October 13th is also the birth date of (amongst many, many others of course) Liilie Langtry, Leon Leonwood Bean (yes – the L.L. Bean), Wilfred Pickles, Art Tatum, Lenny Bruce, Margaret Thatcher, Nana Mouskouri, Paul Simon, Marie Osmond, Jerry Rice and John Regis. It is also Azerbaijani Railway Day!

For me, one of the two reasons that this particular date of the year stands out is that half my life ago I was taking part in the most “significant” run in my running ‘career’ – the 26.2 miles from Marathon to Athens.

The story of that event is told elsewhere and I have no intention of repeating it here. Instead these are just a few thoughts about the whole “on this day” phenomena and how it impacts me and my life.

There are many reasons why a particular date would become significant. Sometimes the date itself is the “trigger” for the memory – in other cases the event will be remembered, but it is necessary to check what the date actually was. The former group will include birthdays, anniversaries and so on where reaching that day is a cause for some sort of remembrance – maybe happy – maybe sad – always significant. The Athens Marathon was very much in the latter set – I had to go looking at the calendar and my running diary to find out what date I ran it – many of the things about it remain firmly imprinted in my memory – but not the date! Before checking I could have told you that it was a Sunday, in October, in 1985 – but I couldn’t have got any closer.

I think that the way these things are remembered depends on the individual – for most things I will have little clue about precisely when it happened – perhaps like the marathon I could manage to narrow it down to the year, usually even the month, but no closer – whilst for other people I suspect that the date is ingrained in their memories and the day triggers the memory of the event rather than anything else. It isn’t, of course, always that way round for me – it would be unwise to have to check the exact date of my wife’s birthday or of our wedding anniversary!!

Generally speaking I am much more likely to be able to answer the question “when is Fred’s birthday” than the question “what is significant about the 17th May” – that is just the way I am wired – and I don’t know whether that is a common thing or not.

Perhaps this illuminates an aspect of learning that is important and reinforces my view that (in general) the way in which an individual best learns is – pretty much – unique to that individual and any attempt to ‘standardise’ teaching is inevitably going to fail most people most of the time.

The topic was “We might live in a computer program, but it may not matter“. As an aside, this appears on BBC.com but seemingly not on BBC.co.uk a search on the UK site does not show the article! Seems you can only find it ‘serendipitously’!!!!

This is not a new idea and, in many ways, it is a modern working over of a VERY old idea. That old idea had surfaced at times in the past – albeit replacing “computer program” with the ‘technology’ of the day. There is no surprise that – given that we have such trouble ‘explaining’ the world – we continually refresh the stories that we tell to ‘explain’ it and the way that it works.

For me (at least) the “but it may not matter” would be better phrased as “but we cannot possibly tell” – I know that some would refute that and suggest that there are ways in which we could look for “proof” that everything we experience is “made up” and we are, if not exactly the figments of some one’s imagination, perhaps the ‘result’ of someone’s experimentation.

Note that, for ease, I am anthropomorthing the initiators here. In this article it is not necessary (nor even sensible) to try and speculate on who/what has caused us to exist. So when I say “someone” (or similar) I am not assuming that it is anything “like” us. Indeed, the whole point (perhaps) is that we cannot begin to comprehend who/what it actually is.

From here on make the assumption that I am expounding “my take” on the subject. I will admit (very readily) that I am talking from a point of view of extreme “don’t know”-ness – so my ideas should not be taken as “the way it is” but simply “a way it could be”.

There are many sources for my thinking around this subject – but perhaps the first time I began to really grasp the concept of “other dimensions” was when I read Abbott’s Flatland. Prior to reading it my take on “other dimensions” was very much a “childlike” view whereby I sort of accepted that they exist without in any way exploring what that actually meant!

If you haven’t read Flatland, then I suggest that it is a great place to start to begin to understand the ‘mystery’ that is implied whenever we talk about a dimension beyond what we can comprehend. I won’t retell the tale here but I do need to precis the fundamental premise on which the story is built in order to use an example.

