there's a whole 'nother aspect of the nerd phenomenon that has to do with the particularities of nerd obsessions and nerd thinking; i have fewer speculations about this because it overlaps with autism stuff i can't claim to understand at all
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but loosely speaking thinking and getting lost in thoughts can be a coping mechanism (i don't mean this as a criticism; coping mechanisms are good, they're for coping, it's right there in the name)
enneagraminstitute.com/type-5
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one version of what you could call my main thesis that i'm exploring on twitter is: it is possible to go from being a nerd to being a jock, to go from being tense all the time to not being tense all the time
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guys can we talk about this completely insane thread where oxytocin nasal spray apparently makes an autistic guy not autistic temporarily? i'm gonna be fucked up about this for days twitter.com/punished3liza/…
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tensions can be discovered and met and understood and loved and melted and integrated and all sorts of stuff; we have many ways to do this stuff now and we can use them and spread the word
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thread of therapy and therapy-like thingies that have helped me or people i know:
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lately i've been focusing on tension in my legs and pelvis (historically i've focused on tension in my chest and gut) and i definitely don't feel done with it yet but there have already been moments that walking and running feel amazing 🥲
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idk how to describe this but i think i can... feel the connection between my feet and my pelvis and the base of my spine now? like something about the way weight gets distributed all along that length has popped into awareness
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other nerd stuff i don't feel like i understand as well: wearing glasses (is this just from not getting enough sunlight?), allergies (spending time indoors + autoimmune issues from chronic tension?)... there must be other stuff, what else?
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some amendments: "Nerdness involves contraction of the body, granted, but it involves expansion elsewhere"
"being in one's head" as primary which someone else also mentioned
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
Still think those people are not all nerds
Nerdness involves contraction of the body, granted, but it involves expansion elsewhere
The relationship between those pressures is important. It's not *just* a cope, but a pressure model of investments
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people don't realize that in some ways being in one's head is a form of embodiment. Nerds often have very interesting and complex head and hand relations
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huh interesting, can you say more?
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I suggest studying the movements of the absent minded professor archetype. Even a review from movies will do. Consider Terrence Tao's description of rolling around on the floor as a mathematical intuition pump. The nerd body is an information processing machine.
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i remember a rationalist friend of mine telling me he used muscle tension as a form of extra working memory and feeling both impressed and vaguely horrified
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basically everyone does, afaik, it's just a question of one's awareness of "extended cognition"
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