Around 2,700 years ago a Greek poet named Hesiod once said "observe due measure; moderation is best in all things" which would later be shortened through history quite simply as "all things in moderation" as advice for life. There comes a point when these little pieces of sage wisdom often discounted and discarded as cliché eventually appear to us. In moments of great epiphany we come to the realisation of truths we already knew but never fully accepted. This for me is one.
There are a lot of things in life which I have little self control over when it comes to my indulgences but one in particular is my love of music. This is not something in and of itself that can cause any harm to me from overindulgence - unless you count excessive headphone use and the concern for my future hearing. Nevertheless there are downsides to my love of something that gives me great joy and pleasure.
The first is what I refer to a musical exhaustion. This happens when you find a track that instantly resonates with you, so much so that it becomes an obsession. You play it in excess, and in the extreme you play it on repeat and it becomes the only song you listen to, which leads to the inevitable exhaustion of the enjoyment you get from it. You then let go of the music and move on.
For me part of the reason I do this is because it represents something new that is a novelty to me and I want to get as much from it as I can, and part of it is simply to increase the play count - which I know I can do through other means without actually listening to it but there's no fun in that. The reason I do this is because I have playlists that are based on how many times I have played tracks and those tend to be my go-to playlists whenever I want something to listen to and don't particularly feel like shuffling through countless tracks.
The second is a phenomenon known as an Earworm, which is basically when you get a melody, or lyrics, or both stuck in your head to the point where you imagine it and you can't really think of anything else. Even when you try to, when you have a moment of rest or silence the Earworm wriggles again and the music plays.
Both of these are pretty harmless, and Music whilst described as a drug by some, is certainly something that is very safe to indulge in, even in excess. Other indulgences not so much, in fact whenever an indulgence can actually cause us harm or have very noticeable negative affects on us we tend to refer to them as a vice. Things like actual drugs, alcohol, gambling etc are all things that spring to mind, and incidentally those tend to be the first things we think of giving up whenever we try to change our lives. Moderation is something that is a lot harder to achieve. Cold turkey with anything is rather simple to achieve, you just have to cut off the supply of whatever you want to give up and then buckle your seat belt and prepare for the rough ride of withdrawal that inevitably ensues. Moderation on the other hand requires discipline, control, and the willpower to say no when you have the opportunity.
The idea of all things in moderation is one that appeals to me very much, but I've never been able to figure out how to do that with any degree of success, unfortunately.
Superstition
Superstition is a strange and unusual thing. To quote Lydia from Beetlejuice, I myself, am strange and unusual. I've always had a fascination with superstitions, in particular those relating to numbers. Whilst I have never delved that deep into Numerology, one thing I have learned is that you can see patterns in anything if you look hard enough, nothing ever appears truly random to us even when we know it is. Perhaps it is that insistence that nothing truly happens by chance that drives us to believe that superstitions might actually be real.
You are just as likely to win the lottery with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, as you are with any other 6 numbers chosen at random, yet our brains refuse to accept this and insist the likelihood that such an event would occur is much less likely than any other 6 random numbers. The truth is that what we are weighing up in that moment is actually selective evidence. When we consider the two scenarios playing out, unconsciously we bundle every other number combination as one, and single this combination out on its own. In that scenario, our 6 sequential numbers versus all other combinations it is true that the likelihood it would occur is far less - because we have not compared it against any single permutation but every permutation at all. To simplify the conjecture would be to say you are more likely to lose than you are to win. That at least we can accept.
The same is true of superstitions, you're just as likely to have no negative outcome as a result of whatever ominous occurrence you take, as you are to have positive outcomes. For example if you take the adage that breaking a mirror causes seven years bad luck, you are just as likely to have seven good years, seven bad, or seven neutral, after the fact. Dismissing cognitive bias which could cause us to fixate on one outcome, in a purely objective analysis of the outcome the act in itself won't influence your life. Yet these superstitions remain prevalent.
Some superstitions can be traced back to events that became associated with them. Incidents happening on dates with specific numbers such as the great fire of London in 1666 reinforce the belief that certain numbers - in this case three sixes whenever they appear together, can lead to negative events. The question is whether the number caused those events, or if those events happening on that date caused the number to become ominous - if the great fire had happened in 1888 would we consider three eights to be a bad omen?
Some superstitions can be traced back to some grain of truth long forgotten. For example if you take the seven years bad luck for breaking a mirror, some historians have argued this emerged as a result of mercury poisoning. Mercury is particularly toxic to humans and if small amounts of it enter the bloodstream it can take a long time for it slowly kill the person that has been contaminated by it. Mirrors in the 1400s were made using glass and Mercury - the former is prone to shattering into shards when broken which can easily cut anyone attempting to clean it up, those cuts can be large or tiny and barely noticeable. Some have posited then that those who broke mirrors made of mercury and subsequently became poisoned by the mercury, suffered a long period of slow decline in health. It's easy to see from here where the superstition that breaking a mirror causes bad luck can emerge - the irony is that superstition is actually true and represents not something supernatural at play but rather something that can be explained quite concisely through understanding of medical and chemical sciences.
That last point is what brings me back to the fascination I have with superstition, if some can be found to be based in truth, then perhaps there is also truth behind the others that all have perfectly reasonable explanations we just have not gained a complete understanding thereof.
You are just as likely to win the lottery with the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, as you are with any other 6 numbers chosen at random, yet our brains refuse to accept this and insist the likelihood that such an event would occur is much less likely than any other 6 random numbers. The truth is that what we are weighing up in that moment is actually selective evidence. When we consider the two scenarios playing out, unconsciously we bundle every other number combination as one, and single this combination out on its own. In that scenario, our 6 sequential numbers versus all other combinations it is true that the likelihood it would occur is far less - because we have not compared it against any single permutation but every permutation at all. To simplify the conjecture would be to say you are more likely to lose than you are to win. That at least we can accept.
The same is true of superstitions, you're just as likely to have no negative outcome as a result of whatever ominous occurrence you take, as you are to have positive outcomes. For example if you take the adage that breaking a mirror causes seven years bad luck, you are just as likely to have seven good years, seven bad, or seven neutral, after the fact. Dismissing cognitive bias which could cause us to fixate on one outcome, in a purely objective analysis of the outcome the act in itself won't influence your life. Yet these superstitions remain prevalent.
Some superstitions can be traced back to events that became associated with them. Incidents happening on dates with specific numbers such as the great fire of London in 1666 reinforce the belief that certain numbers - in this case three sixes whenever they appear together, can lead to negative events. The question is whether the number caused those events, or if those events happening on that date caused the number to become ominous - if the great fire had happened in 1888 would we consider three eights to be a bad omen?
Some superstitions can be traced back to some grain of truth long forgotten. For example if you take the seven years bad luck for breaking a mirror, some historians have argued this emerged as a result of mercury poisoning. Mercury is particularly toxic to humans and if small amounts of it enter the bloodstream it can take a long time for it slowly kill the person that has been contaminated by it. Mirrors in the 1400s were made using glass and Mercury - the former is prone to shattering into shards when broken which can easily cut anyone attempting to clean it up, those cuts can be large or tiny and barely noticeable. Some have posited then that those who broke mirrors made of mercury and subsequently became poisoned by the mercury, suffered a long period of slow decline in health. It's easy to see from here where the superstition that breaking a mirror causes bad luck can emerge - the irony is that superstition is actually true and represents not something supernatural at play but rather something that can be explained quite concisely through understanding of medical and chemical sciences.
That last point is what brings me back to the fascination I have with superstition, if some can be found to be based in truth, then perhaps there is also truth behind the others that all have perfectly reasonable explanations we just have not gained a complete understanding thereof.
Merry Christmas!
My favourite Christmas song isn't really a Christmas song but I think I can get away with including it here. The song is called 'What If' and was recorded as part of the soundtrack to 'Christmas Carol: The Movie' the 2001 live action/animation adaptation of the Dickensian classic, starring Kate Winslet who performs the track. The track resonates with me on many levels, a story that many can relate to, of a love for someone that goes awry leading to the two of you parting ways, and in years to come you look back on that time and wonder what might have been, what if...
I like to think that everything in life happens for a reason, sometimes that reason is known to us, others it is not. Sometimes we eventually find out why and sometimes we never do. I like to think that everything worked out the way it was meant to work out. I know that plays with the ideas of fate and destiny and opens up a huge debate about free will but let's leave that for now, it's too heavy to get into. The point I was making is that when I look back on the "one that got away" or, ones, as there are a few guys I think could fit that moniker, I like to think it didn't work out because it wasn't meant to work out. You can write that off as sentimentality and wishful thinking, you can even put it down to a desire to shirk responsibility but in my defence I don't think any of those relationships could have been saved by anything they or I could have done.
