Mental Models
A few days ago I came across an article linked on HackerNews by DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg covering generally useful mental models and it covers such a breadth of them that it at least makes for a good bookmark if not a blog post, which is barely what this one will be as the stuff whirling around in my head tends to be more than my puny brain can parse and process so I can't easily summarize my output much of the time or I feel it's filled with too many errors to make permanence in a blog post. Among a few of the models I think hold significance for my mode of current thought is Le Châtelier's principle. Summarily it states that "whenever a system in equilibrium is disturbed the system will adjust itself in such a way that the effect of the change will be reduced or moderated" which is a universal aspect that seems relative to the Champion's Paradox or vaguely stated in a phrase I mentioned previously, when we push the universe, the universe tends to push back to equalize itself or in Thermodynamicianism, the most optimal path tends to be wading between the lower and higher entropy dynamic. Just what defines "lower" and "higher" admittedly is very arbitrary just as religion tends to be and best left to individual interpretations. Maybe I really need to stop using "Thermodynamicianism" for fear of looking like a nutcase, maybe I am. But in my defense, I don't use it seriously and oftentimes the seriousness of one's beliefs separates the nutcases from those that like to entertain themselves in thought experiments.
Also another relative mental model, if you could call it that, which I came across lately is the notion of hormesis. To summarize, some amount of stress (entropy, if you will) is beneficial for healthy life as well as some amount of rest (order). So it seems the pattern that my intellectual antennas have been sensing in the past ten years or so is one of duality, of this balance between two opposing forces. It reminds me of the yin and yang in Chinese philosophy, that two opposing forces can be mutually complementary, something which I find rare in many religions while they often stress a good vs evil diametric, one side being entirely good and the other being entirely bad, having no utility whatsoever. I find this frame of thought intellectually dishonest, at best and at worst, it sometimes claims responsibility for much disorder in the world while ironically put forth to supposedly disavow disorder. Paraphrasing Nietzsche, unfortunately in their intent to find monsters they create monsters, meaning if we look hard enough to find negatives in others, we will. Or taken another way, if we oust people who we deem are bad, then we create a group of disenfranchised people who have no other choice than to group with the baddies, thereby creating the monsters; we dispel people while supposedly wishing to dispel only the monsters. But to be fair to Christianity, perhaps there's a small chance that this is why Jesus spoke of loving your enemies, as your enemies in some way make you stronger or invoke a hormetic response from you. To be honest, I assume it's more a symptom of bleeding-heart behavior rather than of any inherent socially strategic motives, which again I'd argue as I previously have that perhaps strategic motives underlie our veneer of emotional decisions. After all, if the universe is logical then all in and of it is logical and so it begets us to assume that underlying the artifice of seemingly idiotic decisions that perhaps there may be layers of logical substrate.
I think a lot of religious interpretation and prophecy is idealistic in heart but I'd argue that it still operates on the same, sometimes ugly level, as realpolitik and underlying it is a logical substrate that many atheists don't like to admit. Speaking for myself, my contention with aspects of religion doesn't argue against the logic of them but the rational integrity of them, note the distinction. Religion, as it may try to glance over, tends to be encumbered by and rooted on primal human conditions and desires and I'd also argue the notion of "divinity" isn't above this and that it's even solely based on these prime directives. But to be fair again, as I try to do, you could argue that human desires are rooted in divine origins but conversely so too can we argue that those same desires can be of non-optimal evolutionary strategic value or of primarily selfish ones thereby breaking down the supposed divine nature of them. For example, we rail against violence except when we're fond of it for pushing our political or religious flavor of the week or millennium. Or sex except when we're trying to encourage other members of our tribe to outbreed the other tribes. Or we speak for love except when someone's loving that which is outside our realm of relevance, ie, loving people, things, etc that may seemingly offer little to no evolutionary or strategic pay-off to us. To be fair to them, when it comes down to it, we're slaves to our intuitive reserves, one of those primitives being our emotional faculties and so I can't fault someone who feels they'd rather intuitively err on the side of love than of hate. As I argued earlier in the Machiavellian sense, you could reason that love creates strongly-chained alliances and fear creates alliances easily broken. Although re-thinking this, the line between love and fear can be very indistinguishable. Consider that when countries go to war, some that do, they do so in fear of empiricism and this create creates strong alliances whether it be from fear of 'the empire' or love of their ally and so fear of 'the empire' or an 'other' can create strong alliances also. Perhaps love and fear are two sides of the same coin thereby reinforcing this yan/yang, or optimal thermodynamic path, that I seem to be tuning to.
Admittedly, I think we're doing the universe an injustice, and the many intelligent minds who study it, by assuming we could interpret it in such an elementary way as I try to sometimes do. I suppose this is just my pattern-seeking brain in overdrive as it was when I was a Christian seemingly obsessed with trying to tie it all together, fruitlessly. This tends to happen with schizophrenic, schizo-affective or people with very pattern-seeking, OCD behavior and something I try to be very well aware of. I observe this behavior also in many religiously-minded folks, few of whom might just be of said type where these pattern-seeking behaviors run in overdrive. You know, life's a fun puzzle but for sanity's sake I long ago stopped expecting everything to make sense when your finite sensory organs operate in a supposedly infinite and infinitely complex universe.
