Thoughts on reality, whatever that really is

I recently finished reading The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman.

It’s a short book, only 200 pages, but still felt too long. Too much filler and repetition. You’re perhaps better off watching an interview with the author on YouTube.

The main premise is simple: we don’t see reality as it truly is, but rather as it relates to our evolutionary fitness.

Some obvious examples of our limited perceptions include:

  • We only see certain wavelengths of light; we cannot see infrared or ultraviolet.
  • We only hear a certain range of frequencies of sound.
  • Our sense of smell is very limited, and often comes with instinctual judgments of pleasantness or disgust.
  • We cannot sense oxygen in our lungs; rather, we can only feel the effects of having too little.
  • We experience being surrounded by solid things, yet atoms consist of mostly empty space.
  • Lots of optical illusions clearly trick our visual perceptions.

This means that everything we perceive in the physical world is actually a high-level abstraction of some unperceived foundational reality. A book, for example, only exists in our minds as a concept, a collection of perceptions and sensory experiences. These perceptions correspond to things in physical reality (that we can’t perceive directly), but they don’t actually exist in physical reality.

The book’s author compares the mind-reality relationship to icons on a computer. Using a computer, you manipulate highly abstracted icons, imagining that files have physical spaces and locations. (The word “file” itself is an abstraction to aid the metaphor.) Inside the computer, everything is just 1’s and 0’s passing through transistors. But it would be completely inefficient to try and derive meaning from those long binary strings, so we work with high-level abstractions, colored pixels on a screen that correspond to those 1’s and 0’s. “Files” don’t even really exist in memory; computer memory is just a big collections of ordered 1’s and 0’s. Files don’t exist until some program (like an operating system) makes some determination of how to separate the bits into separate groups, which is ultimately decided by a human mind, which is where all the meanings of those 1’s and 0’s are derived from in the first place.

OK, that’s all well and good, but so what?

Well… I don’t know. The book doesn’t really go into why understanding this might be important. Perhaps it may help you to appreciate the possibilities of other perspectives, I guess? Help you not take your perceptions for granted, or take for granted the meanings you’re imbuing things with yourself? Or appreciate that there’s a ton of reality that you can’t even see? Perhaps it has some applications for AI or something?

Interesting stuff to think about anyway.

The last chapter is the most confusing. The author starts talking about what he calls “conscious realism“, which I can’t claim to understand very well. He writes on page 184:

If we grant that there are conscious experiences, and that there are conscious agents that enjoy and act on experiences, then we can try to construct a scientific theory of consciousness that posits that conscious agents—not objects in spacetime—are fundamental, and that the world consists entirely of conscious agents.

Um… OK?

Actually, I once had a dream in which I understood that reality and spacetime are created collectively by consciousnesses, so I find the idea compelling. On the other hand, I really don’t understand the idea any deeper than that. On some level, it feels like just playing semantic games with “reality” and “consciousness”, which is maybe all one can do.

(If I say “A book exists only in one’s consciousness”, is not such an existence just as valid, perhaps even more valid, than some other sense of existence?)

On page 190, the author goes on to write:

The definition of a conscious agent is just math. The math is not the territory. Just as a mathematical model of weather is not, and cannot create, blizzards and droughts, so also the mathematical model of conscious agents is not, and cannot create, consciousness. So, with this proviso, I offer a bold thesis, the Conscious Agent Thesis: every aspect of consciousness can be modeled by conscious agents.

I still don’t really get it. Also, don’t you still have to answer what consciousness itself is? (And can you?)

So, overall, some interesting ideas, but I’m not quite sure what, if anything, I can do with them.

 

Random thoughts on Gödel

Last year I blogged about fiction books I wanted to read that year. I only ended up reading three of them. I finished reading War and Peace, which was very long but very good, Stands a Shadow by Col Buchanan, and The Vindication of Man by John C. Wright. Point is, I ultimately didn’t read that much fiction, but read more non-fiction instead.

I’ll probably continue reading more non-fiction than fiction this year as well; there just seem to be more non-fiction books capturing my interest.

I recently finished reading Journey to the Edge of Reason : The Life of Kurt Gödel by Stephen Budiansky. It’s short, less than 300 pages, but provides a very good overview of his life and important mathematical contributions. I wouldn’t have minded if it went deeper into the math, but that’s something I can keep exploring on my own.

