't happen because a problem is too well understood, they happen because a problem is not understood well enough.
This is based on the assumption that more thinking == better understanding.
Recently I've been interviewing and assessing technical tests regularly.
We have this one technical coding challenge. Most of the submissions are 1000+ LOC and quite heavily engineered. One submission though was 300 LOC, runs 3x as quick as everyone elses and is the only one to get 100% in our acceptance tests. The author was very self-deprecating about it - describing it as a quickly cobbled together submission.
I'm nearly 40 and find I over analyze the design of everything. Which is great when I'm architecting a high level software feature, but when I get to coding I'm almost at analysis paralysis over every, damn detail. I miss that sense of flow.
> the ability to scope things down to what exactly what matters
In the last few years, I started shifting my focus from what variety of cases to handle with an elaborate solution, to what possible cases I might be blocking with a simple solution. Gratuitous YAGNI was an important intermediate step in that process. It might not be very FAANG-friendly (or it might not scale to four-digits-engineers regardless of brand), but both in terms of real life performance and peer feedback, it's yielded very good results.
While the first is prone to becoming a bottomless pit of SWE-self-pleasuring; the latter is actually very useful in coming up with something that's cheap, easy and maintainable, but still flexible enough -- which doesn't necessarily mean extensible! Ease-of-refactoring is another flavor of flexibility, and that's where I found this kind of thinking beating YAGNI alone.
One actual drawback I see is that it makes DRY difficult to achieve, but the more people I work with, the more I'm becoming disillusioned with that anyway. It's such an overly adaptable dogma to generate work that is often pointless, and becomes harmful so easily. I think we found so much comfort in "don't type the same thing twice" (though I still try to keep it to 3) that we don't stop to think about "don't maintain the same information twice" anymore. But this is 3AM rambling, so I'll stop here.
It is not really "not thinking", but not using your conscious mind, which can only focus on a single thing.
You think with your subconscious mind too. But this can do multiple things at the same time, way faster than the logical mind.
The harder you focus on a single thing, the more you ignore the entire system and the slower you perform.
It is not just instinct as the article say, a tennis player does not play by instinct because nobody knows how to play tennis when he is born.
It is by training that you develop intuition. If you train well you can perform well without thinking consciously. Training well is hard work and takes a lot of time too.
If you follow your instincts you are predictable and an easy prey. I can hunt or fish animals because they follow their instincts too well.
There is a word that is missing from the language or at least common usage, and that is differentiating something done with conscious effort of every little detail, and something you just do without thinking about it. (there are probably lots of words which somewhat fit the bill)
The hardest way to do something is complete conscious control of every step, the easiest way is something you can do perfectly on autopilot.
"Flow" is about being able to do something very well with almost minimal conscious control. (I would expand flow to being more than this, but it is at least a defining characteristic)
Intuition versus instinct. Instinct is innate, intuition is developed. "The more you know", if you have a better breadth and depth of knowledge and experience to draw from you can "intuit" the (or a) proper course of action without the need for deliberate and thorough reasoning. Many people use the term "instinct" when "intuition" may be the better term.
"Tacit knowledge" I think captures what you are talking about. Its the knowledge embedded in our bodies and automatic responses. Most commonly this can refer to mechanical tasks, like when you go on autopilot while driving.
It can also be used to describe mental tasks and ways of thinking. An engineer has tacit knowledge that shapes their natural way of thinking and intuition. A novelist, a nurse, or a tailor, in contrast, will have very different mental structures.
In Dutch that word would be "automatisme": a habit so ingrained in your mechanical memory that it doesn't require conscious thought.
Thinking about it, wouldn't the word "habit" cover it in English? It makes me smile to realize that our habits are so ingrained, we don't even realize we have a word for it :)
That's great, I can't seem to find a dutch dictionary that includes that word, but I do find it in french with presumably a very similar meaning.
Habit is close, but with a different application. Habits likewise can be done without thinking but with more of a insinuation that the behavior is a sort of regular repeating part of your life. Like a smoking habit or your morning routine.
Isn't that Type 1 vs Type 2 thinking, Daniel Kahneman?
Sure, it's great if we could use Type 1 thinking for everything, but the problem is when things are counterintuitive. So what you really need is a good rule to follow to know when to engage in Type 2 thinking.
My current programming team is doing way too much Type 1 thinking.
Type 2 thinking shapes your type 1 thinking and after a while your type 1 thinking is more accurate than your type 2 thinking for the task, that was the point of this article.
Like riding a bicycle, there is a whole lot you do without the consciousness forward thinking about it.
Sure pieces of your brain are actually doing the mechanics of controlling your body and thus the bicycle... but you aren't thinking about it consciously (mostly).
Imagine posing a dummy walking down the street in stop-motion animation. You are very consciously controlling every aspect, every tiny movement is subject to your awareness and decision. Compared to walking down the street yourself. You don't think about balancing, placing each step, contracting and releasing dozens of muscles in sync... it just happens. Sure sometimes you make very explicit decisions on where to step, to avoid a puddle or dog shit or whatever, but most of the time all of that is way outside of conscious control, you just do it.
Thinking keeps me awake. It's getting worse as I get older.
Maybe it's anxiety or something related, and sometimes it's worried thoughts, but often it's just running through scenarios. Video games, media plots, what I need to do next week. My brain is far more active after 10pm, and I am personally more motivated. I get a burst of energy but it's not really the right time to clean the house so lying in bed has it all go to my head.
I've come to the conclusion I can't sleep with an active train of thought going on. It sounds like meditation should help but I haven't had much luck there. Maybe I just need to try more often until it becomes second nature.
I assume you have already considered and observed the effect of alcohol and/or caffeine intake.
One thing that definitely helps me is to have a routine for bedtime. A hot shower, bed preheated in winter (heated underblanket), keeping the room cold and reading a book while lying in bed. I typically pick technical material as it's less likely to keep me up all night with an engrossing story. At some point, I notice that the mind is tired and I am able to gather words from the page but not comprehend the material. I then set the book aside, turn off the bedlamp and try to sleep. Usually, this is sufficient and I fall asleep in no time. Some people just fall asleep while reading. For me, it's reading. For a friend of mine, it's watching a TV show. He has something playing on the computer or TV and falls asleep while watching it.
The idea is to get the body relaxed (hot shower in my case) and then do something (devoid of stress) that keeps ones mind off the hustle and bustle of one's day.
Also, going to bed and rising at (roughly) the same time everyday will also get the body and the mind trained to be sleepy at that time and it'll get easier to fall asleep.
EDIT: I naturally tend to drift to a nocturnal routine if left to my own inclinations. The hardest part of what I wrote above is just pulling myself away from the day to go to bed at what most would consider a reasonable hour. If you can not convince yourself that sleep is important and commit to maintaining discipline in your sleep/wake routine, no "technique", "advice" or "substance" will be effective on the long run.
The part about reading but no longer comprehending sounds very familiar. If it happens twice that I’m looking at the words, but my mind is going somewhere else, I judge myself ready to fall asleep.
Then after closing my eyes I go through the stuff I just read (to avoid getting stressed out over real-life stuff), and after a while will have one or more thoughts that make no sense.
That’s the sign that falling asleep will happen very soon. From there on I don’t know what happens next.
So what do you do about thoughts of others suffering while you live the good life? Do these kind of thoughts ever keep you up or torment you? Or how do you view a life of luxury while others die at a young age?
If you want to go down that line of thought, you would still have to concede that without adequate sleep, you will be ineffective. In either case, lying in bed, unable to sleep, thinking about those things doesn't lead to anything positive (in my view). Even Gandhi had to sleep.
Feeling guilty and the victim mindset are different sides of the same coin here. Neither is productive.
Neither is not thinking about these things. If you only ever think of yourself, how is that an any more justifiable position than "over thinking" these things? I don't think feeling guilty and the victim mindset are different side of the same coin. It is much easier to feel guilty for not having suffered through something like rape than the actual victims of rape.
I'm often reminding of the saying, "All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing."
Clearly there are two sides and somewhere in the middle is ideal. Question is, where do you feel that middle is?
Rather than an individual thought, consider the "line of reasoning" or "train of thought" and then consider again where it leads.
From two comments, it is hard to see whether your usage of "you" is rhetorical or whether you mean me in particular.
The easy case is the latter and for that I'll say that, I would be rather surprised if you had an accurate idea of what kind of a life I led and how much suffering is in my day-to-day life.
Let's go to the other instance, where you are speaking in general using the rhetorical "you". Here, I agree that there is a lot of suffering in this world. I'll take a specific case of it - hunger. There are a lot of hungry people in this world: even children dying of starvation. We have only considered humans so far. Imagine a little kitten somewhere abandoned by his mother (or just lost) and crying out in hunger (I've found a few like this). The question then arises: How can you eat any meal in peace? Does anyone have a right to eat in peace as long as involuntary hunger exists? Are they "permitted" to eat without guilt or shame? What if one eats a sandwich? What if it is rice? What if it is rice and chicken? What if it's an ice-cream? What if it's chocolate fondue? What if it's a king's feast?
I was unable to see any other natural end to that line of reasoning except a monastic life. Does that mean that when a butcher buys ice-cream for his little daughter, this act should in fact give them both guilt and shame instead of joy? This is not a simple matter if you were to think about how to thresh it out by taking both sides and pitting them against each other in your mind.
I have lived among people of very "opposing" cultures (different countries). Guilt features prominently in one of them. In my view, it is a kind of abuse to foist such a mindset on a young mind and teach a child that one has to look at an activity so natural and important as eating (or sleeping) and feel guilt or shame because of it. How does this not increase suffering? If one's ideal is to work towards diminishing suffering in this world, is causing more of it (to others or to oneself) the right method? In either case, why? And then follows the rationalists question to the idealist: "Will that work?"
If I were to be entirely honest, I do not think this medium can serve well to settle this matter. If we had met in person, I'd have been happy to share a meal with you and learn where each of us is headed. Not that that would settle it of course but it is much easier to debate such matters in those circumstances. I wish you luck and hope that you find a path to what you seek.
There is a very clear difference i think in suffering when you make someone aware of others suffering versus those people living through suffering. The idea isn't that one must suffer in order to live. The idea is that once aware of said suffering, are you not compelled to help? I elect leaders who support ending human suffering through aid.
What I dont do is pretend it is an issue that I need not take any part in resolving. Nor do I advocate a monastic lifestyle. I simply say there is a middle that is ideal, and if so, why are we not compelled to take that position less we be hypocrites?
I'm afraid I have to disagree. There are innumerable issues which cause suffering and everyone chooses which ones they will concern themselves with (if at all) and to what degree. Even the leaders you elect probably fall on the wrong side of the line as per others who disagree with his/her policies. This is just life. Not everyone will be bothered by the same things as you and to the same degree.
As for me, I can go to bed in peace without worrying about world peace and world hunger. I never claimed otherwise. If one were to accuse me of hypocrisy in this matter, I'd expect some evidence before I consider the possibility that there may be a point to it.
So how do you decide which issues bother you and which don't? How do you decide personally which suffering you can tolerate and which suffering you cannot? What compels to you help others and what doesn't?
I guess in the end, if you can go to bed in peace, does that mean nothing bothers you? Is there nothing in the world which keeps you up or night or makes you wish you could change for the better? Or are you perfectly happy with the way things are?
