What’s The Point In Life?

There’s a story-line that many of us follow in life. It goes like this:

In the beginning I was a happy-go-lucky innocent, without a care in the world or a distressing thought in my head. I lived in a Happy Valley of childhood. Then something went wrong. Something bad happened to me, and now I’m exiled from Paradise, and I’m stuck in a world where everything seems grey and miserable and somehow lacking in warmth and colour and joy and purpose. And I can’t get back to the Happy Valley. I can’t find my way back home.

(...)

People get out of the darkness two ways. Firstly, some people just fall asleep again. Life changes, and they stop thinking such deep thoughts, and get caught up in the game once more.  Actually, this happens to everyone. You fall in love, you get a great job, you go on holiday, and things are fun again, and you shelve your inner Hamlet and enjoy the festivities.

There is nothing wrong with this at all. Sometimes the game of charades is a really fun game, and it’s fun to get involved, though unfortunately we often forget it’s just a game and end up totally believing in it and taking it very seriously.

Secondly, some people get out of the darkness by discovering a philosophy or an attitude that helps them through it and gives them a sense of meaning. Their old philosophy – ‘be happy-go-lucky’ -  doesn’t quite work anymore, but they discover a new philosophy which works better.

I’ve turned to different philosophies to help me when I’m lost: Buddhism, Stoicism, Sufism, Taoism, Christianity. These are all quite different philosophies, but I think they have a core message to them.

Which is this: We’re here to know ourselves, to discover our nature, and to help other people do the same.

(...)

But what is the point? That question hangs over us like a cloud when we’re starting out on the journey, just as we find ourselves outside the Happy Valley. Why bother going on, when everything looks so dark and gloomy?

You won’t find an answer right now. It’s not like there is a Fortune Cookie slogan I can give you, which tells you The Point. First you need to practice taking care of yourself. Epictetus said: ‘practice, for heaven’s sake, in the little things, and then proceed to greater’.

Practice taking care of yourself. Practice taking care in the little things. Practice not letting your negative thoughts beat you up and cause you suffering. Why be so mean to yourself? Would you let someone be that mean to your sister, or your boyfriend, or your dog? So why be so mean to yourself?

Practice taking care of your body. The health of your consciousness is connected to your physical health – when you’re tired or hungover, you’re more susceptible to the automatic negative thoughts. Practice taking exercise, going for walks or jogs or swims or yoga, practice getting out into parks or the countryside. Feed your body with good things, feed your soul with good things.

Practice being appreciative of little things – a cup of tea, a good book, a beautiful song, a funny film. Practice being appreciative of other people – little moments where people are kind to each other, despite all the hurt and confusion in the world. Practice loving other people. See them in all their beauty and vulnerability, and how much they want to love and be loved.  (I am rubbish at this, I’m usually an utter misanthrope – I need to practice being kinder and softer-hearted.)

- More Here

Quote of the Day

Don't be afraid to move around and try different things, no matter how old you are. The most important thing you want to find out is who you are and what capabilities you have.

- Karl Pillemer, 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans

"So, Chill Out" says Tyson on Anti-GMO Nonsense

 "What most people don't know, that they should, is that practically every food you buy in a store for consumption by humans is genetically modified food. There are no wild seedless watermelons, there's no wild cows, there's no long-stem roses growing in the wild ...

We have systematically genetically modified all the foods, the vegetables and animals, that we have eaten ever since we cultivated them. It's called artificial selection. That's how we genetically modify them. So now that we can do it in a lab, all of a sudden, you're going to complain?

So we are creating and modifying the biology of the world to serve our needs. I don't have a problem with that because we've been doing that for tens of thousands of years. So, chill out."

- More Here

Quote of the Day

- The Fasinatng … Frustrating … Fascinating History of Autocorrect

The Beauty of Mathematics

All of these objects are defined by numbers, whether they be their electric charge, their lepton number or their rotational value. In fact, science is yet to find a non-mathematic object or characteristic. Every object that exists or will ever exist is a number, every human that exists or will ever exist is a number; you and I, are just numbers. All the emotions you feel — love, hatred, jealousy, fear and anger to name a few — no matter how primal they may be, can be defined by a mere number. Hence, for example, a cat is cute because of a number, a flower is beautiful because of another one.

Therefore, since numbers are logical, everything that you, a number, do may be determined by an algorithm, at least in theory. You make your decisions based upon a pattern; a pattern that is perhaps unique to you because you are a unique number or maybe a pattern that is extremely common because you are not a unique number at all.

We can then take a look at pi; a nonrepeating infinite decimal, meaning that it never repeats itself and contains every single number pattern imaginable, and then an infinite more. Hence, converting pi to ASCII text reveals everything in the universe; your hopes, your dreams, everything you have done, everything you will ever do, what has happened and what will be, and even all that will never be. It contains the answer to all the questions in the world, the secret to immortality and eternal happiness, the meaning of life; it contains within itself, the entire universe.

Therefore, if we are able to harness the power of numbers, then we will be able to tap into infinity itself. Do you still think the study of numbers is useless?

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Quote of the Day

Montaigne attributed our problems with our bodies in part to an absence of honest discussion about them in polite circles. Representative stories and images do not tend to identify feminine grace with a strong interest in love-making, nor authority with the possession of a sphincter or penis. Pictures of kings and ladies did not encourage one to think of these eminent souls breaking wind or making love. Montaigne filled out the picture in blunt, beautiful French:

"Au plus eslevé throne du monde si ne sommes assis que sus nostre cul."

"Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses."

"Les Roys et les philosophes fientent, et les dames aussi."

"Kings and philosophers shit: and so do ladies."

- Alain de Botton, The Consolations Of Philosophy

Wisdom Of The Week

Because here is the other thing the greybeards in 2044 will tell you: Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an entrepreneur in 2014? It was a wide-open frontier! You could pick almost any category X and add some AI to it, put it on the cloud. Few devices had more than one or two sensors in them, unlike the hundreds now. Expectations and barriers were low. It was easy to be the first. And then they would sigh, “Oh, if only we realized how possible everything was back then!”

So, the truth: Right now, today, in 2014 is the best time to start something on the internet. There has never been a better time in the whole history of the world to invent something. There has never been a better time with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit/risk ratios, better returns, greater upside, than now. Right now, this minute. This is the time that folks in the future will look back at and say, “Oh to have been alive and well back then!”

The last 30 years has created a marvelous starting point, a solid platform to build truly great things. However the coolest stuff has not been invented yet — although this new greatness will not be more of the same-same that exists today. It will not be merely “better,” it will different, beyond, and other. But you knew that.

What you may not have realized is that today truly is a wide open frontier. It is the best time EVER in human history to begin.

You are not late.

- Kevin Kelly

Quote of the Day

Using Mummy's to Decipher Heart Disease

We think of heart disease as a modern scourge, brought on by our sedentary lifestyles and our affinity for fast food. But a few years ago, a team of researchers discovered something puzzling — CT scans of Egyptian mummies showed signs of hardened, narrow arteries. Further scans of mummies from other ancient civilizations turned up the same thing.

How could it be that these preindustrial people without donuts or desk jobs suffered from atherosclerosis, a condition we know to be associated with smoking, unhealthy diet and lack of exercise? And what does that tell us about heart disease today?

We may be getting closer to understanding. In a study published this week in Global Heart, researchers conclude that factors like inhaling smoke from open fire pits, and inflammation triggered by dirty living conditions may be to blame.

While inflammation isn't considered one of the main risk factors for heart disease today, studies have found that it's associated with atherosclerosis. And ongoing clinical trials are testing whether reducing inflammation might help reduce risk of heart disease.

Since female mummies showed more evidence of atherosclerosis than male mummies, the scientists also theorize that exposure to smoke from fire pits played a role. "In each of the cultures we studied, the women were cooking," says Dr. Greg Thomas, a cardiologist who led the study. These ancient peoples also used fires to keep warm and ward off insects, he says, "So they were exposed to a lot of smoke." In many ways, inhaling billowing smoke from a fire pit can be as harmful to the heart as smoking cigarettes or breathing highly polluted air, Thomas notes.

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Quote of the Day

Dawes observed that the complex statistical algorithm adds little or no value. One can do just as well by selecting a set of scores that have some validity for predicting the outcome and adjusting the values to make them comparable (by using standard scores or ranks). A formula that combines these predictors with equal weights is likely to be just as accurate in predicting new cases as the multiple-regression formula that was optimal in the original sample. More recent research went further: formulas that assign equal weights to all the predictors are often superior, because they are not affected by accidents of sampling.

- Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow