Antidote

An effective antidote against the effect of social networking is driving. Prolonged hours sat in front of screens must wire the brain accordingly. The concentration required to manage sensory information in the real world makes driving an effective exercise for the brain. Drive carefully and maintain the body as well as the mind.

Their Own Bubble

Human survival depends on bursting the bubble of those who progress surely because of that bubble. This bubble is usually an idea they have about themselves, the origin of which becomes difficult to pinpoint. The idea survives as more people join the club and an organisation develops. It is true that we need diversity.

Discovery

Man the discoverer needed to conquer the imagination. mental obstacles needed to be overcome and these were a significant barrier to scientific exploration and discovery. Induced by superstitious and religious hysteria, there were places man dared not venture. Happy in their own bubble, the christians of those days had complete fantasies

Books about Recursion and Self Description

Douglas Hofstadter’s ” Godel Escher Bach” is the best book about recursion out there. However, it is important to note that Recursion occurs in all kinds of places in life generally. I suppose it’s a question of which particular discipline that deals with recursion you’re looking for. For general philosophical and intellectual stimulation, then “Godel, Escher Bach” is the one to read. You’ll find it on Amazon.

Books are written in language, and language is itself of a recursive nature. NLP, or  Neuro Linguistic Programming, is also about recursion. There are many books opn NLP and it probably doesn’t matter which you read. Quite often the authors of these books give clues to their interest in recursion without direct emphasis. People who understand how to spot the recursion will pick them up without being told.

There best place to learn about recursion is the planet you live on. Take a look around you, you’ll spot it everywhere. The question is, of course, whether or not it is actually real – is it just in the mind?

So What is the “Centre Ground”?

The term “Centre Ground” is used in politics mainly. It is a very general idea and there have being plenty of things said about the centre ground, and what it actually means….and what they’re actually talking about when they use it.

Some people don’t like the idea, mainly because it is associated with the Conservative Party in the UK, although they don’t seem to use the phrase anymore. According to the Selsdon Group, Brian Mointieth writes:

“The centre ground is the imaginary space between competing parties and, because of this, if it exists at all, it is always moving.
“Politicians that seek to occupy the centre ground offer no real hope of change to the problems of the present day. What they are doing is saying they are content with the status quo – they are offering no real alternative. Chasing the centre ground is as futile as searching for the Holy Grail…”

This is not necessarily a political blog. It is about decisions, not just making decisions but doing it effectively and appropriately. I can guarantee you, when it comes to making decisions, the centre ground is very important. You actually want to be chasing something you can never really get to. You never reach your destination, because there should always be more out there to decide upon, because that’s life.  The center ground does indeed change all the time. A major issue in successful decision-making is keeping up with it.

Decision-making is very important in politics, but the decisions politicians make once in government are different to the ones they make on a campaign trail. Occupying the centre ground may not be a good idea, but using it is essential. At no point would I ever suggest anyone “occupies” the centre ground. Someone who “occupies” the centre ground will find at some point that they get in the way of it. The centre ground needs to be perceived and used. It is essential to having a general overview of the general situation in order to make the correct decisions.

Decisions, Risks and Life

Survival and the continuity of your life

Any decision that closes the decision-making cycle is obviously going to be one of those decisions that at the very least makes you unconscious. Therefore, decisions are ultimately related to the management of risks to life. This, however, tends to be many removes away from the reasoning we are conscious of in our lives.

Breathing probably causes cancer, but if you didn’t breathe you’d die anyway. There’s no way to completely eliminate risks – the only thing you can do is manage them as effectively as you possibly can.

 The decisions we make should open up more options for us, not reduce them. It is important also to realise that some decisions with regards to health aren’t actually ours to make – genes for example, and the natural immunological responses to infections – involuntary responses that we do not need to consciously recognise. Also, when it comes to healthcare there is a tendency to let other people (i.e experts (even if you’re one yourself)) make the decisions for us.

Everything in life has a cost (consult the laws of thermodynamics). The decisions we make always come at a cost – this cost is risk and, as in investment, those risks can be over-compensated with rewards. The general overview of decisions-making therefore emphasises the most effective possible reduction of the risk-reward ratio. In certain theoretical disciplines, the risk-reward ratio can be calculated exactly. However, there is also the “Happiness” principle to consider. If an activity of some kind, no matter how risky, is continously participated in by someone who is fully aware of the risks, then that someone at the very least tops up the reward side of the coin with their happiness. They think it is worth the risk, and that sense of worth adds to the reward.

It for Me or You?

Whatever I write here, how the hell can you tell what’s for me or you? (Obviously, this is for you for me). Sometimes it’s purely for me, but sometimes purely for me for you (think about this). Even when it’s for you, it’s still for me. You read for me not just for you. How can you tell what something means, when I am notoriously ambiguous. But not only ambiguous, notoriously pathetic too…

Ambiguity and pathetic – not the best mixture. Although, maybe the pathetic side of things is done on purpose – do I know I’m about to be pathetic, before I actually am? If so, why the hell would I do that? Well, maybe I want to test something – just how quickly people react to things these days. ”Oh. he’s saying this and writing this, that therefore means he’s pathetic about that and the other”- just hold fire with that one! People may be smarter than you give them credit for… 

There’s a game we all have to play in this life and I can honestly say that I do my absolute best not to break the rules. Like I have said before, I don’t half sabotage myself at times, and this most seriously is not done on purpose. This is not to say I don’t take life seriously – you need to keep away from people like that. (I’m probably sabotaging myself right now!)

Know of something now about something someone else obviously knows? Does it mean they knew before or have the only recently worked it out? The reason I say this is because you need to realise that just because someone knows something now, it doesn’t mean they knew it before. Now is now, not before. Before is history, in the past.

Not to say that history is not important – on the contrary. I think learning from the past is very important – how else can one learn from past mistakes? Hmm? I’m not as good at that as I’d like to be though…

Stats to “Obsess” Over?

Should WordPress encourage people to obsess too much about people visiting their blog? This may lead them into being too calculated and not concentrating on the real issues. Also, they may decide to hide things they’d otherwise say or say things that aren’t sufficiently true in order to attract visitors. But maybe it is just common sense to want to attract visitors? Maybe so…

There is an expense here, however. Genuine writing as opposed to plain old attention seeking and self indulgence. I’ve decided I’m not going to bother checking stats anymore, because this leads me into saying some really silly things, in the hope that anyone falling onto my blog from tags may decide to take a further look in the future.

Decison making – The Use of Quote Books as Evidence. Look Back to the Past…

Look back to the past in order to help you with the future.

When faced with a decision, your evidence may come from indirect sources as well as direct sources. Firstly, of course, you concentrate on your own situation that you are in, and that you are deciding upon. It is guaranteed, however, that ar some point in history, someone else, somewhere, has been in the same situation as you. Or at least an equivalent situation. It is important not to rely heavily on refernces books of any kind for any situation, because whatever the situation you are in, it must surely be your own. Your life, your your situation and your decision.

In the book “1001 Pearls of Wisdom” by Paul Ross, the introduction contains the following notable points:

“It is, above all, our own common sense and judgement that help us to make the right decisions, and no book could ever replace our natural instinct to act wisely. [But] great minds rarely think exactly alike. A new perspective can help us tackle a life problem in a way which we hadn’t considered or it can encourage us to see difficult circumstances in a more positive light”.                                                                                                                                       

The more intelligent you already are, the more use you will have for books such as these. This is because it involves the ability to take a quotation and apply it to a situation that it was not originally directly applicable – i.e. from the originator’s sitution to your situation.

Over the centuries and indeed millenia, the major leaders, the wise and the notable have been recorded in quotation reference books. You can use these to aid your decision making process. Such people as these  must have had an excellent track record in decision making, in order to find themselves in notable positions of importance. Such positions come with the responsibility of overseeing hugely important decisions -  hopefully they had a track record of getting those decisions right. You’d like to think that they wouldn’t have found their way into a historical refernce book otherwise…

Why do Books about Recursion and Self Description Always Theme Themselves on Children’s Stories?

I suppose you could say it’s a pattern I’ve noticed. It keeps on recurring again and again.  NLP books and a unique (and much more valuable) book called “Godel, Escher, Bach” by Alexander Hofstadter. I’m not saying it isn’t useful for them to do this, but I’m trying to explain this phenomenon. Then again, maybe it only took one person to want to do this, and then everybody else decided to follow suit. And who knows, maybe it’s really effective.

I’d like to concentrate on potential reasons for their choice of tool, and moreover their reasons for their direction of concentration – just what is it they’re looking for?

In the case of “Godel Escher Bach” it’s very clear. This is a serious book, make no mistake about that. The book is about logic, and written “in the spirit of Lewis Carroll”, who knew plenty about logic, as he himself wrote a book on logic entitled “Symbolic Logic”. The dialogues contain direct references to the subject matter. Most of the stories centre around Lewis Carroll, so I guess that’s the reason for the pattern. It’s just that some books refer to children’s stories, and you’re left wondering why. Anyway, back to “Godel, Escher, Bach”…

Having not read all of this book, I’ve just realised that on page 495, a chapter entitled “Self-Ref and Self-Rep” contains some of the things I discussed in a previous post.  Like “this sentence contains six words.” It was always going to be there anyway, whether I knew it before hand anyway, as the author has given this subject matter a much more thorough treatment than I ever could. Hopefully, though, you will see me write things that are quite original in and amongst the mixture.

I will prove one day that I have grasped this subject all to myself, with my own artwork. Escher-style nevertheless, but unique and original to me also. They won’t look like Escher works, they’ll look like mine.

“Art is either plagiarism of revolution” – Paul Gauguin.                                                                                                                                     ”Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself” – James Stevens.

The subject matter in “Godel, Escher, Bach” is at the heart of both art and science. NLP is a little too direct, and creates a blind spot in learning. Also, NLP books tend to avoid the issues by concentrating on people instead. “Play the issues and not the person” – they need to learn all about this statement. They also need to learn to stop being so patronising with their metaphors and “interesting stories”. And Humpty Dumpty…