I'm afraid we are talking past each other. I can not answer endless questions on this medium as it doesn't seem to take us forward. I'll leave you with a question though: Why does it bother you so, that others aren't bothered by the same things (or similar) and to the same degree (or similar) and that they do not react in the same (or similar) way? Why is what you see "the one right way"?
I took the liberty to make a few assumptions in my questions but you may also note that it is likewise with your line of questioning.
> Why does it bother you so, that others aren't bothered by the same things (or similar) and to the same degree (or similar) and that they do not react in the same (or similar) way?
It bothers me because they is a single truth in the world. There is only one reality, not your view of it. Nor my view of it. In fact, the only reason we can talk and communicate effectively is because we fundamentally agree that there is an underlying truth of any situation, and only our lack of knowledge separates us from understanding each others perspective. It really does make me wonder how I can sit here and not be comfortable knowing that others lack a basic human right like Healthcare, while some say it is not a human right and you either work for it, or get lucky and happen to be born into. It's a matter of injustice from my perspective, and I can't understand why it's not for yours.
> Why is what you see "the one right way"?
Because as far as I can tell I'm earnestly seeking the truest sense of reality and what we want reality to be like. I ask questions and seek answers continually rather than just say, "whelp, that's all I need to know. My thirst for knowledge is satiated."
And thats not a knock to say you can't find what makes you happy in life and be satisfied with that. But it also doesn't mean you can't be shown a better way that still allows you to have what you want while others are taken care of even better.
> I can not answer endless questions on this medium as it doesn't seem to take us forward.
I beg to differ. I learn much from every single question I ask and I better understand what makes humans tick. It's invaluable in a way you don't have to even understand how.
Physical exercise after work, cut out screen time a couple hours before you want to sleep (especially engaging screen time), consider cutting off caffeine earlier in the day (or totally for a while and ease back in), get treated for anxiety (not necessarily medication, therapy techniques like CBT can help in a wide variety of areas).
The biggest one for me was physical exercise. Working out hard for 1-3 hours after work (most people can't put in 3 hours, I know) left me sufficiently physically exhausted that whatever mentally engaging activities I got into later, I was crashing by midnight no matter what. Doing this after work was also critical as it helped create a clean break from work (where many stressful or technically engaging thoughts come from for me). Exercising in the morning did not have the same effect.
I've been dealing with a similar condition for a while. I've learned that it's impossible for me to "not think". Any attempts at emptying my head will only invite more anxieties and problems to be solved. Instead, I've learned to fill it with trivial, creative challenges that occupy keep my brain busy enough to ward off negative thoughts yet introduce no stakes.
Some examples include:
- If I found myself stranded on an island, what kinds of challenges would I have to overcome and how?
- If I could improve the magic system of Harry Potter, what changes would I introduce?
- If I were given a device that I could use to turn back the time to 6 am once everyday, how could I use it to my best advantage while avoiding any pitfalls?
- If I were given a small 12x12x12 room with an unlimited budget to create a living space for me to be confined in, how would I use that space?
These would be the kinds of things that I could think about for a while before finding myself fast asleep. Not sure if this would work for anyone else, but maybe you can give it a try?
I agree, it's nearly impossible to stop thinking on a dime. What you ignore gets invited back into your head. If I try not to think of a pink elephant, it only reinforces that image in my head. I found that tiring it out through a diverse set of means is the only way to drain the gas, so to speak. I also watch/read/listen to dreadfully boring media to mentally tune out.
Funnily enough these are the exact kind of thoughts that keep me up. I get really into it and can't let go of consciousness. Technical or problem solving are the worst for it.
Brains sure are different and weird across us all.
Aside from (mostly) practicing normal sleep hygiene recommendations, I listen to a sitcom that I've already watched many times using wireless earbuds as I fall asleep. Sometimes I do both ears, somtimes one ear, depending on whether I feel like sleeping with my head turned. I'm normally a back sleeper.
Because I've already seen the episodes, they don't stimulate any thinking. They're comedy, so all happy and lighthearted. Well written comedy is funny on multiple-goarounds, but other than some chuckles the point is mostly to help me fall asleep happy. On a bad night I'll listen to two episodes, but mostly I'm asleep halfway through the first episode.
My go to shows fwiw are It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Office. Parks and Recreation also works. It's OK to have plot, as long as you already know the plot / have seen the show enough, so you aren't trying to watch the episode.
Since some of these shows moved off Netflix I've had to buy them on Google Play store. FWIW Google Play's player is better than amazon video's for mobile (it's basically youtube's player).
The wireless earbuds I use are these: $35, https://www.amazon.com/Soundcore-Bluetooth-Headphones-Waterp... and they're connected by a cord so you don't lose one of the buds when you sleep (used to happen to me). I have two sets of earbuds now, because I really struggle to sleep without it now that it's part of my routine and I can't risk them not being charged.
Thanks for the earbud recommendation. I was talking to my mother about the Sleep With Me podcast (she hates it but she's extremely picky) and I realised I need something wireless if I'll ever listen to something like that in bed.
Usually I'm awake in my bed for at least an hour. Sometimes two
Huh, lucky one. Some stay awake until morning.
I know that some people find it strange or even perverted, but try listening to ASMR. First find an artist and a specific 1-2h long video that calms your mind at day while you work or read, and then use it for going to sleep (use comfortable earbuds). They have special videos for sleep, but you may use any of them. You’ll skip a handful of artists and asmr types before you find that one, so be patient. Also try languages you don’t speak (french, chinese). Top, “general purpose” artists is a good start.
Also use browser youtube version and adblock that surely blocks youtube ads, or they will jumpscare you, and turn off autoplay.
You can also use ASMR podcasts, many of which are ad-free (though ask for donations) and are easier to quietly loop through the night for as long as you need. I found a few that actually read bedtime stories.
I was in the exact same situation when I was a kid, I could stay awake in my bed for hours. It was extremely frustrating waking my mother at 3am to tell her that I can’t fall asleep. Nowadays, in my early 20s I can basically fall asleep in less than 3 minutes. I have no clue how this condition disappeared from my life. At least for me physical activity was not a factor in this condition, maybe I’m eating healthier than before (less sugar).
I can trivially explain my own situation. There is a random event or deadline that forces me to stay awake until 2AM. I am slightly sleepy 30 min before midnight. I push through to 0:30 after midnight and then the sleepiness starts going away until it comes back at 2AM. The next day my sleep cycle is now offset by 1 or 2 hours and I can no longer fall asleep at midnight.
It takes a week of consistent bed time to create a consistent time to fall asleep again.
Since I am fully aware of how my sleep cycle works my only conclusion is: I hate EXTERNAL EVENT.
I often get symptoms like this if I am working on/thinking about highly technical things past about 8 PM. I feel like the pace and energy level of what I'm doing is a contributing factor, as I've found reading technical books rarely causes it.
I get that way sometimes. For me, it's usually because I'm not physically tired enough and have a lot of stress in my system. Rowing 7-10 10km pieces over two weeks fixes it.
Be engaged during the day. Use that mental energy. Whatever that means, but challenge yourself and exhaust yourself.
Exercise which is just generally really good for your mental and physical state. Do note that working out later at night can make the problem worse since exercises also causes stress chemicals in your brain and it takes a few hours for those to clear.
Melatonin[1] an hour before bed. It's safe, non-habit forming, dirt cheap, very mild and surprisingly effective in my experience. I take it as needed instead of every night, but I know a few folks take it every night.
I tried melatonin a couple of times and it didn't seem to help. Note also it's not available OTC here in Australia (except in the useless homeopathic form) you need a prescription, but you can bring it back from overseas if you like. Which is a little annoying. They're working on making CBD oil available (also not currently) OTC) but not melatonin unless I missed that.
Huh, I'm actually surprised it's not OTC in Australia. Any idea why it's not widely available?
I haven't tried CBD oil at all (save one time I accidentally got a canned coffee with cbd added to it). I have one friend who reports positive effects but doesn't use it consistently.
I really do think that I personally made the mistake of allowing myself to think actively in bed and like a pebble down a mountain it is suddenly an avalanche that feels impossible to stop.
I have to be completely exhausted in order to get to sleep reasonably quickly after going to bed. I might try meditation at some point... but yes my mind as well suddenly turns on. I also seem to drift off lightly for some period of time and then I find myself unexpectedly awake again and my mind is obnoxiously alert and ready to grind through thoughts.
Yes me too! It definitely feels like something I trained myself into during my teens. I don't know why but I guess the quiet time lead to contemplation of all my teenage troubles. I do the same on bus rides since I used to catch the bus for school every day and had one of the longer rides. The problem is I actually enjoy it so it's hard to stop.
I also drift off and notice it and jerk wide awake. Sometimes with hypnagogia, shadows take the form of bad people or I see spiders hovering or running across my vision. It's a bit disturbing and definitely doesn't help when I get an adrenaline response. I seem far more prone to it when I'm very tired and parts of my brain are shutting down but this one stubborn conscious area keeps me up.
I'm a night owl living on a 9-5 schedule, and I have the same problem. Most of the day I'm a little tired, then at night I get a burst of energy. It's frustrating. I think the ideal solution would be to find a good job that lets me work my ideal hours, but barring that I've found a useful strategy. After my wife goes to bed, I'll go downstairs for an hour or two and read, write, and think. By letting my brain burn off some of its energy, I find myself naturally drifting into a healthy calm tired. I'm never exactly wiped to the point where I can just fall asleep, but I calm down enough that I can still get to sleep at a semi-decent hour. Combined with WFH I actually get close to 8.5 hours by sleeping in later, so it's not bad.
For a while last year, I did just accept it and stay up late until I felt more tired, usually around 1:30am. We were both working from home and I'd sleep in a little bit (which is also getting harder in my late 30s). This wasn't perfect but it was better. But now my wife is back at the office and is out of bed before 8am, which wakes me up and usually I can't get back to sleep easily so I've been struggling since.
I've tried exercise both during the day and the evening in case it's a physical thing, but it either doesn't help or makes it worse. Sometimes my active brain state amplifies physical aches and pains and itches and it just runs away from me and is very distracting.
I think what might really be missing is a sense of closure or achievement. A lot of things in life can give gratification without meaning, but the days I do something like finish fixing the shower or putting up shelves, it does seem a bit easier to switch off at night. Cooking is the closest I get most days.
I get that too. A couple of things that have helped me with that are a version of "Getting Things Done" (gets tasks out of my mind) and genuine solitude. By that I mean don't read anything, watch anything, etc. No inputs, just your own mind. Just sit there and zone out a little. Nudge your mind with reflective thoughts like, "What's important to me? What do I want out of life? How do I feel lately?" Meditation emphasizes stepping back and not putting judgment on things like that, which I think can be healthy, but this is kind of the other side of the coin and helps get a little more of that closure you're talking about.
What type of meditation did you try? Try following / counting breaths. Definitely counting in the beginning, breathe out, 1, breathe in, breathe out, 2, breathe in ... up to 10, then re-start to 1. Do it for 20 min before falling asleep. Then as you try to fall asleep do the same.
Don't be discouraged if it's not working right away. It has to work but you may need months of training before it starts to work well.
The hardest challenge is to be completely cold to the thoughts, no matter how important they may seem, ignore them and return to counting the breaths.
I've done a few meditation podcasts where a guy talks and I follow along, and as soon as it ends I'm relaxed but more alert. If my power trips overnight and the noise (fans or other electrical background noise) suddenly stops, I jerk awake. This is the same.
