Meta, the morality of Haidt

Turing writes, circa 1950

Next stop, Wonderland?

"I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature.

...

We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, and sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go."

-- Emerson

'To die, to sleep ... To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause...' - Hamlet

- Status quo bias

- A report by the president's council on bioethics: Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness

Excerpt:

"... Yet if there is merit in the suggestion that too long a life, with its end out of sight and mind, might diminish its worth, one might wonder whether we have already gone too far in increasing longevity. If so, one might further suggest that we should, if we could, roll back at least some of the increases made in the average human lifespan over the past century.

These remarks prompt some large questions: Is there an optimal human lifespan and an ideal contour of a human life? If so, does it resemble our historical lifespan (as framed and constrained by natural limits)?* Or does the optimal human lifespan lie in the future, to be achieved by some yet-to-be-developed life-extending technology? Whatever the answers to these intriguing and important questions, nothing in our inquiry ought to suggest that the present average lifespan is itself ideal...”

- A book reco: Flowers for Algernon

- And lastly a rant. Notice how a lot of SF stories and movies tend to be alarmist? There is a new invention which makes humans superhuman, or AI is developed to aid humans, or a new drug is discovered, or a paleontological species is recreated, or humans overcome odds to grow brains to travel across space. In the end, there is always a catch, and things go horribly wrong and threaten extinction, some calamitous catastrophe or at least a few shrieking kids later, a hitherto incompetent but large-hearted doofus saves everyone, or a flaw in the thingamacascafadr-that-is-hitherto-not-discovered-by-super-intelligences-but-the-reader/audience-can-get-in-one-cinematic-revelation brings the adversary to its suspiciously anthropomorphic knees. Sick.

Two quotes that I came across recently I liked:

"Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself" -- A. H. Weiler

"A good horse runs when it sees even the shadow of a whip" -- The Buddha

Deep wisdom, good advice, metacognition

Have you had a conversation with someone on a subject you did not quite know much about, or read a write-up on a subject on which you have limited expertise, and subsequently remarked "Now, that is deep". Better even, have you asked someone for advice regarding something you did not know how to handle, and subsequently remarked "That is good advice". I have, and recoiled at the metacognitive gaffe. (Subsequently, the occurrences of my these utterances have diminished.)

(In order to know that the wisdom is deep, your own wisdom of the subject matter must be deep. In order to know that the advice is good, you must have a way to judge good and bad solutions.)

I think perhaps, this is explainable as a matter of terminology:

- When one says "This is deep", one doesn't really mean that one can gauge the depth of the wisdom. One just means that the wisdom is/was sufficiently nontrivial, that one's mind could imagine that the path to it must be hard.

- When one says "This is good advice", one perhaps doesn't really mean that one metacognitively examined the quality of the advice against other solutions and realized it's superiority, but instead means

• the solution given meets some desirability criteria (known a priori) that would be common to unknown solutions to the problem at hand.

or

• the solution to the problem makes one feel emotionally good.

Or is this another thing to be expected of the status seeking missiles that are humans? i.e. upon encountering depth, or quality, humans want to signal themselves and others that they possess the metacognitive ability to evaluate it? Or is this just an ack, to make the other person feel better?

Intention, Free Will etc.

'When the real demonstration came he had us walk on stage, and he hypnotized us in front of the whole Princeton Graduate College. This time the effect was stronger; I guess I had learned how to become hypnotized. The hypnotist made various demonstrations, having me do things that I couldn't normally do, and at the end he said that after I came out of hypnosis,instead of returning to my seat directly, which was the natural way to go, I would walk all the way around the room and go to my seat from the back. All through the demonstration I was vaguely aware of what was going on, and cooperating with the things the hypnotist said, but this time I decided, "Damn it, enough is enough! I'm gonna go straight to my seat." When it was time to get up and go off the stage, I started to walk straight to my seat. But then an annoying feeling came over me: I felt so uncomfortable that I couldn't continue. I walked all the way around the hall.'
...
'So I found hypnosis to be a very interesting experience. All the time you're saying to yourself, "I could do that, but I won't" -- which is just another way of saying that you can't.'

------- Richard Feynman, "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman"

'I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.'
--------- Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone" by A.C. Doyle.

Enter the I of the vortex

Quick Gun Meran

The update on the WCC match between Kramnik and Anand is that Anand selected what appears to be a brilliant strategy of turning the tables on Kramnik. To counter Kramnik's longstanding "Safety with Black, push with White" strategy, Anand seems to have adopted the "Safety with White, attack with Black" strategy. And so far it has worked brilliantly.

Anand leads the match 3.5 - 1.5 having won 2/3 Black games. With 7 games to come, Kramnik faces a precipitous uphill climb. Kramnik needs to play in an unprecedented manner to have a shot at the title from here on.

Interestingly, Anand has shown that he can ditch his loyal preference for 1. e4, which he has consistently stuck to over a very long, eventful and brilliantly successful career, by choosing to move 1. d4 against a player who is one of the current experts on both sides of the d-pawn opening. Moreover, Anand has energetically entered the Meran lines of the QGD semi-slav while responding to 1. d4, which makes for sharp chess which suits Anand style, in positions he has had a lot of success in the past.

Kramnik has to do something extra-ordinary to stage a comeback, and while this is not unheard of in WCC matches, it promises great chess for the next few days.

An excellent paper on the economics of moral righteousness: Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values and taboo cognitions

A classical duel: The aging lightning kid takes on the ice king

The paths of two shooting stars in the chess world will cross in a few days, in an event that will be noted with at best mildly passing curiosity (I am basing this on history for guide) by all but a few geeky woodpushers across the world. This championship match is of historical importance, for it marks the end of an era of controversy in the chess world. Probably the most popularly held view is that the rarefied area at the top of the world of chess is split in the middle, with Vishy Anand wearing the crown handed down from Wilhelm Steinitz from champion to champion, when the previous champion of the bloodline lay it on the line in a tournament style championship held under the auspices of FIDE. FIDE held the championship tournament in 2007 to unify the bloodline title with the FIDE world championship title. Traditionally leaning chess fans feel strongly about the handing over of the bloodline title over a tournament, which they feel doesn't establish the head-to-head superiority of the champion over the challengers. Vladimir Kramnik will be playing Vishy Anand for the unified world championship title in a head-to-head 12 game match.

