Nisan Calimadh

Cannabis

2008-12-01T00:22:00.000-08:00

In the article‭ "‬Mr.‭ ‬X‭" (‬Marihuana Reconsidered,‭ ‬1971‭),‭ ‬Carl Sagan wrote:

I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis‭ (‬and probably with other drugs‭) ‬which are,‭ ‬through the defects of our society and our educational system,‭ ‬unavailable to us without such drugs.

Sagan is not talking merely about‭ ‬sensation‭; ‬he is talking about ideas he gets while high.‭ ‬He gets insights into the way the world works which he finds convincing when high,‭ ‬but unconvincing when he's down.‭ ‬For example:‭ "‬...‭ ‬that there is a world around us which we barely sense,‭ ‬or that we can become one with the universe,‭ ‬or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men....‭" ‬He describes how he tries to explain these ideas in voice recordings,‭ ‬how he tries hard to convince his morning self that he's not being crazy.‭ ‬And still he can be skeptical in the morning.

I find this schism of the mind to be frightening.‭ ‬I am aware that dreams,‭ ‬drugs and psychoses can convince you that certain things are true.‭ ‬I wouldn't want to be two people,‭ ‬a high Nisan and a down Nisan,‭ ‬who hold different beliefs and who don't believe each other.

On the other hand,‭ ‬maybe Sagan is too much of a scientist‭? ‬Science only goes so far,‭ ‬and there are plenty of valid‭ "‬perceptions‭" ‬that are not scientifically testable,‭ ‬whether for practical reasons or for theoretical reasons.‭ ‬For example,‭ "‬a vastly enhanced sensitivity to facial expression,‭ ‬intonations,‭ ‬and choice of words which sometimes yields a rapport so close it's as if two people are reading each other's minds‭" ‬might actually be nothing more than the pot convincing Sagan that he is being especially empathic.‭ ‬This is a possibility that a scientist should consider,‭ ‬and which it would be difficult to disprove.‭ ‬But,‭ ‬as I will allude to in my blog post about‭ ‬Les Mis,‭ ‬for some purposes it doesn't matter whether two people are really connected,‭ ‬or whether they just think they are.‭ ‬It can be a useful feeling that facilitates emotional bonding.‭ ‬I'd be more comfortable with Sagan's high self if he were willing to admit that this perception might be unreal,‭ ‬even if it were worthwhile.

I do believe that there are many ways to perceive the world,‭ ‬and that people generally only use a few of these at a time.‭ ‬There are easy examples of this:‭ ‬If I'm being led through an unfamiliar big house or city or forest without paying attention,‭ ‬I can be unaware of its floorplan or layout‭; ‬if I'm leading someone else through a familiar place,‭ ‬I'm aware of the layout and its relation to the part I can see at any given moment.‭ ‬For another example,‭ ‬I can see the eruv in the community I used to live in‭; ‬it stands out so much,‭ ‬it might as well be highlighted,‭ ‬and I can tell at a glance if it's broken.‭ ‬I know it's invisible to everyone else.‭ ‬As a third example,‭ ‬I can listen to a piece of music,‭ ‬especially classical music,‭ ‬and hear the melody,‭ ‬and the variations on the melody,‭ ‬and the other parts harmonizing with the melody and alluding to it,‭ ‬and certain notes being delayed or being left unsaid.‭ ‬And some people don't hear this.

In fact,‭ ‬Sagan mentions that cannabis use has given him such an appreciation for music.‭ ‬If,‭ ‬as Sagan claims,‭ ‬cannabis tends to make you receptive to things you customarily ignore,‭ ‬I'm sure it is an effective way to find new modes of perception.‭ ‬I have heard that meditation can do things like that too.‭ ‬I believe that there are many ways.‭ ‬You can learn a new language,‭ ‬or learn to play music,‭ ‬or learn how to recognize plants and animals.‭ ‬You can meet lots of people with different sorts of lives and see things from their perspectives;‭ ‬you can do something dangerous;‭ ‬you can try to repair your own bicycle or make your own furniture.

All these activities can enrich the array of modes of perception you have available in your everyday life,‭ ‬often in surprising ways.‭ ‬They are activities that force you to recognize patterns that you normally wouldn't.‭ ‬And afterwards you can see that,‭ ‬yes,‭ ‬these patterns are really there in the world.‭ ‬I am suspicious of the patterns Sagan sees while high on cannabis which seem to disappear and become implausible when he comes down.

