I am not feeling well today and used all the capacity I had to simply push at the edges of my universe and scream a bit into the abyss.
Screaming into the abyss is my pet name for being on the internet. Mostly Twitter. I know it sounds stupid.
Sometimes there are actual people on there still which is a small comfort. Just telegraphing into the universe that you are a “live one” is half the battle of bringing the future into the present.
I know it sounds like a stupid way to bring in resources and deals and alliances but it works. Make of that what you will. I’ll get on a phone call now and again if you are really compelling and intelligent. I spent some time on the phone with one of my favorite people and it was more energy than I would have anticipated.
Sometimes that’s just how it goes. There is only so much you can do when your time horizons for results are measured in a ten year cycle anyway.
It’s occasionally embarrassing to admit there are days I don’t have the energy to manage what what I eat, how much I exercise, whether I bath or do farm chores or otherwise manage the work of physical reality.
A few days of the month I do the absolute minimum to manage stasis and I honestly even that was a stretch. But like the classic Monty Python sketch of another era “I’m not dead yet!”
I’m in a new and odd pattern of activity recently. I maintain a flow like hyper awareness on my rotation of professional obligations with little sleep for two or three days. Then I break to sleep with as little movement or energy expenditure as I can manage for full day. It seems to be working for me.
I would prefer to call this approach “fits and spurts” or “the lion hunts when it’s hungry” but that sounds more like a behavioral problem than a protocol. Which, given the endemic narrative civil wars against empiricism in the N of 1 gym bros, seems about right aesthetically. Experimenting with your body is your right.
I have made many shitpoasts about this culture after yesterday New York Magazine “are we having unrealistic expectations about the same traumatized dude” essay. I don’t know anyone involved in that particular situation but I take lots of biohacking tips from broken people because I am also broken. Physician heal thyself. Biohacker hack thine own protocol and or behavioral problem.
So any distinction between a protocol and a behavioral problem is perhaps unnecessary except for optics. We can do a wash coating of public relations speak but it’s a virtue to seek to serve your gifts while carrying your sins. I personally advocate for a minimum viable approach to this but omnia vanitas
I’d describe her experience as literal shape rotation with what is a “memory palace” visualization of the world.
I can’t imagine not having inner monologue. I have a bicameral mind and can picture imagery and movement in my head and discuss it with myself.
Her description of her thought process is akin to having filing system and seeing her thoughts in that system rendered in a flexible database. It’s like she’s a computer.
Other reactions to this video have churned through my mind. Is self awareness maladaptive? Would a future intelligence find this bicameral mind inefficient and go back to unicameral. What other forms exist? Can we toggle it up and down? Is it a gradient in humans of types of cognition and the inner voice is just a processing error?
Can’t find it in the thread atm but thanks to the person who made this. “The end point of this thinking is self awareness is maladaptive”
Oh my god, I get it now. The bicameral mind is still in the process of breaking down. Inner monologues are holdovers, doomed to be outcompeted by more efficient mind
Is this “breakdown” a the shift away from perceiving the voice as external to the self? Is it the erasure of the voice wholesale? What will artificial intelligences make of these differences in human minds? Is this special? A tiger isn’t bicameral.
I think this is relevant to our moment in artificial intelligence development. A Finnish mathematician wrote one of the best science fiction novels I read in the last decade on quantum minds and memory palaces. There is a side plots with embodied intelligences on Mar.
The Quantum Thief is a science fiction novel by Finnish writer Hannu Rajaniemi and the first novel in a trilogy featuring the character of Jean le Flambeur; the sequels are The Fractal Prince and The Causal Ange
Wikipedia
I’ve got a hazy theory about Nordic decentralized engineering culture and mental organization. It’s not a coincidence that fifteen years ago a Silicon Valley Finnish computer scientist wrote some of the best science fiction about a theory of mind that was interior and perfectly organized right?
I may need to go read Julian Jaynes.
An un-cameral mind, as proposed by Julian Jaynes in his theory of bicameral mentality, refers to a state where cognitive functions are divided between two parts without consciousness or meta-reflection. In this non-conscious mental state, individuals lack the ability to reason, articulate mental contents, or have executive ego functions like deliberate mind-wandering. The breakdown of this division led to the emergence of consciousness in humans, characterized by the capacity for introspection and autobiographical memory[1][3].