I've tried counting back from 5000 slowly on each breath. I got very far before stopping. Going backwards with large numbers is meant to take a bit more mental energy I think.
I've done the 1-10 then reset, we did that in Yoga at the gym. I've also done the box breathing where you breathe in and out slowly but at different rates.
I think mostly it will come down to practice like anything else. I get upset if it doesn't work but I enjoy ruminating so it's hard to let go. In many of these techniques I was very relaxed but still had an attentive core stopping the sleep from happening.
I'm not diagnosing you or anything but that thread put me on to the fact I might have that type of wiring too ... it would explain a lot ( for me ) and possibly some of that ^ ?
[ EDIT ] Anxiety is hands down my primary problem, but sometimes some issues can obfuscate others, and cause deductive fallacies by encouraging you to explain everything away under the umbrella of that first cause.
Yeah my mum and sister (around 65 / 35 years old) were diagnosed last year. I'm thinking I should go along soon since it runs in families. For some reason it's not that easy to book these things in when you have trouble planning and following through on stuff :)
My mum also had insomnia for years. She did get some sleeping pills as a twice a week "reset" and I think a lot of mental issues are exacerbated by poor sleep leading to weak willpower so that could help. But she said the ADHD meds helped a lot with her sleep too.
If you are not on any brain altering medication (or other drugs), try chamomile tea before bed time. Please read up on the chemical profile of chamomile tea as it will interact with certain brain medications (start here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2995283/).
Reducing artificial light after sundown and cutting out caffeine and listening to slow placed instrumental music (key being that there are no vocals/lyrics for the brain to attach to) has fixed my "awake brain" issue. Try to also avoid screen time before and in bed as each "new" thing you see (lets say, hackernews post titles) will activate your brain for a few minutes and keep it awake long after it has seen them. I use a single tea candle and switch off all other sources of light - it emits more than enough light! Basically you want to try to limit any inputs and have a consistent winding down ritual.
After a while the brain will accept this new ritual and will immediately get into a relaxed state if the lights go down and it hears a certain pace of music. For me, hang drum + flute music is the best, followed by calm asian instruments. When you listen to the same calm playlist over and over at bedtime, eventually you will know them. When you get to this stage, the brain will get bored with them at first - then you can double down and hum with the song (if you live alone of coarse). Try not to "talk" to yourself internally during your winding down ritual as it will keep the brain awake (don't try to convince the brain it is time to sleep, it will resist and fight back with more awareness).
Do this for 2 weeks and see if your night ritual improves. Obviously adjust it for your circumstances. Make it your special me-time. Choose the music to be unique and don't play those songs at other times. If you brain really wants to have a chat, ask it how it's been, tell it you are thankful for it and you will see it again in the morning! Make it your friend, don't fight it. I mean it. Be gentle and caring towards it, like you are it's father/mother, accept it for what it is.
The whole ritual last from 20 to 60 minutes, depending on how tired you are and how much conflict you accumulated during the day (conflicts being work frustrations, traffic frustrations, sexual frustration, doing things against your ideal solution, politics/news). These things all put pressure on the internal state and most people relieve those pressures either by sexual release, exercise or drugs/alcohol/food before bed. Having a self care ritual is another option. Sleep will do most of the work for us, but sleep is so much better if is not forced but rather gently simmered in. Fresh bed sheets & hot shower can also affect how comfortable the bed feels. A good mattress also helps. Natural smells also helps, so a drop of rose geranium, rubbed on your skin. Again, if you pick a specific flavour/smell to make part of your ritual, use it only during your winding time ritual and not during the day. You want to let the brain associate the music and smells and other environmental factors with "time to relax mode". Be consistent.
The thing that disturbs my peace the easiest is caffeine, even a single cup in the morning can effect my night time ritual.
Anyway. The above kind of what works for me, it's not medical/scientific based, hope it helps. Self care goes a long way!
Thanks, I'm glad it works for you. I might check if we still have some chamomile tea since I've never made a habit of it. And Kindle on my phone is probably risky because it's right next to the bad engagement-algorithm stuff, maybe I need to pick up some paper books.
For the rest - every time I read something like this I think about my wife, for two reasons.
One - any ritual will force her to do the same and play along but that might be asking a lot if its against her natural inclinations. She tends to want to stay up late (like me) and gets some of her best work done then. If I go to bed alone, then if she is still in the house (so I know she is coming along later) that anticipation alone is usually enough to keep me awake.
Two - she doesn't need any of that. Why can she fall asleep in 5 minutes after reading her phone in bed and breaking every single rule people give me? It always bothers me and I get very jealous :)
"The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment, something that both success and analysis can dull." This point at the end seems a bit forced without any support beyond the author's assertion. The feeling I get is someone who has mastered this unthinking is "enlightened" of sorts with an ability to get to satisfaction with a humility that can be mistaken for smugness.
From fiction, I might refer to the Wheel of Time series where Rand Al'Thor uses a trick to "find the void" in a way his father taught him. When you get overwhelmed from information and emotions, finding the void allows you to regain composure and think straight again.
What if you enjoy overthinking though? What if that is your relaxation, is to be incredibly consumed in thought and solving new and intricate problems versus the dull existence of just "being"?
Not exactly. Meditation is a solitary activity where one can train the mind to emptiness. What the article and I'm referring to is getting to that state while still being in the moment. Meditation might be the ability to sharpen the sword but this is about being able to use it in battle.
Upvoted; I like your analogy. IMHO (and IME as a daily practitioner of zazen meditation), mindfulness is entirely about being in the present moment. Ideally, you simply stay there all the time at which point the "sword" is already sharp and always swinging, whether there's a "battle" or not. (shrug)
Good point regarding mindfulness. I'd say we differ on this topic or at least your explanation in its relevance. Mindfulness is about being present and you could argue fully absorbing yourself in it. This can be debilitating in the moment if you want to truly understand a bitter taste or a painful feeling. I think the article and being in battle is about being resilient and coming to terms with the situation. Mindfulness provides an appreciation and empathy for it but does not directly allow you to transcend it in adverse situations. Just my opinion.
