Short Version
The main purpose of this website is to develop and present information that I believe is good to know, both to work out my own beliefs and to (hopefully) occasionally help others develop their own knowledge and beliefs. Everyone doesn’t have to originate every idea. It’s often easier to read and evaluate someone else’s ideas than to generate all of your own.
Over my lifetime, I’ve accumulated a unique combination of knowledge. Not necessarily more than anyone else, but unique to me, and spread across a relatively large array of subjects, especially science, philosophy, emotions, and life skills.
At the risk of being presumptuous, I think I bring a unique combination of perspectives: historical, scientific, and systems. I might even be able to offer an insight here and there.
I also read a lot and think a lot, and I try to glean the best of what each author has to offer–about subjects of interest to everyone: happiness, relationships, etc. I will freely offer anything that others might find valuable too.
I freely admit I don’t have all the answers. The authors of many blogs and websites write like they’ve already got the answers and are just trying to convey them (e.g., do what you fear, etc.) They contain lots of advice. By contrast, this one will be more about hypothesizing, experimenting, and discovery. Sharing what seems true or useful or beautiful or fascinating or inspiring. Not just dispensing “the answers.”
The mission of this site is not to persuade you or to change any of your beliefs. It’s for me to better understand my own beliefs and to share what I’ve learned. Putting it out into the world is my gift.
Long Version
It’s All About The Information
At the risk of sounding grandiose, the ultimate mission of this website is to contribute something of lasting value to the world. That, in turn, gives my life purpose and meaning.
This something will take the form of information, which rests on the premise that information can have value. An inspiring story, a beautiful photograph, an inspiring speech, a better way of doing something, a good joke, an insightful quotation, a diagram that provides clarity and context and perspective–all of these can directly or indirectly increase the positive emotion in people’s lives, which is the ultimate value and provides the ultimate meaning.
Information (or more precisely, communication) is at the heart of our humanity. The great religions of the world are all based on words–in the Bible, the Koran, the Tao Te Ching, the Baghavad Gita. It was information and ideas–accelerated by the invention of the printing press–that drove the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Words and images can trigger emotions. Information models reality. In effect, our internal models of the world are all built from information received through our senses.
So this site is really about information. Inspiring, useful, beautiful information. Information is not the physical world. It is not wood or steel or glass or water. It is a *representation* of the physical world, with which we build our mental models of that world. And an accurate model has inherent value. Imagine if everyone on Earth had an accurate world model in their minds. No more sectarian violence. No more Group A killing Group B their “wrong” beliefs. No more “liberals” and “conservatives” misunderstanding and maligning and frustrating each other.
The physical world has value. And other animals than humans have mental models of it too. But what makes humans unique is the incredible complexity and richness of those models. Imagine all the millions of books in all the libraries all over the world. Imagine all the billions of webpages that now exist on servers all over the Internet. Imagine the millions of articles on Wikipedia. Collectively, we humans have an incredibly rich and accurate model of the world. But as individuals, we know far, far less. Compared to what we know as a species, as individuals, we are woefully ignorant. My website will help change that.
The physical world has value. When we move through it, our muscles flex and extend and it helps us to be healthy. But increasingly, we live in a world made of information. Good investing advice and understanding of economics is valuable information. The best route to your destination provided by a GPS is valuable information. Knowing where and how to find a compatible life partner and how to develop a good relationship with them has value. But the sheer volume of information creates a problem in itself. It actually makes things worse, by obscuring the valuable information and paralyzing us with too much to take in and process at once.
I am a thinker. I traffic in knowledge and ideas. The sad fact is that, while everyone has a brain and can use language to some degree, many, many people seem to lack the basic mental skills of logic, reason, and critical thinking. For proof, look at the comments posted in response to nearly any article on the web.
When someone asked me what this site was about, it forced me to summarize. “Philosophy,” is what I finally answered. The love of wisdom. But it will also be about beauty too, and happiness, and all the positive emotions.
According to Wikipedia, philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument. The word “philosophy” comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia), which literally means “love of wisdom“.
I want to be a connector, of people and ideas. I believe we, as a society, as a civilization, can do much better than we’re doing now.
In the film ‘Dead Poets Society,’ the English teacher tells his students, “You will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love–these are what we stay alive for.”
Words matter.
Specific Goals
My goal is to create something like a wiki of my own beliefs and thoughts–a structure of richly interconnected ideas. Because one idea inevitably leads to another, when you state one unexpected or seemingly contradictory idea you could take an entire essay just explain that one idea. To convey the full richness and complexity of your beliefs, what you really need is a way to provide links so that when you mention an idea, you don’t have to for explain it in the essay. Instead, people can just follow the links.
This website is my Life’s Work. It is continuously growing and improving as I work on it. A system of interconnected ideas. It is not just an ephemeral series of disconnected inconsequential posts. In effect, it is a belief system wiki. An organization of good, rational ideas. Perhaps one manifestation of the new “religion” the world seems to be looking for.
Say what you will about the religious right, at least they have a consistent (if wildly inaccurate) belief system. What is needed is an equally consistent belief system (that has the benefit of being true) to oppose it.
Here are some specific social goals to which I am dedicating this website (and my life) to achieving:
– Confront false information and lies (much of which will come from the political “right”)
– Reduce the unfairness inherent in the poor education that children in lower income school districts receive.
– Increase happiness
– Improve relationships
– Improve how education is done so that we don’t waste millions of hours by forcing students to temporarily memorize trivia which would only be forgotten weeks after the test take but instead give them a framework they can then use learn and flesh out for the rest of lives.
– Improve our economic system
– Improve our political system
– Reduce the number of people working at jobs they hate
– Improve the management structure of corporations, to make them more just, more equitable, and more competent.
To make and show connections between important ideas.
It needs to be about connecting: ideas with ideas, people with ideas, people with people.
To explore ways to live life better.
To discover ways to increase the joy and meaning in my life, and by extension, others’ lives.
To read for people who don’t have the time or inclination to read as much as I do, and glean the best of what each author has to offer–about subjects of interest to everyone: happiness, relationships, etc.
To freely offer anything that seems like an insight or a pearl of wisdom.
To maintain an archive of my book “reviews”–my thoughts on each, along with excerpts, and what might be learned from it.
To report on the “experiments” I run in my own life, on ways to be happier.
Work on solving my own problems and hopefully help others who have the same problem.
Freely admit I don’t have all the answers. The authors of many blogs and websites write like they’ve already got the answers and are just trying to convey them to you (e.g. Do what you fear, etc) They contain lots of advice. By contrast, mine will be more about hypothesizing, experimenting, and discovery. Sharing what seems true and useful and beautiful. Not just dispensing “the answers.”
To write about things that confuse me (and probably others), to clarify them.
To share things I find beautiful, useful, fascinating and/or inspiring (books, places, experiences, movies, blogs, scientific discoveries)
To confront and combat ignorance and false beliefs, whether political, economic, philosophical, or religious.
This site a dual mission: to engage my passions and to contribute something of lasting value to the world.
The topics I write and post about must be problems whose solution (or at least clarification) would benefit others too.
Compile truths about complex questions that we all struggle with.
Do the research others would do if they have the time.
One of my overarching themes is life improvement. This encompasses happiness, relationships. So I provide information on useful books, websites, blogs, methods.
My website should incorporate elements of Taoism and systems science.
Help give people perspective, with diagrams, links to websites that illustrate complex or large scale concepts.
Collect and share nuggets of wisdom, mostly from books.
Help provide the structure and motivation needed for me to put my thoughts and ideas into cohesive written form, so that ultimately they can be compiled into books.
One of my unique (or at least rare) abilities is to recognize information of value when I see it. Assembling those pieces of information into a single place so they may be easily discovered by others is how I am contributing value. In addition, adding my own small pieces of insight and idea connection, wherever I can. I believe this is called curation.
Questions I ask myself when deciding whether or not to write about something:
– Will it contribute something of lasting value?
– Will it evoke a positive emotion in my readers? Inspiration, encouragement, hope, joy, amusement, aesthetic pleasure, etc.
A key goal for my site is two-way communication. I want to hear from my readers, know what they think, and learn from them.
I want to make the world a little better for the future.
While some of what you see here is curated from the web, there is a significant portion of original creation as well. Curation PLUS creation. The key determinants of whether or not I create something are ‘will it provide lasting value?’ and ‘am I uniquely qualified to create it?’
The site will conduct a series of ‘projects’ or ‘investigative/research areas.’ In these, I not only find and post relevant content, but do my own searching-for-insights-and-connecting-ideas type of writing. These are richly cross-linked, Wikipedia-style. For example, some of these ‘projects’ include Emotional Stability and Life Balancing
My goal is to discover the amazing and share it: amazing discoveries in neuroscience, astronomy, positive psychology, ecology, molecular biology, etc. I want to not only provide perspective, but also put events into context. so they are not just random, unconnected events, but part of a larger structure or system. I want to this thing to be continuously growing and changing and improving.
One area of strong interest is Positive Emotions, because they are what ultimate give life its quality. Happiness, Inspiration, Hope, Optimism, Compassion, Aesthetic Pleasure, Kinesthetic Pleasure, Gnostic Pleasure, Wonder, Serenity, Love, etc.
1. Things to directly evoke it (pictures, movies, quotations, observations, stories, etc.)
2. Methods to evoke it.
3. Scientific research on it.
4. Books about it.
I want to contribute something of LASTING value and the danger of posting links to other URLs is that they could go away. I’ve already noticed some of this “link rot” on blogs in posts only a few years old.
Ultimately, it may only be my words that will stand the test of time.
I’m interested in more than just Feeling. I’m also interested in Knowing. That is, about scientific discoveries, dynamic systems, nature, etc. But maybe this also ties into an emotion–the pleasure of understanding. Gnostic Pleasure? Cognitive Pleasure?
On this site, I will elaborate on and interconnect my (and the world’s best) ideas. I intend this to be a project that will last the rest of my life and result in a work that will outlast me, and hopefully provide something of lasting value to humanity.
Ways This Website is Different From Other Sites (and Blogs)
More pages than posts.
Perspective/Context. Not just presenting facts (the same facts people could get from lots of places) but using scale to show how they fit into a larger picture. Using knowledge of science and history to provide a historical or scientific or cosmic perspective.
Curation. Adding value by sifting through the thousands of websites, blogs, books, and presenting only those that offer the most value
Book excerpts. Best parts of best non-fiction books.
Insight. Every now and then I hope to have an original idea, some flash of insight or understanding into something. I will share these as I get them.
Authenticity. I will use an authentic, individual, real person voice, not “magazine article” voice.
– historical perspective
– Taoist principles
– systems science principles (feedback loops, paradoxes, bigger picture)
– scientific perspective (e.g. happiness techniques based on research, not just anecdote and quotation and personal experience)
– scientific discoveries
– skepticism
– atheism?
– I will make mistakes (and tell my readers about them)
– improving the world (not just my life)
– geekiness
– thinking about large-scale social problems (traffic, depression, loneliness, scientific overspecialization) and trying to figure out solutions.
– what life in a better world would be like (imagine the solution of every problem) no more obesity, pollution, etc
– making connections between seemingly unconnected things
– seeing patterns that most others don’t see.
– providing perspective by using graphics
Not just about improving your life, but about understanding and improving the world.
It’s not like the answers to the questions I pose cannot be found elsewhere on the web, or that my insights are unique. The value I add is as an aggregator. Putting a lot of useful information and insights together in one place.
