Golden Books™

Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing—it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I’d see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn’t have to do it; it wasn’t important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn’t make any difference: I’d invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.

So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.

I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate—two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, “Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it’s two to one?”
I don’t remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.*

I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, “Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it’s two to one is…” and I showed him the accelerations.

He says - “Feynman, that’s pretty interesting, but what’s the importance of it? Why are you doing it?”
- “Hah!” I say. “There’s no importance whatsoever. I’m just doing it for the fun of it.”

His reaction didn’t discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.

I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there’s the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was “playing”—working, really—with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.

It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
Richard P. Feynman

Drugs is another example of how we actively seek to escape from reality rather than gaining objectivity in it. Drug consumption occurs in the whole spectrum of social classes, from the wealthy to the poor and destitute. It is a practise that can be traced since the beginning of time and in all types of societies, from civilised to non-civilised. It is in human nature to seek comfort and pleasure, and drugs is one way that humans found of doing it. The effect of drugs is to chemically alter the state of consciousness. And we deliberately pursuit this for several reasons: as recreation, as part of spiritual rituals, as relaxation or as an escape from the pain and suffering of reality. Objective reality doesn’t offer comfort (on the contrary, in many cases it can be painful) neither is spiritually fulfilling. To deliberately alter our state of mind through drugs is another example of how we actively pursuit comfort and we actively escape from objectivity.

Another example of how we actively search to escape from reality is entertainment. Entertainment is pursuit for many reasons: to escape from boredom or just as a distraction. But one of the reasons we look for entertainment is to momentarily escape from the burdens of daily life. We find entertainment in many forms: sports, music, literature, theatre, spectacles or movies. And how important is for us to escape from reality is reflected on the demand for entertainment. And the demand for entertainment is reflected on the high income of footballers, actors, pop stars, novelists, etc. We seem to have an insatiable demand for entertainment. Entertainment and escaping from reality is valued much higher than objectivity.

Holidays is another example of how we actively seek to escape from reality. Holidays is a time to relax and distract the mind. Nobody goes on holidays to the library or joins a course to learn something new. Holidays is also a time to enjoy and leave behind the compromises, responsibilities and burdens of our daily life. Going away on holidays for example is the best way of doing this and escaping from our daily life. So holidays is not only a time to rest and enjoy, but it is also time when temporarily escape from the reality we live in into a more pleasant one. Holidays is another example of how we actively pursue escaping to a more pleasant reality. Tourism is an industry of enormous size and importance. And its size is a measure of how highly we value escaping from our reality. If we consider how much resources and energy we invest on holidays and weekends, we soon realise the importance we give to escape from our reality and seek comfort from it.

In general, we invest much more time, energy and resources on entertainment, holidays, drugs or comforting metaphysics to escape or avoid reality than on gaining objectivity on it. Reality is often painful, and by nature we tend to seek comfort from pain. In order to do this we sometimes escape from reality or we adjust our world views into more comfortable ones. So not only we tend to be passive on gaining objectivity on Nature, but we are actually active on either escaping from reality or adjusting our subjective views into more comforting ones.

Philosophy of Nature

The Pursuit of Comfort

Subjectivity is an inescapable aspect of our human condition. By nature, we are confined to a subjective view of reality. Higher objectivity is possible, but it depends on a learning process that demands an expansion and integration of knowledge.

We are going to sustain that our world view is not only inherently subjective, but human nature is such that we commonly avoid -and sometimes even reject- objectivity, while we actively pursuit subjective world views that suits our needs.

By nature, we are both lazy and tend to seek comfort. By laziness we don’t mean the unwillingness to work (which is a particular manifestation of its most general sense), but the tendency to minimise effort and maximise rewards. Laziness is not so much a weakness of character but a natural predisposition. It makes biological sense to be lazy. A behaviour that minimises effort and maximise rewards is a behaviour that maximises energy efficiency. The opposite would mean a behaviour that uses energy unproductively; and energy, during evolution, has always represented a scarce resource. It also makes biological sense to seek comfort. The pursuit of comfort comes from the pain and pleasure principle; which is a primitive, but an effective mechanism of self-preservation.

Because we are naturally lazy, we are normally passive about objectivity. Objectivity depends on a learning process that demands effort, time and energy, and it is in our nature to minimize effort. So we tend to search for objectivity only when we need it or when it represent a practical benefit.
Now, not only we are passive about pursuing objectivity because we are lazy, but because we tend to seek comfort, we are active on avoiding it. And there are many examples on how we commonly do this: religion, drug consumption, taking holidays, entertainment, etc.

Religion for example, is comforting in many ways: it make us feel less alone in the world, it offer meaning to life, it offer consolation in death, it offers a world that is essentially fair, it offers redemption from pain and suffering and bliss on their truths, and fundamentally, following a religion is comforting for being a way of forming part of society and satisfying the basic need of belonging.
Religious world views are not objective, but they are mane made world view that adjust to our needs and that make us feel better about ourselves, the world and our place in the world. About 86% of the world population follows a religion in one form or the other. This shows how it primes in man the need of feeling good over the need of objectivity.

Religion is not the only way we seek comforting worldviews. Modernity is characterised by a high acceptance of scientific truth, by a decline on religion and by growing materialistic, individualistic and hedonistic values; all of which results in a general spiritual emptiness. Science might explain the world, but doesn’t fulfil our spiritual needs. So people are looking for alternative ways to find comfort in life, like motivational techniques, positive psychology, self-help, orientalism, etc. Another emerging trend, that combines many of the latter elements, are new and alternative metaphysics. Some of these metaphysics, in order to gain acceptance, make false claims of being based on science. And another thing they offer is peace of mind through alternative ways of seeing the world. The idea that by knowing the truth we can avoid the pain from modern life is another example of how we construct worldviews to fit our needs. Reality is objective and neutral and is not comforting in itself.

. . . . . .

I often liked to play tricks on people when I was at MIT. One time, in mechanical drawing class, some joker picked up a French curve (a piece of plastic for drawing smooth curves—a curly, funny-looking thing) and said, “I wonder if the curves on this thing have some special formula?”
I thought for a moment and said, “Sure they do. The curves are very special curves. Lemme show ya,” and I picked up my French curve and began to turn it slowly. “The French curve is made so that at the lowest point on each curve, no matter how you turn it, the tangent is horizontal.”
All the guys in the class were holding their French curve up at different angles, holding their pencil up to it at the lowest point and laying it along, and discovering that, sure enough, the tangent is horizontal. They were all excited by this “discovery”—even though they had already gone through a certain amount of calculus and had already “learned” that the derivative (tangent) of the minimum (lowest point) of any curve is zero (horizontal). They didn’t put two and two together. They didn’t even know what they “knew.”

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

I did the same kind of trick four years later at Princeton when I was talking with an experienced character, an assistant of Einstein, who was surely working with gravity all the time. I gave him a problem: You blast off in a rocket which has a clock on board, and there’s a clock on the ground. The idea is that you have to be back when the clock on the ground says one hour has passed. Now you want it so that when you come back, your clock is as far ahead as possible. According to Einstein, if you go very high, your clock will go faster, because the higher something is in a gravitational field, the faster its clock goes. But if you try to go too high, since you’ve only got an hour, you have to go so fast to get there that the speed slows your clock down. So you can’t go too high. The question is, exactly what program of speed and height should you make so that you get the maximum time on your clock?
This assistant of Einstein worked on it for quite a bit before he realized that the answer is the real motion of matter. If you shoot something up in a normal way, so that the time it takes the shell to go up and come down is an hour, that’s the correct motion. It’s the fundamental principle of Einstein’s gravity—that is, what’s called the “proper time” is at a maximum for the actual curve. But when I put it to him, about a rocket with a clock, he didn’t recognize it. It was just like the guys in mechanical drawing class, but this time it wasn’t dumb freshmen. So this kind of fragility is, in fact, fairly common, even with more learned people.

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
Richard P. Feynman

FIND SOURCES OF WISDOM THAT WITHSTAND MIMESIS

Experts play an increasingly prominent role in our society. But what makes an expert? A degree? A podcast? Increasingly, experts are crowned mimetically, like fashion.
Because there is less and less agreement about cultural values and even about the value of science itself (consider the debates about climate change), people find “experts” whose expertise is largely a product of mimetic validation. It’s critical to cut through mimesis and find sources of knowledge that are less subject to mimesis.
Find sources that have stood the test of time. Be wary of self-proclaimed and crowd-proclaimed experts.
It’s less likely that experts will be mimetically chosen in the hard sciences (physics, math, chemistry) because people have to show their work. But it’s easy for someone to become an overnight expert on “productivity” merely because they got published in the right place. Scientism fools people because it is a mimetic game dressed up as science.
The key is carefully curating our sources of knowledge so that we are able to get down to what is true regardless of how many other people want to believe it. And that means doing the work.

