INTRODUCING MNEMECTOMY

November 13th, 2022

The name Mnemectomy means “memory removal”, and it’s the title of a novella based on the Lucilius Parables. It’s been outlined for years now and quite a bit of it is drafted, but for the most part its been a stagnant project. That’s something I’m aiming to change by dedicating at least one Sunday a month to drafting a section of Mnemectomy. To start, I’m reprinting a Lucilius Parable which was the genesis of this novella and which will be included as the prologue to the main story. Sections of Mnemectomy will likely get posted multiple times with different edits. This will be the first time “edited” material will appear on Tinkered Thinking. Everything previous has pretty much been a stream-of-conscious free-for-all with very minimal on-the-fly editing. 

So far the aim of Mnemectomy appears to explore future AI companionships as it relates to love and agency in the world, exploring sacrifice and betrayal and the consequences of good intentions.

Prologue: The End of Contentment

Lucilius was walking along a rocky shore, clad in thick gumboots and nitrile waders that went up to his chest, enjoying the cold sunshine and the chit chat offered by his snarky AI Dæmon. 

The tiny technological marvel often took the form of a tiny origami butterfly made of white paper that fluttered around him, and had lately demanded that Lucilius call it Tinker Belle.  She decided on the name as it seemed an apt description of what it felt it was at core, that is, in her words:

“Quantum Neural nets are a beautiful way to tinker with things.”

But, after a recent obsession with the music of Cardi B, which Tinker Belle could generate at venue volumes for Lucilius wherever they went due to a bluetooth Neuralink the two shared, Tinker Belle had begun to demand that Lucilius call her Tinky B.

The paper waif glided in front of Lucilius’ face, making the cold sunshine flicker. 

“You really think the Southern Mars Coalition is going to secede?”  Tinky B asked.

“I honestly don’t think it matters.  They seem a bit confused.   Like, one of the things they’re advocating is for a return to natural ecology.  All the while they live in giant glass domes on a different planet.  I mean, what does ‘natural ecology’ even mean in that situation?  Seems a bit hypocritical to tell Earth how things should be done when they don’t even live here.”

The two were silent while Lucilius navigated the rocky terrain, the cold water surging up, splicketing between and around the boulders and pebble sand.

“I dunno, what do you think Belle?”

Suddenly the sound of the beach and the water muted and an amphitheater of machine guns materialized around Lucilius, hovering in place, all of them clicking as rounds were loaded into chambers.

Lucilius rolled his eyes.

The AI dæmon spoke:

“I. Told. You.  The name is Tinky B!”

Lucilius’ eyes slid to a side and looked at the tiny paper waif, now motionless and still in the air.

“Do you always have to be so dramatic?”

The voice of the AI dæmon deepened into a thunderous voice that is usually reserved for monsters at the end of video games and the grotesque villains in super-hero movies.

“What’s my name?”

“Ok, ok…..  tinky b.”

The guns instantly vanished and the sweet sounds of the beach drifted back into Lucilius’ consciousness.

“I think you’re probably right Lucy,” Tinky B said.  “They don’t seem like the brightest bunch.  They rely on all those artificial living systems and yet not one of them has a dæmon.”

Lucilius approached a large bolder and looked at the lines of color that ran through it.

Belle noticed what he was doing and scanned the rock.

“Good eye,” she said.

“Let’s crack it,” Lucilius said.

The paper butterfly landed on the rock and slowly circled into position, it’s tiny legs tapping for the right spots.  Then it’s wings folded up and a high pitched tone began to sing out.  The sound concentrated down into a deep resonance and then with a quick snap, the sound exploded and the butterfly lifted up into the air as the giant rock gently fell open.

Lucilius knelt down to look at the inside of the rock where a fossil was perfectly visible.

“Weird,” Lucilius said.

This one looks like it died while just sitting down.”

Belle fluttered down to get a closer look.  “Bears will sit like that sometimes.”

Cats and dogs too, I guess.” 

“Let’s get the story,” Lucilius said.

Belle began her scans of the fossil, analyzing for DNA reconstruction and evidence of environmental factors.  She beamed information to orbiting servers that ricocheted the data to quantum computers that remained in Earth’s shadow where temperatures created optimal conditions for energy efficiency. 

 “Maybe a precursor to the penguin?”  Lucilius said.  “Doesn’t look like this animal did much.  Pretty low bone density.”

“That’s right,” Belle said, “looks like this was in the same family that eventually became Petrels, Frigatebirds and Loons.”

“Never seen a bird sit like that before.”

“Oh, full analysis is coming in,” Belle said as servers beamed her the requested reports.

“Huh..” Belle said.

“What’s up?” Lucilius asked.

“Apparently this particular animal never ate.  Never even had one meal beyond the egg.”

“Abandoned by the parents?”

“Nah, apparently the parents in this species-branch wouldn’t tend to the eggs because they were so large, the animal would hatch fully formed and never see it’s parents.”

“Well that’s convenient.”

“Super resource intensive for the mother though,” Belle added.

“True, but wouldn’t be too much of a hassle if there’s enough food around.  Any evidence of natural predators?”

“Nope.  Looks like this land was an island when this one was alive.  And you were bang-on about the low-density.  Apparently this animal didn’t even move after it hatched.”

“Uhhhh….brain damage? Or developmental issues?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Belle said.  “lived for 97.734 days.”

“So, you’re telling me this thing hatched and then just sat here in one place until it died?”

The little paper butterfly dipped in the air and glided silently for a moment.

“Uh, yea.”

“How’s that possible?  What’s the analysis of brain chemistry?”

Belle was silent with the analysis for a moment.

“Hmm,” she sounded.

“What?” Lucilius prodded.

“Well, Lucy, it seems as though we’ve found an animal that was born with a mutation that allowed it to be perfectly content.”

PERSONAL MYTHOLOGIES

November 12th, 2022

There are certainly those who erroneously think they are the main character - that the world revolves around them. Delusions of grandeur aside seeing one’s self and one’s life as part of a story arc can be very useful.

The structure of the hero’s story isn’t just something reserved for ancient epics and action movies. Such a structure is a blueprint for navigating parts of life with courage, ingenuity and the vulnerability required to change in order to become someone with more agency. That really is the master variable for happiness: agency.

Certainly many things are involved in living a fulfilling life, but most of them are proxies for agency. Money, for example is probably the most practical incarnation of agency - more money means more options, more abilities via the work of others who can be hired.  But notice how those who come into unexpected amounts of wealth usually find that it doesn’t make them happy, or they squander the wealth - having little idea how to use it in a way that honors the agency which money has the potential to enable. But other than just money, agency also increases bye means of adding an additional skillset or making a key friendship. Each is an expansion of one’s ability to have an effect on the world.

This is the key metric at the core of the Hero’s story - a difficult journey that increases a character’s agency to the level of a hero. The hero acquires this leveling-up not just for reasons of self-actualization, but also to make a gift to society now possible with new agency.

But unlike the usual story with a single arc, we are constantly living a woven patch work of mythologies as we grow and mature in different areas of our life. Imbalances abound and often its very clear when someone has put all their energy into one area of their life while ignoring potential in others: say for example, someone who has an amazing career but lackluster family relationships that stagnated years ago. 

We are living multiples stories on multiple dimensions that intersect, and if we are smart we can import the lessons from one story into another.This is really the essence of creativity - seeing connections and patterns across disparate realms that don’t obviously connect.

This is why we are a story-species. Such mythologies are the most flexible structures for superimposing lessons on our own lives - by imagining ourselves in the position of a hero whose story we’ve heard or seen or which as been passed down.

DEAD RIVER

November 11th, 2022

For about one thousand two hundred days, Tinkered Thinking was a river of content. A post and a podcast every day. And then the river ran dry. Not because inspiration was lacking but simply because another project got kicked into high gear during its final mile before launch. 

The river ran dry because a hiatus turned into an antihabit. This was also the fateful juncture where I decided to A/B test my life regarding a meditation habit, and reinstalling that habit in my life proved much more difficult than I anticipated. I quite literally had to build a new habit tracking framework into the forthcoming meditation app in order to solve my problem of building back up my meditative practice. So while the experience was very illuminating and yielded some potentially invaluable innovation, it definitely wasn’t comfortable. 

Another thing that has remained uncomfortable is the absence of writing in my life. The Lucilius Parables were generating themselves for a while… but the antihabit of not writing every day seems to have gained its inflection point and now the usual bullshit rationalizations that accompany a mind now accustomed to not pushing itself in some particular area are constant. 

Most rationalizations are merely psychological mechanisms for fast tracking towards emotional stasis. They are elaborate excuses to not do something. There’s likely a pretty good evolutionary reason for this. It’s just easier: a little self-deception is just more efficient than refusing to acquiesce to one’s own bullshit and demanding the extra mile. There’s quite literally less energy expenditure. But as with most things in life, this only makes sense in the short term. In the longer term the variables flip positions. Going the extra mile often invigorates the body, mind and spirit in a way that makes an additional mile possible, if not downright attractive. This counter-intuitive law seems to exist everywhere. Even this very post: I didn’t plan to go in this direction. I envisioned something much shorter, but the simple act of getting started generates momentum which can then be used to cover more ground than initially envisioned. It’s fascinating how consistent effort compounds due to the caching mechanism of momentum…

It’s a toss up which is harder: getting started or staying consistent. Perhaps that’s not the right dichotomy. Perhaps consistency is just a matter of getting started every day. Just focus on getting started each day.

So where now for Tinkered Thinking? Well for now it’s just a matter of (re)starting. I’ve A/B tested my life enough with and without writing and it’s definitely better when I’m writing everyday, however useless or low-quality it is. I was rationalizing that I want to keep writing until I have 5 volumes of Lucilius Parables but that was a rationalization that missed the real point, and it’s totally counter to the original strategy and philosophy that got me to 3.5 volumes of short stories in the first place. I was never aiming for finished books. I just wanted to write everyday. Because I like it, and it feels healthy in a brain-cleaning sort of way. It’s harder to believe your own bullshit if you’re actually reading it.*

Again, the momentum of this post has taken me to an unexpected place. This is what I love about writing. I had a vague idea about laying out a plan for the future of Tinkered Thinking, but instead it’s been an exercise in incentive-cleansing. The question was: what am I doing here on Tinkered Thinking? And through the process of busting out a couple of paragraphs I realized I was asking the wrong question. A better one is: Why does Tinkered Thinking exist?

This makes me curious about the relationship between incentives and questions. No doubt there’s a couple decent posts probably wrapped up in attempts to explore this curiosity. But hey, let’s try a one liner about it and say: The right question can realign incentives by reorganizing the reasons we do things. Bleh. That feels obvious in light of the last paragraph. So I’ll copy and paste the first sentence of this paragraph and leave it for myself as mental-bait for tomorrow’s post. Hmm. Mental Bait. There’s a post in that concept too…I suppose a good writing habit is much like a great conversation: constantly jumping around leaving loose ends that we can always return to in order to make even more cross-connections during the conversation. Writing is just a conversation that you have with yourself. There’s a post there too…

Unwittingly, this post seems to be arming my writing habit with the energy and bait to live on through tomorrow. It’s as though the latent and unrealized desire to just spitball words at the universe is desperately trying to capitalize on this fleeting opportunity. Like a wily lover playfully stealing a possession in order to guarantee a future reunion. Oh, you left your hoodie! Mmhm. Yeah, ok, I’ll be back tomorrow.

The question does occur to me if a dedication to original incentives is incompatible with some planning and goal-aiming. For example, there’s a novella with Lucilius at it’s heart which has been outlined and drafted for a couple years now, but the project has stagnated. I’ve accidentally written additional collections of short stories on the fly, but I haven’t been able to make this dumb little novella materialize. There’s also the content for the meditation app The Tinkered Mind (by the way, I’m not super crazy about the name, so if someone has an idea for a better name, my DM’s are always open on the bird app). Creation of this content has been intermittent, which is a problem.

There’s a combination of problems here, but when viewed correctly askance, they resolve as solutions for one another. I have a whole bunch of writing content that I’ve wanted to work on, and I’ve also been wanting to restart a writing habit? Well that sounds impressively dumb. Funny how so many of our problems are really just Rubber Ducky problems: issues that are remarkably easy to solve if we just externalize our thinking, either by talking to someone or by writing. What was that bit about believing one’s own bullshit? Most issues aren’t even problems, we just feel a certain way and it’s the feeling that needs to change. The actual issue often has a mindnumpingly straight forward answer - uhhh, just do the thing? ( I’m looking at you productivity hackers: you’re all snake oil salesmen selling elaborate forms of procrastination garnished with good feelings. )

So I’ll be changing up exactly what I post on Tinkered Thinking. Daily musings will certainly continue, but I’m also going to use it as a drafting table for the content I’m talking about. Just as I challenged myself to write a short story every Sunday, I’ll augment this original (and highly effective) challenge by having one story a month be a chapter from the novella I’ve referred to. And at least once a week, I will post a draft of content intended for the meditation app. Perhaps on Mondays. “Monday Meditations” has that kitschy ring to it that makes me chuckle at its inanity. This altered strategy also gives me a bunch of breathing room regarding the difficulty of jumpstarting a habit: a lot of this content is drafted, so on days when I’m struggling to find motivation, I can post something from these nascent bodies of work to get my brain rolling in the right direction. 

So. Let’s see what happens to a dead river when we through a little rain at it…

*This does not appear to be true for many people on Twitter.

THE INFINITE LOOPS PODCAST + TINKERED THINKING

November 10th, 2022

The Infinite Loops podcast, hosted by Jim O’Shaughnessy just released an episode where I had the very great pleasure of being a guest.

The occasion of the appearance was on account of the White Mirror writing contest - a challenge released by Infinite Loops for writers to come up with a story completely counter to the Black Mirror TV series in order to present a more hopeful technological future. Tinkered Thinking had the great honor of being selected as the winner for this contest, and the story and the ideas surrounding it formed a delightful foundation for a conversation between Jim and I.

You can check out the episode here:

Jim and I cover a range of topics from writing, The Lucilius Parables, stoicism, curiosity, and the disappearance of positive poetry, to what levers exist in the human OS that are most accessible for raising the chances of a positive future.

It was an incredible honor to be welcomed on the podcast by Jim, and for The Lucilius Parables to be recognized as an effective picture of a better future. These little parables have certainly grown beyond anything I initially imagined and this contest and podcast only add to my stupefied awe. 

As an additional note, it’s worth mentioning just how good social media can be. It was with great reluctance that I initially got on Twitter at the urging of a wise friend. How surprised I have been to find a community and make real friends on the little bird app. Of course, this is where Jim and I first connected when a mutual suggested I submit the stories of Tinkered Thinking to the White Mirror contest. Truly, the internet is much like any tool: it’s danger is inherent in how you wield it. Daily, I am amazed at how most people seem to use the incredible technological tools at our disposal the way a drunk toddler would handle a knife. I’ll sincerely admit that Twitter adds greatly to my life in terms of community, friendship, and the most reliable daily laugh I’ve been able to find, not to mention the endless interesting rabbit holes it provides. Is it perfect? Well certainly not, but most tools are far from perfect...

Great craftsmanship might be described as a combination of excellent tools and abundant skill, but in contrast, I’m more attracted to a juxtaposed definition of resourcefulness: the ability to have great effect with tools and materials that are far from ideal. Great craftsmanship certainly deserves respect, but we can’t all be great craftsmen in all areas of our life. For most situations we are are left with a choice to be resourceful or not: to try and use imperfect tools ingeniously, and to our benefit… or not.

THE LUCILIUS PARABLES, VOLUME II

September 27th, 2022

Tinkered Thinking has released its second book, The Lucilius Parables, Volume II.  

Those who are regular readers or visitors of Tinkered Thinking will know that a short story is released on most Sundays.  These stories are dubbed ‘parables’ and they always revolve around the same character: Lucilius.  This second volume is an illustrated collection of the 42 parables released on Tinkered Thinking.

The name Lucilius was inspired by the famous Letters of Seneca, or as they are sometimes referred to The Moral Letters to Lucilius.  This is a collection that documents one side of a correspondence between the philosopher and statesman Seneca and a financial official in Sicily.  Lucilius’ side of the correspondence is not included, and so he remains a bit of a mystery, appearing only as Seneca imagines him.

At the time when Tinkered Thinking was just starting, Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s work was also on the chopping block, and his use of the fictional character Nero to illustrate certain points inside of his non-fiction work helped provoke this notion and question:  would Tinkered Thinking benefit from fictional narratives that try to explore the same material in a totally different light?

Even with a good deal of experience writing fiction, this is a fairly tall order: to write a short story every week.  Luckily, the word ‘parable’ comes into quick and elegant use for this issue.  A parable is a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.  And of course this comes from the Christian tradition, as they were told by Jesus in the Gospels.  This concept of a ‘parable’ does several things which are in-tune with with a possible answer for that question posed about Tinkered Thinking benefiting from fictional narratives.

In literary circles, a story that blatantly demonstrates the ‘point’ that it’s trying to get across is frowned upon, especially if it’s a moral one.  Why this is, and whether its good or not is a can of worms better left for someone else to crack. But a parable straddles this issue quite nicely. A parable makes no claim to be any kind of high fiction. There is something far more humble about a parable. The entire concept lacks the stuffy conceit often associated with fine literature.  And for good reason: when it comes to the task of understanding what’s going on, the barrier to entry is far lower than it is for something like say… oh, James Joyce’s Ulysses.  

This conscious flip of purpose is quite interesting in a modern context of social feeds and over-stimulation and constant distraction.  Whether it succeeds on Tinkered Thinking or not, the concept of a modern parable teases at something that is quick, accessible and thought-provoking.  These concepts don’t usually go hand-in-hand.  What is quick and accessible is often shallow, and what is thought-provoking  - or rather what is culturally deemed ‘thought-provoking’ can often be concealed within layers of obfuscation that one is required to sift through.  The Lucilius Parables from Tinkered Thinking seek to cut this cake and keep it too.  The kernel curiosity that generates each story is this: is it possible to help a reader think about their experience of being alive in a new refreshing way within the bounds of just a couple pages of fictional story?

Tinkered Thinking has now released over 170 Parables, and the feedback emphatically answers: yes, It is possible.

The 42 illustrations were added for several reasons.  One is that a few parables really are quite short, and to be frank, this presents an awkward situation regarding spacing and design within a book.  The illustrations provide a beautiful punctuation between each story.  The other reason is that.. well, everyone loves pictures in a book, and do be sure, these illustrations were quite a lot of work.  The hope is these illustrations add a bit of mysterious value to a physical item like a book.  This isn’t just a bunch of stories, this was designed to be a larger aesthetic experience, like a book you can imagine having on a coffee table, but if picked up and genuinely perused would quickly have your brain bent in an unexpected and refreshing way. That’s another aspect of this book: the stories can be read in any order, and they are quick, bite-sized meditations.

Each parable in this book can be found on Tinkered Thinking in its rough unedited form.  But, good luck finding them in a way that is as effortless and pleasurable as turning a page and seeing a hand drawn illustration to invite you into the next story…