Too late to edit my comment, but on 2nd thought I'd prefer to pivot from the violent connotations of swinging a sword to something more peaceful. Armor might be a closer metaphor... but that implies a closing-off from the world which is the opposite of what mindfulness brings. So I'll give up on the tortured metaphors here for now. :)
It reminds me of a graduate quantum class I had. The professor gave what he called "infinite time length exams". We would come in during the afternoon and we could stay as long as we wanted to work on the exam--though we had to slip it under his door by say 9:00am. You could bring as many books as you wanted (apparently at one point you could bring "anything" and someone brought a professor--but that could just be a story). But, if you didn't finish in a reasonable time, you probably weren't going to get the answer.
My modern physics professor did this for all our assignments. He didn’t want to rush students to fill out answers, so he made the questions very hard. We had to really understand the mechanics in order to answer the questions. I retained so much more by learning this way when compared to wrote memorization, and it was fun having discussions with other students to help each other understand the concepts.
i really like this sort of exams, where some artificial condition isn't imposed on the examinees for ranking purposes.
I had a computer science exam where you are allowed to bring any text book/reference book you wish, and any notes you've written yourself. The exam was long and hard yes, but it was also thorough. One of the more enjoyable exams i recall taking - vs all of the other types.
With online learning, basically all of my exams are like this. I’ve heard of some people having proctored online exams, but luckily my school’s Math and CS departments seem to have opted to just make the questions harder/unable to be looked up, and gave up on restricting us from using notes or the internet. It’s actually surprising how well it works, if the professor can design the exam cleverly enough. Really the only way you can cheat is by colluding with other students (which admittedly is a fairly big issue) or, for some types of programming questions, by just running the code on your own machine (which again can be avoided by clever test design).
Isn't this just an assignment where you're not sufficiently trusted to be in the location that suits you best (eg library, your desk?) A fully proctored assignment, you may not ask questions once you've read the problem.
I guess it has merit if cheating of that nature is a big problem.
I am reminded of Alan Watts' book, 'The Wisdom of Insecurity,' where I was first exposed to this idea that "thinking too much can be bad for you." I found it lifechanging as it helped me to better manage OCD and anxiety. Recommended reading if you are searching for a tool to slow or limit your thinking.
After only skimming and searching, it seems a bit weird to open an article on this topic with an example from tennis and _not_ reference The Inner Game of Tennis. It's a pretty good book that can be applied to lots of things; conscious thought and verbalizing can make you worse at learning and executing a task.
The book _Writing on Both Sides of the Brain_ (Henriette Klauser) got me unstuck. Ignoring the left-brain/right-brain stuff, imagine that you have a creative, let it fly part and a critical editor part. Constant criticism from the editor can slow all creativity to a stop. Instead, tell the editor, "I promise you'll get your chance. For now, sit down and shut up." Then create in peace, but follow through on that promise.
Practice, relaxation and the relief of (self-induced and exaggerated) pressure. By practicing your writing and getting feedback (from self-critique or others) you have an opportunity to properly internalize things you'd been consciously thinking of before. Maybe it's your style, your choice of terms, whatever. Practice permits the internalization. Relaxation and relief of pressure permit you to actually practice without fear of failure. Failure is often a better teacher than success, you can succeed all your life by dumb luck and never learn a thing or misattribute the success to the wrong elements.
In other skills, physical or mental, removing pressure and practicing more permits the same kind of growth and development.
"Failure is often a better teacher than success, you can succeed all your life by dumb luck and never learn a thing or misattribute the success to the wrong elements." - It certainly sounds reasonable in at least some situations (e.g. failing at losing weight does not teach much), but is it true?
Luck is necessary to succeed, since most complex situations or actions have probabilistic outcomes, but I have not seen many people being taught much by failure, and for good reasons. In theory, failure can be a good teacher: one has to analyze the causal relationship between the events that led to failure and with a cool and serene mind make a better plan for tomorrow. No judgement, no regrets, no mortification of mind and flesh. They wake up feeling energized thinking about what they have learned by the previous day's failure and they are even more ready for success than yesterday.
But this is not realistic; it is easy and common to feel depressed, useless, and small after failure, energy goes down, not up (of course there are exceptions everywhere) and causal relationships are challenging to unravel (when at all possible) and also may change over time and space. Success, on the hand, means that something worked (at least once!).
You're overthinking it. First, what I wrote was not an absolute. Second, if you feel like a failure because you tried something challenging and failed, and couldn't be bothered to try again, you need psychiatric help. I don't mean that flippantly, you really need help. Giving up on something challenging because you fail once is not at all healthy. Very few people succeed on their first try at challenging, skilled activities.
You don't need a cool and serene mind. That's an extreme that most people don't get to. But you also don't need to be filled with anger and self-hatred and depression. It's perfectly feasible, and most healthy people are in this range emotionally, to be somewhere between a zen master and a raging, depressed Hulk.
Some people learn from their own mistakes, some people learn from mistakes made in a live performance (or at a critical juncture), some people learn from mistakes in practice, some people learn from mistakes by just imagining the possibility, some learn from the failings of others. Healthy people do all of those things, with an objective of avoiding failure in the live moment. But you can't just study successes because it's never enough.
> The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment
However, enjoyment in a high-stake situation is too hard to achieve. For people like actors, athletes and musicians, confidence generated through enough practice seems to be the cure. Enjoyment is an aftereffect. For situations for which you have no way to practice, enjoyment just seems hard.
