LastThursday

All self help is about changing for the better, for whatever your current definition of better is, or worse someone else's definition of better.

I thought I'd try and answer, but ChatGPT gave a better response. I asked ChatGPT for a quick summary ChatGPT Certainly! Here’s a bullet-point summary of your message: Current Situation: Studying biology as an undergraduate; chose biology due to interest from high school. Previously studied cognitive science for three years due to personal mental health interest but didn’t complete the degree. Struggle with Life Purpose: Interested in identifying a life purpose, mission statement, and values. Completed exercises to identify values: humor, excitement, fun, attractiveness, pleasure, and others are important. Difficulty connecting these values with a career in biology. Interest in Biology: Finds cellular and molecular biology fascinating, particularly for understanding diseases like cancer. Potential life purpose: applying knowledge of cellular and molecular biology to develop therapies and treatments. Challenges with Career Path: Sometimes loses interest in lab work; struggles to connect theoretical knowledge with practical lab tasks. Distraction by unrelated interests (e.g., geopolitics, YouTube videos). Personal and Social Development: Engaged in social activities to step out of comfort zone (improv club, karaoke, bars/clubs). Feels a lack of deep connections and a small social circle despite good conversational skills. Sense of Achievement: Feels pressure to achieve something prestigious due to comparing self with others, including a successful younger brother. Concerned about not having a clear purpose or enough achievements. Uncertainty and Exploration: Contemplates switching to other fields (e.g., economics, business) but worries about wasting years of study. Seeks a life purpose that aligns with values and will last through a significant part of their career. Reflections on Values and Purpose: Wonders how to align biology with personal values and how to establish a lasting life purpose. Observes that many people pursue careers based on interests rather than explicit values. @LastThursday said: "What advice should be given for the above?" ChatGPT Given the complexity of your situation, here’s some advice to help you navigate your confusion and find a clearer direction in life: 1. Clarify and Prioritize Your Values Reevaluate Your Values: Revisit your values list and prioritize them. Consider what makes you feel most fulfilled and how these align with your current and potential career paths. Experiment with Integration: Try to integrate your top values (e.g., fun, excitement, pleasure) into your studies or career exploration. For example, look for areas in biology that might be more interactive or dynamic, such as fieldwork or public health outreach. 2. Explore Career Options in Biology Broad Career Exploration: Investigate different career paths within biology that might align more with your interests and values. Consider careers outside of the lab, such as science communication, teaching, biotech sales, or roles that involve more human interaction. Shadowing and Internships: Seek opportunities to shadow professionals in various biology-related fields or pursue internships to gain firsthand experience and see what resonates with you. 3. Combine Interests and Career Goals Cross-Disciplinary Paths: Consider how you can combine biology with other interests like psychology, business, or technology. Fields like neurobiology, bioinformatics, or biotech entrepreneurship might offer a blend of your interests. Side Projects: Engage in side projects or hobbies that align with other interests (e.g., starting a blog or YouTube channel related to science communication, attending seminars on different subjects). This can help you explore your passions without fully committing to a career switch. 4. Address Your Achievement Concerns Set Achievable Milestones: Break down your long-term goals into smaller, achievable milestones. This will help you build a sense of progress and accomplishment. Focus on Personal Growth: Rather than comparing yourself to others, focus on your own growth and development. Celebrate small victories and acknowledge how far you’ve come. 5. Social and Personal Development Expand Your Social Network: Continue stepping out of your comfort zone to meet new people. Joining clubs, attending seminars, or participating in online communities related to your interests can help you form deeper connections. Build Confidence: Practice self-compassion and self-awareness to build confidence in your social interactions. Recognize that social skills improve with time and practice. 6. Reflect on Life Purpose Take Time for Self-Reflection: Regularly set aside time for self-reflection. Journaling, meditation, or speaking with a mentor or therapist can help you gain clarity on what truly matters to you. Consider Professional Guidance: If you’re still struggling with clarity, consider taking a structured course on life purpose or working with a career coach to help you define your mission and direction. 7. Stay Open to Change Be Open to Evolution: Understand that your life purpose and values may evolve over time. It’s okay to pivot and explore new directions as you gain more experience and self-awareness. Don’t Rush Decisions: Take the time to explore your options before making significant changes, like switching fields. Ensure that any major decisions align with your deeper values and long-term happiness. This approach will help you align your career with your values, provide a clearer sense of direction, and ultimately lead to a more fulfilling life.

