from Visakan Veerasamy | by Visakan Veerasamy

piggybacking off of this to talk more generally about dunking: i think most dunkers dont think strategically or in terms of outcomes. i think most dunking is mostly a kneejerk re-assertion of one’s own identity + consensus-seeking with others who dislike the same thing t.co/91EeEYgiXB

identity, with both its private & social components, is v precious to most people. they will behave in seemingly irrational and unproductive ways to preserve it. they’ll get into ‘unnecessary’ conflicts, endure a loss of time/energy/money/peace, do free marketing for enemies…

the most critical thing in all of this imo is that people’s intuitions havent adapted to the modern media environment. dunking on something with your friends at dinner is NOT the same as dunking on something on the open internet. even people who know this will forget it when mad

im not saying all dunking is bad or wrong. sometimes its the right thing to do. im saying most of it is ill-considered. and this actually results in an environment that strategic/savvy actors can exploit (somewhat) to their ends t.co/8nzKjFuWA5

the tricky thing here is that its possible to go too far when it comes to courting dunks for profit in my view, the important thing is not to lose sight of your actual goals. once you start modifying your positions to court dunks, you’ve gotten into the sticky wretched pit

nothing is edgier than being earnest. you dont have to go out seeking dunks. simply be the most honest version of yourself you can bear to be, and you’ll attract dunks for it from someone somewhere eventually. then smile and do it again, more cheerfully

over the years ive come to notice that there are “thresholds” at which status is contested. this seems true also for the status of ideas. there’s a phase in which a new idea must be subjected to mockery. it’s part of the test. to pass the test, its proponents must not flinch t.co/iSomIwQ4c3

on the topic of dunking on jhanas, you could kinda parse it as a test to see if the jhanabros flinch. if they start freaking out, retaliating, embarrassing themselvea, etc, jhanas can then be dismissed as unserious. if they remain unflinching, the status of jhanas rise

note i am not even commenting on the merits of jhanas or jhanabros or what the perceived status of the concept and its practitioners is or should be, and i dont have space/time to properly contextualize “these people/framings are not representative…”

im just describing my model (which i think is reasonably well-tuned, from years of observations, analysis, discussion, etc) of how these things play out. if you model this well it’ll help you gain status, be it for yourself or the ideas that matter to you

do i like that the world is like this, that people are like that? eh. there are things about it that i find kinda gross. a more enlightened public would handle all of this much more graciously, but that is not yet the public we are. but perhaps we could become it

the tragic/gross thing is that not-flinching is a skillset that can be semi-independent of a person or idea’s true merits and qualities. but people are impatient/busy/tired etc and will throw good actors under the bus for flinching and venerate bad actors for not flinching

it can be somewhat discernable if someone’s non-flinching comes from a deep well of knowledge/love/compassion etc vs a sociopathic detatchment, but tbh that can take time too

occurs to me that of the deepest core virtues in all of this is patience, temperance. its the rushing that typically causes needless blunders in all directions. and more generally, those who are playing longer games outlast those who are not