and one fine morning…
Reading
poseidon, look at me
Mar 22nd
Fixed WordPress. Fixed some wikis. School is going well. I actually like analysis. Who would have thought? Not that I’m that good at it, but…I like it.
I’m walking again, slowly but surely. It’s spring break now, and I just fixed my bike. Good GOD, I might actually be a real person again within a month!
Starting research with Juan Restrepo, again, slowly. But it’s nice to start to get my feet wet.
I read Malcom Gladwell’s latest book, Outliers. Interesting. Same sort of mental candy as his other books. They taste sweet, and I can’t take in too much at once, because it makes me feel unhealthy, but the ideas are very interesting.
Here are some funny pictures:
við spilum endalaust
Sep 24th
Purge[mind[t],{t,a while back, now}]
Carlin moved to SF with Barry and Helen. Ollie arrived tonight. They are all living together, and I am very excited for them. I think it will continue to be positive for all involved.
Among other wonderful reinterpretations in Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl turns the concept of transitoriness on its head. Usually, we think of things that have passed as transitory; after all, things that have passed are no longer with us. Turning this on its head, Frankl writes, “[T]he only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are preserved and rescued from transitoriness. For, in the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.”
Ok, let’s take that and spilum. Given that at any moment, there are a (countably*) infinite number of possibilities (Frankl calls them potentialities) and that whatever entropic process pushes time forward has the capacity to select one of those possibilities as what actually happened, we conclude that human’s** free will*** has the property of being scribe/selector of which potentiality becomes past reality. Id est: choose your own adventure. “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.” Except that on Rosh Hashanah in this case, there’s too much written, so free will lets us edit the text up until the Yom Kippresent Moment. And in implementation, we use the continuous-time version of the model instead of the discretization—we don’t need the error anyway. </garbage>
Here is maybe not some garbage though. ∃ a huge number of potentialities
⇒ one may exert a large amount of influence over what entropy makes permanent when it records/makes irrevocable the past
⇒ one should attempt to maximize the value of what one allows to be made irrevocable
⇒ contrive a plan to Live Now that solves the maximization problem.
School is going well. Sometimes I think that classes and teaching really get in the way of learning. That, however, has a bit to do with who is lecturing that day. I have continued to heed BE’s advice and have enrolled in a macro econ class. It’s fun because the other students in the class don’t understand that math, and I don’t understand the econ. However, I think the econ is made clearer and more intuitive when the math is already intuitive. I regret (for the sake of the other students) that sometimes the econ intuition may not help with the math intuition, but who knows? I haven’t been there, so I don’t really know.
I have been riding my bike a lot, and recently rode my first century. It took me (and my aunt) 6 hours and 25 mins, which is fine with me, since I just wanted to finish. I got going 52 mph down a hill outside Boulder, which was really exhilarating. Finished with a good attitude despite a flat at mile 83 that really messed with my head a little.
It’s too late now, and I need to TeX up analysis notes in the morning. More ideas than usual lately, but sometimes a little trouble getting them all down. Here are my current goals, with which I have been having a fair amount of success over the past couple months:
- Write every day.
- Eat breakfast every day.
- Emulate Gadi’s confidence.
Interesting articles: Cities rethinking ’50s-era parking standards and What makes people vote Republican?
Over and Out. Here is a picture of Frankl. I highly recommend Man’s Search for Meaning, because it is very good, and only 160 pages too!
*math joke only. No intended meaning.
**gender-neutral form of man’s? ⇒ No the apostrophe isn’t incorrect.
***for our gedanken, we assume ∃ free will.
the birth of blue
Jul 17th
I finished The Limits to Growth, and found their conclusions very interesting. Specifically, it was good to see simulations that made assumptions such as, “what if we had twice as many natural resources?” or “What if there were “perfect” birth control? ” The ability of their model to demonstrate a need for unified change, across all major variables, was very convincing. I am going to start on Jeff Sachs’ book, Common Wealth later this week.
DC sent me a link to a speech by a man named Adam Werbach, which was fantastic. It’s a video, or a podcast, or a pdf transcript:
Adam Werbach is former president of the Sierra Club (at age 23), and founder of the first sustainability consulting firm (originally Act Now, recently merged/renamed Saatchi & Saatchi S). In this speech, he talks about how we need to move beyond a green movement to a “blue” movement which can engage 1 billion people in changing their behaviors. The focus shifts from saving the planet (which appeals to a narrow audience) to saving people and making people happy (a mainstream goal). He started something like this at Wal-Mart by engaging employees and their families in a program called PSP (Personality Sustainability Practice). You can read more about Werbach’s controversial decision to work with Wal-Mart here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/118/working-with-the-enemy.html
Basically, each person chooses one “nano-practice” that is SMART
Sustains the planet
Makes you happy
Affects the community
Repeatable
Takes visible action to focus on for a period of time.
