What I've Been Reading

Complexity science does study something distinctive - namely the emergent features of systems that are composed of a lot of components that interact repeatedly in a disordered way. The reason why it has been hard to identify what is distinctive about complex systems is that there are many different kinds of emergent properties and products of complex systems, and they are not all found in all complex systems. The common features of complex systems manifest themselves differently in different kinds of systems. 

What is a Complex System? by James Ladyman and Karoline Wiesner. 

This is one of the most important books you will read in your life. Developing even a rudimentary understanding of the complexity and complex systems will make one look at life differently (for good) plus it will help develop a sense of humility and gratitude for what we have without believing in magic and conspiracies. 

The complex system helps in understanding things such as how animals sufferings in factory farms will lead to a pandemic that could wipe out our species. 

Ladyman and Karoline attempt to "unpack" complex systems by avoiding biases put forth by existing researchers and keeping it open-ended as humanely as possible. They have also kept math and technical details to the minimum.  

They have done an enormous favor to a common reader by defining some of the salient features of the complex systems (not all always applies to all complex systems):

1. Numerosity: complex systems involve many interactions among many components. 
2. Disorder and diversity: the interactions in a complex system are not coordinated or controlled centrally, and the components may differ. 
3. Feedback: the interactions in complex systems are iterated so that there is feedback from previous interactions on a time scale relevant to the system's emergent dynamics. 
4. Non-equilibrium: complex systems are open to the environment and are often driven by something external. 
5. Spontaneous order and self-organization: complex systems exhibit structure and order that arises out of the interactions among their parts. 
6. Nonlinearity: complex systems exhibit nonlinear dependence on parameters or external drivers. 
7. Robustness: the structure and function of complex systems is stable under relevant perturbations. 
8. Nested structure and modularity: there may be multiple scales of structure, clustering, and specialization of function in complex systems. 
9. History and memory: complex systems often require a very long history to exist and often store information about history. 
10. Adaptive behavior: complex systems are often able to modify their behavior depending on the state of the environment and the predictions they make about it.

We argue that a system is complex if it has some or all of spontaneous order and self-organization, non-linear behavior, robustness history and memory, nested structure and modularity, and adaptive behavior. These features arise from the combination of the properties of numerosity, disorder and diversity, feedback, and non-equilibrium. We argue that there are different kinds of complex systems because some systems exhibit some but not all of the features. 

Chaos is not always complexity:

Complexity is often linked with chaos, and it may be conflated with it, but the behavior of a chaotic system is indistinguishable from random behavior. It is true that there are systems that exhibit complexity partly in virtue of being chaotic, but their complexity is something over and above their chaotic nature. Furthermore, since chaotic behavior is a special feature of some deterministic systems, any dynamical system that is stochastic is by definition not chaotic, and yet complexity scientists study many such systems. 

Measuring Complexity:

Ideas such as "logical depth" measure not complexity but order. Complexity is a multifaceted phenomenon and that complex systems have a variety of features not all of which are found in all of them. This implies that assigning a single number to complexity cannot do justice. 

A variety of different measures would be required to capture all our intuitive ideas about what is meant by complexity. 

- Physicist Murray Gell-Mann

In summary: 

There are many important theoretical questions on which complexity science bears, the most obvious ones concerned with relationships between life and nonliving matter, and between conscious and non-conscious matter. The general implication of our analysis for these matters is that the dichotomy between atoms and molecules and advanced life forms is a very crude way of seeing the many layers of structure that are found at different scales.  The only way to understand the emergence of life is by studying the processes that occur in self-organizing physical systems not just physical structures. 

Once the complexity of nonliving systems, such as the solar system and the Earth and its climate, is grasped in detail, the difference between life and non-life seems to be less of a mysterious leap and more of a continuum. 

When we think about complex systems in the right way, we can abstract from some of their features and understand the simplicity that underlies the wonderful complexity!

Timeless Wisdom From Four Thinkers

Read, observe, describe, follow your mind, be fearless, critical, creative, wondrous, and above all don’t be fooled by easy habits, commonplace clichés, orthodoxies, ideologies, cults, or obscurantist nonsense.

Wow! what a simple insight? Timeless wisdom captured in a single sentence. 

That's from - The four thinkers (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Ernst Cassirer, and Walter Benjamin) who reinvented philosophy

Cognitive Patience

 Wisdom is not contemplation alone, not action alone, but contemplation in action. 

- John S Dunne

Julian Gridhan reviews Maryanne Wolf's book Reader, Come Home: the reading brain in a digital world. This is one of the most underappreciated and intangible benefits humanity reaped because a fraction of humans (and that fraction is going down each year) were deep readers. 

Wolf's coins a phrase for this "cognitive patience": 

Then, in Letter Three, Wolf asks the central question in the book: ‘Deep Reading: is it endangered?’ 

It is the nature of attention … that underlies large, unanswered questions that society is beginning to confront. Will the quality of our attention change as we read on mediums that advantage immediacy, dart-quick task switching, and continuous monitoring of distraction, as opposed to the more deliberative focussing of our attention? 

She is deeply concerned about everything we will lose if we let slip what she calls the cognitive patience we gain when we immerse ourselves in the worlds created by books. She cites the remarkable conversation between Marilynne Robinson and Barack Obama in which the then President called Robinson a specialist in empathy, another word for the kind of attention to other human beings that can help us become responsible citizens and create better societies:

The consistent strengthening of the connections among our analogical, inferential, empathic, and background knowledge processes generalises well beyond reading. When we learn to connect these processes over and over in our reading, it becomes easier to apply them to our own lives, teasing apart our motives and intentions and understanding with ever greater perspicacity and, perhaps, wisdom, why others think and feel the way they do.  

 

The Deep Reading Brain in a Digital World from Atlanta Speech School on Vimeo.

Good Bye Barry Lopez

No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one's own culture but within oneself.  If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts the responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.

- Barry Lopez (January 6, 1945 – December 25, 2020), Arctic Dreams

On the Many Mysteries of the European Eel

This piece is adapted from Patrik Svensson's book The Book of Eels. There is so much to learn from the wonders of this blue planet and our fellow dwellers. 

Patrik Svensson not only teaches about Eel but also about the beauty of silence and our precarious memories. 

This is where the European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is born. This is where mature eels breed in the spring and their eggs are laid and fertilized. Here, safe in the darkness of the depths, small larva-like creatures with disturbingly tiny heads and poorly developed eyes spring to life. They’re called leptocephalus larvae and have a body like a willow leaf, flat and virtually transparent, only a few millimeters long. This is the first stage of the eel’s life cycle.

The gossamer willow leaves immediately set off on their journey. Swept up by the Gulf Stream, they drift thousands of miles across the Atlantic toward the coasts of Europe. It’s a journey that can take as long as three years; during this time, each larva slowly grows, millimeter by millimeter, like a gradually inflating balloon, and when at last it reaches Europe, it undergoes its first metamorphosis, transforming into a glass eel. This is the second stage of the eel’s life cycle.

[---]

When a glass eel reaches the coasts of Europe, it will usually travel up a brook or river, adapting almost instantly to a freshwater existence. This is where it undergoes yet another metamorphosis, turning into a yellow eel. Its body grows serpentine and muscular. Its eyes remain relatively small, with a distinctive dark center. Its jaw becomes wide and powerful. Its gills are small and almost completely concealed. Thin, soft fins stretch along the entirety of its back and belly. Its skin finally develops pigment, coloring it shades of brown, yellow, and gray, and it becomes covered in scales so tiny they can be neither seen nor felt, like an imaginary armor. If the glass eel is tender and fragile, the yellow eel is strong and sturdy. This is the third stage of the eel’s life cycle.

[---]

It can migrate thousands of miles, unflagging and undaunted, before it suddenly decides it’s found a home. It doesn’t require much of this home; the environs are something to adapt to, to endure and get to know—a muddy stream or lake bed, preferably with some rocks and hollows to hide in, and enough food. Once it has found its home, it stays there, year after year, and normally wanders within a radius of only a few hundred yards. If relocated by external forces, it will invariably return as quickly as it can to its chosen abode. Eels caught by researchers, tagged with radio transmitters, and released many miles from their point of capture have been known to return to where they were first found within a week or two. No one knows exactly how they find their way.

The yellow eel is a solitary creature. It usually lives out the active phase of its life alone, letting the passing seasons dictate its activities. When the temperature drops, it can lie motionless in the mud for long periods, utterly passive, and at times entangled with other eels like a messy ball of yarn.

[---]

In this way, the eel lives out the greater part of its life in a brownish-yellow guise, alternating between activity and hibernation. Seemingly lacking any sense of purpose, other than in its daily search for food and shelter. As though life was first and foremost about waiting and its meaning found in the gaps or in an abstract future that can’t be brought about by any means other than patience.

And it’s a long life. An eel that successfully avoids illness and calamity can live for up to fifty years in one place. There are Swedish eels who have made it past eighty in captivity. Myths and legends tell of eels living to a hundred or more. When an eel is denied a way to achieve its main purpose in life—procreation—it seems able to live forever. As though it could wait until the end of time.

But at some point in its life, usually after 15 to 30 years, a wild eel will suddenly decide to reproduce. What triggers this decision, we may never know, but once it has been made, the eel’s tranquil existence ends abruptly and its life takes on a different character. It starts making its way back to the sea while simultaneously undergoing its final metamorphosis. The drab and indeterminate yellowish-brown of its skin disappears, its coloring grows clearer and more distinct, its back turns black and its sides silver, marked with stripes, as though its entire body changes to reflect its newfound determination. The yellow eel becomes a silver eel. This is the fourth stage of the eel’s life cycle.

[---]

Along the bank of the stream, the grass was wet and impenetrable and taller than me. Dad took the lead, forging a path; the vegetation closed like an arch above me as I followed. Bats flitted back and forth above the stream, silent, like black punctuation marks against the sky.

[---]

I can’t recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream. I can’t remember us speaking at all.

Maybe because we never did. Because we were in a place where the need for talking was limited, a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence. The reflected moonlight, the hissing grass, the shadows of the trees, the monotonous rushing of the stream, and the bats like hovering asterisks above it all. You had to be quiet to make yourself part of the whole.

It could, of course, also be because I remember everything wrong. Because memory is an unreliable thing that picks and chooses what to keep. When we look for a scene from the past, it is by no means certain that we end up recalling the most important or the most relevant; rather, we remember what fits into the preconceived image that we have. Our memory paints a tableau in which the various details inevitably complement one another. Memory doesn’t allow colors that clash with the background. So let’s just say we were silent. In any case, I don’t know what we might have talked about if we did.

Very Good Sentence (On Open Society)

I'm optimistic in the big picture, because here we are. The idea that wrongheaded, dangerous, heretical, and blasphemous ideas should be not only allowed but protected is preposterous. It's ridiculous. No society has ever had that idea until about 250 years ago. It shouldn't work, but here we are.

The reason is because, despite its ridiculousness, it has the one great advantage of being the single most successful social principle ever invented. What I tell people is, "Me, you, your children, your grandchildren, and their grandchildren will have to get up every morning and explain all of these principles all over again from scratch. You know what? We just have to be cheerful about that."

- Nick Gillespie, How To Tell If You're Being Canceled. 

People keep forgetting the idea of free speech (and being a free human being) is just 250 years old. We are freaking so blessed and gifted to have born in this era. Don't take it for granted. 

And yeah, the genesis of cancel culture started a couple of decades ago from each one of our homes; hyper-coddling of kids and conversations where realities of life (including death, suffering) are completely censored. 

The Erosion of Deep Literacy

Scientists continue to debate the question of addiction to technology and its effects on memory and social isolation, a question transformed anew in the dozen years since the June 2007 introduction of the iPhone. But beyond the addiction debate, few cognitive scientists doubt that so-called multitasking is merely the ability to get many things done quickly and poorly. And no one doubts that heavy screen use has destroyed attention spans.

But more than attention spans are at stake. Beyond self-inflicted attention deficits, people who cannot deep read — or who do not use and hence lose the deep-reading skills they learned — typically suffer from an attenuated capability to comprehend and use abstract reasoning. In other words, if you can't, or don't, slow down sufficiently to focus quality attention — what Wolf calls "cognitive patience" — on a complex problem, you cannot effectively think about it.

We know that prolonged and repetitive exposure to digital devices changes the way we think and behave in part because it changes us physically. The brain adapts to its environment. The devices clearly can be addictive; indeed, they are designed to be addictive. Technology companies know that swiping "trains" the brain in certain ways; designers know what produces quick bursts of dopamine and oxytocin. They also know that two-dimensional representations on a screen do not match the sensory richness of direct, unmediated experiences, and they know the implications — which is why many cyber-technologists strictly ration their use among their own children. As neurologist Richard Cytowic put it, "Digital devices discretely hijack our attention. To the extent that you cannot perceive the world around you in its fullness, to the same extent you will fall back into mindless, repetitive, self-reinforcing behavior, unable to escape."

[---]

A sadder and more troubling knock-on effect also reveals itself: If you do not deep read, you do not cultivate a capacity to think, imagine, and create; you therefore may not realize that anything more satisfying than a video game even exists. Fully immerse yourself in digital "life," and timelines will flatten into unconnected dots, rendering a person present-oriented and unable to either remember or plan well. That permanently "zoned out" person will become easy prey for the next demagogue with an attractive promise and a mesmerizing spectacle.

[---]

In science fiction, the typical worry is that machines will become human-like; the more pressing problem now is that, through the thinning out of our interactions, humans are becoming machine-like. That raises the possibility that the more time we spend with machines and the more dependent on them we become, the dumber we tend to get since machines cannot determine their own purposes — at least until the lines cross between ever smarter AI-infused machines and ever less cognitively adept humans. More troubling are the moral issues that could potentially arise: mainly ceding to machines programmed by others the right to make moral choices that ought to be ours.

[---]

Those reading this essay developed these habits of mind as children who learned to read and now continue to do so as adults. In an odd way, that's the problem: We almost never reflect on how unusual, and in many ways unnatural, deep reading actually is. Consider that the only time any of us can be alone with ideas brought by others is in reading. It is, as Marcel Proust put it in On Reading, "that fertile miracle of communication that takes place in the middle of solitude." Otherwise, we are each necessarily engaged in dialogue with one or more other in-the-flesh people: In other words, we experience the community as context, simultaneously with the ideas. Deep reading alone creates the possibility of a private internal dialogue with an author not physically present.

[---]

As it is, we now have greater levels of at least superficial participation in political discourse, if not in politics itself, thanks in part to social-media technologies. Vast numbers of people contribute scantily supported opinions about things they don't really understand, validating the old saw that a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

A greater percentage of Americans may be deep literate in 2019 than in 1819 or 1919, but probably not than in 1949, before television, the internet, and the iPhone. We have reached a stage at which many professors dare not assign entire books or large parts of moderately challenging ones to undergraduates because they know they won't read them. And while more Americans are graduating from four-year colleges than ever before, the educational standards of many of those institutions, and the distribution of study away from the humanities and social sciences, suggest that a concomitant rise in deep literacy has gone unrealized as the degree factories churn.

The decline of deep literacy, combined with the relative rise in status of the superficially educated, may well be the main food stock for the illiberal nationalist forms of the contemporary populist bacillus not just in America, but in much of the world at large.

- Please read the whole piece here from Adam Garfinkle. 

