Entropy ā fear ā need ā action (i.e., negentropy) ā life meaning ā āhappinessā (Note: ā = gives rise to, begets, causes,) This bottom-up chain-of-causation applies to all living things. Undoubtedly, this chain is easily misunderstood because of the imprecise ways words are interpreted. The synonym-like parallel meanings below help improve understanding.
Continue reading…Wrapping up
Quantum Superposition as the Driver of Insight
The short article by Donald D. Hoffman from the Edge book, This Will Change Everything, has for the first time given me a tangible explanation for an insight I experienced that was triggered by my brotherās death in 1964. I suspect that the idea he raises points to something very real and experienced by everyone, […]
Continue reading…The New Science of Practical Wisdom
I was looking out the window this bright sunny morning watching all the birds dining at our bird feeder. They were busy going about doing their thing, which at the moment was eating sunflower seeds. Next, I thought of the role they serve in nature by eating seeds. Presumably, they deposit some of those seeds […]
Continue reading…Natureās Bell Curve
A bell curve is a type of normal probability distribution for a variable in nature. The top of the curve shows the mean and median of the data. Its standard deviation depicts the bell curve’s relative width around the mean. Undoubtedly, Iām using the bell curve distribution less rigorously than a professional would. But hey, […]
Continue reading…Facing Fear
In our youth, life is the movement toward goals and away from fears. With aging comes the winding down of this movement. The losses and failures that accrue through oneās life, in conjunction with the ever-increasing physical decline, awaken a natural āappreciationā of death. There is less ability to pursue goals, and even if there […]
Continue reading…Mirror Neurons
The extraordinary human capacity for empathy is a result of mirror neurons. Empathy, like any other emotion, greatly influences thought. This creates an interesting, perhaps unique, quandary for humans. On one hand, this empathy (+) thought imparts an ability in humans to feel a profound sense of connection to nature and the universe beyond the […]
Continue reading…Hunger and our ādiseaseā
Our need for the answer plays a core role in our disease. And the connection between food and this need for answers reveals why. For a hungry empty stomach, food is the āanswerā. For a curious empty mind, answers are the food it seeks. The promise of food, and by extension answers, attracts us like […]
Continue reading…A final word on our disease
Overall, ārealizing I donāt knowā is utterly true. Yet, making that blanket statement is self-contradictory I supposeā¦ a bit paradoxical. Within certain defined limitations, we can know what we know. The problem really arises from putting too much faith in what we think we know. Holding beliefs are like following false prophets, i.e., āAnd many […]
Continue reading…A final word on truthā¦ What is truth really?
Considered from a profound sameness point of view, truth must be singular. In other words, truth is not dipolar and thus rest in the stillness beyond words and names. To paraphrase chapter 1ās first two linesā¦ The [truth] possible to think, runs counter to the constant [truth]. The [truth] possible to express runs counter to […]
Continue reading…A final word on profound sameness
Throughout time, weāand perhaps all lifeāhave intuitively sensed a universal connection underlying the diversity of the world we experience. Granted, this sense of universal connection may actually originate in our innate empathy and egalitarian instincts. However, who is to say these instincts, in turn, donāt arise from a fundamental universal connectionāa unitary reality, for lack […]
Continue reading…A final word on Buddhaās First Noble Truth
I review Buddhaās Four Noble Truth every day during the headstand. Doing this daily reminds me of the pitfalls I need to be mindful ofā¦ and occasionally deeper insight strikes. This morning I was pondering his First Truth, āBirth is sorrowful, growth is sorrowful, illness is sorrowful, and death is sorrowful. Sad it is to […]
Continue reading…A final word on the correlation’s process
We often use language to āhave it both waysā. We unconsciously shift the meaning of particular words to the circumstances and emotions of our moment. This permits us to be comfortably, albeit unwittingly, self-dishonest and hypocritical. As chapter 18 suggests, When intelligence increases,Ā there exists great falseness. Diligently working out correlations forces oneās thoughts to be […]
Continue reading…A final word on consciousness
Our imagination attaches itself to the objects of awareness, of consciousness. We pay little regard to the light that illuminates the objects of which we are aware. Of course, this stands to reason. Worldly objects are always changing, and we are biologically set up to notice this novelty in our environment. The light, on the […]
Continue reading…A final word on civilization
As I detailed in The Tradeoff (p.549), our transition from a hunter-gatherer old way of life to civilization resulted in an exponential increase in our ability to have a powerful ruling effect on nature. As chapter 55 notes, The powerful ruling the old is called not of the way. That which is not of the […]
Continue reading…A final word on free will
Temporal difference (TD) learning is a large part of what really goes on under the hood even as we think we are making āfree choicesā. Technically speaking, this is a way of learning by bootstrapping from the current estimate of the benefit-cost value of circumstances in progress. This process samples the environment and carries out […]
Continue reading…A final word on expectations
The will to survive incorporates a kind of natural sense of expectation or anticipationā¦ a time-sensitive need. Although, a better word for this impulse may be survival ākeennessā. It drives all living things to go forth, to hunt and gather. In a sense, this causes sorrow for all living things. (See Buddhaās Truths Pertain To […]
Continue reading…A final word on need
I canāt end without a final word on need, the offspring of fear. Fear is the mover and shaker behind all lifeās doings. A solid understanding of this primal emotion will help make sense of the rest. If the previous A final word on fear section didnāt suffice, a few of these observations on fear […]
Continue reading…A final word on fear
Need stood out this morning as the driving force behind those birds, us, and every creature in between. If youāve read this book, you know fear and need are the fundamental principles underlying many of my observations. In the case of Homo sapiens, need + thought = desire and fear + thought = worry. Those […]
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