THE FUN ROUTE

September 15th, 2022

Given any new endeavor, any new project or skill to learn, the path forward is often unsure - unknown. And yet, without fail, we try to imagine one. Vaguely and somehow specifically there’s a sense of how it should go. It’s exactly at that point - before even starting - that trouble begins to arise.

Rare is the person who is going to actively imagine a dozen different paths to the same outcome, but in reality, there’s an infinite number of ways to arrive at a given destination, be it a real physical one, or figurative. What differentiates people is how we navigate - toward the first step and from step to step. Instead of taking things one step at a time, the cognitive e convention seems to be to imagine the entire arc of progress, but how we navigate from one small step to the next determines exactly how and if we make it to our desired destination.

The matter of taking one small step towards achievement is a matter of the Optimal Challenge. It’s a bit like the Goldilocks story, but instead of bed sizes and porridge temperatures, it’s a measure of difficulty: Not too difficult or you’ll get frustrated, not too easy or it’ll be boring. And then there’s one more component to the optimal challenge and exactly which optimal challenge to pick: does the result of overcoming the challenge inspire further motivation?

Some challenges are an end unto themselves. Once surmounted we slump back in exhaustion and call it a night. Other challenges, however, produce a result that seems to have the opposite effect: we lean in with more energy, we keep working, and whoops, accidentally pull an all-nighter. As much as staying up all night is not recommended, these are some of the best times - when the flow state seems on another level of longevity, when the marathon session feels like flying.

These experiences hold keys for understanding the mechanics of our own personal navigation when it comes to novel projects and learning new skills. 

A practical example might help: I’m currently sprinting on a small project. A few days ago, an entry about Flip Chess was posted. And after some encouragement from a good friend, I’ve decided to whip up an app for the chess variant. But for this project, I’m using a tech stack that I’m not terribly familiar with. So what exactly should I do? The first day I sort of languished on all sorts of tutorials, feeling out exactly how to do what I wanted to do. By the end of the day I was tired and honestly doubting whether the project was even worth undertaking. But at that point I had a thought: just get a chessboard on the screen. That should be easy. And so 20 minutes later I’d pulled a library, plugged it into my bare-bones set up and voila, I at least had a chessboard to look at. But, I’m a bit picky about how things should look. It was at this point I remember having a little conversation with myself. I reasoned that I shouldn’t do anything aesthetic because that’s not how a good friend of mine would do it. I should get the guts of the application working, and then worry about aesthetics. But that’s when I realized all this that I’ve been writing about. That’s now how my navigation system for motivation and the unknown functions. Having a uniquely colored board in the style I imagine - I realized - would make me more motivated to tackle the trickier stuff that I was feeling daunted about. So an hour or so later, I had what felt like a very slick looking chessboard - and because of it, I was excited to do more, to make it live, to get the guts of the application working so I could see my chosen aesthetics actually function.

So to circle back: it seems that when people think about how the path through the unknown should look, we are trying to imagine the correct way, when it’s actually more practical to ask: what is the funnest way to go about this?

SOLICITING ADVICE

September 14th, 2022

Advice can be a difficult object to parse. First off, no one is you. All the flowery stuff about being unique is, well - true. While there might be many people living a similar life, or people who have lived similar experiences, the differences between very similar lives are still vast. Advice that one person would have loved to hear when they were in your current predicament might not really apply to you, even if the situation is quite similar.

There’s also the issue of bad advice. Much advice is likely just that: bad. Either because someone doesn’t know what they’re talking about or because the advice just doesn’t apply to you aren your situation. It’s a bit like using an instruction manual for a prop airplane engine in order to fix a car engine. Sure there’s similarities in how both work, but the devil is in the details. Heck, even car engines can vary enough that an instruction manual for one doesn’t easily translate to another. Especially if it’s your first time trying to do something with these engines.

Much of the advice we hunt for is likely just due to a social impulse. It feels good to talk about our predicaments, and it feels like being loved when someone cares enough to listen and then say something constructive. 

All of this is also a form of procrastination. 

No matter the mentor or master, there is one source of advice that supersedes them all: reality. But how, of course, do we ask reality for some advice? Luckily reality is ruthless and honest beyond all people we might talk to. The trick is knowing how to ask for the advice. We might ask a friend and a mentor Do you think this is a good business idea? And that friend or mentor might have some interesting things to say, but reality carries a far better answer, and the way to ask reality is to actually go ahead and try it out - the business idea, that is.. Reality will give the final word of advice on whether it’s a good idea or a bad one. Reality’s advice is sought through experiments. And this is why it’s good to try and test ideas in iterative increments as opposed to toiling away on a grand plan for years and years without any real feedback from reality. Launch the smallest possible version of the idea with the minimum of effort and time and… see what reality says. 

ENTERTAINING NONSENSE

September 13th, 2022

Taking nonsense seriously is a serious problem while trying to make sense of the world. But entertaining nonsense is a vital skill because of how it changes our relationship to the unknown.

Is there much of a difference between taking a concept seriously and entertaining that concept? Certainly the seriousness of taking something seriously indicates it’s a bit further along on the spectrum of seriousness when compared to mere entertaining:

It’s one thing to invite someone in and entertain a guest. It’s quite another to invite that guest to move in.

Many people suffer from simply being too serious. And the caution warning on life’s prescription bottle would likely indicate that taking everything too seriously is likely to result in the adverse effect of taking nonsense seriously when such delight should only be merely entertained.

