Mission

Mission #3: Design and execute a simple deliberate practice routine for “expressing an idea clearly and systematically” using the Ben Franklin method (as explained in the essay above). 100 input scenarios should do the trick. Output dimensions would be (a) providing a concrete example (like factorial(3) = 3 * 2 * 1 = 6 when teaching someone about factorial), (b) stating the observations and hypotheses, and (c) having the output of one sentence flow as the input of the next sentence (e.g., data from my computer goes to my wireless router, then from my wireless router to Google’s data center, and through maybe a few more data centers, before it comes to your router, and then to your computer). You are free to use more dimensions. The idea is that you take a trouble ticket, make brief notes, later write your version from the notes, compare to a better response using the output dimensions, and try again. If other TT responses are unavailable, you can work with articles that you think were written clearly. 1 week.

The Benjamin Franklin Method

The book ‘Talent is Overrated’ seems to suggest that greatness is not only for a select few. In fact there exists a path that runs between your current abilities to that of the greats. The journey will be hard, long and demanding. Not many will follow it all the way till the end. But if you do, you become something else entirely. So what is this path?

In the book ‘Talent is Overrated’, the differences between people proficient in a skill and people who are outright great is brought out. The difference was about who did more ‘Deliberate Practice’ (DP). DP is not the same as practice; you know the kind where you hit the golf ball 10000 times without measuring key output dimensions such as distance covered, timing and accuracy. DP and its five elements are mentioned in ‘Talent is Overrated’:

Deliberate practice is characterized by several elements, each worth examining. It is activity designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help; it can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally, whether the activity is purely intellectual, such as chess or business-related activities, or heavily physical, such as sports; and it isn’t much fun.

All this theory is great but…

All theory and no actual practice makes STM’s and Agent’s dull boys

Ok, Let’s become great. For this we need to first start with designing a DP routine. Designing a DP routine for things like sports, music and games, seems to be not too hard, especially considering all the knowledge, technology and coaches available. For example, if you consider a game like chess, the way to DP, is to compare what move you would make in a particular position and compare that to the move of a grandmaster; Of course this needs to be repeated way too many times on millions of scenarios before you become GREAT. There are tons of books and videos to practice from as well. For things like “critical thinking”, “logical reasoning” it seems to be really hard to come up with DP routines. I made an attempt here.

It was hard as f*ck just to design DP workouts! But more concerning is that I failed to meet the characteristics of DP. For example, look at the characteristic, “Feedback on results is continuously available”. In the design for “training to determine EE”, I never really got to something where I would get continuous feedback. I was suggesting in the design, to make a blog post out of a practice session to get feedback. This would mean getting feedback a week later and this doesn’t seem to be continuous feedback. Some other DP designs were vague and I had no idea if it would work even. For example, the one with “training to identify claims of EE”. I had suggested reading news paper articles to determine if something had EE or not. I have no idea if and how this is going to work, and what it would mean to have EE and what it would mean to not. The other examples were like this as well. In the end, it was hard, I didn’t really come up with much useful things.

But then we have clear examples in the ‘Talent is Overrated’ book on how to DP. One such example was based on Benjamin Franklin (BF).

Benjamin Franklin was “America’s first great man of letters” in the view of David Hume and many others, so we might naturally wonder how he came to be the extraordinary writer he was.

— Talent is Overrated, Chapter 7

What he did to become who he was, was roughly like this:

First, he found examples of prose clearly superior to anything he could produce, a bound volume of the Spectator, the great English periodical written by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. Any of us might have done something similar. But Franklin then embarked on a remarkable program that few of us would ever have thought of. It began with his reading a Spectator article and making brief notes on the meaning of each sentence; a few days later he would take up the notes and try to express the meaning of each sentence in his own words. When done, he compared his essay with the original, “discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.”

— Chapter Seven, Talent is Overrated

An STM designed and executed a DP routine based on the BF method here. In my case (according to the mission), I would need to get into designing DP for “expressing an idea clearly and systematically”. To emulate Benji’s method, some superior work (imho) is to be used that “expresses an idea clearly and systematically”. So you find the superior work. You then need to make minimal notes on meaning conveyed a few sentences at a time, rewrite them in your own words, and when done compare with the original. Observe how you and the author of the superior work fare against a set of output dimensions. Hitting 10k balls and not clearly understanding how to compare each hit is useless. How do you compare? On what output dimensions do you compare? That is the precise question that will provide feedback, like when you are under the Hogainagal waterfall, instant and harsh. The blog written by an STM, captures this very well and we will use that as our blueprint to design our DP.