Flatland, as its name suggests consists of just two dimensions – it is what you have on a sheet of paper (or at least what you would have if the paper was lacking in ANY thickness – can you imagine such a “world”. Your world consists entirely of points and lines. Clearly three dimensional objects – such as cubes and spheres cannot exist in Flatland. Part of the story describes the time when a sphere ‘visited’ flatland. It appears as a dot first of all and then – as it moves through the plane of Flatland (although, of course, “the plane of” is not a meaningful expression in Flatland – but you get what I mean!!) – it becomes a circle of increasing size until it reaches its full diameter before reducing in size back to a point again.

The Sphere gives one of the residents of Flatland (A Square) a glimpse of the ‘extra’ dimension. This results in two things relevant to this blog. The first is that A Square, having seen for himself that Flatland is simply a “slice” through the three dimensional world of the Sphere, deduces that the three dimensions may just as well be a “slice” through a four dimensional world. This suggestion is not welcomed by the Sphere who is clearly just as sceptical about the fourth dimension as A Square had been about the third!

Of course, once you accept this premise, it is necessary to extend this further to the extent that any n-dimensional world will clearly understand all n-m dimensional worlds (where m is less than n). However equally the n-dimensional world will find it VERY difficult to conceive of what an n+1 dimensional world looks like.

The second thing is that A Square is ridiculed when he tries to pass on his newfound knowledge to the other inhabitants of Flatland. Even though his “insight” is very much “right and proper” from our point of view – it is, quite simply, unbelievable from the Flatland point of view. How wonderful to find such a simple illustration of how we are – quite literally – blind to things that are outside of our understanding.

Going back to where this all started – when we think of “living in a simulation” we naturally visualise that as something like the Sims or Second Life. These types of “simulation” we understand. They are, if you like, replicates of our own world. They, by and large, obey the same rules and are very much human-created simulations. Thus when we visualise “living in a simulation” we visualise living in something that one of us might have created. There are, however, significant differences when you consider “what would it be like to be a Sim character”?

Clearly they know nothing of the “real” world. They know nothing of how the “player” is manipulating their behaviour – putting them on the right (or wrong) track, etc.. Now “IF” – and yes, it is a big IF!! – we are really just part of some sort of simulation we cannot possibly conceive of the type of “universe” that would have created that simulation.

As I say – this is not a new idea – perhaps the most entertaining version (in my view at least) is that in “The Science of Discworld” – written by Terry Pratchett alongside Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. An “experiment gone wrong” thanks to some typical ‘meddling’ by the wizards of the Unseen University has resulted in the creation of a universe and – in particular – Roundworld. The wizards are able to influence events on Roundworld and generally “interfere” as they have a penchant for doing.

Interestingly – here we have a book (written in the real world) that describes “another world” (Discworld) where the academics have created an “artificial” world (Roundworld) which (it is strongly suggested) is actually our own world. This type of literary ‘magic’ is a sort of equivalent of an Escher drawn world or an impossible triangle. There are a number of books that I have read which in this way blur the lines between an “internal” and an “external” world – in a way similar to a character in a movie stepping out of the screen and into the audience.

Generally we think in terms of the simulator making decisions and affecting the simulation. It is worth considering that there are effects happening in the other direction as well. The mechanisms are (or at least may be) different, but it is still true that the effects happen. This is most clearly seen in the “formal” uses of simulation. Here the simulator has built the simulation in order to assist in understanding a particular situation with a view to guiding decisions in “the real world”. Thus the activities of the various objects within the simulation will at the very least inform the decision maker – and thus have an effect on “the real world”.

Again “IF” we are part of a great simulation then it is not unreasonable to think that our lives are in some way informing the creators of that simulation and in some way helping them to make decisions. It is interesting to speculate on how, exactly, the boundaries between our “simulation” and the “simulating environment” might be blurred or crossed. That certainly happens between discworld and roundworld in the Pratchett envisioned universe.

So – do we live in a simulation? If we do what implications does that have for how we should behave? Is there any reason to think that it makes any difference?

I don’t know! It is, for me, a possibility to consider. The wheels within wheels thinking that is required to get your head around this sort of thing can seem rather daunting and the possibilities are endless in terms of evaluating all the “things to understand” if this is true.

Borrowing from the field of artificial intelligence… one of the aims is to find a way to create autopoiesis – a ‘system’ capable of sustaining and reproducing itself (to give a simplified definition…). What about if that is what the simulation we are in is all about – is the ultimate aim to create a “simulation” that is a replica (or at least a close replica) of our own universe? It is, perhaps, as likely as many other reasons for being….

Addendum: see also this blog post

I had the idea of doing this a while back and one of the things that stopped me was simply knowing where to start! Faced with a blank page it is difficult to know what should be written down – and in this case that extended to not just the content but the subject. I could hardly start with my birth – don’t remember much of that to be honest!!

Anyway, I was in this “stuck” position for a few days – and then suddenly found the way out – and it brought to mind a lesson I learned a long time ago – but one which is too easy to overlook when you need it.

Robert Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” is (as I’ve said elsewhere) one of the few books that I can claim to have read more than once. Even though after the first time you are prepared for the “journey” that the book takes you on – there are always things that either jump out new at you or that you suddenly think “yes – I remember reading that last time – but it had slipped my memory”.

One fragment that had always stuck in my mind is a passage where a student is tasked with writing a 500 word essay on the USA. Wow – that must be easy – only five hundred words and a big topic that everyone knows about. The story progresses as the student struggles to complete the assignment. Write about Bozeman she is told – your home town, should be easy – but it still doesn’t work. Eventually the block is loosened when her focus is brought down to a subject sufficiently small.

I had the same experience – couldn’t think what to write – then chose a quite specific subject and wrote reams on it (with perhaps more to come) and it was stretching back over 45 years into my memories – so not a ‘recent’ topic!!

Anyway, I have decided to have a mixed blog/wiki format – the blog will record entries into the wiki (I know the wiki does that anyway, but its less obvious (and less flexible as well) whilst the wiki allows me to cross link much more easily and also to categorise in a number of different ways.

Each topic I have chosen to write about so far has unlocked a bit of a stream of memories – I just hope that through time these begin to come together as a whole rather than being just a series of disjoint essays. Already I am being triggered into writing much shorter entries – almost as asides on the topic of choice. What I am certainly proving is that the “stuckness” that was described by Pirsig is a very real thing – and focussing on a specific is a great way to catalyse the thinking and creative processes.

Once the project has properly taken shape it will become part of this ‘family’ of little websites and the blog will be linked from here. For the present I am still experimenting with some aspects – so I’ll keep it “under wraps” for a while!!

When I was young there was a group of folks I knew who were up to (I guess) about fifteen years older than I was – everyone older than that was part of the “old people” category – which is actually quite laughable looking back. I realise that I had a very strange perception of what constituted “old”. Many of the “old” people from then I still don’t know their actual age – but I guess they were probably those who were contemporaries of my parents and anyone older than that.

So – do our perceptions of what is “old” equate to how old our parents are when we are born – those who have children at a relatively early age will bring up offspring who think that just about everyone is old!! What is surprising now is that those “old” people are still around fifty or more years later – they must be really ancient now!!!!

On the other hand – do those who are born to “older” parents perceive the world to be full of ‘younger’ people?

The word “perceive” is important here as what I think I am talking about is most definitely driven by perception. The “old” people from my youth were in reality at “best” (or is it “worst” – I’m not sure) middle aged – these were people who were (I suspect) in their twenties when I was born – but – because they belong to a different generation they immediately attracted the “old” tag.

I think that I was much more aware of a “generation” when I was younger – there was a group of people who were, most certainly, “my” generation – then there were those who were “older” and those who were “younger” – and a not inconsiderable number who were sort of “borderline” in one direction or another. Its not something that I could put number on – it was much more an innate sense of “belonging” to my own generation and everyone else was either in or out (or occasionally on the boundary).

When we are young that is, perhaps, reinforced by the fact that you are grouped together (in school for instance) with people your own age – it is uncommon for “youngsters” to mix with “adults” – indeed it was uncommon for 4^th year pupils to mix with 3^rd year!!! (although you might aspire to a 5^th year friend) There are some exceptions – school choir and school orchestra brought you together with a slightly wider age range – although you were still – for the most part – mixing with people within a year or two of your own age.

A “young” teacher was still actually quite “old” by this respect – and many teachers were already well on the way to ancient. (even though they were, quite probably, only in their thirties)

I then spent another five years at university – again with people around my own age although there were a few exceptions, especially in the post grad classes. All of this reinforced a “belonging” to a relatively narrow age range – anyone too far away from “the same age” was much less likely to be a part of your gang!!

There were some ways in which I was – perhaps more than most – accepted into a much wider age range of “people I knew” – of course your family is one such grouping – but that is quite highly structured by age/generation as well. My church activities brought together a very wide range of ages – but even there I can remember that there were the “old” people – and the “ancients”!!

Diving into a “work” situation things are immediately different (although there is still an element of being with your own “generation”). The main difference is not so much with the idea that some are old, and some are not, it is with the fact that you no longer have any reference point to figure out exactly how old anyone actually is!! Yes, you can guess and you will be approximately correct, but there is no equivalent to “people in your year” that was around at school time. The lines are now drawn around the “company structure” and you associate with your “peers” who may or may not be your own age,

Looking back – the environment I found myself in to start with was a relatively restricted one in terms of age range. I was working with “new technology” and that sort of ruled out the “greybeards” – even the bosses didn’t seem to be that old. In many ways in the (nearly) forty years since the company has grown old with me – however, I have not kept climbing the organisation’s ladder for all that time – and the result is that in some ways I see many “younger” people as being more “senior” than I am – perhaps that in itself keeps me thinking “young”.

Those who start at the bottom of the pyramid and climb relentlessly to the top will, almost inevitably, see those below them as “youngsters” and will feel “senior” (and important!!) in some way commensurate with their age. They will indeed be the “greybeards”.

For me, it seems that even though I KNOW that I am nearing the end of my working life I still do not see myself as “senior” or “in authority” in most senses. It seemingly is the case that I cannot possibly be this old – simply because so many people are “more important” than I am.

Growing old is something that I am – inevitably – going to do even more of – this is just the start of the consideration of this process within this blog!

It was unlike other series in that the focus wasn’t on the story of a person, or a group of people – the focus was very much on the “land” itself – Discworld was at the centre of the books – populated by a huge array of characters – many of whom cropped up in several books – but none (with the possible exception of Death Himself) was ubiquitous and central to every story.

The result was that you are left thinking “I wonder whatever happened to ….” – and like real life there were so many unfinished tales – you just knew that the “ending” of many books was merely the start of another chapter – which, of course, will now never be written.

Its rather apt that in recent years Sir Terry had collaborated with Stephen Baxter on the Long Earth series – stories about parallel worlds. Now, Discworld is going to develop in the imaginations of millions of readers and we will – effectively – have the “Long Discworld” as each different version takes the ideas and develops them.

Of course the Discworld novels themselves work on a number of different levels – so not every reader will go away from a book with the same story in their head. So even before anyone has extrapolated from the “end” point there are already many, many different “understandings” of what Discworld is – what Discworld means – and what Discworld will become. Just like our memories of our “real” lives – each reader will retain a selection of “moments” from the books – and – no doubt – will have created for themselves a few “moments” that didn’t really happen in any of the books!!

No one who has spent time with Sam Vimes, Lord Vetinari, Angua, Moist von Lipwig, the Igors, the Nac Mac Feegle and all of the other inhabitants of Discworld could fail to let their imaginations go just a bit further than the books themselves. The wonderful inventiveness and the sharp-witted commentary on our troubles, our history and our hang-ups are triggers for flights of fancy that could end up anywhere.

