Patience:

farnam street:

People wait in different ways. Some are passive. Others are active. These two approaches are as different as the results they yield.

Passive patience is waiting for the world to give you the thing you want. A lot of people live their life with passive patience. Rather than go after the promotion at work they expect it to fall in their lap. Rather than go after the love of their life, they sit back and expect to be courted. Rather than chase their dreams, they wait for just the right opening that always seems around the corner but never comes. These people have the wrong kind of patience.

Active patience is different. Active patience demands action and intention, even while waiting for results. Active patience means not only applying for the promotion but taking your time to build the skills you need to put yourself in the best position to succeed. Active patience means starting the business, writing the book, going after the love of your life.

Active patience puts you in the best position to get what you want. There is almost always an action you can take to improve the odds.

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On Writing:

“We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans — because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings. That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone- because we have the impulse to explain who we are. Not just how tall we are, or thin… but who we are internally…"

Doing Hard Things:

Cal Newport:

Sanderson starts by pushing back on our common instinct to tell kids “you can do anything you want to” or “follow your dreams.” He argues that these aphorisms inflict a disservice on impressionable minds as they obfuscate the complexity, and frustration, and nuance involved in actually pursuing remarkable goals.

He retorts that the following claim is much more realistic:

“I can do hard things. Doing hard things has intrinsic value, and they will make me a better person, even if I end up failing.”

Husband’s income, wife’s income, and number of biological children in the U.S.

Rosemary L. Hopcroft

Abstract

Previous studies have found that the positive relationship between personal income and fertility for men in the United States is primarily due to childlessness among low-income men. Yet because of the opposite effects of income on fertility for men and women, it is important to examine the effects of income net of spouse’s income. An analysis of income from all sources and biological fertility data for husbands and wives from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (2014) shows that for men their own income is positively associated with the number of their biological children, while their spouse’s income is negatively associated with total children ever fathered. The reverse is true for women. These results are not because of childlessness among low-income men and high-income women, but also hold true among all those with children. For men and women aged 45–65, who likely have completed fertility, these results hold regardless of whether or not education is controlled. These findings suggest that if status is measured as personal income for men and husband’s income for women, the positive relationship between status and fertility persists in a postdemographic transition society.

Good Luck:

"You can't control luck directly, but you can move from a game with bad odds to a game with good odds. The world is like a reverse casino. In a casino, if you gamble long enough, you're certainly going to lose. But in the real world, where the only thing you're gambling is, say, your time or your embarrassment, then the more stuff you do, the more you give luck a chance to find you. If you do one thing and stop, you didn't give luck a chance to find you. You only need one thing to work."

Scott Adams

Confusion:

Imposter Syndrome:

How do you advise people that are dealing with imposter syndrome?

Jordan Peterson:

Oh everyone deals with that. Every time you make a status shift as you move upwards of course you have imposter syndrome, because when you first make a transition into a new role you are an imposter, because you're a beginner. You don't know what you're doing.

A meta-analysis of the association between male dimorphism and fitness outcomes in humans

Linda H. Lidborg, Catharine Penelope Cross, Lynda G. Boothroyd

Abstract

Humans are sexually dimorphic: men and women differ in body build and composition, craniofacial structure, and voice pitch, likely mediated in part by developmental testosterone. Sexual selection hypotheses posit that, ancestrally, more 'masculine' men may have acquired more mates and/or sired more viable offspring. Thus far, however, evidence for either association is unclear. Here, we meta-analyze the relationships between six masculine traits and mating/reproductive outcomes (96 studies, 474 effects, N = 177,044). Voice pitch, height, and testosterone all predicted mating; however, strength/muscularity was the strongest and only consistent predictor of both mating and reproduction. Facial masculinity and digit ratios did not significantly predict either. There was no clear evidence for any effects of masculinity on offspring viability. Our findings support arguments that strength/muscularity may be sexually selected in humans, but cast doubt regarding selection for other forms of masculinity and highlight the need to increase tests of evolutionary hypotheses outside of industrialized populations.

Scott Adams's Thoughts on Poor Memory:

>I’ve created 365 Dilbert comics a year for 19 years. I remembered all of them for about the first four years. Now it is impossible. So I sit there for a few minutes rummaging through my memories and finding nothing but spider webs. At this point I will digress and give you my untested theory about creativity:

Creativity is highly correlated to poor memory.

For me, ideas stream through my head at a frantic pace. I feel like a bear trying to grab a salmon. If my paw misses its target, that salmon is gone for good. I don’t dwell on it. I just lunge for the next salmon. I think people who have fewer thoughts per hour have time to let them settle in and form memories. It’s just a theory.<

Scott Adams

On the Utility of Ignorance:

http://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2018/12/on-utility-of-ignorance.html

Thinking Too Much?

Guy Claxton:

"However, when they were attempting the insight problems, subjects paused more frequently, and the pauses were longer: there were many more occasions on which there was, seemingly, nothing going on in the problem-solvers' mind. And when people doing the insight problems did verbalis, they were four times more likely to make the kinds of comments that referred not to the logic of the problem but to their own mental state. They would say things like: 'There is nothing that's going through my that's really in any kind of ... that's in a verbal fashion'; or 'I know I'm supposed to keep talking but I don't know what I am thinking. And this experience of 'nothing going on' was actually correlated with success on the insight problems. Those subjects who paused more solved more problems. Keeping up a running mental commentary really does interfere with the slower, less conscious processes going on at the back of the mind ... We must presume that people for whom such chatter is habitual are thereby hampered when it comes to dealing with problems of great subtlety or indeterminacy."

Non-Neediness:

Da ich in entsprechender Literatur nicht zu Hause bin, bin ich diesem Konzept begegnet bei Mark Manson, am Anfang seines Buches, in dem es etwa um Ehrlichkeit und um die Relevanz von Ehrlichkeit beim Aufbauen von kurzfristigen oder langfristigen Beziehungen und Partnerschaften geht. Non-Neediness lässt sich bezogen auf einen Mann etwa folgendermaßen verstehen: Hat ein Mann die Wahl? Finden sich da z.B. eine oder mehrere Frauen die ernsthaftes Interesse an ihm haben oder potentiell ernsthaftes Interesse an ihm entfalten könnten? Wählen zu können bedeutet auch über Ressourcen oder Fähigkeiten zu verfügen, die solch eine Wahl ermöglichen. Nicht wählen zu können, keine Wahl zu haben, steht im Kontrast hierzu.

Freundschaften:

Zugespitzt:

Gemäß Carnegie schafft die Aufmerksamkeit, und nicht das Angeben, Freundschaften, Beziehungen, etc.:

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."

Amateure und Dilletanten:

Konrad Lorenz:

http://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/amateure-und-diletanten.html

Nur ein Mensch, der mit dem unerklärlichen Genuß eines Amateurs und der Verliebtheit eines Dilettanten auf das Objekt seiner Leidenschaft zu starren vermag ...

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Das besonders Ermutigende für den Experten der Verhaltensforschung ist, daß die gleiche Erfahrung zu einem hohen Grad der Übereinstimmung in grundsätzlichen Dingen führt.

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Diese Dauerleistung bringen nur jene Menschen zustande, deren Blick durch eine völlig irrationale Freude an der Schönheit des Objektes an dieses gefesselt bleibt.

Search:

Christian, Griffiths, farnam street:

' "the search through a space of solutions ... is commonly thought of in terms of a landscape with hills and valleys, where your goal is to reach the highest peak." We go up and down hills and valleys our entire lives as we work through challanges and develop new expertise.'

Distractedness:

Winifred Gallagher:

"It's not a coincidence that the term distracted once referred not just to a loss or dilution of attention but also to confusion, mental imbalance, and even madness."

Partnerwahl, Bevorzugungen:

Wolfgang Wickler:

http://meinnaturwissenschaftsblog.blogspot.com/2019/03/bevorzugungen.html

Semi-Autistic Conversations:

Johann Hari, Stolen Focus:

"It was clear they had met on an app, and this was the first time they had seen each other in person. There was something odd to me, and I couldn't place it at first. Then I realised they weren't, in fact, having a conversation at all. What would happen is the first one, who was blond, would talk about himself for ten minutes or so. Then the second one, who was dark-haired, would talk about himself for ten minutes. And they alternated in this way, interrupting each other. I sat next to them for two hours, and at no point did either of them ask the other person a question."

"I felt like everywhere I went, I was surrounded by people who were broadcasting but not receiving."

Adaptive Functions of Disgust:

Six dimensions of sexual disgust:

"In attempt to reclassify disgust as an emotion that evolved to solve important adaptive problems, evolutionary psychologists have begun to develop a functional framework of this emotion by considering the relevant selection pressures that were recurrently faced over our evolutionary history (Curtis, 2011, Curtis, Aunger, & Rabie, 2004, Curtis, De Barra, & Aunger, 2011; Oaten, Stevenson & Case, 2009; Shook, Oosterhoff, Terrizzi & Clay, 2017; Tybur et al., 2009; Tybur & Lieberman, 2016, Tybur, Lieberman, Kurzban, & DeScioli, 2013). These accounts argue that disgust evolved to solve or ameliorate three distinct adaptive problems: consumption or contact with infectious agents, mating with costly sexual partners, and the violation of social norms. Tybur et al. (2009) specifically hypothesizes that individuals must avoid sex with costly mates and sexual situations that reliably led to decrements in reproductive fitness during our evolutionary history. This hypothesis implies that if a potential mate or sexual situation is costly, then sexual disgust will be activated, and avoidance of sex will follow. Tybur et al. (2009)’s Three Domains of Disgust Scale (TDDS) reliably provides evidence that sexual disgust is a discrete component of disgust that has important implications for human mating.

