How not to practice writing

The guys at copyblogger say that to be a good writer you should always be writing, even when you have nothing to write about, write, write, write.

For several reasons I think this is bad advice.

This is because their concept is based off of a misnomer, a fallacy deriving from the 10,000 hour rule (popularized by Gladwell in his book Outliers). The rule says that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master a skill. Though, as I guess wasn’t taken clearly, or perhaps simply forgotten by anxiousness and impulsivity: “practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect” – Gladwell.

Writing for the sake of writing does nothing, or little at least. Its like talking to nobody, with no message to deliver - how do you know how to say what you want to say?

Writing used as a cathartic medium on the other hand, has purpose; to release the tension of an idea. That practices how you manipulate and convey you’re thoughts. It’s passion, emotion and purpose that resonates with readers.

You need to practice writing when you have the need to express yourself. That’s where it starts.

First, ideas get jotted down in a few lines. Soon they turn into a page. Eventually (hopefully) with practice you’ll be writing pages worth of well-written ideas.

You become a better writer by practicing expressing yourself.

Without purpose you have nothing.
--

A Rant: Assumptions by Association

Socrates, in other words said this, “I know that I know nothing”

Nassim Taleb calls it being a skeptic.

Neither are wrong.

At a party, acquaintances of mine were baffled by my analogy of their logical mistake: all apples are fruits, but not all fruits are apples. It was to illustrate the fallacy in a generalization that had been made. For a good couple of minutes they were mind struck. Literally. “Not all fruits are apples!” They couldn’t believe it – neither could I.

It’s like saying all mac owners are hipsters, or vice versa.
Because of an empirical association, you’ve created an assumption.
Or take for example there are some conspiracers who hold all Jews accountable for 911, simple due to the mere coincidince that the individuals they are accusing happen to be Jewish.
Or how all Americans are fat and lazy.
The list of stereotypes goes on. Though the issue is that I think people haven’t realized that stereotypes go far beyond typing people (perhaps many have realized this, but certainly don’t apply it to everyday scenarios, never mind their thought process).

The world we live in is far too dense and complex. There’s no room for generalizations. Nothing is entirely what it seems. Yes you might have an empirical reference to look back on, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same situation all over again. Most likely this time your dealing with new people or a completely new environment. I think this is where the problem occurs. People don’t know that they don’t know. They think they know. That’s why; when things go wrong, people get surprised, which triggers emotions, most often negative ones. And emotions usually lead to illogical action.

Thing is, as Socrates stated, we don’t know anything for sure. Though, what we do have is an idea of something. Notice the difference. The contrast between knowing and having an idea is that the latter acknowledges the possibility of the unknown. In fact, the latter knows that the unknown is a valid and an entirely possible outcome.

Why do you think some people can’t make sense of this world, thus going insane and live in some sort of hallucination/fictional world? It starts with an event, which they can’t understand or explain. They don’t know that they don’t know. So the minds tries to find an explanation (they think they know). This (lie) false explanation thrives in their mind and persists. They then try to make sense of it (the lie) but can’t, since it makes no sense, and thus, neither does (their) reality.

This is about confronting the truth from the start, or acknowledging to not knowing it. When you can’t explain something sometimes you just shouldn’t** because you literally don’t have the knowledge to. That is the difference between sanity and insanity.

Life is measured in percentages. 80% of the time X happens, the other 20% A, B, C and infinite more possibilities might happen.

** Note it is perfectly understandable to come to ideas of what did/can/could/happen. But the fallacy comes from believing in an absolute truth.

I invent words. Though apparently I’m retarded.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing over the last 6 months, most of it has been on my laptop in word documents. What’s peculiar is that I often come across words that, apparently, don’t exist. You know, that red underlining, letting you know you misspelled a word. Though these words aren’t misspelled, they just don’t exist already (according to the status quo).

For example:

This is out of my history notes:

- Wants reform, but does not become a Protestant in the reformational sense

In my word document, reformational is underlined in red. Does that not make sense? I don’t see why it wouldn’t.

More examples of words that apparently don’t count in our English vocabulary:

Scientifical, academical, tosser (e.g. a coin tosser), catholized, protestantization, et cetera.

Who’s to say what words exist and which don’t?

Fuck the status quo.

ps: if you have invented words yourself, write them below, I'll add them to the list!

Maybe? Perhaps? Possibly?

?

tee heee heee

Seeing in slow motion/Living in the fast lane

Time is subjective. In fact time doesn't physically exist, its just an objective ticker we invented to use as a reference point, a benchmark perhaps in order to organize our busy lives.


Though whats interesting to look at is you one's perception of time, how the faster youre moving, the faster time passes, or the exact opposite. You might have noticed this when you are doing almost any exercise or activity and all of a sudden 2 hours have passed by in what felt like 15 minutes. The exact opposite can be said that when you aren't moving about, time seems to go by slower. Like when your staring at your clock and it feels like 5 minutes have gone by when its only been a minute or less.

I have a theory that perhaps living an active lifestyle keeps your mind sharp, or what I'm really trying to say is: it allows you to see in slow motion.

What I mean by active lifestyle is to enhance your ability of making snap judgments, and perhaps making all decisions in general. Perhaps there is a correlation between one's activity level(of mental and physical stimulation) and one's ability of making decisions which could also possibly translate to one's potential intelligence.

How I see this is that if your body is constantly active (active being physically and/or mentally stimulated) then it is living in the fast lane where time feels as though it is going by quickly. Thus when you slow down (ex: your sitting at your desk doing work or chatting, etc...), your mind is still in the "fast lane" and processes information just as fast. Though now you aren't moving as fast as you were so time seems to go by slowly, but your mind still processes information just as quickly, allowing you to perceive more, in less time.

Think of this analogy, to anyone who watched Dragon Ball Z:

In the shows there was a part when Goku had to go to some alien world to save his friends and combat some villain. But the gravity level on the planet he was heading to was much higher than what he was used to, so he had to train his body and workout in a high gravity bubble sort of thing, in order to get his body tuned to the right level.
Anyways, once he returned to earth, after having trained and fought on that alien planet at such a high gravity level, roaming on earth felt like a breeze and he could move at ridiculous speeds that couldn't have been achieved beforehand.


I also believe that the more active you are, the slower you will age, mentally and physically (though obviously other factors can come into place and change that).

Note: I do realize that you could relate all this to a physical level about health and fitness, about keeping the mind in shape or whatever.