Expressing an idea clearly and systematically

‘Revenge or Grow’ I think is definitely one of the fine works by an STM, much superior to my writing for sure. This essay I think has communicated the idea about ‘what to do when you are hurt emotionally?’, really well. To this day I come back to read this essay, to read the solution in times of need. The reasons and examples used to pursue the reader to give up drama are very persuasive. They are superior to anything I have come up with so far. I suspect I couldn’t have come up with the solution by myself and hence my mighty respect. I think as a direct consequence of this and experiencing what the author expresses about drama, I try to remove drama from my life, even if it means to swallow my pride and say sorry, because peace is important, you want to focus on the bigger and more important battles in life, and not f*cking how to get back at your colleague for some lame attacks he made on you.

So the superior example is this article “Revenge or grow”.

Rough Notes

  • what do you do when people hurt you
  • two options: revenge or grow
  • Revenge would be some sort of punishment, insult or not doing something that he might want
  • it would feel good to deliver an insult or the punishment
  • what if your revenge attempt fails
  • way ahead practice attacking
  • while in revenge-mode you are being eaten from inside
  • mind lives for situations like this
  • good luck thinking about other things
  • alternative is to forgive, and move on?
  • they will continue to attack you
  • how to move on? what does it mean to move on?
  • generate value, enrich your life
  • social life is not the only life
  • if you don’t retaliate people are going to make fun more. But quality of life decreases even more.

Rewriting in my own words

What is the best course of action when someone hurts you? and Why?

People might pick on you, make a lot of people laugh at everything that you do, not stick up for you in a moment of need, randomly get angry at you etc… If you are like me then these things would hurt you. And then you have two options, to make revenge or to grow.

Taking revenge is about providing some sort of punishment to the person who wronged you. Say if he insulted you in front of everybody, then you wait for the right moment and try to insult him back or somehow seek the upper hand. But what if your revenge attempt fails?

Your life then starts to suck even more. Winning against someone who has forever practiced only this, is going to be really hard, and you might want to remember the times you failed when you engaged in drama. Hmmm! So the way ahead seems to be to deliberately practice attacking and get better at it. Is that it? Is this the whole picture? Nope! What happens when someone wrongs you? Introducing, drama.

How do you feel when you are involved in a drama? You constantly think about it, you are consumed by it. You think of ways of getting back at the people who wronged you. You run scenarios in your mind where you are verbally battling with them. You have other things to do, well too bad, drama is still more important for your brain. If your colleague came at you hard in front of everyone for a small mistake, drama starts. The worst thing is you could be waiting for the next opportunity to bring him down and the back and forth could last until one of ya’ll leave the company. So you would always need to be on your guard, and all this for what? The great BRAIN is evolved for things like this. It loves social battles, and it lives for things like this. The Brain lives for it but doesn’t mean you should go along with it.

So what is the alternative? Forgive, move on, get on with the important things in your life. Don’t engage in drama. But how? The next time you find yourself in a situation where people laugh at you, smile and move on, despite all your instincts to retaliate. The next time your colleague comes at you in anger for a really small mistake you did in front of everyone -even though he has made similar mistakes- swallow your pride, say sorry, move on. If this type of drama extends in a few parts of your life, that is enough to give up everything important to you. Drama is not worth engaging in due to the consequences. It consumes you. It eats you alive. Someone gets to live in your head rent free.

Whether you retaliate or not, people are going to come back for more, for their own amusement. People are not going to magically change. But in any case, engaging in drama decreases the quality of your life as it consumes you and does not allow you to focus on important things in your life. You need to realize that social life is not the only life you have. Instead you could focus on creating value, enriching your life. Work on important problems that need attentions, and gain the respect from your work, play sports and get better at skills, instead of by engaging in drama which is more like playing poker with High card.

Output dimensions

This whole comparing thing is going to be really hard to come up with, as we are talking about something so vague and subjective as “expressing an idea clearly and systematically. Instead of discovering my own dimensions, I shall start with some output dimensions that an STM has provided (in the mission) and get some more from criticalthinking.org. I scanned the whole of criticalthinking.org and along with STM’s suggestion (in the section ‘Mission’) we have the following:

  1. state one point at a time

    This would mean to identify the main ideas amongst a set of sentences or paragraphs. The main ideas will be delivered in series i.e., first idea, explanation, followed by second idea, explanation.

  2. Elaborate on what you mean

    The identified main ideas should be elaborated on with more than one sentence atleast.