Self-assessed intelligence, objective intelligence and the higher-order structure of personality

Self-assessed intelligence, objective intelligence and the higher-order structure of personality
Marcin Zajenkowski, Dimitri van der Linden, Radosław Rogoza; 2022

Abstract

The way people assess their own level of intelligence might have important consequences for many life domains. In two studies (Ns = 232 and 237) we examined the association between self-assessed and objective intelligence and the higher-order structure of personality: two metatraits, Plasticity and Stability, and the General Factor of Personality (GFP). The most consistent finding was the positive association between intelligence (self-assessed and objective) and Plasticity, which reflects Extraversion and Openness/Intellect. Plasticity is characterized by the tendency to explore and seek for novelty, which might theoretically link it with intelligence. People with high levels of the GFP perceived themselves as highly intelligent. We suggested that their beliefs might have various sources, such as actual cognitive ability as well as social desirability and agency associated with self-assessed intelligence. The metatrait of Stability was essentially unrelated to self-assessed and objective intelligence. Our research indicates that intelligence might be primary located close to Plasticity in the personality structure.

Discipline:

farnam street:

"Anyone can do something once. Not everyone can do it consistently. Eating healthy for a meal is common. Eating healthy all week is not. Working out occasionally is common. Working out a few times a week is not. Going to bed on time is easy. Doing it for a week is not.

Positioning yourself for future success is simple but not easy. The hardest part is the discipline required to do otherwise ordinary things for an extraordinarily long period of time, even when the results are barely noticeable."

Dieser Blog:

"Mein Naturwissenschaftsblog" wird nun zu Posts von Sachtexten und über Sachthemen  zurückkehren. Künftig werden Gedichte und Aphorismen auf einem anderen Blog veröffentlicht. Allerdings werde ich keine Auslagerung vorhandener Aphorismen und Gedichte vornehmen. Lediglich eine regelmäßige Verlinkung auf neu Veröffentlichtes wird statt finden. Auch werde ich hier ein paar eigene statistische Analysen posten.

Selbstbewusstsein:

Das Wissen um die eigene Verantwortlichkeit,
sowie das Selbstwertgefühl,
das der Wahrnehmung dieser Verantwortlichkeit
entspringt.

Beziehung:

Etwas Organisches,
etwas Lebendiges entsteht,
das zwei Menschen verbindet.

Kontakt:

Was macht der Mensch,
wenn es ihm jahrelang
an angemessenen Kontakt
fehlt?

Er macht sich auf die Suche.

Das Ferne:

Die Sehnsucht nach der Ferne.

Und wenn das Ferne

an Dich herankommt

und ein Gesicht erhält,

dann kann es doch

sehr schön sein.

Distractedness:

farnam street:

"The mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it."

Die Geschichte:

Nun ist's vollbracht,
nun ist's gescheh'n,
nun kann
eine weitere Geschichte
von vorne
neu entsteh'n.

Gedanken:

Und dann
überfallen Dich die Gedanken,
kommen
so viele Gedanken zu Dir;
woher all diese Gedanken
wohl kommen?

Verschwunden:

Du schwindest ja
aus meinem Leben,
bist schon
verschwunden,
nur ein Schatten
liegt noch da.

Begegnungen:

Die Leichtigkeit und Schönheit einer Begegnung ...

Ins Neue:

Und dann kommt der Tag an dem,
nach mehreren Sprungversuchen,
der Sprung ins Neue
tatsächlich stattfindet.

Beziehungen:

Führt eine bestimmte Beziehung ein Mehr an Zugkraft in deinem Leben herbei? Oder beseitigt sie Spannung? Bringt sie Laschheit mit sich?

Auch so sehr man sich manchmal Entspannung wünscht, so ist doch der eigentliche Kerninhalt des Lebens das bewusste Streben. Eben von diesem Blickpunkt her hat vieles beurteilt zu werden. Wer das Streben aufgibt, der begräbt sich selbst.

Zeit:

Da gibt es ein gewisses Gefühl dafür,

dass man in einer Stunde

die Zeit beim Schopfe packt.

Klarheit:

Unsere klarsten Stunden,

das sind die besten Stunden:

Stunden, in denen wir

die Dinge klarer sehen

als sonst je.

Fest:

Ich bin ja da,
fest steh' ich da,
mit meinen Wurzeln,
und freu' mich des Lebens,
des Anblicks dieser Welt.

