FailForward @FailForward@qoto.org

# Wait but why: The Story of Us

https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html

Perhaps one of the most thought-inspiring readings of 2019 and 2020 and re-reading/re-referencing since then for those interested to dissect today's politics with sharp analytical, structured, almost mathematical tooling without regard for any rigour and correctness. Insightful, entertaining, inspiring. Veeeeery long. Full of great illustrations.

Too good to easily summarise, almost everything quote-worthy.

Builds up a "blog-quality-theory" of today's political landscape and dynamics (I need to get a good word for this kind PhD thesis with blogosphere-quality-level rigour, but stratospheric passion behind). Starts with building up a thought framework for an individual and their focus on "stories" and "power" (this is an absolutely fascinating topic for me these years anyway) and our handling of stories and what they generate/invoke in our interactions. Then proceeds to generalise to society and study of societal dynamics which provides a background "theory" for explaining what's going on in politics in recent years.

Mostly US-centric, but I think also well applicable to many phenomena we observe in most of the [Western Culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_culture).

The series culminates in the post [Political Disney World](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/12/political-disney-world.html) which is an extremely insightful (and entertaining!) big-picture explanation of political landscape, struggles and friction we observe every day, but fail to recognise the context of.

I'd be interested to hear about/read a take on this little "theory of everything political" attempt from a trained psychologist or a sociologist.

Recommended.

"Willie Nelson - I Never Cared For You (Official Music Video)"

Soundtrack for some day.

https://youtu.be/kmdwsLtNx2E

"Triggerfinger - Man Down"

Cover of Rihanna's Man Down crossed with Led Zeppelin's Kashmir.

Good stuff from Belgium.

https://youtu.be/PXtb4El_aws

"Amazing Grace - A cappella cover by Matus Uhliarik (432 Hz tuning)"

Just beautiful.

https://youtu.be/VkNOg8wYEpc

# Talking out loud to yourself is a technology for thinking

[Source: Psyche/Ideas, 23 December 2020](https://psyche.co/ideas/talking-out-loud-to-yourself-is-a-technology-for-thinking)

## Summary

Very interesting piece on how thinking aloud (or generally expressing oneself in order to think) is actually a good thing. The author argues that:

> Speaking out loud is not only a medium of communication, but a technology of thinking: it encourages the formation and processing of thoughts.

## On self-talk

> if we can’t discover something just by thinking about it, we might discover it in the process of free speech. ... we usually hold an abstract beginning of a thought, but active speech helps to turn the obscure thought into a whole idea. It’s not thought that produces speech but, rather, speech is a creative process that in turn generates thought.
> -- ‘On the Gradual Formation of Thoughts During Speech’ (1805)

This again resonates with the idea that [deep thinking/problem solving is (I guess for many) difficult to perform when one just sits and thinks](https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105522122721928195). Expressing oneself forces process of structuring thoughts into some more coherent structure/scaffolding/framework and thus it becomes easier to spot mistakes, solva a problem and generally advance.

## On rubber-duck debugging

> Speaking out loud ... allows the retrieval of our thoughts in full, using rhythm and intonation that emphasise their pragmatic and argumentative meaning, and encourages the creation of developed, complex ideas.

> Not only does speech retrieve pre-existing ideas, it also creates new information in the retrieval process, just as in the process of writing. Speaking out loud is inventive and creative – each uttered word and sentence doesn’t just bring forth an existing thought, but also triggers new mental and linguistic connections.

Now this resonates with me quite a bit. As an engineer, I often solve technical problems. A situation like this happens a lot:
1. me: problem!
2. me: think, experiment, fail, backtrack, rinse and repeat, fail, end up frustrated, throw my hands in the air.
3. me: go seek a rubber duck, or a cardboard dog colleague
4. colleague: listens carefully (or not - it doesn't matter)
5. me: explain, explain, explain
6. me: Eureka!
7. problem solved.

This is called [Rubber duck debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging) in software engineering circles. It actually works very well with living rubber ducks.

> By forcing us to articulate ourselves more fully, self-talk summons up the image of an imagined listener or interrogator more vividly. In this way, it allows us to question ourselves more critically by adopting an external perspective on our ideas, and so to consider shortcomings in our arguments – all while using our own speech.

And this hints that it can work equally well with inanimate rubber ducks too.

> ... the best solution for creative blocks isn’t to try to think in front of an empty page and simply wait for thoughts to arrive, but actually to continue to speak and write (anything), trusting this generative process.

Absolutely. Often **doing _something_ trumps doing the _right thing_**. This is the procrastination killer pill.

## On walking while thinking

> ... evidence shows that movement enhances thinking and learning, and both are activated in the same centre of motor control in the brain.

Since around high-school age I like to walk (mostly outdoors, but not exclusively) while reading books, reviewing papers and generally studing. It always made me more focused and perceptive. Finally a piece of research confirming I am not mad (as some around me suspect(ed)).

> activities such as playing a musical instrument, writing, speaking or dancing don’t start in the brain and then emanate out to the body as actions; rather, they entail the mind and body working in concert as a creative, integrated whole, unfolding and influencing each other in turn.

Now, this very much echoes research on [embodied cognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition) and ideas related to [situated agents in AI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situated_robotics). Roughly, that intelligent behaviour cannot be decoupled from the environment it is performed in. This observation underpins the field of [behavioural robotics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-based_robotics) with [Rodney Brooks](https://rodneybrooks.com/) being its prophet.

### On usefulness of friction in expressing oneself

Finally there is this interesting sidenote on expression as friction:

> Elon Musk: ‘Our brain spends a lot of effort compressing a complex concept into words,’ he said in a recent interview, ‘and there’s a lot of loss of information that occurs when compressing a complex concept into words.’
> ...
> However, what Musk chalks up as ‘effort’, friction and information loss also involves cognitive gain. Speech is not merely a conduit for the transmission of ideas, a replaceable medium for direct communication, but a generative activity that enhances thinking.

I agree.

# On being right vs. being right

There's this funny conflation of semantics of the word "right" in English language:

> **right**
> correct; proper; just; appropriate: the right way
> 1. Conforming with or conformable to justice, law, or morality: do the right thing and confess.
> 2. In accordance with fact, reason, or truth; correct: the right answer.
> ...
> -- [The Free Dictionary](https://www.thefreedictionary.com/right)

People use the term interchangeably.

But the difference goes deeper than just semantics. Especially when we argue with somebody, we are often pushing to prove that we are right (as in _correct_), completely ignoring whether doing so is also the right thing to do (as in _appropriate_ or _just_). An example of this is when somebody behaves like an idiot (subjectively judging of course). While it is true, making that explicit to the person is most of the time quite unhelpful as it tends to kill the interaction (because emotions), rather than advance it towards some common understanding. In other words, telling somebody that they are an idiot is right as in _correct_, it is rarely right as in _the right thing to do_.

And this is why conflating these two meanings is so dangerous. Especially nowadays we often argue (on Intertubes and in real life too) and try to persuade the other party that our worldview is "righter" than theirs (as in more truthful, factual, etc.), but too often we fail to do _the righter thing_. Which is listening, using empathy, trying to understand the other one, touching a common base and trying to move on from there. That's more difficult (no wonder, we are all really good at finding the minimum energy path forward - which tends to be the lazy one most of the time). In other words, **to be right (as in _correct_) is way easier than doing the right thing (as in _productive_, appropriate_, or _pragmatically useful_**.

P.S.
While other languages make a stronger distinction between the two terms (German "richtig zu sein" vs. "recht zu haben", also many Slavic languages also make this distinction explicit). Yet, my observation is that in real life native speakers of those languages still conflate these two meanings. It seems to overarch languages.

P.P.S
There is also this interesting Dutch distinction between "gelijk hebben" and "gelijk krijgen", but that seems to be a somewhat subtler animal. As in "doing the right _and_ correct thing" vs. "getting social recognition for it" (_vindication_).

# Goal of technology

[The Platform Is The Enemy](https://danielbmarkham.com/the-platform-is-the-enemy/) piece is a bit of a ranty blog post inspired by the movie Idiocracy, but contains some inspiring thoughts. It discusses two interesting questions:
1. what is the goal of technology?
2. does technology (platform) make people dumb?

## What is the goal of technology?

> 1. The goal of technology is to become a **brain extension**, _helping you to decide what to do_ and then helping you get it done.
> 2. The goal of technology is to become a **hand-held power tool**, helping you accomplish the things you've _already decided to do_

Clearly, both positions are reasonable, it's a matter of subjective taste to pick a side. I personally am firmly on the human-centric side. I build and use technology as a hand-powered tool. But indeed, for many it becomes their extension. And that's not bad. Locally, while driving, the car indeed becomes a body extension to people. I still remember the first time this made a great impression on me while watching Alien 2 movie many years ago , where [Ripley operates the power loader exoskeleton](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSrcMaid0mg). The machine is a direct extension of her. It is her. Still, my position is: _human mind first, technology second._

## Does technology make us dumb?

The argument the author builds goes like this:

> 1. The minute we create a platform for something, ... _the assumption becomes that this is a solved problem_.
> 2. Platforms ... send out the subtle message: _This is a solved problem. No further effort on your part is required here. No thinking needed._
> 3. Human brains are not computers. Let the platform decide. Energy not needed. **Dump those neurons.**
> 4. Idiocracy

Now that is a bit bleak view on human race. Indeed, many of us like to dump neurons and [go on their autopilot](https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105522122721928195). And that's OK.

Yet, the view of an optimist would be that many other harness the freed up CPU capacity to do something better. Something new, something useful, something nice, _progress_. Take e.g., the effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. It took very focused and rapid effort of a relatively large group of people (scientists) to develop. They could do it, because they did not have to worry about deciding where to hide before a sabre-toothed tiger, nor about what to eat for dinner (both solved problems). And I call that a good thing.