What This Website Is Not
– A way to get rich.
– A way to promote another business.
– A personal journal.
– A place for ranting or venting.
A Few Words On Meaning
There are at least two ways to make a lasting contribution:
1. Create/propagate things of lasting value
2. Help society progress to the next step its evolution (such as by helping to spread a good idea or true belief)
Examples of #2: abolitionists, who helped get rid of slavery. Their writings don’t have much value today, since slavery is such an outmoded idea. But at the time, their efforts made a lasting improvement to the world.
I think I might be able to achieve #2, by helping to create and spread good ideas and beliefs. And if my ideas and writing are very good, I might even achieve #1, in the manner of Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Stephen J. Gould, etc. But even achieving #2 would give my life meaning because it would mean my life made a lasting positive difference, however small.
In order for my website to provide meaning to me it must provide value to others. One way to do this is to provide help or insight on problems that we all must wrestle with: life, love, etc.
What is the role of emotion in meaning? Is emotion the cause or effect? Or both? If there is no emotional component, there is no meaning
Meaning comes from helping others.
Social problems. Work on root causes or reducing effects? How best to fix root causes? What are they?
At very large scales of space or time, nothing we do has meaning, in the sense of making a lasting change. But at the scale of human lives, what we can do potentially has a lot of meaning.
Everything we do is confined to this relatively small, 8000-mile diameter sphere. Except for a couple of deep-space probes, nothing we’ve made has left our solar system, and it will take them millions of years to reach another star system. Our radio and television signals have propagated into space. But if there is no one to receive them, or to respond, they will have no effect and thus be meaningless.
In about four billion years from now, our sun will exhaust itself and become a red giant, swelling so large that it will engulf the Earth. The oceans will boil away and all trace that humans ever lived will be erased from the universe (provided we haven’t left the Earth already).
It must be something that only I (or at least, relatively few people) could do. If it’s something someone else could do, I’m not interested. Must draw on my unique abilities and knowledge.
To avoid any feelings of regret from not sharing with the world anything of value that i know.
Try to imagine a better world. One in which most superstitious religious belief has been replaced by reason and knowledge. Where most adults are in relationships and most relationships are healthy. Where most people are athletic and fit, instead of obese. Where life is balanced evenly between work, learning, and play. Where crime is drastically reduced.
My purpose is to hasten the arrival of that world. Even though it’s been over 200 years since the Enlightenment, there is still substantial ignorance wracking the world. And the capitalist system of economics, despite its benefits, cannot bring about this world by itself. The collective self-interested actions of billions of people won’t do the trick.
Subjects Of Interest
Here are some specific subjects that excite and interest me, and that I will focus on, in the website:
– Complex dynamic systems
– Models and modeling (of systems)
– Illuminating and clarifying
– Finding perspectives that make complicated things clear (e.g. chronological, spatial)
– Computer graphics and animation
– Educational software
– Finding the connections between things most people see as unconnected.
– Solving problems
– Humor
– Science writing
– Proteomics
– Aging research
– Biology
– Ecology
– Social networks
– Taoism
– Emergence
– Matching up men and women
– Fixing this society’s messed-up ideas about sexuality
– Discovery
Themes and Categories
Metatheme: To understand and improve your life and your world.
– Self/Life Improvement
– World/Society Improvement
– Relationships
– Happiness (components of it, ways to increase it)
– Science (especially recent discoveries)
– Larger patterns and structures (perspective in space and time)
– Dynamic Systems (feedback loops)
– Meta-processes (for example: how beliefs form, not specific beliefs)
– Psychology/neuroscience
– Philosophy (e.g. The good life, ethics)
– Beauty (in people, nature, technology, etc.)
– Emotions (inspiration, encouragement, affection, etc.)
– Misinformation (sources: Snopes, Cracked, Straight Dope, Dictionary of Misinformation)
The difference between what I write on Facebook and what I write on this site is that on Facebook I intentionally avoid controversial topics. I try not to stray too far into politics or religion. But these are the very things where I believe I have the most passion and potentially could make the biggest difference, and making a difference is key to finding meaning. A possible outcome needs to be about promoting beliefs people should have to get access to a better world, to get to the next level of social evolution.
Just like when there was slavery, believing in abolition was the right thing to do and when there was racial discrimination, believing in civil rights was the right thing to do. Of course even people who believe what I consider to be false will think their beliefs are true and good. fine. We may never agree. I will appeal to reason and evidence. They may not be convinced. But at some point you have to pick a side.
Just think how much better America would be if more people voted Democratic or were more like the Scandinavian countries. Think how much higher the average standard of living would be, how much happier the average person would be, how much better daily life would be for everyone. Finally bad but the conservatives and Republicans outright lie about what Democrats believe. These lies need to be confronted. I feel passionate about that. They’ve caused huge amounts of damage and destruction of my country in my lifetime and I’m not happy about it. This is passion I can use if I can channel it.
This is not to say that everything I write is going to be a rant against Republicans or the religious right. Far more it will be a statement of things that should be universal human values that we all should be able to believe. Helping one another, protecting the environment that we all share, improving happiness and fulfillment of people, increasing the spread of what’s true and reducing the spread of misconceptions, lies, myths and wrong beliefs.
I believe there are universal truths and universal human values that we all should share: love, caring, justice and compassion. Actually, many mainstream Hollywood movies promote these ideas.
It’s not that everyone would want to do what I want to do and that’s fine. For example, there are some people who love to fly–like bush pilots in Alaska. That’s a perfect job for them.. They wouldn’t want to do anything else. Likewise with millions of people in creative professions. Writers, illustrators, chefs, craftsmen of all kinds–across many many different careers people love their jobs.
But I believe many people who work for large corporations not only do not love their jobs, but either actively dislike them or have had to make a terrible compromise and sacrifice to work in the cubicle world. Slowly rotting their souls through thousands of hours of pointless meetings, bureaucracy, meaningless work, and incompetent management. I’m not sure what to do about that. I’m not sure if the large corporate model will even survive in the future for 20 years or 50 or 100 or 1000. But I can’t believe we’ll still be working this way 1000 years from now. It just goes against so much of what makes us human. It degrades so much of what’s good in us.
Maybe at some point, some elements of democracy can be incorporated into corporations so they’re not just private tyrannies. So that instead of all power flowing from the top down, there is some feedback up to the middle layers, so they can affect their performance reviews and that incompetence does not persist and fester.
There are two ways to make improvements in the world: you either reduce or eliminate that which is bad or you create or increase that which is good. I could and probably should make a long list of both of these. For example, the list of bad things to eliminate could include curing various kinds of cancer, or reducing or eliminating hunger, or wiping out malaria, or reducing the number of animals that are euthanized or in shelters, or reducing environmental pollution, or are reducing the incidence of wrong beliefs in the world.
On the list of good things to create or increase might be: things of beauty, true beliefs. Let’s examine that for a moment. Truth by itself has value. Truth is the degree to which your representation of reality and body by actually resembles reality. The more truth a belief has the more valuable it is. Because it is then a reliable model of the world, and can be used to accurately forecast interactions with the world. Truth has value all by itself. true beliefs have value all by themselves. That’s what I really want to do, I think. I want to promote truthful beliefs. I want to improve people’s belief systems, including my own. There’s still a lot but I don’t know that I feel like I need to learn. But perhaps I can be a role model for others.
Maybe I need to write a manifesto. Which is not the same as a mission or purpose statement as it is a statement of belief. My website needs to have a point of view. A position on things, a political stance if you will. It is not neutral. I need to boldly state “here is what I believe and what I will try to promote through this website.” Specifically:
– You should think for yourself.
