Benjamin Davies
@davies·Joined Oct 2025·Ideas
A life aimed at infinity 🦉 🐚 🕯️ 🚀
#3868·Edwin de WitOP revised about 2 months agoFocus is usually defined in coercive terms—working without distraction or despite it. This framing sneaks discipline in through the side door.
- Deep Work: Focus is the ability to concentrate on cognitively demanding tasks without distraction.
- Indistractable: Focus is doing what you intend to do despite internal and external distractions.
- Hyperfocus: Focus is intentionally directing attention while deliberately ignoring everything else.
What all of these share is the assumption that focus is valuable because it resists distraction. Distraction is treated as interference to be pushed aside.
I think this coercive component should be removed. At the same time, empirical experience makes it clear that people do differ in their ability to stay engaged—and that this ability can be trained. So something real is being gestured at, but mischaracterized.
Here is my Deutsch-compatible explanation of it:
Focus is the stickiness of engagement with a chosen problem.
It is not about heroic self-control—suppressing distractions or forcefully pushing competing thoughts away—but about how reliably engagement sustains itself without requiring repeated creative intervention. Creativity enables intentional action; focus determines how often that intentionality needs to be actively renewed.
When focus is weak, engagement is fragile. Minor distractions, impulses, or shifts in attention repeatedly pull us away, forcing creativity to be spent again and again just to re-establish intentional direction.
When focus is strong, engagement is stickier. The threshold for a distraction to take hold is higher. Distractions still occur, but they are rarer. And when they do arise, they are less disruptive, because our sticky focus allows us to handle them using sound judgment rather than succumbing to poor judgment.
Focus is a capacity we can train like any other skill. Periods of sustained engagement stretch that capacity, and—when followed by adequate recovery—our ability to stay engaged grows strongerThis reframing preserves what the popular literature gets right—that sustained attention exists and matters—while rejecting its coercive foundation. It replaces self-war with problem-solving, and willpower myths with creativity and judgment.
I would love to hear criticisms of this theory of focus. It is a core part of my book and, I believe, a necessary incorporation into a Deutschian / TCS view of the mind—one that fully addresses and refutes the popular focus literature referenced above.
Minor distractions, impulses, or shifts in attention repeatedly pull us away, forcing creativity to be spent again and again just to re-establish intentional direction.
How is using creativity to re-establish direction distinguished from self-coercing? I'm having trouble seeing the difference.
Some things wrong with flouride:
https://x.com/ChrisMasterjohn/status/1853076325067591812?s=20
#3404·Dennis Hackethal, 3 months agoSince this criticism (having to pay federal income tax) is true of any US state, I wouldn’t hold it against Nevada specifically unless you wish to rule out the US as a whole.
Valid
This might be a difference in dialect. In New Zealand (and I assume other places, like maybe Australia, UK and Ireland) it is common to use ‘must not’ to mean:
a) ‘ Is forbidden to’ (the meaning you are familiar with),
or
b) ‘necessarily cannot’, usually in a deductive way.
Example sentence: “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he must not be home then.”
This sentence is much more natural to me than “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he cannot be home then.”
This might be a difference in dialect. In New Zealand (and I assume other places, like maybe Australia, UK and Ireland) it is common to use ‘must not’ to mean:
a) ‘ Is forbidden to’ (the meaning you are familiar with),
or
b) ‘necessarily cannot’, usually in a deductive way.
Example: “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he must not be home then.”
This is much more natural to me than “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he cannot be home then.”
This might be a difference in dialect. In New Zealand (and I assume other places, like maybe Australia, UK and Ireland) it is common to use ‘must not’ to mean:
a) ‘ Is forbidden to’ (the meaning you are familiar with),
and
b) ‘necessarily cannot’, often in a deductive way.
Example sentence: “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he must not be home then.”
This sentence is much more natural to me than “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he cannot be home then.”
This might be a difference in dialect. In New Zealand (and I assume other places, like maybe Australia, UK and Ireland) it is common to use ‘must not’ to mean:
a) ‘ Is forbidden to’ (the meaning you are familiar with),
or
b) ‘necessarily cannot’, usually in a deductive way.
Example sentence: “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he must not be home then.”
This sentence is much more natural to me than “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he cannot be home then.”
This might be a difference in dialect. I mean ‘mustn’t’ as in ‘must not’.
Example sentence: “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he must not be home then.” —> “I guess he mustn’t be home then.”
This sentence is much more natural than “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he cannot be home then.”
This might be a difference in dialect. In New Zealand (and I assume other places, like maybe Australia, UK and Ireland) it is common to use ‘must not’ to mean:
a) ‘ Is forbidden to’ (the meaning you are familiar with),
and
b) ‘necessarily cannot’, often in a deductive way.
Example sentence: “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he must not be home then.”
This sentence is much more natural to me than “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he cannot be home then.”
California might be the best place on the planet to live in, in terms of climate, but the downside is that you live in California 😂
In terms of climate, California might be the best place on the planet to live in. But the downside is that you live in California 😂
#3347·Zelalem Mekonnen, 3 months agoDo you care to be around people that speak your native tongue?
No. If living in the best place on Earth requires me to learn a new language I will happily do so. Thankfully I have an interest in languages so it wouldn’t be a problem for long.