So what if you are already a "deep-reader"? It's simple. Diversify your reading. Don't just read the New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal - you do that because of habit. Diversify your reading habits every day; for starters don't read only abstractive bull shit which we know didn't withstand the test of time. 

On "Busy" People

But in the meantime, we might try to get more comfortable with not being as efficient as possible – with declining certain opportunities, disappointing certain people, and letting certain tasks go undone. Plenty of unpleasant chores are essential to survival. But others are not – we have just been conditioned to assume that they are. It isn’t compulsory to earn more money, achieve more goals, realise our potential on every dimension, or fit more in. In a quiet moment in Seattle, Robert Levine, a social psychologist from California, quoted the environmentalist Edward Abbey: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”

[---]

For Merlin Mann, consciously confronting these questions was a matter of realising that people would always be making more claims on his time – worthy claims, too, for the most part – than it would be possible for him to meet. And that even the best, most efficient system for managing the emails they sent him was never going to provide a solution to that. “Eventually, I realised something,” he told me. “Email is not a technical problem. It’s a people problem. And you can’t fix people.”

- That's from Oliver Burkeman

Busyness is the culprit that enables people to elect narcissists and turn a blind eye to animal sufferings. In other words, busyness constantly amplifies people's self-centered existence by signaling their "made-up" cosmic significance. 

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

- Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

 

Helping the Ecosystem through Mushroom Cultivation

This piece was adapted from the article, "Earth's Natural Internet" by Paul Stamets, published in the Fall 1999 issue of Whole Earth Magazine. 

Yes, 21 years ago. I didn't know too much about fungi and mushrooms until Max got cancer and later, this year I read Merlin Sheldrake's book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. 

It is astonishing how little progress has been made economically and culturally in understanding the importance of these fundamental species which indirectly (and directly) make life on earth possible. 

Covering most all landmasses on the planet are huge masses of fine filaments of living cells from a kingdom barely explored. More than 8 miles of these cells, called mycelia, can permeate a cubic inch of soil. Fungal mats are now known as the largest biological entities on the planet, with some individuals covering more than 20,000 acres. Growing outwards at one quarter to two inches per day, the momentum of mycelial mass from a single mushroom species staggers the imagination. These silent mycelial tsunamis affect all biological systems upon which they are dependent. As they mature and die back, panoply of other fungi quickly come into play. Every ounce of soil does not host just one species, but literally thousands of species of fungi. Of the estimated 1–2 million species of fungi—about 150,000 species being mushrooms—we have catalogued only about 50,000, of which 14,000 have been identified with a species name. The genetic diversity of fungi is vast by design, and apparently crucial for life to continue.

Waves of mycelial networks intersect and permeate through one another. This interspersing of mycelial colonies is the foundation of soils worldwide. Although seemingly undifferentiated under the microscope, the ability of fungi to respond to natural disasters and sudden changes in the environment are a testimonial to their inherent intelligence. I believe that mycelia are Earth's natural Internet, the essential wiring of the Gaian consciousness. The recent creation of the computer Internet is merely an extension of a successful biological model that has evolved on this planet for billions of years. The timing of the computer Internet should not be construed as a happenstance occurrence. Sharing intelligence might be the only way to save an endangered ecosystem. The planet is calling out to us. Will we listen in time? The lessons are around us. Will we learn?

The vast, interconnected mantle of mycelia reacts quickly to the availability of plant and animal debris, recycling carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, iron and other essential elements. When storms, floods, volcanoes, or other natural disasters wreak havoc on the environment, fungal champions come to the rescue, capturing debris with mycelium and beginning to recycle. Humans have the unfortunate distinction of creating more debris than any other organism on this planet. We have become the new natural disaster. From our minor significance in the biological world only 10,000 years ago, our population is now over 6 billion, continuing to rapidly increase, taxing resources and stressing habitats beyond their maxima.

[---]

Nearly all plants have joined with saprophytic and mycorrhizal fungi in symbiosis. Mycorrhizal fungi surround and penetrate the roots of grasses, shrubs and trees, expanding the absorption zone by 10 to 100 fold, aiding in their quest for water and increasing the moisture-holding capacity of soils. This close alliance also forestalls blights and is essential for longevity of the forest ecosystem. Throughout the life span of a Douglas Fir tree, nearly 200 species of mycorrhizal mushrooms can be joined in this most holy of alliances. The interrelationships of these species with other organisms in the forest are just beginning to be understood. What we do know is that fungal complexity is the common denominator of a healthy forest.

Unfortunately, the nearly 50% loss of mycorrhizal mushroom species in Europe forebodes of impending ecological collapse. With the loss of fungi, disease vectors soon plague the forest. The diversity of insects, birds, flowering plants and indeed all mammals begin to suffer. Humidity drops, now exposed soils are blown away, and deserts encroach, stressing resources all the while human populations artificially expand beyond the carrying capacity of their resident ecosystems.

Los Angeles, Mexico City, Bangkok and most cities are biological anomalies: they exist only from the subsidies of resources being from drawn from afar. Yet, much could be done with the massive importation of raw material into urban environments. Instead most of the imported materials eventually are diverted into toxic landfills, returning virtually nothing to the carbon bank from which they were drawn. Ever hear of a landfill selling their soil to gardeners? The current practice of garbage dumps is an ecological travesty. Good soil components are mixed in with plastics, heavy metals and chemical poisons.

[---]

Conclusions

What our team has discovered given our elementary research is that the fungal genome has far greater potential in treating a wide variety of environmental and health concerns than we could have conceived. Although we have looked at just a few of the mushroom species resident in the Old Growth, clearly these ancestral strains of mushrooms have survived millennia due to their inherent ability to adapt. These adaptive mechanisms are the very foundation of ecological stability and vitality in an increasingly more rapidly changing environment. Mushrooms are "smart" fungi. These discoveries coming to me are perhaps no accident. Your reading this article is perhaps no accident. Regardless, let's take advantage of a unique coincidence to empower individuals, communities and vast ecologies by harnessing the power of mushroom mycelium.

What can you do? Delineate your garbage into categories. Not only compost all organic debris, but segregate the refuse into piles appropriate for a variety of desired mushroom species. Inoculate cardboard and paper products, coffee grounds, and wood debris with mushroom spawn. Teach children about the role of fungi, especially mushrooms, in the forests and their critical role in building soils. Encourage mushrooms to grow in your yards by mulching around plants. Take advantage of catastrophia—natural disasters are perfect opportunities for community-action recycling projects. We should learn from our elders. Native peoples worldwide have viewed fungi as spiritual allies. They are not only the guardians of the forest. They are the guardians of our future.

 

Fish Feel Pain...

This is extremely sad that we unleash so many atrocities in the name of tradition and sheer gastrointestinal habits...  Today, some "civilized" tribes would devour seven species of fish in the name of tradition. The tribes in sub-Sahara Africa are much better than these morons since they have ecological sense. 

Ferris Jabr writes about research and disagreements on fish pain, how some noble people are trying to reduce their sufferings. I salute you for all that you people do, I have nothing but the deepest respect for you all until my last breath. 

Should we care how fish feel? In his 1789 treatise An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham—who developed the theory of utilitarianism (essentially, the greatest good for the greatest number of individuals)—articulated an idea that has been central to debates about animal welfare ever since. When considering our ethical obligations to other animals, Bentham wrote, the most important question is not, “Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” Conventional wisdom has long held that fish cannot—that they do not feel pain. An exchange in a 1977 issue of Field & Stream exemplifies the typical argument. In response to a 13-year-old girl’s letter about whether fish suffer when caught, the writer and fisherman Ed Zern first accuses her of having a parent or teacher write the letter because it is so well composed. He then explains that “fish don’t feel pain the way you do when you skin your knee or stub your toe or have a toothache, because their nervous systems are much simpler. I’m not really sure they feel any pain, as we feel pain, but probably they feel a kind of ‘fish pain.’” Ultimately, whatever primitive suffering they endure is irrelevant, he continues, because it’s all part of the great food chain and, besides, “if something or somebody ever stops us from fishing, we’ll suffer terribly.”

[---]

The collective evidence is now robust enough that biologists and veterinarians increasingly accept fish pain as a reality. “It’s changed so much,” Sneddon says, reflecting on her experiences speaking to both scientists and the general public. “Back in 2003, when I gave talks, I would ask, ‘Who believes fish can feel pain?’ Just one or two hands would go up. Now you ask the room and pretty much everyone puts their hands up.” In 2013, the American Veterinary Medical Association published new guidelines for the euthanasia of animals, which included the following statements: “Suggestions that finfish responses to pain merely represent simple reflexes have been refuted. … the preponderance of accumulated evidence supports the position that finfish should be accorded the same considerations as terrestrial vertebrates in regard to relief from pain.”

[---]

Despite the evidence of conscious suffering in fish, they are not typically afforded the kind of legal protections given to farm animals, lab animals, and pets in many countries around the world. The United Kingdom has some of the most progressive animal welfare legislation, which typically covers all nonhuman vertebrates. In Canada and Australia, animal welfare laws are more piecemeal, varying from one state or province to another; some protect fish, some don’t. Japan’s relevant legislation largely neglects fish. China has very few substantive animal welfare laws of any kind. And in the United States, the Animal Welfare Act protects most warm-blooded animals used in research and sold as pets, but excludes fish, amphibians, and reptiles. Yet the sheer number of fish killed for food and bred for pet stores dwarfs the corresponding numbers of mammals, birds, and reptiles. Annually, about 70 billion land animals are killed for food around the world. That number includes chickens, other poultry, and all forms of livestock. In contrast, an estimated 10 to 100 billion farmed fish are killed globally every year, and about another one to three trillion fish are caught from the wild. The number of fish killed each year far exceeds the number of people who have ever existed on Earth.

“We have largely thought of fish as very alien and very simple, so we didn’t really care how we killed them,” Braithwaite says. “If we look at trawl netting, that’s a pretty gruesome way for fish to die: the barometric trauma of getting ripped from the ocean into open air, and then slowly suffocating. Can we do that more humanely? Yes. Should we? Probably, yes. We’re mostly not doing it at the moment because it’s more expensive to kill fish humanely, especially in the wild.”

[---]

In the United States, two brothers are pioneering a new kind of humane fishing. In fall of 2016, Michael and Patrick Burns, both longtime fishermen and cattle ranchers, launched a unique fishing vessel named Blue North. The 58-meter boat, which can carry about 750 tonnes and a crew of 26, specializes in harvesting Pacific cod from the Bering Sea. The crew works within a temperature-controlled room in the middle of the boat, which houses a moon pool—a hole through which they haul up fish one at a time. This sanctuary protects the crew from the elements and gives them much more control over the act of fishing than they would have on an ordinary vessel. Within seconds of bringing a fish to the surface, the crew moves it to a stun table that renders the animal unconscious with about 10 volts of direct current. The fish are then bled.

The Burns brothers were initially inspired by groundbreaking research on humane slaughter facilities for livestock conducted by Colorado State University animal science professor and internationally renowned autism spokesperson Temple Grandin. By considering the perspectives of the animals themselves, Grandin’s innovative designs greatly reduced stress, panic, and injury in cattle being herded toward an abattoir, while simultaneously making the whole process more efficient for ranchers. “One day it occurred to me, why couldn’t we take some of those principles and apply them to the fishing industry? Michael recalls. Inspired by moon pools on Norwegian fishing vessels, and the use of electrical stunning in various forms of animal husbandry, they designed Blue North. Michael thinks his new ship is one of perhaps two vessels in the world to consistently use electrical stunning on wild-caught fish. “We believe that fish are sentient beings, that they do experience panic and stress,” he says. “We have come up with a method to stop that.”

 

This Day 2019 - Neo's Home Coming

Seven weeks old Neo came home this day 2019. I surprised myself when I bought home Neo, only 3 days after Max passing away. That decision was made by Max in me. I was restless, depressed and no idea what to do with my life, and Max in me decided the best person to support me would a hyperactive puppy. "Support" is an understatement, Max put me on a ventilation machine named Neo to keep me breathing. 

A lot of people looked at Neo and said he is the luckiest dog... reminiscence of how Max and I lived.  The truth is he is not luckily,,, he got stuck with a sad man. But yet, he and his hyper-activeness have a lot to teach me. Once again the question what I am going to do with these lessons?  By now, I know the answer. Nothing. I do absolutely nothing. Just keep breathing and observe the beauty of life through his eyes. 

I am sorry, I am a sad man who is just biding his time but you know that already. Thank you for coming into my life at the worst phase and showing me what life has still to offer. 

Neo's first photo and coincidently it happened to be with me

                                      First nap at home 

    

When he is not hyperactive, he sleeps like a rock!

                                                                                              Neo curious and mischievous eyes

Neo sitting on Max's couch

                                Playtime!

    

Neo's favorite relaxing space, moonpod!

Neo playing crazy last weekend after the first snow of winter 2020

Learning From the Santa Fe Institute

Every single human being on earth is blessed with the power of thought. And every single one of us utilises our capacity for thinking every single day. Some of us are very good at it, yet others are not, and most of us will tend to hang onto the thoughts that have been presented to us during our education or working lives, and never question their veracity, accuracy or even relevance in today’s world. Even more, very few of us can attain the idea of an original thought; that is, an idea or opinion that has never been previously imagined in the past. But don’t be discouraged, even a genius like Nicholas Sleep has identified there is a body that can. So, if you’re looking for differentiated insights and vastly superior results, the Santa Fe Institute might be a rabbit hole worth venturing down.

- More here and Mitchell Waldrop's wonderful book Complexity - The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos is a great place to get started. 

 

Precarious Memories, Sapiens & 2020

Why we creatures never tend to learn from history? From world wars to pandemics have already happened multiple times but yet we refuse to remember it leave alone learning from it. 

One thing I am certain about the future... well future as in this time next year, most sapiens would have eradicated the memories of Coronavirus and what we went through in 2020 (except the ones who lost their loved ones). 

By refusing to talk about it and think about it, they not only purge their memories but also deprive themselves of developing gratitude for ordinary times.  This is one of the fundamental issues with our brains and it is as dangerous as a nuclear bomb. 

Jen Gerson has an insightful column on the same - you will forget 2020. But you'll remember the parties to come: 

As our dread year 2020 lumbers to its preordained end, I can't help but think about the tricky matter of memory. Why is it that some crises and events seem forever etched into the stories that societies tell about themselves, while others fade into nothing? This has been an unbearable, even apocalyptic year for so many of us and yet I can't help but shake the sense that I will soon be shocked by just how aggressively we will pursue forgetfulness. Once the jabs are in and the bodies tallied, what words will be forbidden? What things will we not talk about?

The 1918 pandemic was another one of those terrible crises that society seemed too-eager to forget once it was over — in stark contrast to the First World War, which although horrific, actually cost fewer lives than that terrible flu. Historians like Alfred W. Crosby have pointed out that the pandemic was not only missing from many modern history texts, it was largely absent from the writing of many of the great Golden Age authors of the '20s. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway — the flu is barely mentioned. 

[---]

I think we seek to forget the stories that make us feel helpless, and the ones that seem to pull us apart. This happened in 1918, too. Diaries that recollect that event seem to suggest that the lockdowns and fear; the sense that one could not help each other or one's neighbours, left the social fabric forever altered. As noted in this Atlantic article, John Delano, a New Haven, Connecticut, resident, said in 1997: “They didn’t visit each other, bring food over, have parties all the time. The neighborhood changed. People changed. Everything changed.”

