I was riding a chrain down a shchreet banging a jrum and eating shrimp.
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If you keep up with English language morphology—and let’s be honest here, who doesn’t?—the opening sentence is a phonetic respelling of ‘I was riding a train down a street banging a drum and eating shrimp’ but for a new generation. Dr Geoff Lindsey created a video, which includes material drawn from his book English After RP: Standard British Pronunciation Today. But don’t be fooled by the RP reference. There is plenty of relevance to the shifts in General American English if ever there was such a thing.
As noted previously, the principle of least effort tends to be a guiding factor for language morphology, and we’re witnessing the conservation of effort driving this shift.
Technically, what’s happening is that, traditionally, we performed some lingual gymnastics gliding (or not) from an alveolar consonant to a post-alveolar shift. The new fashion is to shift the entire structure into a post-alveolar space. Lazy wins. Of course, I’ll expect to hear from vocal prescriptivists, the traditional grammar Nazis, who will insist, “If I see a T in train, I’m going to pronounce it like a T, dammit. No ch-ch as in choo-choo for this ‘adult’.”
I’ve summarised the italicised words in a table.
Tradition
IPA
Nouveau
IPA
train
/tɹeɪn/
chrain
/t͡ʃɹeɪn/
drum
/ˈdɹʌm/
jrum
/ˈdʒɹʌm/
street
/stɹiːt/
shchreet
/ʃt͡ʃɹiːt/
shrimp
/ʃɹɪmp/
shrimp
/ʃɹɪmp/
Traditionally—which is to say the language spoken by older native English speakers—, the consonant clusters are pronounced pretty much as written. One would pronounce the T or TR in train; the DR in drum; and the STR in street. Shrimp had already made the shift, so we can think of it as a trendsetter.
Notice how the T in train shifts to a CH sound (/t͡ʃ/) or how the D in drum shifts to a J sound (/dʒ/). As the video shows, Michelle Obama is a bit ahead of the change curve, as she’s already shifted the S in street to a post-alveolar-friendly Sh Ch (/ʃt͡ʃ/), replacing the ST with a Sh-Ch combination, the S becoming Sh and the T becoming Ch. This trend has not caught on more broadly, but it seems it may be inevitable and allows us to keep this in a nice and tidy box.
In the video, there is a clip recounting a story of a seven-year-old just learning to write (and evidently into Star Wars) who wrote the following.
IMAGE: Watch out for the stormtrooper as written by a 7-year-old native English speaker
Notice that he is trying to capture a quasi-phonetic rendition of the word TROOPER that he hears (correctly) as CHROOPER. Again, this might cause grammar Nazis to go on a rampage. I don’t expect any spelling back-formation reformation to follow suit. We’ll just add this to the “English is not a phonetic language and has a lot of spelling exceptions” adage.
If you are a native English speaker, is this something you notice? If you speak English as a second language, have you noticed this trend? Which camp are you in? Old school or new school?
I have been so utterly distracted by YouTube this weekend. In this case, it’s a video by Dr Geoff Lindsey explaining weak forms of the English language.
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Much of my work life involves speaking either with non-native English speakers or speakers of English who may be quite well versed in English and yet have a certain rigidity in their execution. Along with local accents, this makes the language feel unnatural to a native speaker.
A common challenge is the adoption of weak forms. Following the principle of least effort, language speakers are lazy. In fact, one may extrapolate this morphology to predict where language may drift next. One example that comes to mind is the American habit of uttering flap Ts over ‘real’ Ts that require slightly more effort to produce.
In English, one says the words, butter, water, doctor, and sister as /ˈbʌtə/,/ˈwɔtəɹ/, /ˈdɒktə/, /ˈsɪstə(ɹ)/ whilst in American English, using the flap T sound, one says (respelt in parentheses) /ˈbʌdəɹ/ (buhd-er), / ˈwɔdəɹ/ (wahd-er), /ˈdɔkdɚ/ (dok-der), /ˈsɪsdər/ (sis-der). Whether the pronunciation of the R is rhotic or non-rhotic is another issue altogether.