I'm not sure I entirely agree: curiosity and discovery can be very enjoyable; which means it is more about openness -- personally I over analyze when I am contracted and anxious, which figures.
The question is still there: how do you maintain openness in a high-stake situation? When you play an instrument in front of a large audience, without enough practice it's hard to be open because all your attention will be directed to get things correct. With enough practice, your muscle memory will handle the basics, upon which openness/enjoyment can be built.
I think a person who overthinks does it regardless of the stakes. Focus is very closely related to not getting interrupted by your own thoughts. I agree with you that you need to have the skill to be able to perform well, but I'm suggesting that even in a low-stake one, one who can't focus won't focus, be it overthinking or distractions.
I learned this from this brain exercise game, Peak. I started leveling up like crazy when I stopped thinking and speaking to myself and let my brain do what it does best, which learning.
Yes, and repeated practice at performing _in front of an audience_ will gradually reduce that anxiety for most people. Getting to that state where you can be up in front of a lot of people and just enjoying yourself making music is a wonderful feeling, and for most of us it takes a lot of hard work over many years.
In my personal experience, both with musical performance and public speaking, the #1 thing that makes a difference in terms of how nervous I am during the performance is how well I know the material. The more I can "shut off my brain" and let rote memory handle the basics (correctness), the more room I have to take it further with nuance, dramatic arc, etc.
Y that was my exact thought. You need enough practice (private or public) to achieve the state where you can let your muscle memories to handle the basics.
YMMV; many musicians feed off an audience's energy and thus get more fully and deeply into the moment. Which is what all of this is about -- being 100% in the NOW and not in your conscious mind's memories (past) or anxieties (future).
also elite athletes who play "out of their minds" when everything's on the line, eg star basketball players whose 4th quarter shooting % in playoff games is higher than at any practice
I'd say that it's not thinking too much -- your brain can't stop thinking! The issue is not being aware that you are thinking and that's what cognitive therapy, meditation and mindfulness is all about: being present while you think allows you to understand how this thought process affects your emotions.
This seems to be related to the concept of flow: finding that sweet spot between being too relaxed and too-stressed out. We need a moderate dose of stress to perform at our best. What's so interesting is that experiencing flow is also correlated with long-term fullfillment.
I've recently theorized the single most important factor for happiness and performance is being able to control your stress levels and increase/decrease your stress levels at will. It is not novel, but it helps me if I see my primary task as identifying which mechanisms can help me lower or increase stress. So far, meditation seems to have the best effect.
Qualitatively, I notice depressed people tend to read, write, and philosophize more. I think it partially explains the phenomenon of post-drinking philosophizing at 3 am since EtOH is ultimately a depressant and often amplified by tiredness, and also EtOh seems to promote socializing, Although hangovers are temporary depressive dips where reading, writing, and philosophizing may not be the first thought.. at least not until the bathroom, nsaids, and coffee.
This reminds me of "This is water" by david foster wallace.
> The really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about
Yes, this article seems to have it all. Djokovic, Federer, a cute baby, and with promises of great philosophical thoughts. I would love to read it but unfortunately I actually can't afford it. Oh well. Looking forward to the comments.
"In less dramatic ways the same principle applies to all of us. A fundamental paradox of human psychology is that thinking can be bad for us. When we follow our own thoughts too closely, we can lose our bearings, as our inner chatter drowns out common sense."
"To make good decisions in a complex world, Gigerenzer says, you have to be skilled at ignoring information. He found that a portfolio of stocks picked by people he interviewed in the street did better than those chosen by experts. The pedestrians were using the “recognition heuristic”: they picked companies they’d heard of, which was a better guide to future success than any analysis of price-earning ratios."
"How do you learn to unthink? Dylan believes the creative impulse needs protecting from self-analysis: “As you get older, you get smarter, and that can hinder you…You’ve got to programme your brain not to think too much.” Flann O’Brien said we should be “calculatedly stupid” in order to write. The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment, something that both success and analysis can dull. Experienced athletes and artists often complain that they have lost touch with what made them love what they do in the first place. Thinking about it is a poor substitute."
When I think about the human brain and evolution, I don't view a large brain as a good or a bad thing or something that makes humans more capable than other animals or having a competitive edge.
It's weird how humans are so often suffering from depression, it seems like a larger brain is more the result of an organ gaining in size for all the bad reasons: anxiety, overthinking, mental illness, etc.
It depends on the subject of 'overthinking':
not all subjects are compatible with subconscious/instinctual approach,
creative/physical effort dominates only with simple rules and restricted systems - once your field is complex enough overthinking is more
potent at uncovering flaws/loopholes/creative insights.
In my case, I have found myself not doing enough stuff whenever I think too much. "doing" here doesn't necessarily mean productive work. Even spending quality time with friends and family counts towards and can have much more rewarding effects when compared to overthinking.
Instincts evolved with nature and time. Thinking did too but with the coevolution of poor thinking and negative self talk and bad advice within a short period of time.
Yes, is better not thinking that much and fill all your free time with podcast, audiobooks and email subscription. So someone else will do the work for you
My arsenal for this includes: Beer, wine, wine coolers, hard cider, stoli vodka, malibu, rum, champagne, cbd isolate sublingual tincture, music, Hue mood lighting, candle-like scents, soft sheets, massage, MIV, cell phones in the microwave (faraday cage), and not talking about anything current.
If involved parties aren't relaxed, it's unlikely to be that good.
The alcohol definitely cuts out the overthinking, or any thinking at all. If you are a good soul at heart, the real you that comes out when inebriated can be quite charming, and the opposite if you the real you is a jerk.
But it isn't the always greatest thing for the actual sex.
"Just be yourself" essentially means "Stop thinking... about how to look confident, how to impress her, etc." Such thinking usually yields the exact opposite effect.
I thought this way for many years. Confronting the fact that thoughts carry a cost, and are therefore a tradeoff that has to be weighed against their usefulness in any given case, was the biggest turning point for the better my mental health has ever taken.
If you read the article, that's not at all what it's about. In tech, the issue being discussed is closer to what's commonly termed "analysis paralysis". Sometimes you just have to act on your instincts (honed by experience, knowledge, and study) and act rather than looking for a larger pattern or perfect solution.
I read the article and I don’t like the headline’s framing. Choking also can be the result of being overwhelmed because of a lack of mental preparation. Thanks for your reply.
"This last point is vital. Unthinking is not the same as ignorance; you can’t unthink if you haven’t already thought. Djokovic was able to pull off his wonder shot because he had played a thousand variations on it in previous matches and practice; Dylan’s lyrical outpourings drew on his immersion in folk songs, French poetry and American legends. The unconscious minds of great artists and sportsmen are like dense rainforests, which send up spores of inspiration."
Well, I stopped reading when it said that Federer ”has been choking”, losing due to a ”mental frailty”. It told me everything I need to know that there is nothing serious to be read and learned in this article.
When the article was written Federer had lost to Djokovic after having 2 match points on two seperate occsasions (US Open 2010 and 2011) and since then this has happened again at Wimbledon 2019. In that last two matches Federer was serving as well. It's hard to make the argument that this isn't psychological.
If we model tennis points as random (let's say, accounting only for service), would we not expect people to occasionally lose when they had a match point? We'd expect this to happen more often when playing an opponent of comparable skill.
It's not obvious to me that it's psychological at all, and it seems to me that it's only reported as such because it makes a good news story.
According the most recent of these threads Federer's lose-after-match-point percentage is 1.4%. Djokovic's is 0.2%. Djokovic also has a much higher win-after-facing-match-point percentage. It's hard to claim that this is purely due to randomness.
If you want to convince yourself that choking is a thing, then this is a stat you might look at.
But, this stat is just as likely to be more influenced by how close your opponent's skill was on that day (how often you play opponents at a similar skill level), your and your opponent's relative stamina, whether those match points appeared in a regular service game or a tiebreak (how often your style of play goes to a tiebreak), and perhaps even pure luck - out of thousands of tour players, some are going to have incredible luck.
djokovic was already an extremely strong (mentally, physically, and technically) player himself at that time. he finished the 2011 season no. 1 IIRC.
the "mental toughness" argument cuts both ways. pulling out a win after two match points in a grand slam speaks as much to djokovic's own mental fortitude as it does to federer's lack thereof.
To elaborate beyond what @soneca said, how do we know that Federer lost those points because he thought too much? What if, instead, Federer didn’t think enough, and Djokovic just outthought him? That’s why the conclusion is unfalsifiable.
For me is veeery easy to make the argument that this isn’t psychological, but only to the expected variance of tennis match results. It was you that had to carefully cherry-pick data to support your conclusion.
I would only have to choose among all the other match points he has won through the 20 grand slams he has won. Only considering Federer vs Djoko, Federer won 46% of the matches. There a lot of match points won there. Also, considering only Grand Slams, Federer won 6 out of 17. Not a great record, but still no negligible number of wins. And I would attribute that bad performance more to Djoko skills, and maybe also Djoko physical peak coinciding with Federer older age, than to any thing psychological.
I sometimes find word choice to be a reliable heuristic for evaluating the probable worth of some prose, but I don't see why, in this case, you feel this way. Would you mind elaborating? (Assuming your conclusion is indeed based on the phrasing chosen...)
I start from the assumption that Federer’s career (even in 2012) is enough to prove that he has the mental strength and can perform at the highest level in stressful championship decisions.
But the stronger reason to stop reading is that, in the most generous interpretation, the author started to argue the benefits of “not thinking too much” by using a unfalsifiable claim about a very subjective interpretation of a fact, attributing causality to an anedocte that is far too complex to be resumed into a simplistic reason based on the author’s assumption. This seemed ridiculous to me.
It was obvious to me that the author didn’t have much of a science-informed take (my impression form the title) and was just doing unsubstantiated storytelling
The original article (from The Economist) is from 2012, so whatever the author was referring to was not the same as the injuries discussed in your 2021 article (from ESPN).
> To make good decisions in a complex world, Gigerenzer says, you have to be skilled at ignoring information.
It's total bullshit. It might work with some crap like a lottery or bets on “American Idol” winners, but to solve complex tasks you need more information and more experience. All the examples in this article are to impress not-so-well-educated people, level of TV-show, not higher.
When we make quick decisions in areas out of our expertise, we use the same logic as when we make decisions based on emotions, empathy, “intuition”. It's nothing more than a lottery.
Their first example is just about a mentally burnt out person, that's all. Yes, we should give a rest to our brains, but the advice “just don't think too much” is an idiotic oversimplification.
> They found that those who placed high trust in their feelings made better predictions than those who didn't. The result only applied, however, when the participants had some prior knowledge.
Which is exactly what you're saying so I'm uncertain why you're calling the article "total bullshit" when you're restating this critical part of it in your own comment and own words.
Maybe you need to read the whole article, there is more than just that.
For example, they use as evidence the experiment (on a small group of people, without a control group, without attempts to repeat it - everything to be called anti-scientific), where they separate students, based on the color of their skin. Amazing start, right? And the whole article is filled with such fairy tales, not by scientific data.
I think a nice collective analogue to this is Alfred Whitehead's observation that 'civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them'. Progress is being made by holistically integrating knowledge in a way that makes it sort of ambient.
It also reminds me of a slightly snarky article why all the people in the rationalist cult never seem to actually be successful at anything other than rationalism. It's precisely because consciously thinking is easy, it's the integration of knowledge into the whole is what's difficult but actually necessary.