Nevertheless there's always the thought of "What If" and the curiosity of what life might have been like if it had worked out. I don't know the answer to that question and like the lyrics to the song say, "I guess we'll never know" - still the curiosity remains. There are many things in life we can never know, it doesn't stop us dreaming about them or wondering.
On the flip side there are many things that have happened in my life since, which I don't think would have happened had things worked out. I guess if you weren't the sort to accept the sentimentality of reminiscing about the past and what might of been, it would be better to look at your present and your future and make the conscious decision that you want to do something or make something happen now in your life you can categorically say would never have happened had things worked out, because you are making that decision exactly because they didn't, and make it big enough and meaningful enough to say to yourself it was justified for things to have never worked out, for this to have happened instead.
What you choose to do is up to you, but if you think about those who go on to have lives of happiness in absence of the path they could have taken, those who have no regrets are often those who think that the path they took worked out better in the end - so why not try and make this path as best you can?
There's a quote I love, the precise wording I can't recall but it goes along these lines:
That's a bit melancholy I know but it wouldn't be Christmas if there wasn't some reflection and some contemplation of life. Every year at this time I like to celebrate togetherness and be thankful for what I do have, however great or small that may seem. The religious nature of Christmas I have to say has faded for me over the years. I've redefined the holiday choosing what it means to me and celebrating that instead. To that end, Merry Christmas!
I like to think that everything in life happens for a reason, sometimes that reason is known to us, others it is not. Sometimes we eventually find out why and sometimes we never do. I like to think that everything worked out the way it was meant to work out. I know that plays with the ideas of fate and destiny and opens up a huge debate about free will but let's leave that for now, it's too heavy to get into. The point I was making is that when I look back on the "one that got away" or, ones, as there are a few guys I think could fit that moniker, I like to think it didn't work out because it wasn't meant to work out. You can write that off as sentimentality and wishful thinking, you can even put it down to a desire to shirk responsibility but in my defence I don't think any of those relationships could have been saved by anything they or I could have done.
Nevertheless there's always the thought of "What If" and the curiosity of what life might have been like if it had worked out. I don't know the answer to that question and like the lyrics to the song say, "I guess we'll never know" - still the curiosity remains. There are many things in life we can never know, it doesn't stop us dreaming about them or wondering.
On the flip side there are many things that have happened in my life since, which I don't think would have happened had things worked out. I guess if you weren't the sort to accept the sentimentality of reminiscing about the past and what might of been, it would be better to look at your present and your future and make the conscious decision that you want to do something or make something happen now in your life you can categorically say would never have happened had things worked out, because you are making that decision exactly because they didn't, and make it big enough and meaningful enough to say to yourself it was justified for things to have never worked out, for this to have happened instead.
What you choose to do is up to you, but if you think about those who go on to have lives of happiness in absence of the path they could have taken, those who have no regrets are often those who think that the path they took worked out better in the end - so why not try and make this path as best you can?
There's a quote I love, the precise wording I can't recall but it goes along these lines:
The past is written and cannot be changed, the future is tomorrow and still to come, today is a gift, that's why it's called the present.Today is a day associated with giving and receiving gifts, so why not give yourself a gift by making a change in your life that will make it better, no matter how big or how small, not just today but every day hereafter, try to do something that makes your life better in some small way and maybe in the end the sum total of all those gifts will amount to something that makes everything in your past feel like it was worth it.
That's a bit melancholy I know but it wouldn't be Christmas if there wasn't some reflection and some contemplation of life. Every year at this time I like to celebrate togetherness and be thankful for what I do have, however great or small that may seem. The religious nature of Christmas I have to say has faded for me over the years. I've redefined the holiday choosing what it means to me and celebrating that instead. To that end, Merry Christmas!
The Pursuit of Perfection
There is a temptation in life to imagine perfection. We think about actions that we can take and we think about the subsequent outcomes and we picture in our minds what the perfect outcome would be. For example we can try to bake a cake, and we can picture it in our mind as to what it will look like. We then go through the process of mixing the batter and then baking it and eventually we get the output of our work in the form of a cake and it is an inevitability that we will compare it to what we pictured in our minds.
Perfection is a useful concept when it comes to aspiration and ambition but it is an impractical concept when it comes to evaluating the final result. This is because in almost every single thing we do in life, despite how hard we try, we will never achieve perfection for the simple reason that perfection is to be without flaws, and humanity is flawed, ergo perfection is to be without humanity. There is a reason we use machines and computerized production processes whenever we need precision. There is a reason we don't rely on humans any longer for mass produced products - they can't create uniformity the way computers and machines can. No matter how great the artist is, they will never paint two pictures that are completely identical, there will be flaws between the two, granted with the level of skill they possess, the apparent flaws will decline to the point where you have to look very closely to actually spot the difference.
If you take dating and the pursuit of someone to spend your life with, there is a temptation here too which encourages us to define the perfect person. We picture them in our minds and we add detail in excess until the image we create is as full and complex as we can make it. As before however this can be useful for defining aspiration or ambition but it serves no real purpose in reality when evaluating the final result - in this case the people we actually end up dating. The image of perfection you created in your mind is one that can never truly be achieved, you can come close depending on how detailed you made the depiction but no-one you ever meet in life will ever be the person you depicted in your mind because that person only exists within your mind.
Despite on some level the fact that everyone knows this is the case, we still try to pursue perfection and we still work not only towards our own vision and interpretation of what that is but also towards a collective vision. We as a society collectively define what we believe perfection to be, however this depiction is often fluid. When you look back throughout history and compare past and present you can see quite quickly how style and trends evolved and how the definition of perfection changed. The definition in itself isn't even one that can be considered to be universal, as the more you travel and the more you experience of other cultures the more you begin to see that perfection is subjective and that ultimately it is a matter of opinion, not something objective that can be considered an empirical fact.
Perfection is a nice idea, but when you pursue it, remember it is never achievable in itself, it should only determine direction, not a destination, this and that ultimately the real question is not whether or not something is perfect, but rather, whether or not you can accept the imperfections.
Perfection is a useful concept when it comes to aspiration and ambition but it is an impractical concept when it comes to evaluating the final result. This is because in almost every single thing we do in life, despite how hard we try, we will never achieve perfection for the simple reason that perfection is to be without flaws, and humanity is flawed, ergo perfection is to be without humanity. There is a reason we use machines and computerized production processes whenever we need precision. There is a reason we don't rely on humans any longer for mass produced products - they can't create uniformity the way computers and machines can. No matter how great the artist is, they will never paint two pictures that are completely identical, there will be flaws between the two, granted with the level of skill they possess, the apparent flaws will decline to the point where you have to look very closely to actually spot the difference.
If you take dating and the pursuit of someone to spend your life with, there is a temptation here too which encourages us to define the perfect person. We picture them in our minds and we add detail in excess until the image we create is as full and complex as we can make it. As before however this can be useful for defining aspiration or ambition but it serves no real purpose in reality when evaluating the final result - in this case the people we actually end up dating. The image of perfection you created in your mind is one that can never truly be achieved, you can come close depending on how detailed you made the depiction but no-one you ever meet in life will ever be the person you depicted in your mind because that person only exists within your mind.
Despite on some level the fact that everyone knows this is the case, we still try to pursue perfection and we still work not only towards our own vision and interpretation of what that is but also towards a collective vision. We as a society collectively define what we believe perfection to be, however this depiction is often fluid. When you look back throughout history and compare past and present you can see quite quickly how style and trends evolved and how the definition of perfection changed. The definition in itself isn't even one that can be considered to be universal, as the more you travel and the more you experience of other cultures the more you begin to see that perfection is subjective and that ultimately it is a matter of opinion, not something objective that can be considered an empirical fact.
Perfection is a nice idea, but when you pursue it, remember it is never achievable in itself, it should only determine direction, not a destination, this and that ultimately the real question is not whether or not something is perfect, but rather, whether or not you can accept the imperfections.
A Year to Remember
Every year for most of us we mark the day we were born with a celebration we call a birthday. That day represents a day of remembrance, yet the act itself that we remember often has little or no focus for the day itself. You commemorate your birth and celebrate growing one day older, but it is you yourself that is the subject of the day, not the woman who gave birth to you, nor the act of giving birth. Both of these are usually overlooked entirely, to the point where those that actually draw attention to it are accused of trying to make the day all about them or all about someone else as opposed to the person whose birthday they are celebrating.
