From Farnam Street to Quantum Computing

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash

This morning I was reading an essay on quantum computing when an idea appeared: write a blog post called “From Farnam Street to Quantum Computing.”

That’s the way it is with ideas. They just appear.

I sat down to write the post. And I realized it was a longer story with so much potential richness and detail that I might spend the next month getting it all down.

But I was smarter than that.

I created an outline. And then I wrote as little as I could about each item. And I peppered it with links to side roads for Future Me or any passing strangers to drive down.

The story starts with Sam Harris’ book: “Waking up.”

That leads to Sam’s Podcast, now called “Making Sense.”

That leads to this episode in which Sam talks about mental models with Shane Parrish.

Shane writes the Farnam Street Blog. FS Blog helps people “master the best of what other people have already figured out.”

I’ve read Farnam Street posts from time to time, but after Sam’s interview with Shane, I started giving it a serious read. I’ll write a post about Farnam Street after this one.

And I signed up for “Brain Food,” Farnam Street’s newsletter.

Brain Food 322 pointed me to “Leading Above the Line,” a podcast conversation with Jim Dethmer of the The Conscious Leadership Group. And holy shit, he says so many memorable things in that not-quite-two-hour interview that I’ve got to have the transcript. Which I can get, along with a whole lot of other stuff if I join the Farnam Street Learning Community. Which I did for a totally-worth-it $149.00.

The transcript is on this page but don’t read it unless you sign up. Or read it and then sign up. It’s worth it. It’s got such great stuff that I’m going to write another post about it as soon as I finish this one.

That podcast led me back to Farnam Street where I’ve been consuming page after page of content—because (as the site take pains to point out) you don’t remember that much from one reading. I’ll write about that later, too.

Not that I couldn’t have read the pages before. But I had a new sense of urgency. And supercharged it by listening to other podcasts in Farnam Street’s Knowledge Project series, in which Shane interviews brilliant people to find out what they do that makes them different. I’m about 9 episodes so far into 61 so far.

Then this morning’s Brain Food led me to this:

Why books don’t work — “Books are easy to take for granted. Not any specific book, I mean: the form of a book. Paper or pixels — it hardly matters. Words in lines on pages in chapters. And at least for non-fiction books, one implied assumption at the foundation: people absorb knowledge by reading sentences. This last idea so invisibly defines the medium that it’s hard not to take for granted, which is a shame because, as we’ll see, it’s quite mistaken.

Really? Books don’t work? I read that article. Which is so rich that I’m going to write another post about it as soon as I finish this one and the other one.

And that led me to Quantum Country, a new kind of book that happens to be about quantum computing, a subject about which I know a little, some of which I am sure is wrong. Quantum Country is so rich that I’m going to write another post about it as soon as I finish the other two.

Now let me get this out so I can write some of the others.

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Climate Science Addiction (Part N of M)

I’m a recovering Climate Science and Climate Policy junkie.

I’ve spent hours obsessively reading the science. Not the popular press—which always is trying to sell a story—but scientific papers and blogs written by scientists who are trying to educate rather than to advocate.

I’ve written some other posts on the topic. I’m not going to link to them. I’d only be feeding the addiction.

When Beyond Labels posted this week’s topic, my inner addict took over. I started reading to find out what’s happened since my last bender. Then I decided to try and control myself. And confine myself to summarizing a few key points.

Then I failed.

Monday came and went.

I tried again and failed again.

Now a much fatter version of this post has been sitting in my drafts, blocking the way to better things. Or at least other things.

Do I post it, incomplete and imperfect? Do I delete it? Do I invest more time in perfecting it?

The answer is: incomplete and imperfect.

Really incomplete and really imperfect.

The more incomplete and imperfect, the better.

Where to learn climate science

If you want to learn the science, the best single resource that I’ve found is “Science of Doom” (SoD)

From the About Page.

Opinions are often interesting and sometimes entertaining. But what do we learn from opinions? It’s more useful to understand the science behind the subject. What is this particular theory built on? How long has theory been “established”? What lines of evidence support this theory? What evidence would falsify this theory? What do opposing theories say?

SoD comes highly recommended by lots of people. If you’re a fan of the “we believe climate change is a pressing problem” blog “Skeptical Science” here’s their recommendation.

If you’re more inclined to believe that “the advocates have a point, but they are taking some things too far,” I recommend Climate Etc. by Climate Scientist Judith Curry, who initially pointed me to SoD

About the author (or SoD)

Who writes SoD?

The author does not identify himself on the site. There are references to his name (like the one in Skeptical Science), but I’ve seen no details about his credentials.

So what?

Why trust him?

My answer: read what he writes. His writing must speak for itself because there’s no appeal to his authority.

He documents his path through the literature in detail, and you can follow him—and agree or not—every step of the way.

The comments and discussion in the blog are well moderated, and most comment threads are by knowledgeable people—or at least people who want to become knowledgeable.

Opinions

At the end of 2018, after 9 years of explaining the science, he started writing a series called “Observations and perspectives.” They are worth reading to get a starting point, and perhaps detox from the advocacy press. They are well informed and balanced. If you don’t want to read the whole series (9.5 so far), read these two: contrarian myths and consensus myths.

And done

There’s a lot more in the draft. But short an imperfect gets this done.

And I’m not going to waste time finding an engaging picture.

Fuck it! Press Publish.

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Waking up and the illusion of the self

Robin Schreiner

Dana asked me some questions about The Waking Up Course. Daniel asked some questions about the practice. Their questions led me to clarify my understanding.

So I’ve written this for them. But really for me, because it’s too fucking long for anyone else to read.

Sorry, anyone else. It’s long. Really long. 2300 words long.

Summary

Humans are subject to illusions that affect our thinking, our choices, and our actions.

It takes skill to see through the illusions that can affect the choices we make.

Fewer illusions mean better choices. Better choices mean better lives.

The biggest illusion, so goes the theory, is the illusion of the conventional self.

We are not what we seem to be. We are not what we think we are.

Seeing through the illusion of self is a big deal.

Meditation can help you with that.

The theory of mindfulness meditation

People meditate hoping it will lead them to “a better life,” whatever that might mean to them.

The theory says that one reason that life isn’t as good as it can be—and sometimes even sucks—is that illusions often fool us. We make bad choices based on these illusions. The choices are “bad” because they lead to unnecessary suffering and sometimes misery—for ourselves or others.

The theory says that if we better understand what’s an illusion and what’s not, we’d make better choices and have better lives.

Seems reasonable, right?

How do we tell if an appearance is an illusion?

The theory says that if we observe something carefully enough, without being distracted by other things or being taken in by illusory characteristics and if we see it in its context we can discover that something is an illusion.

Yay.

The theory says that some illusions are very hard to see through.

We’re unlikely to see through the most compelling illusions unless we can control our attention so we can focus on them despite distractions and we can expand our awareness to understand them in fullest context.

How do we learn to control our attention and expand our awareness?

The theory says we can do that by doing exercises designed to help us improve attention and awareness.

But even that may not be enough.

The most difficult illusions will withstand careful, attentive scrutiny. We may look at them for a long time without seeing through them. But if someone calls our attention to a particular feature of an illusion, or explains how an illusion is created, we might see through it more quickly.

Mindfulness meditation practice also includes exercises that put our attention on common, tricky illusions. It also includes reading books or being guided by someone who can explain how some of those illusions work and how we can look in ways that have helped others reveal the illusion.

Without help, we’re unlikely to see some crucial illusions for what they are.

Like the illusion of the conventional self.

Consciousness

Mindfulness meditation practice is designed to increase the power of consciousness so we can see through illusions.

It’s also designed to help us understand consciousness itself.

So let’s start there.

Consciousness is the only thing we can be sure is not an illusion

I wrote previously

There’s exactly one thing that we know cannot be an illusion: one thing, and one thing only — consciousness. We can be fooled about everything else. We can see mirages, hear ringing in our ears, be tricked by magicians. We can take drugs that cause us to see things that violate all the laws of physics. But we can’t be tricked into believing we are conscious: to be tricked we must first be conscious. We can be tricked into believing we are not conscious, but we can’t be tricked into believing that we are.