It really does require going meta and to think about thinking itself. Most will find this nearly impossible without outside assistance. Most therapy is about correcting bad thinking patterns. There's an argument for judgment itself being a thought too, so it's hard to just drop this pattern.

@HMD you're right that there seems to be a general anti-thinking trend perpetuated by the internet. The thinking mind is the problem, but it can also be the solution, just look at what Leo does. @Lila9 is exactly right, in that a lot of thinking is just neurotic monkey mind so becoming aware of it and learning to shut it off sometimes, is beneficial. Quality thinking though is hard and most people don't do it because it's a real effort or they don't know how. It's far easier to fall back to opinion, arguing and emotions (e.g.) - some are even scared of good thinking.

It's interesting to look at the bigger picture and see that scapegoating is just one way to exercise power and control, also known as bullying. It's sad to see how devastating it can be to a young kid, but I'm glad you've managed to regain yourself, kudos.

On today's smorgasbord of YouTube delight it's the turn of science. A lot of the stuff I like to watch is mostly popular science, because it's the most digestible. Indeed, a lot of the ideas I've heard a million times already, but I still get something from each retelling, because some of the ideas are truly hard to grasp in their entirety and it's fun to get different angles on a thing. Anyway, for the meat... Arvin Ash covers lots of different aspects of science with a strong physics bias. He's clear and easy to understand and the animations are very well done The GOAT of science YouTube is Derek Muller, who covers all aspects of science with catchy animations, interviews and visits different institutions, great stuff Destin Sandlin covers science in general, but often with a more engineering focus. His slow motion videos and personal visits to different manufacturing facilities are excellent for seeing science in action Mahesh Shenoy has a smaller following and covers physics, but I find him enthusiastic and clear in his explanations and animations. Mithuna Yoganathan covers lots of ideas in physics with props and does her own experiments. She's very clear and measured in her delivery Jeroen Vleggaar covers lot's of ideas in physics specifically to do with light. He goes into in depth explanations, doing his own experiments and getting to the meat of "why". Excellent stuff. Jade Tan-Holmes covers lots of more popular side of maths and physics, with props and quirky animations. Clear and enthusiastic If you like to see the latest in science then Sabine Hossenfelder is your woman. She's a jobbing scientist so knows what she's talking about and often is no-nosense with a dry sense of humour. Steve Mould often has a quirky take on science making his own elaborate props and really trying to "do" science in its most pure sense, with his own ideas and deductions, good stuff Matt O'Dowd is also a jobbing scientist and similar to Arvin Ash covers lots of ideas in science, often with more of a space theme. Clear and understandable Dianna Cowern covered a large number of topics in science often going out into the field - until she came down with long term illness - hopefully she is able to return one day. Excellent stuff

The mind blowing thing is that Theory of Mind is also applied to yourself. Your emotions and actions are rationalised into a story about your own identity, and produces a "self" as a result.

Suffering is directly caused by identity. An identity is an actively self sustaining entity or system. It can be anything like a biological identity or mental identity. Any disruption to the identity causes suffering, which is an alarm signal to say it is under attack in some way. It's interesting to investigate whether something like a car has an identity. Once the ignition is triggered, then the engine and car systems sustain themselves. The car systems have to regulate themselves otherwise the car will stall. Often if those systems are not working correctly then you will get warning lights. In that sense the car "suffers". Or you might have an alarm system against theft, again the car "suffers" by sounding an alarm, if it is compromised in some way.

You're imagining you too. Or more like consciousness is imagining you and everything else. You're not separate from consciousness, you're within it. Realise the possibility that "you" could stop existing within consciousness. Otherwise, not much.

