Huh. I hope we can get to understand the post by talking about it. I’m not trying to be condescending or annoying. I’m trying to see what you see. What did you think at first the image showed and how did the comment about tankies lead you to second-guess?

Ah that makes sense. Maybe it’s a European/US difference, but it could be just a Time Timer thing. My air fryer is from an American company and it has the same timer as you (wind it up clockwise, then the hand moves counter-clockwise).

I wonder if both types of timers (wind up clockwise and wind up counter-clockwise) seek to distinguish themselves from normal clocks in different ways:

• Wind up clockwise timers (like your stove and my airfryer) let you know it’s not a normal clock by flowing counter-clockwise.
• Clockwise timers (like a Time Timer) let you know it’s not a normal clock by having a red disk slowly become smaller.

Earplugs come in different sizes. Maybe it’s a matter of experimenting?

Ah. To set up the timer, you do pull the hand counter clockwise, as if you were pulling a spring-loaded car backwards for it to move forward on its own. After you release the Time Timer, its hand will move forward on its own, normally, clockwise.

It is a bit unusual, but the point of the timer is to see how much time you’ve got left. It’s like a battery charge percentage. You know that when the battery reaches zero, you’ve got to charge it up again.

I hope the explanation helps. If not, feel free to ask or to check out the videos in the Time Timer website. After all, it is a strange product.

A Time Timer.

They’re not cheap, especially for a timer that’s bare bones (~20 USD).

But it has changed my work life.

1. People who want to interrupt me while I’m working can now see how long until I have my next break. So I am interrupted less.
2. Now I self-regulate a bit better, so I’m able to work longer without destroying myself in the process. I take breaks that help me with repetitive strain injuries and with feeling like I’m a human being and not just a machine.
3. Now I remember to actually start timers when I start working. I know this is a bit silly, but I was having trouble creating a habit of stopping for breaks. I tried to solve this by setting timers on my phone, but I constantly forgot doing it. Now I’m reminded to start a timer by something that I see on my desk.

I’d say the fight against entropy is an attempt to retain specific expressions of energy in the system. The expressions of energy are assemblages that have created order. And yes, as you said, the creation of order has a cost: greater global entropy.

In case you’re interested, this way of looking at entropy and life comes from Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker.

After reading what I have posted, it’s totally fair to believe that I do not find beauty or inspiration in nature. However, I can give you some reassurance.

How? Well, I actually I find the battle against entropy amazing and inspiring. A while ago I was sipping tea while my dog nestled next to me, and I was moved thinking about how we make each other so happy. I am also moved by people, people who look beyond their belly button, people who are kind, people who are good at what they do.

It’s not just that we’re doomed to accept brutality and appreciate tiny slivers of beauty. There’s actually steps that we can take to support life. For example, we can become a part of an assemblage that we like. Sometimes that assemblage is a group of friends, a political group, or an organization. You know you’re in the right place when your incentives align with that of the group. There’s an alignment around shared values, shared goals. Your atoms are keeping your structural integrity. Your cells are keeping you alive. Your thoughts are aiding you in problem solving and connecting with others. And your friends are connecting with you.

There’s quite a bit more to this, so if you’re interested in this way of understanding the world, you can check out Prosocial by evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson and psychologists Paul W. B. Atkins and Steven C. Hayes.

Cordyceps fungus

Holy crap. This gave me the creeps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis This opened the door to the broader category of parasitoids https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitoid

Prion diseases

Truly scary stuff. I vaguely knew that genetic problems are a thing, but I didn’t know the specifics. Thanks for sharing this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion

I agree that there’s a layer of human subjectivity in this whole discussion. Within that layer, I think it’s okay to get a gut sense that nature is brutal and grotesque. My goal is to avoid romanticizing nature.

Once we’re able to avoid our human bias of romanticizing nature, we can take the discussion to another layer, a layer that could be called more objective.

For example, we could talk about entropy and evolution’s attempts to fight against it. We could talk about evolution occurring at multiple scales and dimensions simultaneously, such as atomic structures, cells, and multicellular organisms. These are examples of assemblages, and they expand the possible behaviors of the parts. In other words, assemblages make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

So, how does entropy, evolution, and assemblages connect with our discussion? Well, brutality and grotesqueness can usually be translated into the language of entropy and assemblages. Killing someone destroys an assemblage and increases entropy. Torture and trauma reduce the probability of an organism exhibiting variation in their behaviors. They reduce the emergent properties of the assemblage.

Is it always better to choose the language of entropy and assemblages over brutality and grotesqueness? No. Context matters. Again, if the goal is merely to avoid the romanticization of nature, the brutality and grotesqueness layer is appropriate.