  3. Give example(s) that connect your thoughts to life experiences

    This is straight forward. Examples regarding the central idea connecting to life experiences.

  4. Give analogies and metaphors to help people connect your ideas to the things that they already understand (for example, critical thinking is like an onion, the way you cut it will determine whether your eyes bleed tears or not).

    Analogies and figures of speech shall be available atleast to communicate all the main ideas identified.

  5. State the observations and hypothesis

  6. Have the output of one sentence flow into the other

    Each sentence should connect with the following sentence. What does it mean? Words from one sentence are found in the second sentence? A question is followed by an answer (unless rhetoric)?

    Not like this:

    “But what if your revenge attempt fails? Winning against someone who has practiced this forever, is going to be really hard, and you might want to remember the time you failed when you engaged in drama.”

    The jump between the first and the second sentence is a lot. One sentence does not flow into the other sentence. The second sentence is long and has more than one point in it which makes it quite confusing. The connection for those points is missing as well. Instead,

    Maybe like this:

    “But what if your revenge attempt fails? Your life sucks even more than it did when your colleague put you down. Imagine the times when you failed after engaging in drama, how did you feel? How long did you obsess over it?. We need to realize that there are always going to be people (colleagues) who are better than us in delivering snubs or hurting you, i.e., there is a good chance your life is going to suck if you are engaging in drama. So, it appears to be lost cause to pursue revenge, unless you engage in DP and get extremely better at attacking as a result.

  7. Irrelevant point should not be focused on

    Are there any deviations from the main focus central idea of the essay? Are some questions that could be answered.

  8. Do not miss any relevant points

    Did the author miss to investigate something or miss to consider other relevant points?

  9. Are assumptions justified?

    What are the assumptions and are they justified, if crucial?

Measuring

STM:

Revenge or Grow: Entry question: What do you do when somebody hurts your feelings? What if they do it on purpose?

The two buttons: Here’s the scenario: somebody wrongs you. They screw you in some way. They cheat you in some way. Or make fun of you in a harsh manner - they laugh at you, not with you. Or they hit you where they know it hurts.

You have two buttons in front of you: Revenge and Grow. Take Revenge. Or ignore the injury and Grow.

Which button do you press?

The basic idea is simple. Someone pushes your buttons. They make you feel low-status. Or they make fun of something you care deeply about. Or they are deliberately non-compliant - they purposefully refuse to do something you ask for even though you would have done the same without fuss. What do you do?

ME:

What is the best course of action when someone hurts you? and Why?

People might pick on you, make a lot of people laugh at everything that you do, not stick up for you in a moment of need, randomly get angry at you etc… If you are like me then these things would hurt you. And then you have two options, to make revenge or to grow.

Rule #1: People get hurt by people who make fun of them and the two buttons are the two main ideas. But I think an STM does not deliver them serially, i.e., one point at a time. The first point is delivered and then the next, followed by some discussion of the first point again. It looks a bit repetitive coming to think of it. I think I stuck to delivering the two ideas serially in this case. 0-1 for Agent.

Rule #2: I think both of us elaborate on the first main idea People get hurt .... For the second point most of the info is expected to be delivered in the coming sections. Something that I didn’t do is, I didn’t really expand on this word grow, whereas an STM does, with “ignoring the injury and grow”. This word needs some explanation as there is not much context yet. Strike for me I guess. 1-0 for STM.

Rule #3: I think an STM and I do enough, by delivering atleast 2-3 examples to express the main idea. 1-1.

Rule #4: I think an STM used 3 metaphors with “hit you where it hurts”, “pushing your buttons” & “You have two buttons in front of you”. I don’t think I do have any analogies or metaphors even, to convey the points better. 1-0.

Rule #5: The whole essay by an STM does not seem to have an observation-hypothesis paradigm, and mine doesn’t either. 0-0

I am not able to imagine what an observation-hypothesis paradigm of explanation would look like for the above case or for that matter this whole essay.

Rule #6: Output of one sentence flows into the other until the second main idea is stumbled on.

Or they hit you where they know it hurts.

You have two buttons in front of you:

What I think this rule expects is a segue. Something like the following:

Or they hit you where they know it hurts. So, what do you do? You have two buttons in front of you:

In my case, it seems to be in flow. 0-1 Agent

Rule #7: I think both STM and I stick to not saying anything that is not relevant to the central point of getting hurt. 1-1

Rule #8: I don’t think any relevant points are missed. 1-1

Rule #9: Are there any assumptions that are crucial? Is “there are two buttons” an assumption? Is this crucial? I am not sure of what is expected with this “assumption” rule, as criticalthinking.org routinely doesn’t seem to give examples for what they deliver. Skip.