But this is about something a bit different. It’s about weak forms, particularly vowels that can be weakened from the strong vowel sound to the shwa (/ə/) sound. It turns out that we do this a lot. In fact, more often than not. Rather than a rehash from the video, I’ve cued it to where Tom Hiddleston recites Lord Byron’s So We’ll Go No More a Roving.
So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.
As it happens, much of the difference between native English and English as spoken by non-natives is the hyper-diction heard by choosing the strong rather than the weak form of certain words.
I was browsing YouTube, and I got captivated by reaction videos, where a younger audience listens to music some of us grew up with and reacts to it. Time is a song I grew up on. Pink Floyd were a major influence on my music and my worldview. I have to admit that I am partial to the David Gilmour years and stopped caring about anything released after Roger Waters left. I have spent hours listening to their back catalogue with Syd Barrett and early David Gilmour, but Meddle, released in 1971, is about as far back as I prefer to go—even that old gem, Seamus.
Roger Waters penned the deepest lyrics for Pink Floyd, and this was one of his best. He wrote this in his late twenties, though it feels like he would have been older and wiser. I suppose he’s an old soul. Here’s the first verse:
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
This speaks to how we tend to take time for granted. Sometimes, we just want the time to pass. We’re bored, and we want to get on to something meaningful, eventful, or perhaps exciting. We might be sat in work or school just waiting for quitting time. We aren’t living in the moment or enjoying the moment. And we might just be kicking around on a piece of ground in our hometowns rather aimlessly. And whilst I am aware that many people are looking for someone to guide them to the next level, whether a religion, a vocation, a guru, or a hero, that bit’s never really resonated with me. I suppose I’ve always been naturally insouciant and Zen. Some have said to a fault.
you missed the starting gun
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
The second verse picks up where the first one left off. Let’s not forget that this is Britain—London—plenty of rain. But some people do get tired of lying in the sunshine living their routine workaday lives. When we are younger, the days feel longer. Time is stretched. Einsteinian relativity. Again, we’ve got time to pad out and fill. Something’s happening at the weekend. Let’s just fast-forward, but we can’t, so let’s fill the time with mindless prattle and television or somesuch. Once you were 18 and now you’re 28. What happened? Tens years gone. Where’d the time go?
The last line in the second verse is telling. For me, it’s more an indictment of quote-modern-unquote society. It only applies to those who buy into this worldview. I never bought in. It’s’ always been a sham. But for some, they reach 28 and realise they’ve made the wrong decisions for their lives to end up the way they may have envisaged. I’ve never had this grand vision.
one day closer to death
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Resistance is futile. You can’t escape the movement of time as represented by the quotidian sun. It will always lap you. The sun ages on a different time scale to you. The sun doesn’t appear to age. It was here when we arrived. It will be here when we leave. It was here before any of us were born. It will be here after we’ve all left. Yet with every lap of the sun, we are each another day closer to death. That day may be tomorrow, next week, or in a hundred years, but as Twelve-Step programmes remind us, we live one day at a time. Perhaps even this is too large of a time slice, as we can only live moment to moment. Anything else is but a construction. Nothing else is real. Memento Mori.
thought I’d something more to say
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
Again, time is relative. When we are young, we yearn for things: perhaps to graduate high school; get a driver’s license; graduate college; get the job we wanted; get some promotion or recognition; get signed to a big label; get a big break; the list goes on.
For those who are planners, the best-laid plans go awry. We dream of whatever and even journal these thoughts, but in the words of another song, “you can’t always get what you want”.
We want to do this or that, but life gets in the way. We can’t do everything. Economists capture this by the notion of opportunity costs. We can do this but not that. It doesn’t matter if we are Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or whomever. Time is the ultimate leveller.
We can just keep a stiff upper lip and persevere. Just occupy some place on this third rock, Next thing you know, the time is gone. I recall my ninety-odd-year-old father-in-law after his wife of seventy-five years died. He just wanted to die. He was done. He was ready to quit, but the music was still playing. Any semblance of hope was exchanged for the hope to reach the ending peacefully.
home again
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
In this verse, Roger becomes reflective. He’s nostalgic for home. Anyone with a home has a place to return to after work, after school, or a childhood memory, but to touring performers, home is an even more special place. It’s a place to return to after life on the road, perhaps for months or years. Consider Odysseus and the travellers of old. This home.
He wants to be in this comfortable, familiar place. And after a long day or excursion, it’s a place to rejuvenate and rekindle by the warmth of the fire.
softly spoken magic spells
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
The final verse is even more metaphorical than the others. There’s an allusion. Religious allegory. In the distance, we hear the peal of the church bell beckoning the parishioners to hear the palliative words of the vicars and priests and whatnot. Or perhaps these softly spoken magic spells are simply the prayers of the individuals.
In deference to Barthes, the author is dead. But it doesn’t matter this is my interpretation—my meaning. Even more so, in deference to chapter eight of the Matter with Things, poetry and music are meant to be appreciated as a whole, not dissected. We can reflect on the words and phrases—even the melodies and rhythms—but the words are less than they sum to. Still, this piece moves me. It always has.
In the last chapters, the topics were about different intelligences. As we’ll see, intelligence is one of the factors for creativity, but there are more. Let’s crack on.
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Content
Creativity is an elusive phenomenon that cannot only not be summoned at will, the very act of trying inhibits it. Unlike left-hemisphere-oriented intelligence, there are no simple tests for creativity because of their very nature. Assessing the left-hemisphere is relatively simple because it is systematic and any tests have definite known solutions—whether calculating some figure, solving a puzzle, choosing analogies, or recounting some trivia. There is no such test for creating something not yet created, but there are some proxies that most people categorically fail.
Psychologist, Colin Martindale, had this to say about the personal characteristics of creativity
“Creativity is a rare trait. This is presumably because it requires the simultaneous presence of a number of traits (e.g., intelligence, perseverance, unconventionality, the ability to think in a particular manner). None of these traits is especially rare. What is quite uncommon is to find them all present in the same person.”
— Colin Martindale
Whereas the left hemisphere is analytical, the right hemisphere (hence creativity) is a Gestalt. When given a difficult time-boxed challenge, the left hemisphere dominant individual who does not arrive at the expected response on time will commit to and defend an incorrect response (think escalating commitment), and the right hemisphere dominant individual will simply not commit to a response under the thought that there were still options to be explored.
Effectively, creativity can be broken down into three phases: preparation, incubation, and illumination.
In essence, for the creative individual, the best we can do is to leave well enough alone. Anything but space and permission will kill the creative impulse.
Preparation is simply the accumulation of a particular domain of knowledge. For an artist, it will be to understand, perhaps, colour, shape, texture, form, shadow, media, or so forth; for a musician, it might be to understand melody, harmony, tempo, timbre, dynamics, and so on; for a mathematician, it might be basic arithmetic, theories, proofs, and on and on. It’s also important to note that accumulated information in multiple domains also forms a foundation leveraged by many polymaths.
Incubation is simply waiting for something to grow in the prepared garden. Incubation is an unconscious activity and cannot be controlled or accessed by the conscious mind. In fact, conscious effort and introspection will serve only to impede cultivation. Digging up planted seeds to see how they are growing will only hinder the process.
Illumination is the final phase. Again, this is unwilled. Prepared and incubated flowers bloom. Of course, this is an imperfect metaphor because the ground must already have been fertile at the start. Tossing seeds on fallow ground still yields no blooms no matter how carefully attended.
In essence, for the creative individual, the best we can do is to leave well enough alone. Anything but space and permission will kill the creative impulse.
McGilchrist discusses generative, permissive, and translational requirements.
“The key element in generation seems to be the ability to think of many diverse ideas quickly, demanding breadth, flexibility and analogical thinking – seeing likeness within apparent dissimilarity.” This can be summed up as divergent thinking. This is the openness afforded by the right hemisphere as opposed to the convergent behaviour of the left. As it happens, this is where artificial intelligence falls flat as it is predicated on convergent activity.
The right hemisphere Gestalten surveys the environment and notes otherwise unperceived parallels. It is not a systematic approach. In the words of Oscar Wilde, “Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“Talent hits a target no-one else can hit; genius hits a target no-one else can see”.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer sums it up nicely, “Talent hits a target no-one else can hit; genius hits a target no-one else can see”.
