D Language Foundation Weekly Planning Session Update

[WilliamJames]

On Tuesday, 16 May 2023 at 04:35:51 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> On 5/15/23 15:55, WilliamJames wrote:
>
> Earlier you said:
>
> > If your mind conceives it, it exists only in your mind.
>
> And everything exists in my mind anyway.[1]
>

Some things exist in the mind, and some things are a product of 
the mind.

There is a difference.

The fundamental principles of computing, programming, and pretty 
much anything based on science, can 'exist' in the mind, in that, 
they've entered our stream of consciousness somehow (most likely 
because our biological 'self' already knows these principles, and 
occassionaly they enter our own stream of consciousness through 
some mysterious way, and we simply become aware of them. You'd be 
amazed at the knowledge our biological self has, and how little 
of it enters our stream of consciousness.

Then there are things that are the product of the mind. That is 
where the 'self' comes from. It's arises out of the activity of 
the mind (so it's a product of that activity, not something 
intrinsic in itself). You can make the self disappear through the 
activity of your mind also ;-)

> > An alternative perspective, that could be argued, is that the
> concept of
> > an 'individual self' is more like a disease, and that the way
> out of it,
> > is to keep as busy as we can thinking of things and of other
> people, or
> > preoccupied with a constructive passion of some kind.
>
> Since I make everything, that's exactly what I am doing all the 
> time anyway.
>

You're lucky. Most people are blindless zombies, like those stuck 
in the matrix.

That's not necessarily a bad thing by the way. But in some 
circumstance, it' not ideal, as history tells us.

> > In this view, the self does not matter. It's just tedious
> egotism.
>
> However, self is the only entity that produces motivation and 
> motivation gets things done. That's how I related to IVY.
>
> I've always found motivation a magical thing: I never know when 
> it comes and how. There has been times where I was very 
> motivated, taking tasks and running with them. Other times, I 
> am not motivated at all. I know and research confirms you can't 
> buy motivation, you can't ask someone to be motivated, etc.
> I took IVY to be an attempt at explaining where motivation 
> comes from. It defines the concept of "ideal vision of 
> yourself". It argues that every person has a vision of 
> themselves. When their activities align with that vision, they 
> are motivated and things happen.

Again, the self is a well studied concept. But it remains a 
polysemous concept, and seems to be more an area for philosophy 
than psychology - much like the concept of consciousness. As 
such, IVY could well backfire in the D community, since not 
everyone agrees that there is a self, or that it should be as 
important in ones daily life as some want you to believe. You 
might be more free, for example, if you rid yourself of the 
concept of self. But I divert...

> A big challenge is discovering that vision of one's self. The 
> same thing happens with the organization: It has a vision as 
> well and it is difficult to define. And then there are the 
> "customers". They have a vision as well.

'vision' is the right word here ;-)

> Like a Venn diagram, the three visions intersect. There are 
> different outcomes expected at each intersecting area. The best 
> place is at the center where all three visions are aligned. 
> Then we have happy and successful people, organization, and 
> customers.
>
> That's what I understood of IVY.
> And that ties into goals and tasks. That's how IVY is supposed 
> to help with organizations. I am confident we will take 
> advantage of IVY.
>

fallibilism : the principle that propositions concerning 
empirical knowledge can be accepted even though they cannot be 
proved with certainty.

Really, I just want an announcement for when D3 will arrive, and 
whether it will have the features I want. I don't much care about 
whether people are developing a better vision of themselves ;-)