Vishy Anand: Known for his extremely quick calculations, however in classical games, speed of calculation is usually not of prime importance. Anand's style is sharp but safe and probing. His creative approach does open up vulnerabilities in his camp OTB, but at the same time prods the opponent into areas of tactical possibilities where Anand out calculates his rival. He is known to play the so called "open game" in almost every game of his career with White, by choosing to move 1.e4. This will be a potential weakness for him, since Kramnik is expected to play neutralising lines from the Petroff defence 1...e5, 2.Nf3, Nf6 and so on, which have proven very hard to crack so far. However, Anand does have a more incisive track record with Black than Kramnik, but Kramnik is known to be close to undefeatable with White. Anand's nerves could be a problem for him, especially if he lets Kramnik take the lead early.

Vladimir Kramnik: Known for his deep positional play. Kramnik is known to play for positional long term advantages, especially with White. He is known to seek positions that offer slow gradual improvement, which Kramnik usually exploits to grind down the opponent until he/she pops. Kramnik has been criticized by fans for his extreme passive play with Black, where he firmly places the burden-to-prove-advantage on the player playing White. With Black, he is known to avoid all complicating and risky lines, and is content with entering drawing lines at the earliest opportunity, unless the opponent blunders. This strategy has proven very efficacious for him in all three WC matches he has been part of. His solid playing style and ability to come back from losing the lead make him a formidable match opponent, although his style is not well adapted in winning tournaments where one has to win a lot of games.

The two opponents go back a long way, with Kramnik holding a tiny lead over Anand in head-to-head classical games. I think that this will be a very interesting match, with Kramnik somewhat of a pre-match favourite. I would put it at 55%-45% in favour of Kramnik.

We are all individuals!

(I attempt at haiku)

I pause from pithy
prose and my dry doggerel
to write bad haiku
--------

Ages pass it seems
until the one asks you how
you have felt lately
---------

A jaundiced moon beamed
down on old 101
and she rode with me
----------

I watched her recede
and walk away out of sight
the sun was way harsh
-----------

Mid happy chatter
I rise for a quick breath
of isolation
-----------

Thought that burns right through
the fabric of a subject
like a cigarette

Have hit a dry spell w.r.t. evocative thought. Might take a break from the parables, hyperbole... ellipses too, and stick to some laconic sections for a while.

Sheep in Scotland, and bullet-biting

"I've burned my own house down, the torch is in my hand.
Now I'll burn down the house of anyone who wants to follow me" -- The Bijak, Kabir


A philosopher-joke runs like this:

An engineer, an experimental physicist, a theoretical physicist, and a philosopher were hiking through the hills of Scotland. Cresting the top of one hill, they see, on top of the next, a black sheep. The engineer says: "What do you know, the sheep in Scotland are black." "Well, *some* of the sheep in Scotland are black," replies the experimental physicist. The theoretical physicist considers this for a moment and says "Well, at least one of the sheep in Scotland is black." "Well," the philosopher responds, "on one side, anyway."

You will notice it is possible to go further in the one-up-man-ship game emphasized in the joke. For instance, a philosopher' (or a pseudo-quantum-collapse-philosopher, if you will) may say "One side of the sheep is black when you look at it".

Let us go exactly opposite to the trend highlighted in the joke in analysing it. What the joke captures is a tendency I often encounter: the tendency to steer clear of that beast called falsifiability. Notice how the 'hierarchical heros' of our joke steer ever so clear of abstraction and universalizing, and by doing so, carefully disentangle themselves from falsifiability.

Notice however, that falsifiability is intimately coupled with hypothesis-building, and by consequence - learning something new, above-and-beyond what is experientially true at this point. A non falsifiable statement is content-free, contains no new information, or doesn't impinge on the real world.

Metaphorically speaking, it behooves us to leave our safe havens of terra firma and step on the rocky boats of falsifiable hypotheses, if we ever intend to discover unknown and exotic worlds.

Bite the bullet. It holds the sweet juice of anagnorisis.

For those who came in late to the postmodern party..

One common pattern that executes itself repeatedly in human history is the following loop:

Step 1. Individual (small-collection) nonconformism with prevailing philosophies and establishments.
Step 2. A successful nonconformist movement gaining establishment status.
Step 3. A different counter-culture looping back to Step 1.

The transition from Step 1 to Step 2 is curious. This is where large numbers of individuals consider themselves unique in their nonconformism. This is where people are occasionally surprised to learn that there already is an 'ism' in prevalent language for their espoused brand of antiestablishmentarianism.

One such contemporary phenomenon is self-proclaiming (in a sense) definition-defying postmodernism. (Although, I believe that it is now generally considered that we have left the postmodern era behind us, or are in the process of doing so.)

The following are excerpts from Paul Newall's introduction to postmodernism:

" ... we could say that postmodernism is skeptical of theoretical viewpoints that are foundational (as we discussed in our fifth article) or grounded in some way, and critical of theory in general. Sometimes a distinction is made along the following lines:
Affirmative postmodernists: theory needs to be changed, rather than rejected
Skeptical postmodernists: theory should be rejected, or at least subject to severe critique ..."

"... Although we must be careful to over generalization or oversimplification, opposing modern to postmodern we have:

Structure opposed to anarchy

Construction opposed to deconstruction

Theory opposed to anti-theory

Interpretation opposed to hostility toward definite interpretation

Meaning opposed to the play of meaning or a refusal to pin down

Metanarratives opposed to hostility toward narratives

The search for underlying meaning opposed to a suspicion (or certainty) that this is impossible

Progress opposed to a doubt that progress is possible

Order opposed to subversion

Encyclopedic knowledge opposed to a web of understanding ..."

"... Another telling criticism is to note that to be anti-theory is still to have a theory; that is, the theory that we shouldn't have a theory. Rejecting the need for criteria (whatever their purpose) is still a criterion. Is it possible to be as playful as some suggest, not holding beliefs or methodological approaches and instead refusing to define or pin down narratives? How lightly can we hold our ideas before we end up either holding nothing at all or become certain of them without realising it? ..."

"... Are long, complicated words being used as part of a specialist language or because postmodernists have nothing of consequence to say and want to hide this fact behind their rhetoric? Often the answer is a matter of opinion, or of saying that even a difficult writer can sometimes offer a comment clearly enough to raise an eyebrow before plunging back into a thicket of terminology. Since a key assumption of this series is that anything worth saying can be said clearly, it may be that some people are reluctant to wade into postmodernist thinking for fear that their time will be wasted; unless the writer is composing his thoughts merely for the amusement of himself and a few select friends, this is a difficulty that still restricts the impact that postmodern ideas can have. ... "

The following are excerpts from Richard Dawkins' polemic on postmodernism: Postmodernism Disrobed reviewing the book "Intellectual Impostures"

Quoting Medawar: "... Style has become an object of first importance, and what a style it is! For me it has a prancing, high-stepping quality, full of self-importance; elevated indeed, but in the balletic manner, and stopping from time to time in studied attitudes, as if awaiting an outburst of applause. It has had a deplorable influence on the quality of modern thought . . . "

and

"... No doubt there exist thoughts so profound that most of us will not understand the language in which they are expressed. And no doubt there is also language designed to be unintelligible in order to conceal an absence of honest thought. But how are we to tell the difference? What if it really takes an expert eye to detect whether the emperor has clothes? In particular, how shall we know whether the modish French 'philosophy', whose disciples and exponents have all but taken over large sections of American academic life, is genuinely profound or the vacuous rhetoric of mountebanks and charlatans? ..."

The following link leads you to a new, automatically generated "postmodern" article, each time: http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

The postmodern mara-dragon has slippery and multi-speckled skin of indeterminate colour. It is said to spew flames of rhetoric with a hiss that is said to sound like "Who is to say?".

The postmodern Rainman writes up a self-referenced, anti-structural, high-style null-truth-value (what is that?) interpret-me-if-you-dare write-up and gloats to his brother: "I made a falutin'! ".

Upon encountering passive and active resistance, and apathy regarding my persistent (- but I will be the first to note, of questionably formal precision -) focus on logic, rationality, limits, formalism: I ponder some more on the relationships of the above to emotions, building of opinions and changing of minds.

It was said that logic, formalism, rationality and evidence are all fine and dandy, but they do not comprise what it takes to influence minds into doing XYZ. It was said that people make up their minds, change them et. al. based on emotions and no strength of logic will get Joe/Jane to do something they wouldn't do if it weren't for another's influence. In other words, an appeal to people's reason is inconsequential. Shouting against the wind. Also, who is to say nonformal, haphazard, inconsistent or whimsical means, methods and frameworks do not contain truth or do not offer equally valid approaches at getting at answers.

There is a lot of truth in the above statements, and they contain little I would disagree with if presented as such. However, I have to state where logic, formalism, demonstration of evidence, appeal to reason etc. do play a role. Perhaps I will present this as a laundry list.

• We are minds that do not start out with complete knowledge of everything. In other words, we need to learn to fill in the incompleteness in our knowledge.
• We need to exchange information in order to learn.
• If it were true that one needs to influence a mind in a write-only (or more write-only than read-write) fashion, then a formal system that uses logic, reasoning to build on established ideas and principles is probably not the most effective instrument.
• I am more interested in the "read" part of "read-write" than in the "write" part.
• The "read" part of "read-write" is important. This is what enables learning.
• For the read part of read-write to be effective, demagoguery is not the right instrument. The below bullet-points on this.
• If my mind were to provably advance in knowledge-update, it has to convey information to another mind in clear, transparent ways where the path traversed to labels are visible to the other mind. Elaboration in next bullet.
• When a held position and its motivations are transparently exposed to another mind, that is when the other mind can offer checks and guidelines to further knowledge-update to my own mind. By occluding the traversed paths i.e. introducing any non-transparency, I may protect myself from criticism, but I will be stubbing out learning along that unexposed vector.
• The above bullet point means that while an argument by emotion, or to emotion, such as appeal to emotion may hold truth value and may convey truth to a mind, this truth value may not be establishable in a framework where the path-transparency is guaranteed. In other words, this truth that may be felt is not provable leading to lack of transparency, leading to lack of utility in further guaranteeable knowledge update.
• This is why, while a statement such as "I'll vote for Clinton, because I feel good about her" may hold intrinsic appeal and may be above reproach, and that is how people may decide on their voting, its intercommunicability-value with another mind is low. Lack of transparency means lack of communicability on a commonly establishable basis.
• The role of logic, formalism and reasoning is to provide a framework which if accepted by minds engaging in answer-seeking, lead to establishable ideas the trails to which remain transparent, and further provide transparent trails to other ideas following the same system that led to the labeling of intermediate nodes.
• This, in my opinion is the value of reasoning and frameworks. It is "establishability" of meaning that can be held common across minds.

Daniel Dennett: The self as a center of narrative gravity

Autopiloting, Bonsai minds and a Yodaism

"Boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon? "


We like the comfort of our beliefs and positions. They are our old friends. We have spent a lot of time coochi-cooing with them, ironing out every annoying crease of disformity. Using the chisel of cognitive dissonance, we have sculpted our mind for maximum fit with the undulations of our container beliefs, like a bonsai plant.

No wonder then, new beliefs and new ways of thought appear unpleasant, and rightly so, need to be extensively studied and checked for contaminants under the torchlight of logic, before sweet, happy uptake. Yet, like John Lennon said "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans", we do not step outside life, the universe* and everything, while we happily evaluate options.

We continue to make choices, execute decisions based on our current philosophies - considered, happened upon, underevaluated et. al.- the only thing common to them is we have grown comfortable to them - and reap the benefits/pay the price for the consequences.

Waiting to commit to a (any) school of thought is in consequence, an endorsement of our subscribed (by default) school of thought (which may not have been subjected to the same rigour to which the new school is subjected). (This is different from the argument by verbal skullduggery that starts with "Atheism is also a religion because it is the belief in non-existence of ..." and so on.) There is safety in (default) loyalty to our beloved beliefs, but this safety comes at a price.

The fence is illusory. Do or not do. There is no fence.




* Archimedes said "Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth". Change "earth" to "universe", and 'Houston, we have a problem!'

Prof. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow

the meditation on mara

mara is the omega to the alpha. Agent Smith to Neo. Mr. Nobody the busybody. The serpent seducing you to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The tail of the Ouroboros that has to be consumed to complete the circle of life.

mara is always at hand when you need him and when you don't. He has handy easy-to-understand low negentropic answers to every question you have thought of, and to those you haven't yet thought of.

He speaks of random walks in the dance of rationality. Of destinations the bridges to where have long been burnt.

Your refusal to commune with him is what he wants. Or maybe not. Call him in for a tete-e-tete and ask Ananda to make some tea.

Jessica L. Lakin, Tanya L. Chartrand: Need for inclusion with in-groups, nonverbal behaviour, reaction to exclusion, nonconscious mimicry

"Exclusion from social groups has negative emotional, psychological, and behavioral consequences. Yet it also seems important to explore the potential positive consequences; perhaps after exclusion, individuals engage in behaviors that help them affiliate with new people or re-establish themselves in the excluding group. The research described here demonstrates an affiliative behavior that occurs after exclusion – nonconscious behavioral mimicry."

Some dogs do not want to have their day: Learned helplessness

this post has no title - nonduality: muness: superficiality in fiction

"In The Simpsons episode Itchy and Scratchy Land during a robot attack Lisa attempts to defeat the robots with the liar paradox only to find they have already been introduced to it unlike Homer who go crazy trying to figure it out."

The writers of The Simpsons imagined a Homerian brain going crazy upon encountering the liar paradox. However this does not demonstrate to me the dumbness of the H-brain. Unsmartness, perhaps. By going loopy over the paradox, Homer's mind redeems itself quite well imo and demonstrates its nondumbness. A truly dumb H-brain (Homer*) may (I am speculating here) not see the paradox at all; in any case, may not consider it even slightly noteworthy. I would have Homer* go looking for donuts or something, upon encountering the paradox.

One instance of the failure to self-diagnose the fallacy of composition that I have come across in a real conversation is this: Person X that I am conversing with says "Anything you observe in the universe has a cause/has something else outside of it/there was a time before which the thing existed. There has to be a cause for the universe/there is something else outside of it/there was a time before which the universe existed." This fallacy is very common, but this example is one of the classic ones.




Check out these two portentous videos: Reassembling modular robot, Replicating robot

Origins of bungee jumping (I haven't done any research on any competing claims.)

A paper on effective rationality

Prof. Axelrod on the evolution of cooperation

Right afterwards, when the Buddha had retired for the night, Govinda turned to Siddhartha and spoke eagerly: "Siddhartha, it is not my place to scold you. We have both heard the exalted one, we have both perceived the teachings. Govinda has heard the teachings, he has taken refuge in it. But you, my honoured friend, don't you also want to walk the path of salvation? Would you want to hesitate, do you want to wait any longer?" #




“Men nearly always follow the tracks made by others and proceed in their affairs by imitation.” -- Machiavelli

“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. ... A society which gives unlimited freedom to the individual, more often than not attains a disconcerting sameness.” -- Eric Hoffer


Informational conformity
Sensation transference





Siddhartha awakened as if he had been asleep, when he heard Govinda's words. For a long tome, he looked into Govinda's face. Then he spoke quietly, in a voice without mockery: "Govinda, my friend, now you have taken this step, now you have chosen this path. Always, oh Govinda, you've been my friend, you've always walked one step behind me. Often I have thought: Won't Govinda for once also take a step by himself,without me, out of his own soul? Behold, now you've turned into a man and are choosing your path for yourself. I wish that you would go it upto its end, oh my friend, that you shall find salvation!" #

#Siddhartha, Chapter 3

Taylor and Brown defend their position that


"
...self-aggrandizing self-perceptions, an illusion of control, and unrealistic optimism are widespread in normal human thought ... ... maintain that these "illusions" foster the criteria normally associated with mental health...
"

and conclude that

"
...work on illusions and mental health has gone beyond the simple questions of "Do illusions exist and are they associated with mental health?" The questions we should be asking now are, "When are positive illusions most in evidence?", "Do they ever compromise mental health, and if so, when?", "Are there conditions when they damp down or disappear altogether?", and "Do such conditions address the paradox of how people can hold positive illusions about themselves, their world, and their future while still coping successfully with an environment that would seem to demand accurate appreciation of its feedback?" On these questions, recent research suggests that progress is being made.
"

Interesting questions all; I look forward to unearthing more findings.

Rationality, not!

[This is a follow up to an earlier post, where I said I was looking for a more comprehensive discussion regarding rationality. Conversation at that point focused on the relevance to "real life" of rationality research, as well as applicability, generality and conclusivity of research findings. This review addresses these subjects.]

Extract:

"SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Various arguments have been made disputing the accumulation of findings that show people systematically violating fundamental normative principles of reasoning, judgment, and decision. This review suggests that the violations cannot be dismissed as either random or trivial, nor can they be attributed to experimenters’ misinterpretation of answers that are actually appropriate to alternative, valid interpretations of the problems. The systematic and well-documented findings cannot be attributed to simple computational limitations, nor does it appear that inappropriate types of questions are being asked or inappropriate norms applied. The compelling nature of the rationality critique is having an ever greater impact on work in neighboring disciplines, most notably in the increasing popularity of behavioral economics (Rabin 1998, Sunstein 2000, Thaler 1992, 1993). It may eventually help alter the social sciences’ view of the human agent. "

Prof. Daniel Dennett on Darwin's Dangerous Idea: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Intellectual Integrity and Social Bonding

We live in a society that values and prioritises social bonding, while providing lip service to intellectualism (and often times deploring it).

Seemingly intellectual questions are asked and tackled in social settings. However, the main purpose of such transactions appears to be a collective indulgence in the emotions evoked by probing areas of the brain (mind) *, analogous to the communal eating of a chocolate cake. Favoured questions are of the kind "What is true (sic**) love?", which offer maximum juice from squeezing the touchy-feely centres of a mind. The name of the game is to play with the cognitive tools that are at our disposal to engage in a joyful (not necessarily pleasurable) wallowing in the titillations*** provoked by the analysis, and there is no actual effort to get at an answer. For example, if a deviant offers a fundamental neuroscientific attempt to honestly answer the above question, he/she is cast as a killjoy (- which demonstrates the game-nature of the transaction.)

