The Mind Outside My Head

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Bruce Keener

In the previous post, I argued for the importance of knowing at least some basics of philosophy. Shortly after posting that, I came upon Tim Parks’ very interesting review of the concept of an external mind, and considered it to be a splendid example of using philosophy to help us understand mysteries that have plagued us for thousands of years (such as consciousness … what it is, why it exists, …)

I encourage you to take the time to read Tim’s short but illuminating review of Riccardo Manzotti’s concept of an external mind. It makes me feel good to see someone thinking about a fundamental concept in a way that is totally different from how we have thought of it in the past. It still fascinates me to think that Einstein completely changed how we understand gravity and space and time, because he chose to look at those concepts differently. So very much has changed as a result of his different views. For example, had he not discovered the relationship between space, time, and gravity, we would not have GPS units today … they simply would not work under the concept of Newtonian physics, as they require Einstein’s equations to work.

Note that I am not necessarily endorsing the concept of an external mind (I tend to lean a bit toward a panpsychist view), but I do consider it to be a concept worthy of serious investigation.

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Better Thinking Through Philosophy

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Bruce Keener

The thing I most want to accomplish with this blog is to help you to think for yourself and to be a continuous learner. While I do not think that this requires that you get a degree in philosophy, I do believe that most of us lack a good education in philosophical thinking.

This was especially brought home to me when I read David Albert’s critique of Lawrence Krauss’ book A Universe From Nothing. Dr. Albert appropriately rips Krauss a new one for not doing his philosophical homework on the question of “why there is something rather than nothing,” and for thinking that a vacuum seething with virtual particles is the same as nothing. While it could well be that our universe came to be through the mechanisms that Krauss describes (quantum fluctuations in a vacuum), that does not answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing. For example, where did the laws of quantum mechanics come from? Does it make sense to say the physical laws have existed forever? Does it make sense to say the law of gravity existed a trillion years ago, long before our universe came to be? Does it make sense that there could be quantum fluctuations (variations with time), when many physicists believe that time did not exist prior to the Big Bang? Is it possible that the laws of physics have evolved with time?

To carry this thinking a little further, do you believe the number 2 has always existed, even before the universe was formed? That is, do you believe numbers exist independently of human brains and that we discovered numbers, or did we invent numbers? (It’s not a trick question: some philosophers and mathematicians believe one way, and some the other.)

Philosophical reasoning can help us answer questions of the order “does this make sense?” This makes such thinking all the more important in these days when there is so much publication of info that does not make sense (that is, when you really stop to think about it).

It can even help you choose between religions (or choose to not have a religion). For example, you might initially be biased against any religion that uses ancient “revealed truths” as its core, until you think about “is it even possible to know God unless God reveals some of himself to us?” (Imagine an ant trying to understand us through “meditation,” then imagine that there is even more distance between our brains and God than there is between our brains and the almost nonexistent neurological system of an ant.)

I am certainly not a philosopher, and therefore cannot tell you the best way to learn philosophy (or how much of it to learn). But I can say that Wikipedia and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy have been very helpful to me. I also have recently stumbled across this helpful page of Peter van Inwagen articles. There are also many, many philosophy course offerings at numerous online university websites and at iTunes U.

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Google’s CEO on Competition

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Bruce Keener

A recent Bloomberg Businessweek interview with Google’s CEO, Larry Page, closed with Page saying the following:

For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.

This is excellent advice for us all, and not just for corporations.

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Highly Informed versus Well Informed

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Bruce Keener

From Clay Johnson’s recent New York Times interview:

… I began to realize that there is a distinction between very highly informed and being well informed. That distinction made me think about the relationship of news to food and the information diet.

How do you go about ensuring that you are getting high quality, useful information, instead of just filling up on half-truths about matters that don’t matter?

I’ve done a couple of things over the years to improve the quality of information I take in: (1) I’ve increasingly read more and more material written by the The True Experts in a field, and less and less material from non-experts, and (2) I pick, where possible, experts who have shown themselves to be open-minded, continuous learners.

I still take in too much material that I consider suspect, though, and I still take in too much material period. Perhaps the folks who think you should limit your reading to textbooks are not that far off the mark.

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Thinking about Sin

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Bruce Keener

One thing I try to accomplish with this blog is to remind you, and me, that we need to take time to THINK. Hand in hand with this is my belief that if you always think about the same things, you are probably not really thinking, you’re just rerunning thoughts through your head. So, I believe it is important for us to occasionally think about different things.

In this regard, you might find it helpful to think about the concept of sin. Is there such a thing, or is it just a quaint notion that should disappear from our language in light of our understanding of evolutionary psychology? Note that I am not trying to convert your religious views, or lack thereof, one way or another. It is just that this is a topic that has crossed my mind, and, since I don’t think it has an easy answer, it seems worthy of sharing.

I do not yet have an answer to the question of whether sin is real, although I do lean toward believing it is. I do believe we are overestimating what we can learn from neuroscience, and I suspect, along with the Dalai Lama, that pure Darwinism is flawed and that we do not understand evolution as well as we think we do. (Also see my mockery of Daniel Dennett’s discussion of the Dicrocoelium dendriticum parasite.)

In leaving you to let you think about this topic on your own, I pass along the following:

  • Brain Pickings has Isaac Newton’s list of his sins when he was 19 years old. Very interesting.
  • I recently watched a rerun of the movie End of Days, in which the priest at one point said the following: “Satan’s greatest trick is getting men to believe he does not exist.” Food for thought, eh?

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Your Next Smartphone Carrier

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Bruce Keener

If you have been thought to switching to a different smartphone carrier, a key thing you will want to consider is signal strength. And now there’s an app for that. I had wondered whether Verizon might be better in my area than my current carrier (AT&T), and using this app tells me that Verizon has slightly better signal strength, although not really enough in my view to justify a switch.

Of course, signal strength is not the only factor to consider, especially when you live in an area where all the carriers have a decent signal. You’ll certainly want to consider overall calling plans, too. GigaOm has a good rundown on that.

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Success and the Basics

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Bruce Keener

If I had to name the times that we are living in, I would call it The Lazy Culture. Almost everyone is looking for the easy way to lose weight, to become successful, to stay married when there are tensions, …

While there can be a good side to such laziness, when it actually does lead to easier and better ways of doing things, the fact is that attaining most good things in life requires effort. And it requires mastering the basics and not losing sight of them as you advance.

Two examples of using The Basics to be successful are described in the following articles:

  • Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson discusses how his use of budgets has been and continues to be important to his success
  • The 80 Millions Dollar per year author James Patterson describes the use of detailed story outlines in his books writing. I’ve previously noted that J.K. Rowling makes use of a handwritten spreadsheet in writing her books (basically an outline in a different form).

Fred also mentions the importance of getting the right kind of education.

When was the last time you used a budget? Any reason why you are not using one now? What about the use of outlines in writing letters or documents. Could you write a book without an outline? A blog post? A proposal to the Board of Directors?

“A word to the wise is sufficient.”

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A Simple Man’s Views on Obamacare [Ends and Means]

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Bruce Keener

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will soon hear arguments for and against the health insurance mandate provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) and is expected to make a decision in the June 2012 timeframe.

I do not like mandates, generally, but I must confess to not having worked through all of the pro’s and con’s of Obamacare. I do know that we need to get control of skyrocketing medical costs, and there doesn’t seem to be any other options on the table. Some argue that Obamacare will actually save billions of dollars (trillions in the long run), while others argue that it will increase costs by billions (trillions) of dollars. I honestly do not know which position is right, as I do not trust either side to be objective. And, I must admit to some hypocrisy on mandates: I do not like the concept of requiring everyone to buy health insurance if they do not have it, but I like the fact that fellow drivers in Georgia are required to have car insurance: I would hate to have someone slam into my car, and get away with paying nothing because they had no insurance.

I do know that Obamacare was shoved through the Senate and House, barely passing in the House. As noted in Wikipedia,

PPACA passed the Senate on December 24, 2009, by a vote of 60–39 with all Democrats and two Independents voting for, and all Republicans voting against. It passed the House of Representatives on March 21, 2010, by a vote of 219–212, with 34 Democrats and all 178 Republicans voting against the bill.

That is what I most dislike about Obamacare. I remember when the legislation was being considered: there were all sorts of secret, closed-door meetings, and it was clear that Nancy Pelosi was going to do whatever it took to pass it in the House, despite huge opposition to it. Even if Obamacare survives (and most pundits seem to think it will), the way it came into existence will always be a bitter pill for me to swallow (excuse the small pun).

The product matters. But how it gets made is as important as the product. (That is, the end does not necessarily justify the means.)

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Make Use of Kindle’s Highlighting Feature

Posted on March 24, 2012 by Bruce Keener

My favorite ebook provider is Amazon: I prefer the Kindle ebooks because they typically cost a little less than other ebooks. But, the primary reason I like Kindle ebooks is that everything I highlight in an ebook is stored at

http://kindle.amazon.com/

enabling me to copy any of that highlighted material into “action documents” or even into blog posts. For example, the left column below shows a couple of highlights from the book Coping with OCD: Practical Strategies for Living Well with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, while the right column shows related actions I plan to take:

I also used this feature in this post to share several of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits quotes with you.

You can get imaginative with how you use your Kindle highlights, perhaps creating some PowerPoint slides for staff training, or creating flash cards, or … The key is to USE them, rather than just letting them go to waste.

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Helpful ebook for BBEdit Users [Mac]

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Bruce Keener

For a limited time (through April 9, 2012), you can get the ebook Take Control of BBEdit. Even the normal price of $10 is a good deal. I’ve learned a good from it and I’m only 50 pages into it.

I’ve been using BBEdit on my Mac for about 5 years. It is a professional text editor that can handle any job you throw at it. I’m using it to write this post in Markdown language, as I do with most of my posts.

Features of the book include:

Set up BBEdit for maximum efficiency:

  • Configure key standard and expert preferences for optimal usage.
  • Sync BBEdit settings and support files between Macs using Dropbox.
  • Create text factories that automate sequences of text processing commands.
  • Create “clippings” of boilerplate text, complete with dynamic placeholders.
  • Use Dropbox or a version control system to track versions of documents.

Start work on the right track:

  • Collect multiple resources – including files, folders, and URLs – into a single project window.
  • Use BBEdit’s many options for opening and saving files.
  • Work with remote files via BBEdit’s FTP/SFTP browser windows.

Type faster, search better, and automate repetitive bits:

  • Control BBEdit via keyboard shortcuts.
  • Write faster with text completion of words, code snippets, HTML tags, and more.
  • Clean up text with spurious tabs, incorrect case, gremlin characters, and more.
  • Search for and replace text across multiple documents at once.
  • Learn how to use grep pattern matching for powerful searches.
  • Write in Markdown, and preview Markdown documents.

The ebook is provided in three formats: PDF, mobi (for Kindle), and ePub. You get all three formats in one zip file upon purchase.

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