– That American society has significant systemic problems that need to be addressed. That these problems are causing misery, making us unhealthy, and reducing our ability to compete with other countries.
– That believing things without evidence is essentially evil. Therefore faith is essentially evil and leads to pain and suffering.
– Religion is essentially evil because it divides people, discourages critical thinking, encourages irrational belief, and makes relationships more difficult by reducing the pool of potential partners.
– That many of the beliefs millions of people hold are wrong and not only wrong but destructive. Much of religious belief falls into this category.
– That the way large corporations are currently structured is harmful to both the world and to most of the people working in them.
– That the American economic system is essentially flawed. Yes, capitalism is better than the kind of Stalinist Communism that the Soviet Union practiced, but it is far, far from the ideal way to arrange an economy. Far too much human potential is wasted, far too much human effort is devoted to worthless products and services that do not improve us or make us healthier and fact make things worse. There is gross disparity in what people are given for their labor and it does not vary in accordance to how much effort they expend.
– Unregulated capitalism is destructive and unhealthy in that it leads to environmental pollution and degradation, extreme wealth and income inequality, an ethos of all-againt-all where competition is prized more highly than collaboration, and social instability.
– There is gross unfairness in the American educational system in that children do not receive equal education. The ones that come from poor neighborhoods are in school districts that do not receive as much money and do not get as good an education and are therefore disadvantaged. Also, they cannot live up to their full potential and contribute fully to society.
– Flaws in our political system too. Such as the distorting effect of money on the political process.
– That if we made the changes I recommend, people would be happier, less stressed, healthier, more productive, and so on.
These ideas are controversial. There are many who will disagree, probably vehemently. Some will be intellectually dishonest and misrepresent and mischaracterize these beliefs. But knowing a battle is going to be hard-fought does not mean you refuse to take up the fight. For encouragement, maybe make a list of people who fought similar battles and prevailed, such as Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and so on.
The key is: truth and reality are on my side. I can produce facts and evidence to support my beliefs. If logic and reason can persuade, I can be very persuasive.
Main page: World Improvement
There are two ways to make improvements in the world: you either reduce or eliminate that which is bad or you create or increase that which is good. I could and probably should make a long list of both of these. For example, the list of bad things to eliminate could include curing various kinds of cancer, or reducing or eliminating hunger, or wiping out malaria, or reducing the number of animals that are euthanized or in shelters, or reducing environmental pollution, or are reducing the incidence of wrong beliefs in the world.
I need to make two 2 lists (of What Needs Doing):
1. Good things to create or increase
2. Bad things to reduce or eliminate (what needs fixing)
Self/Life Understanding & Improvement
– Emotions (esp. Happiness)
– Relationships
– Life/Work Planning
– Days in a Lifetime
– Lifehacking
– Problem-solving
– Neuroscience/psychology
World/Society Understanding & Improvement
– Science (astronomy, biology, cosmology, anthropology, etc)
– Cosmic calendar
– Sizes of celestial bodies
– Dynamic Systems
– Social Systems
– History
– Futures Research
General Observations
In a way, “writer” is a misnomer because it merely describes the physical act of moves words from your brain to a piece of paper or digital file. But the real essence of what a writer does is thinking, exploring ideas, connecting concepts, and representing them in a coherent, integrated way using language. “Idea Connector and Representor” might be more accurate.
They say the three subjects you must never discuss are sex, religion, and politics. However, these are also the most interesting, because they go straight to the foundation of how we live.
In many ways, the Internet is allowing us to live more like we were evolved to live: in small tribes, with frequent social intersection, each person sure of their value and contribution.
My writings are useful because they are clarifying to me, and meaningful to the extent they’re helpful to other people.
I don’t want to write per se. What I want is to understand. And for that I have to read and think, as well as write. you can’t draw water from an empty well. Reading and experiencing replenishes it.
Must balance what’s interesting to me so I’ll read/write about it and what’s interesting/useful to others so it will have meaning.