There's a lot of factors involved in success. Volume of work is one of those factors, but importantly not the only one. Here's a few others off the top of my head: Natural talent - people become successful doing the things that come easy naturally Consistency - even if the rate of work is low, over months and years it can become substantial Planning - having some sort of flexible road map can guide you in the right direction Goals, mission statements etc - knowing what you want in the end is good for success Environment - putting yourself in the right places at the right times is good for both motivation and meeting the right people Information - taking in the right information and cutting out the crap will increase success Motivation - learning how to motivate yourself well can be great for success I'd say you don't need all the above, but the more of those things you have the better. Maybe you're not the sort of person that has a high rate of work, but you have natural talent for something, so you should concentrate on that instead. It's also largely domain dependent, some things just simply require a lot of work to get any sort of traction.

On today's red carpet of YouTube celebrity is technology and gadgets old and new. I do like to keep up with technology and see where things are headed. From a young age I always enthralled by technology and the past forty years (and longer) has been an unending roller coaster of innovation, what a joy to be in the middle of it. And I do like a bit of history around this sort of thing too. For your everyday and household technology past and present, Alec Watson takes you through it all with some amount of entertaining wit and sarcasm. Very informative and rigorously researched nonetheless For more of an in depth foray into the history of consumer tech and more Matthew Taylor gives his opinons and overviews. There's stuff there that you didn't even know could exist Fran Blanche revives and and tears down interesting and obsolete tech, and explains how it all worked and sometimes philosophises about engineering in general. Love it. Anastasia N (last name unknown) covers the bleeding edge in semiconductor design, and is a chip designer herself. Very informative and fascinating stuff Dr Károly Zsolnai-Fehér (watch the videos for the pronunciation) covers the cutting edge of computer graphics and related subjects like AI. I like his enthusiasm, and support for the field I'm a real nerd about vintage computer tech and own a few pieces myself. David Murray resurects and covers many aspects of old computer tech, and sometimes forays into non-computer tech Adrian Black gets his oscilloscope and soldering iron out and fixes old computer kit and talks you through all the interesting detail. If I retired and only did this, I'd be a happy guy Christian Simpson covers all sorts of old computer tech and sometimes modern uses for them. Terrible puns and dry wit and a talking dog, very entertaining Neil Thomas loves old tech so much he created a museum in the Gloucestershire countryside. I must go. Lots of stuff about old gaming consoles, arcade games, and old computers, with a bit of history and interviews thrown in. Peter Leigh covers a lot history of computers, games and related things, in true Brit style

That cracked up so bad 🤣 Carry on... 🤣

Is a finger separate from a hand? A finger is just an arbitrary demarcation of the hand. The demarcation of the self is maintained by some mechanism, whatever that is (some sort of reflexive identity). But it seems like it's possible to change the extent of a Self or remove the demarcation altogether through meditation, drugs, sudden enlightenment and so on. So the self is real like a finger is real, for as long as it remains distinct, but its very definition is fluid. If a self can disappear, then it is not a truth.

I can recommend acting, good for self-expression, confidence and connecting with people. Although, I've only dabbled a bit. More conventionally, long distance running, good for overall fitness and mental and physical endurance. Volunteering in any capacity, good for building compassion and understanding and for a sense of accomplishment. Learning to play any musical instrument, good for coordination and dexterity, and learning patience and mastery.

Not much different from real life, people come and go, and sometimes they come back or they shapeshift (ahem multiple accounts ahem).

Normal service will be resumed shortly. But until then I continue my tour of YouTube channels I watch regularly. Today's genre is sort of self help, introspection, philosophy on living, those sorts of things. Alain De Botton, in his own right a philosopher and author, narrates animated videos on all aspects of the philsophy of being human, great and insightful stuff Tom van der Linden often covers the philosphy of how to live, but through the medium of film, and it's a powerful approach. Incredibly well thought out and composited videos have you tugging at your heart strings Lana Blakely is a Swedish YouTuber who covers the many facets of how to live life, and has the wisdom to back it up If you want cinematic videos and an exposition on just being alive then Nathaniel Drew takes you through his life abroad Matt D'Avella is more on the self help and productivity side of things, he's always entertaining to watch and I always come away feeling that I should try the things he's advocating

