COEFFICIENTS OF FRICTION

August 29th, 2019

In the realm of physics, friction has two coefficients: static and kinetic.  But everyone understands this implicitly: getting something to move is always harder than it is to keep it moving.

From this simple intuition, it should make sense that the coefficient of static friction is always greater than the coefficient of kinetic friction.

Delightfully, this seems to be symmetrically relevant in the realm of psychology and habit formation.

It’s easier to keep a habit going than it is to start one.

It’s that first month that’s always the hardest, but after that, it gets remarkably easier to keep going.

With how many things do we give only a few days of effort?

How many bad habits come back after some similarly short stint of abstinence?

On a local level, it feels as though it’ll always be as difficult to maintain the new behavior as it is in the beginning.  But this is not true.  After that first month, the static friction gives away to the easier, lower kinetic friction.  And with habits that are continued long enough, they seem to gain their own momentum as though that kinetic friction gives way completely as they generate their own fuel.

The key here is to plan a sustained sprint through the first month with staggered rewards to break the month up into smaller, manageable units, each one offering something to look forward to.  This is how we dismantle the coefficient of static friction and initiate new stages of behavior within ourselves.

Without chopping up that first month into manageable stretches of time, it becomes an intimating monolith….

A monolith that feels impossible to move…

THE STRATEGY OF TINKERED THINKING

August 28th, 2019

Today, Tinkered Thinking releases it’s 500^th episode . . .

So what’s the point?

Episode 499 kind of answered that. 

So another question is: how?

First a little background:  A little under two years ago the question arose in the mind: is it possible to write everyday about the same thing?  That ‘thing’ was a simple sentence, the title of a non-existent book.

A creative writing assignment that is sometimes prescribed is: think of a book title that you can imagine seeing on a book shelf, or on the New York Times bestseller list.  Something like that.

The next day, when you come in with your title(s), the new assignment is: ok, now write the book.

Pondering this assignment as a thought experiment was also compounded with a steady intake of Seth Godin’s blog.  He has been writing and posting everyday for an immense amount of time.  Something like 17 years if memory serves well.

The name of a book was easy enough to come up with.  But the idea of sitting down to write everyday was more tantalizing, if only for the reason that prior reasons to write had succumbed as casualties to a large intellectual shift.

A couple months later, there was a word document with about 50,000 words.  As a casual coding exercise, this writing was tossed onto the web and shown in passing to a few friends.

Some interest grew and it seemed reasonable to build it out a little.  Since people do not seem to have the time they used to for reading, the podcast element was added and is l a b o r i o u s l y maintained.  The thinking here is that reading is a paralyzing activity: you simply can’t do anything else while your eyes are occupied with text.  Podcasts, on the other hand, afford a freedom from such paralysis.  You can wash dishes while listening, or fold clothing, or drive to work, or go to the gym, or draw, paint, sculpt, ride your bike, et cetera, et cetera.

The dreamy ideal is that Tinkered Thinking can be that morning mind-snack to jog the brain to action while a listener waits for a cup of coffee to take effect.  (And delightfully enough, that’s what it’s become for some people)

The long term reality is that Tinkered Thinking in it’s current incarnation is a scratchpad, a drawing board of sorts:

A place to brainstorm, ponder, question and wonder out loud.

Tinkered Thinking claims no certainty, but rather tries to describe things while feeling around in the dark, while trying different things.

While this strategy was launched with the basic aim of writing about a single sentence – i.e. that imagined book title mentioned at the beginning – the fuel that has kept this project aloft was a curiosity about what might arise -and subsequently- a genuine surprise about what’s turned up.

For one, that original book title that was imagined has faded into the background and what has emerged is a new structure, a more foundational one which will be the focus of Tinkered Thinking’s first non-fiction book, estimated to be fully fleshed out and available sometime in 2021.  This book represents a structure of thought that has emerged unexpectedly from the practice and execution of Tinkered Thinking. 

In the meantime, the platform has already produced a book of sorts, and nearly by accident.  As dedicated listeners and readers will know, Tinkered Thinking releases a ‘Lucilius Parable’ every Sunday which seeks to reimagine the material of Tinkered Thinking in the form of a narrative.  A year of Lucilius Parables has produced enough material to justify a book, which is in the works and will be available to purchase within the next couple months.  And to be sure, all of this material is free on Tinkered Thinking, and through the podcast, however, the printed book will be fully edited, including rewrites and each parable will be accompanied by an original illustration. 

This first book, which will be Volume I of the Lucilius Parables, is a good example of Tinkered Thinking’s strategy yielding unexpected things.  The whole book arose from a simple question:

What if there were a narrative portion to Tinkered Thinking? 

(The inspiration for this was primarily Taleb’s use of the character ‘Nero’)

The exercise harks of a larger tenant of Tinkered Thinking: exploring principles in multiple contexts allows us to discern what is truly useful and glean it from what is simply the product of a quaint conceptual realm.  Language is a double-edged instrument, and what sounds like it makes sense might not actually be practical or even useful.  Luckily, it seems the Lucilius Parables are consistent favorites among readers and listeners

Boiled down to it’s most basic springboard, the strategy of Tinkered Thinking is: What if?

What if there’s a post every day?

What if there’s a podcast episode every day?

What if there’s a narrative episode every Sunday?

What if there’s a book available for purchase?

What if there’s a twitter component to distill ideas into smaller units?

What if there’s a way for listeners and readers to support the work?

What if Tinkered Thinking shoots for a million words?

What if there’s over a thousand episodes?

What if Tinkered Thinking became an ocean of thought. . . .

What might arise from the deep?

This question of ‘what if’ spurs all sorts of different plans to test against reality and that becomes the ‘how?’ of the Tinkered Thinking strategy.

Posting everyday has yielded the realization that quantity is more important for the creator than quality, which is counter to the traditional wisdom.  Of course, if our endeavors actually resulted in a binary choice, we should all choose quality over quantity, but this is often unrealistic.  What traditional thought fails to realize is that

quantity is a part of the process that eventually yields quality. 

This too is part of the strategy that has extended from ‘what if’, and it’s left to the reader and listener to decide how that has turned out.

To be sure, Tinkered Thinking has many possible avenues and plans it would like to explore, but of course there is a limit to the amount of time and energy that can be poured into the platform. 

And on that note: Tinkered Thinking is supported by listeners and readers.  How much Tinkered Thinking grows is directly related to those who follow the material and particularly, those who support the platform.

This platform has no ads, and this is an important part of the philosophy behind Tinkered Thinking when it comes to attention, and how we direct it, parse it, and fill it. 

Tinkered Thinking seeks to be an exercising influence. Like catfish that nip at cod to keep them active, These podcasts and posts increasingly seek to nip at your brain, to ask questions that might poke monsters of thought. 

So.  If you have found any value in Tinkered Thinking, please consider becoming a supporter through the support page at tinkeredthinking.com.  Every new supporter enables a little more time and a little more energy to go into this platform.

Of course, you can always show your support by spreading the word.  Mention it to family, email the link of a favorite post to a few friends.  A text, a tweet is all it takes to help other people discover this platform.

Lastly, a humble thank you to the listeners and readers who already support this platform.  It is an honor to try and rise to the challenge you present everyday.

Tinkered Thinking isn’t going anywhere for the time being.

So until tomorrow:

Be careful of the context.

BUT WHY?

August 27th, 2019

This episode is an extension of Episode 498, entitled Artificial Hardship.  Be sure to check out that one first if you haven’t already.

In that episode a distinction was drawn between artificial hardships and natural hardships.  The modern world –at least for those lucky enough to live in a modern technological area of the world- effectively solves many of the natural hardships that our ancestors had to deal with.  Mass starvation is not a problem and many of the perplexing health problems that riddled the bodies of our forebears has some sort of treatment if not a straight up cure.

This phenomenal new reality employs solutions to such a degree that the solutions end up causing new problems, like obesity and heart disease. 

For the discerning and disciplined individual, it’s possible to walk a middle way in terms of this spectrum  of problem->solution->new-problem-caused-by-solution-on-steroids.

It’s possible to discipline one’s self to work out, fast, and regulate the type of food eaten.  To optimize schedule and lifestyle to take advantage of the best sleep, to mitigate stress and then purposely implement it for benefit.  Those on the cutting edge of what life has to offer today are generally aware of these things and constantly tinkering with the dials to find what is optimal.  

But why?

It boils down to one word.  This whole restless rolling snowball of busy people anxious to get to the next moment boils down to one word, one concept – a luxury really – that often requires many things to be in balance.

It’s curiosity.

At the heart of what moves us forward is a curiosity, about what is possible.

Certainly, needs and impending dangers drive us too, but when these are solved to an optimal degree, it opens up the wide field of the mind for a particularly delicate and beautiful phenomenon.

This is one of the grave tragedies of school.

For the most part, school kills curiosity and trains animal-humans to be well-regulated workers.  And school makes incredibly efficient work of this.

To be sure, all kids are born curious.  Quite literally.  This is why they ‘get into everything’, put everything in their mouth and constantly look around.

Sure they are learning.  Yes.  They are taking in the world and making sense of it.

But wait a moment.

Why does this stop?

Do YOU have the whole world and universe figured out?

Of course not.  But many people stop wondering and stop exploring.  We stop poking and prodding and testing.

We grow fearful and passive.

Today marks the eve of a special day for Tinkered Thinking.  Tomorrow episode 500 will be released.  500 days of writing, 500 episodes for all you listeners and readers.

And to take a moment, I just want to say thank you.  The growing support has been absolutely wonderful.

And that’s exactly what Tinkered Thinking seeks to give back to you.  More than anything, Tinkered Thinking seeks to fill you once again with a sense of wonder – to crack the modern case of fear and wake again that glinting eyed curiosity.

Tinkered Thinking has sought to swim around in our world of words and thoughts and investigate it from different angles with the hope that a reader or listener will simply pause, and go… “huh.  Hadn’t thought about it that way before.”

And that’s the point!  There are so many undiscovered ways to think that each and every one of us has the potential to explore.

Ultimately, Tinkered Thinking seeks to achieve this aim through the most visceral and powerful tool that we have at our disposal:

The Question.

Tinkered Thinking seeks to find those questions, that one question that lights a firecracker in the core of your mind, sending you soaring in the same way you once experienced as a child.

But why?

Because now you can do something about it.  As kids we all thought and spoke about what we’d do when we ‘grew up’.  Well, for the most part, all of us are grown up now, and because of that, we have the power and the opportunity to take that chance.

Ask yourself: if your 7 or 8 or 9 year old self suddenly met you, knowing you were who they were going to turn into…. how would that little kid feel?

Would that kid’s eyes go wide, would that kid pull a tight fist down and go: yesss! I can’t wait!

Or would that kid maybe look a little worried?

Is there a chance that kid would wonder: geez… I wonder where things went wrong.  This is grown-up me and they can do all the things that I want to do but just can’t because I’m just a kid….

So, on the eve of this most lovely little day, Tinkered Thinking leaves you with that question:

Have you honored the curiosity and wonder of the kid who couldn’t wait to be you?

ARTIFICIAL HARDSHIP

August 26th, 2019

Occasionally you will come across a discussion between wealthy people who came from humble beginnings concerning how to raise children.  Such successful people almost always point out how the hardship of poverty or lack of opportunity was a valuable aspect of their growth.  But what to do about the children?  Create artificial hardship? 

Most of these discussions default to the conclusion that creating an artificial hardship is unrealistic and would somehow not work.

Strangely, such discussions fail to see how much artificial hardship already exists on a broad scale.

With all due respect to those who are struggling in a legitimately impoverished situation, the modern world affords many of us a degree of abundance that is staggering when paired with the standards of our ancestors.  The further back in time we go, the harder things get.  Simple as that.  The ‘good ol’ days’ are simply an illusion and a fantasy to escape the pressures and stresses that we might have now.

The double-sided case and point for this would be our immensely complicated medical procedures, -such as bypass surgery- that are implemented to deal with the impacts of abundant food.  Here we have two radically new advances that would astonish our ancestors.

Abundant Food?

Like so much food that they eventually have to cut you open and unclog all the food because it’s stopping your heart?

The first artificial hardship in relation to this problem is obvious.

People want to look good naked.

So they go to the gym.

This is another condition that would boggle many of our ancestors.

Wait, you’re saying you go to a special place to do hard manual labour?  And you pay for this?  What in the hell is wrong with you, go home…relax…. enjoy life for once.  Like, what in God’s name did all of us ancestors work so hard for?

We can highlight another artificial hardship that applies to the same issue of weight and health as impacted by abundant food.

The practice of fasting.

This is a growing trend and the research to support the health benefits has been well established for decades and only continues to grow in robustness.

Now think of all those ancestors we’ve had that suffered through long famines.

So you’re telling me you have all this food available… that you can eat virtually any cuisine you want by just going to ‘restaurants’, and you purposely starve yourself?  Frankly, on behalf of every human that suffered and died just so you could exist right now: you’re an asshole.

The modern world is ultimately a collection of evolving solutions that were implemented to address these age-old concerns.  We are making things easier for ourselves. 

But for what purpose, and what’s the real effect?

Clearly we go a little overboard with our solutions, and we’ve failed to anticipate that too much of a solution actually becomes a new problem.  Too much food, too much inactivity, and boom, you have an unhealthy and uncomfortable life.

As with many things, the middle path balanced between the extremes of solution and problem is optimal.

But back to those rich kids for a moment.

A lack of hardship certainly has the potential to create a fairly useless human that creates unproductive problems for themselves.

On the other end of the spectrum we have those who are stuck in a downward spiral of debt and stress who –for the most part- can’t think clear enough to find a way out.  Chronic stress is potentially another new and unexpected problem created by the modern world.  This seems clear from the fact that we are not built to handle chronic stress.  Short and even intense intervals of stress are actually quite good for our brain, but keep that engine in a high gear and the effects quickly flip to the exact reverse.

(As a quick side note, the neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky is an excellent resource for exploring the intricacies and implications of chronic stress.)

Clearly, a human is likely to do best somewhere in the middle of these extremes.  Some resources, and the opportunity to take a few risks can go a long way in this modern world.

But unlike previous times, that opportunity to take a few risks ultimately involves manufacturing some artificial hardship for one’s self.

Just as going to the gym and fasting to feel good and look good is an artificial hardship..

A university course is artificial hardship.

A side hustle outside of a 9-5 job is artificial hardship.

Getting up on stage for amateur night at a comedy club is artificial hardship.

Writing a blog or a book or a podcast that no one may ever read or listen to is artificial hardship.

Natural hardship in the modern world is a matter of constructing and tailoring a set of artificial hardships.

But why?

Well, stay tuned for tomorrow’s episode.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: PERFUME

August 25th, 2019

This parable is now published in the second volume of Lucilius Parables. Click on the book below to visit the store to consider purchasing.

 

 

 

Lucilius breathed in the stinking air slowly, carefully. He’d made a dangerous wedge of himself between the wooden hull of the ship and the cold slick skin of the carcass. Luckily, the sea was an immaculate stillness; unlike the last time he’d drawn short straw for the monkey rope. It was devil dancing. And last time the boys above had a laugh at him while he lanced sharks and bobbled around on the dead whale, slipping, trying simply to keep from falling into that dark blinking gap between carcass and ship. The first mate, a brute they called Roman, took a perverse sort of pity on him and emptied half a bottle of rum on his head from above. Lucilius’ eyes had stung shut for long blundering minutes, but his beard was soaked, and Lucilius spent the rest of the night sucking oblivion from his own whiskers and laughing at the blank stare of of black eyes in the water.

On this night there was not a sound, as though it had all died with the big fish lashed to the ship’s side. Lucilius loosened the slip knot of the monkey rope pinched round his waist, careful not to lose his bearable posture.

In the moonlight he could make out the designs on his arms. He rolled a forearm to look at the faded image of a girl, the lines already decades old.

Lucilius wondered were she was now, Serafina. He closed his eyes on the cartoonish likeness of her, and in his mind’s eye the simple dotted ovals of color snapped to real green eyes narrowing on him from across the room.

A silly tune rose in the gullet, the same he’d sung softly then, to get her to look, making her nose wrinkle with a smile.

Seraphina. . .

She’s the queen me boys of all the gals that live in the ol’ casino…

She finished buckling her shoe and stood. She misted herself quickly with a small bottle, squeezing a braided bladder hanging from it’s golden top. Walked slowly to him, as the man’s mind raced for a fresh line to add to his new song.

Seraphina’s got no shoes, I been ashore, I seen’er

Seraphina… Seraphina

She hiked up the damp dress and sat on him, facing him, lacing wrists together behind his neck as he sang.

She’s got no time ta put’em on, that hardworked Serafina. . .

The woman’s look sullied. She looked down, and leaned in closer to him.

“You were gone a long time.”

Lucilius shrugged. “Long, hard work to get all that goop and goo to make those pretty powders you wear - that perfume you puff about you.”

She looked at him now, her eyes softer than he’d known and full of question.

“Think maybe you’ll stay? Get a farm or something?”

Even after his long years, Lucilius was still a fool. A fool thinking fool thoughts, merely recording the moment for wiser times.

“I don’t know. Hadn’t really thought about it. Someone’s got to do that dirty work tho. It’s a life for now,” he said as she held his eyes with her own for a last tentative moment. She got up, and left the room.

Lucilius touched the tattoo, but all he felt was his own skin. She was a ghost in the ink now, he realized as he remembered the curious coin on the nightstand. He looked for her after, but she was gone. Only a faint and sweet scent of her fading.

Lucilius looked back out over the sea of black glass. They’d fetched two whales during the day with only enough time to flense and roll one of them and take the head of the second, the blubber now boiling in the tryworks. More goop and goo to barrel and roll below, to take home.

He thought of Seraphina’s little bottle of perfume and the dead whale he was sitting on. He wondered, if any of this stinking carcass would end up in Seraphina’s little bottle.

The carcass bumped, and Lucilius looked around with dread. The carcass bumped again, and through the rubber skin, Lucilius could feel the vibrations of wrestle in the water. He reached up and tugged on the monkey rope to wake his shipmate. The man grumbled, the rope around Lucilius’ waist tightened, cinched him and he hobbled himself up, steadying himself with the side of the ship. His scarred feet took small tentative steps and he swung the lance around again to prod the dark waters for it’s thieves.