When one watches anti-mask protests and witnesses friends and family fall to the intellectual ravages of conspiracy theories on social media, does that not feel a little familiar? No one wants to memorialize a time in which it's impossible to think well of oneself and his neighbours. 

I think we're going to forget 2020. I think we're going to go to some effort to ensure this lost year stays that way.

In other words, Sapiens want to forget stories where they are not superheroes and heroes. Once again, it baffles me how we made it this far. 

Max 2021 Holiday Card

My world turned upside one year ago. I was 45 years old and for the first time, I saw death. I was alone with Max and saw him breathe for one last time. 

I was hoping he would recover and spend more years with me. But as though he knew that the world would be a completely different place in the next 100 days and he didn't want to be inside the vet's office alone while I was waiting in the car outside. 

For more than 18 months, he had shrugged off cancer inside him and lived the way Max always lived. It aches each moment when I realize I will never see him again. It aches when I know I cannot kiss his vet nose. It aches that I cannot bite his lips while wresting on the floor and those peaceful sleep cuddling next to each other happened for one last time last year this day. 

Pain is inevitable in life but suffering is optional. In those 18 months, he taught not to suffer but not suffering even with multiple rounds of chemo, radiation, and tons of medicine. I hope whatever I am feeling now is pain and not suffering. 

I miss my Max. Nothing interests me nor am I passionate about anything; all passions were spent in the way we lived together. The light of that passion is what keeps me still alive but I have no idea why. 

Albert O. Hirschmann Timeless Wisdom - Hamlet Was Wrong

This belief we have that the future is knowable is crazy. People need to have the freedom to take more chances.

- Malcolm Gladwell 

Albert O. Hirschmann is one of my heroes. Not only he has influenced me in understanding what matters in life (by zooming in and out of macro as well as micro) but also a rare human who helps me every day on how I think and frame the problems I solve at work.  

Max's 2013 holiday card  Observe, Observe Perpetually is my all-time favorite and that was the year I learned about Hirschmann (that too posthumously, what kind of a moron am I!). 

Malcolm Gladwell in this interview (thank you) talks about how Hirshmann lived his life using this simple phrase - "Prove Hamlet Wrong"

Shakespeare's Hamlet is famous for his indecisiveness and ironically, a lot of people connect with that (including thyself in my younger years). The genius of Hirschmann was that every time he countered uncertainty, he made it a habit to prove Hamlet was wrong. In other words, he refused to be paralyzed by indecisiveness and took spontaneous decisions. 

Nothing kills progress faster than indecision

This should never be confused with the bullshit of "carpet diem" nor using the phrase "gut feeling" to justify their self-centered lives.  These spontaneous decisions are based on years of honing one's intuitions based on the infinite and continuous feedback between emotions and reasons (remember Antonio Damasio's wisdom?). 

I spent my early years being Hamlet and looking back, the spontaneous decision of bringing Max home on 05/21/2006 is probably when I started following Hirschmann's mantra even before I heard of Hirschmann. To state the obvious; that decision was the best decision of my life. 

The core idea is to be an informed contrarian, not influenced by "standards" of the society plus more importantly, patience and persistence to understand and execute those decisions. 

Gladwell's original column on Hirshmann "The Gift Of Doubt" sums it beautifully in Hirshmann's own words:

Creativity always comes as a surprise to us; therefore we can never count on it and we dare not believe in it until it has happened. In other words, we would not consciously engage upon tasks whose success clearly requires that creativity be forthcoming. Hence, the only way in which we can bring our creative resources fully into play is by misjudging the nature of the task, by presenting it to ourselves as more routine, simple, undemanding of genuine creativity than it will turn out to be. 

In other words, don't get tangled in trying to be creative but instead make it a simple daily habit and way of life. 

Jane Goodall's Interview With Krista Tippett

Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.

- Margaret Mead

A lot of my frustrations come out on this blog regarding the incapacity of humans to understand animal suffering, human-animal bond, and lack of understanding of my relationship with Max. But these frustrations are ridiculous when compared to what Jane Goodall faced in the 1980s (I cannot even begin to imagine how it was in the 1500s and what Montaigne had to face with his fellow sapiens). 

Amazing progress has been made in the last 30 years because of a few human beings like Jane Goodall. Please ignore my frustrations, the truth is Max and I benefited immensely from this progress.

Peter Singer focused on morality and animal suffering but Jane Goodall focused on "why" they suffer. The answer is a rudimentary one - non-human animals have immense cognitive abilities and they are sentient, period.

Please do listen to this heartwarming interview...

KT: It’s worth underlining, because it’s so hard for people now to imagine, that as late as the latter half of the twentieth century, human beings thought that we were the only creatures who made tools.

JG: That’s what was, from science, believed. If somebody at that time had gone to the Pygmies in the rainforest in Congo, they could’ve told you.

When I finally was made to go to Cambridge University, by Louis Leakey—he said I needed a degree to get money—

KT: And, also, you were the eighth person in the history of Cambridge to come in to do graduate work without an undergraduate degree, which was almost unheard of.

JG: I was greeted by scientists who said, “You’ve done your study wrong. You can’t talk about personality, problem solving, or emotions,” because those were thought to be unique to us. I was actually taught, and it’s in the textbooks, that the difference between us and all other animals is one of kind. But my dog Rusty taught me when I was a child that that certainly wasn’t true: we’re not the only beings on the planet with personalities, minds, and emotions. We are part of, not separate from, the animal kingdom.

Arrogant Western science. I think it probably stems from religion. God made man, God made man different, God made man to have dominion over the birds and the animals and the fish and so on. But that is a wrong translation. The original Hebrew word is more like “steward,” not dominion.

KT: There’s social and emotional continuity with the natural world. We’re creatures, rather than just all the other creatures being creatures.

JG: It’s just very arrogant to think that way. I was told at Cambridge that you have to be absolutely objective, you must not have empathy with your subject. “You shouldn’t have named the chimpanzees,” they told me, “they should’ve had numbers.” To me, that was so wrong. When I was watching a chimpanzee family, for example, and one of the young ones did something a little strange, it’s because I was empathetic toward them that I thought, They do it because of . . . whatever. That gives you a platform, and you can stand on that platform and then analyze what you’ve seen in a scientific way. But it’s the empathy that gives that aha moment.

By 1986, I had my PhD, I’d built up a research station, and, best of all, I could spend hours alone in the rainforest. That’s where I felt that deep, spiritual connection to the natural world and, also, came to understand the interconnectedness of all living things in this tapestry of life, where each species, no matter how insignificant, plays a vital role in the whole pattern. And I imagined continuing in that way, well, for the rest of my life. Why not?

And it was when I published that big book, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior, and it had all my scientific observations, but it also had all the stories. Science is apt to scoff at a story; they are apt to scoff at anecdotes. But an anecdote can be a very carefully recorded observation. It’s an anecdote because you only see it once, but those anecdotes are sometimes the key to unlocking a puzzle. They’re terribly important. And a collection of anecdotes, stories, has been very, very important in my research.

So anyway, we organized a conference with the then-director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, Dr. Paul Heltne—I think there were six other study sites back then, and we invited scientists from each and, also, a few from noninvasive, captive research, like big zoo groups, for example. The main object was to see how chimp behavior differed from environment to environment.

[---]

KT: I believe that the title of your book, In the Shadow of Man, in 1971, was that chimpanzees live in the shadow of man, as we had evolved to overshadow them with our powers of thought and speech. But what you also then picked up was how we had evolved and become a threat to the natural world from which we emerged and with which we remained in kinship.

