- Same level of technology as today
- Basic human psychology is the same
- But you are allowed to change prevalent institutions, cultural assumptions etc.
So e.g. if you hate school, you can describe a world that has something else instead.
But you should describe the alternative at least a bit - what kids do with their time instead and how they learn skills and are selected into jobs. Don't just say "no school".
Within those constraints, you're allowed to change as much as you like and can think of.
Today's trauma paper is "Neural Computations of Threat", Levy & Schiller 2020, Trends in Cognitive Sciences. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Much of this is very similar to trauma therapy stuff, but from a cogsci / neuroscience angle so sounds more reputable and scientific. ;)
The overall frame is familiar: anxiety disorders and PTSD are manifestations of a similar underlying mechanism which involves fear learning. Either can be learned as the brain comes to predict that a particular stimulus is predictive of danger.
A learned threat prediction can be triggered and made available for reconsolidation through several processes, including extinction (repeatedly experiencing the trigger without experiencing something threatening), counterconditioning (associating it with something positive),
Notes on Soulmaking Dharma, based on a conversation with my friend.
Epistemic status: had dozens of hours of lecture summarized to me in two hours. Summarizing that and adding own interpretations. Might get a lot wrong, don't really know what I'm talking about.
Soulmaking Dharma is a Buddhist practice mostly developed by Rob Burbea and Catherine McGee. This page has various additional resources, which I have not looked at. \:D/ reddit.com/r/streamentry/…
First thing to note is that Mainstream Buddhist (MB) practice focuses on reducing suffering. Soulmaking Dharma isn't about that; it's more about something like creating and understanding meaning. That may reduce suffering or keep it the same, but either way, that's not the focus.
Things that I imagine would be cool to do with my kids (if I manage to have some): taking bedtime as a moment to reminisce about the day together.
Recalling enjoyable moments is by itself enjoyable. So ask, what parts of the day did you like? What were some good moments? What about it was enjoyable?
At first, just mention things. "You seemed to really like playing with those toys today." "You looked happy being with uncle X."
Hopefully soon the kids will notice that this is enjoyable, and start bringing up things on their own. (And feel like that was their own idea.)
We tend to think of a "cult leader" as someone who *intentionally* sets out to create a cult. But most cult-like things probably *don't* form like that.
A lot of people feel a strong innate *desire* to be in a cult. Michael suggests it's rooted in an infant's need to attach to a caregiver, and to treat them as a fully dependable authority to fix all problems - a desire which doesn't necessarily ever go fully away.
Once someone becomes a teacher of some sort, even if they had absolutely no desire to create a cult, they will regardless attract people who *want* to be their cultists.
It's kinda weird how much harder it feels to speak English than it does to read it. For writing, sentences spontaneously compose themselves in my head, just waiting to be written out.
For speaking, it's often as if I have to forcibly hammer my meaning to the kinds of words that would convey the message, and even then it feels like half the nuance I'm trying to convey is lost and I'm super-aware of everything that I feel like I'm mispronouncing.
It's not just a general "I find writing easier than speaking" thing either, since it's accompanied by a yearning to just be able to switch to Finnish where my intended meanings are much more likely to naturally fall into the kinds of shapes that mostly convey my intent.