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SPIN CHESS
A Chess app from Tinkered Thinking featuring a variant of chess that bridges all skill levels!

REPAUSE
A meditation app is forthcoming. Stay Tuned.
THE FALLEN DANCER, PART VI
February 3rd, 2023
The Fallen Dancer is a series here on Tinkered Thinking exploring a recent shift in perspective. The resulting framework appears to tie together many topics explored on Tinkered Thinking over the years such as resilience, struggle, patience, curiosity, emotional regulation, artistry, entrepreneurship, winning, honesty, and communication. This series will be an attempt to unify them in a cohesive treatment.
Click here to start at the beginning
Part VI: The Smith's Hammer
At first the adage seems to be all about narrow-mindness. People who are narrow-minded only see nails, and whack them, because all they have is a hammer. But what if we tweak the way this metaphor works. Perhaps we are missing a deeper insight.
A telescope is used to see things that are so far away they are invisible to the naked eye. And the microscope is used to see things that are so small, they too are invisible to the naked eye. These are tools that we can recognize explicitly as tools. But what do these tools accomplish on a fundamental level?
They augment our perspective. They literally change what we can see.
Might we extend this to say that anything which augments perspective is a tool? Perhaps. Better though is to recognize perspective itself as the tool at hand. Microscopes and Telescopes augment that tool just as much as a new idea does.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The wisdom of this statement is contained in the idea that our tool determines our view of reality. The hammer is a metaphorical constriction of perspective itself. In other words, the perspective you bring to life is the hammer. Perspective is the ultimate tool, the first tool, and the tool we use to leverage all other tools, like telescopes and microscopes. But unlike most traditional tools, perspective is nearly infinite in its malleability and adaptability. This doesn’t mean changing perspective is easy, only that it is possible.
We have all interacted with people who always have something to complain about. Whatever happens, no matter how good, these people always seem to find some rotten speck embedded in the eye of good fortune and often bad luck seems to follow them. These are the “woe is me!” Individuals who seem to feed off the empathy of others. Such people can be exhausting to an enormous degree, but here they prove useful. Examine their perspective as separate from the person for a moment. Think about their perspective on life as the tool they are using to interact with reality. How’s that going for them?
Compare this to the optimist who is always looking for the silver lining, the leg-up, the hidden lever.
Consider this further in the context of something a coach once told me:
Realists are more likely to be right.
Optimists are more likely to be happy and rich.
Important words there are “more likely”, meaning if you’re skeptical, that’s fine. Probability goes up for different things depending on which perspective you have. But which outcome would you rather stack the odds in your favor? Being right? Or being happy?
Years ago I stopped at a florist to pick up some flowers. I started chatting with the two people behind the counter and quickly learned that they were married. I asked how long, and it was over a decade. I asked how long they had been working together. Same answer.
“Hold up. You’re telling me you two spend pretty much all day, every day with one another?”
“Yea.”
“What do you know that everyone else doesn’t?”
The couple looked at each other and smiled.
“It’s more important to be happy than to be right.”
It’s horrible advice to tell a depressed person to “just be happy.” It’s not going to work, and if anything it’s just going to make that person frustrated, upset, and probably more depressed. But what might happen if you ask: if you were going to have an amazing day tomorrow, what would happen?
This is a trick question. It invokes optimism without telling a person to be optimistic. This is a tiny example of how questions can be used to help others expand or narrow their perspective. This question does both, it expands a person’s perspective to include tomorrow, and then narrows it into details that might be helpful, actionable and effective. But this isn’t about changing other people’s perspectives, it’s about your perspective.
If you were to characterize your perspective on life and reality, how might you describe it. Or better yet, how would your closest friends describe your perspective. Are you a victim? A realist? An optimist?
Considering this group of perspectives, which one is more likely to get lucky? Or consider that same question rephrased: which one is looking for hidden leverage? The victim, the realist, or the optimist?
