Which activities do you give how much time, currently, and ideally? What are the most impactful aspects / dimensions of life for a good enjoyable life? Is this a good list to have as root nodes for going through life? Did I miss listing any important ones? Are these dimensions orthogonal or overlapping? (-> overlapping). What would be the smallest set of orthogonal aspects of a good life? What would be their names?
I could make a religion out of it. (no please don’t).
Context: April 28th, at the beach watching sunset. Later at home watching related content. #Thoughts #HT
Time & related thoughts
88. What is time? Was time discovered or invented? Does a microorganism know time? What even is the notion of time to them? Does a slug know time? Do apes know time? Surely at some point in history, the first human suddenly came up with the idea of time. Did he discover it or invent it as part of the story he started telling? Are we all in his story?
The first human/ape/x to keep track of time started it by looking at the sun – its repetitions. 1 day was the unit.
Who defined “year” first? How did they define it?
90. When did we start counting years? When was it discovered that after 365 days the earth completes one year (around the sun)? Who decided that we will start counting from Jesus’s death? Was Jesus real? Whoever is the storyteller, we are all possibly in his story since then.
90.1 Why are we counting years since Jesus’s death? What are we waiting for?
94. Think of the spacetime block universe. And the multiverse. If I regret a past choice – if I contemplate that if I had made the other choice with a better outcome, in the past, would I have made it out of a proper understanding/calculated choosing? or would it have been just a random choice out of all possible options? For it to have been a wise choice made out of proper understanding, I would need to have foresight of the future; clarity. The visibility along the time axis should not be fuzzy/uncertain.
So I guess the more certain I can be about my future, the wiser the choices I can make.
Is this what the Oracle referred to when she said “You have already made the choice in the future. You just have to understand it. You cannot see past a choice that you do not understand”.
94. Perhaps, over nuancing of some ideas has made it difficult for us to understand the true nature of reality around us. Like, having different tenses and different words for each of the tenses – past, present, future. Eg. Saying “When will X happen and when did Y happen?” vs saying “When does X happen and when does Y happen?”
Maybe people whose language never had any distinction between past, present, future have a more accurate perspective of the universe. Or do we (the English speaking modern Western world) have the more accurate perspective? Which one is it?
96. The universe exists because the spacetime block (matrix of spatial frames) is filled with numbers that are *NOT* random. There is continuity along the frames. That means it contains information. There is a function. Each frame is a function of time.
Other Thoughts
95. “You are my favorite [person].”. What is favorite. Is it a cultural thing? Does the word / notion / meaning of favorite exist in Marathi, Hindi?
89. Are cigarette smokers perpetually high? Is that their normal and they believe that majority of the world is in their normal? It would feel like a sober person feels believing that the majority of the world is their sober normal. Is this what it means to be addicted to something and it being hard to quit it? It’s hard because you don’t understand the reality. But again which one is real?
91. Driving **** thru the winding hills at night with powerful music in sports mode is just like playing NFS on the best video controller & screen never made.
92. I want to be the main character of my life; or the storyteller.
93. I want to learn and understand how the world works. That is my passion. I want to be paid for learning more about the world/universe. Why would they pay me? In exchange, I can teach it to the society. I can be the one discovering things and spreading the knowledge. If only this could happen, I’d be happy. This basically means I should have been a physics student->researcher->professor.
Is this a late realization that I should have had before college? Do most others have this realization before college? What can I do now to get that and be happy?
I am pursuing enlightenment. I have been, since college. Who are the enlightened people of the modern world? Relatively the most enlightened people are those who understand the world/universe the best. Those who have the best model/understanding of the mechanism/workings of the universe/world. If this definition of enlightened remains constant over time/centuries, then today’s Physicists, Mathematicians, Astronomers, Philosophers, PhDs, leaders of the world are the same as olden times’ enlightened/buddhas/pandits/spiritual leaders/leaders.
Are today’s leaders of the world enlightened with some knowledge they share in common with each other that the common man does not know/understand? What is that knowledge? What did Elon Musk grow up reading/learning/watching/observing? Zuckerberg? Shannon? Einstein? Newton?
A good way to teach kids some new instrument / thing like guitar –
Don’t tell them “you are going to learn guitar” or “you should learn guitar”. Don’t tell them anything about it or your intentions to have them learn it. Just keep a guitar at home like you keep a ball or fridge at home. They will try it out out of curiosity. Let them discover how to use/play on their own, how to mimic songs etc. Then after a while of them playing it in their own not knowing music theory & formal conventions, tell them that classes exist where they teach existing knowledge & techniques that can help increase your skill much more.
Everything is a language. Don’t know how to dance? That just means that you don’t know that language. Don’t know how to appreciate weird music? That means you just don’t know how to read in that language.