This norm leads to positive reinforcement of social bonding at the cost of intellectual integrity ****. People routinely* demonstrate tendencies to form social bonds. It doesn't take much (little things like shared gossip, sense of humour, fashion-sense, common joke-targets, willingness to participate in fake discussions such as the above and so on) to establish and sustain a social bond. Intellectual support structures are a lot rarer to come by*****.

Intellectual integrity consists in sticking your neck out, saying something that you are honestly attempting to explore and understand to your best capability. It consists in saying things which are extremely likely to be misconstrued, and while knowing this factoid as well. It consists in saying things that reflect your best expression of your current understanding, which may be exposed as untrue upon further deliberation and fact-seeking (aka google-searching). It consists in saying unpopular things that you hold true, and in losing the popularity contest of social bonding.

Not saying something meaningful - for it cannot be backed up by a mountain of data, or maybe disproved later, or it takes away social brownie points, or it is ("only") a (meaningful) generalization - is losing perspective of this.




* Generalizations are not evil. Generalizations are intended to convey information, and to encourage thinking along a direction. It is valueless to point out that generalizations have exceptions.

** "the real world", "true happiness", "true friendship" -- these and scores of similar loosely used terms (very often, incorrectly*) assume i. the existence of their opposites, and ii. your compliance in accepting point i.

*** Use of written language is another example. Some writers get so lost in their wallowing in the ornamental possibilities that a language offers, that they pay a lot of attention to asking high-flying questions and setting up beautiful sounding phraseology and conundrums, and lose track of meanings that need to be conveyed. This is equivalent to getting charmed by the gift-wrapper, and never getting to the (presumably more valuable) present within.

**** Social bonding and intellectual integrity are not inherently at odds. It is the transactions we set up, and the attitudes we adopt that make it appear that way.

***** Intellectual support when offered is rarely recognized, is spurned, viewed as threatening, evangelical, hubristic, or offered for ulterior purposes such as status-building.

Notes on signaling theory

Extracts:

Signaling status through the display of time-wasting pastimes is an interesting example that was raised by Veblen. He noted that displaying leisure is an important signal of status, of membership in the class of those who need not toil endlessly at some income-producing enterprise. Yet an abundance of leisure cannot be directly observed, for not very many people will watch you do nothing, day after day, year after year. Veblen proposed that the time-consuming acquisition of impractical accomplishments was a way of displaying leisure, and he listed among such accomplishments the ability to speak a dead language, knowledge of proper spelling, the occult sciences, and fashion and the breeding of fancy dogs (Veblen 1899). Someone with less financial resources would need to use much of their time in gainful employment; only someone with the leisure that comes with wealth would be able to display such accomplishments.

...


People are ingenious, and for most signals, there will be ways that someone, somehow, will find a way to fake a seemingly unfakeable signal. Unlike tigers, we can always find a way to stand on a box to seem taller, to bleach our hair to be blonder, to borrow an impressive car.

...


A winter tan is a costly signal of wealth and leisure: it is a signal that one has bountiful time and money, enough to vacation somewhere warm, sunny and far away. For a while, it was a fairly reliable signal. Then tanning parlors came along, and people with far less time and money could sport a winter tan4. Humans are inventors, and inventing cheaper and easier ways to signal a desirable quality – often in the absence of that quality – is a driving force behind much creative design.


See also this related post by Wray Herbert.

- Politics and the English Language - George Orwell.
Using ready made terms and phrases short-circuits thinking.


- On reclaiming objective truth - Paul A. Wagner.
Sensitivity, aesthetics, presentation, avoiding conflict, (... and happiness of believing an objective untruth) are less important than the pursuit of truth.

Whatchamacallit this thingamajiggy?: a psychobabble kōan

The teacher told Psinga: "When you tell Whatsisface 'A lot of Thingamajiggies are Whatchamacallits', Whatsisface resists, and says 'How do you know? Have you asked a lot of Thingamajiggies? Are you saying this because you are yourself a Whatchamacallit?'. Whatsisface doesn't want to pause to understand that:
i. Whatever else Whatsisface considers a Thingamajiggy to be, is also a type of Whatchamacallit.
ii. You may have traversed an inferential distance and arrived at the conclusion 'A lot of Thingamajiggies are Whatchamacallits', and may not be starting with the assumption that 'A lot of Thingamajiggies are Whatchamacallits.'"

Psinga instinctively started to resist, but suddenly stopped short, for he understood. He said "I must take care not to be like Whatsisface." And he took his first step across the inferential bridge.

The pleasure of finding things out

Overanalyze this!

[Jail. Inmate Bulldog walks up to inmate Newbie. Bulldog is a hulk of a man, with false teeth, gruff baritone voice; his sunburnt skin is covered with swathes of scars and tattoos. A Hulk Hogan type towering mass of testosterone. Newbie is an excuse for a man, deathly pale, speaks in squeaks and whimpers; spectacles too heavy for his face. Napolean Dynamite type. They've been forced to introduce themselves to each other by the warden.]

Newbie: Wh-wh-what you in for, sir?

Bulldog: Terrorism, genocide, baby-killing, drug-peddling, running over 5 wives for insurance money, producing chemical weapons in my bathroom...

Newbie: I..I..

Bulldog: ..and I kicked a 3 legged puppy on the way here. What did you do, you little *$%#$?

Newbie: I.. (clears throat) computed the value of pi to the 1349193136497th decimal place..

Bulldog: So? that's not a crime, you ^$#% $%%!

Newbie: ..and then.. (there is lightning and thunder, amidst sudden pitch darkness as Newbie's voice deepens to an inhuman bass. Mephistophelian music is heard) ..I - computed - the - 1349193136498th - decimal - place!

Bulldog: (shrieks incredulously) Aayiiiiiiiie! No, you didn't!

Newbie: (solemnly) Yes, I did.

Bulldog: (Horrified) You heartless, vile, subhuman cretin! (Retreats to the corner, lies down, to assume fetal position and cower).




