The week was unproductive because of my health issue (digestion problem). Last Sunday/Monday I've had so much pain in my stomach that I had to finally resort for medicines. So, here I am on a stricter diet.
I am also refraining from consuming caffeine because it was having a bad impact on my appetite. Past few months I had upped the intake. So, it might have also catalyzed the digestion problem. Instead of having food, I would simply go for coffee to lessen my hunger. I guess you wouldn't want to do that. Now, a couple of days without any coffee and I am finding it hard to be alert. Even during mid-day, an intended 15-minutes nap turns into an hour-long sleep. I find myself dozing off frequently despite having good sleep in the night. Probably, that's the aftermath of strong dependencies accumulated all these years. Let's see!
Anyway, for this newsletter, I haven't done much editing. Putting out my raw thoughts. The health issue has made me think about many moments and experiences. Hence, the title.
Let’s begin with a thought experiment.
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[[The Experience Machine]]
Imagine an organization contacting you with a premise that they have invented a bizarre device that lets you experience anything. That is to say, you can live any life you want to live as. You can have pleasures, pains. Anything. However, once tethered with the device, you are not allowed to be unplugged. Will you choose to have that experience?
This sounds familiar, right?
Yup! This is basically the plot of the movie Matrix (film theorist link), a famous thought experiment known as Nozick’s The Experience Machine. As verbose as it is, it lets you experience another life, another reality. It might have other variants like red-pill-blue-pill, amnesia chemicals, and (of course) Infinite Tsukuyomi from Naruto. You might have also watched series like Sword Art Online and Log Horizon.
**(Black Mirror enters the chat)**
Now what makes it bizarre is that you will not even know if you're tethered to the device? Will you still choose to have that experience? (if your initial instinct was "Sure. I will fly around the planets. Be a professional musician. Make animations. Travel. Live a satisfying life. The list goes on.")
If you ask me the same question, I am stupidly sure to deny getting into that machine. It poses far more philosophical-psychological conundrum for me, if I am to ponder deeply (again, that’s my cognitive-bias). I will even start to think that this reality we all live in is a simulation. (See: simulated universe thought experiment). Or perhaps, I am a just 50-year-old guy from the future who is living in 2020 in his mid-20s. This can continue...
The striking part about this is you might question all the memories you have and the experiences you have accumulated. Are you sure you are not already in the machine or any simulation? Are those memories fake? Can experiences be faked like someone planting a false experience in your childhood?
Side Note: I am a big fan of Ship of Theseus, a kind of identity paradox. Imagine if you slowly replace your memories each day with fake ones. After a certain time, all the original memories vanish. Are you still you? Now imagine your body parts (external and internal) being replaced slowly too. Combine both of these scenarios. Then at the end, are you the original “you”? What makes you “you”? (Re: Who am I?)
It's good to think about these things once in a while. But, if you do it often the world might think that you are out of your mind. Haha. :/
Anyway, there's a big difference in how we remember our own reality and how we remember the experience of it. For instance, you can only feel some of your childhood experiences strongly while memories may not be clear. Like, doing bicycle stunt and getting hurt. You might not remember how it came to be, but only the painful sensation remains.
#Reading
Memory Is the Shadow of Fact, the Artifact of Feeling
Lawrence Yeo | 9 min
Life, if zoomed-out enough, is only ups and downs (peak-end bias?). It can be thought of as a series of nodes, some bright, some dim. Think of it as important plots from an arbitrary story. We can't remember every detail but only a few.
Sometimes some events from the past feel vivid. They seem very important. They motivate us to do something with our present life.
For instance, a very long financial struggle could allow a person to live life without much materialistic needs.
Sometimes it's exactly the opposite. Moments that seem important in the present may become a fragmented memory in the future.
Whatever it is, our (emotional) interpretations of an event matters more than anything else. They drive the paths that follow thereafter. (It’s equally likely that interpretations are superficial.)
Sometimes such emotional assignments can also mask the actual memory. We get so much basked in the sensations of the experience that the memories start to feel unclear. But the emotions remain.
For instance, the first date with someone can give strong feelings but we don't remember all details - how we met, what we talked about.
What is weird is that this emotional assignment is unreliable. It changes in accordance with how we analyze the events. An event that seems negative at the moment could have positive impacts subsequently.
For instance, a breakup in a relationship might have felt very negative. But, upon frequent analysis months after months, it might actually have been a positive one that has changed life's course.
Conversely, a positive event might lead to negative outcomes later.
Say, a person gets a very high raise. There's a change in attitude that people don't like. S/he starts to be more boastful and egocentric.
Memories and emotions are intertwined. Knowing this allows us to be more selective about the events. We can hold onto important events and cherish for life. Others will just be fragmented memories without much impact. After all, we are the historian of our own past, an observer peeking from different temporal lenses.
