Reading time: About 6 minutes, 1300 words
Get 7 for Sunday in your inbox. → Subscribe here.
This issue is https://7forsunday.com/22
March 05, 2023 — #22 →
Periscope depth →
When we have a bit of time to relax, we tend to spend time on activities that provide us with a quick dopamine hit. This is especially the case when we spend our downtime in the digital world. The key to relaxation is to invest in strategies that make your mind less stimulated. Usually this means spending more time in the analog world.
~ Chris Bailey from, The Key to Relaxation
slip:4ucite1.
That analog world can be outside moving or inside doing some yoga, sipping coffee, reading, or spending time with people physically present. The more time I can spend in the analog world, the better my life is.
I have a lot of hard-learned knowledge around what works for me in the morning, and I urge you to experiment to find out what works for you. For years I’ve been using the word “surfacing” to refer to that moment when I transition from simply being myself, to engaging with the world through technology. Surfacing is a submarine reference; Like a submarine, at some point each morning—sometimes after Noon—I sneak up to periscope depth and without making a ripple on the surface I peek to see what in the world might be close at hand. I know that once I break the surface, my life that day changes. One moment, I’m out of sight being self-directed (not necessarily selfish, but rather directing myself) and the next moment there’s an endless world vying for my attention.
My point is not that there’s something wrong with the world. (There is, but that’s not my point.) My point is that the world is simply present. It is ever-present. It’s not the world’s responsibility to not bother me. It is my responsibility to choose. I must choose when to engage and when to be the void. I must choose how to be present for those to whom I am beholden, and I must choose to not waste my energies on everything else. Because there is literally an infinite amount of everything else and chasing that is a fool’s errand.
ɕ
The yellow bow tie in your eye →
I mean it took 10 minutes sitting in a cafe staring at my laptop screen and repeatedly cocking my head back and forth, like an absolute goon, but I can see Haidinger’s brushes!
~ Matt Webb from, Filtered for supersenses
slip:4uieho1.
If you like what I’m doing, you’ll probably also like Webb’s Interconnected. I was skimming through, and spun off digging into optics and eyes and yellow bow ties. I’ve never (or I’ve completely forgotten) known about this before today. Like Webb, I was astounded to realize that I can see Haidinger’s brushes. It’s an optical phenomenon in the macula of the retina. Not everyone has the biology to see it, but with certain light coming into your eye this defect of our magnificent optical systems is revealed. Just when I think, “meh, what wonders could possibly be left…”
ɕ
Choice with Joe Pellerito →
What are the personal and professional impacts of podcasting on hosts, and how do they navigate feedback and balance with other life commitments?
Joe Pellerito reflects on the balance between passion projects and family life, sharing insights from his podcasting journey.
I’m going into topics I’m personally passionate about and I also see it as almost a gift for the guest. So whatever that guest is passionate about, what I’ve noticed is they say, “Joe thank you so much. That’s always going to be out there on the internet. My grandkids can hear it someday.”
~ Joe Pellerito (5:38)
Craig and Joe discuss the challenges and rewards of podcasting, focusing on the feedback they receive from listeners and guests. Joe shares his initial fixation on numbers and how he has since shifted his mindset to focus more on the value of each conversation. He emphasizes that even polarizing topics, like atheism, can spark meaningful discussions, and some episodes resonate with people in unexpected ways. Joe values the personal feedback he receives, especially when listeners share how his episodes helped them feel less alone in their experiences.
They also explore the impact podcasting has on their personal lives, particularly the balance between creative work and family time. Joe reflects on how his podcasting schedule has changed over time, reducing the number of episodes to prioritize his family, especially as his son approaches the end of high school. He talks about the support he receives from his family, like his wife helping to host guests when they come to their home, and the importance of making time for both podcasting and family moments.
(more…)The gaming problem →
As the power of AI grows, we need to have evidence of its sentience. That is why we must return to the minds of animals.
~ Kristin Andrews and Jonathan Birch from, What has feelings?
slip:4uaeea10.
This article ate my face. I was scrolling through a long list of things I’d marked for later reading, I glanced at the first paragraph of this article… and a half-hour later I realized it must be included here. I couldn’t even figure out what to pull-quote because that requires choosing the most-important theme. The article goes deeply into multiple intriguing topics, including sentience, evolution, pain, and artificial intelligence. I punted and just quoted the sub-title of the article.
The biggest new-to-me thing I encountered is a sublime concept called the gaming problem in assessing sentience. It’s about gaming, in the sense of “gaming the system of assessment.” If you’re clicking through to the article, just ignore me and go read…
…okay, still here? Here’s my explanation of the gaming problem:
Imagine you want to wonder if an octopus is sentient. You might then go off and perform polite experiments on octopods. You might then set about wondering what your experiments tell you. You might wonder if the octopods are intelligent enough to try to deceive you. (For example, if they are intelligent enough, they might realize you’re a scientist studying them, and that convincing you they are sentient and kind, would be in their best interest.) But you definitely do not need to wonder if the octopods have studied all of human history to figure out how to deceive you—they definitely have not because living in water they have no access to our stored knowledge. Therefore, when studying octopods, you do not have to worry about them using knowledge of humans to game your system of study.
Now, imagine you want to wonder if an AI is sentient. You might wonder will the AI try to deceive you into thinking it’s sentient when it actually isn’t. We know that we humans deceive each other often; We write about it a lot, and our deception is seen in every other form of media too. Any AI created by humans will have access to a lot (most? all??) of human knowledge and would therefore certainly have access to plenty of information about how to deceive a person, what works, and what doesn’t. So why would an AI not game your system of study to convince you it is sentient?
That’s the gaming problem in assessing sentience.
ɕ
Talent is bullshit →
Marty is a death camp survivor. He’s got the tattoo. He never speaks about the experience directly (I only know through my friend Pablo, who originally introduced me to Marty) but he’ll make remarks from time to time whose gist is, “Appreciate life. Never complain. Work hard and do your best.”
Marty has one other mantra: “Talent is bullshit.”
~ Steven Pressfield from, “Talent is B.S.”
slip:4useta1.
It’s worth reading simply because Pressfield wrote it; He doesn’t write that much on his blog and so I make time to read it all. Marty (who is a fictionalized version of a real person Pressfield knew) consuls a tidy, four points. I was gut-punched to realize that while I excel at the last two, “Work hard and do your best,” and I suck at the first two, “Appreciate life. Never complain.” The complaining bit I have made reasonable progress on. These days I don’t often complain, and when I do complain I am able to see it’s ridiculous indignation at its core. But that first one, “Appreciate life,”… yikes! I seriously suck at that.
ɕ
February 26, 2023 — #21 →
Reading time: About 4 minutes, 800 words
Get 7 for Sunday in your inbox. → Subscribe here.
This issue is https://7forsunday.com/21
Forward is the best option →
Because forward is the best option. Let’s go with one that makes the most sense–and if you don’t have a better plan, you should be responsible enough to back the one that’s most likely to work, even, especially, if you don’t like it.
~ Seth Godin from, The obligation of “none of the above”
slip:4usete9.
For me, this “rhythms” with things like “having skin in the game” and with Theodore Roosevelt’s famous idea of “the man in the arena“. But I like Godin’s turn of phrasing better.
Skin-in-the-game and man-in-the-arena feel focused on requiring one to earn the right to participate in guiding the direction of things (a project, a company, a nation, the human race.) While Godin’s—in my opinion—suggests that the value of your contribution should be judged by how it moves things forward (including contributing to the discussion of what does “forward” mean.)
ɕ
Hispaniola →
Any analysis of Haiti must state two facts. First, Haiti is the only country where slavery was defeated by a slave revolution. Second, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Now that I’ve stated these facts, I’d like to explore deeper. What do we know about Haiti’s poverty? How does this relate to its history? And why does it compare so unfavourably with the Dominican Republic?
~ Craig Palsson from, Hispaniola’s Great Divergence
slip:4utepi1.
In recent years I’ve been trying to pay attention to when I’m geographical ignorant. (Tip: Check out Atlas Obscura.) Hispaniola has always interested me and I can recall—probably in junior high?—thinking, “wait wat? _Islands_ can be divided into multiple countries? How does that happen?” (Which of course makes no sense. People love to fight over things and draw borders.) Anyway. I’ve long known that Haiti and the Dominican Republic were neighbors, but I never took the time to dig into any history. The other day I spun off following a train of thought about the Vente de la Louisiane and it turns out that that story has it’s beginnings in Haiti.
ɕ
A cure for hiccups →
[It] boils down to a simple breathing exercise. First, exhale completely, then inhale a deep breath. Wait 10 seconds, then—without exhaling—inhale a little more. Wait another five seconds, then top up the breath again. Finally, exhale.
~ Uri Bram from, The Cure for Hiccups Exists
slip:4uteie9.
Sometimes I straight-up do public service announcements. Here, have a cure for hiccups!
If you’ve thought about how proper breathing works, you’ll quickly realize those instructions involve incrementally, increasingly flexing your diaphragm muscle. (If that isn’t obvious, the Thoracic diaphragm page on Wikipedia has you covered.) The muscle spasm is part of a feedback loop involving two of our nerves, and intentionally activating the muscle breaks that feedback. The trick is that you need to really flex it… flex it much harder than you normally do when breathing.
Note that if you do the “hold your breath” part of the exercise by closing your glottis (what’s that?) and relaxing your diaphragm, you’re doing it wrong. The entire point of the exercise is to flex, flex, flex and hold tension in the diaphragm muscle.
ɕ