Bees, Death, and Living Well

To the troubled reader:

Every day you will be confronted with things outside of your control. Sickness, storms, theft, accidents - these are the facts of life. They are not good or bad, but simply are. These indifferent things cannot harm you. Rather, you harm yourself when you judge these accidental facts as detrimental. For whatever happens is a part of nature, and nothing that is natural is bad in itself - only when we make it so. And so things outside of your control are nothing to regret, or worry about, or fear. When you are faced with indifferent matters of chance such as these, tell yourself: 'I am freed from the burden of trying to control this.' How much more peaceful to be concerned only with those things which you can affect. Nature cannot be otherwise. If we are to be only a part of it, we must accept all that it confronts us with.

Through drawing this division in your mind, you can separate the wheat from the chaff and safely discard that which we cannot control. With practice, you can train yourself to recognize this more easily. Soon you will mold and temper your mind in such a way to accept the stresses and weights placed upon it. If you make disciplining your judgement a habit, you will flex where previously you would have snapped. With practice, you can ride the waves of emotion that used to crash around you. To domesticate your emotions, rather to be ruled by them - to stand up straight, not straightened - is to live in accordance with nature (1). Only then can you respond properly to that which truly matters - matters of choice. Honest choice and just action are only possible with the clarity of a disciplined mind. So you must start at the beginning - by watching your thoughts and rejecting those judgments of indifferent things.

These are the teachings of the Stoic school. I hope that these writings find you in good fortune, and if you find the present difficult to bear, that I can lend you some of the relief that I have found in these old books. Some of our childhood friends have told me that you have adopted the Epicurean tradition of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n Roll (2). These pleasures are not in themselves bad. But through them one can develop vice. So it is my duty to warn you of the life of pleasure. Examine what this life looks like, where it leads, and how you will feel when it is over. And so I can only share my personal arguments against the Epicurean school, and hope that you receive them before you have fully adopted their doctrine.

The Stoic ethic stems directly from their worldview, one that is in sharp contradiction to the Epicurean. Allow me to draw the distinction through illustration. Remind yourself of the beautiful and diverse forms that nature takes. This is a pleasure in itself. The thousands of different birds, with their hollow bones and colorful feathers, are not unlike the variety of people and situations that you will be faced with every day. Life appears random because we are too small to see the whole picture. But there is a deep order to all things, and this order is sometimes revealed for a moment in the beauty of nature. It is from this order that a sense of duty stems, and from that duty nature reminds us that pleasures should be tempered. Nature reveals our nature, and through it, the way to happiness.

Consider bees. Their wings are laughably small, so much so that their flight was argued to be impossible. But the wings of bees are finely tuned to the size of their large, fuzzy bodies so as to maximize the amount of pollen they can carry. Bees waste nothing: they use this pollen to make honey - pure energy - and spend this time and energy to build a hive for future generations. Bees intuitively use what we must use math to prove: that hexagons are a fantastic shape for building. A grid of tessellated hexagons maximizes the perimeter surface area per unit volume better than any other shape (Figures 1 and 2). Each cell of the honeycomb has entry and exit points. And this fantastically complex and astonishingly regular honeycomb was built simultaneously, with bees starting at different corners and in the middle, meeting and converging at the borders. Bees can fill a sheet of any size with no gaps. A hive of bees may as well be one organism. (It certainly evolves as one.) And a hive functions perfectly with its environment, too. Bees grow and evolve with the flowers, predicting each other's changes to the benefit of the whole natural world.

This sense of wonder found in nature is not idle chatter. You must recognize your common identity and strive to live up to the orderly ideal of nature. Strive to be like a bee, which never fails to fulfill its function (3). Function as a human in the fullest sense - not as mere animal, or individual, or even father, but as a member of the greatest family to grace the universe: nature. In your dealings with others, build a honeycomb. Think and act correctly even when you are separated from others. In doing so, all of humanity will harmonize with each other and in accord with the universal order of nature. To do otherwise - to lie, to act unjustly, and to be misled by false perceptions - is to act against nature and betray the beauty all natural beings hold inside of themselves.