Anniversaries in this way are somewhat peculiar to me, and it is not limited to birthdays but extends beyond them. Births, Marriages, Deaths, Moments of Achievement, Moments of Loss, Days of Remembrance, among others; in almost all of these cases the events that actually occurred are rarely the focus of the anniversary. Wedding Anniversaries celebrate how many years people have been married but the Wedding day itself often has little to no mention at all in the events of the day. Deaths too remember the losses we have had, the people who are gone and are no longer with us to see who and what we have become. We count how many years it has been and we think about how much we miss them, but we rarely focus on their actual death, how they died, perhaps this is the one example here where that's maybe not a bad thing as it would be painful to relive it. But for other days that represent moments of our past that we were proud of, the actual achievement is rarely the focus of the celebration but rather the time that has passed and what you have done since or what it enabled you to do.
It becomes quite apparent when you stop and deconstruct these days of celebration and memorial that they are all in essence dedicated to time itself, not the original events. When we celebrate a birthday we celebrate the number of years, how much time has passed. We celebrate time itself. Humanity is perhaps unique in this regard as we appear to be the only species that actually observes time directly. Others are aware of it passing and carry out routines based upon it such as migration, hibernation, and day and night cycling, but to our knowledge we are the only species that actually understands time - although that understanding in and of itself is rather limited.
The year is almost over, in a few days time we will increment a number by 1 and mark that event with celebrations that will span the globe. For one day more than any other humanity will come together to celebrate time and its passing. With our fascination and our fixation upon time, one has to wonder why it more than any other element of life has become so important to us as a species.
Anniversaries in this way are somewhat peculiar to me, and it is not limited to birthdays but extends beyond them. Births, Marriages, Deaths, Moments of Achievement, Moments of Loss, Days of Remembrance, among others; in almost all of these cases the events that actually occurred are rarely the focus of the anniversary. Wedding Anniversaries celebrate how many years people have been married but the Wedding day itself often has little to no mention at all in the events of the day. Deaths too remember the losses we have had, the people who are gone and are no longer with us to see who and what we have become. We count how many years it has been and we think about how much we miss them, but we rarely focus on their actual death, how they died, perhaps this is the one example here where that's maybe not a bad thing as it would be painful to relive it. But for other days that represent moments of our past that we were proud of, the actual achievement is rarely the focus of the celebration but rather the time that has passed and what you have done since or what it enabled you to do.
It becomes quite apparent when you stop and deconstruct these days of celebration and memorial that they are all in essence dedicated to time itself, not the original events. When we celebrate a birthday we celebrate the number of years, how much time has passed. We celebrate time itself. Humanity is perhaps unique in this regard as we appear to be the only species that actually observes time directly. Others are aware of it passing and carry out routines based upon it such as migration, hibernation, and day and night cycling, but to our knowledge we are the only species that actually understands time - although that understanding in and of itself is rather limited.
The year is almost over, in a few days time we will increment a number by 1 and mark that event with celebrations that will span the globe. For one day more than any other humanity will come together to celebrate time and its passing. With our fascination and our fixation upon time, one has to wonder why it more than any other element of life has become so important to us as a species.
Defining Intelligence
There are many things I can do which impress people, some of these talents are abilities that people believe you need heightened levels of intelligence to be able to achieve. That sounds arrogant to state, but the reason I have worded it this way is because I intend the statement to be contentious. I take issue with the implication that knowledge and intelligence are equal. I fervently oppose this sentiment because many of the things I can do that people find impressive or a sign of intelligence are not abilities that I would consider unique to myself, they're not even abilities I would consider a sign of intelligence.
For example, I can solve a Rubik's cube which impresses some people. The first thing I usually say to people is that they could learn how to do it too if they took the time and effort. The reason I take issue with seeing this as a sign of intelligence is that the method of solving a Rubik's cube is essentially an algorithm - a series of instructions or steps that you follow in order to complete a task. Anyone who takes the time to learn the steps to solving the cube will be able to do it. You can even create a computer program that takes the state of a cube as an input, performs the algorithm on that input and produces a solved cube as an output. Does that mean it is intelligent? Well clearly the answer is no, it's just doing what you programmed it to do. The same is true of any human solving the cube. The true mark of intelligence is whether or not the person or the machine solving it figured out how to do it on their own or whether they were told how to do it.
That distinction is something that isn't easy to make when it comes to humans. At least with machines you can examine the code of their program for signs that it was written by a human. However with humans who can solve the cube, determining whether they figured it out themselves is a bit more complex. You could pose questions about the underlying mathematics, but that assumes the person figured it out via a mathematical approach. They may have discovered how to solve it without an understanding of the underlying mathematics. You could ask questions about the mechanisms of the puzzle and its behaviour but again that assumes they studied these to determine how to solve it. To draw a parallel this is like Maths class in school when you were asked to show your working out when solving equations - you might actually know the answer and how to do it, just have an inability to put that down on paper or explain it. Therein lies the limitation of intelligence, that understanding of our own understanding often limits exterior examination.
You can use rote learning - the repetition of information until it is recalled effortlessly, but just because a pupil can recite their 12 times tables to heart doesn't mean they actually know how to multiply two numbers together. The depth of their understanding is exposed when you ask them to do it with new inputs they have not seen before. Asking a pupil to perform multiplication of 13 times tables for example will demonstrate whether they actually know how to multiply two numbers together. In our Rubik's cube example this can be demonstrated with the Rubik's cube variants. The traditional cube is 3x3x3 but there are other variants, 2x2x2, 4x4x4, 5x5x5 and above. Give them a cube of a size they have not used before and if they truly understand the underlying mathematics or principles at work in the design of the puzzle then they will be able to solve it.
For the record I can solve the 2x2x2 and 3x3x3 variants, I can't reliably solve the 4x4x4 and above I can only get so far. Therein lies the limit of my understanding of the puzzle. The thing is, there are algorithms to solve the larger cubes, which I have read and used with success but I have never practised to the point where I can commit them to memory. I choose not to for the simple reason that I don't want to learn how to do it in this way as there's no understanding of how and why what you are doing works. I've mentioned abstraction before in previous posts on this blog, the idea that you don't need to know how something works you need only know how to use it, I don't like this approach when learning. For the longest time in Maths class when learning about square roots I wanted to know how the square root was actually calculated, this wasn't covered until many years into my education, when I finally learned it's simply achieved through trial and improvement using various algorithms designed to speed up the process, I felt somewhat cheated. If I had simply been told there was no other way than to use repetition to find it, I wouldn't have placed such value on knowing how to do it by hand.
Therein lies the crux of the distinction between intelligence and knowledge - not what you know but what you do not. To put it more bluntly, intelligence is the approach to finding information you don't know and the extent of the structure of that approach. Something that relies on pure random attempts - a random number generator - isn't intelligent, but something that takes a methodical approach to finding that number is more intelligent. Those last two words are quite important to reinforce "more intelligent" i.e. intelligence is not absolute, it is not a state of true or false, but rather it is a scale. Not surprisingly there exist many systems of quantifying where you are on that scale and attempts to measure it for example the Intelligence Quotient - IQ - method of grading intelligence.
Knowing a lot does not make you intelligent, how you use what you already know and how you try to find out that which you don't is what makes you intelligent.
For example, I can solve a Rubik's cube which impresses some people. The first thing I usually say to people is that they could learn how to do it too if they took the time and effort. The reason I take issue with seeing this as a sign of intelligence is that the method of solving a Rubik's cube is essentially an algorithm - a series of instructions or steps that you follow in order to complete a task. Anyone who takes the time to learn the steps to solving the cube will be able to do it. You can even create a computer program that takes the state of a cube as an input, performs the algorithm on that input and produces a solved cube as an output. Does that mean it is intelligent? Well clearly the answer is no, it's just doing what you programmed it to do. The same is true of any human solving the cube. The true mark of intelligence is whether or not the person or the machine solving it figured out how to do it on their own or whether they were told how to do it.
That distinction is something that isn't easy to make when it comes to humans. At least with machines you can examine the code of their program for signs that it was written by a human. However with humans who can solve the cube, determining whether they figured it out themselves is a bit more complex. You could pose questions about the underlying mathematics, but that assumes the person figured it out via a mathematical approach. They may have discovered how to solve it without an understanding of the underlying mathematics. You could ask questions about the mechanisms of the puzzle and its behaviour but again that assumes they studied these to determine how to solve it. To draw a parallel this is like Maths class in school when you were asked to show your working out when solving equations - you might actually know the answer and how to do it, just have an inability to put that down on paper or explain it. Therein lies the limitation of intelligence, that understanding of our own understanding often limits exterior examination.
You can use rote learning - the repetition of information until it is recalled effortlessly, but just because a pupil can recite their 12 times tables to heart doesn't mean they actually know how to multiply two numbers together. The depth of their understanding is exposed when you ask them to do it with new inputs they have not seen before. Asking a pupil to perform multiplication of 13 times tables for example will demonstrate whether they actually know how to multiply two numbers together. In our Rubik's cube example this can be demonstrated with the Rubik's cube variants. The traditional cube is 3x3x3 but there are other variants, 2x2x2, 4x4x4, 5x5x5 and above. Give them a cube of a size they have not used before and if they truly understand the underlying mathematics or principles at work in the design of the puzzle then they will be able to solve it.
