LastThursday

What is this thread? I've got a new theory called Circular Dynamics with pretty colours which goes round and round instead of up and down and round. And for the love of all that is good, SD has never been about individuals: you are not on the spiral, your society is.

Things I cannot let go of. I had another of my weird synchronicities recently. There was a period in my life when these used to happen fairly frequently and I had a love/hate relationship with them. I've never particular been spooked by synchronicities but damn they're very inconvenient at times. I remember parking up at a friend's once with the intention of just popping in and seeing them for a few minutes. They live in a quiet residential area, but parking is permit only, which she had but I said but I told her I would be quick and not to worry. In the space of those ten minutes I got a ticket. Bear in mind a physical person would have had to give me the ticket. There was no one around when I parked up, and there was no one around when I left! Aside from synchronicity, there is the weirdness with people. It's particularly hard for me to put my finger on it, but it's mostly the I-think-about-them-and-they-appear effect. Many times I will start thinking about someone absent-mindedly and they will contact me soon after or I bump into them in the street. It could be brushed off as coincidence, in that I think about a lot of people a lot of the time, but those particular instances have a "feel" to them that are different, like a feeling of something imminent approaching. At times it's got so bad that I have to purposefully not think about people! As you can imagine that is quite difficult to do, but thankfully I'm adept at both distraction and quieting my mind. When I was younger I used to attract a lot of weirdos and randos in the street. I would be minding my own business and they would come up to me and ask me for cigarettes, or money, or directions to some random place I've never heard of, or want to invade my space. My girlfriend at the time in fact used to get so annoyed by the whole thing that she would blame me for "looking at them and encouraging them" - my retort was to say to her "what the hell should I look at then?" lol. But I think it was more than that, there was some kind of vibe I was emanating that was being latched on to by others in need. In fact was I followed by someone like that into my workplace lobby once and security had to deal with them - obviously, I got blamed for that too, for "bringing them into the building", all I could think was WTF? Thank god those days have left me behind. People mostly leave me alone nowadays. Although I did have an odd experience on a train a few years back, which I've written about here already. Then there are the "bad feeling" vibes I get. One especially salient experience was leaving my car in London (where I don't live) to go on holiday. From the get-go I had a bad feeling about leaving the car there, but for the wrong reasons. The area I left my car in was a little rough and I was concerned it would be broken into or whatever, but I kept telling myself it would be ok. A week later I returned and it was absolutely fine. I needed to reverse out of the tight parking space to get out, and realised I might hit the car behind me and slammed on my brakes - at the point there was an almighty crunch and I thought I had in fact hit the car. No. But now I the car wouldn't move, I tried the ignition the engine was going, but the car was immobile. It turned out that transmission drive shaft - which is a big hunk of metal - had broken in two. Nice. The great question I cannot let go of is, is this shit real? I think it is. The greater question is can I control it and if so how? I have my theories and it's largely about being in a certain state of mind, attentive, but inattentive, focused but unfocused. It's certainly slippery to grab on to. Anyway, what was my latest synchronicity? I'd had an odd thought pop up about a YouTube channel I watch called Tokyo Lens. The guy there does a lot of stuff about the culture Japan and what it's like there - I like his energy - but he's not from Japan. At one point though he decided to learn to fly and was going through why it was such a difficult thing to do in Japan etc. That was years ago though and it kind of went cold. Earlier in the week I thought "I wonder what happened to this guy's flying aspirations?" At the same time a friend of mine said he'd lined up some sort of surprise for me, as a thank you for all the hours and days free work I'd given him working on his house etc. That was supposed to be Tuesday, then he said no make it Wednesday. I had no idea what it could be. Lo and behold Wednesday morning this Tokyo Lens guy drops a video about his flying lessons and explains that all those years ago there'd been some sort of accident possibly involving him and it was all on hiatus in Japan - he'd instead gone back to Canada to take up flying lessons again. That synchronicity made me laugh. Of course the other synchronicity was more ridiculous, my friend had got me this flying lesson the same day:

Almost exactly a year ago now I voluntarily gave up working. Working for other people has never gelled well with me. It got so bad at my previous job that even just talking to the boss would induce a fight or flight reaction, and I was losing sleep at night. It was a real shame in a lot of ways that I came to the decision to quit, the job was perfect in a lot of ways. The office was down the road a less than a ten-minute walk away, but ridiculously and amazingly I got to work from home four days out of five. And, I mostly knew what I was doing very proficiently. What spoiled the broth was me changing job positions within the company about a year before I quit. I had been doing work for a particular client (which I'm sure I've written about in this journal), but then that client decide to collapse (their company was sold up) and my job position was gone, my bosses since they ran another business moved me over to retain me. But in that move the whole complexion of the thing changed, most of the work I was to do would be directly for my boss and not for a client. Every relationship is different and this one didn't work out so well. In many jobs I've had many managers who basically treated me badly. Despite having obvious prodigious ability in coding there is something about my character that rubs people up the wrong way. I essentially know what that is: I'm my own person who doesn't tolerate bullshit, I have a lassez faire "mask" to my demeanour and don't do getting flustered or standing to attention. Some bossy people don't like those attributes. And so I get maltreated as a response. I'm reminded of a little competition we had once in one of my previous jobs where we were to design a spinning roulette wheel for a gambling game in HTML. I ended up being the only person to complete the thing in the allotted time - did the bosses award me the prize? No. So what have I been doing for a year? Not much. That "not much" has to be qualified however, I have been working consistently since 1996 and the last stretch of non-work I had was around 2001 for about 18 months when the dot.com bubble burst. A year of "not much" is nothing, in fact I want to get another year in if I can, and indefinite is my dream. A friend suggested a job opening at his place in London for mega-bucks with the possibility of working from home. I can't bring myself even to contemplate it, it's just more of the same and it fills me with dread. But that same friend and I were discussing little project that we had in mind to work on. He wants to create a paid or subscription service to get high-school maths questions posted every month for those parents out there. I had an idea for a phone app for hiking. ChatGPT has been instrumental in getting both these ideas off the ground, my main friction being I've never developed for Android or iOS. But I have a working app now, and have been wrangling with 60,000 UK place names and Welsh don't even talk to me about Welsh. But I hope to push something to the Play Store in the next month or two. If I could make a few thousand a month: an app a month say, then I could stay afloat indefinitely. Please god make my dream come true 🧎🙏

Hi. Good questions I'd say. To my simple analytical brain there's two strands to the answer: support and reflection. Firstly, stick to the people who support you, want the best for you, give you attention you need and generally want to "big you up" in every way, and then reflect that support back to them in the same way. Conversely avoid like the plague, the people that don't do those things and that generally drag you down. Secondly, notice the parts of yourself that appear or are reflected in the words, actions and traits of others. Nearly never in my experience do you find someone who perfectly reflects yourself, it's more of a pick and mix of attributes from different people - you need all those people to make a whole "you" reflected back. Sometimes it's even useful to see the crappy parts of yourself in others so you can become aware, but don't overdo that bit! Why would you want yourself reflected in others? Because that's your centre or home position or cozy spot. You can add flourish and garnish to it, whatever excites you. Where to find these people? No answer. I'm working on that myself.

I came across this YouTube and was reminded of my old post. Keanu and Sandra are so clueless. Nicole Kidman? I would actually die. We're just people doing people things.

It's worth contemplating what this means. Perhaps if every woman was (nearly) equally beautiful you'd still want the most beautiful ones. And maybe that is already the case?

Every cause is unique, every outcome unique. It's never the same dog yelp, it's never the same step on the dog. Causes are categories of things, which needs you to connect things into "sameness". Causation also needs separation, the process of stepping needs to be separated from the process of the dog yelping. Without sameness and without separation what do you have?

I've tried a few of them. Speed dating's fun if you're comfortable talking to lots of different types and you don't take it too seriously. It's good because you're all in the same situation which takes away the hard bit of working out if someone is "receptive". On the other hand five minutes per person is only really going to tell you if there's an attraction there not much else.

a. Forget IQ. b. You can't be someone else yet, accept it and love yourself. c. Given enough time and/or effort you will become someone else. d. Worry less about things you can't change. Put energy into the things you can change. e. You have a lot more power than you currently think. f. Creativity can be learned through practice, forget genes. g. Just keep doing your art, push through the frustration, never give up.

Maybe the insight is that complexity is not absolute, but depends on how you think about the object? You're right in saying that the arrangement of materials matters in terms of complexity. That's spatial complexity. In a machine the arrangement can change over time, so that's temporal complexity. For any machine what matters is its degrees of freedom or if it's a discrete system then the number of different states it can be in. A clockwork has effectively two degrees of freedom: the position of its minute hand, and its hour hand. You could argue that it has more degrees of freedom, because it can be moved and rotated in space: but that isn't inherent to its function, we "throw away" the complexity of its position and orientation in space, and "narrow down" to just two parameters, hours and minutes. Hours and minutes are artificial constructions and so don't necessarily have anything to do with day and night. But a clockwork does encapsulate the idea of "time", and that is quite an abstract, conscious idea. Does a pebble have more complexity than a clockwork? It will have spatial complexity of its elements, due to its formation history. It has no temporal complexity, because it pretty much doesn't change over time. Likewise, it has degrees of freedom of movement, so it makes for a more complex projectile than a tree. In some sense a clockwork is less complex than a pebble, because you don't use it as a projectile, and it has fewer degrees of freedom in its function. As I say it's all a matter of perspective.

Being on here is no different from a moth being attracted to a light bulb. I don't mean it as a put down, but rather that the nature of people is to be attracted to other people. Once you accept that, then any elaboration or over analysis becomes moot. The paradox is clear: And yet, here you are. The deeper point is that the mind and body are naturally attracted to a lot of things, human things. Notice them, accept them, and let them take their natural course.

I see you're going to be a tough nut to crack. Let me see now... Did you know a coconut is not a nut?

8.5749 milli-furlongs. Don't @ me I'm British.

I'll bite. Did you know scorpions are related to spiders?

Interesting question. I'm struck by the idea of self-assembly and copying. A shell, leaf and a brain assemble themselves from matter over time, they grow. A pebble or stone is ground down from bigger lumps. All leaves, shells and brains of a particular type are similar, stones are randomly sized and shaped. A clockwork doesn't assemble itself and is more like a stone. But it does get assembled by something that is self-assembled (a person), so you could call it an epiphenomenon of nature. Its complexity is way less than even a shell, although, you could also call a shell an epiphenomenon. But, there could potentially be many identical copies of a clockwork. A stone could have a complex mix of constituents, but the arrangement is not orderly. I'm guessing a clockwork is mostly brass or steel, possibly ruby for bearings, maybe gold for trim, and quartz for glass; maybe that's fewer ingredients than a stone or pebble?

What is reality? Imagine a block of cheese. Imagine something carves that cheese into different shapes. Reality is the cheese, the shapes, the carving strokes, the tool that carves, and the intelligence that decides where to carve.

You are, and I'm saying that your idea is too simplistic. You have intelligencies not intelligence, and everyone has a different mix. Forget IQ, it's wrong.

The thing is, intelligence is not just one thing on a sliding scale. It is multiple things. I could be intelligent at Chess but stupid at cooking. It's not even clear if skill equals intelligence, I could be skilful at tic-tac-toe but is that really intelligence? Is just having knowledge equal to intelligence, am I intelligent if I know all the capital cities? You are right though that most people probably overestimate their own abilities. But even saying that is problematic. I can measure my skill in Chess fairly easily, but how do I measure my skill in cooking: how do I know how much ability I have in something? You can only know by comparison and measurement, but life's too short to be measuring everything all the time. Most people don't know their own level in anything, you can't blame them.

No... sameness and difference are different. Great video BTW.

A "person" is just a label, as such you will always be more than any label can describe. Said differently, what you "are" is a bunch of labels: but that's just language. Names drift on water Reflecting the full moon

@trenton that's too negative. The issue is one of relativity, stupidity is completely relative (to you). The forum is full of stupid people yes, but also full of not stupid people, relative to you. However, if the wisdom or intelligence is too high, then it's hard to grasp and may even seem stupid. You're not on your own then, but you do have to seek out the intelligence that fits your own. But it's no different in real life, you can only accept and understand new things only from your current viewpoint.

@Samuel this is true to the extent that if you work it takes up a large amount of your waking hours. You'll spend 8 hours sleeping, 8 hours working, and the rest in doing whatever. So, if you can align your work to your values/purpose to increase LOC then it's win win, but mostly that doesn't happen. What does happen is that work pays the bills and that enables you to do what you want with the remaining time you have left. It's more indirect than you're stating. Nearly all jobs are to do with making money primarily, and that means persuading others to part with their cash.

The root cause of friction is a mismatch of worldviews. To break it down, what typically happens in this situation is: You reinforce your worldview with words or violence - they may do likewise Their arguments are persuasive and you change your worldview Your arguments are persuasive and they change their worldview You avoid each other That's politics in a nutshell. The hardest paths are 2 and 3. But nearly never will you change worldviews through reason alone. People hold on to worldviews primarily through upbringing, religion, identity, emotion. Basically, people's worldviews are not built through reason, but through experience. Breaking through that is a hard ask. Intelligence and education hardly comes into it.

A good way to start is to not underestimate your own stupidity. What I mean by that is that tomorrow, in a week, a month, a year, you'll look back and cringe at certain things you did and said and believed about yourself. Look inward first before you look outward, there is the greatest learning.

Some thinking out loud this morning. At different moments in your life you have different sets of thoughts that churn around. When I examine my thoughts they're kind of dreamlike in their character, you know the sort of thing, what would it be like if I was rich and living in mansion, what would it be like if I'd been born somewhere else, born as a different person, and so on. They're dreamlike because they occur but in themselves don't have much meaning or gain any traction: it's unlikely that I will ever live in a mansion. I see it more as curiosity, as mentally "trying on different clothes". One thing that I seem to have a deep affinity with is the outdoor life. I watch videos about people camping, I like nothing more than the beach on holiday, or sitting outdoors in a cafe, working with others in an outdoor project building stuff, hiking, road running. All this might stem from being outdoors nearly all the time as a kid, and especially in the hot dry climate of Andalusian Spain. To me it's play, exploration, freedom, cameraderie, expansiveness. And yet, somehow I'm nearly always indoors. I think subconsciously this fact bothers me, although I don't dwell much on these types of thought generally. I'm inside my head a lot, and this requires a certain amount of stillness and quietude, and being outdoors is the antithesis of that. This need for thinking slowly built up over a very long stretch of time, I was always a curious kid, and when I worked out that I could learn and solve things for myself I never looked back. My default state is "outdoor", "physical", "social", but there is a great weight of "indoor","mental","solitude" working in the opposite direction. I should probably be thankful for having such a balance in my character. But there is also the more subtle battle going on, outdoor is unstructured being, indoor is structured discipline. I've gone from playing "out there" to playing in my head, and I know that I've lost something of my true character along the way. Being an adult requires a fair amount of structure and discipline, and part of me strongly wants to have un-structure and openendedness, not to be tied to anything: freedom from obligation.