One of the most difficult things for me to accept is that it doesn't matter what I want to be doing in a month or in a year or when I'm fifty or in "The Future"; it only matters what I want to do now.

I don't mean this in a stupid or impetuous sense, but my motivations are honestly all too often quite backward. I ruminate on what I might want to be doing in some imaginary future; in so doing I create a cartoonishly unrealistic vision of my future self, which in turn implies a cartoonishly unrealistic image of my current self, which in turn utterly confuses and frustrates all of my day-to-day efforts. Not only do my efforts tend to make questionable sense, but I can't even honestly enjoy them. Everything I do lives in the shadow of some false future. I'm living vicariously through myself! This, perhaps, is what it means to live "in the future."

The only time I look into the future should be in support of the present, and never vice-versa. If I find I want to travel to another country, well, maybe I can't do that right now. Maybe that will legitimately take a few months -- or, hell, a few years -- of planning. That's fine. That's sensible. That's sane. That's honest. If I create an image of some future self, however, who "ought" to be traveling, I'm screwed. Even if I enjoy the trip, I won't enjoy it nearly as much as whatever it is that I actually want to be doing, and all of the time I spend waiting and planning and living in preparation for the trip will be frittered away with false sensations of guilt, of idleness, of insignificance.

There is no such thing as "the future." "The future" is merely a label, a mnemonic device. It is no more potent than the word "red."

I must live for the present, even if it occasionally takes some work and some patience for my present circumstances to align with my desires. I must live for the present. It's all I've got.

A couple of years ago, I came up with an idea for a project. It was exciting, it was cool, it could have even been useful. It was a significant expenditure of time and effort, but it was doable. I thought it was the kind of thing that a lot of people would be interested in -- hell, I thought I was articulating something that was on other people's minds, as well as my own -- and I thought there would be a lot of interest. And there was. For, maybe, three weeks. Dozens of people drifted away after the first few weeks, leaving only a handful of us. That wasn't a huge surprise, though, and we pushed on.

Over the next few months we put in work. There seemed to be momentum, things were getting done, things seemed to be heading in a direction. Then... things... just... didn't. Anything that could become a roadblock became one. Scheduling conflicts, technical problems, writers block, anything. In retrospect, I can't think of one hold-up that wasn't completely arbitrary, that couldn't have been worked around. I know that if I had really wanted to, I could've turned it around. I think I knew that at the time, too.

There's been talk since about reinvigorating the project. Nothing really seems to have come of it. Again, I could've made it happen, and I didn't. It is, essentially, a personal failing on my part. And it's horrifying. It's horrifying because it was something I cared about, it was something that I knew I had control over, and it was something that a number of other people had invested a lot of time and love in. And, somehow, I let it die.

It may not actually be dead. There's been talk about starting it up again. Of course, I'm busy until the summer. And then I'm gone until the fall. I have nothing to say. Given my history, what could I say? "I'll give it a stab in September?" I disappoint people over and over again, and I disappoint myself. I'm not sure which is worse.

This is my life. The scope may vary, but this is essentially the trajectory that all of my projects take. Well, almost all. Far, far too many.

I need to figure out why I do this, and I need to fix it. That, I think, is one of the most important things I can be doing with my life. Virtually everything else is secondary, because it will just be thwarted by this stupid, stupid urge.

"Order" does not exist any more than "chaos" or "randomness" exist. They are simply statements of opinion or, if you're feeling charitable, perspective. If we can filter out virtually all data about a situation such that we can articulate an extremely rough approximation of some limited aspect of it -- an "aspect" being an artificial construct, of course -- then it is "ordered." If we cannot, then it is "chaotic" or "random."

Ultimately, when we attempt to examine concepts such as God or free will, we project a model of the universe from which we then draw our assumptions -- and which is almost always, if not always, dominated by one or the other of these perspectives/opinions. This is why both atheism and theism are flawed, and why the concepts of free will and determinism are both flawed. There is something that is both like and not like God that is God, and we are both deterministic and random in our behaviors, which are neither.

Okay, I need to get back to work now.

Truly, my powers are limited only by my ability to give a fuck.



