Know How

If you gave Isaac Newton the keys to your car and instructed him to go from point A to point B, he would have no clue. What does it mean? Intelligence does not bestow know how, and sometimes know how is essential. By that same token, know how is not an indication of intelligence, nor should it foster arrogance. This is precisely what scares me about allowing anyone with a license to drive, especially when they have no concept of the implication of F=MA.

Surprising Coincidence, Accidental Strategy and the Value of Noticing

For the past 4 days, I've been commuting from South Jersey to New York City by car, and I've been providing my borderline OCD mind with a bit of relief by keeping track of some key travel markers, which revealed a surprisingly consistent timeline, as follows:

From South Jersey

15 minutes to the NJ Turnpike Entrance
15 minutes to exit 8
15 minutes to exit 10
15 minutes to exit 14
15 minutes to Holland Tunnel entrance
15 minutes to get through the tunnel and park

I've consistently achieved this 90 minute timetable, leaving a 15 minute buffer for traffic, but often - inexplicably and unexpectedly - making up time if/when I do run into unusual traffic. To me, this is incredible, especially since the rough 15 minute intervals are so closely coincident with the markers listed. This is also something of a lesson in accidental strategy. Without knowing any better, I decided to leave at 8:15am to bypass traffic. This just happens to deposit me at exit 10 at or slightly after 9am, thereby allowing me to occupy the HOV lane, since the HOV constraint ends at 9am. This also just happens to provide a natural offset for any traffic that I run into after exit 10, since the Holland Tunnel traffic starts to trail off after 9am, thereby expediting my travel to and through the tunnel. My only contribution to this 'happenstance' is noticing, but noticing is valuable.

So now I am wondering...

What other surprising coincidences and accidental strategies currently exist in my life? What is the value of noticing? What is the opportunity cost be of not noticing? These are good questions, I think.

The Reality of Perception

It is one thing to say "I am only going to do things that are fun" and quite another to say "I am going to have fun doing everything". The former demonstrates a lack of understanding that 'fun' is an internally generated, externally germinated phenomenon. The latter relies on the acceptance of the world as it is, and an appreciation that the world is fundamentally good in its natural state. This is akin to the 'three vinegar tasters' in Chinese religious paintings, where the three founders of China's major religions react to the taste of vinegar: Confucius (Confucianism) has a sour expression, as he saw life as sour and in need of rules to mitigate this; Buddha (Buddhism) has a bitter expression, as he saw life as a bitter journey of pain and suffering; Laozi (Taoism) has a sweet expression, as he saw life as fundamentally good 'as it is', as surely as the vinegar tasted as it was supposed to taste. One could argue that one's experience of the world is highly correlated with one's view of the world, but I would argue that one's view of the world is the causal factor in one's experience of it.

Flight Risks

It seems like FAA officials are going to have to step up their game-theory perspectives as we grapple with the cascading effects of flight risks and counter-measures. There is no way to make self-reporting more attractive to pilots when risk-aversion would have any issue lead to grounding; there is no way to lock out the bad guys from the cockpit without also running the risk of locking out the good guys; there is no way to address the asymmetrical risk of armed pilots without arming the rest of the flight crew, thereby creating the distributed risk of firearms on aircraft; and, ultimately, there is no way to balance the risk between actors if two or more of them are in collusion. Ultimately, we have to accept that we put our lives in the hands of others, and no amount of screening or monitoring or other, clever counter-measures can replace an instilled sense of morality that would have caused Andreas Lubitz to overdose on sleeping pills to end his suffering rather than taking the lives of 150 people along with his. This apparent, growing trend of murder-suicide (sometimes, killing to be killed) is quite disturbing. It is as if people want to be remembered, no matter how.