Score: 5-5 on 9, for both Agent and STM.

An STM:

Agneepath? What does social revenge look like? Are we talking about going out and causing some grievous harm to the other person? Nah. What do you think of doing when someone causes you social harm?

You may snub the other person. You may become non-compliant in return when they ask you for something they want. You may insult them and make them feel low-status in some way, if you have the skill. You screw them when you have the opportunity. Or, if you have the stomach, you hit them where you know it hurts them most. You make fun of something that they care deeply about.

Games humans play in the social world. In other words, it’s punishment time.

ME:

Taking revenge is about providing some sort of punishment to the person who wronged you. Say if he insulted you in front of everybody, then you wait for the right moment and try to insult him back or somehow seek the upper hand. But what if your revenge attempt fails?

Rule #1: STM and I talk about the one idea revenge. 1-1

Rule #2: STM and I perform elaboration of revenge. 1-1

Rule #3: STM has a couple of general examples we would see in life, whereas I have no examples. 1-0

Rule #4: This part is interesting, an STM gives an analogy for social revenge with this movie ‘Agneepath’, which is also the heading. He also uses figures of speeches like “Games humans play in the social world”, which I think is a simile connecting social revenge and Games. I have not used analogies or figures of speeches. 1-0

Rule #5: There are not really any observations or hypothesis. 0-0

Rule #6: I think both of us have decent flow from one sentence to another. 1-1

Rule #7: I think both of us stay focused on what is relevant, i.e., in this case, we stay focused on the idea of revenge. 1-1

Rule #8: I don’t think there are other relevant points to consider. 1-1

Rule #9: There are no assumptions and hence no justifications for the assumptions.

Score: 6-4 on 10 for STM

STM:

The tongue is mightier than the sword: What could possibly go wrong if you press the Revenge button? Sure, you get the joy of being vindicated. You feel the self-righteous satisfaction of punishing someone who has committed a moral crime. But what could go wrong?

Maybe your revenge attempt fails. Maybe it doesn’t hurt them because you’re not good at delivering snubs. Or maybe they realize that you’re trying to hurt them and that kinda deflates your whole plan cos their shields are up.

But you could argue that the way ahead is to learn how to deliver such social attacks better. The most popular members of any social network have fine-tuned the art of cutting a person to pieces. They can humiliate and ridicule anybody, on any topic, anywhere. It’s a prerequisite for becoming Queen Bee or Mr. Popular.

The ability to tear a person to shreds is indeed very handy when you want to keep your social status intact. So, is that the way forward? To mitigate any risks of backfiring, should you learn to dole out punishment better?

ME:

…But what if your revenge attempt fails?

Your life then starts to suck even more. Winning against someone who has forever practiced only this, is going to be really hard, and you might want to remember the times you failed when you engaged in drama. Hmmm! So the way ahead seems to be to deliberately practice attacking and get better at it. Is that it? Is this the whole picture? Nope! What happens when someone wrongs you? Introducing, drama.

Rule #1: The main points seem to be, what happens if revenge goes wrong , what happens if revenge goes right and the need to practice social attacks. I do not think each point is delivered one at a time by an STM. An STM has delivered the line “What could possibly go wrong if you press the revenge button?” as part of the first point, but then he immediately moves on to the next main idea what happens if revenge goes right, and comes back to what happens if revenge goes wrong. This does not seem to be delivering one point at a time. Strike for STM. In my case I skip the point on what happens if revenge goes right altogether. Which is more like violating Rule #8. 0-1 for Agent

Rule #2: I think both elaborate enough on the main points. 1-1

Rule #3: I have failed to deliver any examples unlike an STM, who gave examples for all main ideas. 1-0

Rule #4: STM gets this rule right once again, right from his heading “tongue is mightier than the sword”, to “cutting someone to shreds”, to “Queen Bee Mr. Popular”. Good analogies and figures of speeches. Big strike for me. 1-0

Rule #5: I don’t think any observations and hypotheses are considered here by both. 0-0

Rule #6: There seems to be good flow from one sentence/paragraph to the other, in the form of rhetoric questions in STM’s case, for most of the section. As pointed in the discussion of Rule #1, an STM seems to have gone back and forth with the first two main points. This automatically seems to violate this rule as well. Looking at the two sentences in isolation seems to confirm the Strike for STM:

What could possibly go wrong if you press the Revenge button? Sure, you get the joy of being vindicated.