I wondered above if Sagan was too much of a scientist.‭ ‬I say this because he started experimenting with marijuana at‭ "‬a time when‭ [‬he‭] ‬had come to feel that there was more to living than science....‭" ‬I don't know anything about Sagan,‭ ‬but I know there are people who believe that only science is significant or important. They say that any statement that is not falsifiable is nonsense.‭ ‬Such people cannot have a deep appreciation of music or visual art‭; ‬apparently,‭ ‬neither did Sagan.‭ ‬From what little knowledge I have,‭ ‬it seems plausible that cannabis opened Sagan's mind to new and entirely unscientific perceptions,‭ ‬and that he was at first unable to integrate this with the strictly arid and scientific mindset of his down self.

Once when riding in a warm car at night,‭ ‬I got lost in my own thoughts and was seized by the startling certainty that strong artificial intelligence was entirely easy to create,‭ ‬if one only implemented a few simple principles.‭ ‬I did not know exactly what those principles were at the time.‭ ‬By the next morning,‭ ‬it was clear to me that artificial intelligence is not so easy,‭ ‬and that I must have been deluding myself the night before.

I don't expect I will ever have this particular delusion or fantasy again,‭ ‬but I can recognize that such moments of sureness and euphoria can be essential in doing anything creative.‭ ‬Indeed,‭ ‬during a similar warm car ride at night I was once seized by a scene from a yet-unwritten story that was very emotionally moving at the time‭. ‬This inspired me to produce a story which I believe to be inspiring and of intrinsic value.

I brought that up so I could illustrate the idea of properly interpreting feelings and perceptions that might appear to make no sense. I'm glad I accepted and appreciated my fantasy about artificial intelligence for what it was, rather than becoming one of the countless pitiable cranks who believe they are geniuses.‭ ‬If,‭ ‬while high,‭ ‬Sagan was overcome with the idea that‭ "‬there is a world around us which we barely sense‭"‬,‭ ‬he could interpret that as the feeling of his mind being willing to perceive things in new ways.‭ ‬If he became convinced that‭ "‬we can become one with the universe‭"‬,‭ ‬he could regard that as an extremely intimate meditation on an idea you can pick up from religious texts.‭ ‬If he realized that‭ "‬certain politicians are desperately frightened men‭"‬,‭ ‬he could then tell himself that while such an intuition could be true,‭ ‬it might be false, for all he knows,‭ ‬and it might also describe other people he has yet to meet.

I do not want to believe that there are‭ "‬valid levels of perception‭" ‬which are unavailable without the use of drugs.‭ ‬I am willing to believe that cannabis can lead you to good places,‭ ‬but not that it's the only way to get there.‭ ‬And if there are ideas it gives you that you don't understand while outside,‭ ‬I don't believe they are real.

Confession

2008-09-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

I have
a confession
to make.

I don't
really write
poetry.

I just write stuff
and break up the lines
so it looks like poetry.

Self-replication

2008-06-27T01:08:00.000-07:00

If I had never learned about DNA and programming languages, and you asked me to build a machine that can build a copy of itself, I would try to build a general-purpose machine that:

1. Inspects any given machine;
2. Figures out how to build that machine; and
3. Builds the machine.

Then I would set the machine on itself.

But, knowing about DNA and programming languages, I would instead do the following:

1. Design a language that can describe how to build any machine;
2. Build a machine that can understand the language and successfully carry out orders; and
3. Translate instructions for building that machine into the language.

Then I would give the machine the instructions for its own making.

The second strategy is easier than the first because designing languages and translating stuff is something you can do without even getting out of bed; whereas designing a machine that can figure out how to build anything it sees in a systematic way seems impossibly hard. And indeed, the second strategy is basically the one that living things use.

In the past, some people believed that animals contained within their bodies the tiny, undeveloped bodies of all their progeny. It was easier to believe this than to believe that animals are capable of building other animals from scratch. The only problem is that each animal would have to contain a practically infinite number of copies of itself -- one for each of its descendants.

We now know that each animal contains a copy of itself -- not a tiny undeveloped fetus, but in the form of information. When animals appear to make physical copies of themselves, they are really just translating this informational homunculus into a physical being. What's being copied is the information; it's easy to copy information.

2008-04-02T23:52:00.000-07:00

The genre of fantasy is all about pulling you into an imagined world. There are two fundamentally different ways of doing this.

Chris van Allsburg created the above image for the cover of The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis. It is a window into the land of Calormen, south of magical Narnia; the view invites you to imagine yourself traversing the bridge to the city of Tashbaan, where other wonderful vistas no doubt await.