For the sense of beauty that we find in the sand and the surf and the stars is not something exterior to us humans. Nature is not a beautiful object - it is beautiful because we are part of its order (4). And so the concept of symmetry appeals to us innately as a reflection of the universal order of nature. Yet I'll be the first to tell you that asymmetry can be as beautiful as the most regular snowflake. The splaying of a field of corn, the blotches of a cow, the cracks on a loaf of bread, a chipped tooth, a beauty mark, or strand of hair that escapes again and again from its position behind the ear - these are the hauntingly beautiful visions of life (5). Their appeal is found not in order but disorder. Asymmetry reminds us of life's incredible fragility. For just as ripe fruit tastes the sweetest just before it spoils, life is all the sweeter with the knowledge that it is short. Symmetrical forms in the natural world show us that life is resilient; a species persists beyond any individual. This is why all living things reproduce - a kind of immortality - creating new life in their image and striving to persist in the world. Life is an order grafted onto the world that can stand up against the erosion of entropy. But inevitably things wear down and fall apart. And asymmetry gently reminds us of this fact - not in a distressing way, but like a friend who allows you to appreciate all the good that still remains. This gives youth a vibrant energy - a whole life yet to be lived - and old age a wizened, graceful sense of the shortness of life.

Children are beautiful in their youthful energy and flawed asymmetries. They are like bread. You can prepare all you want, to attempt to form them, but just as the cracks in the crust are unknowable before baking, children have a delightful quality of novelty. It is the unknowability and irregularity that gives the cracking crust its beauty (Figure 3). These things resemble life in the fullest sense. They are truly present, living and reacting to whatever happens. Be a child for as far as you can go. Children are made by us, yes, but their particular aspects - their freckles, personalities, sound of their laughs, their virtues, vices, and futures - are outside of our control. That lack of control, that unpredictability, is where beauty can be found (Figure 4). It belongs to nature: to an order that is unseen, an order that has the appearance of randomness, but an order all the same.

Like all that is good and natural, bees are not an impossibility but, rather, the upper limit of an animal's shape, the logical conclusion of a specific purpose being filled in the natural world. Nature demands of the bees that they fulfill their function. And so too, nature demands that we fulfill ours. What is our function? To live in accordance to nature. Aristotle remarked that plants can eat and reproduce, and animals can see and feel. Pleasure belongs in this area of life. As humans we inhabit the pleasures of food and sex from time to time, but to rest there indefinitely is to betray our human nature for an animal one. No, I choose to transcend my animal nature for something higher. For we are animals gifted with a rational mind, itself a chance at serenity, wisdom, and happiness. Happiness comes first with the mastery of judgement, then of assent to nature, then in just action. To fail to achieve this internal mastery is to betray the trust that nature has placed in us by virtue of each of our astonishing lives.

The Epicureans claim that there is no order to nature. For them, the universe is random atoms, flailing about like the bodies of newborn calves. Let us suppose for the sake of argument, that this is true. Even if it were so, the answer to life's question is the same: suspend judgement to domesticate your emotions, assent only to that which is within your control, and act justly in the face of anything. These principles lead to happiness, even in the face of complete randomness. To ignore them entirely is to behave lower than an animal, which at least knows what is good for itself, unlike the fool who is angered by the falling of rain or the beating of the sun, as if they were unnatural. No, as Aurelius often said, providence or atoms - virtue is still up to you (6).

And we must engage life with a full stride, for death is nipping at our heels. The fragility of life, the shadow of death, hangs over your every action. There is no time to lose, and this makes virtue all the rarer. I will share an exercise that allows one to cultivate this sense of urgency. Imagine the moment you realize that you will die. Not now, but visualize yourself on your deathbed with hours to live. What emotions will you feel? Fear, maybe. Regret, maybe. Satisfaction, almost certainly not. What kind of person would feel satisfaction at the moment of death if they feel life has been unfairly revoked, and too early at that? The trick is in the realization that life is no one's lot, not by right. To live, to breathe, to read these very words on the page is an extraordinary fact of the universe. Most of it is and will always be lifeless. Even to think the thoughts you are now thinking is a rarity beyond comprehension. And that rarity means that the ability to think is constantly at risk of loss (7). So when the moment of death is upon you, say not 'why me' or 'why so soon' but: 'how amazing I was here at all' and 'I am thinking now, so I have more to do'.

What will the moment of death feel like? The smell of old flesh mixing with the incontinence and cleaning chemicals of a hospital bed. The engine of your body running hot - straining, gears grinding without oil, and finally melting. This is the moment when the delicate machinery of your body can no longer hold off the slow, inevitable decay that all living things must accept. This is when your billions of tiny bees working in concert cannot keep your body stitched together any longer. You will die surrounded by loved ones or truly alone - it is hard to say which is more preferable, to lose or to be lost - and when you die you will either dissolve into atoms or be released into the universal order that you were born into. In either case, it is nothing to fear. Only fear choosing to live a bad life (8). Bodily pleasures will fade even quicker than your memory of these words. So write words of your own and inscribe them on your heart, as here I have humbly attempted to do.

Your friend, both in life and living well,

Zachary G. Augustine

Figures

1 - Apis florea nest closeup (Sean Hoyland)
2 - A page of a book constructed from a hexagon (Robert Bringhurst)
3 - Bread (Zachary G. Augustine)
4 - Postcard from 1952 (Explosions in the Sky)

References

(1.1) “Stoicism is about the domestication of emotions, not their elimination.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness.
(1.2) “To stand up straight – not straightened.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. (Trans. Hays). III.5
(2) Epicurus. The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia. Trans. Inwood and Gerson. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
(3) “At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work – as a human being… Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?” — Aurelius, Meditations V.1
(4) “our brains developed out of nature...and the architecture of our brains was born from the same trial and error, the same energy particles, the same pure mathematics that happen in flowers and jellyfish...it is nonsensical to ask why we find nature beautiful. We are not observers on the outside looking in. We are on the inside too.” — Alan Lightman, The Accidental Universe 83.
(5) “even the by-products of natural processes have a certain charm and attractiveness. Bread, for instance, in the course of its baking, tends to crack open here and there, and yet these very cracks, which are, in a sense, offences against the baker’s art, somehow appeal to us and, in a curious way, promote our appetite for the food....the fact that they follow from natural processes gives them an added beauty and makes them attractive to us.” — Aurelius, Meditations. III.2
(6) Aurelius, Meditations. IV.3 and X.6
(7) “So we need to hurry. Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our understanding – our grasp of the world – may be gone before we get there.” — Aurelius, Meditations III.1
(8) “There's no reason in being alive if you're not happy. Don't be one of those people that walks around miserable, hating their life. You can change anything about your life that you don't like.”  — Anthony Green

Works Cited

Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. Trans. Hays. New York: Modern Library, 2002.
Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. 3rd ed. Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, Publishers, 2004.
Epictetus. Discourses, Fragments, Handbook. Trans. Hard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Epicurus. The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia. Trans. Inwood and Gerson. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
Lightman, Alan P. The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew. New York: Vintage, 2013.
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets. New York: Random House, 2005.

Make The Internet Work For You, or: Stop Reading What Facebook Gives You

I believe that reading is the most important leisure, hobby, and work that you can possibly do. So I spend a lot of time seeking out, consuming, and organizing information. And nearly all of the most important and interesting human thought ever recorded is available free, on the internet. When you think about it that way, reading is as close as we're ever going to get to time travel for a long, long time. 

Like all new technologies, especially information technologies, the internet has left a lot of people confused, disoriented, and scared (1). But the internet is not inherently destructive or even distracting. It is just a tool, and can be used however you'd like (2). 

