TALEB’S RECIPE FOR A GOOD DAY : (Humiliate An Economist!)
1) Smile at a stranger,
2) Surprise someone by saying something unexpectedly nice,
3) Give some genuine attention to an elderly,
4) Invite someone who doesn’t have many friends for coffee,
5) Humiliate an economist, publicly, or create deep anxiety inside a Harvard professor.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-02 14:51:00 UTC
THE BEAUTY OF THE BRAIN
We are terribly simple in our reasoning ability:
“We are trying to deal with an increasingly complex and chaotic world with biological brains that are fundamentally unsuited to the task. We can only deal with three to five variable/topics/tasks at a time – yet we live in a world where we are often faced with hundreds at the same time,” he said.
“We therefore need augmentation, a symbiotic relationship with our machines – a partnership if you will – to help us cope and prosper as we go into the future.”
IBM-DARPA SyNAPSE
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-02 12:57:00 UTC
SOLACE
Fresh local fruit from the farmer’s market.
Pears, Peaches, Plums, and Figs.
Dark chocolate.
Nepalese coffee.
Couch.
Pillow.
Priceless.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-02 09:40:00 UTC
PRESERVATIVES
Ok, so the damned BREAD at lunch must have been loaded with preservatives, ’cause my ears are ringing like I had front-speaker seats at a Kiss concert, gravity seems to be coming from random directions, and almost all my nouns seem to have run away and hidden from the verbal cat.
I bet I can write some really silly nonsense without trying about right now…. sigh.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-02 09:37:00 UTC
Curt Doolittle shared a photo.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-02 06:45:00 UTC
MORE ON AUTISM, ASPIE-NESS AND LIFE
You know, I had a very troubled childhood and it gave me my desire for success – financial and environmental independence so that I would be free of the terrible decisions of others. I have sort of two subconscious drivers from that childhood: I have to protect everyone, and I have to have enough money to be safe – and safe from ‘ordinary people’.
Back in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s being an Aspie was not a very easy thing. Everyone is ‘harshing’ on your happiness all the time – telling you that you will be happier if you do what other people do. Except all that stuff seems really stupid and boring and i’d really rather either read science fiction or an encyclopedia or try to figure out how to arrange my room differently. OK? It’s just really bizarre.
I actually went through childhood thinking that the world was full of idiots and crazy people – like zombies – but that they were in charge so I needed to get along with them and help them. I was never non-conformist. I mean, these poor fools are trying to run the world right? OMG. I dont’ want to make it even worse! If I help them a little bit they don’t annoy me too much and I can read science fiction and try to draw the internal wood structures of these victorian houses by imagining what’s behind the clapboards.
Really. I swear to god. That is how I thought.
WOMEN
Women can make it worse. They are really awesome creatures. They are like the best-est most wonderfuly-good-smelling, soft, yummy things in the world PLUS they can explain emotions and stuff like that to you and it makes the world a LOT less exasperating. And you just have to be nice to them, listen to them, do stuff for them and give them your money. And it’s like magic. They make you part of the real world.
And because they’re really good smelling, and soft and fascinating and helpful and stuff, they make you connect with the world. You don’t sort of fall into your head for three weeks at a time and then come up for air without any knowledge of time passing.
But, the problem is, that they want you to feel all this stuff. And you say “Well, you know, it’s not like I don’t want to. It’s that I don’t and I can’t feel what you feel. I mean, if someone is color blind, you don’t criticize them because they can’t tell the difference between red and green. But it’s not OK, and you can somehow criticize me if I can’t tell the difference between bored and angry facial expressions.”
Now if you TELL me how you feel I can understand that. But I can’t SEE it unless you tell me. ‘It all looks the same to me. I rely on body language because that seems to work. But I have to concentrate to use it. And if I am thinking about something terribly fascinating like how they manufactured the parts to this chair here, or how the water vapor accumulates over this geography, I won’t notice your body language. Really. Its not that interesting. I’m sorry. It’s not.
Other Aspies and ASD’s are really interesting because they talk about interesting stuff. They are fun to be around. It is the only time we feel really normal. ‘Cause other people think like us. Really smart normals tend to think a lot like us too. But they have all these verbal ticks and status cues that are really annoyingly confusing.
SERIOUSNESS
So I did my duty. I got educated. I got married. I got wealthy. I ran companies. I built companies. I got cancer a couple of times. I got very sick a couple more times.
And you know, I sort of had this incredible epiphany that none of it really mattered. I mean, It’s great to prove that you CAN do something. You should experience all the life that you can while we have it. But that doesn’t mean you want to do a lot of it.
Now, for me, business is trivially easy. Seriously. I can develop strategy on just about any business there is, because I’m fascinated with economics and collecting information about any given business. I never, ever get tired of it. And it’s so freaking obvious that I can’t understand why people do it WRONG so often. (They should read Karl Popper and Austrian economics.)
