What do you do for a living ? Do you love it or hate it?

[squiggly]

I feel you on the instinct level.

My big problem is that I know how the brain works more or less when it comes to crap like this (better than I want to). I actually know less about this kind of stuff (politics, econ, philo, logic, etc) BY FAR than I know about how the brain likes to organize stuff like this--and I am no fucking slouch in those areas (though still far from expert)

I'm as "uneducated" as you when it comes to this stuff--in fact--and that's what I meant (not that you need to school to talk with me, that'd be terrible).

Long story short as possible (since I just went off on a diatribe): the brain likes resolution--if there isn't any, it will manufacture it.

It has to do with how our memories are stored and how we perceive new information.

The brain is constantly filtering material (like a REALLY REALLY ADVANCED "importance separator"). Things that are unimportant, or the brain thinks are unimportant right then--literally fall straight through.

I mean that literally. They are gone not fuzzy. They were never committed to memory. This is part of why eyewitness testimony is shit. The brains ABHORS a vacuum. I wish there was a better word. There needs to be a stronger one.

If your brain could talk, it would talk all day about what a cunt an incomplete memory is. ALL DAY.

Whatever was filtered out must be "assumed" by your brain. Drumming up a memory is intense on-the-fly rendering of the experience itself--but because your brain doesnt download every pixel and sound as it has the experience, in order to reconstruct it it must take some "artistic license" so to speak.

We ALL are compulsed to solve things in this way, it is the hardware we're all stuck with.

TLDR; you are more likely to "feel" something than not to. More likely to come to a belief than not. More likely to arbitrarily assign importance to events which you are more familiar with.

Actually I shouldn't say you, I should say humans.

We all feel like this, as for me--I just choose to be aware of it, and to resist it like the plague.

I wish I could go deeper into the brain talk here, but suffice it to say that the fuckin' thing sets us all up for failure when it comes to predicting complex problems (because it takes MAD shortcuts)--but at the same time it bids us do this 24 hours a day so long as we're awake.

It's nothing more than a very very very very very complex machine. It's a flawed and limited one when it comes to seeking altruism. Don't believe me?

Google "History of Western Man".

 

[caregiverken]

yeah Fractal; Go where the wind blows you...

you dont need no stinking rudder

 

[fishwhistle]

I hate to say it fractal but basically your making yourself sound like a thief,your stealing money from all the rest of us(where do you think grant money comes from?)and your stealing space by taking a seat in a class that someone else might actually appreciate and use to better themselves.Im afraid your karma points dictate that you are nowhere near bottom yet.

 

[fractal]

OK fishwhistle to clear that up, yes i bought a bass with student loans. Which I am now paying back every month. It's not like anybody gave me anything for free - I got money for school that I have to repay with interest. My rent was super cheap at the time and I actually got a 2500 dollar instrument for half price because it was a custom for someone who did not come through on the payment. And I was a music major at the time, without a good quality instrument. To top it off, my first half of my stay at HSU I was using student loans but after about 2 years I was making money and stopped using loans to pay for school and started paying my own way. There is a difference between student loans and food stamps right?
I take offense at your saying I was taking up space in school that someone else deserved more. In fact about 3/4 of my classes over the last 3 semesters I spent finishing my degree were online classes, which up here at my school had no enrollment limits. And besides, they did not offer philosophy that i wanted to take so my second choice was psychology. I still learned something, I was trying to better myself and be productive because there is a shortage of jobs and finishing school was the best option to be productive and work on something constructive after what happened to me in california right before I moved here. For reference, check out my thread from summer of '11 where I said what happened to me. I almost was murdered, had a complete and total nervous breakdown, was a wreck. I had to do something to build myself up and not fall into a dark place and stay there. I just said that it is not my goal to actually practice psychology, I learned quite enough about myself and the rest of the humans I share this planet with and it scared the hell out of me. No way would I want to be immersed in that for a career.


Ken, I hope that was an encouragement and not a roundabout way of calling me a shiftless ne'er-do-well. I have a mighty strong rudder, but sometimes the sea tosses and roars and it is hard to stay the course and impossible to see your port waiting for you beyond the storm.

Squiggs, you know what occured to me is that if we live in a universe governed by quantum mechanics and such, everybody literally sees something different when they look at the same thing. And everybody's truth is their own truth, based on what they intend to observe. So there could be many truths that are all unique and equally valid. Do you agree with that?

