Becoming Eden

Author: divia

  • Incorporating Training into Management

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    We have a dog now! After having read a bunch of books and doing some clicker training with Lydia, I’ve now been doing it with a very food-motivated, very trainable breed of dog. Wow, is it much easier. The dog is totally happy to remain focused on me for dozens of minutes at a time…

  • Anki Cards for Don’t Shoot the Dog

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    I made some Anki cards for Don’t Shoot the Dog to help me better internalize the material. This deck isn’t intended to be a general overview of the most important concepts–just stuff that seemed important and I didn’t think I already fully understood. Your mileage may vary, but here it is! Don’t Shoot the Dog.apkg

  • (Positive and Negative) Punishment vs. Negative Reinforcement

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    I just reread Don’t Shoot the Dog, which I recommend extremely highly. Here’s a good summary, but actually just read the whole thing because it’s worth it. There isn’t a kindle version, but if you google for a pdf that will work. Anyway, I read Don’t Shoot the Dog a while back, then more recently…

  • Updated Anki Decks

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    divia
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    I used to have a bunch of Anki decks up on the internet, until Posterous stopped hosting the files. I’ve gotten some requests for them to be reuploaded, so here they are! (Sadly, they’re not updated. I want to cull unnecessary cards because some of these decks are huge and make it so the clozes…

  • How to Listen Effectively

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    I recently had a conversation with a friend about listening that seemed worth writing up. There are a bunch of things we humans like to do when other people are talking to us. Thinking up what we’re going to say in response is a big one, crunching social rules that we’re afraid of breaking can…

  • Relationship Tests and How to Respond

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    I want to try to point at and describe a particular phenomenon I’ve often seen in relationships: testing. While I’m more familiar with the ways women test men, and I would never claim the testing is on average totally symmetrical, certainly men test women as well. This post will be about the ways that most…

  • Why Don’t We Empathize First?

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    Last week, I advised empathizing before advising. To attempt to remedy my hypocrisy, I will now empathize with the desire not to empathize. Because there really are a bunch of good and legitimate reasons we try other tacks. I’ll say some reasons I don’t empathize, so I’m not speculating too much about general motivations, but…

  • Reminder: Empathize First!

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    If you’re talking to someone who is seeking support, it is incredibly useful to empathize before giving advice. This is true even if the person is nominally seeking advice.  I know to do this, but in the past few weeks, it’s happened at least three times that I can think of that I’ve been in…

  • Conversation Rules for My Birthday Party

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    The feedback I got indicated that the “ask a personal question” rule was the most helpful.  I suspect that setting the intention to have good conversations in the first place was more effective than the specific ruleset, but it’s hard to know with these things. I consider the ruleset an alpha version, and I want…

  • Musings on Nihilism and Metaphysics

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    Today’s post will be a bit weirder than the usual fare. Ever since a fun discussion at Ephemerisle, I’ve had a bunch of things on my mind related to many worlds, the simulation hypothesis, and anthropics in general. I don’t understand anthropics. As far as I can tell, no one does. In the narrative of…