Every once in a while, then, it’s good to deconstruct the mimetic layers behind someone’s authority and think seriously about how we chose our sources of knowledge in the first place. We might find that the road to our favorite experts was paved with mimetic influence.

Wanting, Luke Burgis

Spectator sports like football are normally zero sum games for a good reason. It is more exciting for crowds to watch players striving mightily against one another than to watch them conniving amicably. But real life, both human life and plant and animal life, is not set up for the benefit of spectators. Many situations in real life are, as a matter of fact, equivalent to nonzero sum games. Nature often plays the role of ‘banker’, and individuals can therefore benefit from one another’s success. They do not have to do down rivals in order to benefit themselves. Without departing from the fundamental laws of the selfish gene, we can see how cooperation and mutual assistance can flourish even in a basically selfish world.

"12. Nice Guys Finish First"
The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins

Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.

"Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge"
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov

The couch was in semi-darkness, shielded from the moon by a column, but a ribbon of moonlight stretched from the porch steps to the bed. And once the procurator lost connection with what surrounded him in reality, he immediately set out on the shining road and went up it straight towards the moon. He even burst out laughing in his sleep from happiness, so wonderful and inimitable did everything come to be on the transparent, pale blue road. He walked in the company of Banga, his dog, and beside him walked the wandering philosopher, Yeshua Ha-Nozri.

They were arguing about something very complex and important, and neither of them could refute the other. They did not agree with each other in anything, and that made their argument especially interesting and endless. It went without saying that today’s execution proved to be a sheer misunderstanding: here this philosopher, who had thought up such an incredibly absurd thing as that all men are good, was walking beside him, therefore he was alive. And, of course, it would be terrible even to think that one could execute such a man. There had been no execution! No execution! That was the loveliness of this journey up the stairway of the moon.

There was as much free time as they needed, and the storm would come only towards evening, and cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices. Thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri.

"No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it is the most terrible vice! He, for example, the present procurator of Judea and former tribune of a legion, had been no coward that time, in the Valley of the Virgins, when the fierce Germani had almost torn Ratslayer the Giant to pieces. But, good heavens, philosopher! How can you, with your intelligence, allow yourself to think that, for the sake of a man who has committed a crime against Caesar, the procurator of Judea would ruin his career?"

‘Yes, yes . . .’, Pilate moaned and sobbed in his sleep. 'Of course he would. In the morning he still would not, but now, at night, after weighing everything, he would agree to ruin it. He would do everything to save the decidedly innocent, mad dreamer and healer from execution!'

"Now we shall always be together," said the ragged wandering philosopher in his dream, who for some unknown reason had crossed paths with the equestrian of the golden spear. "Where there’s one of us, straight away there will be the other! Whenever I am remembered, you will at once be remembered, too! I, the foundling, the son of unknown parents, and you, the son of an astrologer-king and a miller’s daughter, the beautiful Pila."

"Yes, and don’t you forget to remember me, the astrologer’s son," Pilate asked in his dream. And securing in his dream a nod from the En-Sarid beggar who was walking beside him, the cruel procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, wept and laughed from joy in his dream.

"The Burial"
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov

Cicero once wrote that to be completely free one must become a slave to a set of laws. In other words, accepting limitations is liberating. For example, by making up one’s mind to invest psychic energy exclusively in a monogamous marriage, regardless of any problems, obstacles, or more attractive options that may come along later, one is freed of the constant pressure of trying to maximize emotional returns. Having made the commitment that an old-fashioned marriage demands, and having made it willingly instead of being compelled by tradition, a person no longer needs to worry whether she has made the right choice, or whether the grass might be greener somewhere else. As a result a great deal of energy gets freed up for living, instead of being spent on wondering about how to live.

Flow in the Family
Mihaly Csikszentmihaly

"I have no use whatsoever for projections or forecasts. They create an illusion of apparent precision. The more meticulous they are, the more concerned you should be. We never look at projections, but we care very much about, and look very deeply at, track records. If a company has a lousy track record, but a very bright future, we will miss the opportunity ...
I do not understand why any buyer of a business looks at a bunch of projections put together by a seller or his agent. You can almost say that it's naive to think that those projections have any utility whatsoever. We're just not interested.
If we don't have some idea ourselves of what the future is, to sit there and listen to some other guy who's trying to sell us the business or get a commission on it tell us what the future's going to be -like I say, it's very naive."
- Warren Buffett

Seeking Wisdom, Peter Bevelin

If we assume that people on average act out of self-interest we'll be less disappointed than if we assume that people on average act out of altruism. This does not mean that we can't make things better. But doing so demands that we first understand why we are the way we are.
Richard Dawkins said in The Selfish Gene: "Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature. Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish."

Seeking Wisdom, Peter Bevelin

He knew he was supposed to move on. Recover. Put it behind him. His few stray friends and few stray relatives had said as much, and he knew that if he were on the outside looking in, he would tell that other Teddy to buck up and suck in your gut and get on with the rest of your life.
But to do that, he'd have to find a way to put Dolores on a shelf, to allow her to gather dust in the hope that enough dust would accumulate to soften his memory of her. Mute her image. Until one day she'd be less a person who had lived and more the dream of one.

They say, Get over her, you have to get over her, but get over to what? To this fucking life? How am I going to get you out of my mind? It hasn't worked so far, so how am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to let you go, that's all I'm asking. I want to hold you again, smell you, and, yes too, I just want you to fade. To please, please fade...

Shutter Island,
Dennis Lehane

‘I predict a bad end for your race,’ Zoltan said grimly.

‘Every rational creature in this world, when they fall into poverty, misery and unhappiness, commonly join with their kinsmen, because among them it is easier to survive the bad times, because they help each other. But among you humans, each of you looks at only how to make something out of misfortune. If hungry, then food is not distributed, the weakest is devoured. Such a procedure makes sense for wolves, allowing the individual to survive healthier and stronger. But among intelligent races such selection usually allows the dominant and biggest bastards to survive. Analyze this how you want.’

Baptism of Fire
The Witcher 5 - Andrzej Sapkowski

‘Do you belong to those, who caused it?’, said a voice.
Dandelion sharply turned around.
The dryad leaning on the pine had hair the color of silver, he could see that even in twilight.

‘An unpleasant view,’ she said and crossed her hands on her chest. ‘The one, who lost everything. It is interesting, bard, because I once thought that one can never lose everything, that something always has to remain. Always. Even in the times of contempt, where naivety can take revenge in the cruelest way, one cannot lose everything. And he... He lost a lot of blood, the option of healthy walking, partial movement of his left hand, a witcher's sword, the woman he loves, the daughter he miraculously found, confidence, faith... I told myself, that there had to be something he had not lost. But I was wrong, he has nothing, not even that razor.’

Dandelion didn't say anything, The dryad didn't move.

‘I asked, if you also took part in it.’ she said after a while. ‘Perhaps my question was pointless. Obviously, it is also your fault. If someone has friends, but still loses everything, they are also guilty. For what they did, or did not. Guilty for not knowing, what they had to do.’
‘What could I have done ?’ he whispered silently. ‘What could I have changed?’
‘I don't know,’ answered the dryad.
‘I didn't tell him everything...’
‘That I know.’
‘I'm not guilty.’
‘But you are.’

Time of Contempt
The Witcher 4 - Andrzej Sapkowski

One of the most basic delusions of our time is that home life takes care of itself naturally, and that the best strategy for dealing with it is to relax and let it take its course. Men especially like to comfort themselves with this notion. They know how hard it is to succeed on the job, how much effort they have to put into their careers. So at home they just want to unwind, and feel that any serious demand from the family is unwarranted. They often have an almost superstitious faith in the integrity of the home. Only when it is too late—when the wife has become dependent on alcohol, when the children have turned into cold strangers—do many men wake up to the fact that the family, like any other joint enterprise, needs constant investments of psychic energy to assure its existence.

To play the trumpet well, a musician cannot let more than a few days pass without practicing. An athlete who does not run regularly will soon be out of shape, and will no longer enjoy running. Any manager knows that his company will start falling apart if his attention wanders. In each case, without concentration, a complex activity breaks down into chaos. Why should the family be different? Unconditional acceptance, the complete trust family members ought to have for one another, is meaningful only when it is accompanied by an unstinting investment of attention. Otherwise it is just an empty gesture, a hypocritical pretense indistinguishable from disinterest.

Flow in the Family
Mihaly Csikszentmihaly