Sunday, June 03, 2012

General-Purpose Self-Improvement

It's often said that the human brain is a computing machine, and this is blatantly true. It's less often said that the human mind is an operating system or programming language. And when it is said, it's assumed to be some kind of metaphor. It isn't a metaphor, it is exactingly true. (Consciousness though has no exact analogue.)

There are two general-purpose psychological self-improvement techniques. And strangely enough, they correspond to two paradigms for programming languages in computing. The two paradigms that admit not only thinking, but thinking about thinking, and thinking about thinking about thinking, and ... to infinity. Computing is about thinking precisely. OO and Functional are about improving your thinking by thinking about thinking.

I think I'm on the right track that this kind of correspondence exists. And I think I'm on the right track that the Core Values paradigm I invented is the one that 'happens' to correspond to the computing paradigm I like (OO). And I think I'm on the right track that the common features between my paradigm and the computing paradigm I like ... are also the same things that make this computing paradigm understandable and natural for the overwhelming majority of programmers.

The OTHER technique is to pretend to be the kind of person you would like to be. And the guy whom I learned this technique from (the writer of Self 2.0) considered it too dangerous to use past a certain point. Myself, I consider it anathema.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder, will it seem pathetic to have achieved through extraordinary lassitude merely what idiots could achieve through extraordinary effort?

Richard Kulisz said...

A monkey with a typewriter still couldn't write the works of Shakespeare in the lifetime of the universe. Equally, an idiot working feverishly can never, ever equal even the lowliest creative genius.