PIÑATA

April 7th, 2021

It’s very unusual for someone to sit down and write an entire book in one sitting.  And even the people who can pull this off can’t necessarily repeat the feat.  It’s a fluke, it’s a grand slam, it’s the exception that proves the rule about how books get written: you have to take a lot of swings at it.  

Tinkered Thinking engages in the same kind of practice.  There are perennial topics that weave in and out of episodes, and in some sense, the fairly sizeable output of Tinkered Thinking is an attempt to take as many swings as possible at such topics despite how tired, behind or uninformed, or ineloquent. 

When it comes to this universe that we seem to be inside of and somehow simultaneously a part of, it’s a bit of a piñata.  We’re not sure what it is, much like being blindfolded, and we’re not sure what exactly is inside of it, much like ourselves and all this matter that we as blobs of some of that matter seem to find ourselves surrounded by.  And we keep taking swings at it.  To figure out what it is, how it works and how to be a part of it.

Everything is like this.  At first we saw stars ad animals and characters of myth, and then we envisioned the world as the center of the universe, and then with another swing we displaced ourselves and finally came up with a heliocentric model of the solar system.  Who knows what another swing will reveal about the cosmos with just the right aim.

This process is learning.  When confronted with a new subject, you take a guess about what you’re looking at.  It’s like swinging at a piñata.  You might miss, so you come up with another idea and test it.  Perhaps there’s contact, and some candy spills out.  But the process is never ending.  Even when it seems like this or that subject has been exhausted and knocked out of the sky, there’s always another piñata to swing at.

It’s piñatas all the way up.

LEARNING & EFFORT

April 6th, 2021

When pursuing a new topic, learning is always more difficult in the beginning.  But why?  The results of learning on any given topic are asymptotic, or rather, there might be more nuance to discover as you go but overall there’s less to actually learn, so wouldn’t it be harder to uncover that nuance which becomes increasingly harder to find?  Masters of a craft might argue for the opposite, but such people likely have an unrealistic view of the beginning of their journey, considering it was likely long, long ago and blessed with the sort of luck that is often phrased as ‘interest’ or ‘natural inclination.’  The fact is, for the great majority of people, learning something new is hard, especially at the start.

In the beginning the subjective experience of learning is confusion, which is far from comfortable.  Confusion, in a learning context, often produces anxiety, doubt and a sense of paralysis.  In fact, the early parts of the learning process might have more to do with emotional regulation than it has to do with acquiring a knowledge of the topic’s parts and how they relate.

Confusion arises when there is a lack of correlation and understanding arises when correlation gives way to revealed causation.

A lack of correlation has everything to do with where attention is being allocated.  Or rather, in the beginning, learning is hard because you don’t know what’s important to pay attention to and what’s not.  You’ll notice that a real expert in any topic is really quick to dive in or dismiss a particular aspect of the field when it’s brought up.  Of course, this might be a sign of hubris when an expert dismisses something that actually turns out to be important, but someone who is truly excellent in their field is generally going to be very quick to figure out what actually deserves more attention, and this is a process that grows with competence while learning.  

In the beginning you don’t know what to pay attention to.  After some exposure, you think you’ve got an idea about what to focus on.  And after time you’re quick to determine if some avenue of investigation is likely to be an unproductive rabbit hole that merely wastes more time than it’s worth.

Learning is the process of fine-tuning the application of effort.  It’s an evolutionary process that seeks to make the that use of effort more efficient.  Notice how this applies to people who stop learning.  They are often stuck, doing the same thing over and over, expending the same exact sort of effort over and over, when learning could unlock a better way that takes less effort.  But of course the learning itself almost always requires a bit more effort than the status quo: it’s a short term increase in hurt and effort for a long term benefit. That is, of course, if you know what to pay attention to as you go.

KNOW THYSELF 101

April 5th, 2021

It’s said that at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, there was an inscription that read “Know Thyself”.  It’s powerful command, one that seems to encapsulate so much of what it means to be a thing alive that experiences this world.  It carries a weight that seems to invoke the sense that to know one’s self is to somehow know what life is.  The two are inextricably linked.  There is so much more to a person than merely their personal preferences, which might be the most superficial interpretation of the Delphic axiom, but it might not be a bad place to get started.