Fundamentally Similar, Systematically Different

Every time I spend time with a curious mind in an outdoor setting, I eventually point out how people, monkeys, dogs, cats, mice, etc, are basically the same pattern with different implementations - i.e. same skeletal structure, same organs, same major functions, implemented at different scales with other, systematic differences that are essential for the survival of the mammal in question. The similarities extend down to the most fundamental building blocks of life, DNA, where humans have a 100% overlap amongst themselves, with differences only in the sequence of genes, a 98% overlap with chimpanzees, a 92% overlap with mice, and, at the further end of the spectrum, an 18% overlap with the common garden weed! The similarities extend down to the very building blocks of matter, where the only difference between elements in the periodic table is the number and configuration of subatomic particles (protons, neutrons and electrons) in their atoms, where these subatomic particles can be broken down into sub-particles (quarks, leptons, etc), and where, I would imagine, these sub-particles can be broken down into even smaller particles - where does it end?!?! Very nearly all of the elements in the universe owe their existence to the nuclear transmutation of hydrogen and helium by different types of stars, where helium and hydrogen originated from the big bang and account for 98% of the mass of ordinary matter in the universe today. How is that for common? We can all easily conceptualize how 2 identical computers, made of identical components, running identical operating systems, can play uniquely different roles in the world based on their software, but the analogy is a bit more perplexing once it is extended to human beings versus the rest of the animal kingdom, and sometimes versus other human beings - i.e. if not for the single, lethal bit set in Jeffrey Dahmer's software, he was, otherwise, just like the rest of us. But the reality is that, from the smallest particles of matter, to the fundamental building blocks of life, to more observable manifestations, most everything is fundamentally similar and only systematically different, and this is true across a wide range of more abstract instincts, behaviors, ecosystems and organizations. This should not detract from one's assessment of their uniqueness in the world, because it is the soul over the software over the hardware that makes all living things unique: the spark of life that turns elements into compounds into a living being; the ethereal force that cannot be decomposed into particles. Understanding our non-uniqueness at an atomic, chemical and biological level is, indeed, the most salient way to grasp our uniqueness at a more fundamental level beyond the purview of science. This is precisely why philosophy embraces science and spirituality: the former can only take you so far, and the good news is that the latter is completely up to you in terms of choice, interpretation and positivity. 

Teachers

They say “those who cannot do, teach”, but, on the flip side, when the expert (or prodigy) is unable to teach their field of expertise to someone, it may be due to the very thing that makes them the expert to begin with: they have assimilated the foundation to the point where they no longer need to think about it, and, therefore, are unable to decompose it into its original, teachable parts. You may experience this if you ever have to teach or write about your own expertise, and you may experience this is a more negative way if you ever have to learn from an expert that has not grappled with this beforehand. So we could say “those who cannot teach, do”, which sounds unfair, very much like the first quote.

Marking the Passage of Time

I recently had dinner with a good friend of mine, who just purchased a fitness watch of sorts that tracks his daily activity (number of steps, sedentary time, etc). He told me that, according to his perception, when he is engrossed in one activity or another, the watch beeps every 15 minutes to remind him to get up and move around, whereas, in reality, the watch is actually beeping every hour. I can relate to this perceived versus actual passage of time, and it occurs to me that the difference can be very useful, in terms of maximizing or minimizing the passage of time, all depending on the objective. For example, during the day, when I am working, I take a sip of water every 15 minutes to create an awareness of the passage of time, thereby maximizing my use of it. On the other hand, at the gym, on the treadmill, I take a sip of water every 5 minutes to convert my own internal accounting of time from seconds or minutes to 5 minute intervals to minimize how long it 'feels' like I am walking. This is just a restatement of several old adages - specifically, preserving time, as in "time lost is never found" from Benjamin Franklin, and preserving experience, as in "the time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time" by Bertrand Russell - but I wonder how many of us actually devise appropriate, self-directed units of time to either slow things down or speed things up. You can be present in the moment to savor every second, or you can track broader milestones to fold the time in between. In The Thin Red Line, Private Witt (Jim Caviezel's character) lives in the second-by-second beauty of nature (flowers, birds, etc) that surrounds him on the battlefield; in Cast Away, Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks' character) lives in the day-by-day activity required to feed his body and stay alive; in The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins' character) lives in the month-by-month activity to feed his soul and truly live. There is a case for savoring every second no matter what your circumstance, so I am not suggesting an outright folding of time, ala the movie Click, where Michael Newman (Adam Sandler's character) transports himself into the future through a magical remote control, and ends up missing the majority of his life. That being said, being aware of and influencing your perception of time can be a great way to be savor beautiful seconds or withstand challenging moments, which can offer a modicum of comfort where there is none.