 

[squiggly]

Squiggs, you know what occured to me is that if we live in a universe governed by quantum mechanics and such, everybody literally sees something different when they look at the same thing. And everybody's truth is their own truth, based on what they intend to observe. So there could be many truths that are all unique and equally valid. Do you agree with that?

Quantum mechanics doesn't really say that--but I think it's true regardless, because the brain is unique in the way that it decides what truth is. The definition of "you" as a person is totally inextricable from your previous experiences. Since everyone has their own experiences, and none can ever be mirrored exactly--it is quite true that truth and perception will be different for everyone, even if only slightly.

At the same time, while I can accept that--I don't think it really addresses altruism. We aren't all entitled to our own individual truths--rather our brain merely convinces us that we are, and that's really what I was suggesting before.

The brain is going to tell you stuff is true anyway, that is it's job--even me, someone who actively resists this urge, cannot escape the ubiquity of the brain's influence on problem solving and decision making.

This really is why I fall back so much on science. Instead of relying on my own senses, I can follow this set of rules which essentially seeks to remove the experimenter from consideration and isolate the problem. That is the strength of the scientific process, while it can expand the mind--it takes every precaution to keep it the hell out of the experiment itself.

Of course results can always still be mis-interpreted, but the scientific method is fairly careful about this as well. As scientists we're not allowed to say we "proved" something. Instead we must discuss what the evidence suggests or what the experiment demonstrated.

Nothing more clearly illustrates this to me than a scientists treatment of gravity.

While we know gravity exists, and we have precisely figured out how to measure it--we still don't know what the hell it IS really. Technically, gravity is still a theory--as it's never been explained scientifically. We haven't even gotten to "the evidence suggests" on this one yet. People the world over are at a loss.

Now a dude like you might come up and say, "obviously gravity is a thing, and time has proven that it exists."

A dude like me thinks of the word proven as illegal and would have to say, yeah--what goes up comes down, but why? We say "gravity" but the reality is that we don't know why. "Gravity" and our overall understanding of it is just a placeholder for the real explanation that we've yet to find.

This is how I look at a lot of your material. It has merit, it makes a degree of sense--but to my eyes it could all just as well be a placeholder without proof. Gravity "makes sense", too--and we all accept it without question, but that doesn't make our explanation or understanding altruistic.

Altruism is the goal of my life. I want to learn about as many things and the way they actually are as I can.

This is why I don't dismiss your theories but rather question them. If you're wrong, I can't prove it anymore than you can prove you are right. In this way I think we all have our own truth--because we all have different standards for what we accept as truth.

I don't think the universe is so forgiving. I think things are one way, and not another. I believe that truth is one, it's one of my few beliefs (that I offer without proof) that I'm confident in.

If it were not, the universe would be much more chaotic than it is. For all its complexity and strangeness, the universe is EXTREMELY ordered.

 

[caregiverken]

Ken, I hope that was an encouragement and not a roundabout way of calling me a shiftless ne'er-do-well. I have a mighty strong rudder, but sometimes the sea tosses and roars and it is hard to stay the course and impossible to see your port waiting for you beyond the storm.

Get a GPS man.
I was being a sarcastic a hole Bro...sorry. :rolleyes:
"Professional students" have always rubbed me the wrong way..But hey thats my problem

I sincerely hope you find the Port you are looking for Bro!

 

[SatansSon]

electric/mechanical engineer but retired after servin my 35! Nowdays I bitch a whole lot n tinker in my home shop n do some elec repair work on the side. Some of us were being bombed n shot at eaten alive by god damn bugs while we went to "school" in the real world then just felt lucky to be here when we came home n got a real education free. Got a special nerve for people who abuse student loans or just any free loader who dont wanna pay his way. Fractal seems like he has a good heart though folks probably still young too.

 

[squiggly]

OK fishwhistle to clear that up, yes i bought a bass with student loans. Which I am now paying back every month. It's not like anybody gave me anything for free

Little note here.

The problem is that loan funds are finite, and someone else got a smaller allotment because you took something you didn't need. Sure you've got to pay it back, and everyone does--but not only did you take from a general fund intended for people who do need it, you also spent the money outside of accordance with the terms and purposes of the loan.

All in all, it's a tiny effect--so I'm not saying you're a bad dude, but let's not seek to justify that which is unjustifiable.

It was a mistake, you're paying for it--we move on.

 

[squiggly]

And I was a music major at the time, without a good quality instrument. To top it off, my first half of my stay at HSU I was using student loans but after about 2 years I was making money and stopped using loans to pay for school and started paying my own way.

Also, go back to school. It's a waste not to, you're too smart. I'm sad for the rest of us if you don't, frankly.

I hate to hear someone not making it. I could've done a music degree also, had offers from Juliard/Berkely/Birmingham Conservatoire to audition when I was ~16 yrs old. I chose not to go that route so that I could pursue job security.

I have a special place in my heart for those who go after music degrees, especially the smart ones, because I know the balls it takes to expect you'll be able to stand up on your talent alone in such a harsh world. I didn't have them, and I commend you for it.

You're a smart guy, too smart to stay uneducated--even if you don't go to an institution to do it.

I think perhaps a slight problem you have is that you don't have enough respect yet for the time, effort, and millions of lives it took for us to get to where we are right now in human knowledge.

There is so much stuff out there that you don't even have to probe--someone has already done all the probing for you at another time and place, and all of the goodies are just there for the taking.

This is the strength of humans. The ability to pass on, to self-improve efficiently (rather than improving only through the rigors of environment and natural selection)--and for thousands of years now, to actually improve each other without direct contact through written language (this is the MOST POWERFUL thing we have as a species, fuck fire).

You have a healthy distrust for that which is written and has been agreed upon, well perhaps more than healthy (in not the best of ways). I don't think you should abandon that questioning spirit, but at the same time often find myself noticing that you'd have done a little better to know a bit more about what you're talking about first.

I honestly really dig your contributions here, because they show individuality and a strong will. I just think that maybe you should incorporate more of the knowledge generations past have gifted us with before jumping to conclusions about things.

If you don't understand physics, for instance, can you really understand and make quality judgments about a plane crash? You might assume that you know what will happen--but what is the error in your estimate?

I think maybe sometimes you go around assuming that it's zero, as we all do. But it is inevitable that if your understanding isn't concrete, neither will you have the ability to make your assertions firm. Understanding is the glue that holds an argument together, and I think that it should more often be considered the pre-text for formation of a belief (rather than, as our brains would have us do, forming beliefs on the fly at all times).

It perhaps isn't for lack of correctness that you sometimes fall on your face with all that--it has more to do with what you bring to the table in terms of explanation beyond what everyone else who doesn't know up from down is able to parrot.
It interesting to say things, but it's even more interesting to say things you're sure about. I think that we're really only separated by a few degrees of surety, you and I (in terms of what we require to believe something).

You've said before that I'm so smart, yet so stupid sometimes.

Well, I acquiesce to that--and you should, too. Because it is the innate nature of all humans. Education is about bridging that gap, it's about developing understanding where there previously was none and using that to be smart more often than you are stupid.

If you think you can get it right all of the time without education, be my guest--but of all the things I've ever been sure about, I am the most sure that anyone choosing to do so would fail.

I mean education ONLY in terms of developing new experience, or drawing from that of others. I don't think you need a degree or a professor to meet the mark--but I do think perhaps you're a bit lazy sometimes with regard to what constitutes a reliable source (and education can help to curb this as well).

 

[kolah]

Quite simply, I just live.

For me, it's all about being free. I try to live my life disconnected from the mutha fuckin Rat Race. It's easier if you have no debt and only use cash when needed.Barter and trade is best. I have no credit cards and no longer am I a slave to the current system. Whether people want to believe it or not, we are all born into slavery. There is a way out though. :)

I love this quote:

 

[caregiverken]

Very Cool Kolah!
I like that alot!

 

[outwest]

I've hesitated to reply to this. Might get a lot of hate based on assumptions. I worked in the corporate world for many years. Advanced quickly, landed a nice office, salary, benefits, bonuses. . .received accolades for my work. Was very happy and found my work very satisfying for many many years. As I advanced and people who were once my superiors became my peers, I started to lose tremendous respect for many of these folks, and eventually had a break down and called all of them out pretty publicly for being incompetent fools who had let the world pass them by and have stuck their head in the sand while it happened. Kinda my Jerry McGuire moment. As you can imagine it didn't go over well. Somehow I managed to still be able to resign AND get a severance. Through the period of my career falling apart, I poured myself into my garden, and never looked back. Been a rough year. Ended my career, a relationship, struggling health, but I'm happy. My job was making me FUCKING MISERABLE, and while things are tight and I'm living on a budget, I'm blessed to have a budget to live on. I will probably find myself back in corporate life at some point, but I'll have a new perspective, and a more positive outlook. I'm also finding a lot of opportunity in the canna industry, so who knows. As long as I stay positive and out of my own head, good things will come.