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Zu manchem dauerhaft >Ja< zu sagen,

zu vielem dauerhaft >Nein< zu sagen,

darum geht's. Daraus kommt die

Zugkraft, die Stoßkraft, die Effektivität

im Handeln, im Denken, im Leben.

Schauen:

Etwas innerlich erfassen,
erleben, erahnen.

Frühling:

Mit den Jahren
habe ich ganz vergessen,
wie Frühling war,
wie sich Frühling anfühlt.

Zeit:

Einfach einmal
einen ganz Tag lang
Zeit haben,
scheinbar unendlich
viel Zeit haben,
das ist schon sehr viel.

Das Erobern:

Eine Frau erobern,
die nicht liebt:
Was hat man davon?

Bei liebenden Frauen
braucht es eine
Eroberung nicht,
zumindest
nicht wirklich.

Selbst:

Sei du selbst. Bleib du selbst.

Verändere dich nicht grundlegend.

Aber vertiefe das, was du bist.

Metaphysik:

Etwa der Ansatz:

Wir werden nicht bloß angesprochen
von den Dingen,
sondern auch und insbesondere
von etwas,
das sich hinter den Dingen befindet.

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Übertragen auf die Welt:

Wir werden nicht bloß angesprochen

von der äußeren Erscheinung "Welt",

sondern auch und insbesondere

von etwas,

das sich hinter dieser Erscheinung

befindet.

Zeit:

Du hast so viel Zeit gehabt.
Und was hast du mit ihr gemacht,
mit all der Zeit?

Zyniker:

Ein Mensch,
dem nichts heilig ist.
Der nichts
und niemanden
einen echten,
tiefen Wert
beimisst.

Rückblick:

Wie die Zeit vergeht.
Schneeweiß dein Haar.
Vor fünfzig Jahren
lernten wir uns kennen.

Geschichten:

Es gibt da einfach.
Da draußen.
So richtig schöne Geschichten.

Bemerkenswert.
Interessant.
Und voller Leben.

Sinn:

Etwas Wertvolles zu finden.
Etwas Wertvolles aufzusammeln.
Tag für Tag.
Das ist die Aufgabe im Leben.
Um nicht mehr geht es,
aber auch nicht um weniger.

Schopenhauer:

An sich ist der Gedanke schon schön: Ein Drang, der diese Welt gestaltet hat.

Nicht zwingenderweise wahr, aber schön.

Bridging the Adaptive landscape:

W. Scott Persons and Philip J. Currie:

"The classic metaphor of the adaptive landscape conceives a hill and valley terrain, where the most beneficial combinations of traits form the tallest peaks (Wright 1932; Simpson 1955). As organisms evolve, they traverse the landscape, with the pressures of natural selection always pushing them uphill. One principle that emerges quickly in light of the metaphor is that lineages are prone to becoming marooned on peaks (Wright 1932; Simpson 1955). That is, the same forces of natural selection that actively drive an evolving lineage to one summit also actively hold the lineage at that local adaptive optimum, regardless of potentially much taller peaks present elsewhere in the landscape. How lineages might overcome such marooning and progress from one adaptive hill to another is a challenging conceptual question and one basic to our understanding of the evolutionary processes."

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Der Gedanke ist schon gut: Die sexuelle Selektion drängt da, setzt da etwas in Bewegung: Führt dazu, dass Organismen einen lokalen Gipfel verlassen.

Erfahrungen:

Hindringen, zur Sache selbst,
Momente, Stunden,
in denen wir erfassen,
oder zu erfassen glauben,
worum es wirklich geht.

All die Jahre:

All die Jahre
kehrte ich mit meinen Gedanken
wieder und wieder
zurück zu dir
und zu unseren gemeinsamen
Erlebnissen.

Gedanken:

Ernste, stille Gedanken.

Solche Gedanken können viel Macht haben,
viel Macht entfalten.

Melancholie und Lebenslust:

Für den Melancholiker ist ja doch irgendwie fast alles schmerzhaft; für die Person mit hyperthymen Temperament fast alles aufregend.

Friends:

They enjoy your company.
They like it, having you around.

Ehrlichkeit:

Wenn eine Person auf ihrem Lebensweg etwas gewinnt,
aber dabei ihre Ehrlichkeit verliert,
dann hat sie netto sehr viel verloren.

Self-Actualization:

A person who became,

somewhere along his life path,

truly, really honest.

Hedonistische Grundeinstellung:

Wenn eine Person Lust sucht, Lust anstrebt,
und/oder vor Schmerz, wann immer möglich, ausweicht.
Als Gegensatz hierzu findet sich eine Einstellung,
der es darum geht, etwas als wertvoll Empfundenes
zu maximieren: Beispielsweise die Ehrlichkeit.
Und das unabhängig davon, ob solch
eine Maximierung mit einem Mehr an Lust
oder einem weniger an Schmerz einhergeht.