09:10 This morning I arrived to the office to find Husserl's PDF open and I kept on reading. This is precisely what I was thinking about yesterday:
Let us clarify this with an example. We had earlier drawn a contrast between just being conscious, by way of seeing, of the blue sky and the theoretical performance of this act. But we are no longer performing the seeing in this eminent sense when we, seeing the radiant blue sky, live in the rapture of it. If we do that, then we are not in the theoretical or cognitive attitude but in the affective. On the other hand, though we have adopted the theoretical attitude, the pleasure may very well be present still, as, for example, in the observing physicist who is directing himself to the radiant blue sky, but then we are not living in the pleasure.
The cognitive and the affective can (and often) co-exist, but only on the most extreme end feeling is a form of rapture. This example by Husserl reminds me of Feynmann's beauty of a flower.
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11:30 I just had my 1:1 review with the founders. They are happy with my work and yet I'm continuously fretting about quitting because I feel I'm not up to the talent of the team. Everyone seems smarter than I am, and with AI moreso. AI multiplies your intelligence, so if you are a smart person you'll get more out of it than a dull one. I must remind myself I'm in a high percentile IQ environment so I don't self-identify as stupid.
At the same time I feel there's more I bring to the workspace than productivity. At another company, someone wrote on my yearly review: "Mark is a calming presence and his presence in the team is very valued". A long time ago my self-esteem was almost completely dependent on my creative output and I've been shedding this form of self-identification.
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Yesterday I started feeling sick and today I have a cold. I suspect this was due to biking to the theater while it was raining last tuesday. I arrived drenched and even after the two hour play I was still wet. It would seem logical that being wet causes colds, in the same way it would seem logical that mounds of seeds cause mice, but these are conditions that favor certain outcomes.
It seems through yoga I've become very unaccustomed to breathing through my mouth. It feels utterly wrong. I prefer to sip in air through my nose at a very slow pace rather than breathing through my mouth. I don't know if what Huberman et al say about mouth breathing is true, but I do know from my subjective experience that it makes a big difference. However, I only noticed I disliked mouth breathing after acquiring the habit always breathing through my nose, so I'm still on the fence on it.