I also wrote this.

You might have some ideas about what consciousness is and what it might mean. Some of those ideas might be illusions. But the bare fact of consciousness is the one thing that cannot be an illusion.

Understanding consciousness is the foundation of mindfulness practice.

Everything must appear in consciousness

To experience something, it must appear in consciousness.

There might be such a thing as an “unconscious mind,” and there are many events of which we might be unconscious. But we don’t experience anything unless it first appears in consciousness.

Right now, I’m sitting here and typing, and my computer is part of my conscious experience. I don’t put it there. It’s just there. No conscious experience, no computer.

I might have the conscious experience of a memory of a computer. But no conscious experience no memory.

We experience parts of “reality” (whatever that is) only when those parts appear in consciousness. We experience “thoughts” (whatever that might mean) only when those thoughts appear in consciousness.

So whatever else consciousness is, it is “the place” where everything that is experienced appears.

Anything that appears in consciousness could be an illusion.

We know that some of the things that appear in consciousness are illusions. But if we are going to build on a firm foundation, we need to consider that anything in consciousness could be an illusion. We could have been hypnotized or given some drug that causes us to experience reality differently.

Consciousness itself is not an illusion.

But anything that appears in consciousness could be.

So how can you tell what’s an illusion and what’s not? And how can you know what’s behind an illusion?

How to test for an illusion

If you examine something (in consciousness) and it transforms or even disappears, then what you first observed was an illusion.

That’s the first test—but not the only one—for determining whether something is an illusion. Look at it carefully. See if it changes. Examine the nature of the change.

If examining something cause it to change radically, then what you first looked at was an illusion. If it disappears when you examine it carefully, then what had been there was an illusion.

If it transforms, then what you now experience might still be an illusion. So you need to examine a transformed illusion carefully as well.

Seeing through an illusion lets you see what’s behind it and what might be causing it. That might be an illusion, too. So keep paying attention!

You won’t find some illusions

If something does not transform or disappear, it might still be an illusion.

Stage magicians, properly called “illusionists,” don’t do magic. They create illusions. The best illusions are difficult to see as illusions and unexpected—even seemingly impossible. If you can see how the woman gets out of the box before it (and she) is cut in half, it’s not much of an illusion. But if the escape appears to defy reason, it’s a good illusion.

David Copperfield), reportedly the most successful stage magician in history, famously made the Statue of Liberty disappear and reappear on live television before a live audience in 1984. No one can do that—so it must have been an illusion. But how?

Copperfield’s secret was ultimately revealed: when the statue was hidden by a curtain, the platform on which the audience was seated rotated undetectably. When the curtain dropped the statue was hidden behind a support. If you’d been there and knew how it was done, you might have looked carefully enough to see through the illusion.

But absent that knowledge, no one was able to tell.

The risk of believing illusions

We make choices so that reality will move in the direction we want. Our illusions may influence the choices we make, but reality determines what happens.

Some illusions reflect reality. Some might be hyper-real. But some are inconsistent with reality. If you choose and act based on an illusion that does not match reality, reality is unlikely to cooperate and give you the result that you want.

When you understand what’s an illusion and what’s not, you’re likely to make choices that will lead to better outcomes.

The reality we experience is an illusion

Reality may exist, but our experience of reality must be an illusion.

How could it be otherwise?

Our experience of a chair arrives when photons bounce off its surface into our eyes. Our lenses project an upside-down image on our retinal cells. Those cells fire and produce a cascading series of neural events that result in our perception of a chair.

Where’s the chair that we experience? It can’t be the chair that’s out there.

What we experience is the two-dimensional projection of the surface of the part of the chair that entered the eye, sliced and diced, disassembled and reassembled, abstracted and consolidated with knowledge of other such objects to produce a three-dimensional illusion complete with a set of “chairlike” expectations and attributes.