In fact, something as mundane and ordinary as personal preferences might be the only place to start on the quest to know yourself.  Kids are fairly enthusiastic on this point.  They pout at the brussel sprouts and grow wide eyed at the chocolate ice cream.  I like this.  I don’t like that.  But of course, this kind of preference is pretty rudimentary compared to an individual decades older who marvels at the delicious preparation of brussel sprouts while having dinner at a fancy restaurant and doesn’t pass up on the chocolate soufflé either.  It perhaps gets a bit deeper when someone understands the neurochemistry behind these experiences and why we might desire one so much more over another.

However, what such preferences really constitute within the topic of knowing yourself is that they comprise a pattern.  Notice the connection to habits.  As it’s been said before, we are what we repeatedly do.  Preferences fall into the same rubric, they describe what we will probably gravitate to again, and again.

Pattern recognition is the first part of learning.  The next part is to understand the pattern so well that it can be manipulated for a particular effect.  A practical example helps.

Say you have a lot of work to get tone today.  One thing that often pops up just when we are getting close to starting this work is a pang of hunger.  The self-deceptive logic is familiar to everyone: eating is important.  You need fuel to get things done right?  Plus the sensation of hunger itself is distracting, annoying really.  Wouldn’t it be best just to get this pressing issue out of the way by taking a little time to eat first?  

This is part of a pattern of experience that we are all familiar with, and it’s got some lies laced into it. Fact is, for the modern human, you almost certainly have plenty of ‘fuel’ to get your work done. Hunger might be a signal that blood sugar is low, but it is in no way an indication that your resources for energy are depleted.  Only when you’re hungry and you can quite literally see the contour of most of your bones and the definition between every muscle can you then perhaps say that hunger is an indicator that resources for energy are low.  For the most part, hunger is just timed response of ghrelin, which is a hormone that creates the feeling of hunger.  Ghrelin doesn’t have too much correlation to blood glucose levels.  It’s controlled mostly by how much eating has occurred in the last few days, the frequency and the amount.

If you think about it, it would be pretty silly for us to evolve hunger in response to low energy levels, as though we need the energy in food to go do things.  In fact, the exact opposite makes more sense.  Evolution has primed us with a system that gives us access to more energy when there’s no food around because there’s a practical necessity to get up and go look for food, which is of course, going to take some energy to accomplish.  Once that food thing is satisfied, there’s little evolutionary need to get up and get going.  Again, it’s the opposite.  The food has been procured.  Now it’s time to sit back and relax and pack on the pounds.  Hence the modern term “food coma”  

Now here’s a question.  When someone is going through that self-deceptive internal logic about why it’s important to eat before getting to work, why doesn’t the thought about a food coma come up?  This is understanding the pattern on a deeper level, and the path to manipulating it is only one easy step away: its the realization that eating would actually be very counter productive and make the likelihood of getting anything done lower, than if the hunger I just grudgingly ignored and all attempts are made to dive right into the work at hand.

The productivity world is all about these sorts of ‘hacks’.  But they aren’t really hacks at all.  Such things are simply part of the human pattern understood with enough depth to manipulate that pattern toward larger goals.

The tragic thing about something as simple as what to eat, when to eat, and it’s impact on other parts of life is that many, many people go their whole life without discovering such practical manipulations.  Most people are directed by the whim and will of their impulses and the way those impulses conflict with external obligations, like work and family.  

Of course there is a universe of depth beyond such simple and pragmatic examples, such as knowing what you are like outside of your own pattern.  As Robert Sapolsky once wrote “Know thyself, especially in differing circumstances.”

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: AUTOCEPTION

April 4th, 2021

Lucilius had a problem.  He’d somehow gotten himself in a bind.  He had a fairly overwhelming amount of work he had to do, but for whatever infuriating reason, he could not figure out how to get himself going on this enormous task.  That was, until he remembered a recent method for solving problems which he’d practiced to great effect.  His face lit up with the idea, and so he set about seeing if it would work for this task.

He laid down on a particularly comfortable couch, and luckily, his overwhelming feelings of being behind and procrastinating created a particularly weary cocktail for his mental state that made him ripe for sleep.  But before he dozed off to escape the world that he couldn’t seem to get going in, he had just a little bit of effort that he needed to put in.

