"How can you hear silence?"
"You have to train yourself. You have to just shut everything else out of your mind and focus."
"Why would you want me to listen to nothing?"
"Because that's where everything important is."
Growing up is weird. It is more than growing old, it is becoming wiser, maturing in your way of thinking. It is gradually changing who you are as a person. I know Avicii's "Wake me up" is a bit old to be used as an example, but it is the best I can think of here. For the reason is simple: it is yet another example of Mobius pop. It tells the listener to let the singer sleep until the singer has become older and wiser. While it does not consist of recursive logic, it does consist of conflicting claims - "wake me up" and it's condition "when I'm wiser". Being asleep, one cannot become wiser, even if one can, there is no way to communicate it to the listener. Thus "wake me up" becomes "don't ever wake me up" and "when I'm wiser" becomes "so I can never be wise".
Conflicts aside, growing up means experiencing life. Not sleeping it away. In the movie 'Philosophers' (spoiler alert!) students in a philosophy class take part in a mind experiment several times. They try the utilitarian approach a couple of times, always failing due to a meddlesome teacher. Then they cheat to exclude the teacher and go off in the opposite direction - they have fun. They don't focus on sustainability and success, they focus on wellbeing, entertainment, even if it is the end of them. For this way they die happy. The movie should have ended right there with the conclusion that people are but butterflies, inhabiting this wee planet for a few decades before perishing, making temporary connections to people, falling in love knowing that everything they start will end, everything they create will be demolished. In the eyes of the cosmic clock, the life of an individual is but a quick moment - blink and you miss it. Blink and it's gone. Blink and you're dead. If life is for so little, why not enjoy it?
However, life is no enjoyment if one does not learn from it. The greatest gift is knowledge and the willingness to use it. Scientia est potentia is a phrase most commonly used about technological advances and secrets, but it applies with common knowledge as well as with quirky facts. Knowing more empowers you to do greater things. Having fun is good, but if it kills you, you can't continue having fun. Knowledge gives you the opportunity to have fun for longer and in more diverse ways. Cutting up a person becomes more fun if you know anatomy, cooking stuff becomes more fun if you know chemistry. Watching a foreign movie becomes more fun if you know the language. But you cannot learn if you ignore the world, if you sleep through your days just waiting for someone else to 'wake you up'. Given that you're reading this I'd say you are already doing quite well for a start. The question you have to ask yourself is 'What's next?'.
If I had to give advice about how to live a life that you'd be happy with I'd say think of something you really, really want. Something big, something hard to get. Something pretty much impossible. Then think of how you can achieve it, and do it. Then think of something even more difficult and more complicated and repeat the process. In the end you'll have grown more than you'd expect. And you'll probably end up old and wise. Avicii would be happy.
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Saturday, January 4, 2014
People tend to think time is a linear sequence of cause and effect. In reality, it is more of a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey... stuff.
Karma. The way things are supposed to be.
It is difficult to make an argument against predeterminism. Anyone who has taken a slightly unhealthy interest in physics knows that with enough data, any outcome can be predicted. With large objects it is fairly obvious, an apple will fall towards the Earth if it is let go, a window washer will fall down if the ladder tumbles. Most chemical processes can be predicted using the laws of thermodynamics.
But most of life is not just falling apples and dead window washers. A great deal of life is social interaction. Giving people something to react to and anticipating those reactions. Getting something to react to and reacting according to your own beliefs. Sharing information in verbal, visual or indeed any form, and reacting to it. Receiving sense data and changing it. But predicting human behavior is a tricky thing - people are different and many will do things that surprise you. Inevitably you will always have less data to predict people's behavior on that people have to react to. Still, a human mind is a simple one. With great power, no doubt, but essentially simple. It hates change.
Psychoanalysists are people whose job it is to analyze and predict human behavior with limited information. Generally they do quite a good job. Many con artists and magicians specialize in cold reading - deriving personal information by fishing for it and closely observing how people look, how they act. It is so effective many people confuse it with clairvoyancy. Even so, sometimes just a few actions can reveal a lot about a person. How they think, how they move. How they would react to a little piece of information. How easy would it be to manipulate them.
What these people do confirms that people are not snowflakes. Being unique is extremely relative - people go where the wind carries them. Rarely do people get to where they want to go, but instead end up where they need to be. That is a connecting line no matter the culture, no matter the race, no matter the upbringing. This is not to say all people are exactly the same, that would be folly! But people are quite similar in their motivations, in their reactions. There are a few types that cover pretty much everyone. Stereotypes, if you prefer. Very often these types can be confirmed with two little questions: 'Who are you?' and 'What do you want?'. The answers, however philosophical they are in nature, reveal plenty about the person. Who they see themselves as, where they are going, why do they do the things they do, what are they striving towards. Once you know that, you can predict their future behavior. Once you also get information about their past, you can predict the success of their future behavior.
Naturally nobody can know everything about an another person, which rules out absolute predictions. But with the information that can be gleamed, you can get pretty close. After all, we all remember how Target knows people are pregnant before they tell anyone.
With the ability to accurately predict the future we step on predeterminism. Not because we know what is 'supposed' to be, but because we can change it. While it is possible that we are 'supposed' to change the 'supposed'-to-be future, but at one point it all breaks down. Once we know enough, we'll be able to predict our own actions, which would therefore have to be locked in place. Fixed points in time. And yet if we know they are coming, what would stop us from changing the way that they are supposed to be?
It is difficult to make an argument against predeterminism. Anyone who has taken a slightly unhealthy interest in physics knows that with enough data, any outcome can be predicted. With large objects it is fairly obvious, an apple will fall towards the Earth if it is let go, a window washer will fall down if the ladder tumbles. Most chemical processes can be predicted using the laws of thermodynamics.
But most of life is not just falling apples and dead window washers. A great deal of life is social interaction. Giving people something to react to and anticipating those reactions. Getting something to react to and reacting according to your own beliefs. Sharing information in verbal, visual or indeed any form, and reacting to it. Receiving sense data and changing it. But predicting human behavior is a tricky thing - people are different and many will do things that surprise you. Inevitably you will always have less data to predict people's behavior on that people have to react to. Still, a human mind is a simple one. With great power, no doubt, but essentially simple. It hates change.
Psychoanalysists are people whose job it is to analyze and predict human behavior with limited information. Generally they do quite a good job. Many con artists and magicians specialize in cold reading - deriving personal information by fishing for it and closely observing how people look, how they act. It is so effective many people confuse it with clairvoyancy. Even so, sometimes just a few actions can reveal a lot about a person. How they think, how they move. How they would react to a little piece of information. How easy would it be to manipulate them.
What these people do confirms that people are not snowflakes. Being unique is extremely relative - people go where the wind carries them. Rarely do people get to where they want to go, but instead end up where they need to be. That is a connecting line no matter the culture, no matter the race, no matter the upbringing. This is not to say all people are exactly the same, that would be folly! But people are quite similar in their motivations, in their reactions. There are a few types that cover pretty much everyone. Stereotypes, if you prefer. Very often these types can be confirmed with two little questions: 'Who are you?' and 'What do you want?'. The answers, however philosophical they are in nature, reveal plenty about the person. Who they see themselves as, where they are going, why do they do the things they do, what are they striving towards. Once you know that, you can predict their future behavior. Once you also get information about their past, you can predict the success of their future behavior.
Naturally nobody can know everything about an another person, which rules out absolute predictions. But with the information that can be gleamed, you can get pretty close. After all, we all remember how Target knows people are pregnant before they tell anyone.
With the ability to accurately predict the future we step on predeterminism. Not because we know what is 'supposed' to be, but because we can change it. While it is possible that we are 'supposed' to change the 'supposed'-to-be future, but at one point it all breaks down. Once we know enough, we'll be able to predict our own actions, which would therefore have to be locked in place. Fixed points in time. And yet if we know they are coming, what would stop us from changing the way that they are supposed to be?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)