What the hell is overanalysis and what is so evil about it?

Human Universals per Donald Brown

HazaaroN KHwahishaiN ‘eisee ke har KHwahish pe dam nikle

HazaaroN KHwahishaiN ‘eisee ke har KHwahish pe dam nikle
bohot nikle mere armaaN lekin fir bhee kam nikle
nikalna KHuld se aadam ka sunte aayaiN haiN lekin
bohot be_aabru hokar tere kooche se ham nikle
magar likhwaaye koee usko KHat, to hamse likhawaaye
huee subah aur ghar se kaan par rakhkar qalam nikle
mohabbat meiN naheeN hai farq jeene aur marne kaa
usee ko dekh kar jeete haiN jis kaafir pe dam nikle
KHuda ke waaste parda na kaabe se uThaa zaalim
kaheeN ‘eisa na ho yaaN bhee wohee kaafir sanam nikle
kahaaN maiKHaane ka darwaaza ‘GHalib’ aur kahaaN waaiz
par itana jaante haiN kal wo jaata tha ke ham nikle

-- Mirza Ghalib (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)



Swanand Kirkire's Bawra Mann from the movie Hazaaron khwahishen aisi.

bawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna,
bawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna...

bawre se mann ki dekho bawri hain baatein,
bawre se mann ki dekho bawri hain baatein,
bawri si dharkanein hain, bawri hain saasein,
bawri si karwaton se nindiya door bhage,
bawre se nain chahe bawre jharokhon se, bawre nazaaron ko takna.

bawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna,
bawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna...

bawre se iss jahan mein bawara ek saath ho,
iss sayani bheed mein bas haathon mein tera haath ho,
bawri si dhun ho koi, bawra ek raag ho,
bawre se pair chahe, bawre taranon pein,bawre se bol pe thirakna.

bawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna,
bawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna...

bawra sa ho andhera, bawri khamoshiyan,
bawra sa ho andhera, bawri khamoshiyan,
thartharati louh maddham, bawri madhoshiyan,
bawra ek ghoongta chahe, haule haule mooh batae,
bawra ek ghoongta chahe, haule haule din batae, bawre se mukhre se sarakna.

bawra man dekhne chala ek sapna,
bawra man dekhne chala ek sapna...

The shortcomings of decision by majority: An economics-professor's take.

Check out this insightful (imo) take on how behavioral economics can address normative questions. It argues against assumptions of people as hyper-rationalistic agents as bases for economic models.

I suspect this tendency is true at a layman level as well. On one hand (normal) people understand and rationalize what is considered (- and all too common in conversations -) "human nature", but when posed normative questions, people apply rationalistic principles. I think this also contains a pointer to how people's responses to hypothetical scenarios from questionnaires do not necessarily represent their behaviour when actually faced with said situations. Example: A lack of sales of goods for which people indicated demand in market surveys.

(Also, this paper made me speculate a bit on how hypnosis works.)

How people consume strength & reliability of evidence: application to investing

Derren Brown's cold reading

Cold reading : Confirmation bias : Selective validation

It seems that quite a few people find the following argument logically invalid (i.e. they refuse that statement 3 follows from statements 1 & 2), because they do not distinguish their beliefs regarding true-false values of statements from their logical validity within a context.

* If it rains I will get wet.
* If I have my umbrella I won't get wet.
-> Therefore, if I have my umbrella it won't rain.

Yes,but-ism and Aha!-addictedness

"All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten" is the sensational title of a book of essays. I haven't read it, and this post is not about that. The more common variant of this is more like "All I Really Need To Know I Learned By Age 15". In fact, most widespread is an implicit position - "All I Really Need To Know I Learned By Yesterday".

Yes,but-ism is one of the mechanisms through which we cling to yesterday's beliefs. A tendency to a habitual "Yes, but ..." reaction as the first line of defence should set off alarm bells in a watchful mind, for potential belief-updates are being summarily blocked. Assuming that the Yes,but-ist is not bigoted, under what conditions then is he/she going to update his/her beliefs? I think that some Yes,but-ists wait for "Aha!" moments to update their beliefs of yesterday.

I first came across the Aha! terminology several years ago when I was reading about Gestalt therapy. I reproduce here an extract from Baker-Sennett & Ceci(1996)/Abstract:

"The most basic premise of Gestalt psychology suggests that the task of human perception and thinking involves the organization and recognition of patterns in the environment (see Koffka, 1935; Kohler, 1947; Wertheimer, 1959 and reviews by Epstein, 1988; Ohlsson, 1984a; 1984b). Kohler, Wertheimer, and others argued that at some point while searching for a solution, the problem is spontaneously restructured, a pattern comes in to perspective, and the problem is solved. Upon arriving at a problem solution, the solver experiences an immediate feeling of correctness otherwise known as an "AHA!" experience."

The story of the discovery of the Archimedes' principle, and Kekule's inspiration for the structure of benzene come to mind as outstanding examples. But it is a tall order to fundamentally expect Aha! moments to trigger belief-updates. Registration of something as profound vs. commonplace is actually a trait of the labeler's mind, not of the phenomenon being studied. Just to cite one example, what Tesla presumably considered profound and important enough to dedicate his life to pursue, are now a few "ho-hum", "banal" chapters in an engineering textbook, presumably not possessing the potential to inspire an Aha! experience for many Yes, but-ists.

Aha! moments are few and far between, and furthermore are functions of the Yes,but-ists' minds rather than the subject matter. (On top of that, people tend to ascribe low Aha!-potential to a phenomenon - even a complicated one - that has already been explained, even if they don't understand the explanation, and regardless of if the original explanation-quest happened through historical, momentous Aha! moments.) The entirety of painstakingly accumulated collective knowledge on the other hand is out of our bounds owing to its sheer overwhelming vastness; even if we were to constantly strive to update our beliefs of yesterday through proactive bromidic means - let alone wait for the luxury of Aha! moments.

Death and literature, religion/spirituality

Death is a powerful device employed in literature to create lasting impact on readers' minds.