That’s what appears in consciousness: an illusion—based, possibly, on reality. But not necessarily.

The illusion of a chair might be based on hypnotic suggestion, or electrical stimulation of parts of the brain, or drugs.

No matter the cause, what appears in consciousness can only be some kind of illusion.

Useful illusions

The illusion of a chair that we are likely to experience probably matches reality. If so, it’s likely to be useful. It might lead us to the illusion of sitting an illusory body in the illusory chair and thus avoid the uncomfortable illusion of fatigue from the illusion of standing.

If an illusion is useful and matches reality it doesn’t change the fact that it is—and must be—an illusion.

We experience these illusions because they appear in consciousness—as does everything else that we experience.

The illusion of self

According to the meditative traditions, the “conventional self” is an illusion. And failing to understand the nature of the illusion is the root of bad choices and much suffering.

How can we discover whether it’s an illusion?

As with all things—by looking carefully—and by understanding a little about how the illusion is created.

When we are aware of an object across space, it seems as though there’s a location—behind our face, typically—from which we are aware. It seems that there’s a self in that location that controls our attention and from which awareness emanates.

That’s how it seems.

But that can’t be entirely correct. There might be an object out there in reality, but we know that the object that appears in consciousness is an illusion. The face we experience, behind which that self-thing seems to be, is another object in consciousness—and must be an illusion.

So is the self that seems located there is also an illusion? Perhaps there is a self, but if there is, then is what we experience an illusion of the “real self?”

How do you see through an illusion? Look closely. If it’s not there, it was an illusion.

The experiment

Pay close attention to the self that you experience. Direct your attention to wherever you think the self is located and examine what’s there.

To get a strong sense of self you might do this: Look across a space at an object, and get a clear idea of the subject-object relationship—-that you are different from the object, and you are looking at it across a space from some point, perhaps behind your face.

So the object is an object, and you are what’s looking at the object. Get a clear idea of the place from which you are looking at the object.

And then briefly—it should only be briefly—turn your attention to “what’s looking.” Turn your attention to the self that’s looking.

If the self is an illusion, you’ll find that there’s nothing there.

If you have the (momentary) experience that “what was looking” was not there when you looked, then you’ve broken through the illusion of self (momentarily).

The object you’re looking at is an appearance in consciousness. The space you’re looking across is an appearance in consciousness. What’s looking is also an appearance in consciousness.

So when you look for the “looker,” you may find that there’s nothing there.

That’s because it’s all just consciousness.

To do the exercise, you need to take a quick look. This isn’t an intellectual exercise. It’s just a glance.

What I experience

You might have a different experience. It’s not right or wrong. It’s probably closer to right than what you saw when you didn’t look closely.

Here’s what I experience when I glance inward toward where I think my self is located.

Nothing.

I find nothing.

I always find nothing.

There’s no self there.

There’s no self to find.

For an instant, when I look inward for the self, I find myself looking outward.

And in the next instant, I start thinking to myself about what I’ve just experienced. I tell myself that the self has gone and I’m looking at the universe. I ask myself questions about what just happened. The illusion of the self reappears, of course. I can’t talk to myself without a self to talk to (and one that’s talking.) But if I glance again, it disappears again.

If the self the illusion?

Or is the absence of the self the illusion?

Or are they both illusions?

So what?

If something surprising happens when you do the experiment—if you see the self as an illusion, it has important implications, but the consequences may not be obvious. They weren’t to me. I saw the illusion, and I didn’t realize the implications. Until I thought about it while writing this.

If the self is an illusion, what about all the shit that’s connected to the self? What about fears? What about frustrations? What about cravings? Seems like they would be illusions, too. If we saw that they were illusions, seems like they’d be easier to deal with.

Surprisingly, embarrassingly, I knew this and forgot it. I wrote about it.
here.

WTAF! How could I have forgotten that?

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Credit Simon Migag

Why Meditate? Redux

Again, the question is asked. Why meditate?

This question (abbreviated) popped up in the channel where some of us discuss such things.