Really, I think this is kinda the core of it. This is the running theme. If I could just be more honest with myself about what I really give a fuck about, I think my life would make a lot more sense. Conversely, many of my great regrets in life stem from not knowing that I really should give a fuck about certain things, or convincing myself that I gave a fuck about other things when I truly didn't. One should only do what one should do. How spectacularly spoiled I am that this can even be an issue.

Know thyself, etc.

One of the greatest luxuries in the world is falling asleep when we wish to fall asleep, and waking when it is our time to wake. How sad that the world we have created so commonly denies us this simple right.

"The idea that I could be simulated on a computer seems at odds with my subjective experience of free will and my intuition that my future actions are not yet determined — I am free to choose them. But consider a computer program that plays chess. In actual chess playing programs the program "considers" individual moves and "works out" the consequences of each move. This is a rather high level description of the calculation that is done, but it is fair to say that the program "considers options" and "evaluates consequences". When I say, as a human being, that I have to choose between two options, and that I have not decided yet, this seems no different to me from the situation of a chess playing computer before it has finished its calculation. The computer's move is determined — it is a deterministic process — and yet it still has "options". To say "the computer could move pawn to king four" is true provided that we interpret "could do x" as "it is a legal option for the computer to do x". To say that I am free is simply so say that I have options (and I should consider them and look before I leap). But having options, in the sense of the legal moves of chess, is compatible with selecting an option using a deterministic computation. A chess playing program shows that a determined system can have free will, i.e., can have options. So free will (having options) is compatible with determinism and there is no conflict."

A followup comment:

"No, MacNeil has it right. This is a problem that can be easily resolved, because the question itself is mistaken. "Free will" is a broken concept. What I'm reading in the comments above is that Free Will must be used to make choices, but cannot be predictable itself. It seems to me that if a) you make useful decisions, there is, by definition, a "predictable" algorithm involved since it has to relate actions to your knowledge and sensory inputs. b) Should you have any kind of identity or personality, (i.e. there is a way to describe you as a person) then by definition this also forms a constraint on your possible decisions. You can't make true randomness a basis for a theory of free will.

"At an even deeper level, it seems we want to separate decision making systems (nervous systems and perhaps, if we believe in strong AI, properly-programmed computers) from the rest of Nature because we are living things which value our own power, survival, and reproduction. From the standpoint of functionality, a brain and an AI are different than a rock, but as far as metaphysics goes, neither physics nor natural selection seems to need it to proceed. My take is that therefore, consciousness (what it's like to BE that decision/control system known as the human mind) is an inherent aspect of physical change. And in fact, it can't be an aspect. It IS physical change. If it were separable from it, there would be no need for it at all. This position also handily eliminates dualism. Any "ghosts in the machine" instantly become the pattern of physical change (computation) in the machine."

Read the whole thing. It is both tiny and tasty.

j03j03 asked me these five questions. Should you wish for me to ask YOU five questions, simply post here with a note saying so. I will respond with my five, and then you post your answers and this explanation in your journal.


1. what is your favorite tv show of all time?

I don't really traffic in favorites, and I don't watch a lot of tv anymore, but for sake of argument... I guess I'd have to say the Simpsons, really. I'd like to pick something elegant or brilliant or obscure, but fuck it. The Simpsons has been funnier and more insightful than most shows I've seen, and far more consistently. And there are about eight billion episodes, so I'm covered in some nightmare scenario where I'm stranded on a desert island and can only watch one DVD series with some quirky apparatus cobbled together from coconut shells, a piece of bamboo, a tattered sail, and a hand mirror. Or I can just fling the discs at passing birds.


2. is violence sometimes the answer?

Kinda broad. Violence against other humans, or violence as an umbrella concept? Lethal violence? Schoolyard violence? Silence but violence?

I believe I have the right to defend myself from an immediate threat, or to help someone else defend themselves from an immediate threat. I think consensual violence (boxing, for example) is alright. I eat a lot of beef. I don't think that any level of violence beyond that is necessary or should be acceptable.


3. why do you think so many people still believe they have free-will?

