24 Comments

I'm fast realizing, in trying to write about stoicism, I already do with Polymathic thinking.

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I mean, wisdom is wisdom, and the Stoics really focused on it for a while there.

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Ugh, I already knew what you were gonna write, so I didn't even read the article, dude.

I'm a blue belt at knowing everything, for real.

But you already knew that, didn't you?

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"A blue belt at knowing everything"

I'm just gonna let that hang in the air for a minute.

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Maybe if you'd read your own post, which I didn't read, mind you, you have understood the "blue belt" reference! Clearly you don't read what you're writing. Classic Andrew.

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I don't force my knowledge on anyone; I wait until someone asks me anything. I have answered many questions on Quora, but there are quite a few on which I have deferred to people with greater knowledge than mine.

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That's a good way to be. I think that, for me, I'm really interested in exchanging information with people, and it's a very greedy process for me: I just want them to understand what I know so they'll stop wasting my time, and vice versa. This happens almost exclusively in real-time interactions; I'm much better online.

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And yet there are many who never realize that they have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Test it out, knowing means you know, speaking means you may not know but have convinced yourself you know. Listening is an art many people who don’t know never master.

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We did some research at the University of Tulsa with the Kuramoto model (I worked for a theoretical physicist) and dose-response curves of flu vaccination. One of our students went on to run with it. Never did get enough for a paper, so we left it for future studies.

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That's awesome. This phenomenon can explain so much about our world. I love bits of knowledge like that - keys that unlock secrets everywhere, like some kind of skeleton key for understanding.

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This reminds of how most people associate crusty punk bands like Discharge and Crass with the 1980s when both, in fact, have origins in the 1970s. I might even mention that it’s a similar phenomenon to how the Americana came to be known as such. While popularized under certain circumstances that shaped how it is referenced, the technique long predates such changes in how it is referenced generally. You may not know any of this and likely have nothing to add to this thought such as the other names the submission now known as the DRC Choke once had and all the problems with that new tag.

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If you know me at all, you know how pedantic I can be with regard to BJJ naming conventions. "Kimura" is ude garami, only called "Kimura" because of Helio's famous loss. Americana was also "ude garami", but I think that American catch wrestlers were really good at this move, being accustomed to pinning people from side control and such. Don't get me started with Joe D'Arce's name and the way HE insists it should be said.

People are dummies if they think Discharge or Crass started during the 80s. That's really all I have on that one.

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Ude garamawhat? I think you mean to reference it as Frank Gotch did when he submitted Maeda and other pretenders in the White House for the amusement of then president Teddy Roosevelt. Despite being a Judo practitioner himself, Roosevelt immediately recognized the superiority of Catch Wrestling. Or maybe it was just the raw, brute strength of Iowa farm boys.

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TR once wrestled a bear in the White House until he realized that "bear" is really just a term of endearment for a big, bearded gay man. From that point forward, it wasn't really wrestling any more.

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Most people aren’t aware that Roosevelt was quite frail as a child and he was motivated to use this as motivation to improve himself in all ways. Many are aware of his dedication to physical exercise, but he was equally dedicated to academic pursuits.

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I actually forgot to add the link for my last response. How embarrassing. https://youtu.be/ELSO9y1Z-_M?si=D1Q1PAbpHnLRdQhT

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I like how he's like, "I slowly do this thing, then set this thing up, and then I RAPIDLY AND VIOLENTLY RIP THIS PERSON APART IN FIVE MOVES"

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It's more fun to believe you know everything

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It's gratifying in the short term, but I'm not so sure it's more fun in the long run.

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In the long run we are all dead, reaching equilibrium. :-)

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What is this long term you speak of? I live for the moment dammit!

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Time is an illusion.

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I am reading a book called "Time Reborn" by Leo Smolin that gets into the idea that time needs to be introduced as a fundamental in physics and that Newtonian physics removes. The concept is hard to get your head around given the Minkowski space-time used by Einstein being accepted. Unifying quantum with relativity is a grand challenge.

https://a.co/d/3A9s5GZ

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Probably like the toughest thing we have ever tried to do!

I am vaguely familiar with Smolin through some documentaries on quantum gravity, maybe. I like this quote of his:

"All that is real is real in a moment, which is a succession of moments. Anything that is true is true of the present moment. Not only is time real, but everything that is real is situated in time. Nothing exists timelessly."

It's complicated, and we need complicated thinkers like Lee Smolin on this.

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