Perhaps it’s the amount of time it takes us to boot up, right after we’re born. It’s longer than we’d expect; for some reason God chose hibernation over standby.
Archive for November, 2009
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Monday, November 23rd, 2009My Idea of an Afterlife (part I)
Monday, November 23rd, 2009Afterlife is a bar, a speakeasy.
In fact, I evaluate bars based on how much they make me feel like I’m in a kind of afterlife. Time stands still, after a while (and not because I’m drunk) I can no longer tell how many hours have passed; after a longer while (but, there again, there is really no concept of a “longer” while), I can no longer tell what time of day it is. There are clocks (it fits with the decor) but the hands are turning counterclockwise? Yet this doesn’t seem strange (or even noticeable) to me; I don’t need to get anywhere. There may or may not be food; I may or may not have napped. I don’t care because there is no tiredness.
The bar is perhaps stylized to look like it’s from the 50s but nobody can be sure. There’s alcohol but, well, alcohol is timeless, even when it was not there. There are some hi-tech gadgets (after all, everyone has touchphones these days) but they are not essential and in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t notice not having one on me. I certainly don’t need one; all my friends are with me. There is no loneliness.
People move in and out and everyone is a stranger and a companion at the same time. Their faces are blurred (like in a dream) but quickly come into focus if you choose to talk to them. Conversations are profound yet unspecific; it’s as if my brain communicated directly with the brain of my companions and we were perfectly in sync. It may seem boring but it’s not, because there is no boredom.
For me, there are several bars akin to afterlife. Milk and Honey (the only place that I enjoy drinking in) is one of them. I’ve also always thought of Brandy Library as a kind of an “afterlife” bar. I’d spend hours there, not caring about what time it was or what I was doing the following morning, or even right afterwards. I’d leave eventually (while in the actual afterlife I never would), at which point reality would slowly come back to me. I’d check my watch (something I never do while in the bar); I’d notice it’s dark outside. It almost always rains outside. It’s not cold but I feel like putting on my jacket–reality is unpleasant, harsh. A few seconds later (since a sense of passage of time comes back) I turn around and the bar is gone. It’s almost as if I was getting born again, unto a cruel world, and Eden was gone.
The surprising beginnings of things (part III)
Thursday, November 19th, 2009Cats.
Just heard it on the radio. People didn’t consider owning pet cats until the nineteenth century, and at first it was a fairly niche thing to do — a lot of young writers, poets, painters would keep cats in their houses, as cats were considered artsy. Then the custom spread to London, and New York where the fad really took off. Everyone and their uncle had a cat.
I think it’s surprising to me because I’ve learned about pet cats being quite popular in the ancient times, in Egypt if my memory doesn’t fail me. If so, it’s an interesting example of the cyclical nature of things.
How do blind people perceive their dreams?
Thursday, November 19th, 2009Coincidences and randomness
Thursday, November 19th, 2009It happened twice in the past few days… each time, I encountered the same fairly obscure (i.e. unlikely to appear in my life) concept in two (or more!) completely unrelated contexts.
- On Saturday, I went to see The Phantom of the Opera (an outstanding production, the kind of Broadway that elevates you). As I flipped through Playbill, I read an article about A Steady Rain, a show starring Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. Then, that night, I was flipping through a hotel brochure and read a different article about how Broadway starts attracting movie actors… A Steady Rain was mentioned. Finally, on Sunday I was talking to a producer who brought up the same show. Quite a coincidence
- I just finished watching House, M.D. (one of two TV shows I religiously watch). The case (SPOILERS!!) revolved around the “hygiene hypothesis”, an idea that living in an environment that’s too germ-free actually makes us sicker*. Coincidentally, just a few hours earlier I was listening to a not-too-recent RadioLab episode and the same hypothesis was brought up! Uncanny
I was quick to burst my own bubble–selection bias is definitely at play here. We perceive coincidences as rare, weird and somewhat mystical so that when they actually happen (and they are bound to every so often), we will definitely remember them, unlike the thousands of non-coincidences that happen to us every day.
But as I thought about it more, I thought of a curious, seemingly unlikely interpretation of this phenomenon: coincidences are equivalent to randomness; and the fact that they happen is simply an outcome of the fact that there is plenty of randomness around us. Without coincidences, there is no randomness.
Say what? Why would coincidences and randomness be equivalent? Getting 7 tails in a row in a series of 100 coin tosses is actually a rather likely event†, but we’d consider it a big coincidence. As shown by a mathematician named Ramsey, in a complex enough system, you can find pretty much any structure you can think of. The world that surrounds us is an incredibly random (and thus complex) system–we are bombarded by terabytes of information every minute, and most of this information is linked‡. It should therefore come as no surprise that the world we experience will feature plenty of structure, even of the most unlikely kind. It is this hard-to-believe structure that we call coincidence. Randomness, therefore, is the existence of unexpected structure.