I get email newsletters from some of most loved places on the internet (3.1-6). While email is an amazing form of communication, it's a poor format for long-form reading. Email newsletters are clunky--they collect, grow stagnant, and are an eyesore, even with a Gmail filter into a "To-Read" label. I've come to hate getting email newsletters, so I never look at them. I now get most of the stories I enjoy while I'm procrastinating on Facebook--which is disappointing on several levels: procrastinating is only so if it's unproductive, and Facebook is almost always unproductive. Facebook is also not a good way to discover the web, and impossible to remember what you actually want to read.

No one actually likes using Facebook, but most people do constantly. There is an obligation to between necessary information, event invites, and simple communication. There are ways to mitigate this such as self-control timers, and deleting the app from your phone. While these are effective and I recommend them, they only treat the symptoms, but no the cause of why the internet can make you unhappy. 

People feel bad after they use Facebook, but they feel as if they have little other choice, because they want the news and the articles from their friends. So Facebook would be better if it was only fulfilled its good and simple functions--with all the news and fun articles ported elsewhere. I often imagine a perfect Facebook newsfeed, but only full of articles that I actually wanted to look at, and people I cared enough to hear about. If Facebook was divided like this, you'd likely spend less time on it and feel better when you do.

Limiting these distractions and unlocking the full potential of the internet is not a herculean task of willpower. It just takes a little foresight. So I unsubscribed and unliked all of these pages--and made a free Feedly account (4). 

Feedly is a RSS reader, which is an impermanent, low-pressure stream of content like Facebook, but as personalizable and devoid of bullshit as an email newsletter (actually less advertising and housekeeping compared to email--and no duplicates) (5).

When I see something I like, I add it to Pocket. The web app is gorgeous and distraction free, and the mobile app is lightweight and works fantastic offline. Here I can read at my own pace and without 99+ tabs open and weighing on my mind and computer (6). Pocket also has impressive sharing features, with the ability to send right to someone else's Pocket queue--just send it to the account they signed up to Pocket with.

What you do isn't nearly as important as what you don't. It's as Chuck Palahniuk wrote in Fight Club, "If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't" (7). Reading is very much the same way. If you cut out the crap, then all that's left is good content.

Now, my Facebook is only people I want to hear from. My email is only things I need to act on (we can talk about Inbox zero another time). My Feedly is a fun way to discover new things, but waiting patiently in the background and not demanding my attention. And my Pocket app is a solid and productive way to learn--my go-to way to wait on the bus or relax before class. 

It took some work and a lot of thought, but I've never been more pleased with technology. And never less afraid. The internet is just a tool, and you'd be foolish not to use it well. Or at the very least, think about what you really want from it, and bend it to your will, rather than vice versa. To stand up straight, not straightened (8). That is the only way we have ever gotten anywhere with the tools we've created.

References:

(1) The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood -- James Gleick

(2) The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains -- Nicholas Caar

(3.1) MIT Tech Review

(3.2) The Next Web

(3.3) Ryan Holiday

(3.4) Farnam Street

(3.5) Vice

(3.6) Dinosaur Comics!

(4) Feedly 

(5) "Managing My Reading List with Feedly & Pocket" -- Marius Schulz

(6) Pocket (formerly Read it Later)

(7) Fight Club (Ch. 5) -- Chuck Palahniuk

(8) Meditations (III.5) -- Marcus Aurelius (trans. Hays)

modus operandi

I hope to post about what I'm reading and writing in an effort to think through it. 

I am interested in the concept of a mental model, or a systematic framework by which a person organizes and interprets the world. 

I am also interested in: the survivorship bias and other fallacies, stoicism and practical philosophy, the history of science and technology, the rise and future of information technology, science fiction, futurology, graphic design, evolution (in particular apes, birds, and the social insects), and patterns in nature, and our mind's tendency to find or create these patterns i.e. thought as analogy.

The way I approach all of this is through my own mental model of selective processing and archiving. This blog is an extension of that because I believe that we write entirely to find out what we're thinking (1). Organization, productivity, self-help, mindfulness, and reading and writing in general are then more practical skills I hope to cultivate in pursuit of this ideal.