The human mind is not especially given to rational reasoning, but is wont to employ heuristics of association that practically lead to local near-maxima for goals important to the human organism, viz. happiness, security and so on, but are hence subject to biases. For example, the scarcity->value association is heuristically employed to sometimes conclude the wrong implication. For instance, people may
- value hard-earned wealth over bequeathed wealth.
- not think highly of a hypothetical futuristic pill which when swallowed provides all the health benefits of exercise.
Another example - people may use "short-cuts" of associativity by making choices that are based on a different criterion than the one immediately applicable to the issue on hand. For instance, people may
- use "likability" or "family values" as important criteria to elect a president.
Advertisers and politicians are aware of these associations and use them to their advantage. Thus, the attractively clad supermodel next to a sports car that needs to be sold, and campaigners offering voters rides to poll booths (illegal in a lot of democratic establishments).

Fascination with the mystery and awe of death, as well as its finality makes it an especially effective instrument to lend gravity to a literary idea. An eager mind may be induced to conclude that a cause that needs to be paid for with death must be an overarchingly important one, since it exacts the ultimate price. Morbid plot lines stimulate zones of fascination and mystery in the mind increasing the appeal of the subject-matter. Killing a character after painstakingly developing him/her makes the story more compelling by evoking such associative tendencies of the reader's mind. Hence for instance the larger lasting impact of Shakespeare's tragedies over his comedies.

Most religious and spiritual literature concern themselves with ideas of death such as "embracing death", afterlife, reincarnation, salvation/nirvana as an escape from birth and death, the soul and its immortality, hell/heaven, eternity and so on. Hypotheses regarding death play a major role in the memetic survival quality and longevity of religious/spiritual credos. There are some who have explored this relationship. For example, consider this psychological experiment referred to by Wray Herbert, and see Umberto Eco's philosophical take on another related topic.

Der Erlkönig, Goethe, Art Song, Schubert

Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind.
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,
Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.

"Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht?"
"Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht?"
Den Erlenkönig mit Kron und Schweif?"
"Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif."

"Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir!
Gar schöne Spiele spiel ich mit dir;
Manch bunte Blumen sind an dem Strand,
Meine Mutter hat manch gülden Gewand."

"Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht,
Was Erlenkönig mir leise verspricht?"
"Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind;
In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind."

"Willst, feiner Knabe, du mit mir gehn?
Meine Töchter sollen dich warten schön;
Meine Töchter führen den nächtlichen
Reihn Und wiegen und tanzen und singen dich ein."

"Mein Vater, mein Vater, und siehst du nicht dort
Erlkönigs Töchter am düstern Ort?"
"Mein Sohn, mein Sohn, ich seh' es genau:
Es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau."

"Ich lieb' dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt;
Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt."
"Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich an!
Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan!"

Dem Vater grauset's, er reitet geschwind,
Er hält in den Armen das ächzende Kind,
Erreicht den Hof mit Mühe und Not -
In seinen Armen, das Kind war tot.

[Narrator
Who rides so late through the night and the wind?
It is the father with his child.
He holds the boy in his arm,
grasps him securely, keeps him warm.

Father
"My son, why do you hide your face so anxiously?"

Son
"Father, do you not see the Elf-King?
The Elf-King with his crown and train?"

Father
"My son, it is only a streak of mist."

Elf King
"Darling child, come away with me!
I will play fine games with you.
Many gay flowers grow by the shore:
my mother has many golden robes."

Son
"Father, father, do you not hear
what the Elf-King softly promises me?

Father
"Be calm, dear child, be calm--
The wind is rustling in the dry leaves."

Elf King
"You beautiful boy, will you come with me?
My daughters will wait upon you.
My daughters will lead the nightly round,
they will rock you, dance to you, sing you to sleep."

Son
"Father, father, do you not see
the Elf-King's daughters there, in that dark place?"

Father
My son, my son, I see it clearly:
it is the grey gleam of the old willow-trees."

Elf King
"I love you, your beauty allures me,
and if you do not come willingly, I shall use force."

Son
"Father, father, now he is seizing me!
The Elf-King has hurt me!"—

Narrator
Fear grips the father, he rides swiftly,
holding the moaning child in his arms;
with effort and toil he reaches the house--
the child in his arms was dead.]

(..don't know the translator)

Der Erlkönig

Fields of possibility

You have probably encountered the new-age-ish refrain "Anything is possible" especially in the context of human endeavours. I have. In the past, my first reaction has been to counter it. I also note that by sufficiently redefining the meanings of the words 'anything' (especially), 'possible', and 'is', I suppose a vague justification of the sentence is possible. The more vaguely redefined the terms need to be, the more the degree of untruth of such statements.

But ponder the 'how' of it, rather than its truth-value. That is, what is it that makes something possible? Consider a couple of specific instances of possibilities for humans, and the theory of evolution proffers an explanation. It is possible to up our capacity to run several miles, for our ancestors have passed on possibilities of augmenting (through training) lung capacities, strengthening leg muscles and so on that aid in running, - such abilities naturally selected for their hunter ways. Our evolutionary ancestors braved the cold climes leading to selections that allow us to put on layers of fat for training to swim in very cold climates. Spatial visualization possibilities selected to survive in prehistoric jungles make it possible to "intuitively" understand classical mechanics, a theory built on physical collisions of bodies of sizes comparable to those of objects encountered in the everyday world.

The inability to visualize a 4th dimension (or for that matter a 5th, 6th, 7th etc. dimension for string theory) is explained by the absence of positive evolutionary selection pressures exerted for that to come about, since an intuition for a 4th dimension does not improve survival possibilities of said ancestors. Similarly, not being able to develop an "intuition" for quantum entanglement is understandable considering the scales at which QM operates is without value for surviving in a "life-sized" world. Feynman said “I firmly believe if you cannot explain a principle of physics in common language and terms, then you probably do not fully grasp the principle in the first place.” Unfortunately, while the value of this dictum is self-evident, it applies in most but not all cases.

Consider now and compare a novice chess player NN, and a grandmaster GM. NN approaches the game as an area where he/she can eagerly demonstrate his/her proficiency in wild gambits, spectacular sacrifices and tactical melees. GM however, understands that the elegantly simple rules of chess set up complex fields of positional, strategic possibilities which allows the harmonious delicate dances of pieces on the board. NN, consumed by his/her myopia, does not recognize the source of the power he/she professes to possess. GM however, has understood that true mastery is an unraveling of the possibilities allowed by the rules of the game.

