Cormac McCARTHY :: Shakespeare advises The Counselor (2013)

The standard criticism of Ridley Scott's film is that normal characters do not talk as do in The Counselor. Indeed the dialogue is almost Shakespearean, for example, the telephone conversation between the Counselor and Jefe. There is also the sense of inevitable tragedy in the sense of Greek theatre. Here is my favorite excerpt from Cormac McCarthy's screenplay (which also summarizes the moral content of the film):

JEFE: "The world in which you seek to undo your mistakes is not the world in which they were made. You are at a cross in the road and here you think to choose. But here there is no choosing. There is only accepting. The choosing was done long ago."

So what about our choices into the future? Here the Diamond Dealer (played by Bruno Ganz) informs The Counselor as follows:

"At our noblest, we announce to the darkness that we will not be diminished by the brevity of our lives."

... yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. The baseless fabric of our revels shall inevitably unravel in ways totally unforeseen.

Nature of Addiction :: In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts

The alarm went off on my clock radio the other day, and I decided to listen and snooze. Instead a riveting interview with Dr. Gabor Maté awakened me. I do not have the transcript, but I will excerpt an open letter from him:

"I wrote "In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts" because I see addiction as one of the most misunderstood phenomena in our society. People -- including many people who should know better, such as doctors and policy makers -- believe it to be a matter of individual choice or, at best, a medical disease.

Addiction, or the capacity to become addicted, is very close to the core of the human experience. That is why almost anything can become addictive, from seemingly healthy activities such as eating or exercising to abusing drugs intended for healing. The issue is not the external target but our internal relationship to it.

Addictions, for the most part, develop in a compulsive attempt to ease one's pain or distress in the world. Given the amount of pain and dissatisfaction that human life engenders, many of us are driven to find solace in external things. The more we suffer, and the earlier in life we suffer, the more we are prone to become addicted. I believe there is one addiction process, whether it manifests in the lethal substance dependencies of my Downtown Eastside patients, the frantic self-soothing of overeaters or shopaholics, the obsessions of gamblers, sexaholics and compulsive internet users, or in the socially acceptable and even admired behaviors of the workaholic.

Drug addicts are often dismissed and discounted as unworthy of empathy and respect. In telling their stories my intent is to help their voices to be heard and to shed light on the origins and nature of their ill-fated struggle to overcome suffering through substance use. Both in their flaws and their virtues they share much in common with the society that ostracizes them. If they have chosen a path to nowhere, they still have much to teach the rest of us. In the dark mirror of their lives we can trace outlines of our own."

Question: The title of your book has its origins in the Buddhist Wheel of Life. In the Hungry Ghost Realm, people feel empty and seek solace from the outside, from sources that can never nourish. In what ways is our culture trapped in this realm? What can society learn from drug addicts who take the feelings of lack that everyone has, to the extreme?

Gabor Maté: "Much of our culture and our economy are based on exploiting people's sense of emptiness and inadequacy, of not being enough as we are. We have the belief that if we do this or acquire that, if we achieve this or attain that, we'll be satisfied. This sense of lack and this belief feed many addictive behaviors, from shopping to eating to workaholism. In many respects we behave in a driven fashion that differs only in degree from the desperation of the drug addict."

Very interesting insights, I thought, but hey -- I'm not an addict -- ok, maybe a caffeine addict. Several days past and I knew deep within myself there was personal denial, maybe even self-deception. Then a paper by Irving Biederman came to my attention, and it all clicked -- yes, I am a knowledge addict.

So what's up with that? Let's break it down a bit:

"The pleasure of grasping a new concept triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances. The brain's craving for a fix motivates humans to maximize the rate at which they absorb knowledge. Biederman hypothesizes that knowledge addiction has strong evolutionary value because mate selection correlates closely with perceived intelligence. Only more pressing material needs, such as hunger, can suspend the quest for knowledge. The same mechanism is involved in the aesthetic experience providing a neurological explanation for the pleasure we derive from art. Biederman's theory holds that the greater the neural activity in the areas rich in opioid receptors, the greater the pleasure; however, repeated viewing of an attractive image lessened both the rating of pleasure and the activity in the opioid-rich areas. The quest for knowledge can never be sated -- as long as mu-opioid receptors remain unbound in the human brain."

