thinking about redoing the layout at syz, but it's kind of strange to think about. i have a strong desire to set up gallery 2 in a way that it's actually used. HOWEVER, maybe that's not actually beneficial to us?
the current proposal is setting up gallery 2 in a way that it gets more foot traffic and in a way that people want to hang out in it more. this has the benefit of having more usable space as well as having a space that's permanently set up for particular activities.
however, there's a few downsides to this as well. doing this would free up more usable space, but we are already in a situation where there's more than enough space for most things we want to do. people naturally end up spreading out in a way that makes a lot of parties feel empty.
we could probably solve this by sectioning areas off and herding to a significant degree. furthermore, having extra space might be better for transitioning to and from different parts of the night.
how to be less flakey
omni instrument
syz identity
how to make decisions
i want to consider 2 use cases - events and general usage. i think events are pretty well understood. We might end up pulling people away from the main attraction during
there's a pattern that's come up a number of times which is - people tell me they wanna do something for syz that they're excited about. i say that sounds great. they do it. i say thanks for doing all this stuff. they feel like they deserve something more from me or from the group because they did all this good stuff, but they're not willing to say it out loud or talk about it. Eventually this feeling eats away from them until they don't want to be a member anymore.
you can't do stuff for other people without asking them if they wanted it and then be upset that they didn't do anything for you in return. this is true of organizations and it's true of relationships.
i think i should be trying to get more socialization? at least more of certain types of socialization. relationship terms
healthy communities. are there places/people that you can regularly reach out to in order to get the types of interactions you're excited about?
winter break projects list
weight liftin comparison
you know you're going to die. why not figure out how you f
let's consider art as an investment property. when seen this way, the actual art becomes irrelevant and the value of the art is controlled almost entirely by the clout of the artist. This is true in our society today - literally any piece of art created by a well known celebrity is going to cost many times more than a piece of art created by the average person no matter how breathtaking it is.
given this, how do you create art that costs lots of money? you make it a clear positive investment. you demonstrate a reliable path to a return on investment. you demonstrate how each of your pieces have slowly risen in price. you focus on clout, on being well known and on being visible in the general world.
nothing a person does that isn't changing a system or creating a system matters.
people can create and change systems within themselves
malice and incompetence are basically the same
i'm done with all numbers greater than 100
doing nothing is doing something
aren't you tired of the way the world is? don't you want something new?
it's natural to want to become more powerful to take care of the people you care about. but becoming more powerful makes it easier to uphold the systems that make people miserable.
sometimes, when i play a video game, i'm pulled out of the act of fighting monsters or whatever the main gameplay loop is and i think about the inevitable predictable end to the game of saving the world from an evil enemy or whatever and i completely lose all interest. Often, in life i have the same thought. What am i going to do with more mnoey when i don't even have time to do all the things I'm excited about now? What am i going to do with more clout that i can't do now? Where is this life going and how do i push it in a direction that's more interesting?
there are many things that someone has to do, but only a few people have to do and it's unfair to expect or ask anyone to do.
how long will you just do the same thing
you can help other people without hurting yourself
there's a feeling that i can't just talk about how i feel. if i just say it without processing it, no one understands it
imagined conversations
a lamp to draw the best of people. i can honestly say that the best people i have found in the bay area i have found through syz
personal 1-on-1s
have you ever felt like you were born into the wrong world, like you're just biding your time until you wake up and you're where you were meant to be
what are the names of god
event game
thinking about what you want is scary, thinking about what you want from other people is scary. thinking about what you can provide to other people to get what you want is scary.
how to stand out
entropic creation
letting other people know what you want from them openly makes it easy for them to provide things for you. starting off with that lets people offer you stuff without needing to be super vulnerable
rubber duck therapy
what do i want?
there is no greater joy than to make the people you care about happy
quota
invisible door game using mazes as a metaphor with conversation sections?
the value of simulated conflict. having fake conflicts when interacting with people can provide signs around what they see as ok and not ok. humor can remove tension around ambiguous situations.
this is fine, but it's not me
how much of you are your daily thoughts? fill your head with the things you want to be.
a task that you keep putting off for weeks that's going to take like 5 min
it's important to let other people know that people like you exist
clicker game to explain systems and feedback loops
question/answer theory of good story telling. question/answer format of good game design? you tend to play a game with this question of "what can i do"
it's hard for me to understand the perspective of people who haven't optimized for their own happiness, or can't see what they want beyond what they want in the moment.
we can do better
smart is a bad descriptor. better is curious, or oppurtunist
thinking about how subjectivity permeates any personal attribute. if someone says something that you agree with, what makes you decide whether it's obvious or validating? what decides whether a joke is funny or mean-spirited? what makes you see an action as selfish vs self-preserving?
is the world enough for you?
happiness is forumulaic and predictable.
at a certain age, maybe once you graduate college and get a job, you start seeing yourself as a solidified person. one of the things i think is important is to always see yourself as someone with the seeds to be a completely different person
every setting in your brain has a knob
maybe it's valuable for syz to be right next to some core group
everything is justifiable
everything that's real can be validated in multiple ways
language is naturally fuzzy and language becomes fuzzier as people have an emotional stake in it
enhanced baseline cognitive load as a result of cognitive disassociation
here's a phenomenon that i think i'm noticing - introversion is often caused by a lot of energy being put into acting correctly in social situations, while extroversion is often a result of not putting much energy into ensuring that one's behavior is correct. part of this is being judgemental. trying to be less judgemental induces introversion
invisible door
persistence of vision display
there's an unspoken part to interactions which is that reactions to things are automatically coded yes or no, regardless of the content. what makes you be like "come on" versus "oh it's not that bad" when someone says something that's not great. what makes you excited to agree with someone vs think that what they're saying is boring and trite?
blaming society is lazy
natural curiosity
community engineering
constantly vibrating with the intensity of my desires
the harder you fight death, the more terrifying it becomes
Drunk is a good time to type out thoughts. Not ideal on a phone but whatever.