Jaynes suggests that ancient people in the bicameral state experienced auditory hallucinations as commands from gods, guiding their actions without conscious evaluation. This theory has influenced discussions on consciousness, language, and culture, although it has faced criticisms and debates. Despite differing opinions, Jaynes’s work remains a thought-provoking exploration of the origins of consciousness and continues to inspire research in psychology and consciousness studies[3][5].
Sources [1] Bicameral mentality – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality [2] The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind http://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Jaynes%20Bicameral%20Mind1.htm [3] The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind [4] Retrospective: Julian Jaynes and The Origin of Consciousness in … – jstor https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/amerjpsyc.125.2.0237 [5] The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072
I saw someone else say meditation is literally teaching people how to run a monocameral emulator. I’ve done these types of exercises as a child. It sounds a bit Bene Geserit but mental exercises around focus was part of the German theosophical tradition that gave us Rudolf Steiner.
I wish I’d be a bit more organized on this but I’ve been fully back on work so this will have to do for today.
I slept a lot last night. Have moved four time zones in as many days with the additional “joy” of daylight savings my body is confused. My mind is not.
My initial impulse today was to push through it with exercise, routines, self care and being present in the real world but after the basics were done I was simply throwing myself into the timelessness of the news cycle. My only clock is the rotation of the planet and even that is arbitrary
Oddly I think this was a good decision in times of adjustment. My body adapts to the sun easily and quickly. My mind however is set on some permanent exterior hive mind that is a 24 cycle. There is no perfect syncing of this to be had nor any shift that seems to make sense to me except “awake” and “asleep”
For most people this strange permanent awareness would be very hard on the nervous system. And indeed it is. And yet the thrum of a global population coming online and offline is soothing and regulating in its own way. Each opening of a new market bouncing me along to a new continent with new people.
I say that this is helpful to me and not harmful only say with any degree of certainty because I regularly dose myself off being “extremely online” into very offline remote living. Being extremely offline has not once improved a single metric for me. This annoys me as much as I was annoyed that removing gluten didn’t improve anything for me.
If anything I seem to self regulate better with maximally online presence. I would have previously assumed something is wrong with me but now perhaps I can explore that it’s an advantage. I come on and off like with whenever I jump back in. The past can be filled in and the future isn’t here yet.
At the risk of being “TMI” (this is a gesture of self knowledge to readers not an actual concern of mine that I will ever include too much information), I did something stupid to my personal biome today.
I took an expired a probiotic. I fucked up my bacterial mix. In my defense, I didn’t know it was possible to have an expired Lactobacillus mix. Expired doesn’t seem to mean dead. It just is not doing what I’d hoped and I feel worse not better.
I honestly sort of believed that most probiotics on the self were bullshit. It’s hard to decide what’s medical woo anymore. But I acquired it from a German pharmacy last year and I guess GlaxoSmithKline supplies better shit in Frankfurt than it does in Bozeman.
I immediately nuked the new, supposedly friendly, bacteria from orbit with a one-two punch of doxycycline. I always carry some with me when I travel. Don’t tell my health insurance I’m so cavalier with my over-the -counter bacteria.
I’m joking, but only just. I’m sure artificial intelligence will be put out to nefarious purposes like denying health care coverage to random idiots who blog about their bodies any day now. I just doubt any lawyer will care what nonsense I got up to with yogurt when so many other forms of Medicare fraud are more accessible.
So in the spirit of my blogging forefathers and mothers, I’ve included you in the circle of trust as to the inner workings of my co-infections, symbionts, and other biological processes. Let’s hope, unlike in the case of Ripley, that nuking from orbit works. No need to be carrying aliens in my dark places.
I had kind of a weird night. I feel asleep feeling earlier than I wanted. I was tired in a way that suggests either manually dosing oneself into sleep or intense physical exhaustion. I’d experienced neither.
I woke up multiple times drenched in sweat and freezing. It’s unpleasant to feel salty and worked up from sleep rather than exercise. I finally gave up on it around 6am.
I’m on GMT+1 in Europe which put my wake time at late Monday evening on the West Coast and early Tuesday afternoon in Japan. I used the opportunity to connect in real time with a friend who lives in Tokyo and catch up on the end of the El Segundo hackathon attendees.
Now it’s evening for me and I’m drained and a bit sick to my stomach. I can’t tell if I’ve got some odd form of stomach bug or if I’m fighting off something else entirely.
