confusions

January 16, 2026

I think I take the structural fidelity of frames more seriously than many around me.

If I pay too much attention to the words I'm speaking or writing, I become nauseous.¹ If I pay too much attention to the words others are speaking or writing, I become nauseous and also relatively misanthropic. This is minimized when I'm operating inside idiolects; my current favorite is Finnegans Wake.

Writing tires me because engaging in conceptual wheat-and-chaff separation, as necessary to dictate words to page, generates nearly irremovable, painful, mental detritus. I don't know how to "garbage collect" while preserving the reproducibility of the generative thought-patterns. Some information is in the artifact, and some is in my head. Their relationship is complicated and not easily compressible!

Relatedly, it's very difficult for me to ingest someone else's "vocabulary."² Locally operating within it is fine. It requires some suspension of disbelief but I've had a lot of practice. Retaining those insights, however, is much harder.

I only feel clean when frames are correct, coherent, and minimal. No one has frames that are correct, coherent, and minimal. The burden of the boundedly-rational agent is to manage this tradeoff. My frames are certainly nowhere near optimal. But translation costs are real.

I'd really like to develop a healthier relationship with confusion. (I wish it wasn't physically aggravating). My best guess at how to do this is to find deep frames I'm satisfied with. Tips appreciated.

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