http://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b 2023-08-04T16:40:18Z Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/ ranprieur@gmail.com http://ranprieur.com/#250e4243097a67bf6f95881a4738ddb00356eaf2 2023-08-04T16:40:18Z August 4. Bunch o' links. Is slowness the essence of knowledge? The article covers slow food, slow science, and mostly slow thinking.

MIT engineers create an energy-storing supercapacitor from ancient materials. Using only cement, carbon black, and water, it "could eventually be incorporated into the concrete foundation of a house, where it could store a full day's worth of energy while adding little to the cost."

This tiny device could reforest the entire planet (thanks Erik). Again using very simple design, they've invented a thing that corkscrews seeds into the ground, greatly increasing the viability of seeds dropped by drones.

These Wavy Walls Actually Use Fewer Bricks Than a Straight Wall, because a straight wall would have to be much thicker to not fall down.

Banished to a Remote Idaho Valley, Beavers Created a Lush Wetland

And I've uploaded a video. This is something I've been meaning to do for years. One of my favorite songs of the 80s is My Mother The War by 10,000 Maniacs. Both YouTube and Spotify have a tepid version of the song incorrectly identified as this great version.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#121ba2e4445493d932bf27b839e5a36572ac9b49 2023-08-02T14:20:24Z August 2. Continuing on the subject of moral recovery, a thread on Ask Old People, Do bad people as they get older ever "get it" and realize they were a bad person? The answer is mostly no, and the top comment lays out the recipe for a bad person: "low self awareness and poor moral development."

Farther down is a link to this fascinating page, Down the rabbit hole of estranged parents' forums. Basically, the parents in these forums say nothing about what they've been accused of doing, unless the accuser makes a mistake they can jump on. Meanwhile, forums for adult children of abusers are loaded with details, and they even challenge each other to make sure they're getting the details right.

Another word for "self-awareness" is metacognition: a perspective that looks inward, and neither reflexively condemns nor reflexively excuses, but tries to understand and suggest adjustments. I've seen it called "the science of self-observation", and it's a difficult skill to learn. Without it, you may fall into the pseudoscience of self-observation, where you start with what you want to believe and pick out evidence.

There's a cartoon trope, where a character has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, giving advice. That's three voices: the angel, the devil, and the self, and three voices is too many for someone with low cognitive powers. Instead, most bad-doers have two voices: the self, who is completely selfish, and the justifier, who tells the self that they're behaving correctly, and blanks out all evidence to the contrary.

Again, if someone else is doing this, there's nothing you can do. But if you're doing it, you can chip away at those habits with innocence and curiosity. An interesting question is, where does the angel voice come from? Somewhere I read about a hypnotist saying that when people get deep enough, they all have the same calm and reasonable voice. I suppose the goal of meditation is to be in that mental state all the time.

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