California might be the best place on the planet to live in, in terms of climate, but the downside is that you live in California 😂
#3344·Zelalem Mekonnen, 3 months agoAvoid the US for this. Food quality is worse than third world countries. The food is no where near as organic. Unpopular opinion, but I don't think food should be industrialized.
The current industrialisation of food is problematic, but these are parochial problems. There is nothing about industrialised food production that is fundamentally and irredeemably flawed. Problems are soluble!
#3344·Zelalem Mekonnen, 3 months agoAvoid the US for this. Food quality is worse than third world countries. The food is no where near as organic. Unpopular opinion, but I don't think food should be industrialized.
I’ve found that if I stick to Whole Foods type places the quality of food is quite good, including some options that aren’t available in NZ.
But yes, the mainstream food options are crap, including the majority of restaurants.
#3343·Zelalem Mekonnen, 3 months agoAll the areas in the US I have lived in have terrible water quality.
Thankfully the US has reverse-osmosis water filtration options pretty much everywhere.
#3342·Dennis HackethalOP, 3 months agomustn’t
Maybe this is the non-native speaker in me, but do you mean ‘can’t’? I thought ‘mustn’t’ means ‘may not’: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/must_not
This might be a difference in dialect. I mean ‘mustn’t’ as in ‘must not’.
Example sentence: “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he must not be home then.” —> “I guess he mustn’t be home then.”
This sentence is much more natural than “His shoes aren’t here. I guess he cannot be home then.”
Maybe juries can be done away with. Not all levels of courts have them, so they mustn’t be fundamental.
Maybe juries can be done away with. Not all levels of courts have juries, so they mustn’t be fundamental.
Maybe juries can be done away with. Not all levels of courts have them, so they mustn’t be fundamental.
My charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” means something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “occurs less and less often in the multiverse”.
My charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” is a loose way of saying something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “occurs less and less often in the multiverse”.
My charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” means something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “a smaller and smaller occurrence in the multiverse”.
My charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” means something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “occurs less and less often in the multiverse”.
#2084·Dennis Hackethal, 5 months agoConsequently (they say), whether or not it was ever possible for one person to understand everything that was understood at the time, it is certainly not possible now, and it is becoming less and less possible as our knowledge grows.
If something already isn’t possible, how could it become less possible?
Isn’t possibility a binary thing? As opposed to difficulty, which exists in degrees.
My charitable interpretation:
“Less and less possible” means something like “more and more difficult to achieve”, or “a smaller and smaller occurrence in the multiverse”.
#2084·Dennis Hackethal, 5 months agoConsequently (they say), whether or not it was ever possible for one person to understand everything that was understood at the time, it is certainly not possible now, and it is becoming less and less possible as our knowledge grows.
If something already isn’t possible, how could it become less possible?
Isn’t possibility a binary thing? As opposed to difficulty, which exists in degrees.
“([T]hey say)” presumably means he is paraphrasing people who get it wrong.
#2276·Erik Orrje, 5 months agoBy the same logic, wouldn't neo-Darwinism also disqualify as a strand, since it's subsumed by Popperian epistemology?
Why does neo-Darwinism qualify as a strand, if it can be understood as a component of Popperian epistemology?
#2278·Dirk Meulenbelt, 5 months agoYou say that trade-offs and scarcity are fundamental to biology. I agree, and this implies economics as a more fundamental science than biology or evolution. It still applies in our computer models, where biological details may not.
Economics is simply at the intersection of evolution and epistemology.
While a lot of what’s involved in understanding a language is inexplicit, it is not possible to come to understand a language without ever dealing with it explicitly.
This is what separates explanatory knowledge from other types of knowledge.
While a lot of what’s involved in understanding a language is inexplicit, it is not possible to come to understand a language without ever dealing with it explicitly.
This is part of what separates explanatory knowledge from other types of knowledge.
#2277·Dirk Meulenbelt, 5 months agoUndestanding does not flow from explanatory knowledge the way you imply. I understand Dutch and English, but a lot of my understanding of it is inexplicit.
While a lot of what’s involved in understanding a language is inexplicit, it is not possible to come to understand a language without ever dealing with it explicitly.
This is what separates explanatory knowledge from other types of knowledge.
#2200·Dennis Hackethal, 5 months agoIn the neo-Darwinian view, any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals. This view is what Dawkins (IIRC) calls the gene’s eye view, and it applies to ideas as much as it does to genes. Any adaptation of any replicator is primarily in service of this concern.
So I think the answer to your question, “Are ideas also guesses of how to survive in the mind and across substrates …?”, is ‘yes’.
… any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals.
Why “at the expense of its rivals”? Isn’t the concern to spread at all, regardless of the outcome of rivals?
#2200·Dennis Hackethal, 5 months agoIn the neo-Darwinian view, any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals. This view is what Dawkins (IIRC) calls the gene’s eye view, and it applies to ideas as much as it does to genes. Any adaptation of any replicator is primarily in service of this concern.
So I think the answer to your question, “Are ideas also guesses of how to survive in the mind and across substrates …?”, is ‘yes’.
… any replicator’s primary ‘concern’ is how to spread through the population at the expense of its rivals.
Why “through the population”? Doesn’t this presuppose a replicator needs to exist within a population to do what it does? The first replicator spread with no population to spread into.