JG: The biggest difference between us, chimps, and other animals is the explosive development of our intellect. Because science is now acknowledging that animals are not the machines they once thought, there’s a huge flurry of information about animal intelligence. It ranges from chimpanzees using computers in clever ways, elephants with their very close social bonds and strong relationships between herd members, and crows, who turn out to be able to actually use and make tools. And pigs—we can come back to factory farms later, perhaps— pigs are as intelligent as dogs, more intelligent than some. And now we know the octopus is highly intelligent. We know trees communicate with each other.

So here we are, with this intellect that’s enabled us to do something very different from all the animal successes, and that’s design a rocket, for example, that went up to Mars. Bizarre, isn’t it, that the most intellectual creature that’s ever lived on the planet is destroying its only home? There’s a disconnect between that clever, clever brain and human heart, love, and compassion. Only when head and heart work in harmony can we attain our true human potential. 

Also, support and join Roots & Shoots - Jane Goodall's initiative to educate children on bringing positive change in their community.

What I've Been Reading

We are at one with all other creatures. Humans do not rank above other animals, or below them. There is no cosmic scale of value, no great chain of being; no external standard by which the worth of a life can be judged. Humans are humans, cats are cats. The difference is that, while cats have nothing to learn from us, we can learn from them how to lighten the load that comes with being human. 

One burden we can give up is the idea that there could be a perfect life. It is not that our lives are inevitably imperfect. They are richer than any idea of perfection. The good life is not a life you might have led or may yet lead, but the life you already have. Here, cats can be our teachers, for they do not miss the lives they have not lived. 

Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life by John Gray. 

To state the obvious again; no one has influenced my thinking other than John Gray. Reading this is book is nothing but a guilty pleasure. Most of Gray's writings starts as a confirmation bias for me. 

Nevertheless, Gray motivates and helps me understand that I am not alone. Thank you, sir. 

Yuval Harri of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind fame is a splendid writer but John Gray has been writing better books for decades and much more to offer. I might be wrong, I do see Gray's influence in Harri's writing (check out their interview together). I wish more people read and understand John Gray's basic wisdom. 

Following are the ten lessons from the book; self-observation are in parenthesis:

1. Never try to persuade human beings to be reasonable

Trying to persuade human beings to be rational is like trying to teach cats to be vegans. Human beings use reason to bolster whatever they want to believe, seldom to find out if what they believe is true. This may be unfortunate, but there is nothing you or anyone else can do about it. If human unreason frustrates or endangers you, walk away.

(I understand this in theory and I do follow this in practice than most sapiens. But yet, I do forget this most important lesson often when in midst of sapiens. Call it Ulysses style self control; I spend most of my time with Neo, Fluffy, and Garph.) 

2. It is foolish to complain that you do not have enough time

If you think you do not have enough time, you do not know how to pass your time. Do what serves the purpose of yours and what you enjoy doing for its own sake. Live like this, and you will have plenty of time.

(Well, Max taught me this lesson 14 years ago and still dominates  lesson persists all my actions)

3. Do not look for meaning in your suffering

If you are unhappy, you may seek comfort in your misery, but you risk making it the meaning of your life. Do not become attached to your suffering, and avoid those who do.

(This I learned from Fluffy. I did go out of my misery against every cell in my body to bring Neo home within three days after Max passed away.)

4. It is better to be indifferent to others than to feel you have to love them

Few ideals have been more harmful than that of universal love. Better cultivate indifference, which may turn into kindness.

(Most of my disagreements with Sapiens come from this lesson. In these polite, white lies filled and politically correct disillusioned life has little place for people like me. I do understand that most people don't  follw this lesson, and naturally, I don't give a fuck about it) 

5. Forget about pursuing happiness, and you may find it

You will not find happiness by chasing after it, since you do not know what will make you happy. Instead, do what you find most interesting and you will be happy knowing nothing of happiness.

(Thomas Jefferson made the biggest mistake of his life by adding the phrase "pursuit of happiness". That mistake has eventually lead us to Huxley's Brave New World where people cannot emote even when Max passed away.) 

6. Life is not a story

If you think of your life as a story, you will be tempted to write it to the end. But you do not know how your life will end, or what will happen before it does. It would be better to throw the script away. The unwritten life is more worth living than any story you can invent.

(No kidding! Unwritten is more worth living indeed. My favorite quote Mind as a River has been a guiding force to drop my "story" in a heart beat)

7. Do not fear the dark, for much that is precious is found in the night

You have been taught to think before you act, and often that may be good advice. Acting on how you feel at the moment may be no more than obeying worn-out philosophies you have accepted without thinking. But sometimes it is better to follow an inkling that glimmers in the shadows. You never know where it may lead you.

(I have written many times over the years on how depression is an "oil change" for the brain and has always helped me to think clearly.)

8. Sleep for the joy of sleeping

Sleeping so that you can work harder when you wake up is a miserable way to live. Sleep for pleasure, not profit.

(Once again, Max taught me this.)

9. Beware anyone who offers to make you happy

Those who offer to make you happy do so in order that they themselves may be less unhappy. Your suffering is necessary to them, since without it they would have less reason for living. Mistrust people who say they live for others.

(Same as #5 and #4)

10. If you cannot learn to live a little more like a cat, return without regret to the human world of diversion

Living like a cat means wanting nothing beyond the life you lead. This means living without consolations, and that might be too much for you to bear. If so, take up an old-fashioned religion, preferably one that abounds in rituals. If you cannot find a faith that suits you, lose yourself in common life. The excitement and disappointments of romantic love, the pursuit of money and ambition, the charades of politics, and the clamour of the news will soon banish any sense of emptiness.

(I cannot ever return to the human world of diversion. I don't fit it nor I want to fit in. Just the mere thought of it gives me nightmares) 

There are thousands of more lessons I learned and still learning from Fluffy and Garph. I will continue to observe, incorporate those lessons into my life, and jot it down here until I fall. 

The point is a cat is just one of many from the non-human animal creed. There are zillion lessons Max taught me and Neo teaches from a different dimension. I learn rich and diverse lessons from individual's from a single species namely dog and cat, There are other second-hand lessons I learned from Elephants, African Grey Parrots, Octopus, Ravens, and Dolphins for starters. 

It is no accident that my time was filled with wonder every moment I spent with Max and now, the wonder continues in a different dimension with Fluffy, Garph, and Neo. 

My little world with an infinitesimal allocated time and a life with no significance became richer since I stepped outside of myself and tried to step into Max's world. I can only hope that I stepped out far enough; that is one of the reasons I want to experience psychedelics. 

To put it bluntly and paraphrasing John Gray - It's just plain boring to spend this precious life basking in my own and fellow sapiens' unwavering "imagined" radiance. 

Why I Loved & Will Always Love Biology

Imagine a flashy spaceship lands in your backyard. The door opens and you are invited to investigate everything to see what you can learn. The technology is clearly millions of years beyond what we can make.

This is biology.

– Bert Hubert, Our Amazing Immune System

I was just an average kid at school but by sheer coincidence, I was school first in biology and history.  I guess, what you subconsciously love comes out naturally. But I didn't pursue biology from high school for one reason and one reason only - I couldn't kill animals. Nevertheless, that love for biology only increased with time. 

James Summer has a brilliant hindsight observation on the same-shared love of biology - I should have loved biology:

I should have loved biology but I found it to be a lifeless recitation of names: the Golgi apparatus and the Krebs cycle; mitosis, meiosis; DNA, RNA, mRNA, tRNA.

In the textbooks, astonishing facts were presented without astonishment. Someone probably told me that every cell in my body has the same DNA. But no one shook me by the shoulders, saying how crazy that was. I needed Lewis Thomas, who wrote in The Medusa and the Snail:

For the real amazement, if you wish to be amazed, is this process. You start out as a single cell derived from the coupling of a sperm and an egg; this divides in two, then four, then eight, and so on, and at a certain stage there emerges a single cell which has as all its progeny the human brain. The mere existence of such a cell should be one of the great astonishments of the earth. People ought to be walking around all day, all through their waking hours calling to each other in endless wonderment, talking of nothing except that cell.

I wish my high school biology teacher had asked the class how an embryo could possibly differentiate—and then paused to let us really think about it. The whole subject is in the answer to that question. A chemical gradient in the embryonic fluid is enough of a signal to slightly alter the gene expression program of some cells, not others; now the embryo knows “up” from “down”; cells at one end begin producing different proteins than cells at the other, and these, in turn, release more refined chemical signals; ...; soon, you have brain cells and foot cells.

How come we memorized chemical formulas but didn’t talk about that? It was only in college, when I read Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, that I came to understand cells as recursively self-modifying programs. The language alone was evocative. It suggested that the embryo—DNA making RNA, RNA making protein, protein regulating the transcription of DNA into RNA—was like a small Lisp program, with macros begetting macros begetting macros, the source code containing within it all of the instructions required for life on Earth. Could anything more interesting be imagined?

Someone should have said this to me:

Imagine a flashy spaceship lands in your backyard. The door opens and you are invited to investigate everything to see what you can learn. The technology is clearly millions of years beyond what we can make.

This is biology.

– Bert Hubert, “Our Amazing Immune System”

A Parasite's Perspective - Kevin Lafferty

Relationships Are Everlasting Stories

Out of the blue, I listen to this beautiful old Tamil song after decades. It minded me of those four days in October 2019... it had a happy ending. Max is not here anymore but he came home and that beckons everlasting peace in my short life. 

The English translation (which losses much of the essence) goes like this: 

Relationships are everlasting stories

Feelings are like short stories 

One story can conclude 

While its end might lead to another

Only happiness beckons hereafter 

Only happiness beckons hereafter 

[---]

Your heart feels heavy 

I am here from you

I will bear the burden 

The corner of your eyes 

Why are they wet?

I will soothe those tears 

Your sorrows would end 

The mist would clear 

Oh milky cloud 

I will blend in your renewed beauty 

[---]

Life is like a song

And the melody is growing 

Every day will be filled with happiness 

So far you have only seen sorrow

From now on there will be only happiness

A new melody of happiness is starting now

A fresh flow of water in the river,

And it's merging with the ocean

Similarly, our bond has joined again today 

And happiness is born

[---]

Relationships are everlasting stories

Feelings are like short stories 

One story can conclude 

While its end might lead to another

Only happiness beckons hereafter 

Only happiness beckons hereafter 

Max's first day, first photograph 05/21/2006

This relationship of ours was a short story but yet, it is a small part of the least understood and everlasting human-animal bond. 

These simple bonds will not only outlive self-centered humans but someday might save and protect this beautiful planet. 

Thank you Max for giving me a glimpse of life before I fall. 

Your Immune System Is Your Greatest Asset — Here’s How to Care for It

Complex systems need huge respect and patience. The immune system is the mother of all complex systems in a living body (more important than the brain). Food, microbiomes, a clean-chemical-free environment, exercise, calm mind are some of the myriads of simple things that make up a good immune system life long. 

But yeah, it easier to dwell in conspiracy theories than meditate constantly on complex systems. 

For the past 17 years, I have interviewed people with medical evidence for recovery from incurable illnesses. Like the now disproven idea of spontaneous generation, there’s also nothing spontaneous about spontaneous remission. In cases that were previously considered flukes with no medical or scientific value, there are actually identifiable factors associated with how these individuals created abundant health and vitality in the face of great odds. The healing of their immune systems is a critical part of their stories.

It turns out that you don’t have a heart problem, a diabetes problem, a blood pressure problem, a cancer problem, or an autoimmune problem as much as you have a chronic inflammation problem. Chronic inflammation is an immune system gone awry, damaging the body it was designed to protect. If you want to decrease the amount of chronic inflammation in your body, then you need to heal your immune system.

You have an amazing immune system, with brilliant cells and cell-subtypes, all of which want to unleash their superpowers and keep you healthy and vital. For that to occur, you need to give your cells the proper conditions. One of the most important things you can do is give yourself real food, mostly plants, and largely eliminate processed foods, sugar, and refined flours from your diet.

Food is either medicine or poison, depending on what it contains, so you want to eat a clean diet. Don’t over-medicate. Flush your lymphatic system regularly with lots of water. Get plenty of rest. Spend time with people you love who make you laugh.

- More here

What I've Been Reading

The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. 

- William James

Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova. In Maria's own words, if you get only one thing out of this book, it should be this: 

The most powerful mind is the quiet mind. It is the mind that is present, reflective, mindful of its thoughts and its state. It doesn't multitask, and when it does, it does so with a purpose. 

I did stop and reflect on what I read and write here... human intelligence and exceptionalism are overrated but yet, I read and write a lot on the importance of knowledge (not exceptionalism). The reason being the former can be understood only with the latter (it is never a chicken and egg problem). In other words, parochial knowledge present in most adults is more harmful than no knowledge at all. 

If you have read Conan Doyle and/or watched the modern BBC version of Sherlock Homles then please do yourself a favor and read this book. 

Maria has sketched out some brilliant ideas on how to improve this scare faculty in most of the sapiens. You might want to excuse her for some of the physiological experiments/researches she quotes and focus your attention on how she captures Sherlock's methodological approach to intuition development. 

• Homles recommends we start with the basics. As he says in our first meeting with him, "Before turning to those moral and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the enquirer being by mastering more elementary problems." It not for nothing that Holmes calls the foundation of his inquiry "elementary." For, that is precisely what they are, the very basis of how something works, and what makes it what it is. 

• The scientific method in a nutshell: understand and frame the problem; observe; hypothesize (or imagine), and deduce, and repeat. To follow Sherlock Holmes is to learn to apply that same approach not just of external clues, but to your every thought - and then turn it around and apply it to every thought of every other person who may be involved, step by painstaking step. 

• This is the scientific method at its most basic. Holmes goes on step further. He applies the same principles to human beings: a Holmesian disciple will, "on meeting a fellow-moral, learn at a glance to distinguish the history of the man and the trade or profession to which he belongs. Puerile as such an exercise may seem, it sharpens the facilities of observation, and teaches one where to look and what to look for." Each observation, each exercise, each simple inference drawn from a simple fact will strengthen your ability to engage in ever-more-complex machinations. It will lay the groundwork for new habits of thinking that will make such observation second nature.

 (What a thought! It was Max, not Holmes who taught me these simple tricks of observation.)

• In order to break the autopiloted mode of thinking, we have to be motivated to think in a mindful, present fashion, to exert effort on what goes through our heads instead of going with the flow. To think like Sherlock Holmes, we must want, actively, to think like him. Motivated subjects always outperform. 

• The final piece of the puzzle: practice, practice, practice. You have to supplement your mindful motivation with brutal training, thousands of hours of it. There is no way around it. As Holmes often notes, he has made it a habit to engage his Holmes system, every moment of every day. In so doing, he has slowly trained his quick-to-judge inner Watson to perform as his public outer Holmes. Through sheer force of habit and will, he has taught his instant judgments to follow the train of thought of a far more reflective approach. And because this foundation is in place, it takes a matter of seconds for him to make his initial observations of Watson's character. That's why Holmes calls it intuition. Accurate intuition, the intuition that Holmes possesses, is of necessity based on training, hours, and hours of it. 

• What we store in our brain's attic matters. Holmes famously didn't care if the Earth went around the sun or the moon. Holmes explains to Watson, "A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain attic." Brain attic is a precious real estate; tread carefully and use it wisely. 