A good explanation of Gödel’s most famous contribution, his Incompleteness Theorem, can be found at the 15:16 mark of this YouTube video, though while the video makes the main idea understandable, it still glosses over the finer details of the proof that make it definitive.

To quote page 241 of the book:

Both of Incompleteness Theorems proved that no finite process of inference from axioms within a well-defined system can capture of all mathematics. But that, Gödel pointed out, leads to an interesting either-or choice: either the human mind can perceive evident axioms of mathematics that can never be reduced to a finite rule — which means the human mind “infinitely surpasses the powers of any finite machine” — or there exist problems that are not merely undecidable within a specific formal system, but that are “absolutely” undecidable.

Both choices point to a conclusion “decidedly opposed to materialistic philosophy,” Gödel observed. If the mind is not a machine, then the human spirit cannot be reduced to the mechanistic operation of the brain, with its finite collection of working parts consisting of neurons and their interconnections. If, however, the mind is nothing but a calculating machine, then it is subject to the limitations of the Incompleteness Theorem, which leads to the thorny fact that numbers possess at least some properties that are beyond the power of the human mind to establish: “So this alternative seems to imply that mathematical objects and facts (or at least something in them) exist objectively and independently of our mental acts and decisions, that is to say some form or other of Platonism or ‘realism’ as to the mathematical objects.”

Of course, none of this should be mind-blowing to anyone who already believes in God and has already rejected the notion of materialism, but I still find it thought-provoking. As to whether or not the human brain is nothing but a calculating machine, I don’t know. But even if it were, it would not be inconsistent with religious belief, as it would still point to metaphysical truths beyond itself. (This also states nothing about consciousness or the nature of Free Will. Is Free Will born from a necessary limitation of the Incompleteness Theorem?)

While Gödel was not open about whatever he believed regarding God (especially in the more atheistic-leaning circles in which he worked), he did write a letter revealing he certainly believed in an afterlife (from page 267-268):

You pose in your last letter the momentous question, whether I believe we shall meet in the hereafter. About that I can only say the following: If the world is constructed rationally and has a meaning, then that must be so. For what kind of a sense would there be in bringing forth a creature (man), who has such a broad field of possibilities of his own development and of relationships, and then not allow him to achieve 1/1000 of it. That would be approximately as if someone laid the foundations for a house with much effort and expenditure of money, then let everything go to ruin again. Does one have a reason to assume that the world is set up rationally? I believe so. For it is certainly not chaotic and arbitrary, but rather, as science shows, the greatest regularity and order reign in everything. . . . So, it follows directly that our earthly existence, since it in and of itself has at most a very dubious meaning, can only be a means to an end for another existence.

This of course to me echoes C.S. Lewis’s famous quote: “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

That said, Gödel seems to not have been fond of organized religion. He also says, “… according to Catholic dogma omnibenevolent God created most human beings exclusively for the purpose of sending them to Hell for all eternity.” This is, of course, completely wrong; he obviously spent no time looking for an honest understanding of Catholic dogma.

Gödel was also plagued with mental disorders. He suffered from hypochondria, obsessive-compulsiveness, and harsh periods of maniacal fear and paranoia. While it may be tempting to regard these mental instabilities as an unfortunately side effect of his brilliant mathetical logician’s mind, as the contrast seems starkly ironic, I believe they are more likely unrelated. It would seem more likely to me that his mental disorders arose from emotional overreactions in his assessment of various perceptions. That is, assessing the meaning of a troubled stomach, for instance, has nothing to do with logic, so being a genius logician is perfectly compatible with overreacting to such a thing. He probably would have been able to received better psychological treatment had he been born decades later. Also, if he had been more open to the implications of the teachings of religion, he may have been less inclined to obsess over his social status and whether or not he “achieved” anything, another source of excessive worry and doubt for him.

Overall, it was a very interesting biography, and I would definitely like to explore more of his work and better understand his theorems, especially in how they apply to computer science and AI. Recommended to anyone with similar interests!

The Coming Illumination of Conscience

I recently started reading a book called The Warning : Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience by Christine Watkins.

The book talks about a sort of yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecy in which the sky will grow dark and Jesus will appear for all on earth to see. As the back of the book quotes: “With His divine love, He will open the doors of hearts and illuminate all consciences. Every person will see himself in the burning fire of divine truth. It will be like a judgment in miniature.” (Our Lady to Fr. Stefano Gobbi of the Marian Movement of Priests)

There’s a common phenomena among people who have “near death experiences” (which is perhaps a misnomer because they are sometimes just death experiences) of receiving a “life review“. In this review they are shown their past actions through the eyes of God; they see how their actions affected all those around them (being able to experience their actions from other people’s point of view), how their actions rippled into the world and into their own future, and how pleasing or displeasing it was to God.

Of course people interpret and describe these experiences differently, but I think it’s fascinating just how common it is, and experiencing such a “review” certainly fits with Christian theology.

So the “prophecy” seems to be that all humans on earth will experience such a review while still alive and in the flesh!

So… will this prophecy come true? Do believe in it? I don’t know, perhaps lacking direct evidence I’m more agnostic towards it. But does it matter? Though believing it may serve as encouragement, it really doesn’t change what any good Christian should be doing anyway in terms of repenting of sins, praying, growing in faith, etc., regardless of whether you’ll experience such a “life review” or “illumination of conscience” in this life or the next. We should be “getting our house in order” either way.

Do I want this prophecy to be fulfilled while I am living? That’s a tough one, because we don’t know what will happen immediately after.

On the one hand, I would love to experience such a review myself while alive for my own spiritual growth. I also think it would be nice if we humans were closer to each other in terms of spiritual beliefs, especially with contentious issues that cause disunity and emotional distress like abortion and sexual morality, and perhaps even identity politics. Our modern lives have become very secular and Jesus can easily seem like more of a mere historical figure or a strictly personal friend with whom we share a strictly private relationship.

On the other hand, the books warns that upon receiving this illumination of conscience, some people will literally die of horror, and others will “deny the Warning and attribute it to new technologies. … Some of my children will deny that the Warning came from My Kingdom and will rebel against Me, uniting with evil” (pages 42-43). I’m guessing that those who unite with evil may double-down on persecuting believers and we will see a far worse spiritual-turned-physical battle than any social unrest we’re witnessing now. There may be a great deal of suffering. Perhaps I would not like to experience such a world-wide miracle in my lifetime.

So… I don’t know.

Fortunately it’s not up to me!

Anyway, I still find it to be a fascinating book. I had never heard of this “Warning” before, so it’s very interesting to read various testimonies from different times and places that seem to agree with each other on this prophecy (though the interpretation of vagueness may account for some of that).

I’ll also mention that it’s written from the point of view of a Catholic and I think most or all the testimonies shared are from Catholics as well, so as far as I can tell there’s nothing in the book that is directly incompatible with Church teaching. That said, it’s not necessarily Church approved either. But, as mentioned before, the “Warning” doesn’t obligate a Christian to do anything more than he should be doing anyway, so I’m not sure belief, uncertainty, or rejection regarding such a future event matters too much.

Used bookstore plunder

Another episode of “used bookstore plunder”! I didn’t actually spend a load of money, most of it was bought with trade credit. Anyway, here’s what I found (click picture for full resolution):

Lots of fiction, mostly Andre Norton and Michael Moorcock (who I usually have trouble finding in used bookstores). We’ve got:

  • Poul Anderson — Three Hearts and Three Lions (been keeping my eyes out for this one, glad to finally find it)
  • Orson Scott Card — Songmaster (another I’ve been keeping an eye out for)
  • L. Sprague de Camp — Land of Unreason
  • Erin Hoffman — Lance of Earth and Sky (still haven’t read the first book of this series)
  • Michael Moorcock — (I have yet to read anything by him, so I hope he’s not too bad; I hear his name a lot so I want to eventually familiarize myself with his work) The Skrayling Tree, Blood, Sword of the Dawn, The Vanishing Tower, Count Brass, The Secret of the Runestaff, The Knight of the Swords, The Eternal Champion, The Sword and the Stallion, The Swords Trilogy (they put these trilogy sets out after I had already bought two of the books included in it), The Chronicles of Corum, The Champion of Carathorm, The Queen of Swords, Stormbringer
  • Andre Norton — Songsmith, The Gate of the Cat, Moon Called, The Jargoon Pard, Elvenblood, Mirror of Destiny, Merlin’s Mirror, Shadow Hawk
  • Fred Saberhagen — Merlin’s Bones
  • Robert Silverberg  (I haven’t read any of his books, but I’ve enjoyed some of his short stories before) The Book of Skulls
  • Alexander Solzhenitsyn — August 1914, The Gulag Archipelago Vol. 1 (because Jordan Peterson)
  • Jack Vance — (Vance is another one I don’t often see in used bookstores, so I was happy to find a good number of them) The Dragon Masters, The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph, Son of the Tree / The Houses of Iszm, The Gray Prince, The Pnume, Slaves of the Klau, Lyonesse, Ecce and Old Earth
  • John Varley — Millennium
  • Gene Wolfe — Soldier of the Mist

Nonfiction books include:

  • The Beethoven Compendium and Musical Structure and Design
  • Master the Basics of Russian along with some old play in Russian to practice translating (I want to learn Russian, all I know so far is: Здравствуйте! да и нет, и спасибо! I don’t think that’s enough.1)
  • Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction and The Science of Jurassic Park and the Lost World (They were both 75 cents)
  • Chase, Chance, and Creativity (It’s about the role of chance in creativity; I’ve been fascinated by the psychological phenomenon of creativity lately, an on-and-off interest, especially in its relation to artificial intelligence)
  • Everything that Linguists have Always Wanted to Know about Logic (I’m not a linguist, but I like how this book combines and linguistics with logic; again interested in this for artificial intelligence purposes as well. If you think about it, human language is like a programming language of thought.)
  • Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche and For Self-Examination / Judge for Yourself by Kierkegaard (philosophy for some light weekend reading)
  • Alan Turing: The Enigma (hopefully this biography of Turing will be more interesting than the film based on it, which I thought was terrible)

Lastly, I bought two 3D blu-rays, Jurassic Park and Pacific Rim. I can’t watch them in 3D yet until I get a PSVR, but as it seems they don’t really sell them anymore (perhaps they’ve quit making them altogether?), I’m eager to get them while I can. It’s a shame they weren’t more popular, but their prices were pretty ridiculous.

So that’s my used bookstore plunder!

I haven’t finished reading any books at all this year; instead I’ve been reading a lot of fragments from non-fiction books.

Random bits from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s biography

fhb

I finished reading a biography about my old famous aunt Frances Hodgson Burnett a while ago, the most recent comprehensive biography that was published in 2004: Frances Hodgson Burnett: The Unexpected Life of the Author of The Secret Garden

I recently came across some quotes I had pulled from it, little tidbits I thought were interesting.


From page 137:

It was about this time that Frances fell into the habit of “adopting” other children while she was absent from her own. In Rome she took up two “tiny pretty little beggar boys” who sang for tourists near her hotel. … Over time she would bring in sick children to educate them, and would help establish a club for boys in London. She saw these disadvantaged children as somehow substituting for her own, and she expected her own children, so far away, to respond with enthusiasm toward those they might well view as their substitutes as rivals. Frances in some way believed that lavishing attention and gifts on other children, then telling her own children about it, would make her sons feel closer to her rather than jealous or replaced.

This just made me laugh. It’s of course easy to admire her charity, but telling her own children about it as if it excused her from lavishing similar attention on them leaves me scratching my head. Maybe her children were not as hungry for attention as others, but I can’t see myself as a child much appreciating hearing about strangers getting gifts from one of my parents. Even when you’re a mature adult, it’s like getting one of those donation non-gift gifts, “a donation has been made in your name to blah blah blah”, to which you must politely and humbly reply, “Gee, that’s great, thanks!” rather than, “Thanks for reminding me that I’m already too fortunate for a gift and that you’re charitable. What a great gift.”