Finally, the author applies this optics on software engineering:
> One bunch of folks creates various platforms in order to do the thinking for another bunch of folks. ... Most of the time we end up training morons who can weakly code against the platform but can't reason effectively about the underlying architecture or reason for the platform to exist in the first place.

Generally, I agree with the author's sentiment there. But again, let's not aspire to make everybody a guru engineer. Weak coding against a platform and having little clue what is going on is bad engineering, full stop.

Yet, in hands of an experienced craftsman, this becomes a great accelerator of creative processes. Yes, it causes a paradigm shift in the craft's practices: in 90's we used to write things from scratch 90% of time and 10% of time we re-used 3rd party libraries. Today, we 90% of assemble stuff from opaque (and often buggy) 3rd party libraries and code stuff from scratch 10% of time (mostly business logic). Maybe it feels dirty, but in the end it allows us to quickly create great stuff and deal with technical debt, bugs and performance later.

I remain an optimist.

# People would rather be electrically shocked than left alone with their thoughts

[Source](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/people-would-rather-be-electrically-shocked-left-alone-their-thoughts)

---

A notable quote from an independent researcher:
> “When people are spending time inside their heads, they're markedly less happy.”

People simply do not like to think. Indeed, I think, most of the time we are running on an autopilot and like to keep it that way.

Reminds me of a good quote:

> “I suppose that you seldom think. Few people think more than two or three times a year. I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.”
> -- [George Bernard Shaw](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/20/shaw-think/)

Well, as an elitist, I like to tell myself that I better my fellow humans by trying hard to think somewhere between two or three times a year and a few times a week.

The article does not say what kind of thinking people were asked to engage in. I observe myself thinking at least about 2 kinds of topics:

1. myself, that is primarily my emotions and whatever raises them; and
2. external world, stuff I need to sort out with for others, etc.

Now, I would claim that thinking about oneself typically leads to [rumination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumination_(psychology)) and as such is most of the time unproductive (although I admit, deeply satisfying sometimes).

Dealing with the external world, on the other hand, for me at least, leads to manipulation of external facts. Now either you don't mind having "your own facts", or you deeply care for what is true outside (as much as you can establish what it even means and approximate it).

And here we come to why it might be so difficult to think "on command", or "just like that". Personally, I think when I speak, or when I write. That is, when I can engage an _external memory_. Because to manipulate external facts I need to keep track of them and the thinking, in my case at least, is about _structuring_ them, _connecting the dots_ between them, _backtracking_ and so on. That is, massageing thoughts until something useful comes out (a solution to a problem I have).

But we also know that human short term memory is limited to somewhere [between 5 and 9 things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_memory#Capacity). When I sleep badly, even less.

So no wonder I find it hard to think without speaking to somebody or writing things down.

_I think, when I express myself._ And that’s one of the reasons for signing up to this space - I am looking to get a cheap and easy way to express tidbits of information I want to think about.

> Lay your weapons down
> And I'll take my armor off
> Say what we need to say
> ...
> -- [Ilse DeLange/Lay Your Weapons Down](https://youtu.be/91SFHNbr_Po)

Vulnerability. We need more of this in today's world. In relationships, politics and in discussions. It's difficult to hear each other through the fortresses and armours we tend to build around ourselves - just to soothe the pain inside.

It takes confidence to be vulnerable.

And conversely, it is mostly insecurity and fear which leads to building walls around oneself.

> _You are strong enough,
For all you’ll ever have to face,
The only map you need is Love,
To guide you through this illusion of a maze._
> -- [Marketa Irglova/Without A Map](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dFp4SIMlbs)

> Everything you know is wrong. And these five words help me carry on.
-- [ElevenHill/Ride Your Wave](https://youtu.be/UQDuZnb8W48)

"WE ALL ONE - ARAVA GAL - INSHALLAH" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/WjGyT4W4gCU

"Pippo Pollina - Il nibbio"
https://youtu.be/766R_ABocRs

Soundtrack for a nice summer day.

Irony is like spice: it can give an edge to a point, but you cannot make a dinner out of it alone.

CO2 already emitted will warm Earth beyond climate targets, study finds | CBC News
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-targets-1.5861537

A note from an independent researcher quoted in the piece: “When people are spending time inside their heads, they're markedly less happy.”

People would rather be electrically shocked than left alone with their thoughts | Science | AAAS
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/people-would-rather-be-electrically-shocked-left-alone-their-thoughts

#science

Melody Gardot & Sting - Little Something (The One Show) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VB6YYHIECQ

#bbc #music #Sting #Melody_Gardot #The_One Show #A_Little Something #BBC_One

Milan André - The Prize | Sofar Bratislava - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qIq14QTHqM

#sofarsounds #songs_from a room #sofar_sounds #sofar #unplugged #live #lyrics #acoustic #cover #session #official