For the record I can solve the 2x2x2 and 3x3x3 variants, I can't reliably solve the 4x4x4 and above I can only get so far. Therein lies the limit of my understanding of the puzzle. The thing is, there are algorithms to solve the larger cubes, which I have read and used with success but I have never practised to the point where I can commit them to memory. I choose not to for the simple reason that I don't want to learn how to do it in this way as there's no understanding of how and why what you are doing works. I've mentioned abstraction before in previous posts on this blog, the idea that you don't need to know how something works you need only know how to use it, I don't like this approach when learning. For the longest time in Maths class when learning about square roots I wanted to know how the square root was actually calculated, this wasn't covered until many years into my education, when I finally learned it's simply achieved through trial and improvement using various algorithms designed to speed up the process, I felt somewhat cheated. If I had simply been told there was no other way than to use repetition to find it, I wouldn't have placed such value on knowing how to do it by hand.
Therein lies the crux of the distinction between intelligence and knowledge - not what you know but what you do not. To put it more bluntly, intelligence is the approach to finding information you don't know and the extent of the structure of that approach. Something that relies on pure random attempts - a random number generator - isn't intelligent, but something that takes a methodical approach to finding that number is more intelligent. Those last two words are quite important to reinforce "more intelligent" i.e. intelligence is not absolute, it is not a state of true or false, but rather it is a scale. Not surprisingly there exist many systems of quantifying where you are on that scale and attempts to measure it for example the Intelligence Quotient - IQ - method of grading intelligence.
Knowing a lot does not make you intelligent, how you use what you already know and how you try to find out that which you don't is what makes you intelligent.
Distractions
Procrastination is when you have something you want to do, or something you need to do, but you keep putting it off by doing other things. Sometimes you do this consciously and at other times this is just the by-product of a lack of focus or the lack of desirability or determination to achieve the goal you set out to achieve in the first place. Whilst there are many ways to overcome this, what I find most interesting about the whole concept of Procrastination is the fact that it only seems to happen when you don't want it to.
There are times in life when we experience things we really don't like, and in those moments either after the event or even before it in anticipation, we can fixate on it and build it up in our minds to be much more than it is. In those moments the thing we would like more than anything is a distraction, yet as easy as it can be to get distracted when we do need to do something, it can be equally as hard to find distraction when we don't.
Trying not to think about something, ironically, seems to make us think about it even more. The harder you try, the more you will inevitably dwell on the thing you were trying desperately not to think about, but why is this the case? You could posit that it's a case of desirability in that you will find distractions more easily if the thing you are distracted from is something undesirable, yet that doesn't seem to be the case, anxiety overrides desire and we dwell on things we really shouldn't even more so when it is something we know we should not, and have no desire whatsoever to experience - like if you have a fear of the dentist, you know your health is important but the fear overrides the rationality and you avoid it at all costs, and yet the reason you need to go in the first place dwells in your mind.
You could then perhaps argue that the opposite is true, that the more desirable an experience would be, the less likely you are to be distracted from it, but again, that doesn't seem to be true. There are a great many things in life we want, but we are unwilling to pursue, and many more we know how to get, yet we don't put any effort into getting them, regardless of how big the reward waiting for us on the other side may be. We fixate on the short term, and the fact we have to change our direction or alter course limits us from even trying in the first place - we'd rather stay the course we are already on because it is less effort, even if we know it's headed for a cliff edge we won't do anything until it is impending and we have no other choice - but even then some of us who are defeatist will reach the cliff edge and think, "well I'm here now, may as well jump" - I know that's rather melancholy but it's somewhat true, sometimes the path backwards can seem even more effort and we just can't muster up the courage to pursue it.
There are times in life when we experience things we really don't like, and in those moments either after the event or even before it in anticipation, we can fixate on it and build it up in our minds to be much more than it is. In those moments the thing we would like more than anything is a distraction, yet as easy as it can be to get distracted when we do need to do something, it can be equally as hard to find distraction when we don't.
Trying not to think about something, ironically, seems to make us think about it even more. The harder you try, the more you will inevitably dwell on the thing you were trying desperately not to think about, but why is this the case? You could posit that it's a case of desirability in that you will find distractions more easily if the thing you are distracted from is something undesirable, yet that doesn't seem to be the case, anxiety overrides desire and we dwell on things we really shouldn't even more so when it is something we know we should not, and have no desire whatsoever to experience - like if you have a fear of the dentist, you know your health is important but the fear overrides the rationality and you avoid it at all costs, and yet the reason you need to go in the first place dwells in your mind.
You could then perhaps argue that the opposite is true, that the more desirable an experience would be, the less likely you are to be distracted from it, but again, that doesn't seem to be true. There are a great many things in life we want, but we are unwilling to pursue, and many more we know how to get, yet we don't put any effort into getting them, regardless of how big the reward waiting for us on the other side may be. We fixate on the short term, and the fact we have to change our direction or alter course limits us from even trying in the first place - we'd rather stay the course we are already on because it is less effort, even if we know it's headed for a cliff edge we won't do anything until it is impending and we have no other choice - but even then some of us who are defeatist will reach the cliff edge and think, "well I'm here now, may as well jump" - I know that's rather melancholy but it's somewhat true, sometimes the path backwards can seem even more effort and we just can't muster up the courage to pursue it.
Data Mining
In computing, data is quite literally anything you can record. I don't necessarily mean in terms of sound and video, although that can be included. In computer science the act of recording data is known as logging and you might be surprised how much actually occurs if you've never studied the field - even if you have studied it you might still be surprised at how much data is logged without you knowing.
Information as opposed to data, is more developed and more concrete. If data is anything that can be recorded, then information is data with context or meaning. What you can extract from data, the conclusions you can draw, that is known as information. We live in a society where almost everything we do generates data, and almost all of that data can be used to generate information. Whilst the world has become increasingly aware of this fact, and whilst data collection and processing has become more prominent in our mindset and part of the Zeitgeist, it is perhaps a misdirection or misconception that data should be the key focus of our concern - in reality it is the information that is extracted from that data that is the real concern.
How old you are, in and of itself has little consequence when someone else knows that fact. Your age represents nothing more than a data point, something that can be charted or stated as an attribute. The risk to you personally, posed by someone else holding this data is negligible. The risk comes when this data is used to generate information. When your other data is added to create context, then information emerges. When people know what you have bought and sold combined with your age they are able to extract information. Conclusions can be drawn that someone your age might be interested in a given product. A profile is created, and I don't mean a profile like those on social media networks, although the concept is similar. A profile in the context of data extraction is used to create templates. Templates can be referenced later to give an accurate prediction of how someone might behave.
When you start collecting data from many different people you begin to harvest it, this process can be explicit, by asking individuals for their data or it can be implicit, by accessing the data they have already given you authority to access - whether they are fully aware of that or not. You can also access data in other ways, either by stealth through the use of tracking, without the subject of the data being aware of it, or through unlawful means such as hacking.
When you have amassed a large enough collection of data you can pool it together into a data set and then dig down through it to see what you can find. The process of digging through data sets is known as data mining, and like real world mining, the ultimate goal is to find clusters - groups of data accumulated together. In traditional mining those clusters would be ores in veins that indicate more of the resource you are after is nearby. In data mining, those clusters let you see where your data comes together. Where that data converges can lead to multiple data subjects all conforming to the same profile you have created. The larger these clusters become the greater the convergence of the data you collected.
When you see all the purchases made, and the ages of the people who made those purchases, you can see where correlations occur, you can see where specific audiences emerge. Audiences, like those who watch a TV show or a Theatre production, are people who have an interest in the same thing. Through data mining you can tap into audiences and identify those who are part of them, and crucially, reach those whose data you have not collected. Therein lies the ultimate goal of data mining - growth. All data mining at it's core, the same as traditional mining, is done in the pursuit of accumulating more of the resource you wish to mine. Data mining seeks to find more data, to extract more information, and to use that information to pursue growth, reaching more people to become subjects, to increase the size of the data set, and improve the accuracy of the predictability through the profiles you create.