Ok. Here’s my commentary, in case you were interested: Werbach has vision. He is, however, the Danton who is too pragmatic for the enviro-Jacobins. I think that Werbach’s ideas show a lot of foresight, and he realizes that radical environmentalism isn’t the best way to change the world‘s environmental practices. I am getting excited now: Jeff Sachs has well-argued opinions on economic growth and eradication of poverty through the widespread, small-scale, e.g. microloans. Werbach’s message is essentially the same, but applied to a different problem that is endemic to current worldwide culture (broadly speaking.)
If you take Werbach’s small-scale ideas, and combine them with massive structural/policy changes, as suggested in Lester Brown’s Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, the result could be serious change on a large scale, capable of redefining what is thought to be possible by humans. Brown recognizes the need for change in policy very clearly, while Werbach sees the power of changing a culture… And all of this was written about 35 years ago in The Limits to Growth, whose conclusion is that reducing pollution, stabilizing population, and investing heavily in technology won’t change the world’s outcome—it will only change the timing of events, give or take 50 years. The real solution is a change in cultural practices in simultanaeity with changes in world policy. Otherwise the world’s dynamical system has predictable and not very bright futures.
and we’ll sing it back to you
May 23rd
I returned from London on Monday. It was a very different vacation than most that I have taken in the past. I think the best description is that each day can be subdivided into two days: solitary and not. Since B was TAing at the U Chicago GSB, he was working most of the day. O was working at UBS during the day as well, so I spent the morning and afternoons walking around, taking tours, looking at buildings and museums, and thinking. Some of the days, I visited B at work and read. In the evenings, when everyone was done with work, we’d go out and play. The bars in London close pretty early, which was a little bit frustrating, but not the end of the world.
The value of the trip, for me, was the thinking time, and quite nearly, a proof of concept for The Good Life. To put things in perspective, I’ll reflect on Wash U and my time there. In talking with my students this semester, I’ve fielded the question, “Do you miss Wash U?” quite a few times, and what I have realized is that I don’t miss St. Louis, the classes, or the campus. Rather, I miss the people, and being in a stimulating environment where people give a shit about the world: the bubble.
If satisfaction arises from immersing ourselves in good conversation and good people, why do we sometimes prioritize our careers over everything else? People will often move across the country to be with Deloitte or Goldman, but they won’t move across the country to be with the people who are most important to them. As my mother pointed out, ideally, you care enough about your work, and it is meaningful to you to the point that it truly is reasonable for us to move based on job pressures. But for quite a few others, a deeper satisfaction (at least at our age!) comes from our peers.
To that end, some of the most important people in my life are moving to Oakland. Should I go too?
I finished reading Peter F. Hamilton’s books in The Night’s Dawn Trilogy. I was very impressed. The books are filled with both scientific creativity, as well as ethical and spiritual reflection…not unlike Orson Scott Card’s Homecoming Saga. Maybe Hamilton has something really valuable to offer all people, or maybe his books are just coming at a particular time in my life where I see my future as pliable and inspiring. The following quotation is from the final book of the trilogy, The Naked God, and fits in nicely with Jared Diamond’s Collapse, which I finished today.
You don’t have to tell the rich and the educated, the privileged … It is the others you must convince, the ignorant masses, yet paradoxically, they are the ones hardest for you to reach. Theirs are the minds which, thanks to circumstance, have set and hardened against new concepts and ideas from an early age.
And compare with Von Mises:
If the small minority of enlightened citizens … do not succeed in winning the support of their fellow citizens … the cause of mankind and civilization is hopeless. There is no other means to safeguard a a propitious development of human affairs than to make the masses of inferior people adopt the ideas of the elite. This has to be achieved by convincing them. It cannot be accomplished by a despotic regime that instead of enlightening the masses beats them into submission. In the long run, the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.
To me, both of these authors’ ideas speak directly at the young environmentalism movement.
homegrown
Apr 27th
It’s almost summer. School is wrapping up nicely. The next two weeks will be a shit show, but I think that’s how things really ought to be this time of year when I’m in classes: caffeine abuse, heightened productivity, weird sleep patterns, and dangerous levels of confidence. The task list is: a paper and presentation on chaos in economics, a finance problem set and final. Cake.
