DISSONANT THOUGHT

March 31st, 2021

With all due respect and reverence for children, at the end of the day, they can be a bit of a nag.  Any parent, teacher, or babysitter knows this.  At the end of the day, often what a child most wants, and often needs is, some attention.  If you’ve ever had your name on repeat in the mouth of a toddler, you’re probably familiar with the experience of finally turning to that toddler in the midst of other chaos to finally give them their due turn, only to find out that they don’t actually have anything to say or show you.  They just wanted you to focus on them for a moment.  And of course there’s nothing wrong with this, it’s healthy and important, and not all shared attention between people needs some tertiary object of discussion or interest.  Sometimes we just need some company and the acknowledgement that, hey, we’re both here right now.

Thoughts are a bit like children.  They pop up, seemingly out of nowhere, and often with less than ideal timing.  Dissonant thoughts in particular can hang around, as though carved into the vinyl of a broken record played by the mind’s gramophone.  And they continue to stick around, like a child with a distracted parent’s name on repeat.  

Often the thought, just like the child simply needs to be acknowledged.  For whatever distracted reason, however, we seem unfortunately adept at bearing the buzz of an uncomfortable thought that hovers just on the edge of consciousness.

Much of meditation is simply dealing with this unholy queue and orbit of nagging thoughts.  It’s much like having a long line of children that are all vying for your attention.  You have to give each kid their due and sometimes, finally, you get to the end of the line.  By acknowledging each thought, each lingering worry and consideration, the end finally comes and there’s a brief respite before the swirl of life generates more.  For a brief moment there is no dissonance, and the mind is at peace with itself.

At this point in the description it might seem that we are each just unlucky factory workers in the production of thoughts.  But, like creatives, writers, and even miners, it’s necessary to go through a lot of useless material in order to get something good, and this is the most important detail.  Some dissonant thoughts really do need a bit more than simple attention.  They require thoughtful consideration, planning, strategy and most importantly, action.

What’s odd though is that there crucially dissonant thoughts don’t necessarily have automatic salience above and beyond other dissonant thoughts that are of little consequence.  The mind can fail to highlight what is important due to the fog of dissonance it’s swimming around in.  Sometimes you don’t realize how important an issue is until you’ve productively moved through a few meaningless ones that were somehow in the way.

These dissonant thoughts that are truly concerning are perhaps our brain’s most productive function, as least from a personal and subjective standpoint.  These crucial dissonances lay out the stepping stones to a better life.  We improve our experience not by adding things, but in this case finding solutions that remove such dissonant thoughts.  For example, an ambient stress about a financial situation requires real planning, thoughtful action, and hard work.

The true value of a clear mind at peace is that it creates a clean and present space for problems to be effectively recognized, analyzed and solved.  Many people suffer simply because they are working very hard on the wrong problems, which are often a proxy for real productivity when overwhelmed with a menagerie of mental dissonance.  Clearing the clutter of the mind smoothes the path towards the real problems of one’s life.

RATIO OF ATTENTION

March 30th, 2021

Attention is a subtle subject, which is to say that it’s either too complex to accurately describe or our knowledge of the subject is too lacking for any such description.  This is merely to preface a musing about attention with the fact that we haven’t nailed down any hard truths.  But in order to make any headway, we first need an idea to work with, a figment of the imagination that we can rub up against reality and try to falsify.

One conjecture about attention that seems to have some ground within the current state of the thought is that our attention is two fold.  We can’t actually multi-task as some very inefficient people might claim, but we can handle two tasks quite well.  Like holding a conversation while driving a car.  We cannot however, drive a car, have a conversation and write an email, for example.

If for a moment we take the premise that we have two attentional avenues as true, what exactly might these two attentional avenues look like?  How do they differ and in what ways are they similar?

Attention, is a state of context.  It’s defined primarily by what is within it’s scope.  When a teacher snaps in the direction of a student and says “pay attention” that teacher is prompting the student to switch context - to abandon what is in the student’s current context and replace that object or objects with that of the teacher, and the subject being taught.

With the conversation in the car, one attentional field is quite expansive, noting what is behind the car via mirror, the shape of road up ahead and of course other cars.  The other attentional field is focused just on the words of the conversation, the phrasing, the rhythm and tone of the person’s voice.  In this case the context is much smaller and the objects of focus are far fewer.

Iain McGilchrist in his book “The Master and his Emissary” holds that these two attentional fields have just that ratio: one is focused on the bigger picture and the other is narrowly focused on specific details.  

McGilchrist doesn’t vary too much from this position, but what if the ration of scale between these two attentional forms  changes?  Certainly any ratio comparison between two things of different size pretty much means that one will always be bigger and the other smaller, but what if instead of one attentional avenue being chronically stuck with the aperture wide open and the other tuned in like a microscope, what if they can toggle to intermediary sizes?   What if we can be focused simultaneously on two similarly sized contexts?  

An example might be playing a piano song.  One attentional avenue may be concerned with the accuracy and timing of each note, and another is focused on the overall feel and sound of the whole song.  Certainly something like this must be the case if we do in fact have two attentional fields since a person can get “lost” in the act of playing and therefore isn’t paying attention to what’s going on in the room.  But then again this begs the question of whether there are in fact multiple attentional avenues at play in the first place.  Who’s to say there isn’t just one?

If there are two attentional avenues and if their scope and context is a ratio that can change, is there a benefit or danger with a close ratio?  What about a highly unbalanced one?

There are some aphorisms that point at an answer.

Can’t see the forest for the trees.  Is one.

Another is: penny wise, pound foolish.

Both of these attempt to convey the danger of focusing on details at the expense of the larger picture.  It’s a bit like telling someone to not look at their feet as they walk, but instead to look ahead for that cliff you’re about to walk off.  

We’re all quite aware of how important it is to keep the bigger picture in mind, despite how bad we actually are at it.  Hence the aphorisms.  It seems we feel we need the constant reminder.

That being said, getting anything done inevitably requires an attention to detail.  Any accomplishment, no matter how big really just boils down to the execution of innumerable tiny tasks, which of course reside in a small and narrow context.  

The ratio of attention we seem best to shoot for is a highly imbalanced one:  Keep your eye on the price, but make sure you take care of the details as you go.

This might mean that we risk something important when we fail to stretch our attentional avenues as far away from one another in scope as possible.  The more that ratio approaches a one to one relationship, the more our dual powers risk reducing to the functioning power of just one power.  Perspective becomes stiff and homogeneous, making it harder to change, being blind to other possible directions that would be obvious with a larger perspective.

Although there’s still as of yet so much to be determined regarding the nature of attention, it’s clear that at least within this framework, the greater the ratio, the better. But regardless, this is just one small hypothetical detail in a large emerging field.

TINKERED THINKING IS FAKE

March 29th, 2021

Recently, Tinkered Thinking made a change.  If you only read the platform then you probably haven’t noticed, but if you listen, chances are you’ve picked up on something different.  Yes, Tinkered Thinking has outsourced the recording of podcast episodes.  Sort of.  It’s still the same voice, but it’s no longer me reading episodes.

You may have recently seen videos of Tom Cruise which are not actually videos of Tom Cruise.  These are so called ‘deep fakes’ which use a variety of machine learning techniques to generate hyper-realistic video and audio.  Tinkered Thinking has begun to employ something similar, though not as perfectly effective.

First, a small confession: I, the creator of Tinkered Thinking, absolutely detest recording episodes.  In the beginning it was merely difficult and I figured like most things I would get fairly good at it and find a way to enjoy it as a kind of practice.  As luck would have it, or rather not have it, I haven’t improved much in my ability to read and record.  I still make loads of mistakes that have to be edited out, and the entire process lacks all sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that comes with other things, like writing everyday, for example.  

So, when the discovery came about that it’s possible to deep fake your own voice, and then simply plop a transcript into a program that then uses a machine voice to create pretty decent simulacrum, I couldn’t resist.  This required reading a half hour of Planet Earth script which is then used to train the machine on the sound of my voice.  Considering the cost and the ease and good fidelity of result, I couldn’t pass up on the use of this tool.  Granted, it isn’t perfect.  It’s certainly robotic, and it lacks some nuance about exactly how some things should be intoned.  

If Tinkered Thinking had more audience support then I would consider continuing recording episodes myself, but alas Tinkered Thinking is still just a little hobby project.  One that I certainly want to continue.  And in light of that fact, if you would like to support Tinkered Thinking you can do so on the support page.  In the meantime, while the Tinkered Thinking audience and income is still relatively small, this machine voice offers a substantial improvement for insuring that Tinkered Thinking continues:  it makes the production of the podcast far less time consuming and to be perfectly honest, the whole project is more enjoyable with the removal of it’s most unpleasant thorn.  This is on top of the fact that Tinkered Thinking is just a side project, and my main focus independent of Tinkered Thinking is ramping up into what will probably be a very busy year.  This technology offers an edge against being busy: the chances that I can keep up with the project are higher if I can get it done quicker. 

There’s also the consideration that this deep fake technology which Tinkered Thinking uses will certainly get better.  It’s doubtful that it won’t improve to the point where I wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference between an episode I personally record, and one generated by a more advanced deep fake version of my voice.

The particular technology being used here is a program called Descript, and the feature is called Overdub.  It’s improved quite a bit in just a year, to the point where it makes sense to actually use it, and everything points toward it getting even better.

If you truly can’t stand the change, feel free to reach out on Twitter, and I’ll be happy to discuss it further.  Though, if you aren’t one of the platform’s generous and treasured supporters, I can’t promise your argument will land with as much emphasis as you might hope.  Surely anyone can understand why.

At the very least, though the result might not be perfect, it is pretty cool regardless.  It’s a perennial wish among so many people to have clones of ourselves so we can get more done and enjoy more of the various facets of life.  Well, we now live in a time where we can get a taste of that and outsource some of the less fulfilling work to a digital version of ourselves.  

As a final note, Tinkered Thinking will still continue to record the weekly Lucilius Parables since the machine voice is particularly inept with the vicissitudes of fiction, not to mention that those episodes are actually kind of fun to record.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: EYE ON THE PRIZE

March 28th, 2021

Through the music, with his eyes closed, Lucilius could see the movement of fingers, the fall and press of keys, the jump and slide of hands.  The notes fluttered into the silence, each with their individual, practiced strength, and Lucilius enjoyed as he judged.  The melody slowed, perfectly and wound down to it’s last notes, the sweet sound lingering in the air, blurring that invisible border between memory and sensation.

Lucilius opened his eyes to the little boy looking at him in hopeful expectation.  Lucilius slowly nodded, the fresh mellifluous memory washing over his mind.

And when he finally failed to say anything further, the boy prodded.  

“Well?”

Lucilius met his eyes and paused before saying just, “Perfect.

The boy’s face lit up, as he was instantly primed to explode with happiness, his body becoming tense with the hope that he might jump up and cheer.

“Really?”

Lucilius just casually nodded.

“What are we going to do?” The boy asked.

“What do you mean?” Lucilius asked.

“Are we going to celebrate?”

Lucilius leaned back and looked off for a moment, breathing in deep as though the question actually did require a thoughtfully considered answer, as though there was something to figure out, to weight and wonder.  His eyes darted back to the boy, hinting, just hinting at the possibility that he might now join the boy in a proper congratulatory celebration.

“No,” Lucilius said.

The boy’s face remained primed with it’s joy, but now tinted with a veneer of confusion.  Surely, Lucilius was making a joke.  

But he was not.  Lucilius squinted a little and nodded his head slowly from side to side as though trying to suss out a measurement.

“Maybe…” he said slowly, “.. maybe after you’ve mastered your third song,  or maybe your fourth.  I’m not sure.”

The boy’s face relaxed, realizing that it wasn’t a joke.

“But why?” The boy asked.

Lucilius smiled.  “Do you want to learn how to play the piano or do you just want to know how to play one song?”

The boy was a little dejected.  “Shouldn’t I celebrate success along the way?”

Lucilius wagged his head a bit from side to side.  “Every once in a while, sure.  But for now let’s keep our eye on the goal.”

Years later, when the rapid and precise rattle of notes slammed perfectly into the end of the song, Lucilius was the first to stand among thousands, to applaud for the truly superlative performance.

LIMIT OF LANGUAGE

March 27th, 2021

How many words have you invented?  At the very least this is a game that all children seem to stumble upon at some point, smashing syllables together in strange combinations and then stitching meaning onto them.  But how often does this sort of thing hold?  We don’t vote words into usage, they join our practical lexicon organically, through no conscious consensus, and more importantly, through no conscious design - it just happens.

The troubling conclusion here is about control.  Do we control language?  None of us have a choice about which language we first learn.  We do not get to research the semantic differences, weighting the strengths and weaknesses in order to figure out which language might best serve us.  No, we are given a language, and it is the cost to play.  But embedded in that cost is a set of constraints that can be very very hard to see.   What plays more of an active role: our control and design of language, or language’s control and design of how and what we get to think and communicate?

One wholly dictates the other, and we are left at the whim of communal organic design, which has not conscious intention behind it at all.  The constraints of language can only be hinted at by way of negative space.  For example:  what can you experience that is impossible to communicate in words?

Poets and writers over the centuries have been praised for their ability to tip toe into this ineffable territory, but no matter how much progress is made on this front, there still must remain area outside the capture of language.

There are a few token experiences that consistently escape the grasp of language, and which default to fairly uniform and therefore flat methods of description.  The experience of love, for all it’s songs and poetry is probably a good one.  But beyond this, religious experiences, and psychedelic experiences are consistently represented by language in ways that are barely two dimensional.  The reason, at least with psychedelic experiences may be that the compounds involved are directly effecting the very source of language - the parts of our brain that produce and process it.  Though if this were the whole case, it’s imaginable that we might be able to dutifully convert the memory of the experience into language, but the result here too is woefully lacking.  

Are there experiential places that we as humans can go where language cannot follow?  Is it possible to phrase with language the directions for how to get to such a place?

Language inherently collapses experience and concept, by converting something that exists on many dimensions into fewer dimensions.  Language can prattle on in a spiralling knot, attempting to weave an insidious net through the memory of experience in order to tie it down discretely, but it’s that very nature of language, that of discreteness, which prohibits it’s success.  

But language does grow.  There was a time when humans were experiencing everything without language to capture any of it.  But then some structure of sound and rhythm wiggled into life and started latching on to the most tangible aspects of our experience, and from there it has grown, and it continues to grow.  The best example of this is the explosion of terminology in scientific fields.  As we discover more categories into which the universe can be sensibly atomized, we name each box and method.

This growth spurs a wonder about the future of language.  What will it be like to talk in a few decades when we have more memes and more words?  What about a few centuries?  What might language look like in millions of years?

Language is a technology, and technological process has a fairly reliable habit of replacing the technologies it finds with new ones that are often very different.  The car replaced the horse, and the two are about as different as you can get, though they achieve much the same thing as a technology of transportation.  Given enough time, language might become a quaint memory, maybe even a hobby if we graduate to some sort of conceptual and experiential telepathy.

But in the meantime, language is here to stay, and it can still grow, at it has here with this episode.  There might not be any new words in this little piece of writing, but the searching tendrils of language have attempted to feel out new surfaces in that realm that spurns its touch.   

Words are a function of common experience.  Two people both have to have some sort of experiential correlate to a word for it to function in communication.  If only one person has had the experience then a word for that experience just doesn’t hop the divide between people.  It’s a bittersweet tragedy that a unique experience can only be communicated through it’s non-unique attributes.  And we are all having unique experiences.  

This paradox feels like it could be at the heart of existence: how is it that you and I are both stuff of the same single universe and yet there is this intractable gulf between us?  How funny is it that I am trying to bridge that gulf with this fundamentally primitive technology of words?  As infinite as this gulf might be, hopefully something has managed to make it to the other side.