How then do you overcome this system? If you do not want to be part of this system, or if you want to attack it, and protest against it, how do you overcome it? The answer is rather simple. Disinformation - false information. The integrity of these systems in their entirety relies on the accuracy of the information provided. So the first line of defence against these systems is to use inaccurate information wherever it is legal and prudent to do so. Those who are more militant in their objection would likely resort to providing disinformation even when it is not legal to do so. I don't approve of that personally however I would ask you to consider who it is and is not legal to lie to if you wanted to pursue that path. There is a fine line between giving false information, and committing fraud. The latter occurs when you give disinformation to a legal entity such as a bank or public body you are legally bound to tell the truth to for the purpose of the services they provide. As for social networks etc most of their terms and conditions are not enforceable by law as their stipulations are primarily aimed at consent which you can revoke at any time. Further to that as most of these rely on contract law, one of the first things you will learn about contracts if you ever study them academically or professionally, is that contracts need to be witnessed, and they need to be signed by the party to the contract - those terms of service etc are never witnessed, and as for being party to the contract, if the identity used to sign the contract is not your real identity, the contract is not valid even if it is witnessed.
For legal reasons I must disclaim I am not a lawyer and I cannot offer you legal advice. I have studied several areas of law and the information provided here is given based on my experience, it is based on opinion and I would ask you to seek legal advice before acting upon it.
Disclaimers aside, the desire to prevent profiling is legitimate. The services we use have become increasingly invasive and require us to give over more and more information as payment. They may be free in the monetary sense but they certainly do cost us all to use. I would urge anyone with concerns to think about the information they give freely to companies online, use software like AdBlock Plus to block advertising, enable Do Not Track features of your browsers, and switch off third party cookies - most websites don't need them except for tracking. Going further you could use a privacy conscious browser such as Brave to increase privacy and security. Websites can still track you even if cookies are disabled by using supercookies - these are server-side cookies that use browser fingerprinting inserted into HTTP headers to track you. Browsers such as Brave offer the option to block this behaviour and prevent websites from tracking you in this way.
Delete any old or outdated information on social networks. If you have facebook perform an audit of your account by looking through your 'Likes' and deciding what's still relevant, if you have Twitter you can do the same, or consider using a service like tweetdelete.net to delete any tweets older than a specific time frame e.g. a month. You probably have thousands of tweets on your profile, the bulk of those will no longer be relevant, and 99.9999% of the people who follow you or will follow you will never see or read those tweets, the only people they are benefiting are those who scrape data from your public profile to build up a profile on you.
Delete your old accounts on websites you no longer use - this is perhaps the most pertinent, you can use justdelete.me to find the 'delete account' page for most popular websites and instructions for many others. You can use namechk.com to find which websites a username is in use on - handy for finding old sites you forgot you once used.
Information as opposed to data, is more developed and more concrete. If data is anything that can be recorded, then information is data with context or meaning. What you can extract from data, the conclusions you can draw, that is known as information. We live in a society where almost everything we do generates data, and almost all of that data can be used to generate information. Whilst the world has become increasingly aware of this fact, and whilst data collection and processing has become more prominent in our mindset and part of the Zeitgeist, it is perhaps a misdirection or misconception that data should be the key focus of our concern - in reality it is the information that is extracted from that data that is the real concern.
How old you are, in and of itself has little consequence when someone else knows that fact. Your age represents nothing more than a data point, something that can be charted or stated as an attribute. The risk to you personally, posed by someone else holding this data is negligible. The risk comes when this data is used to generate information. When your other data is added to create context, then information emerges. When people know what you have bought and sold combined with your age they are able to extract information. Conclusions can be drawn that someone your age might be interested in a given product. A profile is created, and I don't mean a profile like those on social media networks, although the concept is similar. A profile in the context of data extraction is used to create templates. Templates can be referenced later to give an accurate prediction of how someone might behave.
When you start collecting data from many different people you begin to harvest it, this process can be explicit, by asking individuals for their data or it can be implicit, by accessing the data they have already given you authority to access - whether they are fully aware of that or not. You can also access data in other ways, either by stealth through the use of tracking, without the subject of the data being aware of it, or through unlawful means such as hacking.
When you have amassed a large enough collection of data you can pool it together into a data set and then dig down through it to see what you can find. The process of digging through data sets is known as data mining, and like real world mining, the ultimate goal is to find clusters - groups of data accumulated together. In traditional mining those clusters would be ores in veins that indicate more of the resource you are after is nearby. In data mining, those clusters let you see where your data comes together. Where that data converges can lead to multiple data subjects all conforming to the same profile you have created. The larger these clusters become the greater the convergence of the data you collected.
When you see all the purchases made, and the ages of the people who made those purchases, you can see where correlations occur, you can see where specific audiences emerge. Audiences, like those who watch a TV show or a Theatre production, are people who have an interest in the same thing. Through data mining you can tap into audiences and identify those who are part of them, and crucially, reach those whose data you have not collected. Therein lies the ultimate goal of data mining - growth. All data mining at it's core, the same as traditional mining, is done in the pursuit of accumulating more of the resource you wish to mine. Data mining seeks to find more data, to extract more information, and to use that information to pursue growth, reaching more people to become subjects, to increase the size of the data set, and improve the accuracy of the predictability through the profiles you create.
How then do you overcome this system? If you do not want to be part of this system, or if you want to attack it, and protest against it, how do you overcome it? The answer is rather simple. Disinformation - false information. The integrity of these systems in their entirety relies on the accuracy of the information provided. So the first line of defence against these systems is to use inaccurate information wherever it is legal and prudent to do so. Those who are more militant in their objection would likely resort to providing disinformation even when it is not legal to do so. I don't approve of that personally however I would ask you to consider who it is and is not legal to lie to if you wanted to pursue that path. There is a fine line between giving false information, and committing fraud. The latter occurs when you give disinformation to a legal entity such as a bank or public body you are legally bound to tell the truth to for the purpose of the services they provide. As for social networks etc most of their terms and conditions are not enforceable by law as their stipulations are primarily aimed at consent which you can revoke at any time. Further to that as most of these rely on contract law, one of the first things you will learn about contracts if you ever study them academically or professionally, is that contracts need to be witnessed, and they need to be signed by the party to the contract - those terms of service etc are never witnessed, and as for being party to the contract, if the identity used to sign the contract is not your real identity, the contract is not valid even if it is witnessed.
For legal reasons I must disclaim I am not a lawyer and I cannot offer you legal advice. I have studied several areas of law and the information provided here is given based on my experience, it is based on opinion and I would ask you to seek legal advice before acting upon it.
Disclaimers aside, the desire to prevent profiling is legitimate. The services we use have become increasingly invasive and require us to give over more and more information as payment. They may be free in the monetary sense but they certainly do cost us all to use. I would urge anyone with concerns to think about the information they give freely to companies online, use software like AdBlock Plus to block advertising, enable Do Not Track features of your browsers, and switch off third party cookies - most websites don't need them except for tracking. Going further you could use a privacy conscious browser such as Brave to increase privacy and security. Websites can still track you even if cookies are disabled by using supercookies - these are server-side cookies that use browser fingerprinting inserted into HTTP headers to track you. Browsers such as Brave offer the option to block this behaviour and prevent websites from tracking you in this way.
Delete any old or outdated information on social networks. If you have facebook perform an audit of your account by looking through your 'Likes' and deciding what's still relevant, if you have Twitter you can do the same, or consider using a service like tweetdelete.net to delete any tweets older than a specific time frame e.g. a month. You probably have thousands of tweets on your profile, the bulk of those will no longer be relevant, and 99.9999% of the people who follow you or will follow you will never see or read those tweets, the only people they are benefiting are those who scrape data from your public profile to build up a profile on you.
Delete your old accounts on websites you no longer use - this is perhaps the most pertinent, you can use justdelete.me to find the 'delete account' page for most popular websites and instructions for many others. You can use namechk.com to find which websites a username is in use on - handy for finding old sites you forgot you once used.
Introvert vs Extrovert
I consider myself to be an introverted person as opposed to an extrovert, but I have come to question whether that system of classification is actually valid in terms of absolutes. What that actually means is surprisingly hard to define. There are numerous attempts to categorise personalities and fit people into boxes where they sit neatly in order. These attempts usually involve a survey or a quiz of some sort where the answers you give then indicate your classification. The trouble is, there doesn't seem to be a consensus on how to actually define each term. Most people can agree on some general characteristics but most of those are subjective. For example characterising introverts as quiet and extroverts as loud is somewhat problematic when you ask people to define what actually constitutes either of those things. Most of these characteristics end up being relative and consequently your perception of what constitutes either shifts based on where you fall on those scales - like someone from a cold country considering 20 degrees Celsius [68 Fahrenheit] to be a hot summer's day and someone from a warm country considering that a cold winter's day.
Instead I feel the definition and distinction between the two in practice doesn't come down to what other people outline but rather which you identify with yourself. Whilst some consider introverts to be anti-social and extroverts to be social, one could argue this is a stereotype, that introverts are concerned with the depth of the connection in social settings whereas extroverts are concerned more with the experience and the nature of the gathering. To give an example, an introvert would not necessarily be fazed by a room full of people if they knew them all well and they were there for some common goal. I consider myself an introvert, I have no desire to be in a room full of people I don't know and probably have nothing in common with, however I have no problems with gatherings for specific purposes, classes in college and University never fazed me, the latter of which had over 200 people in them as a matter of routine. I didn't feel uneasy in those situations because I knew everyone was there for the same reason and that I had a common ground with everyone - the subject matter - which I could fall back on.
There's a quickness to associate shyness with introversion but in my experience many people who others label as introverted due to shyness at first meeting, turn out to be anything but shy when they are comfortable with the people they are around. This goes to extremes where I would say many of these people turn out to be some of the most extroverted personalities in my perception.
For me introversion is perhaps better defined by the level of thought someone puts into their actions before taking them, and the extent to which they look inward and examine those actions after they have taken them. I wouldn't define it as something absolute and would go so far to say that introversion and extroversion are in essence emotions or moods and that your personality is not fixed as one or the other but in reality is a neutral ground between the two. I would propose that you are capable of both and you likely exhibit both in equal proportion. Whilst you might assert the contrary at first in immediate retort, I would ask that you refrain from retort and actually look at your life as a whole rather than focusing on the parts that conform to the personality type you feel the most affinity with. Ask yourself what and where do you conform to the opposite. Ask yourself what conditions need to be met for you to behave in that way and ask whether those are conditions you can consciously control. If the answer to that second question is that they are not under your control then simply ask if your personality type is actually a response to your environment not an exhibition of your true "default" behaviour. If you were put in the opposing environment that encourages the opposing personality type, would it flourish?
Instead I feel the definition and distinction between the two in practice doesn't come down to what other people outline but rather which you identify with yourself. Whilst some consider introverts to be anti-social and extroverts to be social, one could argue this is a stereotype, that introverts are concerned with the depth of the connection in social settings whereas extroverts are concerned more with the experience and the nature of the gathering. To give an example, an introvert would not necessarily be fazed by a room full of people if they knew them all well and they were there for some common goal. I consider myself an introvert, I have no desire to be in a room full of people I don't know and probably have nothing in common with, however I have no problems with gatherings for specific purposes, classes in college and University never fazed me, the latter of which had over 200 people in them as a matter of routine. I didn't feel uneasy in those situations because I knew everyone was there for the same reason and that I had a common ground with everyone - the subject matter - which I could fall back on.
There's a quickness to associate shyness with introversion but in my experience many people who others label as introverted due to shyness at first meeting, turn out to be anything but shy when they are comfortable with the people they are around. This goes to extremes where I would say many of these people turn out to be some of the most extroverted personalities in my perception.
For me introversion is perhaps better defined by the level of thought someone puts into their actions before taking them, and the extent to which they look inward and examine those actions after they have taken them. I wouldn't define it as something absolute and would go so far to say that introversion and extroversion are in essence emotions or moods and that your personality is not fixed as one or the other but in reality is a neutral ground between the two. I would propose that you are capable of both and you likely exhibit both in equal proportion. Whilst you might assert the contrary at first in immediate retort, I would ask that you refrain from retort and actually look at your life as a whole rather than focusing on the parts that conform to the personality type you feel the most affinity with. Ask yourself what and where do you conform to the opposite. Ask yourself what conditions need to be met for you to behave in that way and ask whether those are conditions you can consciously control. If the answer to that second question is that they are not under your control then simply ask if your personality type is actually a response to your environment not an exhibition of your true "default" behaviour. If you were put in the opposing environment that encourages the opposing personality type, would it flourish?
The Second Time Around
For the two years I spent in College, there were a few subjects which I just did not grasp, no matter how my lecturers tried to explain the subject matter, it just wouldn't sink in. When it came to University there were only a few modules that touched on the same subjects, one of which I passed the coursework for 100% and failed the exam. I was given a compensated pass in that module as it was foundation year and it didn't contribute towards the degree as a whole. For the three years I spent in University I still never fully grasped the subject matter and to this day I still can't get my head around it.
This wasn't the case for everything however, in University I also struggled with a few other subjects, which years later when I returned to them through self-study, everything clicked. The time away from the subject and the eventual return under less pressure with less constraints combined to create a new mentality and a new drive that allowed me to progress.
This second time around mentality is something that I try to keep with me in life. There are experiences I have had when younger which never appealed to me at the time. I try not to let that be a deciding factor in whether or not I would try again, for the simple reason that for other things like the subjects from University, the second time around was very different from the first. Whatever the experience however meaningful or seemingly trivial, I like to revisit when years have passed just to see if anything has changed. I have wrote before about the taste of olives as a metaphor for this, olives being something I thought disgusting as a child and you could not pay me to eat them and yet now my opinion is very different. I fry some food in olive oil, I eat chocolate olives - a type of praline coated in chocolate that uses olive oil in the mixing process and are glazed to look like olives - and I like olives on my pizza where the flavour compliments the other toppings.
Some things however it feels, like those subjects from college, that no matter what you do it just won't work out. One of the hardest things in life can often be the easiest, and that is the notion of giving up. To walk away and admit defeat and stop trying. I find it fascinating that this can be the hardest and the easiest depending entirely on what our desire and what our motivations were for trying in the first place.
This wasn't the case for everything however, in University I also struggled with a few other subjects, which years later when I returned to them through self-study, everything clicked. The time away from the subject and the eventual return under less pressure with less constraints combined to create a new mentality and a new drive that allowed me to progress.
This second time around mentality is something that I try to keep with me in life. There are experiences I have had when younger which never appealed to me at the time. I try not to let that be a deciding factor in whether or not I would try again, for the simple reason that for other things like the subjects from University, the second time around was very different from the first. Whatever the experience however meaningful or seemingly trivial, I like to revisit when years have passed just to see if anything has changed. I have wrote before about the taste of olives as a metaphor for this, olives being something I thought disgusting as a child and you could not pay me to eat them and yet now my opinion is very different. I fry some food in olive oil, I eat chocolate olives - a type of praline coated in chocolate that uses olive oil in the mixing process and are glazed to look like olives - and I like olives on my pizza where the flavour compliments the other toppings.
Some things however it feels, like those subjects from college, that no matter what you do it just won't work out. One of the hardest things in life can often be the easiest, and that is the notion of giving up. To walk away and admit defeat and stop trying. I find it fascinating that this can be the hardest and the easiest depending entirely on what our desire and what our motivations were for trying in the first place.
Practice
To a writer there is nothing more terrifying and exciting than a blank page. There is infinite potential for creativity, and there is an unending reminder of failure if you can't fill that space. Finding things that inspire you to write can be difficult, inspiration can be elusive especially when you aren't feeling that great mentally. Although having said that, some of the greatest writers throughout history have been incredibly depressed in their personal lives or suffered from terrible afflictions that make them feel abject misery.
For me personally, creativity has always been a reservoir rather than a well, not something I have to dig down into but something that is held back by a wall constantly that only needs to be cracked before it floods out. To make my creativity flow, often all it takes is to start writing about anything at all. If I hate it when I write then I usually realise what would make me happier, I pursue that to see how far it will take me. The more I write, the easier it becomes.
The greatest advice I was ever given as a writer was from my English teacher when I was 14 years old, she said if you want to be a writer you have to write and never stop. You have to come back constantly and keep going, keep writing, even if you think what you write is utter tripe, the act itself gets the part of the brain involved warmed up and it gets things moving. The longer you go without writing, the harder it will be to return. In many ways this is the same advice a personal trainer will give you when you pursue fitness, the longer you go without visiting the gym, the harder it will be to return to it. To get the best result you have to do it often and maintain it. The muscles in your body perform better when they are maintained. This is the same idea for writing, to consider your mind a muscle and your talent to be something that you have to train and maintain if you want it to grow.
I write poems, and short stories, and blog posts, and I write much more than this. I write technical documents, user guides, reports, and reference manuals. I write as much as I can, and whenever I want to learn about something new, the best way for me to commit what I have learned is to take it and write with the knowledge I gain. If you want to learn how to do something to the best of your ability and cement your understanding then imagine having to explain what you are learning to someone else - that brings up a depth of reasoning that goes much deeper than your own when you are receptive of information.
Whilst I share much of what I write, here on this blog, there is a wealth of other work I create that isn't shared here, primarily because it isn't relevant, or because it touches on themes that aren't the subject of this blog. The poetry I write doesn't really fit here, and it doesn't fit on my other blogs either at the moment. The short stories I write are published through Amazon, and most of the technical documents I write are either commissions or they are manuals I have written for my own reference - with the exception of the text books which I have published through Amazon via Kindle and just in time printing. I'm not a fan of traditional publishing as it often results in wastage when you print a lot of books that don't sell, whereas just in time printing only creates physical copies when they are requested.