Honestly with how frequently I nuke my own gut biome it’s unclear. It feels as if I’m on a course of antibiotics but I’ve not taken a dose of anything recently. The symptoms are not the full on gastrointestinal effect of food poisoning neither are they the unpleasant travel stomach one associates with new foods & water.
In an ideal world I’d use differential diagnostic artificial intelligence but that would clearly be unsafe so I’ll have to ride through it with over the counter medication, witchy self knowledge and a bit of suffering.
I suppose that’s no different than any other medical condition I’ve had to treat in the past on my own. I’ve had a host of irritating chronic conditions I’ve only pieces together with what feels like endless effort and consultation. I wonder if we will look back on the American Medical Association as a cartel in the not too distant future. It certainly doesn’t feel as if keeping me from healing myself benefits me.
I even added some friction to my own shopping to speed up my decision making. So maybe there is a theme to be found in the extra friction. And truthfully I’m not sure all of it is net positive. I’m in the red more than I’d like. So I’ll cut down on any friction that isn’t performance enhancing.
I’d love to know if this happens to anyone else. I find I’m easily influenced by the data that my fitness trackers share with me. Sometimes it will even affect my mood negatively. A green recovery can make me feel more optimistic.
I’m a user of both a Whoop and an Apple Watch. I’ve got a whole biohacking routine like every other Silicon Valley bro.
This morning, after a fitful seven and a half hours of sleep, my Whoop showed my recovery was in the red. My HRV was 26 which is low even my my standards.
I felt worse yesterday than I do today so it’s my hope that my Whoop is merely showing me the bad day I had after the fact. Pain can affect my recovery significantly as it’s a lot of stress. I’ll manage my way through it slowly and with lots of rest. And I’ll try not to let it get to my head. A quiet day in bed reading the internet is is a good day in my book.
I had a series of unplanned excursions today that got slightly out of hand. A hotel didn’t work out and I found myself switching my base of operations.
In the process of moving about, I thought to myself “I’ll just have a coffee and eat later!” I fart all the time. It was 10am at that point and I’d had dinner the night before at 6pm.
Truly I sealed my own fate. I did not stop to eat for the next ten hours. I first repacked all of my clothing and other travel items. I then packed it all into a car. I then drove all over town running various errands to make sure I was prepared for the week. I didn’t want any distractions during my workweek.
Being practically minded, and hoping to avoid eating out for all meals, I ended up at a grocery store and bought a week’s worth of meal ingredients. That itself took over an hour. By then was a busy Sunday afternoon so it felt as if the entire city was doing grocery shopping at the same time as me. Fighting with folks in the parking garage made me reconsider if some people should be allowed cars at all. I was getting exasperated.
The drive to my subsequent my lodging managed to take well over an hour and a half. Traffic on the weekends right?
While I knew the lodging was up a hill it somehow didn’t occur to the “bitches be shopping” version of me at the grocery store.
The version of me that lives in reality had to schlep suitcases and a week’s worth of groceries up what my fitness tracker says is five flights of stairs. It took a few trips.
By the time I’d unpacked, put away the groceries and finally had the sense to put together a plate of cold cuts and tomatoes it was 6pm.
That number of activities doesn’t seem like it should have taken the whole day but at least I got in an accidental fast. I hadn’t planned to go an entire day but I’m sure I’ll make up for it with all the groceries I bought tomorrow.
My corner of Montana is in the cozy quiet grip of rural winter. I’ve left that quiet behind for a trip.
I’m in a city center and I have a symphonic mix of civilizational noises. The hum of idling trucks, the roar of a motorcycle zooming past, and shrieking giggling teenagers walking past all remind me that density gives vibrancy.
I have become accustomed to quiet noises of country life. Winter in Montana has a wonderful muffled quality after a snow fall. Once a storm has passed and the winds have blown out, you enjoy such peaceful stillness under the snow.
The ambient noises of life drag on my attention. Even as the city outside goes on with its day the Airbnb has its own new noises. The odd efficiency apartment half sized fridge buzzes at a volume I don’t think my refrigerator at home could manage. My fridge runs so quiet an alarm goes off if it’s left open.
Adjusting to new environmental sounds is always a nervous system challenge. The ambient noises of life get categorized by your mind eventually but the adjustment is tiring. I hope these new noises become routine soon. I’d rather it be a thrum in the background filter of my brain instead of this awful foreground of novel noises.