Now consider the following work of art:

This map accompanies The Book of Ti'Ana by Rand Miller and David Wingrove (among others). It depicts the cavern of D'ni, located miles underground, and a tunnel that leads to the Earth's surface. Notice first that it is two maps: The bird's-eye view of the route spans most of the canvas, from the lake on the left to the volcano on the right. Below it is an elevation view of the same route which runs in parallel to the bird's-eye view. The relationship between the maps is emphasized by the layout: They both curve up and to the right, complementing each other.

The rest of the canvas is taken up by illustrations of small details relevant to the journey. As you trace the path from D'ni to the surface, your attention is drawn to these drawings, and your eye instinctively attempts to read the accompanying captions written in D'ni. But then your attention is drawn to a nearby compass rose line, which you follow back to the map's origin.

This is a piece of fantasy art, but it is also a functional document. It has an interactive quality to it: You can choose to explore the work by tracing a route on the map, or studying the drawings, or scrutinizing the cartographic legends and headings. And all the while, you remain very aware of the fact that you are reading a document.

If you become engrossed in this piece of art, you will not lose the sense of examining a document. And yet a part of you will become convinced that the world depicted really exists, far away underground.

Compare this fantasy with the picture of Tashbaan at the beginning of this article. Becoming engrossed in that artwork makes you forget that you are looking at a picture. You begin to feel that you are really in that other world.

The picture of Tashbaan invites you to enter a fantasy, leaving this world behind. The map of D'ni, on the other hand, allows you to explore a fantasy within the context of this world. These two modes of fantasy are satisfying in different ways.

Why can't a fish survive out of water?

2007-11-24T02:22:00.000-08:00

Why can't a fish survive out of water? There are two different responses to this question:

(1) Because a fish's gills do not work in the air.
(2) Because a fish does not have lungs.

Both of these answer the question, although the former is perhaps the response that comes more naturally to mind.

Determining why something happens is like determining the cause of an event: You imagine a world in which the event does not occur; the imaginary world must also lack the cause. For example, consider the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge on 7 November 1940. The bridge collapsed because of strong winds on the 7th of November; for without those winds, the bridge would have remained intact that day. The bridge collapsed also because it was negligently designed; for if it had been made stronger, it would have withstood the winds of the 7th of November.

In the case of the fish out of water, I can think of two simple ways of changing the world to save the fish's life, short of throwing it back in the water: The first is to allow its gills to function in the air. The second is to give it lungs. These give rise to solutions (1) and (2) above.

Alternatively, we can determine why a fish on land cannot survive by comparing it with something else that can survive. The crucial difference between the landed fish and a fish in the water is that the landed fish's gills are dry, and so aren't working properly. The crucial difference between the landed fish and ourselves is that the landed fish lacks the lungs we use to breathe.

2007-09-23T23:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I read a short story — contemporary, non-genre fiction. I rarely do that, because I usually find such stories to be empty or depressing, or both. But the beginning was interesting, and there were several artful turns of phrase I couldn't help but appreciate. So I kept reading.

(The story is Findings & Impressions by Stellar Kim, not that it matters.)

It starts out like a radiologist's report, but turns into a narrative about a sort of friendship that arises between the narrator and his patient, a woman who is dying of cancer. Okay, so she's a remarkable woman who remains strong in the face of her disease, and the doctor befriends her, and she's going to teach him something about life and death before the end. So far, so good.

Except they never get very close at all (for a number of reasons), and he doesn't learn anything really profound, and the story ends in a very mundane scene. The story reads like the less remarkable parts of my daily life.

I realize that I dislike this story, and stories like it, not because they're about ordinary people or ordinary places, but because they're about ordinary events. I want to read about the extraordinary. I want the cancer patient's approaching death to endow her with some kind of special wisdom or preceptive faculty; I want the two characters to fall madly in love, in defiance of death; I want the doctor to come to terms with the loss of his late wife by realizing with relief that he, too, will die one day.

I find many good stories in science fiction and fantasy, because in the imaginary realms, extraordinary things happen all the time. But it's also okay for realistic fiction to be about extraordinary events. Because in reality, extraordinary things do happen.

A leaf

2007-09-10T14:09:00.000-07:00

It's not yet autumn, but I found this prematurely-fallen maple leaf today. The obverse:

The reverse:

Sickness of the mind

2007-09-07T00:32:00.000-07:00

I thought I had found a solution, but my sickness has only gotten worse. I recognize the symptoms. I think I'll have to let it play itself out and see what happens.

ADDENDUM: I talked to someone about it, and it turns out that's exactly what I needed.

