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Bird spotting as relevance realisation
We went hiking through the jungles of Central America. There is a rare bird in this scene. As we emerged from jungle’s undergrowth to this raised open area, our guide immediately pointed, and said, there’s a male quetzal. I couldn’t see the bird. Even when he pointed in the direction, I still couldn’t see. He…
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Retreats
Where I am, there are countless retreats and an almost limitless demand for it. It puzzles me. It seems that people are retreating from the world. I wonder what the opposite might be. To stay calm and determined in the face of adversity, or to aim to do something about it; to change the small…
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Entropy, Kintsugi and Antifragility
“The laws of thermodynamics were developed by nineteenth-century scientists to describe relationships between heat and mechanical energy. The second law of thermodynamics is based on the observation that many physical processes appear irreversible: Although these processes may theoretically be able to proceed forward or backward, when we observe them, they only go one way. Once a…
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FinOps Notes (so far!)
I’ve been reading through a book about FinOps. It appears to be a topic which is getting increasing attention. I expect that most of it can be boiled down to some key principles. Principles: Next steps: Key metric: unit economic metrics to enable data driven decision making by engineering teams Definition Cloud: Problem: A FinOps…
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The Creative Mind: Notes & Summary
The Creative Mind by Margaret Boden was a revelatory book which has certainly helped to understand what creativity is as well as its origin
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Spellbound: Notes
Spellbound by Daniel Liberman Tapping into the unconscious, understanding it – understanding why it can lead us astray from ourselves destructively but also understanding how we can tap into the unconscious and being to harness the power. To understand the unconscious we cannot use ‘language’ or rational thinking. We need something else. The key to…
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The felt presence of immediate experience
“When our own goals and beliefs and perceptions and behaviors are functionally integrated such that there is little conflict or contradiction between them that is when we experience this this sense of meaning in life” We have developed behaviours that help us pursue goals (biological, pre-programmed goals: finding a mate, keeping a mate, parenting etc,…
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Notes on appreciation
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Free Energy Principle, Predictive Processing and Meaning notes
This is the synthesis and synergising of various talks about free energy principle, predictive processing and its connection with meaning. By understanding predictive processing and free-energy (as a lens) you can understand other aspects such as addiction or meaning-making (meaning in life). Psychedelics and the Free Energy Principle: From REBUS to Indra’s Net https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/building-a-science-of-consciousness/id1654416860?i=1000586050485 Perception…
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The Heroine’s Journey
If it’s true what the cognitive neuroscientists say that story and myths inform you about what to do when you don’t know what to do, then stories are fundamental to decision-making under uncertainty, and that the brain relies on micro-narratives to deal with combinatorially explosive complexity of everyday life, let alone chaos. And so, as they…
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Patterns of behaviour (from child to parent)
Something I noticed when I first started living together with my partner was that there was a clash of certain ways of doing things / approaches or principles, even though we had similar cultures and similar belief systems. It often baffled me how we could be so different on such things. Only now do I…
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The Distant B&W Past
Growing up, the past seemed so far away. There were black and white images of this period before, especially images from the Second World War. The past seemed so distant in my mind. Due to the lack of colour, it appeared awful. I was glad that I didn’t live during that period. But most of…
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Feeling the Timeless
I’m sitting next to a fireplace on Christmas Eve, a time to reflect. I notice that there must have been quite some effort to install the iron fireplace and its chimney into the wall. I’m reminded that Klaus did that. Klaus was one of Dad’s best friends and now I’m staying in the flat that…
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A Tough Lesson about Incentives
I found this line very interesting in a recent conversation with Dominic Cummings when he related his experience of working in Russia: “I also learned about incentives a lot. So everything I had to do with the airline was a total fiasco. And one of the things I figured I learned was — I, like…
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A Lasting Quality
“If you want to preserve a building, you will try to make it in materials which last and last forever. You will try to make sure that this creation can be preserved intact, in just its present state, forever. Canvas must be ruled out because it has to be replaced; tiles must be so hard…
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