outwest

 

[kuz]

Trust me man. . . Humboldt State University is a communist training academy it is just insane. INSANE. But, I gotta give it to you that if I had not taken it so personal, and just sat there laughing at the professors on the inside I could have graduated I was only 2 semesters from it. I was in a very reactionary time while I was there and couldn't let it go. . . But I wanted to LEARN, pure knowledge that is what philosophy is. But instead I got fucking social engineering courses and racial conflict theory instead it really pissed me off. The last straw was when people started calling for my murder in the school newspaper because I wouldn't swallow their ideas on how horrible of a white person with stolen white privilege I am. Philosophy classes should be free of politics and bullshit like that IMO.

Thats why i didnt go to school. Had a lot of older friends coming home from college with weird anti american, evil white man, attitudes. One girl in particular, she is living in Croatia today still preaching how bad us Americans are, at the age of 50, her evil American mom still sends her a package of evil American supplies every month.

But you need the degree just to show you accomplished something. Either that or expect to be self employed.

 

[Seamaiden]

I don't get why people get degrees and don't use them...they aren't cheap;)
Why did you stop growing in the redwood curtain to begin with?

I now advise people to learn a highly skilled technical science or field, such as non-destructive testing in all its various forms. I've watched my stepson, no college, just the education the US Navy gave him in the area, take 2yrs off after getting out (6yrs in), fooled around at taking some classes, took another job at a manufacturing place that gave him real life experience (read: he learned how good he had it in the Navy), and then he pretty much waltzed into a >$60,000/yr job at a *major* facility. He's civilian now, and at 27yo he's positioned to make more scratch than his old man, with better benefits and vacation.


Fuck the college degrees, learn something you can DO. That's what I'm telling young people and their parents now.

Ok, I thought maybe you went to school in Cali and then started growing...

I fully understand not wanting to deal with public workplaces and all...fyi
There are many beautiful people just like the ugly, focusing on the ugly will make them way more visible...

I call it the asshole factor, and different jobs attract different types that contribute to the overall asshole factor.


Aquarium shop, 3% of the customers and co-workers are assholes, so it's a 3% asshole factor.
High end home furnishings shop in busy malls in affluent areas, fully 1 out of every 3 customers is an asshole, so that's a rock solid 33% asshole factor.

Just a couple of examples.


Who else here would work at a zoo or aquarium if given the chance? I won't work primates or large carnivores, but I'm happy to handle pretty much everything else. Oh, I don't care for pinnipeds, at all.

 

[midwestdensies]

This thread went elsewhere.. about how we think and not what we do. I cant read those novels squiggs. be more concise, how about just not turning blue at the face bc none of us will change. Just had to comment.
MW

 

[coloradochem]

started outta high school on a directional underground bore crew, putting in utility services. really cool job. had a really bad dirt bike accident, and had to quit, went to school for a year. and got a summer job framing houses.... oh id shoot that guy if he was still alive, lol. went from the house rat stuff to commercial, took a side step and learned to finish drywall, then got to welding, started welding clips, and straps on studs. and worked my way up to structural and red iron. loved it hated it, but mostly hated it. Burning rod 40plus hrs a week gets old fast, and the politics and ua's were too much for me. when the economy got bad, i ran and seldom look back. didnt do shit for a cple years, tried to sell cantalope, that didnt work out. tried to sell fireworks that didnt work out lol. really bad timing haha.
Now i grow full time, love my new gig dont know how long itll last, but im having fun while it does.
No regrets

 

[Aligee]

This thread went elsewhere.. about how we think and not what we do. I cant read those novels squiggs. be more concise, how about just not turning blue at the face bc none of us will change. Just had to comment.
MW

very true...

 

[putembk]

Good thread. Lot of interesting reading here. Have learned a lot about members on this forum. Some surprise me, you are living a very good life.
Take it from an old geez. No matter how educated you are It is easy to succeed in this country, all you need is determination. For the most part Americans are lazy and want to take the easy way out. Dosen't matter what walk of life you come from it is easy to be the best at what ever you do, you just get off your ass and do it. I always had the attitude that I will be the best at what ever I was trying to accomplish. It worked for me and It will for you as well if you are a self starter and have a lot of drive and determination.

 

[outwest]

Good thread. Lot of interesting reading here. Have learned a lot about members on this forum. Some surprise me, you are living a very good life.
Take it from an old geez. No matter how educated you are It is easy to succeed in this country, all you need is determination. For the most part Americans are lazy and want to take the easy way out. Dosen't matter what walk of life you come from it is easy to be the best at what ever you do, you just get off your ass and do it. I always had the attitude that I will be the best at what ever I was trying to accomplish. It worked for me and It will for you as well if you are a self starter and have a lot of drive and determination.

I have a similar, slightly more complicated outlook. It takes 3 things to be successful. . . You gotta be smart, you gotta be willing to work hard, and you gotta have a positive attitude. If you take a person with those 3 traits, they will be successful in any context. It's certainly worked for me.

outwest

 

[sky high]

Been a hard one for me to reply to as well... Damn...like this thread...my life is so fuckin' scattered anymore...it's crazy. Anywayz...

Can't say how it will play out in the future for the young uns with the whole college thing seamaiden....

But for me....who dropped out of college my Junior year to "make money" (to pay legal bills from a pot bust in '77)...vs. the wife...who graduated With a BS in Accounting and went on to get her Masters... the amount of $$$ we have each made to toss into the mutual pool has been like night and day. So much so, in fact, that we have had roll reversals for 20 years where she worked and I was "Mom". And fuck...I'm never goin back to work at a "job" @ this point....LOL. I'll leave that to you young uns!! I'm a kept man! The wife is at the same job she's held for 27 years....and I hold down the fort.... but changes are ahead @ some point.

We're at the "How much $$$ do you really need to make it through?" point in life.... not the "How do we get..." point of life....>especially< after losing our oldest son.

To encapsulate....More "life"...rather than defining what we do for a "living", is where we are heading. We may do other things to stay busy...but by choice...not full-on financial need.
Unless it all goes to Hell...I think we'll at least have food and paid for land/shelter til we die with the $$$ we have on hand right now. (we are not planning AT ALL on Social Security and have our own gig)

But to keep in line with the topic.... after dropping out of college I was a machinist in my dad's shop for 6 years. Mills/lathes/CNC/MIG welding/etc/etc/etc. Hated it. (tho I miss having access to the tools/machines)

Got the wife the Master's and she found a job here in Paradise in '84. I couldn't get out of Missouri (Misery) fast enough. I took a job on the ski hill and worked 4 days a week/was on skiis 7 days a week. (loved it) Worked on the Golf course in the Summer/ski hill for 6-7 years til I started my own irrigation/landscape gig. Did that for a few years til my body got tired of being broken....and put the shovel down for good. (ouch..still hatin it)

Built a house in 90... started growing as a side gig....worked a few more years at hourly wage kind gigs.. ski shop...parking garage attendant...and then bagged it all and started staying home with my boys when the daycare bill got larger than my paycheck. Played the garden thing as best I could on the side and still be stealth...and never relied on it for steady income. This was pre-Internet/pre-easy anything regarding growing... (loved it)

Fast forward 15 years.... kids grown enough to see it all go down.... we have some fun blowin shit up...then the Holder/Ogden memo hits and everyone else finds their balls when it gets safe to do so and we have less and less success as the years go along. Thankfully though....as before...we never relied on pot for income/our soul existence.....and even when it was VERY good money the money wasn't as good as the wage the wife makes with her Masters on a consistent basis. Yup...those checks just keep coming. (love it)

Education over cultivation...always, kids. Otherwise...yer hourly...or if you do get a good job you WILL top out on where you can go cus while you may have experience, you don't have the qualifications to advance. My bro in law is right there...Navy guy...good job.... watches as those who spent/went to college get ahead and he is topped out on pay.... fact of life. Right or wrong....

Me...I'm at the crossroads. One son has passed on...the other is away at college (we paid for for it all cus we saved for it since they were born)... I'm still at home....no game...no income. Still have a whoppin' garden cus my red card/the law says I can...and give a lot away 'cus I'm just pissed and fell like it warrants it/is the only way I can rail back against the State/the Centers legally for fuckin up the game. I basically had my rug pulled out from under me all around in the last 2 years...kid died... circus came to town with masses of greedy, self-entitled clowns in tow.... and LIMBO has ensued...

But hope is not lost. 30+ years of hammering away...time to cash in on a buncha long-term investments/real estate and do something different...like farmin' and kickin' back on some land we've been lookin at that has a stream like in the vid.....and letting the rat race run amuck/over everyone else....completely unnoticed...for as long as we can.

For once...it's good to be the old fuck.