Giant squid

2007-07-25T16:10:00.000-07:00

The next time you're laughing with a friend, or walking home, or using the lavatory at night, startle yourself with this realization: There are giant squid. Right now. They are many times the size of your body, and they swim through billions of gallons of ice-cold, pitch-black seawater. Maybe they're hunting food. Maybe they're mating. Maybe they're trying to sleep. You may never see one before you die, but they are alive and living as you go about your life under the sun they will never see.

2007-04-13T02:09:00.000-07:00

At the risk of turning this blog into a running xkcd commentary interrupted by intermittent Borges book reports -- hey, actually, that would make a really cool blog.

Anyway, xkcd's latest webcomic depicts a guy in a hat saying to the protagonist, "What if I had some ice cream? Wouldn't that be awesome?". The narrative then shifts to Hat's thought bubble, which contains a scene identical to the first except that Hat now has ice cream and Protagonist is saying, "Great, you've trapped us in a hypothetical situation."

Let me explain what is going on here. Hat's idle thought does not magically transport him and Protagonist into that bubble. Hat proposes a hypothetical situation, which is equivalent to referring to one world out of the infinite variety of imaginary worlds. In particular, he is thinking of a world in which he has ice cream.

To be more precise, he is thinking of a world whose history is identical with the real world's, and whose present blesses Hat with ice cream. The Protagonist in the thought bubble remembers hearing Hat talk about ice cream, and now he sees that Hat obtained some ice cream out of nowhere. He concludes that he is living in a hypothetical world, where the law of conservation of mass is subordinate to the whims of Hat's appetite.

A pair of worlds that have identical histories up to a point in time is equivalent to a world that bifurcates into two timelines at some point. Hat's musings split the world into two such worlds: A real world in which he does not have ice cream and a hypothetical world in which he does have ice cream. Hat and Protagonist are likewise split into two copies each.

Of course, the real world and the hypothetical world do not interact. The hypothetical Protagonist only perceives a change in the world around him: From his point of view, reality has been altered, or, equivalently, he has become trapped in a hypothetical world.

This is essentially the problem faced by people who upload their minds into virtual reality simulators: A digital copy of the mind wakes up in the simulation and notes, with satisfaction, that he has been uploaded successfully. When the original biological copy wakes up, he is disappointed to find himself in his old body. (Unless the subject is being uploaded against his will, in which case the biological copy is the fortunate one.) If you really want to live the rest of your life in a computer, you have to arrange for your physical self to be killed once a digital copy of you is made.

Back to the comic strip: The copy of the Protagonist that the narrative follows is doomed to live trapped in a hypothetical world. Or is he? His solution is to summon his own hypothetical world, in which there exists a knife that can cut a path into other worlds, like Philip Pullman's subtle knife. This artifact makes its way into the hand of the Protagonist who summoned it, and then conveys him back to the reality he remembers. Except now there are three Protagonists in the real world: The real Protagonist, the hypothetical Protagonist, and the hypothetical Protagonist's hypothetical Protagonist. If this doesn't make sense, read the cartoon.

The idea of an object or person that can travel from imaginary worlds to the worlds that imagine them is deliciously paradoxical, and is explored in a short story by Borges that I'll discuss here someday soon. The magic in this cartoon, however, comes from the narrative, which makes a surprise departure from a boring situation and leads us through an absurd network of alternate realities.

Failure

2007-04-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

When you play Super Smash Bros. Melee in single-player mode, the result of a match is immediately indicated by the voice of the Announcer. If you win, he enthusiastically proclaims "Success!". If you lose, he declares

Failure

with a sneering voice so dripping with censure, so inappropriate to a lighthearted video game that I find it funny. But now it's the loudest admonition echoing in my head.

Yes, I'm dealing with failure today.

I'll just say that I'm glad I'm not going into bioinformatics, because this would be an inauspicious way to start.

The Lottery of Babylon

2007-03-28T22:42:00.000-07:00

Among the short stories in Jorge Luis Borges' anthology Ficciones is "La lotería en Babilonia", which, in my edition, contains the following passage:

[....] No se publica un libro sin alguna divergencia entre cada uno de los ejemplares. Los escribas prestan juramento secreto de omitir, de interpolar, de variar. También se ejerce la mentira indirecta.

I am also in possession of a literal if inadequate translation ("The Babylon Lottery") by Anthony Kerrigan, who translates the passage as follows:

[....] No book is ever published without some variant in each copy. Scribes take a secret oath to omit, interpolate, vary.

The incommensurability of the lengths of these passages is not an error of mine; in both versions, these passages terminate their respective paragraphs, and the subsequent paragraph concerns a different topic. Evidently Kerrigan's omission is more demonstrative of the idea expressed in the original than a more faithful translation would be.

I am reluctant to ascribe to Anthony Kerrigan the imaginative decision of this significantly-placed infidelity, for the story had already been published in one or two other places before Ficciones was compiled, and the multiple manifestations of the story need not have been identical. Whether the credit is due to Kerrigan, or to Borges, or to the inscrutable labyrinth of chance, is immaterial; the fact is that the infinite game of chance described in this story is no longer confined to an imaginary Babylon.

Wanting something makes it real

2007-03-26T02:33:00.000-07:00

xkcd's latest comic strip is another serious one. The faceless protagonist dreams of a girl who whispers a set of coordinates in his ear. But when he goes to the specified place at the specified time, he only discovers that "wanting something doesn't make it real".

The delicious irony, the truth within the truth, is that the character in the strip is wrong. For it is inevitable that on that September afternoon a handful of xkcd devotees will converge on that spot in the neighborhood playground. They will arrive one by one, young men and women, strangers to each other, wearing sweatshirts and jackets against the autumn wind. And when their watches and cellphones and GPS handhelds simultaneously read 2:38pm, they'll look up at each other and share a shy, intimate smile. They will smile at the silly foolishness of going to some point on the globe chosen by a poorly-drawn webcomic; but at the same time, without needing to speak, they will understand that the promise had, in a way, come true. Each of them will have come, hoping but not expecting to find others looking for them; and that's what they will find.

They'll start chatting, maybe about schoolwork, webcomics, science and technology, philosophy. Some will be content with enjoying a meaningful conversation with a stranger, and then go home; others will introduce themselves by name, and friendships will be born.

And perhaps the author of this event will show up; and perhaps his dream girl will be waiting there for him. Or perhaps he will simply let his readers discover each other. In any case, it is certain that he is aware of the very real consequences his fantasy will have. Why would he explicitly write out the coordinates of a location in close proximity to a school full of his readership, and a time in the future during which students will be in town? Use Google Maps if you don't believe me; it's fun.

The sad last panel of the comic says "wanting something doesn't make it real". But the silent message of the comic, which will be felt but not read in that playground six months from now, is that wanting something can indeed make it real.

Don't ever get Beethoven...

2007-02-05T17:41:00.000-08:00

Don't ever get Beethoven to write a funeral march for you.

Beethoven's sonata in Ab-Dur, Op. 26, is a series of variations, the third of which is a "marcia funebre sulla morte d'un eroe" ("funeral march for the death of a hero"). It commences with the same flavor as Chopin's well-known funeral march: The melody is played by quadruple chords in the bass clef which simultaneously beat out the plodding rhythym. The melody moves very little, conveying a great solemnity. There is considerable dynamic variation which allows for pathetic expression. In short, it's a perfect funeral march.

Then comes the middle section of the march, and the sad, stately melody is swept aside by what can best be described as a clown frolick. There are these playful alternating thirty-second notes in major key, and they are answered with a comical high-pitched two-note retort. "Nananana-nananana-nananana-nananana-na -- wah wah!!" This is exactly the sort of thing Bugs Bunny would dance to while performing hi-jinks.

After this inexplicable interlude, the sonata returns to the funereal theme and concludes the movement. Wotta guy, that Beethoven.

Nisan council

2007-01-22T11:49:00.000-08:00

The council of Nisan went well; I got a nice conference room set up, and we were out of there in less than an hour. The result is a weekly schedule that looks good; the challenge will be to stick to it.

Some ideas for 2007

2007-01-06T06:35:00.000-08:00

I actually have some New Years' resolutions this year. I'm not quite sure how I'll implement them, but this year is going to be different in some subtle ways.

One resolution is to talk with myself more. The first Nisan conference will occur next Tuesday or Wednesday, with a representative from each of my little projects attending. We'll be drawing up my weekly schedule.

Another resolution came to me as a gift recently. One component is solid, though it weighs only a few grams; the other is liquid, and that part I give to other people. I'll start by giving some to the one who gave me this gift.

Another resolution is to eat slower.

One thing that I did not resolve is to periodically update this blog. In fact I was moved to write this first entry because I just finished reading a powerful fantasy novel and I'm feeling reflective. And it did nothing to alleviate this wretched illness of mine. Oh, am I sick. Ah, well.

Another resolution is to get more sleep -- when I can. I've grown accustomed to driving myself to exhaustion each night, but I always pay dearly for it afterwards.