Experience Machine Ethics
Jasper Gilley | 14 min
In this essay, the author presents the ethical implications of the Experience Machine and how laws should be enforced around it.
The experience machine can be thought of as a proto-entertainment-education media just like modern entertainment platforms. It's like putting Virtual Reality (VR time capsule video) on steroids, a heavy one. While such machines can have positive impacts on the industry, it could also have drastic negative effects on humanity.
First, the machine can mask the experience of the actual reality, the kinds that you get when interacting with the real people. All the emotions and the unpredictability of the real world are hidden away in the experience machine.
Secondly, people could be so much immersed in it that they choose not to be unplugged. This is directly seen in today's media too. People go on binge-watching, game-playing spurs just to escape day-to-day trenches of life. This can affect the economy of the world. Imagine if no-one does any work and spends their life daily in the machine.
Lastly, the ultimate effect is when most of the people choose to have unpleasant experiences. It can also be used as a means of torturing someone.
I think, just like any media, there could be regulations around the experience machine. A few regulations the author proposes are:
The Experience Machine should have a kill switch that can halt its operations. This is done to prevent people from having mental breakdowns.
The machine should have a health monitoring system to check for signs if people are stressed out or having mental breakdowns.
Strong privacy laws should be enforced just like modern [[Social Media]]. What type of data is stored? Who is allowed to use the data?
Pre-censorship should be done to those experiences that are likely to make the experiences dangerous.
Control of distribution of the machine?
At another end of the spectrum, it's a bit philosophical:
How can you define reality? What makes this reality we are having less of another experience?
My Thoughts
Although there are many pieces of research that are prevalent in the Brain-Computer Interface domain, the technology is nascent. It's an overstatement to even think that the Experience Machine is a near-future technology. Provided the current advancement in BCI, it can only do a few niche things, especially in the medical domain. Companies like [[Neuralink]] (a waitbutwhy link), Neurosky are only starting out. The modern iteration of the experience machine is locked up in the form of BCI-AR-VR tech. People interacting with each other without speaking, people controlling each other's hands are some experiments.
Still, it's fascinating to think about it. The Experience machine might be the ultimate technology to consume information; an amalgam of all the media.
For now, I am putting on my hat of skepticism for this far-fetched technology.
Here Be Black Holes
Surekha Davies | 16 min
This was an interesting essay about how seemingly-dissonant domain of science like astronomy and biology has similar storytelling framework.
On one end of the spectrum, the very first image of a Black Hole (veritasium link) was the result of combining data from multiple sources because otherwise, it would have required a single massive telescope, as large as the Earth, to even capture the image.
At the other end, throughout history, people had been using different observations from different sources (in the form of drawings, stories, folklores) for imaging Deep Sea creatures. One of many examples is [[Olaus Magnus’ Sea Serpent]] that depicts bizarre sea creatures that seem out of this world, like monsters from some sci-fi stories.
At first, from the modern perspective, we might be tempted to deny the factualness of such illustrations. But, on closer inspections at how difficult it was in those times to actually navigate the deep sea, things start to make sense. People (from marine biologist to fisherman to residence) might have glimpsed a part of such creatures. Or perhaps, have had first-hand encounters. Without proper recording instruments, those observations could only remain in memories. So people, through drawing and passing on stories, might have illustrated the creatures in hindsight.
In the absence of comprehensive and accessible information, acquiring knowledge about sea monsters and black holes calls for imaginative image-making. Perhaps more surprisingly, the black hole image has a lot in common with much earlier images of another sort of deep space, containing a different hidden entity: the sea monster.
Another fascinating way to look at this is how deep sea is also as mysterious as the deep space, both equally comprising of weird, bizarre conditions (like Brine Pool).
#Watching
The riddle of experience vs. memory
Daniel Kahneman | TED Talk | 16 min
It's always fascinating to listen to Kahneman's talks. Here, he talks about two types of “self”: Experiencing Self and Remembering Self.
While the experiencing self lives in the present and experiences it continuously, the remembering self is a storyteller that maintains the story of our lives and does all the decision-making.
In a way, the experiencing self only has emotional assignments to the events. It is able to re-live the past through sensations (and time?) instead of memories.
The remembering self -- as Humans are story-driven creatures -- only thinks in terms of important memories that are able to provide values and can impact decisions.
One important way to think about the difference is time:
For the experiencing self, a 2-week vacation is twice as good as the 1-week.
However, for the remembering self, the 2-week vacation is barely better because there isn't any new memory formed. There aren't any new stories to add.
That is, the larger the time, the greater the experiencing self gets affected.