A serious person might claim that nonsense should not be considered at all. But being so serious, a serious person cannot seriously entertain the possibility that such serious discrimination might hamstring the ability to discriminate! How is one who only considered things seriously supposed to consider whether something is nonsense or not? Well, our serious fellow is caught in the hinge and teeth of a serious problem. Consideration of nonsense mistaken as something that is not nonsense means said nonsense must be seriously considered.

Hence the need to entertain nonsense. Is this guest merely a fool who makes me laugh, or is this a zen master of sorts making fun of me and itself?

Entertaining nonsense means combing through a lot more of the content of life. But not as an arduous task, but a pleasurable one, like feasting ones eyes on a beautiful vista, taking in more and more because all the details add to the beauty. 

But most importantly, the mental demeanor that comes with an ability to entertain nonsense translates to the way we shake hands with the unknown.

Traditionally the scariest thing to humanity, the unknown is home to both delightful surprise and crushing disappointment. All manner of unexpected lies beyond its front door. And those too serious to entertain nonsense have far more trouble knocking for entry than those who keep their souls fresh with a little nonsense.

FLIP CHESS

September 12th, 2022

This is a variation of chess that is designed to bridge the gap between experienced players and those just getting started. Normally, games for newbies against skilled players are demoralizing. Who wants to play a game after losing 7 games in a row? No one. Such games are also often boring for experienced players. Two problems, one solution:

Enter flip chess.

Instructions: Set up the board normally. Each player makes a move. Then, a coin is flipped. If the coin lands heads up, the board turned around, meaning: the players swap sides. Then the above instruction is simply repeated: each player makes a move and then the coin is flipped.

Why does flip chess work? 

Most importantly, by the end of the game, when one side has won (or drawn) both people playing the game have contributed to the win. The game is still fun without being demoralizing for the newbie player. Equally important: the game isn’t boring for the experienced player. Each flip of the board presents a fresh chess puzzle to work on, and it allows the more experienced player to develop both sides of the board without getting into the recursive loop that occurs when trying to play yourself. The newbie player also gets to see more developed boards - something that only comes about far down the learning curve.

While this might not work for elite players, flip chess likely bridges the gap between most players. But more importantly, this form of chess is more likely to keep a newbie interested. I have seen far more people give up on playing chess due to a demoralizing string of defeats than I have seen people grit their teeth and make it through the initial learning curve.

It’s interesting to think what sort of play might evolve with flip chess. Right now the sample size is very small (basically me and a few people I’ve tried it with), but with a larger sample size there’s an interesting set of new tactics that might evolve that take into consideration the randomness introduced by the flipped coin, more akin to poker… but this is yet to be seen.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: DREAM OF THE LUDDITES

September 11th, 2022

Lucilius and the rest of humanity was now spending almost all of its waking existence in a simulation of one sort or another. In fact, many people never even left the host simulation which functioned as a gateway to nearly all the other simulations. There was something for everyone, and everything for anyone: Hyper realistic video games that merged the old entertainment of movies with the agency of RPGs. There were learning simulations and therapy simulations, but in all, nearly every simulation that humanity now indulged with was simply an iteration on community. 

Lucilius was soaring through host simulation, scanning the possibilities when he noticed something he’d never seen before: a warning notification. He zoomed toward the simulation node and entered the simulation antechamber - a kind of welcome room to learn about what was on offer. An attendant materialized behind a desk, its feet already propped up, reading a book - an ornament of the antechamber, and a generated program that could answer Lucilius’ questions.

“What’s with the warning notification?”

“Memory erasure required for this one?”

“Like, a full memory wipe?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

The attendant, now resigned from the task of being distracted from their book, looked at Lucilius. It’s a luddite simulation.

Lucilius was aware of the word, but didn’t understand. 

“Like a hippie paradise or something?”

The attendant wagged its head unconvinced from side to side.

“A bit more extreme.”

“How extreme?”

“Hunter gatherer extreme,” The attendant said, raising its eyebrows.

“Oh neat. How long does it last?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I assume it’s story line?”

The attendant shook its head. “Nah, this simulation starts in batches, and most prefer not to do a time toggle.”

“Most? So how many groups or batches are there?”

“About two dozen.”

“And how many people are engaged?”

“A few thousand per, usually. Just enough so the simulation’s genetic program can run without too much risk of malformations.”

“Wait are you saying people are having kids in there?”

“Sure.”

“What happens when the simulation ends?”

“Only one has ended.”

“Holy, so all the other batches, these people have been in there, for what, years? Decades?”

“Yep.”

“And what happened with the one batch that has finished? Did they have a strange time reacclimatizing? Did any of them forget what the real world is like?”

The attendant smiled. “That batch was time toggled.”

“Ok, so how much time did they experience?”

“278,221 years.”

“What?!?” Lucilius exclaimed. “What do people do in a hunter gatherer simulation for a quarter million years?”

The attendant smiled. “They went because they yearned for a simpler time, a simpler life... but eventually they forgot why they'd gone in the first place and they invented civilization, and they progressed technologically until they too began to build simulations in order to escape their world, their reality. Yearning it seems, always, for something simpler, something other than the reality we're given.”

“A simulation inside a simulation in order to escape the simulation.”

The attendant nodded.

Lucilius rolled his eyes. Unimpressed. But a question gathered in his mind around an incongruity.

“Wait you said that batch finished.”

“Mmhmm,” the attendant sounded.

“But you said they built that simulation inside their simulation. That doesn’t add up, how did it all end? You said batch was done with their hunter gatherer simulation.”

The attendant smiled and then looked around.

“Where exactly do you think you are right now?”

Lucilius looked around. He was in the host simulation. But he clearly remembered the real world. The history that lead up to it. The technological progress, the creation and adoption of simulations. He looked back at the attendant.

“And where exactly do you think you came from?”