Ouch. Looked it up. Its brutal. https://enviroliteracy.org/do-lions-eat-their-prey-alive/

TIL lions eat some prey alive because it saves the lions energy. They avoid spending too much energy killing a prey that is difficult to kill. Instead, they incapacitate (but not kill) a prey and start eating right away.

I agree. The boundary can easily become diffuse or even silly.

However, there’s a reason I asked what I asked. My ultimate purpose is to show that existence is not perfectly designed, that sometimes it is brutal and grotesque. Unfortunately, people often retort saying nature is brutal and grotesque because of humans. So, by focusing on non-human nature, I’m sidestepping the retort.

Pinecones are indeed beautiful. However, they are decidedly not one of the greatest arguments for the existence of an intelligent higher power. In fact, the whole claim about pinecones having the Fibonacci sequence is false https://youtu.be/1Jj-sJ78O6M

Additionally, I wouldn’t think that cones having nice shapes are an example of nature being brutal and grotesque. But I suppose you wanted to make the opposite argument: that nature is perfect and beautiful.

Ouch. Rape. Sometimes gang rape. Bloodied female. Sometimes drowned female. https://misfitanimals.com/ducks/how-do-ducks-mate/

Awful.

Here’s some I know:

• Dolphins rape other dolphins https://theconversation.com/dolphin-sexual-politics-gets-the-tabloid-treatment-6063
• Praying mantis females often eat the head of males they have sex with. Some spiders do that too, like the appropriately named black widow spider. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_cannibalism
• Mass extinctions have occurred in the past, way before humans existed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
• Genetic mutations often lead to inviable offspring or awful conditions (I don’t know specific examples off the top of my head)
• Parasites can take control of insects and lead them to drown (also don’t know examples off the top of my head)

Others have talked about the ultimate measure: your GPA. However, for you to get that high GPA it can help to:

• Train your relational frame skills.
• Develop good learning habits through Tiny Habits or something like that.
• Develop a good relationship with your thoughts and emotions through something like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or the Healthy Minds Program or any program designed to improve your relationship with your thoughts.
• Internalize something like Make it Stick or another book that teaches how to learn quickly and well.
• Internalize habits of mind such as Harvard’s Project Zero’s Visible Thinking Routines.

We share the goal of making the world more private. I’m not trying to be cheeky or mean. I’m genuinely curious. Would you be against reading to learn how to talk more compellingly?

I agree that there is plenty of nonsense out there. There are many interventions veiled as “scientific”, and most people don’t have the ability to lift the veil and recognize the pseudoscience beneath.

Unfortunately, the answer to your question is, partly, no. Psychology has not inoculated the world from pseudoscience. However, the answer to your question is also, partly, yes. There are people who have learned from the most robust evidence in psychology.

To the extent that organization and management adapt to robust findings in psychology, there are many contributions that psychology has made to organization and management.

• Clear goals. Things like SMART goals, specific goals, vivid goals, implementation intentions, mental contrasting, or otherwise things that help you be clear rather than vague about your goals— all of those tend to have a moderate effect on outcomes.
• CBT, ACT, and mindfulness. You will probably groan at this, because you have probably had watered down, simplified to the point of being unrecognizable versions of these. At their best, these have shown improvements in the way workers approach their work
• Psychological safety. You will probably also groan at this, because ironically psychological safety interventions, when done poorly, can make some people feel unsafe. However, the correlational and longitudinal data is quite clear: psychological safety leads to better results. Unfortunately, the experimental evidence has, to my knowledge, stuck to health-related organizations, where not speaking up costs lives. I wonder if there are good studies elsewhere now.
• Feedback strategies. There have been good experimental studies showing that the way you give feedback can change your organization’s capabilities over time. This is similar to psychological safety but arrived at from a different lineage in the literature.
• Multitasking and task-switching. This one probably goes without saying, because there has been more than extensive research on this. Minimizing distractions, focusing on one thing at a time, having a pull-based workflow…

More broadly, you could look for good resources for Evidence-Based Management.

If we ignore Alfred Binet, then sure I can get onboard with you :) Indeed, the pre-IQ head-measuring stage of racism was filled with white supremacist nonsense. In that sense, it is a history filled with pseudoscience and pain.

Out of curiousity, would you classify Alfred Binet as an eugenicist and white supremacist?

You seem to value honesty and accuracy. It sounds as if you’re saying that someone smart wouldn’t say they’re smart. It also sounds as if you’re saying that someone who wouldn’t be considered smart can correctly identify people who claim that they’re smart but in reality aren’t.

How come?