Well, that does it for now. For once I wrote a short blog post (not quite as short now with editing) without feeling shame for not putting much thought into it. I often feel that what needs to be written has already been written, by myself or someone else, and the world's already suffering enough information overload so I'm careful with how much pollution I create in an internet polluted with media that fills our time but not necessarily our souls, so to speak. Much of it doesn't offer very long-term nourishment but only in the sake of candy; quick pacification but little long-term benefit and low application potential. And I'm still not sure this post has any application potential or any point other than for me to jot down a few relevant bookmarks and perhaps open a few minds up to different modes of thought that they may not normally exposed to. But least of all it's a cathartic expression of mind and justifiably some of our relatively benign behavior should be free from much analyzing lest we fall into the 'thinking about what I'm thinking about what I'm thinking about' halting problem or mindtrap that I'm prone to.
Also another relative mental model, if you could call it that, which I came across lately is the notion of hormesis. To summarize, some amount of stress (entropy, if you will) is beneficial for healthy life as well as some amount of rest (order). So it seems the pattern that my intellectual antennas have been sensing in the past ten years or so is one of duality, of this balance between two opposing forces. It reminds me of the yin and yang in Chinese philosophy, that two opposing forces can be mutually complementary, something which I find rare in many religions while they often stress a good vs evil diametric, one side being entirely good and the other being entirely bad, having no utility whatsoever. I find this frame of thought intellectually dishonest, at best and at worst, it sometimes claims responsibility for much disorder in the world while ironically put forth to supposedly disavow disorder. Paraphrasing Nietzsche, unfortunately in their intent to find monsters they create monsters, meaning if we look hard enough to find negatives in others, we will. Or taken another way, if we oust people who we deem are bad, then we create a group of disenfranchised people who have no other choice than to group with the baddies, thereby creating the monsters; we dispel people while supposedly wishing to dispel only the monsters. But to be fair to Christianity, perhaps there's a small chance that this is why Jesus spoke of loving your enemies, as your enemies in some way make you stronger or invoke a hormetic response from you. To be honest, I assume it's more a symptom of bleeding-heart behavior rather than of any inherent socially strategic motives, which again I'd argue as I previously have that perhaps strategic motives underlie our veneer of emotional decisions. After all, if the universe is logical then all in and of it is logical and so it begets us to assume that underlying the artifice of seemingly idiotic decisions that perhaps there may be layers of logical substrate.I think a lot of religious interpretation and prophecy is idealistic in heart but I'd argue that it still operates on the same, sometimes ugly level, as realpolitik and underlying it is a logical substrate that many atheists don't like to admit. Speaking for myself, my contention with aspects of religion doesn't argue against the logic of them but the rational integrity of them, note the distinction. Religion, as it may try to glance over, tends to be encumbered by and rooted on primal human conditions and desires and I'd also argue the notion of "divinity" isn't above this and that it's even solely based on these prime directives. But to be fair again, as I try to do, you could argue that human desires are rooted in divine origins but conversely so too can we argue that those same desires can be of non-optimal evolutionary strategic value or of primarily selfish ones thereby breaking down the supposed divine nature of them. For example, we rail against violence except when we're fond of it for pushing our political or religious flavor of the week or millennium. Or sex except when we're trying to encourage other members of our tribe to outbreed the other tribes. Or we speak for love except when someone's loving that which is outside our realm of relevance, ie, loving people, things, etc that may seemingly offer little to no evolutionary or strategic pay-off to us. To be fair to them, when it comes down to it, we're slaves to our intuitive reserves, one of those primitives being our emotional faculties and so I can't fault someone who feels they'd rather intuitively err on the side of love than of hate. As I argued earlier in the Machiavellian sense, you could reason that love creates strongly-chained alliances and fear creates alliances easily broken. Although re-thinking this, the line between love and fear can be very indistinguishable. Consider that when countries go to war, some that do, they do so in fear of empiricism and this create creates strong alliances whether it be from fear of 'the empire' or love of their ally and so fear of 'the empire' or an 'other' can create strong alliances also. Perhaps love and fear are two sides of the same coin thereby reinforcing this yan/yang, or optimal thermodynamic path, that I seem to be tuning to.
Admittedly, I think we're doing the universe an injustice, and the many intelligent minds who study it, by assuming we could interpret it in such an elementary way as I try to sometimes do. I suppose this is just my pattern-seeking brain in overdrive as it was when I was a Christian seemingly obsessed with trying to tie it all together, fruitlessly. This tends to happen with schizophrenic, schizo-affective or people with very pattern-seeking, OCD behavior and something I try to be very well aware of. I observe this behavior also in many religiously-minded folks, few of whom might just be of said type where these pattern-seeking behaviors run in overdrive. You know, life's a fun puzzle but for sanity's sake I long ago stopped expecting everything to make sense when your finite sensory organs operate in a supposedly infinite and infinitely complex universe.
Well, that does it for now. For once I wrote a short blog post (not quite as short now with editing) without feeling shame for not putting much thought into it. I often feel that what needs to be written has already been written, by myself or someone else, and the world's already suffering enough information overload so I'm careful with how much pollution I create in an internet polluted with media that fills our time but not necessarily our souls, so to speak. Much of it doesn't offer very long-term nourishment but only in the sake of candy; quick pacification but little long-term benefit and low application potential. And I'm still not sure this post has any application potential or any point other than for me to jot down a few relevant bookmarks and perhaps open a few minds up to different modes of thought that they may not normally exposed to. But least of all it's a cathartic expression of mind and justifiably some of our relatively benign behavior should be free from much analyzing lest we fall into the 'thinking about what I'm thinking about what I'm thinking about' halting problem or mindtrap that I'm prone to.
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