Citing Isaac Asimov writing about Darwin’s insight, he notes that before Darwin, many people had read Malthus and studied species, but they lacked the creative spark that Darwin had.
Steve Jobs noted that
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things … A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So, they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
— Steve Jobs
This is a failing of the business world and of specialisation more generally. McGilchrist writes, “Linear approaches and analytic thinking, characteristic of the left hemisphere, are fine in the right context, and may at a subsequent phase take part in creativity by narrowing things down and eliminating some of them, but on their own will not achieve creativity”.
There is a direct link between intelligence and creativity. Ego crushes creativity.
There is a direct link between intelligence and creativity. Ego crushes creativity.
He again cites Asimov:
“My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. The creative person is, in any case, continually working at it. His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it …The presence of others can only inhibit this process, since creation is embarrassing.”
— Isaac Asimov
Some people excel at maths, but many are systematic and procedural left-hemisphere types; they apply logic and reason—insert tab A into slot B. The famous mathematicians understand the procedures, but their ideas come from intuition rather than reason. The left hemisphere doesn’t recognise this as a viable vector, and therein lies the rub. “Math is not about following directions; it’s about making new directions,” writes mathematician Paul Lockhart.
This is why we hear so many accounts of aha moments, something coming to one person in a dream or Isaac Newton’s falling apple anecdote.
“These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward”
Albert Einstein
Einstein told Max Wertheimer, founder of Gestalt psychology, “These thoughts did not come in any verbal formulation. I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterward”. Words are a left-hemisphere phenomenon.
Many accomplished musicians hear a piece whole. All they need to do is to compose it to staff paper or perform it. We hear this regularly: “I was driving from here to there and it just came to me. All I needed to do is to remember it long enough to get it down.”
I found McGilchrist’s inclusion of hemispheric damage quite interesting. He provides many examples of artists, composers, and poets, but I’ll only summarise them. For musicians and Artists with right hemisphere damage, those who even retained the urge to create did so at a lower quality level. However, those with left hemisphere damage operated at the same level and oftentimes at a higher level, without the inhibition and censorship of the left hemisphere.
It’s important to note that most people rely on both hemispheres. When I write left hemisphere dominant, I mean to say that either the right hemisphere simply underperforms or that the left hemisphere does not cede control back to the right hemisphere. Generally speaking, both hemispheres experience the world, and a strong right hemisphere will act as air traffic controller, or perhaps have the right of first refusal, but this is a loose metaphor because sometimes the left hemisphere just fields an experience and takes its best guess how to handle it even if it should have been fielded by the right hemisphere and even if the left hemisphere provides the wrong answer. The left hemisphere is the hemisphere of the ego and identity, so it is somewhat relentless and defensive even when it is wrong.
As a side note, I trust that political identity and escalating commitment are left-hemisphere activities and why modern Western politics feel so intractable.
After a strong argument for right hemisphere dominance and divergent thinking being hallmarks of creativity, he offers some counter-evidence and counters some of it.
A paper by Arne Dietrich and Riam Kanso co-authored a book citing instances of convergent thought processes that led to something innovative or creative. At the onset, McGilchrist calls them out for conflating problem-solving with creativity. In the end, the left hemisphere does play a role. He calls this the translational phase. Essentially, this is Mozart having heard his symphony and needing to put his thoughts to paper. Or the poet.
He goes off on a bit of a tangent noting how words pale concepts, and divergence and convergence are no exception. This fits in with my own insufficiency of language theory, but McGilchrist and I have different rationales for our arguments, so I’ll not side-track this summary.
He cites some statistics correlating creativity with mental health disorders and incidences of suicide. This will set the reader up perfectly for the next chapter about schizophrenia and autism.
Perspective
In summary, creativity has got me riled up more than in the previous chapters. This is partially due to how it comports with my own observations. I have always felt that humans are not very creative or innovative despite protests to the contrary. In fact, I’ve often commented when I’ve heard people say something like “artificial intelligence will never create the next…” Fill in the blank: Mozart, Picasso, Michelangelo, Nabokov, Wordsworth. Or Einstein. Of course, neither will a human be the next of these.
All these people are right cerebral hemisphere dominant. AI operates systematically, in the manner of the left hemisphere. None of these people built up systematically. Instead, their ideas were wholly formed, and their creations were reductive rather than additive. Famously, Michelangelo was to have said, “The sculpture is already complete within the marble block before I start my work. It is already there. I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.” He sees the solution first and then builds towards it.
In my professional life, I have been a strategist as a management consultant as well as a business analyst. In each case, I could quickly assess a situation and then spend weeks or months defending my intuition with words, diagrams, and numbers.
As a business analyst, I would offer a recommendation, and this would need to come with an estimate to deliver the recommendation. This figure would come to me in a matter of minutes. Then, per protocol, I would need to enter micro-level details into a pricing model so it could calculate from the ground up. First, this was time-consuming. Second, this would be circulated for review where different people would (almost invariably) reduce the number of hours estimated, typically due to pressure to reduce the cost. Ultimately, a number would be output and tendered to the client or the person footing the bill. Again (almost invariably), the number initially intuited was more accurate and reflective of what was ultimately invoiced. Unfortunately, business is a left-hemisphere endeavour, and that will be its Achilles’ heel and denouement.
This wraps up the chapter on Creativity. The next chapter is “what schizophrenia and autism can tell us”, and is the end of part one of The Matter with Things.
What are your thoughts and experiences with creativity now that you’ve heard McGilchrist’s take?
I’d been professionally involved in the music industry since the early 1980s, a career option from which I was greatly discouraged. Like many others, I was drawn to music early, but my family were not supportive. Accessing music beyond what I could hear on the radio was nearly impossible.
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I had been asking for instruments, but I was directed to band instruments—a coronet to be precise. My dad had played the trumpet in his days and had suggested it. They bought me a coronet, and I enrolled in the school band. Let’s just say that this was not fulfilling. I didn’t find out until later that practically everyone else was also taking private lessons on the side. Many had an actual interest in what instruments they were playing.
I wanted a guitar. As I found out when I finally bought my own guitar at 14 that my mum didn’t want to encourage me to play rock music. My bio-dad had played the guitar and he was a heroin addict, so guitars equalled heroin in my mum’s mind. Might have as well been a gateway.
When I began working in high school, I was able to buy a turntable and records. And a guitar. That’s when I heard the rationale for not being given one. The guitar displaced books somewhat until I found a happy medium.
My ex-wife recounted, well countless times, how she had wanted to be a ballerina when she was a little girl, but she was never allowed to take lessons. As I recall, her mum didn’t like the local dance instructor on a personal level, though I don’t know anyone that her mum did like outside of her siblings. This pained her well into adulthood, and she still fancies the lost career option.
she admitted that she would have preferred violin
Her niece took piano lessons and was coerced into becoming a Medical Doctor as her sister with no artistic interests was pushed into becoming a lawyer. As she was in her residency, she admitted that she would have preferred violin and to have become a veterinarian. And so it goes.
Fast forward to my then-three-year-old son. I was still playing my guitar around the house, and he would engage with it. I’d place it on the floor, and he’d play with the strings. I’d tune it to an open or modal tuning and cycle through my effects pedals for tonal variety. Whenever I’d play, he’d come around, and I’d take a break to encourage his interaction.
Come Xmas, he was four, and I bought him a three-quarter scale Squire Affinity Strat with a practice amp and the general accoutrements. We took the requisite photos of him wielding the guitar as a memento for when he hit the big time.
we heard chorus after chorus of “Cat Scratch Fever…”
That was the last time he touched that guitar. Or mine. Somehow, this purchase was the kiss of death. When he was five or six, he evidently heard Ted Nugent’s Cat Scratch Fever on the radio. I didn’t listen to Classic Rock radio, so I’ll presume it was my wife. In any case, we heard chorus after chorus of “Cat Scratch Fever…” in pitch. Nothing more.
At six, he had a deep interest in Korn. This was retained as we migrated from Los Angeles to Chicago. In fact, he asked me if I would teach him how to play some Korn songs on the guitar. I informed him that I had sold my 7-string before we left LA, and Korn was a low-B 7-string band. I tried to show him some 6-string renditions, but they don’t quite sound the same an octave higher.
Around this time, we bought him a drum kit. He played it exactly never—though it came in handy some years later for me, so that worked out nicely. His mates would come by to visit, and they loved it. All of his friends would pound away on them whenever they had the chance. A month or so later, Korn were touring (during the time when Brian “Head” Welch had departed in favour of Christian values), but he had switched genres to Classical and Epic music.
I had a digital synthesiser that got moved into the living room (rather than the studio, which was downstairs), so it was more accessible when the inspiration struck. He was attracted to that in much the same manner as the three-year-old him was drawn to the guitar. He was more interested in the textures than the melodies or harmonies.
My wife enrolled him in piano lessons, as she herself had also done as a child. He took those for a few months, but he never really grew to like it much. We asked if there was anything he was interested in, but that was just listening. Eventually, he took a music appreciation course that he appreciated, but that was about it.
He’s twenty-five as I type this. He loves music and still favours instrumentals. Soundtracks and video game music are among his top genres.
she reacts to melody and beat
Now I have a toddler. She’ll soon be three. She is also drawn to my guitar. This time, I gave her an older ukulele for a while, and then I bought her her own. She responds to music when she hears it. She reacts to melody and beat, interpreting it with her own dance gestures. She’s not mastered the ukulele, but it’s hanging on her wall at about her shoulder height near her bedroom door. She strums or plucks the strings when she enters and exits her room. Often, she takes it off her wall hanger and noodles with it.
For Xmas, we bought her an assortment of kids’ instruments as did someone else, so she’s got two—xylophones, triangles, harmonica, blocks and shakers. I don’t recall what else, but she seems to love to engage with them. We’ll see where it ends up. One never knows.
Full Disclosure: This post has absolutely nothing to do with philosophy.
The Netherlands consists of 12 provinces. Two of them are considered Holland. Until about 2020, the Netherlands was OK with taking the name of its more famous provinces, but no longer.
The Netherlands with Holland highlighted
Referring to the Netherlands as Holland is like referring to Canada as Saskatchewan or the United States as California or France as Bretagne. Complete this cycle for your own favourite countries and regions. It works on the subregion level, too. It reminds me of times when you announce that you were raised in Inverness or wherever and someone asks if you happen to know Angus Macleod because he was also from Inverness and so you may have crossed paths. Because that’s remotely plausible.
So why the geography lesson? I have family in the Netherlands—in fact in Holland—and I’ve recently had a mate have to return to Holland. He was living and working in the US during the Covid debacle, and his employment was terminated, which meant that his H1-B sponsorship was terminated, and he was summarily forced to return to the Netherlands with his wife and two older children. This was more than slightly disruptive, as one might imagine.
Cubism reminds us that we don’t see the world as it is. We see pieces, and we fill in the gaps. From the front, we can’t see the back. From the top, we can’t see the bottom.
Video: YouTube Video
The illusion that, if we can see something clearly, we see it as it really is, is hugely seductive. John Ruskin makes the point that clarity is bought at the price of limitation. He paints a scenario wherein we are asked to imagine viewing an open book and an embroidered handkerchief on a lawn. From a quarter mile away, the two are indistinguishable. Moving closer, we can see which is which, but we can neither read the book nor trace the embroidery. Closer still, we can read the text and trace the embroidery, but we can’t see the fibres of the paper or the threads of the kerchief. And we can’t simultaneously focus on both and see detail in each. Focusing on the book, we can look closer and see the watermark, the hills and dales in the paper’s surface. With a microscope, we can see more still, as infinitum.
But at which point do we see it clearly?
I’ve created a YouTube short. I have to admit that I dislike the format. Sixty seconds isn’t really enough time to convey a concept. There’s too much missing context, and no time to elaborate. Nonetheless, I was reading The Master and His Emissary and wanted to share a point. I don’t feel I succeeded. I posted it anyway, and here it is.
Life is an opportunistic parasite. It’s been speculated that life on Mars annihilated itself. This is almost a truism. In most models, there are only two options: life annihilates life or the inanimate environment intervenes. As regards anthropogenic climate change, occasionally, it’s both, though some are afforded a sense of plausible deniability—they get to throw their hands up into the air and proclaim that these things just happen to happen in cycles. It’s happened before; it’ll happen again. What can you do?
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“Besides, they threatened a new Ice Age in the 1970s, and now they’re warning about climate change? I’ll have none of it. Climate change is just another way for certain so-called green industries to fleece the public and abscond with government subsidies, but we’re wise to them.”
Dramatic Reanactment
Humans refer to life feeding off of other life as parasites, seeing no irony in fitting the same description. This is not a novel observation, but most prefer to ignore it. We proclaim that we are at the top of the food chain, except it’s a food web, and we’re not at the top. We’re a mediocre species on a unique but mediocre planet in a mediocre galaxy supported by a mediocre star, we call the sun, and so on. As the saying goes, “as above, so below”. Mediocre all the way down.
But life annihilates life. Of course, there is war and hate and intolerance and ignorance. These comprise the lion’s share. In fact, I’m not sure what one might add. We annihilate other life, and we annihilate ourselves. Sure, there’s age and disease and trauma and asteroid strikes, but most of these are beyond our control.
Annihilation is inevitable, whether on an individual micro-level or a macro-level. Annihilation is entropy—the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Earth is a macrocosm of Easter Island, driven to extinction through resource depletion. There are other ways to go. We’ve even got some locked and loaded.
I recently posted a YouTube Short video titled You Have No Free Will, but this is still debatable.
Video: You Have No Free Will
The premise of the belief in free-will is that human decisions are made approximately half a second before we are conscious of them, and then the conscious brain convinces itself that it just made a choice. This sounds pretty damning, but let’s step back for a moment.
Podcast: Audio rendition of this page content
If you’ve been following this blog these past few months, you’ll be aware that I feel the question of free will is a pseudo-question hinging primarily on semantics. As well, there’s the causa sui argument that I’d like to ignore for the purpose of this post.
There remains a semantic issue. The free will argument is centred around the notion that a person or agent has control or agency over their choices. This means that how we define the agent matters.
In the study this references, the authors define the agent as having conscious awareness. Since this occurs after the decision is made, then the person must have had no agency. But I think an argument can be made that the earlier decision gateway is formed through prior experience. Applying computer metaphors, we can say that this pre-consciousness is like embedded hardware or read-only logic. It’s like autopilot.
In business, there are various decision management schemes. In particular, the conscious but slow version is for a person to be notified to approve or deny a request. But some decisions are automatic. If a purchase is over, say 50,000 then a manager needs to sign off on the request. But if the purchase is under 50,000, then the request is made automatically and then the manager is notified for later review if so desired.
I am not saying that I buy into this definition, but I think the argument could be made.
You might not know it by the number of posts discussing it, but I am not really concerned about whether or not free will really exists. I don’t lose any sleep over it. At the same time, I tend to react to it. Since I feel it’s a pseudo-problem where tweaking the definition slightly can flip the answer on its head, it’s just not worth the effort. On to better things.
“We knew that conscious processes were simply too slow to be actively involved in music, sports, and other activities where split-second reflexes are required. But if consciousness is not involved in such processes, then a better explanation of what consciousness does was needed,”
Andrew Budson, MD, professor of neurology, Boston University
Under this new theory, supported by recent studies, choices are made unconsciously and then we are made conscious of the choices after the fact. This tosses a spanner in the works of some proponents of free will. Some may still claim that it was uniquely ‘you’ who made this choice—conscious or otherwise—, but others may not be so fanciful.
“According to the researchers, this theory is important because it explains that all our decisions and actions are actually made unconsciously, although we fool ourselves into believing that we consciously made them.”
“What is completely new about this theory is that it suggests we don’t perceive the world, make decisions, or perform actions directly. Instead, we do all these things unconsciously and then—about half a second later—consciously remember doing them.”
Andrew Budson, MD, professor of neurology, Boston University
And here we are again with more evidence that we are not consciously responsible for our choices, and yet the conscience has such a fragile ego, it needs to think it does.
Philosophics 