So I have had my fancy cars, and my two houses and my corporations and my travel-lifestyle, and I wasn’t happy at all. Because I’d have do force myself to adjust all the time. It was really interesting. Really. Fun. And really no one can ever say to me that I can’t do anything. ‘Cause I can do it repeatedly even if I haven’t got a cent to start with.
THE WHY
But I realize that the only reason I do this stuff is so that I can have a woman, and afford to have a woman, and have her explain the world and insulate me from the world. But that it’s circular. It’s working for having a woman that is actually making me unhappy. If I have to do this to have a woman, then I either need a different one, or not to have one at all.
Instead, if I loved my Aspiness, rather than fought for normalness, I would be a lot happier. I would work and write on a problem that requires a whole lot of thinking. I would work at the part of work I like rather than the part I had to in order to maintain my control over a whole lot of people. I wouldn’t be sick all the time. I wouldn’t be stressed all the time. And I might live a bit longer too.
The problem then, either doing without a woman by learning to connect with the world on your own. Or finding a woman who isn’t wrapped up in all this materialism stuff that they find so absurdly fascinating. Someone who doesn’t want you to feel differently than you feel. Or feel what you can’t.
I set out to do both.
VICTORY
I am really good at connecting with the world. I can work a room like nobody’s business. I just had to live in a place with high population density so that I’m around people I can readily interact with all the time. So I do.
I try to avoid television and computer games and to work instead. And only use entertainment when I cannot do anything else. Not as a form of medication.
I am perfectly fine on my own now. Although I have trouble training women still. For some reason they keep chasing me. I tell them its a bad idea, but they keep at it. 🙂
So, now I have my political and economic philosophy to obsess over, I have a small company that doesn’t have any debt, I produce something I believe in, and I work with really smart nerdy folk who understand and appreciate me. I try to have as few possessions as I can. And that last bit is really important to me. I try not to change contexts too much. Travel is something I reserve for necessity. I live in what is for me the best place on earth.
I love my inner Aspie and I dont fight it. I feed it. I care for it. And I am happy.
Cash is freedom. Possessions are a prison. Marry your work. Love everyone you can as much as possible. That’s bad for a consumption economy but it’s really good for us.
And I suspect that it is something more men should think about. Because Atusim is just MALENESS exaggerated a LOT.
It’s just sad that it took me more than half my life to figure it out.
Cheers
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-01 16:11:00 UTC
http://t.co/uerV2OF5DE
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-01 15:09:00 UTC
AUTISM AND THINKING vs LEARNING AND EXPERIENCING
I watched a video today about some young boy with autism who is an early entrant to college. His basic point is that learning isn’t the same as thinking. And if you’re motivated to think, then structured learning is really just an obstacle that gets in the way of your thinking.
When I tell people “I learned everything on my own. School and university were just excuses to be around people, in a social environment. I didn’t learn anything in the classes, I learned everything from books.” They look at me with disbelief.
But it’s true.
I would go to the bookstore. Pick the classes with the books I liked. Read them. Vaguely listen in class. The ‘order’ of the classroom and the speech pattern of the teacher or professor is extremely relaxing, and until I got older and learned how to control it, the overstimulation in less organized environments was incredibly painful.
Simple places like stores were really troublesome because, I sort of have this stress reaction when I overhear people talk about anything that is actually hurtful for them to believe. I feel like I have to save them. (Really.) So if I’m stressed I can’t go to a Costco for example. But if I bring a pair of headphones and book on tape about something that’s fairly logical then I can do it. Same way that other people use music for feedback. Music doesn’t do it for me. Only if I’m driving, and there aren’t other stimuli out there.
I don’t really ‘work’ at anything in the tradition sense. If I just expose myself to information and my head does all the work for me. It’s like this big steam operated machine that just wants to work on problems as hard as it can or it’s annoyed and will just pick one at random. So I have to pick problems for it that are interesting. Work isn’t hard for me. It’s calming actually. But I can only handle one or two problems at a time.
Now, it’s not a complicated concept to deal with really. If you shut down the sense of self, and shut down empathy, you still have this brain that wants chemical stimulation, but there are fewer ways of getting those chemical psychic rewards. So your brain sort of learns to specialize in the activities that give it reward. And practice makes perfect in almost everything. So you pretty rapidly get good at what you focus on: your sensory experiences in the case of normals, or gathering information in the case of people like me.
Of course, the world is a different place now and medicine is farther along. Fifteen years ago they didn’t know what to do with me. “Curt, you have some strange obsessive focus, and we don’t have a name for it.” Even during my divorce in 08, my wife’s psychologist said ‘there is no such diagnosis’. Which, I found a really strange and meaningless thing to say, given that I got that diagnosis from one of the top three of four researchers in the field who had worked with me for years, and used me in experiments, and I was talking to some guy who counsels divorcees.