In my case, the flow seems to be really off. I go from “Your life then starts to suck even more.” to “Winning against someone who has forever practiced only this, …”. There is nothing inbetween that connects these two sentences. Instead I think it would be better if I said something like the following, to ensure flow:

“But what if your revenge attempt fails? Your life then starts to suck even more. Unless you are like the Queen Bee or Mr. popular, the chances of your revenge failing (i.e., life sucking even more) is quite high. So the way ahead seems to be to deliberately practice attacking and getting better at it. Is that it? Is this the whole picture? …”

0.5-0

Rule #7: I don’t think anything said by both an STM and I was irrelevant. 1-1

Rule #8: I never really explicitly considered what it would mean to win a revenge attempt. I missed that. Although the value in this case might not be much, it looks like it is a pitfall. I should talk about all cases, not wave it off with my hand. Strike! 1-0

Rule #9: “The most popular members of any social network have fine-tuned the art of cutting a person to pieces”, is an assumption from an STM’s side. This assumption is not crucial, other than for delivering the point. Anecdotal evidence would suggest as an STM says. This rule has not really been clear to me from the beginning, should I flag every assumption? I think this assumption doesn’t need any justification. More on this on the section on reflection.

Score: 5.5-3 on 9 for STM

STM:

Consumed in fire (Note: These symptoms may not be typical. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe others have a less visceral reaction.)

Let’s assume that you can punish people at will when they threaten your social status. What then? What effect is it having on you? Apart from giving you visceral pleasure, that is.

Could it be eating you from the inside? Could you become too immersed in the social games and forever be in the grasp of yet another joy-reward hurt-punishment cycle? Could you give so much importance to winning in your social life that you lose track of what you want to achieve in the other areas of your life?

We were built to survive and thrive in a social world. Much of the complexity of our brain is said to have evolved to handle the pressures of social life. In fact, it is a big deal for your mind when something goes wrong in the social world. That’s why shame and fear of ridicule can easily snuff out any brief flames of motivation you have for achieving something against the norm.

It’s safe to say that when you engage with strong social activities like revenge or punishment, they will consume your mind. It will be hard to think about anything else. Your mind is like MS Dhoni in the last five overs of a cricket match. This is what it lives for.

Try as you might to divert it, your mind will insist on obsessing about all the ways in which they have screwed you and how you can make them pay for it. Your mind will defend itself by saying that it is just about deterrence. Like, you know, hitting the baddies hard so that they know not to mess with you again.

ME:

How do you feel when you are involved in a drama? You constantly think about it, you are consumed by it. You think of ways of getting back at the people who wronged you. You run scenarios in your mind where you are verbally battling with them. You have other things to do, well too bad, drama is still more important for your brain. If your colleague came at you hard in front of everyone for a small mistake, drama starts. The worst thing is you could be waiting for the next opportunity to bring him down and the back and forth could last until one of ya’ll leave the company. So you would always need to be on your guard, and all this for what? The great BRAIN is evolved for things like this. It loves social battles, and it lives for things like this. The Brain lives for it but doesn’t mean you should go along with it.

Rule #1: So the main points of this section seems to be consumption in drama, brain being evolved for the social world and actual impact of engaging in drama. It looks like an STM seems to talk about one point at a time. For me, I seem to be talking about actual impact of engaging in drama and brain being evolved for the social world. But I think I violated this rule. I initially talk about the actual impact of engaging in drama, but suddenly for like a sentence I go to the next main point and then come back to the first point. How much the drama means to the brain, seems to be related to brain being evolved for social world. The changed version below (change shown in the form of strike-through) should pass rule #1.

… You run scenarios in your mind where you are verbally battling with them. You have other things to do, well too bad, drama is still going to consume you. well too bad, drama is still more important for your brain. If your colleague came at you hard…

Strike! 1-0

Rule #2: I just started off with this word called drama. What is meant by it is not clear. Other wise it looks fine for both of us. It is still a Strike for half a point atleast. 1-0.5

Rule #3: I think both of us have enough examples. 1-1

Rule #4: Analogies, for sure an STM has given. “Your mind is like MS Dhoni in the last five overs of a cricket match. This is what it lives for.”, Epic! Indeed I have never thought of writing or explaining things in this dimension until it was explicitly brought to my notice recently. Hopefully in the coming articles. 1-0

Rule #5: It is more like a question answer session rather than a observation, hypothesis paradigm. Same with me. More like conclusions as a result of observations. I am continuing to not be sure if this framework might work for this type of essay. 0-0

Rule #6:

It looks ok, but I see that I might have combined or introduced randomly the “brain” in this sentence “You have other things to do, well too bad, drama is still more important for your brain.”. I read this para a few times and felt it slightly all over the place as well. Whereas when I read an STM’s delivery it seemed to be much better.

I think one flaw in the flow is that I don’t keep the two central ideas discussed separate, i.e., I deliver that “drama is still more important for your brain” right in the middle of the first main idea. And I don’t do anything more with it, until a few sentences later. Messing up the first rule seems to automatically mess up this rule.

Another thing I noticed is that I want to inform the audience that engaging in drama takes a lot of your time and f*cks up important things with the following:

The worst thing is you could be waiting for the next opportunity to bring him down and the back and forth could last until one of ya’ll leave the company

I started abruptly by delivering the example, and I didn’t take it much further. Instead I moved on to the next point. The flow was hence missing or the connections were missing between multiple sentences. I would like to rewrite the passage focusing on flow. This is done below with some comments in the brackets:

“How do you feel when you are involved in a drama? You constantly think about it, you are consumed by it. You think of ways of getting back at the people who wronged you. You run scenarios in your mind where you are verbally battling with them. You have other things to do? Well! too bad, drama will still win (removed “drama is still important for the brain” which did not fit here). Drama doesn’t stop when you want, in fact, it goes on and on for a long time (drama and time elaborated). For example, your colleague comes at you hard in front of everyone for a small mistake you did, thus initiating drama. You try to get back at him, and then he tries to get back at you (filler sentence added which seemed to be missing!). This goes on until one of ya’ll leave the company. Sometimes you tend to think about how someone has wronged you for weeks. As I am working on this document, there still comes in flashes an incident of drama that happened 4 weeks ago. I think about how a one asshole screwed me (Notice the anger, Notice the drama). Even yesterday after 4 weeks of the incident I still talk about it, I still think about it. I try to avoid it in most cases, but it is hard.

The great BRAIN seems to love this kind of shit. It obsesses over this. Apparently it is evolved to thrive in social environments and hence it craves for drama. It wants drama to be the single most important thought in your head. This is NOT GOOD, especially when the STM’s and AGENT’s have much much bigger things to deal with. The Brain loves it, but does that mean you should give up everything important to you to satisfy it, i.e., engage in drama?”

1-0

Rule #7: Points discussed don’t seem to be irrelevant. 1-1

Rule #8: I didn’t mention in my part of the essay something that an STM mentioned. It is about how your brain tries to convince you, “Your mind will defend itself by saying that it is just about deterrence. Like, you know, hitting the baddies hard”. I think this is important as this is a relevant mechanism that the brain might try to trick you into believing. One that I need to be aware of and hence should have been in my version of the article. 1-0

Rule #9: Skip!

Score: 7-2.5 on 9

Quick P.S

This is quite exhausting. Finishing a few paragraphs of 9 dimensions OMG, it is painful! How am I going to pull off 3 more hrs of this? 1 hr and 40 mins and am already knackered!

STM:

The High Road What is the alternative? Seriously, what else could you possibly do but avenge the hurt? They have (apparently) decreased the quality of your life significantly. Unless you hit them back, this is gonna happen again and again, and your quality of life (it feels) will go down with every blow.

How the hell can you think of doing anything but punish the guy who caused you so much pain? If you don’t retaliate in some way, would they not keep taking advantage of you like this? Won’t you just drown in the shower of hurts? But then, we saw that even if you seek to punish others socially, your peace of mind will still take a hit.

Could we choose to take the high road and just ignore it?

“But… but…”, you splutter.

Yes, I know. They’ll keep attacking, keep making you feel bad, keep making your life worse. Yes, it’s not in human nature to notice when you’re destroying everything precious to a person by abusing the fact that you’re in a position of higher social status.

People who have made fun of you in the past and abused you in every way possible are not magically going to change tomorrow and tell you that they shouldn’t have done all that.

Ain’t gonna happen. The best you can hope for, if you pluck up the courage open up to them, is - “Hey… we were just doing it for fun, man. Why you taking it so seriously?”

So, yeah, I’m well aware of that. And I still suggest letting it slide.

ME:

So what is the alternative? Forgive, move on, get on with the important things in your life. Don’t engage in drama. But how? The next time you find yourself in a situation where people laugh at you, smile and move on, despite all your instincts to retaliate. The next time your colleague comes at you in anger for a really small mistake you did in front of everyone -even though he has made similar mistakes- swallow your pride, say sorry, move on. If this type of drama extends in a few parts of your life, that is enough to give up everything important to you. Drama is not worth engaging in due to the consequences. It consumes you. It eats you alive. Someone gets to live in your head rent free.

Whether you retaliate or not, people are going to come back for more, for their own amusement. People are not going to magically change. But in any case, engaging in drama decreases the quality of your life as it consumes you and does not allow you to focus on important things in your life.

Rule #1: The difficulty in picking out the main points seems to be note-worthy. An STM seems to start with rhetoric questions on taking revenge being the way to go despite everything followed by reason for taking the high road and then people are not going to change. I cannot believe that I can actually split some thing into a few clear ideas in series. I have the same similar main points as well and in series. 1-1

Rule #2: It looks like I should have clarified more about what I mean with people are not going to change, the second idea. I just have a sentence on it. It’s a strike boys. 1-0

I think I would change the text related to the second idea i.e., the second paragraph with some elaboration based on an STM’s text. “Whether you retaliate or not, people are going to come back for more, for their own amusement. If people hurt you in the past, you cannot expect them to magically change. Even if you open up to them, all you will get is a lousy “hey we were just doing it for fun, why are you taking it so seriously?”. These people who are higher in social-status than us, don’t seem to understand this pain, and there seems to be not much evidence that this would ever change, based on several interactions I have had.”

Rule #3: Actually an STM doesn’t give examples for the idea of what could be the alternative i.e., what is an example of “take the high road and just ignore it”. Whereas I do. For the people will not change point , an STM seems to have given good examples, whereas I barely even said anything about it. 0.5-0.5

Rule #4: An STM seems to be engaging in quite some rhetorical questioning:

which is a device used to persuade or subtly influence the audience.

This he has done in other sections as well, along with figures of speeches and analogies. 0.5 extra for the rhetoric questioning.

Metaphors and other figures of speeches (FOS) indeed by an STM: “won’t you just drown in the shower of hurts?”, “peace of mind will take a hit”, while delivering the rhetoric questions. Surprisingly, it looks like I have used some FOS’s as well: “It(drama) eats you alive”, “someone gets to live in your head, rent free”, “swallow your pride”. 1.5-1

Rule #5: Ya not sure here as well about observations and hypothesis. Skip!

Rule #6: For me there seem to be some strikes: After delivering the example about how to deal with my colleague I say “if this type of drama”. What type of drama am I talking about when the previous sentence seems to talk about reducing drama. Strike!

If you look at my two paragraphs, it appears like there is a jump in flow. But if you look at an STM’s delivery, there is a neat segue (“But… But… you splutter”) as shown below:

Could we choose to take the high road and just ignore it?

“But… but…”, you splutter.

Yes, I know. They’ll keep attacking,

And I think because of that it flowed like a water fall.

1-0

How I would re-write (with some comments in the brackets) is as below:

“So what is the alternative? Forgive, move on, get on with the important things in your life… The next time your colleague comes at you in anger for a really small mistake you did in front of everyone -even though he has made similar mistakes- swallow your pride, say sorry, move on… (the change begins here) But isn’t this going to allow him to think he is right? Isn’t this going to set the tone for future conversations? Isn’t this going to give him permission to keep riding on you whenever he wants, for his amusement?

Yes, he probably will come at you more often even. If people hurt you in the past, you cannot expect them to magically change. Even if you open up to them, all you will get is a lousy “hey we were just doing it for fun, why are you taking it so seriously?”. These people who are higher in social-status than us, don’t seem to understand this pain, and there seems to be not much evidence that this would ever change. So, people are not going to magically stop their hurting. Is it still a good idea to let it slide?”

Rule #7: Don’t think anything irrelevant was written by both of us. 1-1

Rule #8: I am not sure if we are failing to consider any relevant points yet. 0-0

Rule #9: SKIP.

Score: 6-3.5 on 9

Quick P.S

Just couldn’t continue. Went limp! Needed to sleep for half hour! I tried to continue and force myself, but I just couldn’t.

Reflection

Clearly an STM’s article was much better by feeling as well as according to the Scores at the end of each piece. My highest was 5 and that of an STM was a record 7. This way of working looks like a start unlike my previous attempts. This was hard and exhausting no doubt. The painful parts seem to be to figure out what the dimensions mean and checking if those dimensions were met. Most of the times checking this would mean that a piece had to be read atleast a few times in full concentration. For example, for the first rule “one idea at a time”, I typically read some pieces 3-4 times. And everytime I iterated (3x times with this essay) I had a slightly different interpretation.

