Chris Williamson

Chris Williamson asks what a better approach is for somebody who wants to learn a lot from people who know a lot, and whether people should exit formal education as quickly as possible. Chris Williamson presumes the entire system cannot be upended right now immediately. David Deutsch says upending is outside his wheelhouse. He does not know how to formulate good political policies that will gain wide acceptance. Technically, he says, with the internet there are now the means of completely upending the system and not having any compulsory education, certainly for children.

David Deutsch says there are more and more ways of adapting university education to technologies like the internet and c

David Deutsch says the Fermi problem is not the kind of problem he likes. We do not know whether we are alone in the universe. We might be or we might not be. It is easy to come up with explanations for why the aliens or their robots are not here yet, so the Fermi problem is a collision between one fantasy and another fantasy.

Chris Williamson asks what David Deutsch has come to believe about the Fermi problem. Deutsch says we do not know the answer. He also calls it the Fermi mystery, but it is not unusual, because we do not know most things. Problems he enjoys look as though something must be so and yet also look as though it cannot be so. Two claims appear to be in collision. Quantum gra

David Deutsch says people should look to correct errors and should not look for certainty. He quotes Popper, who says we are all alike in our infinite ignorance, and who says we may all know different things. An infinite distance remains. People hold different finite amounts of knowledge, so everyone is only ever at the beginning of infinity, and they have something in common with everyone else at the beginning. Holding oneself up as an authority is a philosophical mistake and a sociological or cultural mistake. It is a power play rather than a participation in the growth of knowledge.

Chris Williamson asks how a person can hold strong convictions while remembering they can be completely mi

Chris Williamson says plain success is low skill because a formula can get you there, while success kept connected to the rest of life is much closer to art than to science.

Chris Williamson is much more impressed by success done with balance and fun. Success is hard, and it is nowhere near as difficult as doing it while having a good time, being a good person, feeling good, staying in a community, helping family, and not using people in a transactional way. No formula shows how to build a good business and keep a good marriage, how to avoid denying parts of yourself, or how to turn past pain into anything other than a chip on the shoulder that becomes an identity. The vacancy after achieve

Spencer Greenberg says the least sexy, highest-impact part of self-help is that you cannot just learn techniques. You have to sit down, make time, and do them. Many people read self-improvement books and do nothing differently afterward. Reading will not change your life until you put the ideas into action.

Chris Williamson says it is better to read one chapter and then go away, or to follow a single strategy. Atomic Habits and Tiny Habits keep you on one track, so you are still doing a thing while you learn how habits happen. Chris Williamson contrasts that with a 500-page collection of disparate protocols. He says reading the material is not doing the work, and reading can hand you a simu

Spencer Greenberg calls them glad you did it activities. Afterwards, you are glad you did the activity. People often scroll on a phone or watch too much television instead. Replacing all downtime with something productive denies your own needs. Coming home from work tired means you need to relax, which is why the phone scroll happens. Swapping the scroll for more work denies the need to relax, and Spencer Greenberg says it is not a very healthy thing to do.

Spencer Greenberg loves documentaries and still has many unseen. Instead of doing whatever bullshit to relax, Spencer Greenberg pulls up a documentary long wanted. Watching it feels like a meaningful use of time. The documentary stays me

People with a lot of anxiety hold beliefs about worry that work against them. Worry feels urgent, so it has to be handled now. They believe they cannot do anything except worry, as if they are not capable of stopping. They also believe worry is valuable, because something bad would happen if they stopped.

The method Spencer Greenberg loves is worry time. Pick one time of day, for example 5 p.m., and do not pick a time before bed. Through the day, write each worry down once. The example is not knowing whether a project will go well tomorrow. When the same worry returns, leave it off the list and wait until 5 p.m. The wait is batch processing: defer the worry, and if it comes back, say it has

When people are highly emotionally dysregulated, Spencer Greenberg says grounding outside the body helps. Look at three different things outside the body, notice three things that can be heard, then notice three things in the body, and switch between them. Chaos is going on in the mind, and getting out of the mind is what temporarily feels better. Chris Williamson puts the same sequence as a focus outside the body, a focus on the body, and a focus inside the body.

When the grounding does not work, a stronger shock can. Not electricity. A brief splash of super cold water can suddenly shock a person out of an emotional disruption. Chris Williamson asks whether the splash sits next to the mamm