Because they don't have a choice. (ba-dum BING!) In all seriousness, I've had two or three datapoints (which I still need to verify) fall into my lap lately that indicate we often function as rationalization engines. The last one I heard, subjects were being manipulated to experience anger, fear, etc. Purely mechanical manipulations. Afterwards, they were asked about how they felt, and they had elaborate justifications for it -- how the other person was threatening them, reminded them of someone they knew that they had that reaction around, etc. Rationalizing the irrational. So, assuming that's correct, I guess that kind of begs the question as to why would the mind would function that way, and I really don't know why that would be. Perhaps our conscious mind functions primarily to interpret sensory data to react to it effectively. Free will would be a misinterpretation of the "range of motion" we have in our response to environmental stimuli.

Or, hey, maybe we've just got free will after all. Honestly, I've never really understood the preoccupation with free will -- maybe I'm dense, but I just don't see how it changes anything one way or the other.

Actually, fuck all of that.

We're extensions of the universe. The universe is an extension of us. We are influenced by it. It is influenced by us. If there is one grand deterministic system, we are a part of that system and we are a part of its rule-set. Free will vs. determinism is a false dichotomy.


4. when was the last time you cried tears of sadness, what was the direct cause and did you try to hide it from those around you?

When my girlfriend's bird died, back in the spring. I didn't try to hide the fact that I was crying, but I did try to suppress it somewhat.


5. why do you suppose some people try to insult others for admitting when they've made a mistake, especially when it's shimmeringly obvious that they already feel plenty bad about making the mistake in the first place?

I dunno. Because they're not ready to let go of the pain that they feel the mistake has caused them, and they think that they need another person for that?

Alternate answer: because that's how they've been treated when they've made mistakes.

Do not despair, little trooper.

We are all alone in the middle of the night. There's no one else around to hear our bullshit, and for the most part we're too worn out to care. Our conscious mind gets tired of thinking up stories, and begins to realize how small it really is, and every once in a while a glimmer of truth can slip out.

If there's any time to listen, now is it.

You're doing okay. Everything's going okay. Yeah, it all seems crazy. Sometimes it feels like things are finally coming together, sometimes it feels like they're all falling apart. The truth is both and neither and everything in between. Things are changing. You know they are, there is no shortage of external benchmarks to gauge that by. Progress isn't easy, and it's not even very reassuring, but it's real, and it's important, and it's happening.

Deep down, you know that. And consciously, you know you know that. Sure, it's killing you to say it. You doubt every word as soon as it hits the screen but still you keep typing away, because you know you need to believe this. Maybe you just need to believe it because it's comfortable, but you know, I think you just need to believe it because it's true.

Have faith, little trooper. You'll make it.

If you can find beauty in a fern, or a rainstorm, or a black hole, or a bird devouring an insect, you can find beauty in humanity. As horrible and as cruel as this species can be at times, it can never fail to be an agent of nature. Perhaps we can be more than indivisible sparklings of eternal pattern, but we can never be less.

That's it. I think I understand my purpose. I need to clear my mind and open my eyes so that I can better see how the world works, so that I can better imagine how it should work, and so that I can figure out how to get it there.

That's the only good reason for me to care about mysticism. Everything else is just an empty mind game.

It's so simple. It's like the world has been shouting that at me all this time. There have been signs everywhere. I've either looked right past them, or arrogantly disregarded them.

So simple. I should have known that all along.

I couldn't have known. I wasn't shown this by all the people I expected to show me these things. They knew there was something, and they tried to express that, but they didn't understand it. They couldn't express it. Understanding it is my job. Man, all that pain. All those fights, all those disappointments, all that confusion, all that wasted time.

Just because I didn't understand myself.

But I didn't understand myself. I didn't, and it's just that simple. And I never would have come to understand any of this without all of those "empty mind games." That's worth remembering.

I am self-constructing, as all humans should be. As all humans should know they are. As all humans could know they are. As all humans can know they are.

I still have a lot to learn about myself and about the world. But at least I know why I'm doing it now, and I trust myself to find the next step. I can do this.

I might have a long way to go. That's okay.

It should be fun.

I'm trying to understand what is important to me and which approaches are sensible. Some of these may seem very basic, and that's just fine with me. Many of these seem to only restate the same principle in a slightly different context -- that's okay too, that's probably useful. These are listed here as much to correct my own ongoing behavior as anything else. I can't take credit for any of these. I don't claim to know what the hell I'm doing. This is all subject to change.

( Big fat nerd stuff... )