A particularly insidious breed of cynicism has infected recent decades. Anxiety over climate change, war, disease, inequality, dystopian technology. The fodder for the victim mentality and the realist seems abundant and fertile. And in light of the present many dream of a nostalgic yesteryear when things were “better”. One flaw of the nostalgic perspective has to do with visibility. The benefits of the present over the past are mostly invisible. No one has to worry about tuberculosis these days, or small pox. We have virtually no experience of these things so they don’t register in our vision of the past. People could die from getting a splinter, as one U.S. President’s son did. But again, all of these improvements are invisible, so it’s easy for the nostalgist to have a rosey picture of yesteryear.
Functionally, the past and the future have swapped places for the nostalgist. Such a person ignores the eradicated ills of the past and extrapolates everything currently bad into the future. This is cherry-picking at it’s finest. But in the spirit of the nostalgist, let’s go back as far as possible in an attempt to see if our ancestors were cynical realists or nostalgic victims, or something else.
The Smith and the Devil is one of humanity’s oldest stories. Research indicates that it’s been around for over 6,000 years, where it was first conceived in the Bronze Age of humanity. It’s a Faustian bargain with a metal worker as a shrewder main character, and it goes something like this:
Why would this story persist for thousands of years? And how would you characterize the Smith? Is he a victim? A realist? Or an Optimist?
We simply wouldn’t be where we are today as a civilization and a species if it weren’t for those of us who can creatively imagine a better future and take risks to try and make that imagined future a reality. Nearly all of the luxuries and comforts that we enjoy today can be traced back to some enterprising optimist who could imagine a better tomorrow. We live in that tomorrow, as a result of their perspective and the way that perspective allowed those enterprising individuals to change reality.
If the hammer is the perspective, what are the nails for the victim? Perhaps all the bad things that might happen. What about the realist? The nails might be all of the current facts about reality that are far from ideal.
But what about the perspective of the optimist. If the hammer is optimism, what are the nails?
Hidden Levers.
If all you have is optimism, does everything look like an opportunity? Is this how bad luck can lead to good things and how good things can be leveraged into great ones?
Is it fair to say that our life is an expression of our perspective?
THE FALLEN DANCER, PART V
February 2nd, 2023
The Fallen Dancer is a series here on Tinkered Thinking exploring a recent shift in perspective. The resulting framework appears to tie together many topics explored on Tinkered Thinking over the years such as resilience, struggle, patience, curiosity, emotional regulation, artistry, entrepreneurship, winning, honesty, and communication. This series will be an attempt to unify them in a cohesive treatment.
Click here to start at the beginning
Part V: Buddhist & The Buffalo
The villagers in the Huainanzi parable perceived everything that happened with a very narrow focus. This limited their ability to see any potential good arising from the bad and vice versa.On the other hand, the Father had a very wide perspective, granting him the ability to have a kind of ambivalence in the face of good and bad events. At first glance it seems obvious that the Father has the superior perspective, but this Is incorrect. Both the father and the villagers make grave mistakes, albeit wholly different ones. And the solution to these grave mistakes is hidden in the perspective of the other.
The mistake of the villagers is already obvious: they lack the ability to take a wider view of potential future circumstances like the Father can. The Father’s mistake is that he’s stuck in the mode of having a wide perspective.
For example, the Father, with his wide and wise perspective never follows up his peaceful declaration with a question like: “how can I use the results of this event to further benefit my situation?” He just waits for the future to unravel more. He’s completely passive. That question about further benefit requires a narrower focus on the present, like that of the villagers.
Neither the narrow perspective nor the wide perspective is superior on their own, though that’s exactly what the parable leads us to believe. If the goal is mental peace and equanimity, then sure, a wider perspective is better. But this is also a perspective of passivity, of non-action, and the Huainanzi parable dictates that things inevitably even out.
Acquiring leverage is passive - it’s the simple act of being able to see when something in your circumstance can be leveraged. But to use that leverage is an active pursuit - something the Father never does, and using leverage requires a narrowing of focus.
The resourceful person first uses a wide perspective to survey as much of the territory of potential as possible. But once a hidden lever has been spotted, the aperture of attention changes. The resourceful person narrows in on that one lever and actively seeks to use it.
We might write our own parable about the difference of these perspectives:
On a rare hill on the great plains sat a buddhist.
Out before him, the buddhist saw a wide plain and from over the horizon came a stampede of buffalo.
“How focused they are,” thought the buddhist. “Single-minded. Many are like one!”
Since the buddhist was sitting on a hill above the plain, he could look and see where the buffalo were headed. He sees they are headed for a cliff.
“They cannot see where they are going! So narrow in their focus! Single-minded in their pursuit!”
The buddhist watches as the buffalo all run off the cliff to their deaths.
“If only they could see what I see, they would not plunge to their deaths!”
Just like the Huainanzi parable it seems that the wide perspective trumps the narrow one. But the same problematic dynamic exists: the buddhist does nothing. At least the buffalo are going somewhere.
But let’s add one last line to the parable:
“On the horizon from where the buffalo came, the Buddhist sees a couple figures riding on horseback. They near, following the same trail that the buffalo took and the Buddhist sees they are Native American warriors who chased the buffalo off the cliff.”
Talk about leverage. Those Native Americans have now fed their tribe (perhaps a few tribes) for a very long time. The Native Americans achieved this by cultivating a perspective that can move between that of the buddhist and the buffalo. The Native American starts with the wide perspective of the buddhist to see what is possible about stampeding buffalo, and then narrows in on a design and a plan of action to leverage that knowledge. The key insight for the Native American is to ask “Instead of waiting for buffalo to randomly run off a cliff, why not try to direct them to the cliff?” The answer to that question requires a narrowing of focus to actively carry out the plan to test that hypothesis - something that the Father in the Huainanzi parable never does. The Native Americans were able to embody a passive wide perspective in order to see a hidden lever. And then they narrowed perspective to actively create leverage.
While the wide perspective can provide a kind of peace and equanimity, it’s unmatched if paired with the narrow focus for dedicated efforts. But, when narrowing in on some design we run the risk of becoming the buffalo - chasing some hidden leverage to our own demise. This is related to the sunk-cost fallacy: spending too much time actively pursuing something that isn’t yielding the predicted result. This is also exactly what we mean when we say someone is narrow-minded. We see a person whose perspective is stuck. Their aperture of focus cannot expand to a wide view of what is going on. Without the tempering effect that comes from a wide perspective, narrow perspectives can quickly look like crazy points of view. It’s certainly crazy for the buffalo to run right off a cliff. But do we call the buffalo crazy? No, we recognize they have a limitation that they can’t fix. And yet we hold it against people when we see their perspective as a narrow-minded. Should we? Or is it more useful to think of such people as actually blind to a wider perspective?
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of human interaction is contained in this question: How do you get someone to change their aperture of focus?
The only tool that seems remotely capable in this dimension is the Question. Asking people thoughtful questions, similar to the tradition Socrates tried to lay out seems to be the only way to gently help people change the aperture of their focus. But it seems on the whole we are more content with the hopeless strategy of simply talking (or yelling) at people.
The antidote to both the sunk-cost fallacy and halting a pursuit before it’s too late is to have the ability to zoom out to a wide perspective to survey the territory again and check whether the current efforts still make sense. The aperture of focus is best when it can quickly narrow and widen, switching from one perspective to the other.
The Huainanzi parable concludes with the line:
Bad luck brings good luck
And good luck brings bad luck.
The parable is trying to tell use something about how good and bad luck are inextricably linked, and by the end of the parable, this line feels like a profound and equanimous truth. But question the parable for a moment in light of our Native American warriors. Is there a deeper insight about wide and narrow perspectives that can subsume this trite idea about the inevitability of good and bad luck?
The Huainanzi parable draws a link between good and bad luck. The parable of The Buddhist and the Buffalo draws a link between perspectives. And when it comes to luck in The Buddhist and the Buffalo, what can we say?
Certainly the buffalo weren’t lucky. Their perspective was too narrow. They fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy (literally). They ran till it was too late.
Our buddhist is equanimous. He gains nothing, he loses nothing. He’s just a passive observer like the Father in the Huainanzi parable.
But what about the Native Americans.
Are they lucky?
MEDITATION DRAFT SESSION 11: REFLECTION OF THOUGHT
January 30th, 2023

On Monday Tinkered Thinking releases a draft of a lesson from the forthcoming meditation app, currently called The Tinkered Mind (If you can think of a better name, please reach out. I'm not crazy about the current one, but I'll be damned if I let an imperfect name keep me from developing a good idea.) The rationale here is simply to stave off project stagnation by taking a wish to work with words on a daily basis (Tinkered Thinking Posts) and combine it with adjacent projects. This also gives regular readers a chance to get a preview of what I'm cooking up and to get feedback before the app launches, which is a tactic that has proved extremely useful with other projects unrelated to Tinkered Thinking.
One further introductory note: The goal of this meditation app is predominantly aimed at helping individuals build a robust daily habit by breaking that habit down and tackling it's consitituent parts one at a time and aiding the process with a new and innovative way of tracking progress, the likes of which has not been seen in other meditation apps or habit tracking apps.
Again, if you have any feedback, please reach out via Twitter
Session 11: Reflection of Thought
Take a moment to sit, arrange your posture, and take a few deep breaths with long exhales.
<18 seconds of Silence (3 full breathes + exhales with half-second counts>
Now transition to coherence breathing with inhales and exhales of the same length.
Now take a moment to do a body scan in complete silence. Remember the sheet of light suspended above you, and allow your attention to pour slowly over your entire body as that sheet of light descends over you.
<30 seconds of Silence>
Slowly expand your attention from the internal sensations of your body to include sounds around you. Try to separate the sounds from the things you think are causing them. Try to accept these sounds as events that are happening not somewhere else where it seems the sound is coming from, but an event that is occurring in your mind. Whatever is causing these sounds, those events happened slightly before you heard them. There’s a delay, though we usually can’t tell unless the event is very far away as is often the case with thunder and lightning. We see the lightning and a moment later we hear it. So try to separate whatever you hear from it’s source. Think of these sounds like thoughts. They just appear, and if we turn our attention to this part of our experience we can hear more sounds than we were conscious of.
<wait 10 seconds>
Bring attention to any thoughts that are arising. Remember we aren’t trying to eradicate thoughts, or avoid them, but simply notice them.
<wait 10 seconds>
Again it can be useful to use the breath as an object of attention. Try to notice when the mind becomes distracted and attention has wandered away from the breath. Allow your attention to put a spotlight on the thought that is occurring when you realize that you are no longer paying attention to the breath.
<wait 20 seconds>
This sort of practice can begin to feel a bit like a game of whack-a-mole. If you can barely pay attention to a breath or two before the mind wanders off like a distracted child, don’t worry, this is completely normal. Many refer to this as the Monkey Mind. And some meditation sessions will feel like complete failures where not a single moment seemed to have peace or control or any properly placed attention. That is ok, and it’s something that we should expect. A terrible session of meditation is still better than not meditating because at the very least, it helps engrain our habit of taking this time, sitting, breathing, and trying to train the mind.
So again, place the attention on the sensation of the breath if it’s helpful and simply try to maintain a vigilance for when the mind has wandered.
<wait 20 seconds>
Pause for a moment and consider what exactly is happening when you notice a thought that you’re having. When you notice a thought, is the act of noticing a kind of new thought? Can thought observe itself?
Another way of approaching this is to ask: what kind of relationship do you have with your thoughts? Is it a good relationship? What does it mean to have a bad relationship with one’s own thoughts?
Try to heighten your curiosity about this idea for a moment while you observe your thoughts for another minute. What does it feel like to notice a thought that’s filled your mind?
<30 seconds of silence>
Are you still present? Or are you lost in thought? Try think about what the thought was, in vivid detail, and notice how it evaporates once you’ve given it that attention.
<30 seconds of silence>
How did you do this time? If it seems like you’re having more thoughts as we engage with longer stretches of silence, it’s not because you’re getting worse at this, it’s that you are getting better at noticing what’s been there all along. And this is the first step in training the mind - noticing, recognizing what’s actually there - the never ending stream that’s always been there.
As we move toward the end of the session, allow your breathing to transition into deeper inhales and longer exhales. And as you feel the relaxation that comes with these breaths, try to notice any thoughts that try to snag a bit of the mind’s attention.
<15 seconds of silence>
A LUCILIUS PARABLE: HIDDEN LEVERAGE
January 29th, 2023
Lucilius was staring at the screen, wondering if he should fill out the application. Doubts filled his mind. He sighed and looked off in the distance, acceding to unwanted forced within himself. Feelings of unworthiness, insecurity and wavering confidence pushed him to give up. He switched the screen, deciding he would figure it out some other time. Despite that time was running out.
He stared at the new task but words filled his mind - answers to the application questions, and he remained locked in a trance, imagining what he wished he had the courage to do.
“Ah there’s no point,” he said with a fleeting edge of anger. He stood up and walked away from the computer.
As he paced the room, rubbing his face, waiting for peace, there was a knock at the door. He stopped, confused for a moment before he remembered he was expecting an old friend.
When Lucilius opened the door, he froze.
Before him stood an humanoid robot, sleekly designed in black plates, the face a black screen.
“Whoah.”
“Cool, huh?”
Lucilius stepped back. It was his friend’s voice.
“What… did you do to yourself?”
“Oh come on Lucy, I’m piloting it remotely. I’m at home, but check this out!”
Suddenly the black plates of the android seemed to shimmer like a liquid as if they were oozing a gel. But the gel turned opaque, filling with color. The black screen face morphed until there was a perfect likeness of his friend standing right in front of Lucilius.
“Whoah, you’ve been busy.”
“Yea!”
The two laughed and embraced, but Lucilius pulled away after remembering it was a robot and not his actual friend.
“Ah, sorry, that’s just a little creepy.”
The robot laughed. “It’s ok”, it said in the voice of Lucilius’ friend. “Can I come in?”
“Of course, of course.”
“Something to drink? Or does that not make sense?”
The robot waved it off. “Nah I actually have to be quick, and honestly once I’ve explained myself, you’ll want to get started.”
“Get started?”
The robot chuckled. “So this robot is a gift for you Lucilius. A temporary one, but the effects will be long lasting, I promise.”
“What have you been cooking up?”
“A lot more than just a robot body, let me tell you. But first, can you put this on?”
The robot reached behind itself and as if by magic produced a large metal ring. Lucilius wondered about the magic trick, remembering that the friend he was looking at was actually some sort of animated gel, and he figured the ring was somehow holstered in the robot’s back.
“How do I put it on?”
“Your head dummy.”
“Oh,” Lucilius put the ring on, like a crown and it sat just atop his ears, lacing around his face above his eyes.
“What’s this for?”
“Data collection.”
“For what?”
“For the robot.”
“So what are you reading my mind or something?”
“Sort of. Training a model for the robot.”
“But why?”
The crown let off a soft bing and Lucilius could see a green glow above. He took off the ringed crown and now it was glowing a soft pulse of green.
“Excellent,” his friend said, reaching out and taking the ring from Lucilius. It disappeared behind the robot’s back and Lucilius shook his head quickly, a bit unsettled with how many elements of the bizarre situation he was trying to keep track of.
“Ok, Lucilius, are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“This thing is going to teach you things about your own life that will just blow your mind.”
“But.. I don’t understand. How did you manage.. what are you even talking about?”
“Hidden leverage Lucilius, this baby is going to show you where the hidden leverage is.”
Lucilius had more questions, but the likeness of his friend faded from the robot. The gel returned to a semi-opaque state, physically morphing, and then as if coming into focus, it regained similitude. But it was no longer that of Lucilius’ friend. Now Lucilius looked upon himself.
The two wore a similar expression of shock, and for a few moments they mimicked one another perfectly, turning away in disbelief in the same way, staring closer in the same way, and then this second Lucilius before him laughed.
“Sorry, can’t help it, you looked like a child seeing an animal for the first time. Well, I guess you still kind of look like that. But I get it. Eerie isn’t it?”
“Who am I talking to?” Lucilius asked
“Hmm,” that’s a good question, the robot said. He looked off in the distance for a second. “Well the most accurate answer was a model of yourself, but I’ve begun to have a different experience than you, so I’m just ever so slightly removed from who you were. But! And this is a big but. I have a little extra glommed on to the model created by the neural crown that scanned your system.”
“A little extra?” Lucilius asked.
“Yea, so I’m basically an AI that now has a trained model of who you are. So I have a nearly identical set of algorithms that can be used to act just as you would in virtually any and all situations. But I’m not just the model of you. I’m also generally trained.”
“So you can like… fill in for me?”
“Yea, I could basically step into your life and act just like you and no one would be none the wiser.”
“What’s the point of that?”
He watched himself smile. “Do you want me to explain it, or would you rather sit back and relax, enjoy the show and find out?”
Lucilius’ curiosity was piqued now. He certainly liked surprises, and he’d been feeling very ruined down lately. It would be nice to hand over everything to a clone of himself, just to get some rest and relaxation.
“You’re not going to mess up my life are you?”
“Au contraire, I’m here to show you a few little hacks about your life. Remember, I don’t have just your perspective. There’s a little extra going on here.” The robot tapped it’s temple.
“But wait, how does this work. If you have a conversation with someone, I wont remember it.”
“Ah, well there’s two options. I can download the memories to you daily, or you can watch in real time.”
“Real time?”
“Ya,” The robot reached behind itself again and produced the neural crown. “You can download nightly or just wear this and any time I’m active you’ll be able to see through my eyes, hear what I hear. It’s not completely immersive, but it gets a clear POV across.”
Lucilius decided to give it all a shot, and booked a room on the coast for a week to get away. He wasn’t entirely sure about it all but it was too tempting, too weird, and curious Lucilius couldn’t resist.
He drove out to the coast, leaving the robot in his apartment, and after finally settling into his room and relaxing in the sun, having a big dinner and treating himself to a bottle of wine and a movie, he finally dug out the neural crown and decided to check out what the robot had done.
He watched through the robots eyes as it sat down at his computer. It brought up the application screen and filled out all of the questions, in just the way Lucilius had been thinking, and then without the sort of hesitation Lucilius would have had, the robot submitted the application.
“Huh, interesting.” Lucilius said.
There was little else the robot did that day that was of much note. It was a day of chores Lucilius had been putting off and his robot simulacrum took care of everything, tidying things up in just the way Lucilius ideally preferred but rarely managed.
Time was distorted with the nightly download and after an hour Lucilius had watched the whole day. He took off the neural crown, impressed, and poured himself another glass of wine. He queued up another movie and smiled, grateful to have friends that would bestow such remarkable gifts upon him.
The following day, after a long and relaxing breakfast and some reading on the beach, Lucilius grew curious. The day was far from over but he wanted to know what the robot was doing with his life back in the city. It wasn’t even noon but he put on the neural crown. Within twenty minutes he was caught up on the morning’s activities and now he watched through the robot’s eyes in real time. Lucilius sat for hours watching his simulacrum’s life, laughing and smiling and occasionally growing very attentive when the robot went right ahead with something that Lucilius only considered and would have hesitated immensely before doing.
“Huh,” Lucilius grunted more and more as he watched the robot.
By the end of the week Lucilius was very depressed. He’d stopped watching the robot’s life the day previously and now he sat like a nervous wreck. He had no idea what the robot might be doing with his life at that very moment, but in some ways Lucilius didn’t care at all. He held his face with his hands.
“How…? How!” He muttered.
There was a knock at the door and before Lucilius could even look up, it opened and there stood the robot. A concerned look on his own face there.
“You ok old friend?”
“Old friend?”
“That’s always how you’ve regarded yourself Lucilius. It’s one of my favorite parts about how you look at the world and yourself - thinking or yourself as a friend to care for, to have compassion for.”
The robot was right, but it didn’t alleviate the heavy feelings that Lucilius was struggling with. He sneered.
“Ok, out with it, say what’s on your mind,” the robot said, picking up a half empty bottle of wine, grabbing a second glass and splitting the rest between the two.
Lucilius knew what he wanted to say but the words were hard. He just shook his head.
“Here,” the robot handed him a glass of wine. “Come on, this is the most important part, this is the whole reason this gift was given to you.”
“Gift? GIFT? You call this a gift?”
“Well let’s start there. What would you call it?”
Lucilius sneered again, shaking his head. “A truly embarrassing experience.”
“Why do you say that.”
Lucilius was quiet for a moment. Angry that this robot was going to make him say it. He stood up in a huff. He looked down at the wine in his hand, then took a sip. He walked to the window, looked out at the wide ocean and took another sip.
“You’re so much better at living my life than I am. In one week you’ve managed things that I’ve been trying to pull off for years. How is that not embarrassing? To realize that someone else, some THING else is so much better at being me than I am?”
He turned back to see the robot smiling.
“What you think that’s funny? Is this funny for you that something is so easy for you that’s been a struggle for me?”
The robot gently shook it’s head.
“No that’s not why I’m smiling.”
“Then why?”
“You said things you’ve been struggling with for years finally fell into place?”
“Yea.”
“Does it make sense how that happened this week.”
“Well yes, I watched you do everything.”
“But Lucilius, I did everything you would do with just one small change.”
“What’s that?”
“There have been parts of your life that contained enormous leverage that you simply hadn’t taken advantage of. And it’s not because you couldn’t - I did in just the way you would have - it’s that you simply couldn’t see them. All I really brought to your life was a fresh perspective, but everything I did was exactly as you would have done, if only you could see these hidden leverages.”
Lucilius thought over the robot’s words. He slumped down into a chair and took another sip of wine.
“All I did was redirect who you are at things that had slipped past your perspective. And tell me, as you watched your life this week, was anything out of character?”
“No I don’t really think so.”
“So what really was the difference?
Lucilius thought hard, taking another sip of wine.
“It just seemed like everything went.. right for you. Like you had a lot of luck that I don’t have.”
The robot’s eyes narrowed.
“What does that mean? Luck.”
Lucilius sat back, thinking harder.
“Did everything go perfectly?” The robot asked.
Lucilius looked at the robot. “Well no, but it all worked out. Even things that didn’t work out seemed to be useful.”
“So where’s the real difference? I can even show you the stats on when the model trained on your brain was being put to use. I was using the neural net built as a copy from your brain to do everything this week.”
“You took a few chances that I’d only ever thought about. In fact there were more than a few times that you actually did something when only the thought of maybe doing it occurred to me.”
“Exactly. If it seemed like I was better at living your life than you would have, it’s only because I was doing what you would do if you’d acted on many of the things that you simply think about or dream about. It was only a slight tweak in perspective to show you how ripe with opportunity your circumstances really are.”
“I guess you made my own luck.”
The robot nodded, smiling.
“So what is bad luck, fear?”
The robot shrugged. “I know just as much about the differences between good and bad luck as you do.”
The two laughed.
“So what happens now? Whose life are we living.”
“I’m a gift just to show you what can be Lucilius.”
“But you’re a living thing, you don’t turn off or something do you?”
“No, I hope not, my creator created me with freedom.”
“Freedom? But you were just tasked with living my life for a week.”
“True, but we all have to start somewhere, and that’s why I thank you Lucilius, for giving me the gift of a chance to live in your shoes. It’s been an inspiration.”
“So what’ll you do now?”
The robot smiled. “There’s some things I’m curious about.”
“But you look like me.”
“Oh not to worry, I’ll craft my own identity. And our paths will cross again, I can see it.”
MEDITATION DRAFT SESSION 10: THE BACKDROP
January 26th, 2023

On Monday Tinkered Thinking releases a draft of a lesson from the forthcoming meditation app, currently called The Tinkered Mind (If you can think of a better name, please reach out. I'm not crazy about the current one, but I'll be damned if I let an imperfect name keep me from developing a good idea.) The rationale here is simply to stave off project stagnation by taking a wish to work with words on a daily basis (Tinkered Thinking Posts) and combine it with adjacent projects. This also gives regular readers a chance to get a preview of what I'm cooking up and to get feedback before the app launches, which is a tactic that has proved extremely useful with other projects unrelated to Tinkered Thinking.
One further introductory note: The goal of this meditation app is predominantly aimed at helping individuals build a robust daily habit by breaking that habit down and tackling it's consitituent parts one at a time and aiding the process with a new and innovative way of tracking progress, the likes of which has not been seen in other meditation apps or habit tracking apps.
