One of the most useful things that I gleaned from ‘The Meditations’ – and have subsequently seen re-iterated elsewhere – is that, whether we like it or not, we always live in the moment. The past is nothing but a memory, and the future nothing but uncertain possibility – the only thing real is the NOW. In spite of this, we’re always either thinking about something that’s already happened or wondering about something that will happen. We spend our time using the past to try to get to the future, while the present – the place we actually live – slips by us.

The obvious lesson here is something along the lines of “stop and smell the roses.” To not get so caught up in our concern about the future that we forget about the now. But I took an additional lesson – that when I think of myself, I should be thinking of every ‘me’ that’s living in the moment, from now until my death. Meaning, take the time I have left in my life, and divide it into moments. Each moment is really a separate ‘me’. So I should think of myself as billions of separate ‘me’s’ occurring one after the other, in a long chain that breaks when I die.

One of the purposes of this – other than the trippy feeling gotten from thinking about it – is that whenever I do something, I shouldn’t just consider what I want now. I should consider what the billions of future selves might want. Any choice I make will follow me for the rest of my life. It will be looked at and evaluated and criticized by billions of other ‘me’s’. That’s some serious peer-review. And they all have an equal claim to be ‘me’ – they should get a vote in what I do.

This is my (admittedly esoteric) way of fighting future discounting. The human brain has a tendency to overvalue our current preferences and undervalue our future preferences. It’s why we take that 11th shot of whiskey, or get that tattoo, or marry that harpy with the great ass – we’re not thinking about what our future selves will want. We’re opting for immediate pleasure at the expense of our future selves’ pain. It’s easy to forget about them of course – they’re like unborn, invisible children. But just like you don’t drink alchohol or smoke for the benefit of your unborn baby, you shouldn’t take actions that your future selves won’t like – there are alot more of them than there are you.

Extra credit: At 25 years old, I have about 50 years left (using average American male life expectancy). For the length of a ‘moment’, I’ll use the average neuron firing rate, which I believe is around 10Hz. Some quick math gives me an estimated 1.577 x 10^10 moments left in my life. Almost 16 billion.

This post is a scientific experiement.

Do a search for ‘mental inertia’, and you’ll get various self-help blogs all describing the same basic idea: that your mind doesn’t want to work, and you need to overcome it’s tendency to stay at rest if you want to get anything done. That you need to fight mental inertia!

Like so many things on the internet, this is almost right. It certainly is difficult to get started on something – the so-called tyranny of the blank page. Everyone’s had the experience of that assignment or project they KNOW they should get started on, but find it so much easier to just keep watching tv. Learning how to get over that initial hump is useful.

But the hump only half the story. A body at rest does tend to stay at rest, yes. But a body in motion also tends to stay in motion. Mental inertia is the tendency for your mind to stay in whatever condition it’s currently in. It applies equally to watching tv and to wrting, or coding, or painting, and everything else. Onve you’ve gotten started, you can take advantage of the inertia you’ve gained and use it to get things done. The trick, then, is to get over that initial hump, and then take coast down the hill on the other side.

This theory suggests a few things you should do to take maximum advantage of mental inertia:

-For the first few minutes, don’t worry about the quality of whatever you’re doing. Merlin Mann has stated that it takes him 15-20 minutes of typing before he’s actually writing. Baseball players aren’t trying to hit homeruns in the batting cages, they’re trying to get their swing right. Focus on the process of what’s being done, rather than the result.

-Once you’ve gotten started, don’t stop if you don’t have to. The more you let yourself slow down, the more work you’ll have to do to speed back up again.

Remember, things aren’t negative or positive. Mental inertia is a quirk of how the brain works. Fighting against it is probably impossible. Instead, take what you’re given, and turn it to your advantage.

“All you have to do is write one true sentence.
Write the truest sentence you know.” – Ernest Hemingway

–

“I haven’t written anything good today.”

Scratch that. Good doesn’t mean a fucking thing.

Try again.

“I haven’t written anything I’m proud of today.”

Wrong. Your pride is a smoothtalking, doubledealing liar, and is not to be fucking trusted.

Again.

“I haven’t written anything worth reading today.”

Closer. Maybe. But it can be done better.

Again.

“I haven’t written anything that will last today.”

Don’t make it sound like a fucking choice. Take responsibility.

“I failed to write anything that will last today.”

Sounds awkard. Cut to the point. The important part.

“I failed today.”

WHO did you fail? Hint: it’s the only person that matters at all.

“I failed myself today.”

Maybe. Maybe. Add another sentence on the back of it.

“I failed myself today. Nothing I wrote was worth reading.”

Still needs work. This could take a while…

–

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

- Ernest Hemingway

Today, a special treat: self-referential sentences! Digest and enjoy.

1)This sentence doesn’t contain the word “godellian”.

2)This sentence doesn’t talk about itself.

3)Go read the next sentence.

4)Go read the previous sentence.

5)You haven’t read this sentence.

6)Replace all instances of the letter ‘x’ with copies of this sentence.

Now copy this blog post, and paste it over this sentence.

Under what situations should alcohol be considered a performancing-enhancing drug? Alcohol increases gregariousness, sociability, and self-confidence. On the other hand, it decreases reaction times, coordination, and most other cognitive functions. Are there any situations-in a rule based competitive environment-where the positives give enough of an advantage that a) the negatives are more than cancelled out and b) they should be considered illegal?

I can’t think of any, but I suspect that some do exist.

A simple thought occurs – everything we do in life falls into one of three categories: self-improvement, self-maintenance, or self-destruction. We’re always either getting better, staying where we are, or getting worse.

Self-improvement is the art of getting more: more money, more free time, more happiness, more knowledge, more everything. Self-maintenance is the art of staying where we are – of not losing what we’ve managed to accumulate. Paying your bills, practicing your skills to not get rusty, and reviewing something you’ve learned previously all fall into this category. Self-destruction is taking a match to what you have, lighting it, and watching it burn.

I’ve listed them roughly in order of their esteem. Self improvement is considered an unquestioned good, whereas self-destruction is considered a mental illness. Self-maintenance varies along that continuum depending on who’s being asked. The ultimate goal, then, is to spend as much time as possible improving yourself as much as possible, spending only what you have to on self-maintenance. Self-destruction shouldn’t even enter the picture.

Of course, life never works out quite as nicely as it does on paper. In reality, self-improvement gradually morphs to self-maintenance as you’re forced to spend more and more of your time and money just keeping what you have. Self-maintenance gradually declines into self-destruction as you get bored or disillusioned with what you now spend the entirety of your time on. Self-destruction, in turn, leads right back to self-improvement as your newfound freedom brings with it new possibilities to strive for. It’s a cycle that continually renews itself.

It’s our lot to never be satisfied with our lot. Whenever we feel like we’ve stagnated, like we’re not going anywhere, our natural instinct is to burn the whole thing down and start again. How many people move to a new place to try to get a fresh start? How many artists try to reinvent themselves after success?

The answer, then, is to set your sights as high as you can. Set a goal you might never be able to achieve. Decide what to do with your life, and then do it in a way that you really can spend your whole life doing it. If you pick a high enough mountain to climb, you won’t have to worry about falling down the other side.

Curiosity is a funny thing. It almost feels like a hole inside your brain – like you’re missing something important. So you indulge that feeling, that burning desire to KNOW, and try to fill the hole up with knowledge.

Unfortunately, the hole doesn’t stay the same size. Your thirst for knowledge won’t be easily slaked. You can’t learn things until the hole is full, and then devote yourself to a new task. It doesn’t work that way. Each new thing you learn, paradoxically, makes the hole bigger.

Think of a donut. The ring is what you know; the hole what you’re trying to fill up. But you can’t just stick something in the center and be done – all knowledge rests on a foundation of previous knowledge. The only way to learn something new is to extrapolate from what you already know. So you cut a gap in the donut, and bridge it with more knowledge.

The problem comes into focus. Even though you increased your knowledge, at the same time you made your hole bigger. Every new fact you nail down makes you realize there are ten more things you haven’t. Learning serves to increase your ignorance. And it’s proportional to how much you know – the more you learn, the bigger it gets. Like an itchy mosquito bite, scratching at it just makes it itch even more.

But what happens if you continue on like this? If you ignore the warnings of people telling you that you can’t know everything, and stretch your brain to the absolute limit?

Keep going from the previous donut, and eventually it’ll look more like a circle than a ring. Your knowledge, though vast, will appear to you as just a thin line surrounding an enormous expanse of ignorance. Eventually it will become so large that in trying to see it all, the line itself will become hazy, hard to see, and eventually become indistinguishable from its surroundings.

A lifetime of learning brings you inexorably to the fact that you know nothing at all.

“The first technique is the last, the beginner and the master behave in the same way. Knowledge is a full circle.” – Miyamoto Musashi

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” – Socrates

We have a pretty nice printer at my office, a Savin 8060. At last count it had spit out over 750,000 pages, and it’s still going strong. I’m not sure how much it costs, but I’d guess around as much as my car.

Whatever the number is, we’re certainly paying some multiple of it for a 24 hour support contract, so that whenever it breaks down a bearded man will drive out immediately and fix it. Factor in the cost of toner (299.95 a roll), and it probably costs more to maintain that printer than it does to pay my salary.

My own jealousy of the printer aside, the point is that keeping something up and running is costly. Whenever you get something, it extracts not just an upfront cost, but a constant tax for however long you have it. Entropy will constantly drag it down into disrepair, forcing you to prop it back up with investments of time or money. Buying a house means a lifetime of lawn-mowing, gutter-cleaning, roof-reshingling, appliance-replacing, and carpet-scrubbing. Having a car means that for as long as you own it, you’ll be filling the gas tank, rotating the tires, topping off the coolant, changing the oil, replacing the tail-lights, and buying new batteries.

Think of what we do to maintain our bodies. We spend hours at the gym to maintain our physique and health; we’ll spend months or years learning a new skill, but then we’ll spend the rest of our lives practicing to make sure we don’t lose it; we’re constantly getting haircuts, applying makeup, taking showers, shaving, flossing, and trimming our nails, all to keep a decent appearance. We seem to have a natural affinity for keeping ourselves and our world in good working condition.

The problem with maintenance, though, is that all your effort is spent just keeping what you have. Like the Red Queen, you keep running and running and running, but get nowhere. If you’re not careful, maintenance will slowly expand until your entire life consists of nothing but keeping what you’ve managed to accumulate.

If you’re not careful, the shit you own ends up owning you.

Whenever you want something, consider what it will REALLY cost to keep it. Think about what getting it will mean you CAN’T do, and think if you still really want it.

I’m faced with the same question again: is it better to post something I’m not proud of, or nothing at all?

Last time I opted for the former. This time I’m choosing the latter.

I’m happier about it.

See you tomorrow.

You are what you know. Every second you’re awake, you’re absorbing information from the world around you. Everything we experience, every skill we learn, is just information that gets written onto our neurons. Our lives can be thought of as the information we accumulate during them. Thats what this graph shows.

Along the x-axis are catagories that you spend your time on, and along the y-axis is how much knowledge you have about each of them. The width of each area is the time spent. A wide area means more time spent than a thin one. Similar fields are grouped together – Newtonian Physics and Civil Engineering, for example. Like the continuum, this isn’t a mathematical representation – it’s a tool for visualization.

This idea needs ALOT of work, but expect to see an essay explaining the entire thing (similar to the continuum) eventually.