I started reading a trilogy of scifi books that Barry (and Calvin) recommended to me, which have been awesome. They’re by Peter Hamilton, and so far, I am very impressed by them. I shouldn’t say them; I am only about 1000 pages into the first book, but it’s pretty sweet. Luckily, this desire to read candy books all day long comes at the wrong time. But soon…soon.
I started running again. Having taken an extended break for the entirety of ski season, it feels good to remember why running makes me feel so elated. I’ve also started working out more consistently. The effects of weight training and running are so different on my mental state though, that it’s hard for me to think of them in the same category. Running makes me feel alive, capable, and independent. Lifting makes me feel confident, attractive, and accomplished. I told Woods that I’d run for a couple hours with him later this summer, so I need to get my ish together for that.
There are plenty of other things to write about, but maybe I don’t want to. To summarize: this past weekend was phenomenal (went to Dan’s, a fashion show, Medeski Martin & Wood concert, and a ski team party last night, and in the process, spent time with most of my favorite people in Boulder), the new band is going well, and I feel like Brandon and I are getting closer as Ronnie prepares to depart for law school.
Track of the week: Kings of Leon – Fans (Audio only)
just relaxed and paying attention
Feb 18th
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/ Thanks to Barry for this one. Hilarious. Ronnie, get a load of #69. I am pretty sure it was made specifically for you.
I have been thinking more and more about “Mathematics is its own barrier to entry.” I think it’s funny, but I also think that it’s pretty true.
I rejoined facebook. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. More or less, my opinion on it has changed. My feeling now is similar to my feelings about fraternities as an undergrad: if it’s an element of your life, that’s fine, but if it is your life, that’s not fine. In other words, use facebook or other online junk, e.g. this blog, for a purpose, but don’t attempt to define much about yourself through it. This is not to say that I felt like I was doing so in the past.
I don’t remember who it was that turned me on to the idea… but the basic concept is that you should get to know people through interacting with them because then you have a context for your knowledge. For example, if I learn that Carlin practices yoga meditation, I’ll learn it in conversation where it has a context, or through a friend, where it also has a context. If I read it on a blog or facebook, then it feels a little bit less contextualized, as if I am doing research on him or something. I feel that meaning is lost in that process.
School is going well. I’m loving it. I feel that I’m at the peak of my productivity, concentration, and organization right now, and continuing to improve.
I finished The Journey to the East which was very interesting. I have comments on it, but this is not the place. Now, a study of Being Peace on DC’s recommendation. Reading before bed is really nice.
we made plans to be unbreakable
Dec 25th
I have never seen roads more deserted than I saw this morning. Imagine then, the confluence of the deserted roads of 4:00 Christmas morning, a whirling torrent of snowfall, one hour of sleep, and profligate optimism. From the milieu, from the ether, here are my thoughts and proto-weltanschauung: Necessarily, the universe must have either a) had a starting point/time or b) been in existence forever. Those two categories describe the entire set of possibilities. So I think now about a) and wonder what caused the beginning and b) how that is even reasonable/possible. Second, is our universe the whole of Existence? Cosmology would suggest not, especially in light of the physics of subatomic particles, who reside in potentially n-dimensional space, where 4 < n < 11? 12? Then there are issues of gravity and all the other stuff that really, when boiled down, all seems to suggest that there’s a hell of a lot more going on behind the “scenes” that we can’t see or perceive. Want to call it God? Ok. Then there are other ideas about multiple universes, mathematically asymptotic space, and the possibility that “God” is really just a set of rules that allows us, as the universe, to evolve until we can look back on ourselves and reflect on our existence. Other rulesets exist, but don’t necessarily allow for this sort of intro/retrospection which we call consciousness. So… Is God the impetus for existence? The justification for unbeginning/unending existence? The work behind the scenes, which we can’t see or perceive (yet)? Or maybe just the favorable ruleset for the way our world fits together, which allows for our Life? I don’t know. There are a lot of things that exist that don’t necessarily have to be out there like that. Theists get angry when I suggest that we’re just here by chance, and there’s not a lot of meaning to it all. But that chance, in and of itself, is beautiful and meaningful—when you win the lottery, just because you’re one-in-ten-million, doesn’t mean you haven’t won—and maybe that’s the beauty of Creation. That’s what I think about when I think about God. He’s not flying around throughout all the trees and animals and dirt and rocks, nor is he sitting on a cloud with a beard, or offering zealous martyrs 100 virgins. He, in my mind, is much more nebulous than that. And faith, therefore, to me, isn’t a feeling of confidence in the afterlife or immortality of my soul. Rather, it’s confidence in the persistence of the pattern in which we all exist.
your hand in mine
Dec 24th
There exists an absolute lowest temperature (0 K) but does there exist an absolute highest? Absolute Hot