This I believe 2005-09-25 (ed. 2013-10-01)

• Life
  • Stagnation ≈ death.
    • Change does not necessarily imply life.
    • Anything that is unchangingly "perfect" is also dead.
  • There are multiple "best" _____, for anything remotely complex.
    • Any given thing is "best" and "worst" by some measure, but that measure is probably boring.
  • There is no endpoint to any natural form of long-term development - though most eventualy have diminishing incremental improvement.
    • Sufficiently increasing your skill at something makes you a beginner within another level of it.
    • For anything non-trivial, thinking you're near the end of what you can learn probably indicates lack of insight.
    • New levels of skill often involve completely changing what is important and what irrelevant.
    • Teaching a skill well requires doing so at the level of the student, not the teacher. Many teachers (and tests) forget this, resulting in "learning" that is only ephemeral.
• People
  • Others - and the outside world in general - are dependable only to act in keeping with their history, not their promises or desires.
    • People can change — just not dependably.
    • Never depend completely on others' action or inaction; no matter what others do, you should have an acceptable outcome.
      • This requires a sort of rigorous independence, particularly of emotion.
      • One should still trust others, take risks, etc — only that no matter what, you can find a path that fulfillls your needs. Rather like aikido.
        • Don't gamble unless you're willing, and can afford, to lose.
        • You can probably afford to lose a lot more than you think.
    • Never expect others to act differently than is their wont, but be prepared for it.
  • Most people and systems are very predictable. Those that aren't (non-trivially) are interesting, because their unpredictability implies some lack of knowledge or understanding which could be gained.
  • Most things are possible; most conflicts can be resolved.
    • Most deadlocks can be solved by going one more step meta, identifying an axiom conflict, or identifying a difference in semantics / framing.
    • Axiom conflicts cannot be resolved, but can be negotiated. (Often higher-level concepts masquerade as axioms. These are especially negotiable.)
    • Changing one's experience is always possible — by changing either one's actions or perception.
• Understanding
  • Everything has a reason.
    • That reason might not be psychologically acceptable, or available data might limit how accurately one can determine it. Actively differentiating between the two usually leads to more empathy.
  • It's useful to understand everything multiple levels of description / detail, ranging from specific to highly meta.
    • Most people understand the meta level better if they first understand examples from which it was extrapolated.
    • Because any given behavior might arise from a wide variety of internal states, both predicting and negotiating with others requires understanding both from own point of view and an external behavioristic perspective.
      • To understand yourself better, get an external perspective. You already have the internal one.
  • Coercion of any sort is not a reliable way to control, predict, or direct the behavior of others, except insofar as it is constantly enforced. When it is not, expect them to do what they want. Viz. drug laws.
    • Changing what they want, or adapting to it, is a reliable method. Viz. advertising.
  • Most significant personal changes happen quickly. However, the integration following it, and the preparation preceding it, can take very long indeed.
    • Truly major personal change cannot be made much easier by preparation. Trying to temper the blow is a form of fear, which is justified for the before-change self and incomprehensible to the after-change self.
  • It's impossible to know that anyone is having the same experience as you, but one can approximate to the point of having no describable difference.
    • It's rather difficult to get someone to understand a worldview that they have not had. The closest approximation is either give them some experiential glimpse of it, or to get them started on a positive-feedback cycle that will lead to it eventually.
    • One's capacity for understanding is directly limited by the breadth of one's experience.
      • What constitutes a new experience is only clear in retrospect. Beforehand, you can only guess, or rely on the suggestions of people who seem to understand something you do not.
      • Experiences that are truly new are relatively rare. If you do have one of them, your predictions of what it will be like are probably completely useless.
  • The main advantage humans have over computers and mules is in two skills: pattern recognition and integrating disparate experience. This is in a sense my definition of human intelligence.
    • Any situation that makes people do something other than these is likely dehumanizing.