Today a doctor takes ten minutes to say that I very mild ASD. Certain patterns are extremely fascinating and I cant let go of them. I can still jump in and out of my head, and still empathize with spoken emotions, and still read body language even if I have trouble with faces, subtle emotions, and my emotional vocabulary is smaller – and my humor more limited. I imagine for those Aspies who have it worse than I do, that they cannot reconnect with the world at all. At least for me, if I work at it, and practice, I can.
I love people. They make no sense some of the time. Whey they are too illogical it makes me very anxious. Because I can’t save them – and they don’t want to be saved either. 🙂 But I just love them. I love human beings. All of them. (Pretty common attitude for Aspies really.)
Funny thing I like to share, is that vey educated people often have very substantial errors in their thinking that astounds me. It’s actually emotionally safer to spend time either with engineers and other very logical people, or sort of lower middle class folk, that just talk about life experiences, than their more educated peers who make catastrophic errors on a minute by minute basis.
I still run into people that are fascinated by my sort of talents (which you really have to experience in person apparently to grasp). But I tell them “Actually, it sucks to be me. Childhood was very difficult. Adulthood is only marginally easier. And I’m only happy because I figured it all out myself – even if too late in life. So I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.
You might want to live in a world that has us in it. We do amazing things really. But you don’t want to be one of us. We’re just a different kind of ant, a human specialization, that randomly shows up in the population and does a specific thing, so that the rest of humanity can go on without us.
What I appreciate these days is the ability to talk about it without the pointed finger of leprosy. But I don’t. I just tell people that “eh… I’m a mild aspie. we are fascinated by shiny things.” And I laugh. Or I say “If I get too detailed with this topic its ok to tell me to shut up.” Or if someone asks me a question I say “do you really want to know, because I’ll tell you”. These are all devices that ask other people whether they want the aspie version of something or not. I just assume that they dont want it. And that works. ‘Cause otherwise you’re basically telling people that they’re stupid. (Really.) And then if you say you’re an aspie they kind of think it’s cute, and don’t get offended. You just can’t get too obsessed about the topic.
Aspies are generally very nice. We seem to retain our childish charm longer, because really, we’re childish inside. Life has been a bit cruel and hard on me so that child has a more pragmatic instinct and the competitive part of me is a bit scary to others at times. But his joy at interacting with others is still easily excited.
And the fact of the matter is, that if you are just nice to everyone you meet, don’t demand anything from them. And listen for and make use of, any opportunity to help them or compliment them, then in general, people will love you. You gotta give to get. And love is only as scarce as the time we have to give it.
I smile a lot. I laugh a lot. And care about people. I try to be generous. And that’s about all of us really need from each other to make the world a wonderful place to live in. 🙂
Cheers
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-01 14:01:00 UTC
SUPERMODEL FACTORY?
I do not know what is going on today. But I’m sitting at this cafe, working on the problem of platonism in mathematics (and logic) and it’s like Podil has been invaded by an army of models or something.
Very strange. I mean. It’s nice and all. But. It’s just like, that movie The Truman Show, where the protagonist (Jim Carrey) doesn’t realize he’s in a movie.
I keep looking for cameras….
lol
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-01 06:17:00 UTC
(IRONIC HUMOR) PROPERTY RIGHTS AND TAXES AS LOANS
The exchange of free riding, fraud, theft and violence for property rights functions as an involuntary loan of the opportunity to consume by way of free riding, fraud, theft and violence, on the unproductive. In exchange for which, at some later time, they receive the service of less toil, lower prices and greater variation, and freedom from slavery.
Under democracy, the unproductive tax the income of the productive, so that the unproductive receive the same benefit as if they were productive.
The problem is that the productive need the unproductive to have money to spend, in order to maintain momentum (velocity) in the economy, from which the productive benefit.
So as long as the tax money of the productive is given to consumers, and not the government, and not to competing social interests, it’s a necessary and reasonable exchange of value – instead of a forced loan of free riding, fraud, theft and violence from the unproductive for the purpose of consumption, it’s a forced loan from the productive to the consumer.
Now, if the productive could SAVE enough that when they got off the hamster wheel of velocity, that they could maintain their standard of living, I kind of think that this system works in a sort of madcap kind of way. I don’t like it very much. Because the hamster wheel is really risky for entrepreneurs. And I don’t want to suppress the lottery effect. that drives innovation under capitalism. But it might be possible to solve the problem of rewarding entrepreneurship differently from investment and lending.
I think, if I work a little bit more at this I can explain it all in moral language that average ‘folk’ can understand. ‘Cause the language of man is morality not empiricism.
The world we have made is a hysterically funny place.
Source date (UTC): 2013-09-01 05:18:00 UTC