Whatever your interest, whatever your hobby, if you want to master it then the old adage is true - practice makes perfect - or at least it will take you one step closer to it. There's even a theory which is often quoted, to become a master at anything requires 10,000 hours of practice. You can breathe a sigh of relief in knowing this has been debunked, practice alone won't lead to mastery no matter how much you do it. To master any skill you need to increase your understanding of it and find ways to improve it.
For me personally, creativity has always been a reservoir rather than a well, not something I have to dig down into but something that is held back by a wall constantly that only needs to be cracked before it floods out. To make my creativity flow, often all it takes is to start writing about anything at all. If I hate it when I write then I usually realise what would make me happier, I pursue that to see how far it will take me. The more I write, the easier it becomes.
The greatest advice I was ever given as a writer was from my English teacher when I was 14 years old, she said if you want to be a writer you have to write and never stop. You have to come back constantly and keep going, keep writing, even if you think what you write is utter tripe, the act itself gets the part of the brain involved warmed up and it gets things moving. The longer you go without writing, the harder it will be to return. In many ways this is the same advice a personal trainer will give you when you pursue fitness, the longer you go without visiting the gym, the harder it will be to return to it. To get the best result you have to do it often and maintain it. The muscles in your body perform better when they are maintained. This is the same idea for writing, to consider your mind a muscle and your talent to be something that you have to train and maintain if you want it to grow.
I write poems, and short stories, and blog posts, and I write much more than this. I write technical documents, user guides, reports, and reference manuals. I write as much as I can, and whenever I want to learn about something new, the best way for me to commit what I have learned is to take it and write with the knowledge I gain. If you want to learn how to do something to the best of your ability and cement your understanding then imagine having to explain what you are learning to someone else - that brings up a depth of reasoning that goes much deeper than your own when you are receptive of information.
Whilst I share much of what I write, here on this blog, there is a wealth of other work I create that isn't shared here, primarily because it isn't relevant, or because it touches on themes that aren't the subject of this blog. The poetry I write doesn't really fit here, and it doesn't fit on my other blogs either at the moment. The short stories I write are published through Amazon, and most of the technical documents I write are either commissions or they are manuals I have written for my own reference - with the exception of the text books which I have published through Amazon via Kindle and just in time printing. I'm not a fan of traditional publishing as it often results in wastage when you print a lot of books that don't sell, whereas just in time printing only creates physical copies when they are requested.
Whatever your interest, whatever your hobby, if you want to master it then the old adage is true - practice makes perfect - or at least it will take you one step closer to it. There's even a theory which is often quoted, to become a master at anything requires 10,000 hours of practice. You can breathe a sigh of relief in knowing this has been debunked, practice alone won't lead to mastery no matter how much you do it. To master any skill you need to increase your understanding of it and find ways to improve it.
Addicted to Nostalgia
There are a lot of things in life you can be addicted to, some are more destructive than others. The National Health Service [NHS] in the UK defines addiction as "not having control over doing, taking or using something to the point where it could be harmful to you" - obvious examples aside, this definition throws open the possibility of addiction to all manner of things.
I guess really the crux of the NHS definition and its limitation isn't really what it can apply to, but rather that caveat "where it could be harmful to you" and the definition of harm therein. It's easy to limit harm only to physical harm, but in doing so you would completely exclude many addictions where the negative affects are not physical but mental. You can even go so far as to say that any negative impact on your life or limitation of your ability to live your life could be construed as harm.
I find it interesting to contemplate what that could be applied to and how far you can take it. There are various media sensations where tabloids and magazines and their ilk often speak of addictions to things you wouldn't conventionally view as bad. Rather than take that idea and apply it to something that would be controversial as many do, I'd rather apply it to something you might not have thought about.
If wishes, hopes, and dreams, can all be considered desires for the future or desires for how the present could be changed, then you could view nostalgia as the desire for the past - although you do have to draw a distinction between the past as it was and the past as we remember it because the two don't always align. In that vein I would say that while depression can lead one to feel a mental and physical exhaustion and the desire not to leave bed, almost to the point where addiction to sleep and dreaming can develop, I would go so far as to say fixation on nostalgia itself can become an addiction in and of itself.
If you define side affects of a behaviour as being harmful if they impede your ability to live in the present and look to the future then you could say if your fixation on the past whether it be as it was or as you remember it, could be harmful if it stops you from living life in the moment. If you miss out on experiences today because you long for yesterday so much, and deny yourself a future because you indulge in your desire to look back too much, is it fair to say you are addicted?
The reason I ask this question and pose this idea is because I am becoming increasingly aware of the negative impact on our society as a whole of a widespread populism that is defined by the desire to go back. Across the western world, both sides of the Atlantic, populism has been feeding the idea that things were better in the past and that the world would be a better place if we went back to the way things were. The trouble with this whole idea is that it is empirically flawed. The economic models of the past wouldn't work with our current society, they didn't scale in the first place that was why they were replaced to begin with. Progress was never something that was forced upon society as a whole, whilst undoubtedly along the way there were always those that opposed and objected and resisted change every step of the way the fact remains society as a whole moved in the direction it did because it was what people wanted.
I'm not convinced that many people actually want to go back to the past as it was, instead I think many people have romanticized it, particularly those who either did not experience it to begin with or weren't fully aware of it at the time to be able to judge it fairly. When you ask people why they think the world was better back then, they pick out things they liked and completely forget about everything they didn't, many right up to the point where you can ask pointed questions about the negatives that they can't answer because they either didn't recall them or never experienced it themselves.
In the UK for example many people reminisce about the 90s and the 80s as decades of greatness which many would want to return to and relive. The same people however can't justify that longing when asked about the negative events of those periods. When you ask if people would like to rebuild the Berlin wall, the vast majority would say no. When you ask if they want widespread unemployment and inflation that is spiralling out of control, they also say no. When you ask if people want authoritarian governments with leaders that were akin to dictators who made decisions that even now decades later still impact upon the lives of people who lived through them, again people say no. You get right down to it and see that really all people want is to experience the fashions again, the food they ate, the TV shows they watched, and the Music they listened to in an effort to indulge their nostalgia. They don't actually want to live like they once did. The World Wide Web was invented in the early 90s, but didn't become widespread to the extent it is now until the 00s, yet ask those so eager to return to the 80s if they would give up their smart phones, their tablets, and the ubiquity of the Internet to do it and you will see the reluctance begin to assert itself. It becomes quite clear it's not the past as it was, but the past as they have idealized it that they want to return to - a world that never actually existed in the first place.
Have we as a society become addicted to nostalgia? Is the depth and breadth of the political and social turmoil we live through today in reality a symptom of widespread addiction? If so, how can you tackle that addiction? Perhaps we need a radical solution to the problem; if one of the most effective ways to treat addiction is to go cold turkey, maybe it is time we started to seal away our past as a society in archives. Stop repeating old television shows, stop selling old music, preserve it only in archives that can only be accessed for research and posterity. Restrict publications and TV shows about past events to those of a verifiable nature. Encourage society to move forward and stop remaking and remixing old content and instead create completely new content. I'm not talking about rewriting or erasing history like that of Nineteen Eighty Four. All I am doing is highlighting the fact that we as a society have been around for thousands of years yet it is only a few decades of the late 20th century that we fixate on, and one of the reasons for that is because so much information and content created during that time is so readily available to us. We don't focus on the Roman Empire, or Medieval Europe to the extent we do with the late 20th century.
In the movie the Matrix when the first Matrix proved to be a disaster the machines had to rebuild and redesign it, in doing so they modelled it on the world as it was in the late 20th and early 21st century. If we aren't careful then our obsession with that time period might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. With the rise of VR and our pursuit of evermore immersive experiences it's not hard to see how a Matrix like simulation would become something people actually want to create and experience and it's not hard to see that time period becoming the one most people want to relive. If we ever make that a reality and go back to lie in the poppy fields, what would that spell for the future of our species?
I guess really the crux of the NHS definition and its limitation isn't really what it can apply to, but rather that caveat "where it could be harmful to you" and the definition of harm therein. It's easy to limit harm only to physical harm, but in doing so you would completely exclude many addictions where the negative affects are not physical but mental. You can even go so far as to say that any negative impact on your life or limitation of your ability to live your life could be construed as harm.
I find it interesting to contemplate what that could be applied to and how far you can take it. There are various media sensations where tabloids and magazines and their ilk often speak of addictions to things you wouldn't conventionally view as bad. Rather than take that idea and apply it to something that would be controversial as many do, I'd rather apply it to something you might not have thought about.