Everything is a language to our brain because a language is just a dictionary – an association of feelings/concepts/notions/ideas/mental image/eidetic imagery/mood (x) which are some embedding in the brain’s neural net, to words (y). x is to y.
If y = playing piano, then it means you can translate from x to piano music. You can speak piano. And if you can “appreciate” piano music, then you can read piano, i.e translate from piano music to x (series of feelings/concepts/notions/ideas/mood).
Neural networks simply form associations between two things from the input layer to the output layer. A translator from one domain to another is just an encoder-decoder.
YouTube has disappointed us all by removing the Dislike bar
It indicated the quality of the video / content, allowing us to decide if it was worth watching.
It indicated if the video was controversial (think 50-50 bar). Thus it showed where other people stand on the content of the video.
It was a quick summary of the public perception without needing to read many comments.
It was YouTube’s qualitative advantage over videos & content from FB, Insta, Twitter. Those platforms without a dislike button allow crap content to be prevalent.
YouTube may give bullshit reasons like they removed the Dislike bar to “protect” creators from dislike-harassment but it is not hard to see that their motivation to remove it comes from point (1) – if we cannot see the dislike count, it would increase user engagement, watch time, ad-revenue, thus increasing profits.
Thus, I urge you to realize this, and consciously reduce YouTube engagement.
Skip over videos that you are unsure of for which you previously would have consulted the Dislike bar. Don’t give them the watch-time, ad-time and Views.
Unsubscribe from YouTube Premium. Use an adblocker in the browser. I guess if you are a power user who uses it on mobile & TV, this will be hard to resist.
Try alternative like Odysee.com, Vimeo, DailyMotion, FB Videos, CuriosityStream etc.
By removing the Dislike count, the valuable information gained from points (1), (2) & (3) will be lost forever in the future. The way people use the Dislike button will change because they cannot see the Dislike bar. More of crappy content will become prevalent. Imagine clickbait videos, fake news, fake guru videos for which you would not be able to see how many others have Disliked; you would take that content more seriously than if you could see the Dislike count. Bad content creators won’t get accurate feedback.
I’m sure Google / Youtube understands all these negative consequences; because afterall they are the smartest people. But they can afford to do this because they have a monopoly. This is why we can’t have good things. When a company has a monopoly, the quality of the product goes down. They just think of maximizing profits.
It is sad that Google / Youtube has made this decision for chasing financial profits, by causing a reduction in user experience and reduction in quality of content in the future. Google used to be the charming company that made products for actual good of the world, not for profits. But seeing this deviation from their original mission is saddening, lowering their image in the eyes of the public.
Perhaps by boycotting their attempt at increasing user engagement they would bring back the Dislike bar.
In the meantime, there are a couple of browser extensions that can show the Dislike count. These extensions use the YouTube API to fetch the dislikes count for now; however, YouTube has announced that they will be removing this information from their API in mid December. Here’s an extension that you can use till then: www.returnyoutubedislike.com.
Finally, I leave you with the following three videos to watch to understand why censorship on Youtube, Facebook etc is bad. These videos show us an extreme situation, but it can be a slippery slope if we do not educate ourselves of the distant outcome. Hiding the Like/Dislike opinion of other users is a form of censorship on a public forum.
Ten years ago, after finishing my bachelors when I was in an existential crisis, I had come up with this purpose for my life:
My purpose of life, since we do not know our purpose, is to find that purpose of life. i.e. Work on finding out the Truth, meaning of life and universe.
One way I figured I could contribute to this is through the field of machine learning and AI – I did not understand it much especially since I had studied mechanical engineering, but I felt an intuition that these could be legit avenues. I figured if we ever invent a “self-learning machine”, and provide it the same senses, cognition and motion as humans, it would learn and grow way faster than humans could. And then when it knows more than humans, we could just ask it the purpose of life.
My life did not go as planned for whatever reasons. I could not get onto that academic path of contributing to such science & tech directly [yet?]. Blame it on opportunities, circumstances, resources, personal flaws, procrastination, lack of information, bullshit US visa system, whatever. Life happened. I have been quite depressed about that for long.
Recently, I have been revisiting the simulation hypothesis (like The Matrix), and it has been causing a bit of an existential crisis again. Imagine humans in an effort to understand the universe spend thousands of years with science, tech, art etc, and finally understand it only to discover that they have perfectly understood only a simulation, and there is another real universe outside it with an unknown number of layers of simulations outside it! Our simulation may not have the same behavior as the real universe. The real universe may not even be observable. That information may just not be available to us. What then! Well, that throws my original purpose out the window which had pacified my existential crisis. I’m back into the crisis!