* Something I’ve personally believed in ever since childhood–when I was little I would get sick all the time. I went through pneumonia, rubella, chickenpox, measles, you-name-it. At some point I got fed up with this (quite a bold thing to do when you’re eight!) and stealthily plodded through whatever ailment I was suffering from, coughing in secret and all. I haven’t been seriously sick ever since.
† Randomness–stochasticity–was the subject of another RadioLab episode I’ve recently listened to. The coin toss experiment was described there and this is the episode that inspired my randomness theory. You’ve really got to start listening to this show…
‡ The laws of physics, for example, are one example of such a link: if we drop a heavy object, it will make a sound as it hits the floor–the visual and the auditory information is thus linked.
Life Hack #26: How to prioritize things
Thursday, November 19th, 2009(This might be one of the most useful discoveries I’ve made about myself so far. This may not apply to everyone but I’ve found it very valuable.)
Prioritization is a difficult problem because it involves more than one factor. If only one dimension is important, prioritization is easy: since prioritization is an ordering of things, all we need to do is come up with a consistent (transitive, i.e. if A is “more” than B and B is “more” than C then A will always be “more” than C) ordering of items based on that one factor. For example, if we want to prioritize solely based on how much we want to do something, we’ll do a good job coming up with the order (do it the way we sort a hand of cards — for each item, figure out which of the items already prioritized it’s “more” than and which one it’s “less” than).
The reality is that prioritization involves multiple dimensions: how much we want to do something (both in the short term–instant gratification–and the long term), how long it’s going to take, how hard it’s going to be, how tedious it is to do (which is different from the other three!), etc. We can no longer come up with orderings because we don’t really understand how the different dimensions relate to one another. Which do I want to do first: something that takes a long time but is enjoyable, or something that’s hard but gives me something in the long term (and, of course, the degree to which these factors are at play is also important).
I’ve witnessed many people try to come up with frameworks to handle this problem. We’ve all done it: one-to-ten grades, complex formulae that look like weighed averages (although nobody wants to admit that that’s what they are), forced rankings, baffling heuristics… I’ve tried and failed many times. At the end of the day I feel like something is not quite right.
And this led me to a solution which I’ve been trying out for the past two weeks, with great success. I started prioritizing things based solely on one factor (which is easy), namely based on how anxious not doing them makes me. I think I’m “spawning” a new principle that seems a good one to follow in my life: leading an anxiety-free life (perhaps that’s what happiness is, after all).
I have a short list of problems that I want to tackle in my life. I reorganize this list based on how anxious I feel about each of these problems. All tasks that I have to do that derive from these problems are therefore much easier to prioritize. While this model is much more simplified (it ignores a lot of the factors I mention above), I’ve found it to be (a) very satisfying, and (b) fairly robust (i.e. I can still shuffle some of the tasks around and by and large I feel good about the results). Perhaps this capacity of something to reduce one’s anxiety is a good natural heuristic that combines these factors. Perhaps it works because it addresses a deep feeling, a kind of fundamental utility. Either way, it works like a charm.
Frustrations with Technology (part II)
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009My relationship with technology is most definitely a love-hate one. Here’s a good example why.
I went to the Knicks game last week. As I sat in my seat in Madison Square Garden, my friend–assuming I’d be at home–texted me asking if I can DVR a show–he had forgotten to do it himself the night before, and he was having dinner with his coworkers. Alas, I also was not at home. Bummer!
Technology comes to the rescue. It turns out that I can schedule shows to be recorded online, and so I can simply use my iPhone and do it right there, after the Knicks are getting their asses kicked in the first quarter and before they are getting their asses kicked in the second quarter.
Quite happy that I will be yet again saved by technology (so I can have that funny feeling), I proceeded to go to my cable company’s website. What I did not, however, anticipate, was that as I sat there watching the game, hundreds if not thousands of other people were probably also using their phones: checking email, surfing the net, downloading music, etc. Of course (here comes the “hate” part) the cell network can’t take that much load and so my phone would forlornly announce that the cellular network could not be activated (the sad part is that while the cell operators are aware of the problem and probably put more repeaters in MSG, I’m guessing they didn’t put enough in order to cut costs–the supply is set at the 90th percentile of the demand, just like the way bandwidth is priced by hosting providers–and I bet the Knicks game exceeds the 90th percentile).
So there I was staring at my phone, hoping each Web request would go through. And there were many, many Web requests (mainly due to the fact that the World Wide Web operates on an antiquated and not at all performant way information is sent back and forth called HTTP). The cell networks are kind enough not to interrupt a request as it is being received (I noticed, for example, that when trying to fetch mail, I would wait a long time for the connection to be established, but once it was, all 28 new messages were downloaded at once), which still gives me hope. After all, the game is two hours long.
Half an hour later (after clicking on “record shows” on my cable company’s website redirected me to the logout screen (I wasn’t logged in), which redirected me to the register screen, which redirected me to the webmail (!) screen, which finally redirected me to the login screen (of course, each redirect is a separate Web request), I was there. And there I found out that the website doesn’t render properly on the iPhone, because who would ever want to schedule shows on an internet-enabled mobile device (doing it on a computer at home is a much more likely use case!). Another load of frustration.