If wishes, hopes, and dreams, can all be considered desires for the future or desires for how the present could be changed, then you could view nostalgia as the desire for the past - although you do have to draw a distinction between the past as it was and the past as we remember it because the two don't always align. In that vein I would say that while depression can lead one to feel a mental and physical exhaustion and the desire not to leave bed, almost to the point where addiction to sleep and dreaming can develop, I would go so far as to say fixation on nostalgia itself can become an addiction in and of itself.
If you define side affects of a behaviour as being harmful if they impede your ability to live in the present and look to the future then you could say if your fixation on the past whether it be as it was or as you remember it, could be harmful if it stops you from living life in the moment. If you miss out on experiences today because you long for yesterday so much, and deny yourself a future because you indulge in your desire to look back too much, is it fair to say you are addicted?
The reason I ask this question and pose this idea is because I am becoming increasingly aware of the negative impact on our society as a whole of a widespread populism that is defined by the desire to go back. Across the western world, both sides of the Atlantic, populism has been feeding the idea that things were better in the past and that the world would be a better place if we went back to the way things were. The trouble with this whole idea is that it is empirically flawed. The economic models of the past wouldn't work with our current society, they didn't scale in the first place that was why they were replaced to begin with. Progress was never something that was forced upon society as a whole, whilst undoubtedly along the way there were always those that opposed and objected and resisted change every step of the way the fact remains society as a whole moved in the direction it did because it was what people wanted.
I'm not convinced that many people actually want to go back to the past as it was, instead I think many people have romanticized it, particularly those who either did not experience it to begin with or weren't fully aware of it at the time to be able to judge it fairly. When you ask people why they think the world was better back then, they pick out things they liked and completely forget about everything they didn't, many right up to the point where you can ask pointed questions about the negatives that they can't answer because they either didn't recall them or never experienced it themselves.
In the UK for example many people reminisce about the 90s and the 80s as decades of greatness which many would want to return to and relive. The same people however can't justify that longing when asked about the negative events of those periods. When you ask if people would like to rebuild the Berlin wall, the vast majority would say no. When you ask if they want widespread unemployment and inflation that is spiralling out of control, they also say no. When you ask if people want authoritarian governments with leaders that were akin to dictators who made decisions that even now decades later still impact upon the lives of people who lived through them, again people say no. You get right down to it and see that really all people want is to experience the fashions again, the food they ate, the TV shows they watched, and the Music they listened to in an effort to indulge their nostalgia. They don't actually want to live like they once did. The World Wide Web was invented in the early 90s, but didn't become widespread to the extent it is now until the 00s, yet ask those so eager to return to the 80s if they would give up their smart phones, their tablets, and the ubiquity of the Internet to do it and you will see the reluctance begin to assert itself. It becomes quite clear it's not the past as it was, but the past as they have idealized it that they want to return to - a world that never actually existed in the first place.
Have we as a society become addicted to nostalgia? Is the depth and breadth of the political and social turmoil we live through today in reality a symptom of widespread addiction? If so, how can you tackle that addiction? Perhaps we need a radical solution to the problem; if one of the most effective ways to treat addiction is to go cold turkey, maybe it is time we started to seal away our past as a society in archives. Stop repeating old television shows, stop selling old music, preserve it only in archives that can only be accessed for research and posterity. Restrict publications and TV shows about past events to those of a verifiable nature. Encourage society to move forward and stop remaking and remixing old content and instead create completely new content. I'm not talking about rewriting or erasing history like that of Nineteen Eighty Four. All I am doing is highlighting the fact that we as a society have been around for thousands of years yet it is only a few decades of the late 20th century that we fixate on, and one of the reasons for that is because so much information and content created during that time is so readily available to us. We don't focus on the Roman Empire, or Medieval Europe to the extent we do with the late 20th century.
In the movie the Matrix when the first Matrix proved to be a disaster the machines had to rebuild and redesign it, in doing so they modelled it on the world as it was in the late 20th and early 21st century. If we aren't careful then our obsession with that time period might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. With the rise of VR and our pursuit of evermore immersive experiences it's not hard to see how a Matrix like simulation would become something people actually want to create and experience and it's not hard to see that time period becoming the one most people want to relive. If we ever make that a reality and go back to lie in the poppy fields, what would that spell for the future of our species?
Resistance is futile
A while ago I wrote a post about suggestions for topics to write about. In that post I discussed the reasons why I write about certain things. There have been some events lately mostly political but some of them have just been part of life which have happened that seemingly everyone has been talking about. Whilst this blog is a representation of what is going on in my mind, it is a lot more controlled in terms of release schedules. I write posts for it and schedule them and try to keep the times I release new posts to something that resembles structure and routine. There is a forgiveness then when things happen and there isn't a post on here that addresses the issue, in fact posts on here are rarely about current events. Social media however seems to be the exact opposite.
Social media is a place where people expect immediate gratification, and depending on the platform, people often expect immediate replies. Social media is seen as being something that is more invasive, or pervasive as the case may be, when it comes to our personal lives. There is less tolerance for delay and very little forgiveness when you don't follow the herd mentality. When events of cultural significance happen, there is a pressure felt on social media for people to comment on those events. Even when events can be argued as insignificant, if enough people have already commented, you're expected to do so too. The peer pressure that can result in these situations is one of the things I dislike about having any sort of online presence whatsoever. It's not limited to an individual either, although I can only speak from personal experience as an individual, I do know from professional experience that those who work with social media and have a business with a significant online presence there is an expectation that they comment on things even when it has no relation to their business whatsoever.
I've come to the conclusion that the reason this has become such a prevalent part of online society is because humanity as a whole expects conformity. People don't like it when you don't conform. People really don't like it if rules and expectations that are placed upon them are not seen to be placed upon you too - even when arguably the only reason those expectations and constraints were placed upon them was because they asked for them or expected them.
Conformity is something that isn't easy to gauge in others when we have little exposure to their day to day lives, the result therefore is that people expect social media to be a place where you share every waking thought, and if you don't post it, you didn't think it. If you didn't think it, then "how dare you not care about this thing that I care so much about!" seems to be the immediate reaction. When did we as a society reach the point where we care so much about what other people think? I know there will be some that will argue that they don't care what others think and will give examples of how they set themselves apart from the rest of society, but the irony there is by actually comparing yourself to other people, you're demonstrating an awareness of what they do and how they think. You might not care what they think of you, but you care enough about what they think to try and distance yourself from what they think.
Short of bowing out of society as a whole and living in ignorance and isolation for the rest of your life I don't actually see how you can truly escape what other people think. As long as you have to remain part of society as a whole there will remain to be a comparison between you and it. Like a single pixel on a screen you will be seen whether you want to be part of the picture or not. It really comes down to how inconspicuous you are or how much you stand out from everyone else. That in itself is a measure of conformity, with the more you stand out being the more likely you are singled out.
Social media is a place where people expect immediate gratification, and depending on the platform, people often expect immediate replies. Social media is seen as being something that is more invasive, or pervasive as the case may be, when it comes to our personal lives. There is less tolerance for delay and very little forgiveness when you don't follow the herd mentality. When events of cultural significance happen, there is a pressure felt on social media for people to comment on those events. Even when events can be argued as insignificant, if enough people have already commented, you're expected to do so too. The peer pressure that can result in these situations is one of the things I dislike about having any sort of online presence whatsoever. It's not limited to an individual either, although I can only speak from personal experience as an individual, I do know from professional experience that those who work with social media and have a business with a significant online presence there is an expectation that they comment on things even when it has no relation to their business whatsoever.
I've come to the conclusion that the reason this has become such a prevalent part of online society is because humanity as a whole expects conformity. People don't like it when you don't conform. People really don't like it if rules and expectations that are placed upon them are not seen to be placed upon you too - even when arguably the only reason those expectations and constraints were placed upon them was because they asked for them or expected them.
Conformity is something that isn't easy to gauge in others when we have little exposure to their day to day lives, the result therefore is that people expect social media to be a place where you share every waking thought, and if you don't post it, you didn't think it. If you didn't think it, then "how dare you not care about this thing that I care so much about!" seems to be the immediate reaction. When did we as a society reach the point where we care so much about what other people think? I know there will be some that will argue that they don't care what others think and will give examples of how they set themselves apart from the rest of society, but the irony there is by actually comparing yourself to other people, you're demonstrating an awareness of what they do and how they think. You might not care what they think of you, but you care enough about what they think to try and distance yourself from what they think.
Short of bowing out of society as a whole and living in ignorance and isolation for the rest of your life I don't actually see how you can truly escape what other people think. As long as you have to remain part of society as a whole there will remain to be a comparison between you and it. Like a single pixel on a screen you will be seen whether you want to be part of the picture or not. It really comes down to how inconspicuous you are or how much you stand out from everyone else. That in itself is a measure of conformity, with the more you stand out being the more likely you are singled out.
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