I am genuinely confused about the point being made. Is it (a) don’t abuse a good thing (b) different kind of circling for different kind of purposes (serious circling vs game circling for practice) or (c) something else entirely.
It feels like a lot of words to say very little of substance—this is not meant as an attack, just a candid observation. This piece doesn’t make me angry or isn’t wrong, or anything like that.
It also feels very silly—this is not about the piece but about the situation. And I wonder what that means, that I find it silly. Given my priors and background, this situation is something I don’t imagine being able to take seriously.
Circling feels weird to start with, but I can understand its rationale fairly well. My worry would be that it would devolve into something quite unnatural and devoid of some sort of common sense. It would be whatever the opposite of smooth is—awkward maybe, but that’s not totally it either. I think in some important sense, smoothness matters a lot, but I’m still missing pieces of the puzzle here.
Anyway, this is not a criticism of circling, just some prior predictions about the experience of circling. What worries me is that this kind of experience report (and actually, your previous post as well) point towards validating those predictions. And I don’t really have a point here, I’m just sharing my thoughts in case they would be useful, cause some reflection or some interesting comment.
There’s something related to (a) as a minor point, certainly—a sort of ‘the coyote needs to never look down’ thing, where certain things go interesting places if you let them, even if they’re not where you intended, and you should some combination of gently steer and go with it and then debrief after. It’s not (b). I’m more trying to share a model of how the thing works as I developed it, and share some little things along the way that seem like good moments/data, and also building a 3-part narrative that felt like a 3-part narrative that should be told, and which I decided would be more effective if I split it into 3 even if combined they’re still post-length.
I think the fact that it feels silly to you is telling. I remember having this reaction before I went to CFAR and actually tried circling. In my (brief) experience circling, the point is that there’s an emotional dimension to “what it’s like to be you” that is somewhat orthogonal to our everyday experience, and that interacting via that dimension is important (in part for the reasons Selquist mentions).
Perhaps you’re pattern-matching circling onto “things weird people do”, maybe it feels weird because you’re actually uncomfortable making yourself vulnerable, or maybe it’s something else. I think the best thing to do here would be to try things—circling isn’t an expensive or dangerous exploration move.
This reaction is why I’m pretty happy that I had my first experience with it before I knew what it was at all. That way I got to have those concerns with built-in context.
Maybe, but doubt. I think I did express myself poorly—I’m generally pretty tolerant of weirdness and even awkwardness. I think what it evokes me is more like pointless meeting where I have to try very hard not to roll my eyes at how silly what we are doing is, and how pointless, and how obvious it would be to an external observer.
But like I said, I would try circling with an open mind any chance I got. I’ve only got a sense of what it looks like from the outside and that’s very different from what it is on the inside, for many many things (creative work, yoga, playing video games, …).
I am genuinely confused about the point being made. Is it (a) don’t abuse a good thing (b) different kind of circling for different kind of purposes (serious circling vs game circling for practice) or (c) something else entirely.
It feels like a lot of words to say very little of substance—this is not meant as an attack, just a candid observation. This piece doesn’t make me angry or isn’t wrong, or anything like that.
It also feels very silly—this is not about the piece but about the situation. And I wonder what that means, that I find it silly. Given my priors and background, this situation is something I don’t imagine being able to take seriously.
Circling feels weird to start with, but I can understand its rationale fairly well. My worry would be that it would devolve into something quite unnatural and devoid of some sort of common sense. It would be whatever the opposite of smooth is—awkward maybe, but that’s not totally it either. I think in some important sense, smoothness matters a lot, but I’m still missing pieces of the puzzle here.
Anyway, this is not a criticism of circling, just some prior predictions about the experience of circling. What worries me is that this kind of experience report (and actually, your previous post as well) point towards validating those predictions. And I don’t really have a point here, I’m just sharing my thoughts in case they would be useful, cause some reflection or some interesting comment.
There’s something related to (a) as a minor point, certainly—a sort of ‘the coyote needs to never look down’ thing, where certain things go interesting places if you let them, even if they’re not where you intended, and you should some combination of gently steer and go with it and then debrief after. It’s not (b). I’m more trying to share a model of how the thing works as I developed it, and share some little things along the way that seem like good moments/data, and also building a 3-part narrative that felt like a 3-part narrative that should be told, and which I decided would be more effective if I split it into 3 even if combined they’re still post-length.
I think the fact that it feels silly to you is telling. I remember having this reaction before I went to CFAR and actually tried circling. In my (brief) experience circling, the point is that there’s an emotional dimension to “what it’s like to be you” that is somewhat orthogonal to our everyday experience, and that interacting via that dimension is important (in part for the reasons Selquist mentions).
Perhaps you’re pattern-matching circling onto “things weird people do”, maybe it feels weird because you’re actually uncomfortable making yourself vulnerable, or maybe it’s something else. I think the best thing to do here would be to try things—circling isn’t an expensive or dangerous exploration move.
This reaction is why I’m pretty happy that I had my first experience with it before I knew what it was at all. That way I got to have those concerns with built-in context.
Maybe, but doubt. I think I did express myself poorly—I’m generally pretty tolerant of weirdness and even awkwardness. I think what it evokes me is more like pointless meeting where I have to try very hard not to roll my eyes at how silly what we are doing is, and how pointless, and how obvious it would be to an external observer.
But like I said, I would try circling with an open mind any chance I got. I’ve only got a sense of what it looks like from the outside and that’s very different from what it is on the inside, for many many things (creative work, yoga, playing video games, …).