I was able to do some magic, though, and after another hour got to the screen that allowed me to select which show to record. I felt somewhat good–the road was rocky but ultimately I’m at the finish line.
Except that at this precise moment my iPhone died. Low battery–after all, I’ve been surfing the Net for something like an hour…
Heartbreaking
Monday, November 16th, 2009I open the dashboard of the blog. A pending comment! How exciting–I love hearing what people have to say. It is, after all, one of the two reasons why I post. What is one of my dear readers going to say? Is he or she going to vehemently disagree with one of my opinions, citing an early twentieth century physicist? Will he or she show me the error of my ways (or just gently highlight the lack of maturity of thought (which is fascinating in it of itself; I am going to write about the “levels of sophistication” someday)?
Perhaps the commenter will disagree but will fail (deliberately or not) to provide justification. A dramatic exchange of epithets will ensue, culminating in a climactic revelation that the commenter actually agrees with me but wanted to truly understand the reasons behind my statement.
Perhaps it’s just a friend of mine who lazily dropped a line just to create a semblance of keeping in touch.
I am not picky… maybe it’s some teenager who really needs to express his hatred toward something and a couple of paragraphs online seem like an easy target? I would be pleased with that as well. After all, a comment is a comment. There are no stupid comments (just a lot of angry idiots).
I open the page to see what one of the above has to say. The first half of the sentence is intriguing, thought-provoking. It’s open-ended — I can visualize hundreds of ways to follow the first half. It’s catchy. It says,
At first it wasn’t clear to me what you were trying to say,
I can hardly stop myself from reading the rest of the comment. Will it reveal the ultimate truth about the Universe? Will it point out the fundamental flaw in me? I should calm down, drink some tea, perhaps sleep over it. The comment won’t disappear. It will still be here in the morning.
I couldn’t sleep. I had this dreadful dream in which I was captured by a secret society (the Freemasons?) who demanded to know the secrets of the Universe. These secrets, apparently, were hidden in the second half of that comment and only I could unlock that comment! Perceiving that the stakes were high, I was silent. I was getting ready to endure unimaginable pain while being subjected to mediæval torture when I woke up. I must read the second half of that comment!
And there it was:
At first it wasn’t clear to me what you were trying to say, but then I re-read your post and everything became clear. Thank you, this is now one of my favorite sites!
Strangely flattering, wouldn’t you say? Why the sudden change of heart? It was a post about puppies, for goodness sake, does one really need to read it twice to understand it? And is it really the reason to make this one’s favorite blog? Who am I dealing with here? Is this some kind of a test?
I did more investigation. The author of the comment lived abroad (I could tell from a .ru email address, oh how proud I was of my investigative work). How exciting! Perhaps a language barrier is why the comment didn’t immediately make sense to me. Perhaps I should ask one of my Russian friends (Do I have any?) to help me understand this bit of prose. Some idiom in his or her native tongue that the commenter unknowingly translated literally?
I picked up the phone and called my Token Russian Friend. He greeted me with a grunt–it was 4 a.m. (since I woke up in the middle of the night). When I explained the gravity of the situation to him (It’s a matter of life and death, after all. And my sanity. And possibly a $50 gabazillion treasure locked inside these few words), he asked me to read the comment to him (strangely, unlike me and surely everyone else in the world, he did not sleep curled up with his laptop).
“You’re an idiot. This is spam.”
Toot toot, caller disconnected, announced my iPhone with a snazzy transition that cost several million processing cycles to generate.
Imagine how heartbroken I was. Crestfallen. I felt cheated. Why, of why, would such a tragedy happen to me? What have I done to deserve this?
Sadness turned to confusion, then to grief, finally to anger (Somebody’s to blame for this! This damned society is to blame. This consumer culture. Death to capitalism!).
Then despair.
Finally, I went back to sleep having figured out how I will exact vengeance. I will blow the whistle! I will post about the dirty ways in which those spamists operate. I will let the world know! I will share my painful experience with everyone else, as a warning for others. And if the least I can do is save one poor soul from losing a good night’s sleep, then so be it!
P.S. http://spamradio.com/ is now one of my favorite sites (although at first it wasn’t clear to me what the authors were trying to say…)
Misuse of statistics
Monday, November 16th, 2009Just a few days ago, CNN just reported 3,900 deaths in the U.S. this year due to swine flu. Everybody panic, right? Except that flu claims about 35,000 lives every year (swine flu might in fact be much less lethal than initially suspected), and it claims lives of people who are elderly, vulnerable and already sick.
Sometimes I wish numbers hadn’t been invented. Why? Because in the wrong hands, they are harmful. And, the sad truth is, most hands are wrong hands.
I guess it really stuck, huh
Monday, November 16th, 2009Why is it that by far the most frequently used icon for the “save” operation on a computer is…
...the floppy?
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