• Uncluttered brain attic, yes but not stark. An attic that contained only the bare essentials for your professional success would be a sad little attic indeed. It would have hardly any material to work with, and it would be practically incapable of any great insight or imagination. Holmes's all-important caveat: the most surprising of articles can end up being useful in the most surprising of ways. You must open your mind to new inputs, however unrelated they may seem. 

• The so-called Motivation to Remember (MTR) is far more important at the point of encoding - and no amount of MTR at retrieval will be efficient if the information wasn't properly stored to being with. 

• Timeless advice from Holmes: "Read it up - you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before."

• We pay attention to everything and nothing as a matter of course. Choosing wisely means being selective. It means not only looking but looking properly, looking with real thoughts. It means looking with the full knowledge that what you note - and how you note it - will form the basis of any future deductions you might make. It's about seeing the full picture, noting the details that matter, and understanding how to contextualize those details within a broader framework of thought. 

• The Holmes solution? Habit, habit, habit. That, and motivation. Become an expert of sorts at those types of decisions or observations that you want to excel at making. Reading people's professions, following their trains of thought, inferring their emotions and thinking from their demeanor. Sherlock illustrates four important elements: selectivity, objectivity, inclusivity, and engagement

• Observational process (Bayesian update): you can set goals to help you filter the world, but be careful lest you use these goals as blinders. Your goals, your priorities, your answer to the "what I want to accomplish" question must be flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances. If the available information changes, so should you. Don't be afraid to deviate from the preset plan when it serves the greater objective. 

• Heisenberg uncertainty principle in action: the fact of observing changes the thing being observed. Even an empty room s no longer the same once you're inside. You cannot proceed as if it hasn't changed. This may sound like common sense, but it is actually much harder to understand in practice than it seems in theory. Understanding a situation in its fullness requires several steps, but the first and most fundamental is to realize that observation and deduction are not the same. To observe, you must learn to separate situation from interpretation, yourself from what you're seeing. 

• Another words of wisdom: Nonchoices are choices too. 

• An observant mind, an attentive mind, is a present mind. It is a mind that isn't wandering. It is a mind that is actively engaged in whatever it is that it happens to be doing. And it is a mind that allows System Holmes to step up, instead of letting System Watson run around like crazy, trying to do it all and see it all. 

• Richard Feynman frequently voiced his surprise at the lack of appreciation for what he thought was a central quality in both thinking and science. "It is surprising the people don't believe that there is imagination in science. Not only that view patently false but it is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of the artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail what has already seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult."

• We tend to think of creativity as an all-or-nothing, you-have-it-or-you-don't characteristic of the mind. But that couldn't be further from the truth. Creativity can be taught. It is just like another muscle-attention, self-control - that can be exercised and grow stronger with use, training, focus, and motivation. 

• Holmes pays one of his rare compliments to Inspector Baynes: "You will rise high in your profession. You have instinct and intuition." What does Baynes do differently from his Scotland Yard counterparts to earn such praise? He anticipates human nature instead of dismissing it, arresting the wrong man on purpose with the goal of lulling the real criminal into a false complacency. 

• One of the most remarkable characteristics of Sherlock Holmes was his power of throwing his brain out of action and switching all his thoughts on to lighter things whenever he had convinced himself that he could no longer work to advantage. 

• The most important thing that a change in physical perspective can do is prompt a change in mental perspective. Even Holmes, who unlike Watson doesn't need to be led by the hand and forcibly removed from Baker Street in order to profit from some mental distance, benefits from this property. 

• Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi once said: whenever a task proves difficult or takes time or doesn't have an obvious answer, I pretend I'm in jail. If I'm in jail time is of no consequence. In other words, if it takes a week to cut this, it will take a week. What else have I got to do? I'm going to be here for twenty years. See? This is a kind of mental trick. My way, you say time is of absolutely no consequence.

• More wisdom: when all avenues are exhausted, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. 

• The improbable is not yet impossible. As we deduce, we are too prone to that satisficing tendency, stopping when something is good enough. Until we have exhausted the possibilities and are sure that we have done so, we aren't home clear. We must learn to stretch our experience, to go beyond our initial instinct. We must learn to look for evidence that both confirms and disconfirms and, most important, we must try to look beyond the perspective that is the all too natural one to take: our own. 

• Avoid mindless existence. Education never ends, Watson. Holmes's message to us isn't as one-dimensional as it may seem. Of course, it is good to keep learning: it keeps our minds sharp and alert and prevents us from settling in our ways. But for Holmes, education means something more and questioning your habits, of never allowing System Watson to take over altogether - even though he may have learned a great deal from System Holmes along the way. It's a way of constantly shaking up our habitual behaviors, and never forgetting that, no matter how expert we think are at something, we must remain mindful and motivated in everything we do. 

• Overconfidence is bad. Very bad indeed. Observe these four sets of circumstances where overconfidence predominates. First, overconfidence is most common when facing difficulty: for instance, when we have to make a judgment on a case where there' no way of knowing all the facts. This is called hard-easy effect. Second, overconfidence increases with familiarity. Third, overconfidence increases with information. Finally, overconfidence increases with action (as we actively engage, we become more confident in what we are doing). 

• The genius and humility of Sherlock can be inferred from the following sentence in Yellow Face: "Watson, if it should ever strike you that I getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you."

• Holmes may have his Norburys. But he has chosen to learn from them and make himself a better thinker in the process, every perfecting a mind that already seems sharp beyond anything else. We too, never stop learning, whether we know it or not. At the time of "The Red Circle," Holmes was forty-eight years old. By traditional standards, we might have thought him incapable of any profound change by that point in life. 

• It is most difficult to apply Holmes's logic in those moments that matter the most. And so, all we can do is practice, until our habits are such that even the most severe stressors will bring out the very thought patterns that we've worked so hard to answer. 

 (You don't have to believe this but I have lived this not too long ago. The worst phase of my life when Max was suffering, me being an emotional wreck and surrounded by self-centered humans who have no to little understanding of the human-animal bond - had to make fast decisions, think clearly, and yeah, work-in-a-field which needs constant thinking to pay for Max's treatment. Yes, practice, practice, practice in good times - comes to your rescue during worst of times)

• Holmes even knew about the importance of fasting. "The faculties become refined when you starve them," says Holmes when Watson urges him to consume at least some food. "Why, surely as a doctor, my dear Watson, you must admit that what your digestion gains in the way of blood supply is so much lost to the brain. I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. Therefore, it is the brain I must consider. 

• Watson understood his friend's need for solitude when Holmes asks him to be left alone: "I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial."

• As Holmes warns over and over, it is the least remarkable crime that is often the most difficult. Nothing breeds complacency like routine and the semblance of normality. Nothing kills vigilance so much as the commonplace. Nothing kills the successful hunter like a complacency bred of that very success, the polar opposite of what enabled that success to begin with. 

• It's easy to see Sherlock Holmes as a hard, cold reasoning machine: the epitome of calculating logic. But that view of Holmes the Logical Automation couldn't be further from the truth. Quite the contrary. What makes Holmes who he is, what places him above detectives, inspectors, and civilians alike, is his willingness to engage in a nonlinear, embrace the hypothetical, entertain the conjecture, it's his capacity for creative thought and imaginative reflection. 

Certainly we should take care not to make the intellect the god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve; and it is not fastidious in its choice of a leader. 

- Albert Einstien. 

Finally, understand this: 

Never forget that even Holmes had to train himself, that even he was not born thinking like Sherlock Holmes. Nothing just happens out of the blue. We have to work for it. But with proper attention, it happens. It is a remarkable thing, the human brain. 

As it turns out, Holmes's insights can apply to most anything. It's all about the attitude, the mindset, the habits of thinking, the enduring approach to the world that you develop. The specific application itself is far less important. 

Peter Belvin wrote another phenomenal book on Sherlock Holmes - A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes. You can check out my notes/review from 2013 here.