Weekly Roundup: 7/16/21

This Week on Better Questions

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Fast-Tracking Progress With a Quarterly Review, Part 3: Stabilization

Why is exponential growth so often followed by collapse?

Deep Dive

Stabilization / Crab In a Bucket

This week, we're talking about why understanding the natural ebb and flows caused by reinforcing and stabilizing feedback loops is so critical:

It helps us avoid psychic self-harm.

Something On My Radar:

The Ultimate Jim Rohn Library on Audible

Jim Rohn is one of the godfathers of the "self help" genre, and, in fact, the original coiner of the term "personal development." This is 11 straight hours of live and pre-recorded material, covering a wide-array of typical self-help subjects.

Rohn remains an original. His delivery is folksy and charming. The lessons are nothing you haven't heard before - that's kind of the point. It's a bit like getting advice from a grandparent - both soothing and challenging.

I've been listening to this on walks rather than podcasts, and he's as good at putting some pep in your step as he was 30 years ago.

He won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I've got an incredible soft spot for this kind of thing, complete with cheesy synth interludes.

Five Interesting Links For The Weekend:

Huxley, Burroughs, and the Church of Scientology

I had no idea Huxley and Burroughs were into Scientology. If you've ever wondered what the appeal could have been, this article does a fairly good job of digging into it. "Here and now, boys!"

Talk of toxic masculinity puts the blame in all the wrong places

A criticism of "toxic masculinity" discourse, from the left (or, at the very least, from a "progressive" perspective on gender and class, rather than a conservative one).

That which is unique, breaks

"Love and effort create magnificent places. Genius inhabits them. People go to them because they know such places and landscapes offer consolation of the soul, and the soul is not fooled by substitutes. We let those places turn our moods, we want them to, they do so easily. Today it is not always hard to find such places, but why is it difficult to make new ones?"

Looking for COVID-19 ‘Miracle Drugs’? We Already Have Them. They’re Called Vaccines

A rousing defense of vaccines, and a far more skeptical rounding up of the Ivermectin conversation than I've seen.

How deep brain stimulation changes a person’s sense of confidence

"Why, exactly, is DBS so transformative – not just eliminating OCD symptoms, but increasing self-confidence and openness to the world? And how can we make sense of self-confidence in the context of electrically induced changes in the brain?"

I'm a sucker for any neuroscience article that gets into Being and Time.

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