Frances was a famous writer at a time when high powered women were not so common and surely the idea of “feminism” meant something far different than it does these days (especially the Internet’s bizarre brand of “SJW feminism”). She was once asked to contribute a set of her works to woman’s exhibit at the World’s Fair in Chicago in the 1890’s, an exhibit meant to “instruct men as to the work and importance of women”, paying tribute “to the achievements, public and domestic, of women.” From page 166:

As one of the world’s most popular living women writers, Frances was asked to contribute a set of her works, but she did not take this as the honor it was doubtless intended to be but rather as one in a series of requests. Her apparent annoyance seemed to lie more in the fact of a building devoted to womanhood than with anything else. “Will you please send a complete set of my books … ” she wrote to Scribner’s. “It is in response to one of those endless demands that one should send some of oneself to some Womans Department of Something at the Worlds Fair. I have grown so tired of Woman with a W though I suppose it is the rankest heresy to say so. I dont want to be a Woman at all. I have begun to feel that I want to be something like this ‘WOMAN.’ Nevertheless if every body is sending books I must send mine.”

I thought that was an interesting response; I reckon she didn’t like the idea of others seeming to define for her what a ‘Woman’ should or shouldn’t be, or that she was automatically obligated to support the cause by virtue of being a famous woman. Hard to tell for sure though.


A hint of how the book business worked in the days of old, from page 178. Frances wanted a book of hers to be published immediately rather than having to follow the publisher’s schedule, and she was apparently a popular enough author that she had some pull. Scribner’s offered to skip the novel serialization and the income that would have come with it, but offered an advance on royalties. Here’s what I thought was interesting: Frances rejected this deal because accepting an advance on royalties could be risky in those days because the advance might have had to be returned if the book failed to earn it out. Can you imagine having to pay back an advance? That would stink. I was surprised publishers and authors apparently used to make those sorts of deals.


Back to womanhood for a moment, from page 187, Frances was being interviewed and was asked questions about the sexes:

“The man and woman question has no interest for me,” she told the interviewer. “We are not to be divided into mere men and women; we are human beings who are part of each other. Each part should be as noble as the other, and the one who is stronger should teach the other strength. To be a man’s wife and the mother of human beings is a stately thing. Frequently it is not, but it should be. And to be a woman’s husband and the father of human beings should be quite a stately thing. When it is not it is rather disgraceful. . . .”

“Then I gather that your ideal woman must be a mother?” [The interviewer putting words in her mouth?]

“She must be a mother if she has children. . . . She must have the reason and sense of honor and justice which one expects from the ideal man.”

Having written a book that both bowed to and called into question the proper role of women, she ended the interview with a statement that seems to have sprung from her lips without forethought. “It is my opinion,” she told the interviewer, “that the ideal woman, among quite a number of other things, should be a ‘perfect gentleman.'”


Skipping 100 pages into Frances’s future, here’s another part I found funny. In 1914, Little Lord Fauntleroy was turned into a British film for the first time. From page 279:

[The film] made its New York screen debut at the Lyric Theater. In true Frances fashion, she made a “fairy story” of it, taking the hundred seats the producer had offered her for the first performance, a benefit for the Newsboys’ Fund, and instead of distributing them among her friends made a children’s party of it. With Frances as hostess, the dozens of boys arrived half an hour before the curtain went up and waited in great excitement.

This reminded me of J. M. Barrie doing something similar in the film Finding Neverland, inaccurate as it may be, in which the playwright invites children to fill seats throughout the theater for the premier of Peter Pan, both as a gift to them, and to provide a spirited laugh track for his fairy tale to ease what the typical adults may otherwise try to take too seriously. “What is it called, James? A play!

Anyway, Frances’s little plan does not go so well…

Although she had been told that there would be a few “novelties” in the production, neither she nor the children were quite prepared for the fact that the director decided to kill off each of the heirs to Dorincourt, one at a time, in florid details of hunting accidents and delirium tremens. By the third miserable death, one of Frances’s small guests cried out, “I don’t like this play! If I knew this play was going to be this kind play I wouldn’t have come to this play. I want to go home.” With that he bolted up the aisle in tears, and most of the other children followed suit. Frances could only herd the wailing children out of the theater in dismay.

Sad, but hilarious.


Finally, it seems Frances did not much like editors or criticism. Nowadays, writers quickly learn that taking criticism is part of the craft, and one must learn to use it to fine-tune one’s work and one’s skill. Frances, it appears, did not quite operate that way. She believed her work came from a higher power, so it was not for others to criticize or edit. From page 294, emphasis mine:

Elizabeth [a friend] was a sounding board, one whose job was to admire but not to criticize. Frances once recounted in amazement the time she’d read a story to a young man who dared to offer criticism, something Elizabeth would never dream of doing. In fact, the only other time someone had dared such a thing, it ended with his losing his job. Apparently Frances sent the manuscript of one of her novels to the publisher at a time when her editor was unfortunately in Europe. His new young assistant wrote out a list of improvements and passed them on to the equally new assistant editor, who made the mistake of mailing it to Frances. “The result,” Elizabeth wrote, “was an explosion that shook the building which held the magazine and its employees. Mrs. Burnett gave a magnificent illustration of the tempest that can be aroused in gentle souls.” She withdrew the manuscript, to the astonishment of the editor who’d known nothing of what happened, and refused all their calls and letters and cables. By the time it was resolved, months later, Frances had their written agreement that they would continue to publish her work without any alterations whatsoever, as they had all along. When Elizabeth later asked why Frances was so averse to criticism when she averred that stories came from outside of herself, the answer was that “I am the custodian of a gift. It is for me to protect its dignity from the driveling of imbeciles!”


That’s it! Overall, it was a fascinating book, I very much enjoyed it!

Bookstore plunder

I had a bit of time over the weekend to browse a used bookstore. Not as much time as I would’ve liked (I can browse a used bookstore for many hours if allowed), but I did find some interesting stuff.

rhapsody

Didn’t have time to browse the film soundtracks, but I did snatch up some symphonic metal from the Italian band Rhapsody of Fire. Their album The Frozen Tears of Angels features narration from the late great Christopher Lee; his deep cinematic British voice compliments the fantastical metal very well. It’s a concept album that’s part of a larger saga of albums, none of which I have… yet.

lesmiserables

Also music related is the blu-ray of the 25th anniversary concert of Les Miserables. I think it came on PBS or something once, but I missed it. But now I can watch it over and over!

hugo

Picked up a movie companion to one of my favorite films. Looking through it, it looked awfully familiar, but I double-checked my bookshelves and I don’t have it. I could swear I’ve browsed a copy of it somewhere else before though. Maybe there’s another copy somewhere else in the house? I have no idea…

elantris

I haven’t read Brandon Sanderson in a while, but I picked up Elantris for someday.

straub

I’ve been reading Peter Straub’s Shadowland recently and have been enjoying it very much, so I picked up pretty much all the Peter Straub I could find, which amounted to nine books. They’ll take me forever to read, but they all look interesting… I’ll probably dive into one after I finish Shadowland

mozart

Picked up some books on Mozart and classical music because I’m such a classy guy.

pdqbach

Finally, I happened upon a biography of one of the great classical composers who most music scholars, in their snooty snobbery, ignore completely.

Used bookstore plunder

We don’t have really any good used bookstores very close to us. They tend to have very small selections or high prices. But on Tuesday I was able to make it to a larger used bookstore about an hour away. Their selection wasn’t amazing, but wasn’t horrible either, and their prices were pretty nice. I unfortunately didn’t have as much time to peruse as I would’ve liked, but I spent quite enough money anyway, so the time limit was probably a good thing. I could browse books for many countless hours; it’s a great source of intellectual stimulation and inspiration. As to how long it will actually take me to get around to reading the books, I’m sure I’ll have them all read by *cough* *cough* [inaudible] *cough*.

So because I don’t have much else to blog about (besides [insert the latest controversial issue here], but enough’s been said about that already), I will tell you what books I got, complete with beautiful photographs filtered through Instagram’s X-Pro II because I’m so cool.

Dreams

Became interested in the works of Jung through Joseph Campbell, though he’s usually so abstract that he’s tough to read. I can’t help but think that trying to interpret dreams very much risks searching for meaning where there actually is none, at least not as much as one may think. But I’m interested in the subject regardless, and certainly open to having my mind changed if I can manage to understand what Jung writes. And even if I don’t agree, I’ll be interested in his thoughts.

Campbell

Speaking of Joseph Campbell, found a couple of his books there as well. Goddesses in particular looked interesting, because I had never heard of it before (granted, I think it was published posthumously and is actually a collection of his essays on the subject rather than something he actually put together himself), and because one of the stories I’m currently plotting involves a “goddess” archetype, so I’ll be interested in what insights Mr. Myth himself can share on the subject.

sagas

I’ve eyed this at the bookstore a few times, so nice to get a big discount on it at a used bookstore, eh? And it’s in almost new condition too. Just curious about the subject, though I know very little about it.

Power

I really have little clue what exactly this book is about. Browsing through it, parts looked interesting enough, and it was cheap. Guess we’ll see!

Goodkind

On to fiction, picked up the fourth book in Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, though I’ve yet to read the 2nd and 3rd. I read the first book, Wizard’s First Rule some years ago and enjoyed it. Goodkind’s writing is very bland, but that’s at least better than being clunky and cluttered, and the story itself definitely held my attention throughout. I’ve heard the series gets repetitive later on, though.

Jordan

I have yet to read any of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, though I hope to at some point, especially now that it’s actually complete, so I picked up the second, third, and fourth books in that series. (Already have the first.)

Vinge

Similarly, I have yet to read anything by Vernor Vinge, but I’ve good things about him from readers I trust and his books definitely look interesting.

Stephenson

I’ve read Neal Stephenson’s Anathem and Reamde, both of which I gave five stars, so I’m interested in anything by Stephenson. (Already have his Baroque Cycle and Cryptomicon, though I haven’t read them yet; they’re definitely doorstoppers.) I hope to start reading his latest book, Seveneves, as soon as I finish the last eighty pages of Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance, which I’ve been reading for the last two months.

IMG_20150528_045606

From the mind of Ray Bradbury, I’ve only read Something Wicked This Way Comes and Zen in the Art of Writing, both of which are fantastic. So I’ll definitely be interested to read some more of his work. I also like the look of these classy 70’s paperback editions. Can’t find ’em like this anymore. In a new bookstore, that is.

Peter Pan

Always interested in some classic children’s fantasy, as old-fashioned as the old stuff tends to be, and this isn’t one you see too often.

Sweeney Todd

And just because it was cheap. One of my favorite movies.

CDs

Finally, also got some CDs, mostly soundtracks. Good stuff.

And there you have it. Go out and peruse your closest used bookstore today, and support authors not getting any money… oh no, wait…

Talent and stuff

My weird and often late work hours prevent me from falling into any sort of groove lately; my sleep schedule is all over the place and I can’t seem to get into any sort of routine. Not that I really need one, but I’d probably be more productive with one. I’m still working on writing things and programming musical things, but progress is slow on everything. The days seem to be flying by; every day feels like only a few hours. Suddenly an entire week is gone, and then the entire month. My mind is clearly shrinking.

Talent book

I bought a book last week (or was it the week before?) called The Little Book of Talent: 52 Tips for Improving Your Skills by Daniel Coyle, which is basically a book of tips (52 to be exact) about how to… improve your skills, I guess one could say. It’s a quick and easy read and full of great little nuggets of wisdom about how to practice skills productively. I have yet to try putting them to the test (especially as I was feeling pretty sick all through last week), but one tip stood out to me…

From page 112:

Tip 51: Keep Your Big Goals Secret

… Telling others about your big goals makes them less likely to happen, because it creates an unconscious payoff — tricking our brains into thinking we’ve already accomplished the goal. Keeping our big goals to ourselves is one of the smartest goals we can set.

Definitely one I’ll have to try. This very blog is riddled with my blathering about goals I never seem to reach. So I’m going to try just shutting up about them and see if that helps at all. (It’s not my only problem, I know, but it’s still worth trying.)

Other interesting tips from the book include:

  • Tip 15: Break every move down into chunks
  • Tip 18: Choose five minutes a day over an hour a week
  • Tip 30: Take a nap
  • Tip 46: Don’t waste time trying to break bad habits — instead, build new ones
  • Tip 47: To learn it more deeply, teach it

The book makes a point about making a daily habit of things. The only daily habits I’ve gotten very good at are eating, sleeping, and taking showers. So that’s something I’ll have to work on. (Making new habits, that is, not eating and stuff.) The book also points out (as with the aforementioned tip 18) that just five minutes a day of focusing on some particular thing can make a big difference; it doesn’t have to be some hour and a half of dedication that will just wind up discouraging you from putting in any time at all. (“Oh, I don’t have enough time to focus very deeply today!”) So that’s definitely something I need to try.

Anyway, it’s a good book, and one that I’ll be rereading now and then. I especially appreciate how pithy it is. These self-helpy type books so often have only a few little points to actually make, but spread them out over a couple hundred pages bloated with boring personal stories and examples. And at the end the reader thinks, “Gee, that was good!” and then forgets what few main points there were, if there were even any at all. This book, on the other hand, is only main points, with pithy little paragraphs for a bit of elaboration. None of that annoying self-help bloating-to-make-it-book-length-to-sell-it stuff.

Bonus material

Here’s a TED talk by the author…

And here’s a funny comic from a talented person:

3-painting

My tweet is in print!

novelcover

As tough as it is to write a novel and getting it published, how many published authors can lay honest claim to having a tweet published?

Working On My Novel is a short experimental book that collects a little over a hundred tweets of writers on Twitter who tweeted the phrase “working on my novel.”  One of my tweets was selected, so I received a contributor copy and am obviously I bit biased in the book’s favor.  Still, it’s interesting to see the various contexts in which people work on their novels, from the writers who are able to watch random TV shows while they write, to those excusing themselves from writing because they’re too busy or tired, to those who claim in one way or another that they will surely find success, though one can’t tell whether their tweets are written with honest hope or sarcastic despair.  But by the end of book, I actually found myself inspired to get working on my novel again.  (Not the same novel that my tweet in the book refers to, of course; I finished that one.)

You belong to Universe

mastery

I’m reading Mastery, the latest book from author Robert Greene (author of the classic book The 48 Laws of Power).  On page 42, Greene writes about Buckminster Fuller.  A depressed Fuller was on his way to commit suicide when he heard a voice from within himself that said:

“From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought.  You think the truth.  You do not have the right to eliminate yourself.  You do not belong to you.  You belong to Universe.  Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”

I am not sure what the first line means.  What is “temporal attestation”?  From the context, I guess it means that you do not have to wait around to see whether or not your thought is true; whatever you think right now is true, based on your experiences.  It may not be true in the sense that it may not correlate with reality, but it is still valid in and of itself.  If you gain new experiences, as you inevitably will, you are obligated to form new thoughts based on them, not to refuse them in the name of pride or fear.  That’s my Karl Popper-ish guess, at least; it may be something both deeper and simpler than that.

“You do not have the right to eliminate yourself.  You do not belong to you.  You belong to Universe.”  This certainly struck me.  There are people who have had powerful conversions after suicide attempts who also mention learning that their life is not their own to eliminate.  And certainly much of today’s political and spiritual misery probably arises from the idea that each man belongs only to himself, and not to “Universe” (or God as we might say).

While a man’s significance in this life may forever be obscure to him, I don’t think it will remain that way forever.  I believe part of the comfort and joy of Heaven, that feeling of being “at home”, comes from being able to see oneself fully, and to see the connection between oneself and the rest of existence.  However, I cannot confirm this.  (Yet.)

The “advantage” of others seems a subjective thing.  I can easily imagine someone wanting from me something I cannot or will not give, claiming it would be to his advantage, whether it be my money, my approval of something I cannot approve, my time, my agreement, or my indifference to his words and actions.  That is, you do not get to decide for others or for the Universe (God) what would be to your advantage; it is not merely the fulfillment of your latest natural desire, such as money or the adoration of others.  To know what would be to the “advantage” of others is the wisdom we ask the Universe for, in the name of and for the sake of the Universe.

Anyway, the main principle I take away from this is that I am not living my life for the sake of itself.  While working on my novel or any of my projects, it’s easy to get sidetracked daydreaming of fame and fortune, wanting a piece of the power that the “big names” in the entertainment industry have.  And, on the business side of things, that’s how the world encourages one to think.  Money and power are the validators, and the foundations for getting anything done.  But that’s not where the fulfillment in a project comes from.

It also makes me that much more interested in the life and works of good old Bucky.