2024apr29: I think this wants to be a more substantial post about attention. consider my recent conversation with dinesh about focus and epistemology… letting go of preexisting frames and assumptions, being genuinely open and curious

thread

I never really understood the whole “empty your cup” and “unlearn what you have learned” thing until maybe a couple of years ago. Like, intellectually it sorta made sense, but… is it really that big a deal?

It actually is, IMO, and I’m wondering now how I learned to see it

I think it might‘ve been a consequence of being exposed to a much larger number of people and having lots of conversations – over time I noticed that some people were bringing all their baggage to every conversation, while others were listening intently

“never be looking so hard for something that you fail to see what is there” – there’s a quote like this and I’ve seen people retweet saying “ah it’s about journalism” and others saying “ah it’s about scientific discovery” and “ah it’s about parenting” ~It’s about life~

If you start looking for it there are tonnes of gems throughout the history of art and culture and storytelling that try to convey this. In TDKR, Batman couldn’t make the leap until he let go of the rope. A metaphor for letting go, more broadly, in general

We can probably graph this in some way. When we’re holding on to preexisting ideas abt what we’re looking for, who we’re talking to, etc – there’s a sort of Procrustean effect. We mostly only see what we’re looking for. It makes us slow, stupid. We fail to notice nuance, surprise

We might *feel* fast and smart, but we’re only fast and smart within the narrow bounds of the game that we think we’re playing. When we are fixated on the game we think we’re playing, we close ourselves off from playing a bigger, better, more interesting game

Circling back to “active listening” – that’s another thing that sounded dumb to me. I hear what you’re saying, why do I have to be all… wooey… about it? But I’ve grown to realize that words they say are like ~20% of what’s being communicated

The best questions you can ask someone is in that space where you’re paying close attention to them – to their face, their expressions, their body language, and you notice that they’re holding back in some way. They might not even realize themselves that they’re doing that!

This is true for regular conversation too, and I think it’s true of comedy, wit, and of business – IMO I almost always want to be willing + able to drop my current routine/pattern instantly in order to respond quickly and nimbly to what’s in front of me

At the heart of this, I think, is a question: do we allow life to surprise us? Bc everything we think we know is a *tiny* fragment of the world. The world *will* surprise us, in both good & bad ways. Emptying your cup is about refusing to be in denial

✱

(dec2022 thread) a tragic thing is the dozens of exchanges i’ve had with acquaintances over the years where they’re struggling with something and imo they basically need a reality check but i’m not the right person to deliver it to them because we’re not that close

it’s kinda meta too, it’s usually a thing that’s keeping them from experiencing closeness with other people

or a thing that’s keeping them from getting to the next level that they think/say they want to get to, but their demeanor says otherwise

this is what I mean by “their demeanor says otherwise”. they have a glazed over look, yup. they’re not really listening. they’ve already decided. to get them to listen would require a kind of magic-trick class “shock to the system” which is a LOT of effort for me to orchestrate

there comes a point in conversations where people can tell if you’re really listening or if you’re not. this cleaves outcomes into two camps, the people whose lives seem magically full of serendipity, and ppl who just cant seem to get anywhere

the problem isn’t that they don’t know the problem. the problem is that they think they know the problem. if they admitted they don’t know, we can help them. in fact, anyone can help them. even a child can help them, if they’re really listening.

this is what Empty Your Cup is about

you can see it in groups of friends, in scenes, etc, when a bunch of people have Made Up Their Minds about stuff and they’re not interested in listening. and then there are other people who have decided to set up camp and have a fruitless conversation with the non-listeners

this is how we get sitcom dynamics

we cannot help people who are too busy to REALLY listen. not in the moment, anyway. we can try and leave them some breadcrumbs that they might trace back after some crash event

this is also what i was screaming about here (I cannot help you if you don’t fucking read!!!). knowing what words mean and reciting them does not mean you are actually reading

I get it, there are lots of reasons why people might be functionally incapable of listening or reading:

mostly just kinda sad to witness people blunder around with blinders on – and if anyone tries to intervene head-on, often they’ll fly into a rage about it, or otherwise be really obstinate and difficult and unpleasant to deal with. so their suffering will continue

10000+ interactions with people later, I’m actually fairly convinced that, in the general case, “give them breadcrumbs they can trace back after some crash event”, is close to the best move, in terms of bang for buck

the most intuitive/common version of this that people encounter is probably, your friend is dating someone who’s obviously bad for them, and they’re someone who doesn’t appreciate having their judgement questioned. so what do you do?

“nothing” is actually a solid workhorse of an answer. because the wrong answer can ruin the friendship. I’ve seen it happen. (and, meta: at a higher level view you get to ask yourself, do you want to be friends with people like that? there’s no global right answer, its up to u)

like how in some video games you need high charisma etc to unlock the more interesting conversational options – stuff that works well here is socratic questioning IF YOU CAN PULL IT OFF WITH SINCERE INTEREST + WITHOUT CONDESCENSION

I do this with friends I care about, but with acquaintances its like, do they even want that conversation? seldom. I’ve had mutuals unfollow me over situations where I ask them questions, fairly gently but persistently, that they then take 2-3 years to come around to themselves

it used to be, “i can see how it plays out but i can’t do anything about it”, now it’s like, “I can see how it plays out, and I can help, but the cost/benefit on that is seriously not in my favor”, which in some ways is more bleak,

but so it goes, such is life, lol, ayy lmao

i know that the adversarial read of this is “visa has a messiah/savior complex and thinks he was put on this earth to solve people’s problems”, to which, oof, touche, i’m working on that lol, but also yeah I have helped loads of people with their problems and hammer/nail etc

having made a tremendous positive difference to some subset of people can be a bit of a mindfuck to experience – this has you veering towards the Excruciatingly Meaningful part of the equation and you gotta steer back