UnbornTao

In what ways are you empowering your own life and the lives of others? And what are you doing that goes against this principle?

You may not be able to fully appreciate highly skillful people unless you pay attention to where the person is coming from. How do they see reality? How do they use their mind? What do they focus on? You might even need to be reasonably skillful yourself at that particular craft in order to begin to truly appreciate mastery in others. Among other things, this would require leveling up your observational abilities. Adopt a beginner's mindset. Remain humble and embrace the vulnerability that accompanies this state.

Being open(-minded) is an antidote to dogma and ideology. It allows us to entertain possibilities we may not have considered before. However, remember to remain balanced in how you practice openness. This principle is not about adopting a lightweight, purely intellectual "anything goes" or "everything is possible" attitude, nor is it the same as being gullible - a conflation that is often made.

Attachment might be fundamentally motivated by the fear of emotional or conceptual groundlessness.

How do you relate to failure? It is integral to the process of learning and to succeeding in any pursuit, and yet we try to passionately avoid it. Some of us seem to live as if we could somehow get around failure and directly reach success that way. Is this your current experience? Failures are stepping stones to success - use them as feedback. Fail faster and intelligently. Correct as you go. The moment you recognize an opportunity for correction, take it.

What are the differences between being smart, being clever, and being intelligent?

I think most people are attracted to fantasies rather than to simple honesty. What they want to hear is their inclinations and preferences being validated, not truthful communication. I assume this is one of the reasons why teachers become massively popular. Nice marketing, though.

Yeah, well, it's pretty fun to learn, too. If what you value are privacy, security and customization, Linux may be ideal for you. It could also be considered a hobby by users who aren't tech-savvy. It's presumably a decent and more expensive improvement. Now with a notch! I've been tempted to buy $500 PC laptops several times. It's best to see a purchase like this as a long-term investment, though. Cheap PCs won't hold up very well after two or three years of intensive daily use.

I always remain suspicious of dirt cheap tech products precisely because of these practices.

Tabs plus other cool features will arrive in the fall of 2022. Explorer and task manager already support dark mode in insider builds. I get what you mean though. Yeah. Basic at best. Microsoft rebuilt the taskbar and start menu from scratch. That's why they lack basic functionality from previous editions. Sounds nihilistic to me. What's wrong with macOS? Depends on your needs. Freed from bias, advantages to any OS can probably be found. You're being unfair. Apple tax? A Dell XPS costs the same while the Air offers better performance and battery life, while remaining cold and silent. All without ads, telemetry nor bloatware. Apple is ludicrously expensive and Intel MacBooks were bad and overpriced. The way I see it, depending on your needs, M1 is one of the best investments you can make. With an unparalleled resell value, durability and years-long reliability. It's also getting new AI and machine learning functionality. Compared to a similarly-priced PC laptop, which one would hold up best after four years? Pirating in what sense? You're right. Mac and serious gaming aren't compatible as of now. Zorin looks pretty good for beginners. I've used Elementary OS for about six months and liked it a lot. What about manufacturers? With Windows and Mac no decision needs to be made except between those two. In Linux there are tons of distros to choose from. That's already too much responsibility for the average user. There's no standard Linux distro that is mainstream and that gets installed by default in new PCs except Ubuntu, maybe?

Perception is indirect by nature; it is about something, not that thing itself. Whatever the thing is for itself is unknown. Perceiving is a process mediated by the senses, which are biological inventions.

Can you find mind in your experience?

What comes to mind when you reflect on yourself? What prevents you from behaving differently? Has some aspect of your self-makeup changed over the years? Your persona isn’t etched in stone. Your personality is not who you are. Transforming as a person - even though it involves a kind of death - doesn’t mean you cease to exist. We tend to find the work of transformation threatening because we really think that way.

Boredom could be seen as arrogance - thinking that the way you think existence is is the same as existence.

As humans, we live within conceptually-invented worlds yet generally fail to notice that they are fabricated; we take them to be objective and real. We don’t recognize them as such, just as a fish doesn’t realize it has always been swimming in water. For example, we live as though our particular culture were "true" - that our shared assumptions, values, customs, and worldview are the "correct" ones, that they accurately represent reality, or are reality and "the way things are." Additionally, on a personal level, you may implicitly believe that your experience and worldview are true - perhaps even universally shared. They are yours, and that seems to be your main concern, not whether they’re accurate. You're not even conscious of why they are that way - you just take them for granted. For example, do you currently assume that (live as) the way you experience "reality" is the same way for others?

What is desire? Can you detect a background sense of pain accompanying this feeling-activity? Desire implies a separation between you and the object of your desire. This separation - and the comparison between your current experience and the imagined, more enticing one - generates suffering. Moreover, once the object of desire is attained, the search for the next one soon begins. The content of desire may change, but the activity seems to be continual.

Succinct summary lol Windows 7 was considered the best by many. Consistent, simple, efficient. It just worked.™ 8 was a mess. Poor taste and execution, imo. 10 was "free". At that point, they introduced Windows-as-a-service, pushing continuous and often disastrous updates. It included telemetry and bloatware baked-in. Now, your data is what subsidizes Windows. 11 is basically 10 with a fresh coat of paint. To be fair, this statement is likely oversimplified as I'm as clueless as any average PC user. Your complaints have already been partially fixed in the latest Insider dev builds. Thankfully, the UI is slowly getting refreshed. Give Microsoft a decade or two. Gaming ≠ Mac. Paying upfront for an adfree, consistent, seamless, and private experience, great hardware included? To people like me whose priorities are light tasks, it is worth it. Have you checked out Apple Silicon? It's blowing the competition out of the water in terms of performance/efficiency. Not very suitable for the average person, though. Average users want a plug-and-play experience. With Linux, even choosing a distro is paralyzing, and that's just the first decision to make. Then you have to choose desktop environments, display and window managers, etc. Customizable Linux laptops might be the future, surely they have potential. If not... time to switch to FreeBSD.

Stoicism is ideal for this purpose. A Guide To The Good Life by William Irvine.

User @Ulax shared this reading list which I found interesting. 52+ Books on What School Should Have Taught Us About the Art and Science of Success, Fulfillment, and Achievement.

"Today we're announcing EdgeOS, a groundbreaking OS powered by ads and the web."

It likely is a myth that masturbation causes acne. Acne is a recent disease in human history. Otherwise individuals throughout history would have had acne too, but they didn't. Also, what about sex? Why would masturbation cause acne but sex would not? It likely is a combination of factors: diet, stress levels, sleep quality, supplementation, etc. Try removing gluten, sugar, dairy, flour, and ultra-processed foods (also hydrogenated oils!).

Great, thanks.

Was it Arch-based? Debian is very reliable and stable while offering old packages whereas Arch provides the cutting-edge packages at the cost of everyday stability. Fedora may be the one that strikes the best balance -- more stable than Arch and up-to-date packages as opposed to Debian. Stability: Debian > Fedora > Arch. New Packages: Arch > Fedora > Debian. I don't quite get why some people dislike it so much. Customization on macOS isn't as granular as Windows, let alone Linux. There are macOS power users, whatever that means. So I guess that macOS isn't as dumbed down as some people think. It's restricting and limiting in some ways, I get that. But limitations allow for some of its benefits. Windows's telemetry, decades-old design inconsistencies, etc. are significant disadvantages for the average user. It feels like using five OSes in one.

OK. The Montessori method seems to be a good option for that.