Ran Prieur

March 27.

2019-03-27T15:30:36Z

March 27. Continuing from Monday: What's inevitable about our future? The answer depends on whether we think that inevitability is part of some hidden intelligence. I'm going to start by pretending that it's not. If the universe is mindless and meaningless, then humanity is driving blind into ever-increasing danger, and it's only a matter of time before we go off a cliff. Probably we'll develop virtual reality so good that we lose interest in the physical world, and go extinct. At the same time, we'll probably use biotech to change ourselves so much that we're no longer viable in nature, and go extinct.

Now, if there is a mind behind the movement of technology and history -- whether it's a human collective subconscious, or space aliens, or whoever runs the simulation -- then they might have a plan for us, and they'll make sure we survive. Or they might not have a plan -- they might be improvising. In that case, I still think we're okay. As a sci-fi writer who makes up stories on the fly, I would never kill off humans, because we make such good characters. But I might kill off most of us, or I might change us to make us even more interesting.

If there is a mind, and a plan, then it still might not be about us. I've seen this idea more than once: that aliens are using us to change the earth's atmosphere to match their home planet, so they can live here and we can't. A nicer idea is that Gaia is using us to bring the carbon to the surface, which will eventually be turned into plants and animals, and the biosphere will be more rich and abundant than it's ever been, whether or not we're here to see it.

But suppose we are the heroes of the story. The popular story is that we colonize space. But remember, this is no longer a meaningless physical universe, because in that scenario, we have no chance. This is a mind-based universe, a big dream where matter is nothing more than condensed dream-stuff. In that case, why make the physical universe so big and so spread out? Without faster-than-light technology, even traveling to other starsystems is unrealistic, let alone to other galaxies. Why put them there if we can't go there?

One possibility is that it's all been set up for us to develop really good FTL tech, to go far out into the universe. But I think the physical universe is a metaphor. It's there to inspire us to imagine space exploration, to stretch our dreams enough that we'll be ready to explore a different kind of universe, one that we haven't discovered yet, or quite imagined.

Update: I just went to donate blood, in the atrium of a campus building that was playing classic rock. While the blood was coming out, they played "Take My Breath Away." While I was recovering, they played "Cold As Ice." And I thought of a scenario that fits through the cracks of my argument. 1) Sadly, we do live in a mindless physical universe. 2) The guiding intelligence behind technology and history is a human collective subconscious, and it's smart enough to keep us from going extinct. 3) In a thousand years, it might totally be realistic to send probes, terraformers, and finally human colonists, slower than light, to other starsystems, and gradually spread through our own galaxy.

March 25.

2019-03-25T13:10:08Z

March 25. This was posted a week ago on the subreddit, a ten year old Kevin Kelly essay, Progression of the Inevitable. It starts with a long and mind-blowing catalog of all the technology and science that was invented/discovered by multiple people at around the same time.

There are a bunch of directions to go with this. One is to ask if the same thing happens with creative work, and Kelly describes how several core details of the Harry Potter books existed in other books that J.K. Rowling probably didn't read. Still, he's talking about ideas and not execution. You can see this better with music. Without Led Zeppelin, we would still have heavy blues, but beyond that general description, it would be missing what makes Led Zeppelin great, especially in a song like Kashmir.

Another direction is to wonder about some kind of collective consciousness. Kelly rejects that idea outright, but Harry Potter works against him here, because you can tell a purely mechanical story about how conditions were ripe for incandescent light bulbs, but not about how another writer came up with "Larry Potter, an orphaned boy wizard wearing glasses surrounded by Muggles."

Of course he's just following the culture of his time, and a philosophical doctrine that I call antipsychism: whatever it is, you must assume there's no consciousness behind it. (The one exception is that we have to assume other individual humans are conscious, otherwise there would be social chaos.)

But this leads to another question: Is there an inevitable progression of social and philosophical ideas? I think there is. As much as I'd like to go back in time and kill Descartes, someone else would have come along and showed us how to think of reality as intrinsically lifeless. And there are already a lot of thinkers trying to re-animate the world, probably in better ways.

The final question is the hardest: What's inevitable about our future?

March 22.

2019-03-22T22:40:18Z

March 22. Today's post comes from an email conversation with Matt. On the last post, he comments: "In most renderings of 'Heaven', the rhythms and contrasts of life have been flattened." So I'm wondering, why is the heaven myth that way, and not some other way? Is it cultural, or biological? In squirrel heaven, would there still be winter?

I think our concept of heaven emerged from ancient settled cultures. Only when people start having year-round dwellings, and building physical wealth, do they start to see the perfect life as something that needs to be protected from change. That's why the Christian heaven, like ancient cities, has walls and gates. I'm curious about ancient nomadic cultures, and how they saw the afterlife. Update: Gannon mentions that the Tarahumara, described in the book Born To Run, believe "that upon death they shed their earthly bodies so they can more quickly glide across the earth."

Anyone who believes in a better life after death has to explain why we're not there already. Why do we have to spend any time in a world that's not the best available? Three guesses: 1) The next world is hard to appreciate, without being in this world first. 2) This is a simulation, or a prison world, where we have to develop certain skills and habits before we can be permitted to live in the real world. 3) The whole thing is not well-managed, and we're here by accident.

Of course Hindus believe in reincarnation, and I have a crazy idea that we're reincarnated as progressively "lower" creatures. Like, we start as miserable gods, and end up in the total bliss of being bacteria. Matt writes:

I have a conviction that, as bio-engineering and cyborg tech really gets going, a number of people will not only choose not to enhance themselves -- they'll choose states of consciousness closer to wolves and owls.

I'm thinking, we don't even need to imitate particular animals. All we need are technologies that can temporarily and precisely shut down different parts or functions of our brains. That's basically what recreational drugs do now, but future tech might make our drugs seem crude and clumsy.

Related? When Gut Bacteria Change Brain Function. It seems that eating yogurt can help with anxiety and depression.

March 20.

2019-03-20T20:20:59Z

March 20. I always buy the same grass-fed ground beef at Winco, and normally it's about 20% fat. But the latest batch is so lean that my hamburgers don't even leave any grease in the pan. So I'm wondering if the cows burned up all their fat in the long cold winter.

Whether or not that's true, until recently it was normal for the weather to affect our food. The food system is now so industrialized that we expect total uniformity of every product, and little deviations bother us.

When we talk about "meaning", and how little of it is left in the world, we're talking about connections, relationships, things influencing other things. If you're designing a game, it would be a great touch to make the fall meat fatty and the spring meat lean. It would make the world feel more alive.

So why is our society increasingly being designed to make the world feel less alive? Probably it's because we've been overvaluing predictability, undervaluing connectedness, and not noticing that we can't have both. If things are connected in a meaningful way, then things are influenced by other things enough that they're no longer predictable.

I was reading an article about the failing American Dream, which mentioned that we want to see life as a story, when really it's a bunch of random stuff that happens. I disagree. When I look at my own life, it's totally like a story, and if it gets too boring for the unseen audience, some painful and unlikely event will advance the plot.

The American Dream is not an attempt to make a story where there isn't one -- it's an attempt to control the story, to replace life's wild ride with a steady and predictable climb. And that level of control was only realistic for a few generations of the wealthiest nations in a brief age of perpetual growth.

Now that we're past that peak, we need to change our deep values, and I'm thinking of James Scott's book Against The Grain, and Morris Berman's book Wandering God. Settled peoples try to build wealth and security, so that nothing bad happens. Nomadic peoples try to set up their lives so that when bad stuff happens, they can keep going, and keep having a good time. That's a change we can make in our laws, and also in our heads.

March 18.

2019-03-18T18:00:59Z

March 18. I'm not feeling smart today, but here are two articles with the latest science on a problem I don't have, Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight, and Death of the calorie. Basically, you should exercise for general health, and lose weight by permanently changing your habits to eat less-processed foods in moderate portions.

I still don't think we have the whole story, because lab animals on fixed diets are fatter than they used to be, and there was also a study that obese people who lose the weight become less healthy. Maybe there's some yet undiscovered medical condition, for which obesity is a defense.

New subject. Dick Dale died yesterday, and I realized that his most famous song was the missing piece in an instrumental playlist I've been working on. That link is the new playlist on Spotify, and here are YouTube links for Dick Dale's double-speed surf cover of Misirlou, and an old Greek version that's very different but also great.

March 15.

2019-03-15T15:30:05Z

March 15. Happy links for the weekend. An inspiring article on people living in converted school buses. I'm thinking, on the one hand, nomadic living is awesome and more of us should be able to do it. On the other hand, it takes a lot of energy to drive a school bus around, and to maintain roads good enough for school buses. I'm wondering what nomadic living will look like in a few hundred years.

Related: The Case for Getting Rid of Borders Completely

A popular article on How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger. "Across the board, all the moms mention one golden rule: Don't shout or yell at small children."

'Extinct' Formosan clouded leopard spotted in Taiwan. I actually believe that nearly extinct animals can survive in a grey area, where they cannot be proven to exist, but there are still sightings. The Tasmanian tiger has been there for a while. Related, from the subreddit, A quantum experiment suggests there's no such thing as objective reality.

March 13.

2019-03-13T13:10:33Z

March 13. Moving from the outer world to the inner world, Against Willpower. The idea is that willpower is a pre-scientific concept, a social invention, that doesn't match what's really going on. But for me, it seems to match pretty closely. I don't feel like going to the gym, or taking the garbage out, or brushing my teeth, but I force myself to do that stuff because I know it's good for me; and if I force myself to do too much stuff that I don't feel like doing, I get burned out.

But when I take a second look at the article, it's completely about negative self-control, blocking yourself from doing stuff you think is bad for you, and not at all about positive self-control, forcing yourself to do stuff you think is good for you. The latter is usually framed as "procrastination", which is stupid. The problem is that there's all this shit we don't feel like doing, and to frame that problem as putting off doing that stuff, is like framing a knee injury as walking with a limp.

Anyway, one useful concept in the article is "intrapersonal bargaining". I would explain it like this: instead of "me" forcing "myself" to do or not do something, there are different voices inside me, with their own personalities and motives, and they need to have conversations and reach consensus about what to do. It's funny, because the phrase "inner peace" is such a cliche that we don't bother to unpack the words, but that's exactly what the words describe: the voices inside us working together instead of fighting. Maybe in some future enlightened age, they'll look back at our concept of "self-control" as a weird symptom of an authoritarian culture.

March 11.

2019-03-11T23:50:54Z

March 11. Two links from the subreddit. Is a Harvard MBA Bad for You? It's becoming more obvious that, not only do people with MBA's make the world generally worse, they're also unhappy. The article blames a deeper cultural shift "towards valuing profits and markets." I think it's something even deeper, but I can't put my finger on it. What have we lost, that we're so receptive to the idea that money is a good measure of value?

And this video, Thief vs AAA gaming, compares a great 1998 PC game with its lame 2014 remake. It's funny because the new game is bad in the same way that our whole society is bad. Instead of being immersed in a story with an unfolding mystery, in which we enjoy the process of growing our understanding, we're just given a bunch of quest markers for a tedious grind.

In my last post I wrote: "The real reason society is going to collapse, is when enough of us sense that we'll be happier living in a much simpler society." But "simpler" isn't the right word. Leigh Ann and I have been playing a really complex board game called Spirit Island. It's much better than a simple board game like Risk.

If a game designer looked at our world, they would see that it's highly complex in a way that's not at all fun. We don't actually want to live in a simple world -- we want to live in a well-designed complex world. But the best path from one complex world to another, is through simplicity, by stripping it down and building something different.

March 7.

2019-03-07T19:10:43Z

March 7. I don't wanna do my video game chores. It's about Red Dead Redemption 2, a new game that's highly rated for its scale and graphics, but a lot of people think it's boring.

I'll probably never play RDR2, but after I thought I was getting bored with all entertainment, Fallout 3 went on sale for $10 at GOG.com, so I started playing, and I love it! Like RDR2, it's a gritty open-world game with lots of quests and weapons. Here's a long video, Fallout 3 Is Better Than You Think.

When you look at discussions about which game in a series is better, like Fallout 3 vs 4 vs New Vegas, or Elder Scrolls Morrowind vs Oblivion vs Skyrim, everyone knows the newer games will have higher resolution graphics, but ultimately nobody cares, because whatever level of graphics the games have, players will get used to it. Instead people talk about things that are harder to quantify, like the feel of the game.

Strangely related: Why So Many Smart People Aren't Happy. The interviewee argues that people are seeking mastery, but they don't know how to measure it, so they fall into measuring it through quantifiable comparisons to other people, like salary, or awards. But those are also the kinds of things where whatever level you're at, you get used to it and aren't any happier than someone at another level. So instead, we should measure success by how much we enjoy what we're doing, and try not to look at the outcome.

You know, that's easy to say if you're already a relatively successful person, who fits well with the dominant culture, and can pick from a broad menu of jobs. I've known basically what kind of life would make me happy since I was 16 and wanted to run off and be a hermit in the mountains of Idaho. The real reason society is going to collapse, is when enough of us sense that we'll be happier living in a much simpler society, even if it's less comfortable.

March 4.

2019-03-04T16:40:04Z

March 4. Major Games Publishers Are Feeling The Impact Of Peaking Attention. "Consumers simply do not have any more free time to allocate to new attention seeking digital entertainment propositions, which means they have to start prioritising between them." The article is focused on the video game industry, but I see this as much bigger. Human attention is the world's most valuable resource, but it's not like oil, where the fields are drying up forever. It's more like farmland, and there's no more room to make new fields. Also, existing fields are getting depleted, as people burn out from all the low-quality demands on their attention. (Related: Let's Destroy Robocalls)

So what's a high-quality demand on your attention? That's for each of us to decide, and it changes with experience. If I had seen today's video games in 1980, I would have thought they could entertain me forever, and now it's hard for me to find anything I even want to play. A week ago I finally quit Ask Reddit, because what I can learn from that crowd, and what they can learn from me, are both approaching zero. About the same time, I wrote this in an email: "I've been meditating a lot more lately, for a strange reason, that I'm getting bored with almost anything else I could do. It's like the mind is a prison, and when you lose interest in all the stuff at the center of the prison, you start looking at the walls."

I see two kinds of walls, one between conscious and subconscious, and one between head and body. I think that's why the basic meditation technique is to focus on your breath, because your breath straddles both boundaries. Related, a long article from Aeon about conscious breathing.

Also, Seven Practical Facts about the Human Brain, including that 80% of signals go from your body to your brain, and only 20% from brain to body.

And an article about intuitive eating, which basically means getting better at sensing what your body needs to eat, instead of trying to force diets on it from your head.

February 28. Loose ends from Monday. It's probably not true that autism is the next stage of humanity, but it is a fun idea. From the other side, this subreddit post suggests that the recent surge in autism/aspergers could be a symptom of human consciousness going out of balance, through technologies that have made us too narrow-focused. I don't think little kids are looking at smartphones and suddenly becoming autistic. It's more like autism has emerged as a message from some hidden level of human identity, reflecting our culture's mental imbalance back at us.

And about my utopian vision of making all necessities free, when I think through the political details, it's completely unrealistic. We're probably going to get an unconditional basic income, maybe in as little as ten years. The corporations need it, so they can continue to sell their products while spending less on labor.

Something cool that might come out of it, is what I'm calling UBI communities. A bunch of people with common interests can sign over their incomes to an organizer, who gets some economy of scale on food and housing, and gives them all stuff to do. I remember visiting the Twin Oaks community in 2005, and my only real complaint was that they worked way more hours than a frugal person in the normal economy. But with everyone contributing their UBI to support the place, that problem goes away.

I've got a sore neck now from the crash, but my brain seems to be already clearing up. Today I put together a new playlist on Spotify, American Indie Rock 1985-1993.