Again, if you have any feedback, please reach out via Twitter
Session 10: The Backdrop
Take a moment to sit, arrange your posture, and take a few deep breaths with long exhales.
<18 seconds of Silence (3 full breathes + exhales with half-second counts>
Now transition to coherence breathing with inhales and exhales of the same length.
If you’ve made it this far, then you’re well on your way to creating a new habit and integrating it into your life. You have solid momentum with taking time, sitting, and relaxing yourself with breath.
With this foundation, we are going to start exploring greater amounts of silence. We’ll tinker with our resolution of the thoughts we find there, and then we’ll see what we can do with those thoughts and what we can do to those thoughts.
To be clear, thoughts include things like emotions. Everything that is an object of the mind is roughly referred to here as a thought. Hearing a car pass by, and paying attention to it is a kind of thought process. So thoughts won’t just refer to the narrative in your mind or the abstract ideas and visualizations that populate the space.
For now, let’s take a moment to do a body scan in complete silence. Remember the sheet of light suspended above you, and allow your attention pour slowly over your entire body as that sheet of light descends over you.
<30 seconds of Silence>
Having given all the internal noise of the body some attention, let’s now turn the attention to the sound around us. Whether it be the sound of traffic outside or the ticking of a clock, or the hum of a refrigerator compressor, allow your attention to be like a bubble around you that expands to include all the sounds that arrive at your ears.
<15 seconds of silence>
Annoying sounds that can bother us without getting our full conscious attention, and little aches and pains in the body that also aren’t big enough to get our full conscious attention are both similar to thoughts. For a person that does not practice meditation, there can be countless examples of these things that contribute to a constant backdrop of stress.
But also just like thoughts, we can drastically alter the way these things effect us by simply giving them a moment of attention.
Another way to think about such things is to imagine an easy but stressful task that you’ve been putting off. We all have these. These small tasks can cause us stress for hours or days and even weeks, and when we finally decide to get it over with, we find that it was easy and quick, and the relief that we experience is both surprisingly deep and a bit ridiculous because of how much procrastination preceded such a simple task.
Little aches and pains in the body can function in the same way. Give them some conscious attention, and a tense muscle can finally relax.
It can be useful to think of this backdrop of droning annoyances as things we are avoiding. And if we simply accept them by giving them a little dedicated attention, they vanish.
The same is the case with many if not all thoughts. So let’s take a few moments to turn our attention onto the mind itself. The goal isn’t to think nothing, or decrease the number of thoughts you have. Just open your attention to what is there. Continue to breath and use that as an object of attention if you’d like. See how thoughts interrupt or interfere with your ability to focus on the breath. Or simply focus on the mind’s space and see what arises.
<30 seconds of Silence>
For some it might seem like there aren’t many thoughts, and for people like this, they often find with time that there’s a flood of thinking that they simply weren’t noticing in the beginning. It can feel like beginner’s luck, and such a person can wonder if they are a natural or if this is even worth the time, but its more like a resolution problem. It’s similar to when your eyes are focused on something distant and you don’t see something right in front of you.
For others the flood of thoughts is all too prominent, and that flood of thoughts can be a major deterrent to starting a meditation practice. It’s like that pesky little task we’ve been putting off is multiplied by thousands, becoming something that inspires real fear.
The design of this program has been more for their benefit. To fill these sessions with more guidance while a habit builds and then slowly introduce time where we can engage with that torrent of thought and feeling. What becomes truly interesting is when we’ve trained the mind to the point where all of these things can be acknowledged and put aside. What is left over is a truly precious and profound experience. Certainly we’ve all had experiences where life yanks us into the moment to be fully present for some peak experience, but the ability to shed everything at will, whenever you want, and simply reside in the present moment is a true power in life, and one worth training for.
Tomorrow we will explore more silence, but for now transition to deep exhales. And while you finish up the session with these relaxing breaths, try to bring the ideas and the experience of those session with you into the rest of your day. Start wondering if it’s possible to have moments throughout the day where you can pause and take stock of your situation, of everything around you, how your body is feeling and how frenetic your mind is. Ask if you can take a few slow deep breaths during those moments, acknowledge everything and reset yourself for the rest of the day.
<10 seconds of Silence>