Mercurial » Mind

Thinking as a hobby

Camilo — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:52:52 +0000

PTB points to the three degrees of thinking that William Golding discovered early in life. I love that ability to place your mind outside of the discourse, look at the background noise, and come with a reason why.
But much more interesting is that question by Golding, “What is the truth?”, that meta-thinking that recognizes the inherent limitation of our thoughts, and dares to go further

There is still a higher grade of thought which says, “What is truth?” and sets out to find it.

But o curse, the very same act of finding fault with the world is, in itself, a form of blindness – a higher one, if you like: We find that there are other points of view, and we try to arrange the world in a logical manner – logical to us, comfortable to our biases and limits. We define the world by simply saying where our limits are.

More interesting, then, is to accept that, for all we know and devise, the world is still going to be ruled by instincts and primeval desires, and our logical fallacy is going to reveal itself in a sudden flurry of temptation, our beautiful rational logic srpinging fangs and claws with which to apprehend that reality.

Because, you see, we are the Thinker, and we are also the Venus, the leopard, the snake. And so is everybody else.

Pain is just an oil away

Camilo — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 13:14:51 +0000

From wired, it now happens that nerves may transmit information using a mechanism akin to sound waves, not electric signals!

Since olive oil is similar to the lipid molecules that make up nerve cells, Jackson and Heimburg started questioning the generally accepted belief that anesthetics block electrical pulses by fitting themselves into pain receptors on cells. That seems next to impossible, they said, because anesthetic molecules come in many shapes and sizes, and it’s difficult to imagine that they all happen to physically fit into all receptors.

People are not happy:

The theory has not been well received. Few are convinced that the inexplicability of anesthetics is reason to dismiss the Hodgkin-Huxley model. One molecular biologist and ion channel expert even refused to comment on record about the theory because he found it too preposterous.

Links to the paper, and the researchers’ websites: Andrew Jackson and Thomas Heimburg.
Thomas Kuhn wrote that our understanding of science changes according to the new and unexplained facts that challenge our world view, generating a crisis, and debunking old theories. This might be happening here: anomalies that generate new knowledge, and bring the old owners of a theory into a crisis: that’s how science advances.

You are wrong, and here’s why

Camilo — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:31:34 +0000

You have a cognitive bias. Yes, dude, you are wrong all this time, and you don’t even know it!
Specially, now that I live in a test environment, these words become alive:

So we have gobs of busy people that might not know a lot about computers and security clicking and surfing all over the web (logged in as admin), but that think they know what they are doing. Sounds like a recipe for disaster or a great Monty Python episode involving loaded shotguns.
One disturbing finding of the report was that many users are not even looking at (and/or understanding) the indicators they have available in a browser that relate to their safety (SSL padlocks, location fields, status bars, etc). This is akin to getting off on the _wrong_ exit at 3am in an unfamiliar city holding a map. Not good.

Users are really good at what they do: they usually master complex interactions between their customers; they can find holes in the process and fix these; they develop an intricate support network to deal with daily occurrences, and they make their living processing uncounted transactions every day.
But they don’t know your tool, and they definitely do not abide by your rules.

Similarly, you are completely unaware of other people’s areas of expertise – even though you are competent at whatever is it that you do. Therefore, shut up, listen and learn.

BTW, this is why democratic, diverse and encouraging environments are always more successful that restrictive ones: the respect inherent in allowing someone else to dissent makes the system more resilient, stronger and adaptable.

And that is what you want in your app.

via rebecca blood and sentient development.

Dreams and memories

Camilo — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 03:10:42 +0000

I haven’t slept well in weeks, and it shows: I have been under some stress as of late.
So sadly, no dreams – or rather, fractured ones, fleeting images, flashes of ideas that are, later, difficult to understand.
I do have memories, though. I am driving by a restaurant, and think about sharing a dinner – or I go to a festival, and miss the perfect person to talk to; these manteaus would look good on her – but she is not here.
Sometimes I remember her smile, watching her in an elegant dress, or simply dancing to some music. I imagine her smile, her patient demeanor, her calm poise.
Those places that I used to frequent are full of memories. I go there alone, or not at all: with whom am I going to share the surprises, the food, the hope? The night is so dark without the moon!

Plastic brain, purple rain

Camilo — Wed, 30 May 2007 12:29:19 +0000

OK, so that is a bad word game, yet the plasticity of the brain appears to be nothing short of amazing, miraculous, and incomprehensible just yet; from the NYTimes:

For patients with brain injury, the revolution brings only good news, as Dr. Doidge describes in numerous examples. A woman with damage to the inner ear’s vestibular system, where the sense of balance resides, feels as if she is in constant free fall, tumbling through space like an ocean bather pulled under by the surf. Sitting in a neuroscience lab, she puts a set of electrodes on the surface of her tongue, a wired-up hard hat on her head, and the feel of falling stops. The apparatus connects to a computer to create an external vestibular system, replacing her damaged one by sending the proper signals to her brain via her tongue.

And I am getting the book.

Recursive

Camilo — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 19:41:59 +0000

Program Yourself

function get_smarter():
1. Am I smart enough yet? (default answer: of course not!)
2. If yes, go make a grillion dollars, or go fishing, or something. (Note: this statement is unreachable).
3. Otherwise:
1. Do various important things, until I have some free time.
2. Pick a book from my book list and read it.
3. If I’ve read it already, check all the references at the end, and add the ones that look good to my book list.
4. get_smarter()

Now.

Empty

Camilo — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 18:21:58 +0000

Found at Daily Zen:

Do not be an embodier of fame;
do not be a storehouse of schemes;
do not be a proprietor of wisdom.
Embody to the fullest what has no end
and wander where there is no trail.
Hold on to all that you have received from Heaven
but do not think you have gotten anything.
Be empty, that is all.

From the Chuang Tzu

Expert

Camilo — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 16:01:01 +0000

Kathy Sierra’s post on How to be an expert simply reinforces the old advice: Practice!

Yet the research says that if we were willing to put in more hours, and to use those hours to practice the things that aren’t so fun, we could become good. Great. Potentially brilliant. We need, as Restak refers to it, “a rage to master.” That dedication to mastery drives the potential expert to focus on the most subtle aspects of performance, and to never be satisfied. There is always more to improve on, and they’re willing to work on the less fun stuff.

And in this day and age, we have become so utterly obsessed with doing everything that we are not experts anymore: we coast around trying to do things as best as we can.

And that is why only a few obsessive and determined individuals actually made it.

Beginner’s mind

Camilo — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 15:51:21 +0000

Zen mind
Forget all. Be a beginner.
Much of the personal turmoil that surrounds me can easily be traced to thousands of experiences in my life. Add to that an excellent memory, and the sensation of being inside a hurricane of emotions and behaviors becomes a very concrete entity.
Enter the monkeys with the beginner’s mind:

The beginner’s mind is one of clarity unencumbered by the years of ego, rules, social experience, worldly knowledge, bad habits and other baggage that accumulates and weighs us down. It is the original face, the one we each had before we were born. It is primordial, and free of imposition. It heeds no resistance, and is aware only of the natural flow of things.

I remember receiving that book from a very good friend uncountable years ago, when he saw that I thought too much, and thus tried to pry me away from that excessive analytical bent of mine.
Later on, and before coming to this country, a taxi driver that had been trained by the Israeli Army told me “there is no thinking, just acting.”
How true.
Thinking is only a rationalization of decisions already taken, at best, and a morass in which all actions die, at worst. Our mind’s abstract processes, while amazing=g in creating its own reality and interpreting it, also serve as a very convenient barrier between the world that lives out there and the one that gets interpreted in the mind.
Too much thought gets you a Frankenstein’s monster.

We live startled, aroused, expecting the universe to behave in one way or another. And, by and large, the universe complies. We attempt to sit in zazen but really, the first act is that of lacking reference, world, distinctions and categories. We do fully live when being silent and completely new: a beginner’s mind in which every act is light and sensation, and we do not know.
We, I hide behind a wall of knowledge, forms, thoughts, and expectations. I become what others expect, what others determine, and silently scream my own self, trying desperately to untangle.
That is, until I let go, and forget those expectations, and relentlessly approach that moment with a complete awareness and an empty mind.

First impression

Camilo — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:00:52 +0000

On perceiving a marvelous subject for the first time, it is usual to surrender our rationalization to the simple surprise and complete awe that that first encounter might engender, without pausing to actually judge or qualify in any way the experience. Later on, if asked, we will revert to “awesome”, or a simple “the best experience”, and mostly the rationalizations and ideas will start pouring out of our mind.
But, at the very beginning, that subjective assessment will be completely secondary to the raw power of the emotions and physical understanding of the phenomenon that you are experiencing. That instant of reality displaces every other thing in the Universe.
Later, we all do grow complacent. That instantaneous immersion, though, that first impression, marks a whole lot of our attitude toward the subject that we will like to experience.

Take, for example, the ocean (assuming, of course, that you grew away from it): What happened the first time you saw that mass of water? What emotions came to you from feeling the noise of the ocean, smelling what the wind brought, seeing the absurd vastness?
Oh. You saw the ocean when you were two. You grew with it, and it has never brought a smile to your face. The ocean just is.
Ask the fishermen in a small village. Or their wives. They all grew with the ocean, they all respect it.

That initial communion with the unexpected, the sensation of belonging to that instant and that place, the absolute renunciation of expectations and desires, and simply the experience of what is happening in that instant, in that place.

That is what I want to relive.