The method I used currently where I made notes as I saw fit, and wrote the essay 2 days after making the notes, seems to be enough for now. The bigger problems seem to be the dimensions. Discovering them as well as understanding them, and identifying if the rules were met or not, seems to be the hard part.

For sure there are better dimensions to be discovered than the ones I have. Looking at the greats and identifying output dimensions or refining my output dimensions could surely be a method. I could even look online for more resources on dimensions. Somehow I found criticalthinking.org, the website that clearly knows the importance of examples, lacking it majorly. It was just theory being delivered one after another. Imagine a dry subject such as “critical thinking”, with no examples.

Reflection on each dimension

Rule #1: One idea at a time

I had quite some doubts about my output dimensions, and had to refine them over time, to allow myself to identify something reliably. For example, the dimension initially was “state one point at a time”. What the hell is time? It took me a few sections, before I could catch on to how vague it was. Then I moved on to “one idea per paragraph”, in an attempt to have something concrete. Then I moved to “one idea over a few paragraphs, where I see no overlap of another idea”. Still vague, but much better than the beginning. In hindsight, for making a rule concrete, I could have made a hypothesis of a rule and tested it out on the best essays I know. But with this article I was focusing on getting the work done. Determining the output dimensions more seriously would have taken more time I think. This also applies to the other dimensions.

Rule #2: Elaboration

I made up my own definition to allow myself to reliably identify it. The definition being that there was >1 sentence on the main idea, just so that I could identify something concrete. Maybe it is not the best, but it is a start.

Rule #3: examples

I think this was easy from the get go. I don’t know if I did justice in evaluation. I think from the next time that I should focus and be clear that only the main ideas need examples and I should try to segregate them per main idea.

Rule #4: analogies and figures of speech

Somethings I think I missed or was too lazy to refine: Should every main idea have both analogies and figures of speech? Are figures of speech important or do we just care about Metaphors?

Rule #5: Observation-hypothesis

This one is a tough one. Say you are explaining a how a computer works or how a bicycle works. How is it possible to deliver this in a hypothesis-observation framework. I want to conclude for now that the observation-hypothesis framework might not work in this case while explaining a concept such as ‘Revenge or Grow’. I need to look at few other essays and work this out.

Rule #6: flow

The definition used till the end is vague. I seem to be checking if one sentence connects with the next sentence. What does that mean “objectively”. Most times sentences are not written like, “ Jack and Jill went up the hill, jack came down and who is left?”. The complexity arises when looking at the delivery of the sentences. So most of the time, I see, if there are proper segues or if the next sentence seems to build off, or answer something posed in the current sentence. Still vague I think.

Rule #7: irrelevance

I don’t think I identified even one point that was irrelevant. That is a flag already. I need to work on this. I think by the time I came to rule #7 I was exhausted that I didn’t want to spend time understanding more about it or deliberating over it.

Rule #8: Missing other Relevant points

To be honest I think what I said for the last rule applies here as well. I didn’t quite put effort in it, unless something said by an STM was missing in my article.

Rule #9: Assumptions

What assumptions to circle out and what does it mean to have assumptions justified, was not clear and no useful work was done with this dimension. Sometimes I tried and gave up abruptly.

Final Remarks

This is probably what DP looks like.

  • This was actively designed to get better at something. The 9 output dimensions are the parameters that help us gauge how good or bad we are.

  • This can be repeated a lot. There are great articles out there, of Eliezer, PG and an STM, which I could use to perform the same BF method on one dimension at a time.

  • Feedback on results is continuously available. The feedback was available right from the beginning. The output dimension measurements are probably not too accurate, but this is a start and there are ways to make the dimensions better. For all dimensions, when the intention of the definition is not clear, I could draw a few hypothesis and test it on the articles of the greats to determine what exactly it could be. This way I could fine tune and discover dimensions of value.

  • It is highly demanding. Well, I remember the day when I started writing it all out. After around 2 hrs I just couldn’t. I tapped out!

    Identifying dimensions and understanding them was one of the main issues. Also, as mentioned by an STM in his DP of the BF method, DP is usually looking at one aspect of the skill and training it. 9 output dimensions seemed like an overkill to do all together. Maybe that was one of the reasons for how mentally drained I felt.

  • It isn’t much fun. Yep.

Contrast that to just writing one 3,000-word essay and calling that practice — STM

Exactly.

To be continued…

P.S

My version took: 2 and half hours to write and iterate after having made notes 2 days back.

Went over the parts sections of DP 3 times in total. I would think roughly 2.5 hrs in total for each section

Average time: ~4 hrs per day (for 7 days). Number of words without quotes: > 7k words