Preliminary: post-once-per-day ended up being a fairly bad idea, since I don't actually have content for more than one post a week.
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In On Ideas and The Fallacy of Reason I talked about how important dialog is. We are limited by ourselves and the only way to break that limit is to try stepping outside. The key to that lies in social interaction, which lets us see both the world and ourselves from another perspective. In False Promises I said that my ability to change is limited by who I am. How do I break past that?
I've always thought it's important to study topics outside your professional field, and even outside your interests. That's a way of opening new modes of thought. One thing that's hit me recently is the importance of interchangeability in thinking. A teacher I greatly admire once said that you could think of skills as a form of knowledge- the knowledge-how instead of the knowledge-of. The inverse of this is we can see knowledge as a form of skill- the ability to aggregate and process information. The skill of operating on what you know to figure out what you don't.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that other mental constructs are also interchangeable. Of course, the two I'm most interested in are worldviews and improvements. Let's say they are the same thing. Improvement is the act of moving into new worldviews that better suit you. For example, patience is simply the realization that waiting is good. On the flip side, worldviews reflect your state of being, and changing worldviews requires a change in state.
Okay, let's assume we can establish isomorphism. Cool trick. Now what? Well, We have this incredibly powerful tool for modifying worldviews. It or a modification of it should be equally powerful for fueling growth. Not only that, but it'd also be the most powerful tool, just like it is for beliefs. There can be other methods, but they'd pale in comparison.
If improvement is primarily triggered by external events, then we cannot
barrel into it with sheer willpower. But just because an event is
external does not mean it is random. Any force outside you can cause it. So if there was a way of making external events cause it, that would be the most powerful tool for growth.
So improvement <-> worldviews, external events <-> talkin' with people. What I'm trying to say here is that we need our friends to help us grow.
The idea of having friends contribute to your changes has been bouncing around my head for a long time, and I think it's a pretty trivial idea. The new bit is that I'm starting to think that it's not just helpful, it's required. Nothing else in your arsenal can match the power of the social network. And if properly harnessed, the network can cause profound levels of development. At will.
Okay, maybe not at will. But much more often than you'd get if you didn't tap it.
The term 'dynamic' springs to mind. Whenever I think about this, it just feels right. The social network is the frame on which we build dynamics, connections designed to cause growth. It isn't dependent of other connections. We can have friendships without the dynamic, and dynamics without friendship. Even so, I imagine that maintaining a strong dynamic without friendship would be incredibly difficult.
This provides a huge launching point. We can beat stagnation and inaction through proper use of the dynamic. Unfortunately, just the outline is there. There's a topic in mathematics called Generalized Abstract Nonsense, which is the art of using objects in proofs without knowing their properties. I'm arguing that dynamics are essential to growth. Hooray. This doesn't tell us how to use them, or even what makes them so much more powerful than anything else. In order to properly harness dynamics we'd probably have to work out those bits.
Even so, I'm confident about this. Even if the interchangeability breaks down, the worst it could do is refute the idea that dynamics are the most powerful tool. I don't think you'd have any trouble establishing their usefulness without using mathemagics.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
On Ideas
Missed two days of the groove, and I think the post I did last Friday on The Other Blog doesn't really count. I feel like I should punish myself somehow. Or I could stop being a baby about this and get back on the run. Let's do the latter!
If there's one thing I'm paranoid about this blog, it's coming across as an arrogant jerk. If there's a second thing (and there is), it's saying inane things. I want(ed) this blog to be a way of codifying and tempering my ideas on change, not a way of parroting pointless platitudes. Yes, it might be important to think outside the box. Everybody knows this. If I wanted to talk about using lateral thinking as a means of empowerment, I'd need to try to find something new and interesting to say about it. Otherwise I could replaced by a monkey copying over random pages from "Six easy steps to a better you" and nobody would notice a thing.
