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To me it's less about thoughts and more about emotions. And not about doing it all the time, but only when I'm having some intense emotion and need to do something about it.

For example, let's say I'm angry about something. I imagine there's a knob in my mind: make the emotion stronger or weaker. (Or between feeling it less, and feeling it more.) What I usually do is turn the knob up. Try to feel the emotion more completely and in more detail, without trying to push any of it away. What usually happens next is the emotion kinda decides that it's been heard and goes away: a few minutes later I realize that whatever I was feeling is no longer as intense or urgent. Or I might even forget it entirely and find my mind thinking of something else.

It's counterintuitive but it's really how it works for me; been doing it for over a decade now. It's the closest thing to a mental cheat code that I know.

I write this song about Bryan Caplan's My Beautiful Bubble 

https://suno.com/song/5f6d4d5d-6b5d-4b71-af7b-2cc197989172 

I wish you the best and look forward to hearing how it goes.

What is the mechanism, specifically, by which going slower will yield more "care"? What is the mechanism by which "care" will yield a better outcome? I see this model asserted pretty often, but no one ever spells out the details.

I've studied the history of technological development in some depth, and I haven't seen anything to convince me that there's a tradeoff between development speed on the one hand, and good outcomes on the other.

I suspect that many people who use such a phrase would endorse an interpretation such as "The most beautiful... to me."

Could you say more, especially about "non-verbal signs"? I can guess what you're gesturing out, but I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

I wish there were a clear unifying place for all commentary on this topic. I could create a wiki page I suppose.

Update: a friend convinced me that I really should separate my intuitions about locating patterns that are exactly myself from my intuitions about the moral value of ensuring I don't contribute to a decrease in realityfluid of the mindlike experiences I morally value, in which case the reason that I selfishly value causal history is actually that it's an overwhelmingly predictive proxy for where my self-pattern gets instantiated, and my moral values - an overwhelmingly larger portion of what I care about - care immensely about avoiding waste, because it appears to me to be by far the largest impact any agent can have on what the future is made of.

Also, I now think that eating is a form of incremental uploading.

Why is nobody in San Francisco pretty? Hormones make you pretty but dumb (pretty faces don't usually pay rent in SF). Why is nobody in Los Angeles smart? Hormones make you pretty but dumb. (Sincere apologies to all residents of SF & LA.)

Some other possibilities:

• Pretty people self-select towards interests and occupations that reward beauty. If you're pretty, you're more likely to be popular in high school, which interferes with the dedication necessary to become a great programmer.

• A big reason people are prettier in LA is they put significant effort into their appearance -- hair, makeup, orthodontics, weight loss, etc.

Then why didn't evolution give women big muscles? I think because if you are in the same strength range as men then you are much more plausibly murderable. It is hard for a male to say that he killed a female in self-defense in unarmed combat. No reason historically to conscript women into battle. Their weakness protects them. (Maybe someone else has a better explanation.)

Perhaps hunter/gatherer tribes had gender-based specialization of labor. If men are handling the hunting and tribe defense which requires the big muscles, there's less need for women to pay the big-muscle metabolic cost.

Can I check that I've understood it.

Roughly, the essay urges one to be conscious of each passing thought, to see it and kind of head it off at the tracks - "feeling angry?" "don't!". But the comment argues this is against what CBT says about feeling our feelings.

What about Sam Harris' practise of meditation which seems focused on seeing and noticing thoughts, turning attention back on itself. I had a period last night of sort of "intense consciousness" where I felt very focused on the fact I was conscious. It. wasn't super pleasant, but it was profound. I can see why one would want to focus on that but also why it might be a bad idea.