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The Death of Daydreaming

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707 points isolli | 4 comments | 05 May 25 12:22 UTC | HN request time: 1.133s | source
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bhouston ◴[05 May 25 15:27 UTC] No.43896107[source]▶
I find that daydreaming is absolutely critical for coming up with good strategies. Otherwise I can default to just do the next obvious thing, which isn't always the most strategic if you can take in the full picture, or at least consider alternatives well.

The two ways I get to strategic reflection are really:

- Doing lego. I find thhat doing lego is actually really good at helping me consolidate thoughts and ideas. It takes up just enough mental energy to not get bored, but it lets me think about things with an unstressed mind.

- Walks. The other way to generate new perspectives is to take a walk at lunch though non-interesting territory. I really do not find walks in a busy downtown to be relaxing, too much activity intruding on me to actually be low stress, but if it is in a forest or even just a long parkway that works for me.

The absolute worst way to come up with new ideas is in front of my computer trying to work. Good for doing the next obvious thing, but really hard to think outside of the box.

You really do need a mix of the two, otherwise you are either doing the obvious or never actually doing anything.

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whywhywhywhy ◴[05 May 25 15:40 UTC] No.43896273[source]▶
Sitting on public transport looking out of the window not your phone and listening to music is ok but probably not podcasts.

Also showers are very good for the right state of mind.

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SirFatty ◴[05 May 25 15:49 UTC] No.43896369[source]▶
The shower, every time. No idea what the difference is if I stand in the shower or sit on the couch in my living room. Sometimes I end up looking like a prune.
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pfannkuchen ◴[05 May 25 16:03 UTC] No.43896511[source]▶
Not very many of our ancestors were eaten in hot springs, I guess? It’s hard to hunt when the ground is so slippery. Then our body feels safe and allows attentional resources to be diverted away from safety and towards ideation?

Same thing happens for me, and that’s my working theory.

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Etheryte ◴[05 May 25 17:14 UTC] No.43897252[source]▶
These kind of evolutionary theories often make for captivating and plausible stories, they are also pretty much universally false. Similar trains of thought were used in the middle ages for example to rationalize male and female roles in society, all of which have been debunked many times over at this point.
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bhouston ◴[05 May 25 18:21 UTC] No.43897887{3}[source]▶
It is unlikely hot springs were omnipresent enough across the environment to have an impact on overall human evolution.
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1. pfannkuchen ◴[05 May 25 19:24 UTC] No.43898521[source]▶
The safety instinct complex likely has components shaped in pre-human and even pre-ape and perhaps even pre-mammal ancestors.

Pressure comes from duration as well as frequency of encounter. A feature encountered infrequently but consistently across many millions of years can exert a pressure equivalent to a feature encountered more consistently for a shorter period.

Also note that the effect size to be explained here is not that large - just a nudge towards relaxation in what seems to be a subpopulation of humans.

What do you think about that?

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2. bhouston ◴[05 May 25 19:45 UTC] No.43898723[source]▶
Sure, but this reasoning you are using could justifying saying just about anything we have encountered in human history, no matter how infrequent or minor, could have influence our evolution. It is incredibly hard to falsify such claims and easy to make them. I don't really know how to respond.
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3. pfannkuchen ◴[05 May 25 20:26 UTC] No.43899106[source]▶
Yeah I personally don’t think such speculation should be treated as “science”, per se.

But, if the science minded shy away from such areas completely, they will be (and are) filled with explanations from people with completely unscientific worldviews and values.

The Dawkinsian selfish gene framing is unfalsifiable. Even Darwin is practically unfasifiable. It kind of comes with the territory.

I think the degree to which such an explanation is a just so story depends on how many aligning aspects we can observe in reality. An example in this case - the more a shower shifts from utilitarian to luxurious, the more it happens to resemble a hot spring. What would be the most luxurious shower? To me, natural stone walls in a natural looking pattern (impractical to clean), no obvious drain, instead the water drains into crevasses in rock (which is mimicked even in run of the mill shower designs), some natural light but not too much, etc.

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4. namaria ◴[07 May 25 10:36 UTC] No.43914080{3}[source]▶
> The Dawkinsian selfish gene framing is unfalsifiable.

Disagree. The whole thesis rests on genetic determinism, which was hypothesized early on - around the time the book was written - but discredited later.

> Even Darwin is practically unfasifiable. It kind of comes with the territory.

Which thesis in Darwin do you think is unfalsifiable? The null hypothesis of the time was that nature was created the way it is and variety was evidence of god's handiwork, and he proposed, argued and in my opinion convincingly established how a well structured system of rules could indeed lead to change and variety.