As the normal borders of his mind loosened and the edged blurred, the corners softening to rounds that shifted, moving away from their usual conscious anchors, he spoke within his own mind.  He thought of the real world problem he had, and he set about making a request to his own mind to figure something out about it while he was asleep, and most importantly, he managed to tack on a request to remember it upon waking.

And then Lucilius slumbered, his mind undulating through that phantasmagoria of vision merged with concept, doused with incoherent splashes of memory and sensation.  His mind took hold of it’s own being and stretched it, parsing it, molding it and refracting it through countless perspectives.  The dream is a hallucination, a crazed existence if only for it’s incoherence, it’s mangled logic and seductive conviction.

Lucilius’ eyes slowly opened.  He knew where he was but his mind was still soft, fuzzy on a threshold of time as the environment of his consciousness rapidly changed.  

How easy it is to forget the place we’ve just been, Lucilius thought.  Like walking through a knew building, entering a new room and having no idea what the hallway looked like.  Were ancient people more skilled in this realm of sleep?  Lucilius wondered.  He felt he once knew the answer, but he couldn’t explore it, for there sitting in the center of his mind was the idea, the solution to his qualms in the real world.

“Of course,” he said out loud.  He sat up with a start, and then bounded for his computer.  He clacked away at it for a moment, but it wasn’t yet for the work that still loomed over him.  He was busy building a simulation.  He’d built many, but he’d never thought of one so simply until the little nap he’d just had.  It took little time at all to cook up, and with it done he readied his neuralsync for the experience.  The connection was active and nominal, and then Lucilius smiled, and before pressing the final button, he said..

“Good luck old friend.”

And then Lucilius woke up within a softly lit cube.  The lighting was perfect.  Which was a relief.  He had no way of changing it now.  Against one wall was a simple desk, a chair and atop the desk was an old mechanical typewriter.

Lucilius sat down and smiled.  “Well, you devious friend, we’re stuck here until you hit your word count.”  

Lucilius laced his fingers together and pushed his palms out away from himself, cracking his knuckles.  The tips of his fingers suddenly felt alive, eager to hit keys.  Finally, there were no more distractions.

COMMUNAL HALLUCINATION

April 3rd, 2021

What exactly is the meaning of that word?  We’ve all occasionally had disagreements about this or that word, either by slip of memory of genuine mistake.  Though, what exactly are we arguing about, and how can we be sure about the truth of a word?  

Surely a dictionary is the obvious source of truth in such a case.  But if this statement itself were true, there would be no reason to print new dictionaries.  It’s not just that new words are bing invented, dictionaries are reprinted because words are also shifting and sliding in terms of what they mean.  Even the most casual thought about etymology should prove this point.  

Language is a dynamic, organic entity that grows and evolves.  But where exactly does it do this?  It’s hosted not so much on paper and within books as it is within our minds, and particularly, our communal minds.

A secrete language known by only one person is fairly useless.  Surely it may be useful for that single individual who wishes to keep thoughts and ideas private, but it’s utility is inevitably tied to what the person does in concert with other people, namely the expression of those ideas and thoughts through other forms, as when their secret research finally bears fruit that can be shared with the world. 

Language is, a communal hallucination.  It is validated for stability through it’s continual use, and this process of testing it for truth unfortunately only has a partial connection to reality.  Much of language remains stable across multiple minds through a circular proof.  There are many words and usages that become detached from practical reality and drift off into an ether of what might be called ‘nonsense’.  

And yet the nonsense functions because it’s shared, and many people can, together, have the same fantastical idea.  Reality is always an interesting wake up call when such meandering forms of meaning start to inform actual behavior and that behavior comes into hard contact with the consequences of the world we live in.

We are all living in a fairly concentrated hallucination through language.  So much so that our idea of things through language can blind us from what’s actually right in front of us.  It’s fairly easy to get lost in that hallucination because talking is so much easier than actually doing things that have practical consequences.  

So no matter who is talking, be it yourself or someone else, it’s useful to remember that we’re all just dabbling in a pool of fantasy.  Sometimes it yields some useful things that we can use in the real world, but for the most part it’s a staging ground - the original simulation that we use to toss ideas against one another in a harmless battle royale to get a sense of what might actually work.