Some sense that you share a similar context to others is special
artist/creator mixer?
event kickstarter?
secret party
basic rules
ARENT YOU tired OF DEFERRING TO THE JUDGEMENT OF MACHINES
loss aversion
social inertia - when people are already hanging out, it's easy to want to keep hanging out with those people
there are better ways to try
creative templating language
reference frames for decisions
social questions
meta rank
how to have good conversation and enjoy it more
art show applications
personal variance
syzygy needs an alex
syzygy members gotta learn how to create space
syz invite list
we should host more events??? maybe working memberships should incorporate hosting events.
let's experiment with how little we need in order to do an art show.
virtual friend
wall plotter
the states and moods that make people defensive.
it's important to make a strong effort to connect yourself to other people. your projects give you a lot of comfort because it's something you're good at that you get clear signaling out of, but you need to leave the safety of those things
death of the ego as cyclical suicide
can you remove all the things designed to protect your ego and still be a functioning human?
people have a strong idea of what is their community and have a VERY hard time reaching out of their community
levels of community
the compression of society into a single entity is a nervous disease. it poisons people's minds with thoughts of "but what would others think"
assumptions necessary for automating thought flows
immediate feedback is important for interest and art
TRASH ETHOS
all things have an infinite number of good attributes and an infinite number of bad attributes
not all attributes contribute to positive and negative feedback loops
conflict between "it's cool that you did everything yourself" and "ughh doing anything takes so much work"
easy example: screenprinting is cool to do yourself, BUT it's a huge hassle to do which prevents you from doing it. outsourcing tshirt creation and actually getting a result from it is better than screenprinting eventually
mathematical modeling tendancies
ideas of winning and victory are a nervous disease
fake words
vibe check value
live narrator project
plain language
meta is what people think about something that have 0 bias. when you ask a friend about a concept, there's bias there - that friend wants to make you feel good. even when you ask someone personally about an idea or concept, there's a bias - they don't want to make the conversation awkward
finding people with similar mental operating systems, maybe highly improbable
feelings of difference or sameness are manufacturable. all combinations of things have an infinite number of similarities and differences. we arbitrarily instincitively choose which things are important
a difference in perspective that i've noticed between the way that i think and the way that other people think is in seeing things as primarily individualistic or primarily systematic. This perspective doesn't connect to just people, but also events or actions.
art challenge where someone who can't draw tries to draw something and other artists finish it
axioms of life:
naturally, people like making other people happy and people dislike making other people sad. only hurt causes people to hurt others
why aren't people curious about what could make them happier
i just want
happiness comes from people similar to you. goodness comes from people different than you
syz lessons
sandwiches
self awareness test
joke formats
peer groups
mixing and mastering doubleblind test
the burden of justification in conversation
real talk
friends
syz list
larrikin
internet club
??? is really important to knowing yourself!
thinking about some new forms of levels
the first level is having a piece of knowledge
the second level is knowing what other people think of that piece of knowledge and guiding your reaction to the knowledge based on that
the third level is knowing that thee are many different and nuanced perspectives on that knowledge, so many that you can't just go with what is popularly believed, and you need to figure it out for yourself
the fourth level is understanding that even a piece of information that you figure out for yourself is probably wrong and that you'll probably encounter a piece of information that causes you to re-evaluate
i am the beast i worship
screenprint
new gambling
no space between decision and action
people should be comfortable enough that they're willing to say things that are stupid
thinking about putting our expectations on other people. the default of modern day is definitely to let everyone be or do whatever they want and just slowly phase them out of your life if that doesn't line up, but isn't it better to expect more of people? to spend time with people and then let them know what you want from them?
sf art galleries
invite only social network
olio
shibboleth
advanced specialization or generalized mediocrity
percolate
connection between dissonance and negative feedback loops
hunter mentality
relationship between age, stability, decreased risk taking, decay
conflict between constant progress and selflove
when you depend on something strongly, it becomes harder to criticize. i see a lot of people who strongly believe in the power of technology get more and more upset by technology being bad, but a lot of people don't realize that there are systems outside of technology designed to fix technology's problems.
consent and cowards
higher order communication as a signal for the closeness of a community
short guide on how to engage with me
casual conversation
single dependancies
power distance
high quality interactions are difficult without getting to know someone for a while
learning to let go of truth and correctness is conversation
his terrible swift sword
the difference between being laughed at and been laughed with is whether people care if you're laughing.
in everyone you know, strive to find something that they are better than you at
consider a giant living among ants. The slightest movement of the giant can destroy the homes of a thousand ants. as such, every ant is aware of even the smallest action of a giant, yet there is no reason for a giant to know anything about even a million ants.
consider how ignorant a giant must be compared to an ant. The ant knows of many worlds besides its own, but the giant, having no predators or anything that can hurt it, has no pressure to be aware of anything.
is it better to be a giant or an ant? both, or either, when it suits you. don't be fooled into thinking that anyone is one or the other. everyone is both at all times.
deep dive into different burning man principles
life deck game
puzzle conversation game
photography scavenger hunts/bingo
the line between subjective and objective and how it can vary between people
questions that get people to be closer to one another
How to make people deeply curious about other people's perspectives
email leads vs FRIENDSHIP
things that have only one reason to happen don't happen
links
cumulative experiences
best simple burn thing
t