This blog is then more of a practice at solidifying my thoughts, rather than an end product. At best it's only a record of my attempts. I hope to post reading lists and book reviews from time to time. I will be the sole owner of this blog, but I welcome guest posts. If you would like to talk email me in the sidebar. My graphic design portfolio is always available in the sidebar if you're looking for that.

References:
(1) "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." --Joan Didion

Formatting:

Because the internet is incredibly fast and accessible, it has a great potential for distraction. While links are integral to anything interesting, I'll try my best to signify them with numbers which correspond to endnotes, as shown above. This has the added benefit of being easily searchable, for me and for you :)

How to Live or: A Philosophical Reading List

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” -- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Philosophy gets a bad rap. Its purpose has never been one of airy speculation removed from reality. No, it focuses on just thought and justified action: how to live and for what. While these writers had philosophy explicitly in mind, their ideas are hardly nonsensical or even complex. Everyday life is their primary aim. For all time, people have looked inward for answers to life's problems. Philosophy is nothing more than the record of their conscious and focused effort toward a solution.

No one is immune to the issues that philosophers deal with. While there is a tendency to white-knuckle our own problems, everything you're dealing with has been dealt with before, countless times. Why not benefit from the hard-earned lessons of others? We are all struggling to figure it out, and no matter what you want to call it, their strategies for life's hardship matter--more than anything.

Philosophy is simply self-reflection, a personal meditation like writing, like cooking, like reading, like running. Written philosophy can take many forms, most more intimidating than others, but a select few beautifully simple and direct. The very best walk you through life's doubt and uncertainty, placing you at the beginning of the path of relief from hardship, ready and willing to handle anything that comes your way with grace.

While nearly anything that can be called knowledge originated within the domain of philosophy, what fuzzy questions that remain are those that have not been solved and probably never will be. Because of the natural process of differentiation among modes of thinking and their formalization into disciplines, philosophy has given birth to the self-contained spheres of politics, literature, religion, math, engineering, and science. Philosophy's own sphere of influence shrinks with each offshoot, inevitably resulting in a discipline whose scope is at once limited and grand. Thus, the poor contemporary opinion of what is rightly humankind's oldest and most valuable pursuit.

This was not always the case, and so long as we live and are concerned with doing it well, will never be the fate of philosophy. Although I believe philosophy is much broader than the Western canon, I've selected works only from it to illustrate my point: that practical wisdom is few and far between and even 'philosophy' has its fair share of gems hidden in complex text.

Note that I can only recommend books that I've actually read. In order of importance:

Meditations  -- Marcus Aurelius (trans. Hays)

Not just the most practical and readable philosophical text, but the greatest book ever written. A true manual for how to live, or how to best deal with the all parts of life--especially the bad. Despite being the most powerful man in the world as the last good emperor of Rome, Aurelius humbled himself every night by reminding himself of how to control what he can, and how to best deal with what he can't control. He is an exemplar of virtue particularly the difficult ones such as humility, patience, and acceptance. Aurelius lived every breath of his short life and dealt with the harshest adversity as calmly as the greatest fortune. (Don't read anything other than the Hays translation!)

On Liberty -- John Stuart Mill

Mill believed the Stoics were the greatest product of the ancient mind, and it shows. His fierce emphasis on independence, humility, and personal honesty and responsibility culminate in a reassuring meditation on how to remain sane in society.

The Consolations of Philosophy -- Alain de Botton

Semi-historical essays about Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, all of which--despite the popular conception--were concerned not with speculation but with living well. Their theories uniquely color their lives and formal philosophies, but a common thread binds them. The author, de Botton, is unbearably French but tells a great story.

The Problems of Philosophy -- Bertrand Russell

There is no better introductory text, survey course, defense, or history of philosophy than this essay by the man himself. The last section argues in the same manner of Plato and Aristotle: that conscious, focused thought is the best way to spend one's time.

Letters from a Stoic -- Seneca (trans. Campbell)

It reads like a popularized, aphoristic version of Aurelius, because Seneca's thoughts were recorded in his writings to others instead of to himself (as Aurelius intended). Seneca also failed to live the patient, virtuous life he preached, often folding when it mattered most. While Aurelius, Epicurus, and Seneca all enjoyed great status in life, only the latter let it affect his being. These are the small differences between three very similar thinkers, and it does make a difference. However, Seneca's focus on coming to terms with death and his poetic approach to practical philosophy makes for great reading. He practically invented the essay format.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir -- Norman Malcolm

The author paints a picture of philosopher Wittgenstein as an eccentric, intense, and deeply caring individual through over 40 letters they shared after their time together at Cambridge. Wittgenstein has an intense dislike for any insincerity, imprecision, or lack of sophistication in everyday speech. He frowns even more upon insincere sophistication, fake precision, or misused jargon, which naturally makes him despise philosophers. Wittgenstein fought his whole life not to become an academic, but still philosophy was the only work that satisfied him. He is paranoid, especially about his own work, and extremely self-deprecating. Despite this, Wittgenstein lives in exact accordance with his personal ideals, chief among them being kindness, generosity, and honesty. It's bizarre but amazing. Malcolm often refers to his friendship as emotionally draining but deeply satisfying, and I imagine that's what it would be like to take absolutely no concessions in life. This memoir could very well be renamed "Wittgenstein's personal ethic". (Note: this is one of the few books Amazon doesn't have stocked cheaply, so be on the lookout).

On the Genealogy of Morality -- Nietzsche (trans. Diethe)

Nietzsche takes the Stoic idea of personal responsibility and a strong will and pushes it to its extreme, tracing questioning the very idea of strength and weakness in society.

Symposium / Phaedrus -- Plato (trans. Nehamas/Woodruff)

If you didn't know any better, these two dialogues read as literature. They portray a version of the good life and, if you read closely, argue for it. Symposium deals with thought, knowledge, and love, while Phaedrus speaks of balance and truth in art, philosophy, and life. All with snappy Socrates and his fancy sandals.

Nichomachean Ethics -- Aristotle (trans. Reeve)

Prerequisite: patience, or a familiarity with Aristotle. Very rewarding and infinitely deep, but complicated and hard to get into. I need to revisit it.

Review: The Consolations of Philosophy

The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton is is listed as "Self Help" first, and "Philosophy" second. That is reflected perfectly in the writing (1).

The French author gives short biographies of perhaps the 6 most misunderstood philosophers and their works. Even better, he traces the connections between the works forming two neat chains of intellectual development. The two groups of three, indicated on the striking watermelon like cover--see de Botton's previous work for more of his strange style (2)--are as follows:

     Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca the Younger

     Montaigne, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche

The cover's accolades states that this is a "fine introduction to the world of philosophy". If you know some philosophy but want to find out more about the lives of these thinkers, then this can be considered an introduction. While I would read almost any well-researched intellectual history, especially on such a good group of philosophers, it is the restraint and composition that the author exercises that makes this so refreshing. De Botton's writing is simple, addictive, and compelling. 

The Chapter on Montaigne was one of the best of the bunch, and really puts academics and authors and "great thinkers" in perspective. I will definitely be looking into the essays of such a humble, wise man. It also introduced me to Schopenhauer, and completely changed my view of Epicurus and Nietzsche. I would have also been surprised by the morals of Socrates and Seneca if I didn't already idolize them. 

Ultimately I think this is a book about morals and practical philosophy. Living in accordance with well-reasoned, personal virtues sits not just at the core of philosophy, but life as well. I think this sort of thing isn't talked, thought, or written about nearly enough, and for that it receives my highest recommendation, right alongside Meditations, The War of Art, and The Joy of Living (3.1-3). They may seem cheesy at first glance, but these books are incredibly deep and have changed my life. 

If receiving short and poignant life lessons, entirely devoid of condescension or pretension (as much as a Frenchman can muster), from some of the most absurd, frankly ridiculous men who have ever lived sounds like a good time, then this is it.

References:

(1) The Consolations of Philosophy -- Alain de Botton

(2) How Proust Can Change Your Life -- Alain de Botton

(3.1)  Meditations  -- Marcus Aurelius (trans. Hays)

(3.2)  The War of Art -- Steven Pressfield

(3.3)  The Joy of Living -- Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

The Experience Machine

My good friend Avery brought the game Castle, Forest, Island, Sea to my attention (1). If you haven't played it yet, I'm about to spoil it. Go play it. Okay? Good.

The game goes through the same areas regardless of what choices you make, but it's a great way to see the practical implications of various philosophical views. It's almost like a literary story with philosophical themes. How the game leads you down a linear path and presents you with "choices"--in the video game they're-not-really-choices sense of the word--is supremely interesting. Castle presents a deterministic view of the very act of choosing philosophical beliefs.

It reminds me of the Steam game The Stanley Parable (2). They both destroy the notion of choice in a similar way. The game is brilliant and quite funny, but also to express a difficult point. By exposing its own internal structure, Stanley makes the artificiality of video games painfully obvious. One particular ending of the game refers to menial jobs. It gives that wonderful feeling of existential dread. The game makes you push buttons to advance the script in exactly the same way that a mindless worker would. And video games are supposed to be a leisure activity. 

A fully deterministic world would be boring and predictable unless one didn't have full knowledge of the world's predictability. That is, if we remain ignorant to the true nature of the world it makes no difference whether there are a finite amount of choices, or whether free will exists. If everything seems unpredictable then it might as well be, at least from the experiential side of things.

That's where the Experience Machine section of Castle comes in. Your character opens a book and becomes absorbed in an ideal world. "Ideal" not in the sense that this virtual world provides boundless pleasure, but rather, the perfect amount of pleasure, challenge, suffering, preordained outcome, and free ones--all resulting in the truest sense of happiness. We as people like choice, or at least the illusion of it. In fact, one can't be happy without sadness as a reference point. So too with other emotions such as boredom, tiredness, etc. Aristotle's golden mean of pleasure and virtue seems to be the obvious inspiration for this more modern thought experiment. I find it very similar to The Matrix (3). Agent Smith says that the first Matrix was a perfect world of boundless pleasure, but humans grew bored if life didn't have enough challenges, enough defeats to make the victories worthwhile. In this way, the machines settled on the frustrating modern world, with all it's potential successes and actual failures intact for all of it's human inhabitants. So it is with human motivation.

The end-of-game recap of the Experience Machine describes the situation as one that, given the choice, most people would turn down: with a few notable exceptions who'd accept it. You'd be happy to know that the Epicureans, Stoics, and some Aristotelians (depending on how literally you read the Ethics) fall into the latter category. Presumably, these Hellenistic philosophers would be happy to accept the experience of the machine even if they knew it wasn't real (not getting into that word). I'd argue this is because these three ethical schools make pleasure, virtue, and happiness/excellence/areté (respectively) the final end, and the Experience Machine provides all that in precisely the perfect amount that each theory necessitates.

However, I believe virtually everyone would choose the Machine if and only if it was impossible to determine the reality of the world, once firmly inside it.  Any prior knowledge of the Machine's world being fake would be erased upon entry, much like The Matrix. Unlike The Matrix, there would have to be no way of finding this out, or ever getting out. That is, our world and the world inside the Machine would then both be rea", because there is no way to find out otherwise. The Machine is interesting because it may not be so hypothetical. We have just as much reason to believe that we are in it now as to the contrary. This possibility changes nothing except in the way that some philosopher's privilege the truly Real (with a capital R, meaning objective reality one would see if all barriers and illusions were removed, i.e. outside of the Matrix. As Morpheus first says, actually quoting Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, one of the founding texts of media aesthetics, "Welcome to the desert of the Real.") (4). But why is this the case? In a truly perfect Experience Machine, where your sense are all you can ever know, why would we subjugate them? The position I'm furthering, one of taking the Machine, or, at the very least, accepting it once you're in it, is similar to how Aristotle places his trust back in the senses after Plato's extreme skepticism. (See Raphael's School of Athens (5). Why is Plato pointing up? And Aristotle?) 

If one accepts this position, then I believe a specific type of physical theory must directly follow. Whether it would be determinate or indeterminate, and further, what it would appear to those inside the system, is a question I have no idea how to even approach. 

However, it's not so simple to accept this position. Stanley and Castle made me transpose video games' notion of linearity into real life: is the total set of possible philosophical beliefs limited in number? 

If there are only a finite amount of beliefs to be held, then they will all eventually be discovered and presented with time and effort. This applies equally well to philosophy, morality, religion, and physical theories. If there is a correct view of each, one can only hope that perseverance and lack of ignorance will naturally select these correct views out of the less-correct ones. But if both of these types of views reoccur--that is, the set of total beliefs is assumed to be finite-- then even a liberal reading of free will is powerless to invent and ponder novel views of the world. (I think the whole notion of "novel discovery" is vastly overrated--I often think that the philosophic/scientific world has this massive virginity complex about discovery: as if, correct or interesting views aren't worthwhile if they aren't novel or freshly discovered, and I think that lies in the selfish desire to take credit for things and be remembered--but that's neither here nor there.) Ignoring the discovery aspect, I am optimistic that a metaphysics of this nature would eventually produce real insight through science. Or there would simply be nothing more to discover after a certain point. Do we then become like Dr. Manhattan (6)? Alternatively, we could get sick of the search and there could be no scientific answer. Like a dying Feynman says, "If it turns out it is like an onion with millions of layers and we are just sick and tired of looking at the layers -- then that is the way it is" (7).

Consider the alternative case. If there is an infinite amount of beliefs to be had, then the chances of discovering the correct ones out of the ocean of possibilities seems hopelessly slim. At least, a position that doesn't trust the senses would have no way of discerning the correct and less-correct ones. We would be limited by what we could imagine, and may miss certain possibilities outside of the realm of our experience. For example, if a man hypothetically never knew hunger, he would also have no knowledge of being too full. Conversely, a position such as Aristotle's that does trust the senses would find a tight correlation between proposed theories and realities in determining correct theories i.e. scientific inquiry that naturally progresses. We still face the above problem of searching, but in this case philosophy would not be a hindrance to science so long as we can use the senses.

For these reasons I'm inclined the think the senses are a form of truth. I consider the Experience Machine just as real as whatever world we're living in, because the machine I picture in my mind is essentially this world as far as I can tell.

One last note: Castle asks what is philosophy and records player responses. A good proposal was "what science doesn't deal with"--although this is perhaps too narrow. I just wrote "everything", but of course this is unsatisfying. Philosophy is perhaps the hardest category to pin down, although my best guess at the moment would be: thinking about thinking. This includes most metaphysics, ethics, language, games, math, religion, and everyday conversation. It excludes most sciences, except psychology and behavioral econ, I think. The latter two fields are much less science and much more logical, rational explanation, which is what I think philosophy values more highly than data. It also excludes art and literature, although they can certainly be philosophic to the degree that they encourage thinking about thinking. 

Between Stanley, Castle, and Bertrand Russell's excellent History of Western Philosophy, I've been pretty busy thinking about philosophy (8). Although by no means is this blog supposed to be only philosophy. I don't anticipate posts being this long, especially during school. Anyway, the important thing in my mind is to devote a little time to explore your own thoughts and see where they lead. As I'll explain in more depth (hopefully) next time, I think this is perhaps the most important thing one can do for himself. These type of fringe thoughts often end up being the most valuable to record. And the most fruitful.

References:
(1) Castle, Island, Forest, Sea
(2) The Stanley Parable
(3) The Matrix
(4) Simulacra and Simulation -- Jean Baudrillard 
(5) The School of Athens -- Raphael
(6) Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen
(7) "On Science and God" -- Richard Feynman
(8) The History of Western Philosophy -- Bertrand Russell