For instance, for me when I had my hernia surgery my memory of the post-surgery effect makes the surgery painful as I wasn't able to urinate for 2 days. The doctors had to poke in some tubes to the bladder, which is still a bad memory. However, the experience during the surgery wasn't that painful as I can vaguely remember the entire operation.
I also loved the thought experiment Kahneman presented at the end:
Suppose you are given a chance to go on a vacation. But all the photos/pictures will be destroyed at the end of it. Will you choose to go?
Now, there’s a plot twist. What if you will be given a drug to forget all the memories? Will your decision change?
I think this puts a better perspective on the dichotomy of the two selves. If there aren't any memories, stories to be told, then will it even matter?
"We don't choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences."
The False Memory Effect - How Fake Memories Change Us
Pursuit of Wonder | 9 min
This is a fictional short story. However, the study referenced in the middle is based on a real study known as the "Lost In The Mall" experiment, which found that in the right conditions, we can assimilate or create entirely fake memories.
In this story, the main character Charlie was implanted with a fake memory in his childhood, which seemed true during those moments. Ultimately this had a profound positive impact on his life.
Although fictional, it's amazing how a false memory can have bizarre consequences (Butterfly Effect?)
The Past We Can Never Return To
Kurzgesagt | John Green | 9 min
John's voice is always soothing to listen to. Plus the animation does so much justice to the whole narration which is originally from John's podcast: Lascaux Paintings and the Taco Bell Breakfast Menu (highly recommended).
There is always this mysteriousness with paintings from the past that we can never fully grasp. It is as if the ghosts of the past remain there, staring at us, a shadow of surrealism we can never quite understand. A fragment of the past, not the actual past.
John uses hand stencils as a metaphor for that shadow, especially when looking at the cave paintings from Lascaux, a pre-historic cave, that are almost 17000 years old.
It also gives a sensation of how little we know of ourselves. And that's kinda sad and beautiful.
Art is beautiful. :)
The Rhythms in Everything
mystiverse | 11 min
I found this video philosophical.
Why is there life?
Why do we even exist?
Why is our universe fine-tuned for life? (Brian Greene TED Talk)
We can agree that modern physics is governed by the Standard Model (Fermilab video) and General Relativity. However, it's not only physics that seems to be fine-tuned but also biology. Why is that so?
This philosophical rabbit hole never ends. We exist and that's about it. The universe continues to exist even if we cease to exist. And that's kinda beautiful for me. This reminds me of a beautiful quote from Carl Sagan:
"The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself." - Carl Sagan
Just like we depend on the rhythm of the universe to be alive, the universe also needs our rhythm.
Lily and Jim
Don Hertzfeldt | 13 min
This is a hilarious animation that depicts the awkwardness of going on a blind date. Haha.
On a serious note: Don Hertzfeldt is a genius in animations like these. (See: Rejected). I got so much inspired that I did an 11-seconds stick figure animation.
Also, do check out Mattias Pilhede’s videos. I can relate to almost all of them.
#Fragments
Story: The Funny Thing About The Past
Hengtee Lim | 21 min
Beautiful. Inspiring.
Story: Black Holes
Hengtee Lim | 4 min
Poignant. Beautiful. The following lines hit close to home. Let it be!
That night I stared at some writing on a lonely computer screen, and sipped at a glass of wine.
And I thought that The Black Hole, with all its failures and unfinished work, was a unique kind of beautiful. Beautiful because it had tried and failed, lived and loved, and crashed and burned.
Poetry: I Hope I Can Love You This Way
Mahek Jangda | 3 min
This touched me in a different way, especially the ending:
"But first I hope I can love me this way....”
Music: The Lumineers - The Ballad Of Cleopatra
24 min
This takes me to places and time. Full of emotions. That's okay I guess. :)
Also, the whole story is marvelous. I just don't have words to describe how good it feels to listen (and watch) this. It’s a ballad of life full of love, relationships, choices, and regrets I guess.
Music: Moonwolf Departure
Pat LePoidevin | 6 min
Listening to this song after a very long time. Soothing.
Music: Drive Home
Steven Wilson | 8 min
This triggers a few memories. :)
#Ending-Thoughts
I am thinking about this quote by Art Garfunkel from his note to his younger self:
"What do I know that you may value? It's what you know that I have forgotten."
We often try to bury our past, speculate about the future, and worry too much today. At least that's the case with me. Lately, I am trying to not overthink much. However, I am failing at that task too like anything else. I just hope this time anxiety shall pass.
Thanks for sticking around. I appreciate it. I hope you could find some memories and experiences to wonder about. Do share your thoughts. Or share this newsletter to anyone who finds these bits interesting (and inspiring?).
Love,
Nish
PS: I have added an entry from my journal to my mind-cave - The Clock Strikes 12. Hope you’ll find it worth reading.
Also, I am listening to these podcasts currently: