“mindfulness”

We were chatting. I was grasping for a great, recent quote that congealed my thoughts well but I couldn’t find it in my quote collection nor recall anything but the vaguest of phrasings.

This sort of thing has happened often to me and I’m sure it has to you: googling for vague recall, for completing your thoughts. Instead of closing your eyes and willing an unconscious mind racking you outsorce to Google the unconvering of the tip of your tongue. What stroke me this time was the chaining and the speed (just-in-time-thinking). What got me to write this down was that in a few years such a thing will be so unremarkable I’m sure we’ll wonder how it felt before, if those in transition ever noticed how their mind was being steadily extruded.

Let us imagine that intelligence had resided, not in mankind, but in some vast solitary and isolated jelly-fish, buried deep in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. It would have no experience of individual objects, only with the surrounding water. Motion, temperature and pressure would provide its basic sensory data. In such a pure continuum the discrete would not arise and there would be nothing to count.

Michael Atiyah’s thought experiment, as quoted in Is God a Mathematician?

Having thought about this question a good deal, I believe that math is a human construct in that the Math that is possible is far Vaster than we imagine, and from that gnarly Vastness we choose only one thread. That’s what Atiyah’s quote illustrates to me.

As to its universal truth, validity, applicability…, perhaps all that can be said is that empathic nonhumans might be able to get and accept some of it, just as exotic stories start to make sense to us only after we understand the exotic sensibilities that gave rise to it.

Flow was one of the best books I’ve ever read. I’m halfway through its sequel, The Evolving self, and I can already say the same for it. I’m already having trouble remembering meself before I started reading it—it’s one of those books that stretches and rewrites you as you read it. It’s also deeper than Flow, more speculative, darker—the whole first half has been about the (inevitable) obstacles to human freedom.

Put in the effort. ”An overemphasis on intellect or talent—and the implication that such traits are innate and fixed—leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.” That, in a sentence, is Scientific American’s excellent The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. It’s really some of the best life advice you can get (intelligence is just a nice case example).

The result plays out in children like Jonathan, who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.

Praising children’s innate abilities, as Jonathan’s parents did, reinforces this mind-set, which can also prevent young athletes or people in the workforce and even marriages from living up to their potential. On the other hand, our studies show that teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life.

 [The other test group], meanwhile, focused on fixing errors and honing their skills. One [schoolchildren] advised himself: “I should slow down and try to figure this out.” Two schoolchildren were particularly inspiring. One, in the wake of difficulty, pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips and said, “I love a challenge!” The other, also confronting the hard problems, looked up at the experimenter and approvingly declared, “I was hoping this would be informative!” Predictably, the students with this attitude outperformed their cohorts in these studies.

In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”

Carol S. Dweck, The Secret to Raising Smart Kids

It’s a tough call, distinguishing talent from effort. Intimidation and discourage further muddle the waters. But the question is rather whether or not you want to get better. Talented or not, you will not get magically better without effort. Talented or not, you will get better with effort.

Transhumanist transgender Martine Rothblatt proposes the most original solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I’ve ever conceived: Two Stars for Peace—the incorporation of Palestine and Israel into the U.S. as the 51st and 52nd states. She has wrote a book making the detailed case and has spoken about it on Sirius satellite radio:

This is so far out our ordinary could I’m still shocked. My rather unusual Mexican high school put an odd emphasis on the Middle East and this is by far the best idea I know of. Just imagine, fighting war with peace. Hope. Freedom.

”...begins with a single step,” no? That’s the classic form in English of a Chinese proverb usually attributed to Lao Tzu. It’s wisdom could be said to lie in counteracting our natural inability to grasp incrementalism.

Interestingly, there’s a variant of the proverb I had never heard before—“The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.”—which can lead one to a totally different interpretation: wherever you are, whatever your goal, you have to begin where you stand. The place to start is here, can be nothing but here.

(And for a further remix, “On a journey of a hundred miles, ninety is but half way.”)

A Fair Ellen (noun) could be a roundabout, inefficient, sometimes extravagant and always pathetic behavior to get around a bug in a product. Particularly when it lingers on long after said bug has been fixed. From Bruce Tognazzini’s inspired collie metaphor.

It may only be that my grandfather’s agony has me seeing everything with long-now eyes but these days I’m increasingly aware that I should take precautions in case I die.

I don’t want to die. I don’t shake my head and look away at death, I stand up in defiance. But the fact is our lives are still too fragile and faced with the possibility I would rather think things through.

Which is why I’ve written this short will. I shall edit and refine it as long as I’m living (with the latest version the official one, of course) and so I thought I should start now.