Quickthink

Errol Morris winds up his 5 part series on anosognosia with some reflections on the human condition. It is a bit on the pessimistic side, suggesting that we are all “incarcerated in a prison of cluelessness”. But it could be worse. We could be wallowing in self-deception, or just in plain denial of facts staring us in the face. Morris winds up with an interesting parable:

When God created man (and woman), he gave them the ability to perceive the world, but withheld from them the ability to understand it.

But is it so bad?

One might easily foresee that this would lead to unending, unmitigated frustration and suffering.  But here’s where self-deception, anosognosia and the Dunning-Kruger Effect step in.  We wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything, but we would never be aware of that fact.

Hmmm … not sure what to think here. Here is the link.

It was one of those beautiful days here in Tartu with a warm sun and cool breeze. We might ring in the evening with a fun quote to get you thinking:

In his book Infinity and the Mind, mathematician and author Rudy Rucker relates a telephone interview with Kurt Godel, the author of the famous theorem that bears his name, and who is widely regarded as the greatest logician of the 20th century. Rucker had been puzzling over the nature of consciousness and whether machines can think. He asked Godel if he believed whether “there is a single Mind behind all the various appearances and activities of the world.” He reports, “[Godel] replied that, yes, the Mind exists independently of its individual properties.” Rucker then asked if he believed that the Mind is everywhere, as opposed to its being localized in the brains of people. Godel replied, “Of course.”

Here is the link to Dr. Dossey’s rather odd article where he reflects on the existence of a universal consciousness.

From Inc.Com, founder of 37 signals Jason Fried starts off his article this way

I think of myself as wildly ambitious and unapologetically lazy.

I love it. Here is the link to the article

From Good Magazine

(The food) industry that buys close to 21 million pounds of MSG each year

Hmmm … that’s a lot of MSG. Which , by the way, may not be as dangerous as some say - Read on : http://www.good.is/post/don-t-be-scared-of-msg/#ixzz0iveeGVI1

Just for fun on a snowy Friday

Alarming Image from Environmental Graffiti

‘Of all the bad things that could happen on a Monday morning, mass extinction would no doubt be up there as one of the worst. You know the scene.  At the White House weekly round up meeting,  the mad scientist (who actually isn’t so mad after all) makes the offhand comment. “We could try a massive intervention to alter the sub-oceanic ecology.  After all — (and here it comes) — it would probably not be as bad as a mass extinction event.”

A hush fell over the room. Except for George who had gulped his coffee too fast. After a medium sized belch, he muttered that he had to go to the toilet. Fast.  The shock of the idea of mass extinction gets you thinking. All of the good times that may not be. Hmmm …

Back to reality — The good news is that the above is just another piece of QT schlock fiction writing. The bad news is that I pulled the phrase out of a Fast Company non-fiction article. Here is the link. In fact, this is the second article that I have read that refers to surprising levels of methane found around the Arctic Sea  region near Siberia that appear to be coming from melting stuff from down below. And no, I can’t be more specific than “stuff”. Read the article if you want more detail. The point — This is potentially very bad news on the global climate change front. Let’s hope that it is not as serious … as it could be.

That got me thinking about the phrase “mass extinction events”. Have these actually happened? There was that meteor that killed the dinos. But was that it? I did a Google search, and found out … gulp … that these tend to happen from time to time (ever 200 hundred  million years or so). Telantour Travel the World lists 10 ways this could happen again.

Hmmmm …. do I have time to finish my coffee? Or, as the hapless bartender asked just before the end of the world in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Would it help if I put a paper bag over my head?”

Just how do insects survive the cold winters? I hadn’t given it much thought. And in fact I assumed (and even hoped) that they did not. But according this article by Sean B. Carroll, some use antifreeze. Naturally produced antifreeze, but antifreeze nonetheless. Here is a link to the article. It ends this way

A long-standing challenge in human organ preservation has been precisely the problem that these insects have solved — how tissues can be frozen for a long time and then thawed out successfully. Research teams are now exploring how to apply insights from the animal world to the operating room.

Or they could go to my freezer, where some tissues have been frozen for a millennium.

From Seth Godin’s blog about the value of promoting curiosity

 … without “why?” there can be no, “here’s how to make it better.”

He has a good point I think.

I really like the focus that Havi Brooks gives to the idea of  “getting stuck” and “getting unstuck”. Havi helps people get unstuck. One of her tools is to reduce the trauma that we feel from ideas that are too big. Too abstract. Too coercive. Too scary. So she offers us new words that help us open the door and move on. In this interview with Sarah Bray, (among other things) she talks about about who invented the word patsafarianism:

Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for Pastafarianism. That’s from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster . But I did invent biggification and stucknesses. And while goofy words are not the secret to un-sticking things, they do kind of take the piss out of the process, which I think is useful.

For those of you who might to learn about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, here is a link. So … turning to the more buttoned down set, ”what kind of vocabulary do institutions needs to “take the piss out of the process” and get unstuck?” Hmmm …. Tom Peters tries, but dmeanding ”excellence” just doesn’t take enough of “the piss out of the process” if you ask me.

Advertisement: Some Clues to Leading the Good Life May be Hidden Here

Sir John Mortimer was a much more interesting person than his great character, Rumpole of the Bailey — especially with respect to living the good life. Why? Rumpole is an amusing, but misanthropic drunk. Mortimer was an amusing bon vivant … who liked a nice glass of champagne in the morning (and could afford it).

I am reading Mortimer’s collection of (very short) essays called ”Where There’s a Will” where he reflects on aspects of the good life. One essay is about Shakespeare (with a dash of Montaigne thrown in at the end). This quote caught my eye

Shakespeare, like Richard II, talked of wills, and famously left his second-best bed to his wife. He left no advice, however, rightly believing that it’s a dramatist’s business to ask questions and not provide answers.

“But”, you might protest, ”Shakespeare’s characters answer many questions”. Yes, they do. But these are not necessarily the thoughts of Shakespeare, the man.

This led Mortimer to ponder which characters Shakespeare (the man) probably loved best. Which ones spoke for him? Mortimer’s answer - the clear sighted common folk whose fate it is to tolerate the bombast and ultimate tragedy of the great and mighty. Characters like Kent from King Leer, Horatio from Hamlet, and Iago’s wife Emilia in Othello. In Shakespeare’s world, and perhaps today, one wonders whether the great and the wise hail from different clans altogether. Mortimer takes this line of thought one step further

Perhaps our problem today is that we have too many Hamlets and not enough Horatios

It is an alarming thought — millions of self-absorbed Hamlets and Hamlet “wanna bes” all reciting approximately the same lines about tragedy, impotence and paradox, and torturing the women folk with obscure riddles, but in the end not sure if they exist separately or as part of some sort of bad dream. All in the name of very deeply felt past injustice perpetrated by evil members of an older generation who are beyond punishment, but not revenge. In this way, we grope for the stage when we have only general admission tickets in hand.

From my experience, it is rather difficult to resist the clarion call to imagined greatness. And so, as young boys we dream of leading the charge up the hill. As adults, however, some come to realize that it is important also that those who are wiser than us would follow.

FOLLOW - For those who are curious about Mortimer, and would like to understand him a bit better, here is another quote from his book. This one is from an essay called “Inventions and the Decline of Language”

It is important to remember that all these ingenious ways of sending messages have no importance in themselves. The “medium is the message” is one of the world’s silliest remarks. The message is the message, and it doesn’t matter whether you send it by e-mail, a note in a bottle or on a picture postcard.

Entertaining, n’est ce pas?

Eric Asimov has written a very nice profile of some fine wines from Rioja. I have added this to my Food and Wine Buzz list for those who are into lists. This quote from Maria José López de Heredia caught my eye

New technology is fine, but you can”t forget the logic of history

In this technology mad era, we might keep this in mind.

FOLLOW - Perhaps we might also need to focus on the logic of relationships. Consider this post by high tech wizards who are re-discovering the value of looking at people during meetings.

2d FOLLOW - I am surprised, but it seems that learning how to use paper and pencil is a hot topic. Seth Godin weighs in on this theme as well. He writes

The act of writing is a verb, it’s the process of putting it on the page that underlines what you’ve said, that highlights the moment. You’re also creating a record of what you said, which emphasizes that you’re not a weasel.

What Seth is talking about is using writing as an anchoring technique. This is not a new idea.