It seems like you don’t get any benefits for normal life until [The Mind Illuminated level] 7+

If meditating doesn’t enhance the other 15 hours of your life (8 for sleep and 1 for meditation) - I don’t know why anyone would do it.

You can learn detachment without losing 6.25% of your conscious life.

I responded, but my response was reflexive, mindless, automatic.

It was a pretty good response, because AutoMike, who delivers reflexive, mindless, automatic shit-on-demand is good.

But there are better responses.

How do I know? Because I fucking wrote better ones. Several times.

I wrote this one: Because I keep forgetting. And I wrote this one: Why meditate? Oh, yeah, before that I wrote this one: Intention lost, intention regained? And I also wrote this one: An intentional meditation on intention and meditation,

So you could read them, and you’d have a better understanding. But it’s a lot of words. And some are not relevant. And you might be too fucking busy.

So let me try to boil things down for my future selves (who, like me, will probably forget the shit that I’ve already learned.)

Meditation results depend on intention

First: meditation is mainly a good use of time or mainly a fucking waste of time depending on the intention you bring to the practice. It depends on you.

I wrote about that in this post: Intention lost, intention regained. It’s not too late to read it. Or you can keep reading this abbreviated version.

If your intention is just to rack up another notch on your meditation streak belt, then it’s mainly a fucking waste of time.

And sadly, too often that’s all l bring to my practice.

Not to say I don’t get something out of it. I did say “mainly a fucking waste of time” not “totally a fucking waste of time.” But it could be a way better use of time if I was just a little—well, mindful about my mindfulness practice.

And I haven’t been. Or haven’t been as much as I could be.

If you intend to get to level 7+ so you can get some value from the practice, then you’re likely not to get much value until you get there.

But you can have other, more immediate intentions.

The waking up intention

Here’s an intention you might want to bring to your meditation practice, Future Me—and anyone else who gives a shit.

You might intend to wake up and spend more time awake.

Some time ago a Past Me woke up and realized, for the first time: “Fuck! I’ve been asleep!”

Every time after that when another Past Me has woken up, he’s realized pretty much the same thing: “Fuck! I’ve been asleep. Again!”

I spend most of my time on automatic, in a dream. I have little rituals designed to help me wake up. But they’re dream-rituals, and they’re easy to do on automatic, too.

It’s like being deep in a dream and the alarm clock rings. I hit snooze and don’t really wake up.

And because everyone I know is also in their own dream, and we’re all pretending we’re all awake, there’s a lot of agreement.

Yay! We’re awake.

But maybe we’re not.

There’s the reflexive, mindless, automatic reminder to wake up and the reflexive, mindless, automatic response to someone’s reminder.

And then there’s actually waking up. Hearing the sounds around you. Did you do that, Future Me? Being aware of your mood. How about that, Future Me? Thinking lovingly about another person (which means being aware of someone’s existence beside your own.) Did you do that, Future Me?

There’s the easy and instantaneous experience of waking up (“I’m awake. Yay! Now back to sleep.”) and the more difficult and intentional experience of being awake for more than that instant of realization.

So my intention in mediation is to wake up. And to be better at waking up and staying awake.

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Photo: Davide Cantelli

Paradise forgotten, paradise remembered

I ended May with a flurry of writing activity: seven posts in this blog in five days. And several posts in others, too. That’s the way that I want things to be.

Then I became obsessed with making the next round of improvements to my vastly improved writing practice. What could go wrong?

I just said it. I became obsessed. I completely forgot the last significant insight I’d had: the one I wrote about in Jocko Wilnick’s three principles for success.

Discipline.

I forgot about discipline.

Now I remember.

And I remember some of the other things that I had learned and wrote about that week—but only because Past Me wrote about them. Thank you Past Me! If I had to remember them on my own, I don’t believe I could have.

So, Future Me, here’s what I aspire to help you become: disciplined.

I could probably acquire a new habit reasonably quickly if I already had discipline.

But I don’t.

But how do I bootstrap discipline?

I have an idea, and I’ll update this post and link to a new one about it if it works.

No link? No discipline.

Yet.

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