So there are biochemical incentives to seek out novel experiences -- until we get "satisfaction," but what does that mean? Some believe it's the interaction of dopamine, the hormone secreted in the brain in anticipation of pleasure, and cortisol, the chemical released when we are under stress [e.g. Gregory Berns]. Biederman briefly mentions the role of neurotransmitter GABA, gamma-aminobutyric acid (which one can buy at a health food store).

Clarity for the moment thus boils down to: opiates, aesthetic pleasures, and neuroscience. [The link herein goes to a PDF of: Irving Biederman & E.A. Vessel, Perceptual Pleasure and the Brain, American Scientist (2006), 94:249-255]

Cat and string :: quantum mechanics and dualities

During the Fall semester of 2007 physics professor at Berkeley, Irfan Siddiqi, asked this question:

“If individual atoms always behave according to quantum mechanics, and if all objects are made of atoms, why doesn’t everything behave according to quantum mechanics? Where does classical mechanics come from? I understand what’s quantum. How do you become unquantum? If I were to make Schroedinger’s cat, one atom at a time, would it be quantum mechanical?”

He responded to his own question as follows:

“To date, physicists have reconciled this dilemma by noting that when a quantum object interacts with an uncontrolled environment consisting of many atoms in random states, then any superposed quantum states decay almost instantly. Even if everyday objects could be prepared in a quantum state, as soon as they came into contact with any kind of classical measurement apparatus, they would immediately collapse into a single, definite state perfectly well described by classical mechanics.”

Interestingly at nearly the same time, but at a different location, Prof. Mina Aganagic talked about how she got started in string theory:

“I went to a few talks at Cal Tech colloquia, and one person I admired very much as a teacher was John Preskill. He gave this talk about black holes and information loss and I thought it was fascinating. I walked into John Schwarz’ office and I asked him—I had no idea he was the founder of string theory—and he told me a little bit and he gave me his book about string theory. I opened the first page and I was hooked. What fascinated me about string theory is the kinds of questions people were asking. From the first year of grad school I knew I wanted to do string theory.”

So in a way, it was a profound accident (beings, supposedly composed of atoms, colliding)... and Aganagic went on to explain:

"String theory is the only known solution to the problem at the core of modern physics: the incompatibility of quantum mechanics and gravity. Perhaps the most remarkable thing we know about string theory is that it is a theory with many dualities. Duality means that there can be different descriptions of the same theory, some very simple and classical, and others very complex and quantum mechanical. Dualities have taught us that what originally appeared as distinct superstring theories are in fact weakly coupled descriptions of a single theory.”

Aganagic is working to understand all these dualities which have led to numerous advances in quantum field theory (e.g., the exact solutions of some supersymmetric gauge theories), mathematics (e.g. Calabi-Yau mirror symmetry), and quantum gravity (the counting of black hole entropy). The most important physical principles: gauge theory and general relativity, are predicted by string theory [though the empirical verification of the theory itself may be somewhat problematic]. “Moreover,” she says, “underlying different descriptions of the theory are often different branches of mathematics.” [see her SPIRES HEP papers]

I have always wondered at exactly what scale a classical model must turn to the quantum alternative. Is the demarcation sharp or fuzzy?

So this story about cat and string has a continuation in the tale about how an elephant is described by three blind men (or a group simply called E8 ;)

Parallel worlds :: Mark | Hugh EVERETT

... incredible documentary from Mark Everett, frontman of the EELS (an alternative rock band best known for its first record Beautiful Freak and its melancholy follow-up Electro-Shock Blues), on his journey to understand his father Hugh Everett III, the quantum physicist who opposed Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation by developing the theory of parallel multiple worlds.

Hugh Everett's 1957 Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton was followed by a paper in the same year entitled "'Relative state' formulation of quantum mechanics", Rev. Mod. Phys. 29: 454–462. The documentary uncovers passages from a draft which were not included in either formal publications, but are nonetheless interesting for intuitively grasping a difficult idea:

'[O]ne can imagine an intelligent amoeba with a good memory. As time progresses the amoeba is constantly splitting, each time the resulting amoebas having the same memories as the parent. Our amoeba hence does not have a life line, but a life tree. The question of identity or non identity of two amoebas at a later time must be rephrased. At any time we can consider two of them, and they will have common memories up to a point (common parent) after which they will diverge according to their separate lives after this point. It becomes simply a matter of terminology as to whether they should be thought of as the same amoeba or not, or whether the phrase "the amoeba" should be reserved for the whole ensemble.

We can get a closer analogy if we were to take one of these intelligent amoebas, erase his past memories, and render him unconscious while he underwent fission, placing the two resulting amoebas in separate tanks, and repeating this process for all succeeding generations, so that none of the amoebas would be aware of their splitting. After awhile we would have a large number of individuals, sharing some memories with one another, differing in others, each of which is completely unaware of his "other selves" and under the impression that he is a unique individual. It would be difficult indeed to convince such an amoeba of the true situation short of confronting him with his "other selves".

The same is true of [sic] one accepts the hypothesis of the universal wave function. Each time an individual splits he is unaware of it, and any single individual is at all times unaware of his "other selves" with which he has no interaction from the time of splitting.

We have indicated that it is possible to have a complete, causal theory of quantum mechanics, which simultaneously displays probabilistic aspects on a subjective level, and that this theory does not involve any new postulates but in fact results simply by taking seriously wave mechanics and assuming its general validity. The physical "reality" is assumed to be the wave function of the whole universe itself. By properly interpreting the internal correlations in this wave function it is possible to explain the appearance of the world to us (classical physics, etc.), as well as the apparent probabilistic aspects.'

Hugh Everett's theory was generally rejected by the physics community for decades. A typical critique invoked subjective experience; for example, Bryce DeWitt had claimed that since he could not feel himself split as in the amoeba metaphor, the theory could not be true. Everett replied in his letter to DeWitt that when Copernicus made his radical assertion that the Earth revolved around the sun instead of the converse, critics rejected Copernicus because they could not feel the Earth moving.

Everett's famous footnote in the Reviews of Modern Physics paper summarized his many-worlds theory where the Schrödinger equation holds for both the quantum and Newtonian worlds:

'In reply to a preprint of this article some correspondents have raised the question of the "transition from possible to actual," arguing that in "reality" there is—as our experience testifies—no such splitting of observer states, so that only one branch can ever actually exist. Since this point may occur to other readers the following is offered in explanation.

The whole issue of the transition from "possible" to "actual" is taken care of in the theory in a very simple way—there is no such transition, nor is any such transition necessary for the theory to be in accord with our experience. From the viewpoint of the theory all elements of a superposition (all "branches") are "actual," none any more "real" than the rest. It is unnecessary to suppose that all but one are somehow destroyed, since all the separate elements of a superposition individually obey the wave equation with complete indifference to the presence or absence ("actuality" or not) of any other elements. This total lack of effect of one branch on another also implies that no observer will ever be aware of any "splitting" process.

Arguments that the world picture presented by this theory is contradicted by experience, because we are unaware of any branching process, are like the criticism of the Copernican theory that the mobility of the earth as a real physical fact is incompatible with the common sense interpretation of nature because we feel no such motion. In both cases the argument fails when it is shown that the theory itself predicts that our experience will be what in fact it is. (In the Copernican case the addition of Newtonian physics was required to be able to show that the earth's inhabitants would be unaware of any motion of the earth.)'

So what are the main points? Human consciousness does not collapse the wave function. Everything that is possible does happen (in some branch of the multiverse).

Complexity argument

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER

Before developing a Theory of Everything, one might ask whether the human brain and its products are indeed capable of understanding the truths about the universe.

Karl Sabbagh, author of THE RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS, asks: "Why should we expect to be able eventually to understand how the universe originated, evolved, and operates? While human brains are complex and capable of many amazing things, there is not necessarily any match between the complexity of the universe and the complexity of our brains, any more than a dog's brain is capable of understanding every detail of the world of cats and bones, or the dynamics of stick trajectories when thrown."

Sabbagh invokes the complexity argument, but the fundamental problem is addressing the limits of our knowledge. Over 200 years ago, Kant divided the universe into two domains: phenomena and noumena, or in plain English, the knowable and unknowable domains. So that implies we must qualify ToE to mean: "Theory of Everything (knowable)" -- but then it is a misnomer because Everything does not really include everything. Perhaps the most interesting stuff is going on over in the world of noumena (like God playing dice to amuse himself in his infinite boredom). Or if one has any faith in decoherence theory (or the theory of multiple universes) there must be other versions of ToE which we cannot possibly access even in ordinary phenomena.

Self? Language & everything else

THE WORLD QUESTION CENTER

Suppose you have a complete theory of Everything (both knowable and unknowable), does it count if you cannot articulate it? A theory must be expressed in some language to make it comprehensible to another being. The limits of that theory is circumscribed by the limits of language, what language is capable of expressing. If something is ineffable, then it obviously falls outside of language, but more importantly, it falls outside of any possible theory.

Ask any mystic about his or her experiences, and I'll bet the conversation is about noumena. During discussions, we readily use the subject "we," just as I use "you" to address you. But who are "you" really? Some might say, body and soul. And there again the Kantian division between phenomena and noumena pops up -- for the entity "soul" cannot be pinned down in phenomena.

In his 1994 book "THE ASTONISHING HYPOTHESIS: The Scientific Search for the Soul," Francis Crick [co-discoverer of DNA] argued that the soul is an illusion perpetuated, like Tinkerbell, only by our belief in it. He wrote: "'YOU,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

Oceanic Feeling

The Oceanic Feeling : The Origins of Religious Sentiment in Ancient India

vide Jeffrey Moussaieff's influence from Daniel H.H. Ingalls, professor of Sanskrit at Harvard, and Louis Renou, Indologist in Paris. Interestingly in his 1990 book _Final_Analysis_ he wrote, "[I] slowly began to free myself from a belief that they [Pali and Sanskrit texts] were 'the truth.' They were simply one among a myriad of beliefs that owed their power primarily to the fact that people were born into them, or had the ideas drilled into them over and over."

William James used the phrase "oceanic feeling" to describe mystical religious experiences.

Hugh Everett bio notes

Einstein letter to boy Everett (quantum theorist)

When he was 12, Hugh wrote letters to Albert Einstein raising the question whether it was something random or unifying that held the universe together. Einstein was kind enough to answer. In a letter dated June 11, 1943, he wrote,

"Dear Hugh: There is no such thing like an irresistible force and immovable body. But there seems to be a very stubborn boy who has forced his way victoriously through strange difficulties created by himself for this purpose.
Sincerely yours, A. Einstein".

Later in his life Everett would write in this (unedited) Ph.D. dissertation:

"[W]e must renounce all hope of finding anything like the correct theory... simply because the totality of experience is never accessible to us."

This follows from his theory of multiple universes, also known as decoherence theory, since we are on one realized path among many branching superpositions each producing yet another universe (with a different 'copy' of ourselves). [see Sci.Am. 2007 December, pp.98-105 for more details]

Myths of PMA (not PMS ;-)

from: The 5 Myths of Positive Mental Attitude:

"Everyone who accomplishes anything - whether it’s earning a million dollars or becoming an award-winning actor - accomplish it the same way: by taking action.

Positive people have an edge because they believe the object of their desire is attainable. They come from a ‘can-do’ mindset. Their actions are not based on fear or scarcity, but based on possibilities. Thus, a positive attitude helps a person manifest their desires, not simply by dreaming about it, but by inspiring the person to take action.

It’s the action behind the attraction that makes the dream come true.

Even in external circumstances that seem out of our control, we can always control is our internal response. In fact, it’s the only thing we have absolute control over."

The only thing we could possibly have any control over: our inner awareness.

Defeat Brain Drain

Source: Mind Hacks: Ten Ways to Defeat Brain Drain

'Here are 10 ways you can beat brain drain.

1. Meditate -- By meditate, I mean sitting and closing your eyes for 20 minutes or so. Sit still and simply observe the thoughts that come into your mind. Don't try to solve any problems. Just watch and let go.
2. Take A Walk -- A brisk walk outdoors—especially in a park or someplace you are not familiar with will take your mind off your main task so it can relax. Pay attention to the scenes as you travel. Stop and smell the roses, as the cliche goes. Take a minute to see the beauty of panoramas.
3. Listen to classical music -- Sitting still with relaxing Mozart or Bach playing through headphones can transcend the brain drain. It will relax you while coaxing your mind to think about other things. (Editor: Here are some free classical music downloads.)
4. Read something entertaining -- There is nothing like a chapter of your favorite book to take your mind off the causes of your brain drain. Reading is an interactive action, so you keep your mind active, while relaxing at the same time. Tip: Use reading for 10-20 minutes as a reward for 30 minutes of focused work. Use an egg timer to keep track.
5. Reboot your brain with a caffeine nap. -- University studies show that drinking a cup of coffee and then immediately taking a 10-15 minute catnap gives you an energy boost. This is called a caffeine nap. I've found it works equally well for brain drain. (Just make sure you have something to do when you wake up, because you are going to be ready to rock and roll.)
6. Go to a movie. -- If you can fit in a two hour movie, at the theater, it is worth the time and money just so you can get away mentally and physically. Sitting in front of the big screen is a great way to take your mind off everything.
7. Listen to motivational CDs -- This is a tip I picked up from Steve Pavlina. When he's tired from intense thinking, he pops in a motivational CD. Although it might seem like this would be more work, it isn't. By listening, you can relax, and become almost passive, as the ideas and strategies gradually break the drain.
8. Play a sport -- Studies show that people who do a competitive sport such as tennis, basketball, golf, martial arts, or football are happier overall. To compete in the sport may make you tired physically, but will wake you up mentally. When you wake up mentally, brain drain stops being as big a problem.
9. Break down your project into bite-sized chunks -- Rome wasn't built in a day. Maybe you are trying to move your mountain in a day too. Take a half hour or an hour to take a close look at your projects. Are you trying to write a novel in one day, when it would be more practical to shoot for three pages of a novel a day? You might be in brain drain because you simply don't have sensible objectives.
10. Play a game -- Playing a game that gets you away from your draining thoughts is an excellent way to get past the sluggishness. You might prefer crossword puzzles or sudokus if you don't like video games. Either way, playing a game lets you know life doesn't always have to be so serious and focused. Make time for play too!

Remember, the good news is brain drain means you are using your brain at maximum capacity. The bad news is you are not giving your brain needed periods of rest. Rest is important for creative thinking and problem solving. Thus a series of short breaks between your work is necessary for you to work at a high level. So in planning your next intense project, be sure to scatter in several scheduled periods where you can take a break and give your brain some time to incubate.'

Paperless life

Palimpsest: the guide to a (mostly) paperless life | 43 Folders

"[R]ecognize that paper is all about process, whereas digital media are all about information and retrieval. One mustn't be afraid to whip out a scrap of paper when it's time to scribble impromptu notes, mark a manuscript for edits, or do some visual thinking. Equally, one must not hesitate to scan or transcribe and then throw away a piece of paper that has value only in the potential future usefulness of the information it represents, once the drafting and scribbling are done. Embracing paperless reference filing is not the same thing as rejecting paper's important role in your work."

The author then advocates scanning documents into PDFs (now an ISO standard) which are beautifully handled natively within OS-X Leopard.

PowerPoint Zen > Gates v. Jobs

"In the world of PowerPoint presentations, you do not always need to visually spell everything out. You do not need to (nor can you) pound every detail into the head of each member of your audience either visually or verbally. Instead, the combination of your words, along with the visual images you project, should motivate the viewer and arouse his imagination helping him to empathize with your idea and visualize your idea far beyond what is visible in the ephemeral PowerPoint slide before him. The Zen aesthetic values include (but are not limited to):

Simplicity [kanso]
Subtlety
Beauty , Elegance
Suggestive rather than the descriptive or obvious
Naturalness (i.e., nothing artificial or forced) [shizen],
Empty space (or negative space)
Stillness, Tranquility
Eliminating the non-essential

Gates v. Jobs: lessons in contrasts" -- MUST SEE:
http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/the_zen_estheti.html

Hofstadter's _I Am a Strange Loop_

David Deutsch writes in his review: 'I Am a Strange Loop is supposed to explain that a mind is a near-infinitely extendable, self-referential loop of symbols that suffers – or rather, benefits – from the hallucination of being an "I". Furthermore (Hofstadter says paradoxically), that hallucination is itself an "I". Hofstadter's "strange loop" is a bit like an ordinary feedback loop, such as the images in a pair of parallel mirrors facing each other, but instead of merely depicting itself physically, it symbolically refers to itself. And unlike ordinary self-referential statements, like this one, the symbol inside a brain that refers to itself as "I" is not used by anyone else: it is someone. [...] Hofstadter embraces irrationality itself: "Our very nature is such as to prevent us from understanding our nature." '

Philo :: Metta

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. -Philo of Alexandria