I have also been reading / watching a little about how there possibly are limits to what we can know. Something like Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem.
So I guess if purpose-1 would be fundamentally impossible, then what’s there to life at all? Other than just having fun, do your time and get out when it’s time? Hence, I now have a secondary purpose in addition to the original primary purpose (at least tentatively until it gets ingrained):-
Enjoy living, as if you’re in a video game with just 1 life. There’s no meaning to life, just do what you like.
This happens to also be the message of the movie Soul. It’s the same message as Kurtzgesagt’s video on Optimistic Nihilism. It’s probably the same message as when people say “Don’t forget to have fun!”. It’s probably the same message as what my mom writes in her email signature – “Be Happy”. It’s the same message as The Happiness Equation’s rule – “Be happy first, then pursue wants”.
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Musings to follow this:
Implications of that purpose. Hedonism? Maximizing fun? Short-term vs Long-term gain? Calculative vs impulsive? Calibration of that? Morality?
People don’t understand that when they are arguing over something, they NEED TO keep their language unambiguous and clear to eliminate any possibility of doubt and misunderstanding. As it is, any language is not fully efficient in conveying the exact meanings. On top of that if you start using rhetoricals, sarcasms, taunts, it increases the ambiguity all-the-more. I mean, sometime person B won’t get your sarcasm while you assume he is getting it. And so B’s reply would seem more arrogant to you. Then again, there may come another sarcastic statement, or a rhetorical question, delaying the solution exponentially!
So here are some basic rules I believe should be followed when you are Arguing or Debating or Discussing a topic:
1) Remember that an argument has a solution / conclusion. The conclusion could be something that you commonly concur upon, or it may be identifying which on aspects your preference differs, or a combination. The common conclusion may or may not be in your favor but you should strive to work towards the true solution. In other words, drop your ego, and be honest & frank.
2) Try to keep the language down-to-earth. Be direct. And expect direct, sharp sentences. Because the truth can be bitter.
3) Get straight to the point without trash talk like above because it only increases tempers and delays the solution. Don’t beat around the bush.
For example: Don’t counter like this (like person B does): A: I have no idea what you are talking about X-( B: You know very well what I am talking about X-( Instead do this: A: I have no idea what you are talking about X-( B: I am talking about how that day you ditched me and went to play basketball with Katrinn. [Even though you think A knows what you are talking about, SAY IT so that further beating around the bush is avoided.]
4) For some mature topics, you may need to use profane words like sex. Don’t be prudish in an argument.
5) An argument/discussion/debate must be logical. Feelings and emotions can be considered within the logic.
6) At some point one may say “Pratyek goshtila karan astach asa nasta” i.e. “Not everything has a reason”. I think everything does have a reason, but it may just be really hard to find or identify. It may be difficult to put into words or too lengthy. Or it may be something too obvious to realize. Take your time to reflect, and try to explain the reason.
Abstract thinking / analogical reasoning / metaphorical thinking / mathematical thinking / symbolic thinking – This makes you intelligent and witty! Comedians probably develop this early in life, heading in the direction of street smartness rather than technical. Scientists, researchers and inventors do the same but on a very technical level, drawing analogies between mathematical models and real-world systems. Artists do the same which is why they see deep meaning in abstract arts. Movie directors do this so as to depict something with great impact.
Everything in our understanding of the world is probably analogical, for example, an atom may not be really an atom. An atom according to our understanding may be representative of something different but behaves in the same way.
Good movies to exercise this: Mr. Nobody, The Fountain.
About “expressing much, and being unperturbed / calm”
We use swear words to express some quick anger / frustration like –
fuck!
shit!
“abe yaar”
Some people say that expressing in such a way is good. But I have been believing otherwise since my childhood. I know from childhood that using swear words to express some tiny frustration momentarily actually amplifies the frustration at least a little.
If you force a smile now on your face, you do feel slightly happy! If you force your facial expression into that a sad, droopy face, you do feel sad. Hence, expression results in more of that emotion! When you use an interjection like “shit!”, or “abe yaar”, “damn”,… it increases that feeling. Instead, you should overcome the need to interject and continue being unperturbed. That keeps you more peaceful and lets you think with more clarity in the next moment.
Extension to this topic: While arguing with someone too, one can get annoyed, frustrated and either use swear words, or lose their calm. The above idea can be applied here to instead remain totally calm & unperturbed by the other person’s comments. When arguing with a friend / acquaintance, you can let go off the frustration / annoyance by thinking “this guy is an idiot, I’ll not get too involved in this subject; his loss!” and continue being unperturbed. But when arguing with a close person, you cannot overlook their potentially incorrect views because they matter to you.