YouTube is of course incestuous, or is that promiscuous? I don't know what I'm talking about. Here's the reaction to the reaction lol ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In today's suite of YouTube videos is the outdoor category. I do relish a good hike in the countryside, and very rare spot of camping. I'm not sure where my love of walking comes from, no-one else in my family is interested in that sort of thing. I kind of just started one day some time in my twenties and never looked back. However, I do like exploring new places and like the freedom and tranquility of it. Claire Conybeare (I think that's her last name!) does all sorts of camping expeditions by herself in the British countryside, with a little bit of a breakdown of her equipment, well shot and narrated, and a quirky sense of humour Steve Wallis's shtick is stealth camping, and he's camped in some questionable places only once getting caught. Good entertainment Tom Davies best known as GeoWizard occasionally does crazy stuff in the British countryside, or in more urban locations - apart from his more usual GeoGuessr videos, again very entertaining Paul Whitewick is newer to me, he does mostly historical stuff and walks the British countryside, and I always learn something interesting Isabel Page recounts stories about her life in the woods and being self-sufficient, incredibly well shot and narrated. I always feel so peaceful after these videos! More incredibly shot videos and stories from Jonna Jinton who lives in the icy wilds of the north of Sweden.

You didn't mention absolute infinity, you just said infinity. If that's your definition, then by definition it includes everything. But how do you know we're in an absolute infinity. What is your logic? Or is it faith?

It doesn't follow that infinity contains everything possible. For example take all the numbers from 1 to infinity. Take out the number 3. You're still left with an infinity of numbers, there's just no three. In fact you could take out an infinity of numbers and still be left with infinity, for example take out all the odd numbers.

No list today. But in a case of YouTube synchronicity, this came out an hour ago. Surely they're reading my journal? Sabrina Cruz, Melissa Fernandes and Taha Khan answer all the questions you've often wondered about but never thought you'd get the answer to, love the channel (if you reading this...)

Can you tell I'm on the optimistic side of things? I don't deny your domain knowledge hopefully you'll be part of the future of AI going in the "right" direction. I know by exponential I really mean the S-shaped curve, it's not exponential forever. I just don't believe that in a lot of areas the ceiling of AI has been reached yet, it really is early days. Some ceilings might be power consumption, transistor density and availability of data, but ingenuity knows no bounds and some of these blocks will be bypassed one way or another. Shifts and paradigms have an uncanny ability to "come out of nowhere", the transformer architecture being exactly one of those shifts. What it might take is something akin to Turing with his ideas on what a computation is, instead we need ideas on what reasoning is and how to model that successfully - something way beyond propositional logic say. We want AI to actually understand (reason about) what it is doing, i.e. self reflection and context awareness.

Don't forget AI research has been going on since the 1960's. Seven years is no time in the scheme of things, another big innovation will come along soon enough, maybe even helped by AI itself. The fact that there are dedicated GPU's coming onto the market, shows that optimisation for AI has already started, it's not the end of the process. The whole pipeline for AI will be optimised in hardware in time and reduction in power consumption will be part of the mix. Perhaps not, but new paradigms come along. In the end AI will seek and suck in it's own data autonomously. Most likely with embodied AI. In any case, in the end widespread usage and a large ecosystem of smaller AI's are going to have more impact than single monolithic AI's. The usage of AI in all its forms is still increasing exponentially and hasn't reached saturation.

What? I didn't say nuffink. Move along, nothing to see here 😈

There's less difference between a character in a novel or your imagination and your real friend X than you think. The common thread is that they're all constructions in your mind and imagination. Theory of Mind breathes life into your mental constructions. In fact some people do this sort of thing on purpose and create Tulpas which are "materialised thought forms". Are any of these constructions conscious? Some say no, for example philosphical zombies. I say yes, because you yourself are conscious. Your consciousness is their consciousness. Although don't confuse it with solipsism (uh oh), consciousness doesn't belong to you.

No no. AI still has a lot of exponential growth. The bottleneck of power consumption will be solved in time by dedicated silicon, it's already happening. And AI will get deployed into everything and that's only going to carry on accelerating. The problem of data for training AI is real, there's only a finite supply of it, but that only applies to the top of the range cutting edge AI. Lesser AI will just not need that quantity of training data. Also, new more effective techniques will come along for training AI, so more will be squeezed from the data we do have. I don't believe synthetic data will fix the supply problems though.