On the other hand, thinking of new and innovative things to say is hard. The good ones are already taken. The bad ones are also already taken. Trying to come up with a new things to say is a brutally difficult skill to develop. I dearly hope that someday I'll be good enough to come up with innovative ideas whenever I need to. Sort of a pipe dream. Until then, I have to hope that I can force whatever ideas I do have into something remotely interesting. That's another important skill to have, but it comes a little easier than the first one.
Or I could think outside the box!!!
My two mosts successful posts were The Fallacy of Reason and On Elitism. Other posts of mine got more hits, but those were the ones that got the most responses. They were the ones that sparked the most interesting discussions. They were also the two pieces that I wrote in response to other people. In both cases somebody said something that horrified me and I vomited a stream of words to get the taste out of my brain. I dunno if this is dependent on hating the other person's position. Maybe it's really just the feeling that my ideas are directly relevant to a person (despite neither person reading this blog). But maybe it's because I think faster when I feel threatened. Having good ideas is a way of fighting back (despite neither person reading this blog).
I think it also has to some extent be personal. The discussion has to involve you, or the attack must threaten you. The only revelation I had from Atlas Shrugged was "Rand is a blithering idiot". But throw an individual into the mix and it gets more fun. The person is addressing you, and you have a responsibility to respond.
I'm already seeing this as incredibly inane. "Talk to people!" Yeah, that's new. The extra tacked on bit is "Talk to people you vehemently disagree with!" I think as long as you can enter a discussion knowing "I will vehemently disagree with them and probably feel threatened" it should be okay.
If there's one thing I'm paranoid about this blog, it's coming across as an arrogant jerk. If there's a second thing (and there is), it's saying inane things. I want(ed) this blog to be a way of codifying and tempering my ideas on change, not a way of parroting pointless platitudes. Yes, it might be important to think outside the box. Everybody knows this. If I wanted to talk about using lateral thinking as a means of empowerment, I'd need to try to find something new and interesting to say about it. Otherwise I could replaced by a monkey copying over random pages from "Six easy steps to a better you" and nobody would notice a thing.
On the other hand, thinking of new and innovative things to say is hard. The good ones are already taken. The bad ones are also already taken. Trying to come up with a new things to say is a brutally difficult skill to develop. I dearly hope that someday I'll be good enough to come up with innovative ideas whenever I need to. Sort of a pipe dream. Until then, I have to hope that I can force whatever ideas I do have into something remotely interesting. That's another important skill to have, but it comes a little easier than the first one.
Or I could think outside the box!!!
My two mosts successful posts were The Fallacy of Reason and On Elitism. Other posts of mine got more hits, but those were the ones that got the most responses. They were the ones that sparked the most interesting discussions. They were also the two pieces that I wrote in response to other people. In both cases somebody said something that horrified me and I vomited a stream of words to get the taste out of my brain. I dunno if this is dependent on hating the other person's position. Maybe it's really just the feeling that my ideas are directly relevant to a person (despite neither person reading this blog). But maybe it's because I think faster when I feel threatened. Having good ideas is a way of fighting back (despite neither person reading this blog).
I think it also has to some extent be personal. The discussion has to involve you, or the attack must threaten you. The only revelation I had from Atlas Shrugged was "Rand is a blithering idiot". But throw an individual into the mix and it gets more fun. The person is addressing you, and you have a responsibility to respond.
I'm already seeing this as incredibly inane. "Talk to people!" Yeah, that's new. The extra tacked on bit is "Talk to people you vehemently disagree with!" I think as long as you can enter a discussion knowing "I will vehemently disagree with them and probably feel threatened" it should be okay.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
The Fallacy of Reason
Last night I had an argument with a friend about a thing. Since this was online I will probably be having this argument with them tomorrow too. Over the course of this argument I brought up something from my personal life. Her response was (paraphrased) "I want to talk about arguments, not personal feelings."
On the surface this seems reasonable. We are always told that anecdotes have no place in evidence. If a study shows that punching chickens does not cure cancer and I tell about how aunt Martha punched a chicken and cured her leukemia, I'm being a terrible debater. I think this has been taken too far, though. Anecdotes have been entirely shut out in favor of "reason". But are these enriched by the lack of experience? I'd say no. It's the opposite.