There is so much that could be said – I’ll finish with a couple of quotes (there are far too many to include them all):

Two related incidents over the last few days have – once again – driven home both the sentiment and the reality of this.

I found myself wandering round the university town of Oxford and – as part of that wander – we went into Blackwell’s bookshop on Broad Street.  Opened on 1st January 1879 from the outside it looks like just another little shop – however – in common with seemingly a large number of buildings in the centre of Oxford it goes both up and down from street level.

This results in a sort of TARDIS-like effect when the only appropriate response is “its bigger on the inside”!  If you are interested there is an exceedingly comprehensive online tour of the shop here.

Anyone reading what I write here cannot help but realise that various areas associated with cognition are very much of interest to me.  Philosophy, Psychology, the Mind and other associated subjects are areas of any book store that draw my attention.  This resulted in me heading for the very bottom of the Norrington Room – the bottom of the shop – where I perused a number of books that caught my eye.

Given the subject matter – I was immediately struck by the philosophical question raised by the fact that there were four shelves which contained copies of the recommended book of the week (or perhaps month, can’t remember) plus the 1st, 2nd and 3rd highest selling books in the subject area.  What struck me as apt was not that the shelves existed, but that they seemed (rather incongruously) to have sold out of the 3rd best seller!!

Couldn’t help wondering if it would become No.1 next week (and if so, would it still be an empty shelf?).  So many questions…..

Anyway – getting back to the point – having realised that I had read just a few of the books that filled the shelves around that part of the bookshop I was (to quote Pratchett once more) “struck by my tremendous sense of my own ignorance” – there was so much still to read – and – wait a minute – what about the thousands of books that I had walked past in order to get to this part of the bookshop – how few have I actually read.

It reminded me a bit of seeing the “hundred must read books” on a website.  If I remember correctly I had read less than half – but more than the ‘average’.  However, whilst I have a reasonable record when it comes to having read the “classics” I realise that in comparison to the huge number of books in that bookshop my “read” list is tiny – therefore my ignorance is huge!!

The other reminder of my ignorance was on a completely different topic – the incidence of mental health issues amongst the population.  I was surprised to read that 1 in 100 people suffer from schizophrenia – then, on researching the validity of that statistic I was gobsmacked to discover that around 23% of the population of the UK will suffer some form of mental illness in their lifetime.

Wow!!!

No wonder there are so many references to these insidious diseases now that the taboo on talking openly about them seems to have dissipated quite a lot.

So – I am reminded once more – well twice more – just how great my ignorance is – and I know that every morsel of knowledge that I consume will result in another huge lump of ignorance being added to the pile.  By some measures “knowledge” is multiplying orders of magnitude faster than i was just a few years ago.  There is no way that anyone can possibly keep up – and so – the ignorance mountain will continue to rise up far faster than the knowledge mole-hill.

All I can do is concentrate on ensuring that the mole-hill doesn’t collapse in on itself!!

The translation that seems most apt is “flourishing” and this is what the authors suggest to think of in The Shrink and the Sage.

The Problem With Happiness

Whilst being happy is clearly a ‘good thing’ it can also be unattainable under some circumstances – what is important to note is that the lack of happiness does not mean that “life is not good”.  Happiness tends to be a ‘fleeting’ emotion – which comes and goes with our moods and feelings – whereas the feeling that we are enjoying a good life (or not) is a more long term state.

Of course, in some ways we are dealing with semantics – for some people “happy” is not just associated with being joyful, laughing and joking – it is also used for contentment and, I suppose, sufficiency. The statement, “I am happy with my life”, is probably more a reflection of eudaimonia than a reflection of extreme joy.

This is a problem with words – it is always difficult to define the meaning.  Indeed it is probably more often than not that the meaning that is heard is different from the meaning that is said!!  In his post to LinkedIn and Facebook yesterday Mel Schwartz said

So here we have it – as I say “I am happy” – what do you imagine I mean?  It is not just that statement, of course, everything that I am writing here depends on the reader understanding what I meant. (rather than what I wrote – which to me is the same thing, but to other people may well not be – indeed probably isn’t)

This is, of course, a bit of a sidetrack away from the “be happy” them of the post, however, it is something that affects us in all parts of our lives – we instinctively assume that when we say something those who hear us will understand what is said.  That’s just the way it is.  That is also the root of so many misunderstandings, so many arguments, so many conflicts.

Getting back to the topic….

The sentence that particularly caught my eye – mainly because it harks back to one of the recurrent themes here – was the following:

This is the place that I ended the previous post at.  We cannot know all the outside influences that will stop us achieving what we set out to achieve (and therefore stop us, presumably from being happy) because there are so many and – even when we can assess them as risks – they can at best be given a likelihood of occurrence.  It is probably optimistic to say that there is a one in a million chance that we achieve precisely what we set out to achieve.

This, of course, needn’t be a problem.  It is “just life” and as long as we accept the deviations from our originally intended course – and recognise that these deviations are out of our control – then we can be ‘happy’ that we were – as the previous post suggested – the best that we could.

The other significant throwback on this topic is to Viktor Frankl – whom I have talked about a number of times in this blog, but particularly in the post Inspirational Writing.  Its interesting how he has come up in my life recently in so many different ways.  Specifically, the reference in respect to happiness is that Frankl espoused the need for meaning – without giving your life meaning you cannot be happy (or fulfilled).

Apart from Frankl there are two other names that surfaced in this part of the book – both of them have equally appeared in my thinking, but I don’t think I have explicitly mentioned either in the blog before – they are Daniel Kahneman and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi.  They both deserve to be given a lot more space than just a quick mention here – in the case of Kahneman I have read a lot of his writing and was particularly influenced by Thinking, Fast and Slow.  Csikszentmihalyi, on the other hand, has so far gained entry into my thinking thanks to others writing about him.  His book, Flow: The Psychology of Happiness: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness is on my list to read.

So – to summarise – happiness – in the sense of unbroken joy – is patently unattainable, however, if we think of it as fulfillment or better, flourishing, then it becomes something that we must continually aim for.

Whilst doing that, we need to be continually aware that it is certain that we will fall short of what we are aiming at – usually for reasons outside of our control.  There are a significant number of forces acting upon us that will likely redirect the flow of events.  We are not alone!!!  We cannot do anything, but it causes other things to happen – you cannot do just one thing!

As I look back over my own life I can see the wisdom in what he has written – the realities (good and bad) are all part of what has made me the person I am.  It would be, in some cases, easy to say “I wish I could go back and make that decision again knowing what I know now” but… and it is a big but…. I know what the result of the original decision has been – I have no idea of the eventual outcome if I changed that decision and it could as easily work out to be worse rather than better.

Someone – and at this moment in time I can’t remember who – said words along the lines of “everyone when making a decision chooses the right course of action available to them on the basis of what they know at that moment and how they perceive the results”.  That, of course, does not say that everyone makes good decisions because they may be based on inaccurate knowledge, or a skewed view of the world, or a misconception about the outcome – and there will always be unintended consequences.

So, I am comfortable that even when the decisions were difficult my choices were ‘correct’ within the assumptions and worldview that I had.  Faced with the same decision now (rather than going back to the original time) I may well make a different choice, but that still does not make the original one wrong!

I can see that there have been many times in my life when decisions have been made where there was very little reason to go one way rather than another – just a little thing would have swayed my judgement and the outcome would have been different.  That includes some pretty major decisions as well – where the whole course of my life could have changed.

There is no point in thinking “if only…” because the if only would almost certainly have led to those unintended consequences – or at least to different ones – there have been plenty of unintended consequences of my decisions over the years!!

So, thank you Viktor Frankl for giving me a really good way to view my life history and the rich and wonderful experiences I have had.