The game is paradoxically smaller than NN and yet larger than GM. A quote comes to mind - I am sure I paraphrase, please point me to the original if you are aware of it - "The apprentice laments 'My art has failed me', while the master says 'I have failed my art'".

The bias blind spot

Pronin, E., Lin, D. Y., & Ross, L. (2002). The bias blind spot: Perceptions of bias in self versus others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 369-381.

Why write?

George Mallory is famously supposed to have responded "Because it is there" when asked "Why climb Everest?". More recently some have criticized this as the essential colonial impulse to conquer and tame anything that appears enigmatic, challenging or out of reach. The question is at least as intriguing as the answer. Recently, I ask myself the question "Why write?". This question belongs among a generic class of questions such as "Why run?", "Why learn a new dance?", "Why learn to ski?", "Why live?" or "Why do anything at all?". This classification reminds me of the concept of NP-completeness in complexity theory.

I attempt an allegorical answer. Suppose you have blue litmus, and a solution. You can either let the litmus stay blue, or you can attempt to learn something about the solution, i.e. its possible acidity. But not both. You already know that the litmus is blue, but when you risk the changing of its colour, that is when you learn something about the nature of something. Of course, you'll astutely observe that this raises the question "Why learn something about something?", and we are back in the realm of our above basket of questions.



Pegging as an impediment to learning.

Pegging, the way I use it here, is the active endeavour of the mind to hold on to old patterns and experiences while attempting to learn something new, be it an activity such as skiing, or a language such as Spanish. It is the neurotic drive to relate what we learn to something we already know - this manifests in "trying not to go down too fast" while attempting skiing ("too fast" is relative to our earlier experiences of walking/running etc.), and trying to discover parallels and similarities with English usages while attempting to pick up a new Spanish construct. This inner neurotic struggle continues as we try to further peg what we have already learnt in a field, and resist learning anything that violates a pre-established "rule" which represents our current state of knowledge. Thus, we are doomed to progress in a ladder-rung like climbing manner, where every bout of learning must be neurotically resisted, and then followed by pegging to establish patterns that can oppose further learning. The other option of choosing ungroundedness may offer opportunities for uncontrolled learning, but one runs the risk of skiing off the precipice of sanity.



Contrarianism during discussions.

Contrarianism is the proclivity to oppose a mainstream or prevalent idea. To swim against the current. For some, this comes naturally, or habitually. Habitual contrarians love argumentation, and hence like to take a position of maximum contrariness in a debate, are anti-establishment (rebellious), like the under-dog over the top-dog and so on. They attack stereotypes, and preferentially oppose qualitative assertions. Regarding the former, - almost anything nontrivial that is ever said to convey meaning is a generalization i.e. a stereotype. In fact, considering every stereotype evil is itself a generalization performed by such a contrarian. (This is a bit more meaningful and less self-serving than the speciously clever 'The statement "Every rule has an exception" being a rule, must have an exception as well'.)

Two samples of top chess players suffering the pain and helplessness following blunders:

http://webcast.chessclub.com/Linares08/GOTD/Macauley.html (When blunder strikes)
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4263 (Final phase of the game Kramnik-Mamedyarov)

Feynman on hallucinations:

"... the imagination that things are real does not represent true reality. If you see golden globes, or something, several times, and they talk to you during your hallucination and tell you they are another intelligence, it doesn't mean they are another intelligence; it just means that you have had this particular hallucination. So here I had this tremendous feeling of discovering how memories are stored, and it is surprising that it took forty-five minutes before I realized the error that I had been trying to explain to everyone else."

the void

The void is indescribable through language. An attempt to describe it defeats the purpose, for it subtracts from it's meaning, or presents a schism, categorization of some sort where there isn't any, or falls short by encapsulating a part of it.

"We constantly seek to find, in the Quality event, analogues to our previous experiences. If we didn’t we’d be unable to act. We build up our language in terms of these analogues. We build up our whole culture in terms of these analogues." - Pirsig

"Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. " - Miyamoto Musashi

"We look at it, and we do not see it, and we name it "the Equable" We listen to it, and we do not hear it, and we name it "the Inaudible." We try to grasp it, and do not get hold of it, and we name it "the Subtle." With these three qualities, it cannot be made the subject of description" - Lao Tzu

In spin class

The spin class is nearing the end. The metronomic beat that pervades the space in the room is starting to sound hypnotic. It conjures in my mind visions of congolese dancers and their sublime movements to the drum. The pulsation in the body seems to resonate with the beat, sometimes the sound of the heart is apparently akin to the sound of goodbye.

The tightness in the lungs annoys like an unmarinated idea, and it is getting very hard to keep with the beat. The mind wanders with abandon, as is its wont. It is now wondering about the numerous minefields that one has to watch for and carefully circumvent in order to arrive at disillusioned understandings of even relatively simple concepts.

Her voice punctuates my respite from reality. "For the next 30 seconds", she says, "I want you to go all out. Harder than the hardest you guys have ever pushed". I will be lying if I say I am out of energy, but I can feel the exothermic burn in the hamstring tissues.

The beat is now heavily syncopated. I feel like I am about to witness the opening of a gate to a sanctum sanctorum.
The song has reached a booming crescendo.

"...Shivaya shivashankaraya..
Shashishekaraya..
Parameshwaraya..
Namoh namaha..."

The congolese dancers collectively exult in ritualistic frenzy..

Asch's conformity experiment

Buddhi-yukto jahatiha ubhe sukrta-duskrte
tasmad yogaya yujyasva yogah karmasu kausalam
The Bhagavadgita 2:50-51

Yoga is skill in action. It is the act of yoking to reality, an active engagement to the perception of reality. I have come across several variants of this precept, sometimes in surprising places and sources that are unlikely to have exposure to the motivation for these verses. The skilled practioner of a craft is actively engaging in a gauging or reading of a facet of reality, and in doing so has a brief albeit unadulterated perception of his/her relationship with his/her immediate reality. This state may be described as zen by the mahayana buddhists, dhyana in hinduism, or as being in the zone by an athlete.