As much as we hate to admit it, reason is a subjective thing. We find evidence to suit beliefs, not the other way around. We put too much power on our invisible assumptions, and too little on what we profess we believe. Let me take an obvious example:
"The presidency requires being always available and able to give your all. Women can have children and need maternity leave. So women should not be president."
Sounds silly, right? Replace 'president' with leader and you get something from Rousseau. He was a hell of a lot smarter than I was and way better at using his reason. So why does he say something so stupid? He's operating under the prevailing assumption of the time that men > women. His argument perfectly fits in with his beliefs so he does not try at all to examine it for flaws.
Are we any better? Our 'reason' is built on axioms, and those axioms didn't come from the brain wizards. It's shaped by your world. Where you grew up. The people you talk to. What you want to believe. It's why every 14 year old can so obviously see how everything works and you just don't get it. His world is so limited that nothing challenges his core beliefs. He may use great reason, but that's like building your house out of the best cardboard around. It's still made of cardboard. Everybody's been there. I have. So have you.
It's only we grow a little older and actually get some experience in the world that we stop thinking we know all of the answers. The experience is what should shake our core beliefs. Think communism will make everything just peachy? You see how people backstab each other if we can get away from it. Or maybe Objectivism is the One True Path! Oh wait, the poor people are poor because they're in terrible nightmares, not because they're lazy bums. Religious people are deluded sheeple! If you can get through this university and still believe that, then I applaud your willful ignorance.
That's why I bring up personal experience. I can't make you live my life. I can't force you to grow up in a very religious community, or struggle with mental illness, or have to learn humor like a new language. But by god I can let you know what it's like. It's a tiny glimpse into a different world, and maybe, just maybe, you'll see that your core beliefs aren't the unshakable tenets of reality. Just as mine aren't. No one's is. But if we think that trying to understand each other's personal experiences is an affront to some nebulous 'reason', we're not going to get anywhere. We'll just logic ourselves in our tiny bubbles and pretend that if people don't agree with us they're not being 'intellectual'. That's as far from reason as you can possibly get.
On the surface this seems reasonable. We are always told that anecdotes have no place in evidence. If a study shows that punching chickens does not cure cancer and I tell about how aunt Martha punched a chicken and cured her leukemia, I'm being a terrible debater. I think this has been taken too far, though. Anecdotes have been entirely shut out in favor of "reason". But are these enriched by the lack of experience? I'd say no. It's the opposite.
As much as we hate to admit it, reason is a subjective thing. We find evidence to suit beliefs, not the other way around. We put too much power on our invisible assumptions, and too little on what we profess we believe. Let me take an obvious example:
"The presidency requires being always available and able to give your all. Women can have children and need maternity leave. So women should not be president."
Sounds silly, right? Replace 'president' with leader and you get something from Rousseau. He was a hell of a lot smarter than I was and way better at using his reason. So why does he say something so stupid? He's operating under the prevailing assumption of the time that men > women. His argument perfectly fits in with his beliefs so he does not try at all to examine it for flaws.
Are we any better? Our 'reason' is built on axioms, and those axioms didn't come from the brain wizards. It's shaped by your world. Where you grew up. The people you talk to. What you want to believe. It's why every 14 year old can so obviously see how everything works and you just don't get it. His world is so limited that nothing challenges his core beliefs. He may use great reason, but that's like building your house out of the best cardboard around. It's still made of cardboard. Everybody's been there. I have. So have you.
It's only we grow a little older and actually get some experience in the world that we stop thinking we know all of the answers. The experience is what should shake our core beliefs. Think communism will make everything just peachy? You see how people backstab each other if we can get away from it. Or maybe Objectivism is the One True Path! Oh wait, the poor people are poor because they're in terrible nightmares, not because they're lazy bums. Religious people are deluded sheeple! If you can get through this university and still believe that, then I applaud your willful ignorance.
That's why I bring up personal experience. I can't make you live my life. I can't force you to grow up in a very religious community, or struggle with mental illness, or have to learn humor like a new language. But by god I can let you know what it's like. It's a tiny glimpse into a different world, and maybe, just maybe, you'll see that your core beliefs aren't the unshakable tenets of reality. Just as mine aren't. No one's is. But if we think that trying to understand each other's personal experiences is an affront to some nebulous 'reason', we're not going to get anywhere. We'll just logic ourselves in our tiny bubbles and pretend that if people don't agree with us they're not being 'intellectual'. That's as far from reason as you can possibly get.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Internal and External Changes
I've noticed a strange pattern with this blog. The majority of my posts are about improving my ability to do something. Sleep better, keep on projects, maintain momentum, etc. In my head, though, these aren't 'real' improvements. To me, improvements change the state of who I am. Improved me is more patient, more controlled, more able to stand up for himself, etc. But that isn't what I'm working towards. I'm working towards the external changes.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. External changes are just as important as the internal ones if you want to get anywhere. But to leave the internal changes off entirely? No. Terrible idea.
The problem is it's easier to make external changes than internal ones. If I want to be better at balancing my budgets, all I need to do is set up a system and stick with it. If I want to be braver... how the hell do I do that? Changes in personality come from challenges. That isn't something you start at will.
But it's still vital to do them. It's just a matter of figuring out how.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. External changes are just as important as the internal ones if you want to get anywhere. But to leave the internal changes off entirely? No. Terrible idea.
The problem is it's easier to make external changes than internal ones. If I want to be better at balancing my budgets, all I need to do is set up a system and stick with it. If I want to be braver... how the hell do I do that? Changes in personality come from challenges. That isn't something you start at will.
But it's still vital to do them. It's just a matter of figuring out how.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
The Problem with Weekly Tasks
There are a couple of things I want to do at least once a week. There are a couple of things other people want to do once a week. We all never do them. Goals I plan once a day are fine. But if it's less than that, even if it's a less demanding responsibility, it never happens. I think the problem lies in the amount of leeway I'm giving myself. If I can do something any day, and I don't feel like doing it today, I'll say "eh, tomorrow". And then tomorrow I'll say "eh, tomorrow" again. Repeat as necessary. When the week is past I've sort of forgotten when the deadline was, and even if I remember think it can be fuzzy (since I'm already up against the well). Then it becomes "eh, I'll do it next week for sure" and the process repeats.
This isn't a problem if I do something every day, because then I, well, have to do it every day. This makes the solution set simple:
A) Make things happen daily. I have to update the blog every day, for example.
B) Make things happen on specific days. I have to update the blog every Wednesday. I can update before then, but I still have to update on Wednesday.
C) Build a dynamic. Yes, I know this is the obvious solution. Still.
I'm gonna try A for a bit, although I'm adding the caveat I can also update The Other Blog.
This isn't a problem if I do something every day, because then I, well, have to do it every day. This makes the solution set simple:
A) Make things happen daily. I have to update the blog every day, for example.
B) Make things happen on specific days. I have to update the blog every Wednesday. I can update before then, but I still have to update on Wednesday.
C) Build a dynamic. Yes, I know this is the obvious solution. Still.
I'm gonna try A for a bit, although I'm adding the caveat I can also update The Other Blog.
Monday, April 23, 2012
False Promises
Last night I reread this entire blog, noting the projects I said I started. Millennium Goals. The Workbank. A more rigorous sleep schedule. Wordsmashing on the other blog. All of them gone, abandoned a couple of weeks after they started. I think I heard this problem on the edge of my vision. More recently I've begun projects but not talked about them, because I was afraid of publicizing a thing that was bound to fail. I promised I would update this blog at least once a week. My last post was almost a month ago. I don't keep my promises.
I've thought back to all my previous, long dead ideas. The Lightbulb Project. Dinner with Strangers. Foodmapping. Who knows how many writing projects. Exercise. None of these are part of my life anymore. I still find some of them exciting or important. That doesn't matter. It seems that if something has to last more than a couple of days or so, I abandon it. If I had to point to my biggest flaw, it's probably this. I can't keep interested in things. Even when I know the rewards far outway the costs.
This is as close as you can get to stasis. How am I supposed to change when I can't stay changed for even a week? True change is supposed to affect the rest of your life. I can't cause it. It just happens to me. I'm standing still and don't know how to move.
I've tried a hundred different tricks to keep motivated. They work for a bit but I drop them too. The problem feeds into it itself. It is unsolvable because I need it solved to solve it. Catch-22.
Of course it's not truly unsolvable. It's just that at this time in this place my methods of fighting it have miserably failed. Maybe I need new methods. Maybe I'm thinking about it in the entirely wrong way. Maybe I can't beat it on my own and need outside help to deal. Maybe it really is unfixable. Refusing to think that as it's unproductive.
I think the problem boils down to the following: it's not about keeping motivated in a particular project, it's becoming a type of person who can stay motivated in general. Right now I think my problem has little to do with losing interest and much more to do with losing steam. Thing is, I have no idea how to change that. There's gotta be some way to throw yourself off center such that for a drop of time the rules don't apply to a small part of you. That's the window.
I started this blog to make my projects public so I could be held accountable if they failed. That didn't work. I think it quickly morphed from "here's what to harass me about" to "lookit me im improving!" and "listen to my opiiiniiiiiiooooonnnnnns". Someone rightfully pointed out that to some extent I was more interested in appearing to change than actually changing. "The guy obsessed with self improvement." Well, I have to recognize that this is true. I also have to recognize that some of my problems are the type which I can't deal with privately. Between contributing to a public image I hate and not getting this problem into the open, I should choose the former. Better be seen as arrogant and be dynamic than be seen as normal and be static.
So yeah. Proposed problem: how do I change from being a person who can't keep motivated on {arbitrary issue} to one who can? And how do I ensure that I actually follow through on this? I want to hear your thoughts.
I've thought back to all my previous, long dead ideas. The Lightbulb Project. Dinner with Strangers. Foodmapping. Who knows how many writing projects. Exercise. None of these are part of my life anymore. I still find some of them exciting or important. That doesn't matter. It seems that if something has to last more than a couple of days or so, I abandon it. If I had to point to my biggest flaw, it's probably this. I can't keep interested in things. Even when I know the rewards far outway the costs.
This is as close as you can get to stasis. How am I supposed to change when I can't stay changed for even a week? True change is supposed to affect the rest of your life. I can't cause it. It just happens to me. I'm standing still and don't know how to move.
I've tried a hundred different tricks to keep motivated. They work for a bit but I drop them too. The problem feeds into it itself. It is unsolvable because I need it solved to solve it. Catch-22.
Of course it's not truly unsolvable. It's just that at this time in this place my methods of fighting it have miserably failed. Maybe I need new methods. Maybe I'm thinking about it in the entirely wrong way. Maybe I can't beat it on my own and need outside help to deal. Maybe it really is unfixable. Refusing to think that as it's unproductive.
I think the problem boils down to the following: it's not about keeping motivated in a particular project, it's becoming a type of person who can stay motivated in general. Right now I think my problem has little to do with losing interest and much more to do with losing steam. Thing is, I have no idea how to change that. There's gotta be some way to throw yourself off center such that for a drop of time the rules don't apply to a small part of you. That's the window.
I started this blog to make my projects public so I could be held accountable if they failed. That didn't work. I think it quickly morphed from "here's what to harass me about" to "lookit me im improving!" and "listen to my opiiiniiiiiiooooonnnnnns". Someone rightfully pointed out that to some extent I was more interested in appearing to change than actually changing. "The guy obsessed with self improvement." Well, I have to recognize that this is true. I also have to recognize that some of my problems are the type which I can't deal with privately. Between contributing to a public image I hate and not getting this problem into the open, I should choose the former. Better be seen as arrogant and be dynamic than be seen as normal and be static.
So yeah. Proposed problem: how do I change from being a person who can't keep motivated on {arbitrary issue} to one who can? And how do I ensure that I actually follow through on this? I want to hear your thoughts.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Modes of Thought
I want to try writing in a different way.
I sometimes feel limited and trapped, a 10 foot person in a 6 foot body. There's an outward pressure on my skin, threatening to explode and throw everything out. This body is a Matroshka doll, a second self inside the first self and all the way down. If we strip away everything that makes me me, all that would happen is that we would find a Me again.
It's an outcropping of intense restlessness, but forming an energy that can't be physically used. I'm trying to channel it mentally now and see if I can let some of it out, push that illusory self into bits of words and see myself from another place of myself.
Often I'm struck by a surreality about myself. I interact with the world in strange ways. I mean, I walk around campus handing out homemade candy. Why? Because. The thing is I cannot imagine anybody else doing this. If somebody walked up to me and said "here, have a caramel", I would honestly not know what to do. Which is odd, because that person is an aspect of me. I am not capable of seeing myself when that self is in another.
And that extends the other way, too. I cannot see another person seeing me. I can self-reflect but not throw that reflection into a mirror. Maybe it's another consequence of a malfunctioning brain. An unpleasant consequence is it is very hard to anticipate how people will react to me. So I just go with the flow.
This limitation of my self-awareness fascinates me. I cannot completely understand myself. I need someone else to tell me who I am. I once asked people what I could do better, and some of the answers were things I could not anticipate. In my head I see it as a hall of mirrors, seeing myself reflected in a thousand different ways and a thousand different colors. Did you know that if you juggle that kind of place, you can see what it looks like from behind you?
I've tried to think like other people. Not just "ask myself how would XYZ think", but try to think those same thoughts as if they were my own. It's hard. It's really damn hard. And even with people I am very close to, I can barely do it. Even then, it will be completely wrong. I am lightning in the shape of a human, casting the world in blue. Can I say that this is how I think, but everybody else is a Chinese Box?
Hell no.
Our individuality cuts us off from entire modes of thoughts, our minds collapse knowledge into three dimensions. Even when we try to act with perfect rationality we still are limited by our ignorance. And worse, we are limited by the unknown irrationalities, the things we don't know we don't know. Then again, maybe rationality itself is just another way of dealing with the world, one that easily gets us what we want. Or what we think we want. But not the only valid way. I've occasionally wondered if you could use irrationality as a epistemic superweapon. Rationality is so slow.
This is yet another reason why Rand is an idiot. We cannot be Objectivist unless we are also completely objective, and objectivity is impossible. You cannot exist without a mode of thought. It may constrain you, but it also gives you the power to act and think. I guess it's less collapsing potential and more as creating a tiny bubble in potential.
Even so, it's still a bubble, and bubbles have walls. We are used to thinking in certain ways and may not see clear ideas from other ways. The easiest way to think outside of the box is to think in another box. This is why it helps to know multiple academic fields. If you can move between the each field's mode, you can more easily solve individual problems in those fields.
More importantly, it means that we're always dependent on others for their own modes. Two mathematicians may be able to see the world mathematically, but they will see it in slightly different ways. And they will see in radically different ways. Of course this is tautological, only an idiot would say that teamwork was useless. Two people can come up with ideas that just one person would not. I wonder if it's in part because their sets of modes combine to produce entirely new modes of thought.
I've always wondered where the restlessness comes from, the restlessness that makes me want to explode. I think it might in part be from limitations in how I can think. I am human, so I am limited. If I want to make the restlessness bearable, I have to interact more with others, and interact in ways that would expand my own self. I also need to explore other ways of thinking.
And there are the unknown unknowns, always out there, affecting us in ways we can't comprehend. Maybe that's what we should care about. That's the scariest thing of all. It's not that we don't know what's most important. It's that we haven't yet considered it as a thing we could know.
The restlessness is back. Or maybe it never left. I feel like I'm on the verge of catching fire, burning without heat, pain, or harm. There are ways of thinking out there that not only would benefit me, but would completely change me. What are they? Where are they?
I sometimes feel limited and trapped, a 10 foot person in a 6 foot body. There's an outward pressure on my skin, threatening to explode and throw everything out. This body is a Matroshka doll, a second self inside the first self and all the way down. If we strip away everything that makes me me, all that would happen is that we would find a Me again.
It's an outcropping of intense restlessness, but forming an energy that can't be physically used. I'm trying to channel it mentally now and see if I can let some of it out, push that illusory self into bits of words and see myself from another place of myself.
Often I'm struck by a surreality about myself. I interact with the world in strange ways. I mean, I walk around campus handing out homemade candy. Why? Because. The thing is I cannot imagine anybody else doing this. If somebody walked up to me and said "here, have a caramel", I would honestly not know what to do. Which is odd, because that person is an aspect of me. I am not capable of seeing myself when that self is in another.
And that extends the other way, too. I cannot see another person seeing me. I can self-reflect but not throw that reflection into a mirror. Maybe it's another consequence of a malfunctioning brain. An unpleasant consequence is it is very hard to anticipate how people will react to me. So I just go with the flow.
This limitation of my self-awareness fascinates me. I cannot completely understand myself. I need someone else to tell me who I am. I once asked people what I could do better, and some of the answers were things I could not anticipate. In my head I see it as a hall of mirrors, seeing myself reflected in a thousand different ways and a thousand different colors. Did you know that if you juggle that kind of place, you can see what it looks like from behind you?
I've tried to think like other people. Not just "ask myself how would XYZ think", but try to think those same thoughts as if they were my own. It's hard. It's really damn hard. And even with people I am very close to, I can barely do it. Even then, it will be completely wrong. I am lightning in the shape of a human, casting the world in blue. Can I say that this is how I think, but everybody else is a Chinese Box?
Hell no.
Our individuality cuts us off from entire modes of thoughts, our minds collapse knowledge into three dimensions. Even when we try to act with perfect rationality we still are limited by our ignorance. And worse, we are limited by the unknown irrationalities, the things we don't know we don't know. Then again, maybe rationality itself is just another way of dealing with the world, one that easily gets us what we want. Or what we think we want. But not the only valid way. I've occasionally wondered if you could use irrationality as a epistemic superweapon. Rationality is so slow.
This is yet another reason why Rand is an idiot. We cannot be Objectivist unless we are also completely objective, and objectivity is impossible. You cannot exist without a mode of thought. It may constrain you, but it also gives you the power to act and think. I guess it's less collapsing potential and more as creating a tiny bubble in potential.
Even so, it's still a bubble, and bubbles have walls. We are used to thinking in certain ways and may not see clear ideas from other ways. The easiest way to think outside of the box is to think in another box. This is why it helps to know multiple academic fields. If you can move between the each field's mode, you can more easily solve individual problems in those fields.
More importantly, it means that we're always dependent on others for their own modes. Two mathematicians may be able to see the world mathematically, but they will see it in slightly different ways. And they will see in radically different ways. Of course this is tautological, only an idiot would say that teamwork was useless. Two people can come up with ideas that just one person would not. I wonder if it's in part because their sets of modes combine to produce entirely new modes of thought.
I've always wondered where the restlessness comes from, the restlessness that makes me want to explode. I think it might in part be from limitations in how I can think. I am human, so I am limited. If I want to make the restlessness bearable, I have to interact more with others, and interact in ways that would expand my own self. I also need to explore other ways of thinking.
And there are the unknown unknowns, always out there, affecting us in ways we can't comprehend. Maybe that's what we should care about. That's the scariest thing of all. It's not that we don't know what's most important. It's that we haven't yet considered it as a thing we could know.
The restlessness is back. Or maybe it never left. I feel like I'm on the verge of catching fire, burning without heat, pain, or harm. There are ways of thinking out there that not only would benefit me, but would completely change me. What are they? Where are they?
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