A Flemm Blog

It bottles (30 Rock) my mind how difficult it can be to get someone to do something for you - even if it will cost them nothing. This is not only the case with strangers, but with people who care about each other as well. Getting someone - anyone - to do something they don't already want to do can be downright impossible.

"Why should I put up with the discomfort of something I'm not terribly interested in?

Just because it will make you happy?

Forget it".

My only explanation is that we genuinely do not want other people to be happy - even when we do. Or, at very least, other people's happiness is about as low as you can get on our list of priorities.

I don't think human beings quantify their happiness on an absolute scale. I'm pretty sure it's measured on a relative scale.

If John is happier than me, I must not actually be happy.

As we all know, the primary goal of 99.9% of all people is to get what they want. I'm not judging anyone, we just all care about ourselves more than others - and that's okay.

So if I am more important (to me) than you, it stands to reason that my happiness is also more important (to me) than yours. Fair? I think so.

If we remember that happiness is measured on a relative scale, for me to be happy, you need to be less happy. So if you ask me to do something that I don't want to do (it will make me - at least a tiny bit - less happy), and my doing it will make you more happy, I'm not going to do it.

The Math:

John asks Andrew to [insert anything]. Doing so will reduce Andrew's happiness by 1, and increase John's happiness by 15.

At first glance, it seems simple: the cost to Andrew is 1 unit of happiness. HOWEVER, since John will increase by 15, the gap between Andrew and John increases by 15 as well. Add the 1 that Andrew lost, and your final gap in happiness is 16.

Becaus of the relativity of happiness theorem, the act of Andrew [insert anything] for John causes his happiness to reduce by 16 units.

That's why people don't do things for you (or me) that don't make them at least as happy as it makes you (or me).

It's 11:00 pm, and do you know what your Google ads are? I do:

I think Google is worried about me ...

For the record, I am not considering suicide.  I am not depressed.  I may be without faith, I may desire to have no emotions, I may expect nothing from my life - but I am not depressed.

Every discussion (I use the term lightly) about religion I've ever had with a religious person has boiled down the following statement:

"Faith is about believing in something without any proof"

EXACTLY!! How rational is that? What's the point? Most importantly, how can you decide to start having 'faith'?

I should say that I have no problem with people having religion, or faith, or whatever - I don't care what anyone believes - I simply find the notion of 'faith' interesting.  I could never let a blind belief in something with no evidence determine the way I act. I need reason.

I need to logically determine how I should act, and what I should think.  Pawning those decisions off on 'faith' removes my mind/logic from the equation, and replaces them with the promises of another person - another person with the same blind faith, who is operating on promises of yet another person with blind faith. Do you see where I'm going with this?

People who tell me about their faith always come off as though they feel superiour because they are able to have faith. 

"How sad that you aren't able to believe in what that guy told me. How I pity you".

I don't want your pity. I'm happy. I'm also happy that you're happy. Isn't it great when we're both happy - when we agree?

I never want my actions to be determined by emotion. I believe in being rational, and emotional responses are completely lacking in ration. Acting on emotions - or outwardly displaying them - has never led me to a positive outcome. I try to think before I do anything, and emotions are not thought.

Obviously, ignoring emotions doesn't work - they do, and will always exist - so I try to treat emotions as exactly what they are: an unruly part of the brain responding to the world. I try to take note of my emotions, and think about them rationally. In this way, I become disconnected from them. As though I were reading about them in a book. Once in do this it feels as though it's a different character, other than myself, feeling the emotion.

"Hmmm. I seem to be feeling angry. Why? Oh - because [insert reason for anger here]. Interesting"

Stepping back and looking at emotions from a rational perspective also affords me a chance to realize how little acting on the emotion will accomplish. 

"If I yell or throw something, will anything change?"

Now this doesn't always work, and wouldn't work for everyone, of course, but it's a neat trick. 

As an aside, while writing this post about emotion, I have realized that I midly aspire to be Vulcan (or maybe I aspire to be mildly Vulcan). 

We fancy ourselves 'intelligent' beings.  Life-forms that think, and plan. As a result, before we do anything we anticipate the result. We calculate (often subconsciously) the possible outcome, and pick one (also often subconsciously) as what we think is most likely (we're often wrong). This possible outcome we have chosen is what we expect to happen - we have built an expectation.

The problem here is not that we expect a certain result from every action, it's that there are no controls over how these expectations are formed. Think of a terrible sports team (i.e. Leafs) building the expectation that they will win every game. 

All of us, from time to time, make unreasonable expectations, and it's no way to live your life. When the leafs lose a game, all of their idiot fans are angry about the loss, but that is compounded by the fact that their expectations weren't lived up to.

If you expect to be excessively happy, and find that you're just at par, the failure to live up to your expectations will make you unhappy.

I try to live life expecting nothing good to come my way. That way, when nothing good comes my way, I'm not bummed about it. 

The key to life is managing your happiness. Proper expectation management makes that much easier. 

Internet advertisers are constantly gathering information about you. They know everything you do online. They know what you eat, what music you listen to, what porn you watch, what blogs you read, etc. They also know who your friends are, what they eat, what music they listen to, what porn they watch, what blogs they read, etc.

And so we yell:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

My private information!

We yell because the knowledge that we are so completely understood and categorized causes us to lose our sense of uniqueness and mystery. 

Notice that I've used the word mystery as opposed to privacy. Why? Because the information used to categorize you isn't private. In the Internet Age this knowledge is considered fair game.  The books you read, the music you listen to, what gadgets you buy - these bits (pun intended) of information are no longer private. This being said, we still like to feel mysterious. It feels good to not be known - to not be defined. So we are losing [have lost] our personal 'mystery'.

Once they know us, they categorize us. We are all defined. Once this happens, can we still feel unique?  How unique am I when 99% of my habits, likes, dislikes can allow me to be grouped with millions of other people? Answer: not at all.

Once we reach this point where we are not unique (and we know it) and our personal mystery is gone we can begin to sing a different tune. Instead of:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

My private information!

We can say:

Okay. I understand that advertising is a necessary evil, but at least the ads are targeted to me. At least I get to see ads for things I may want - not adult diapers and tampons. 

So screw my mystery. Screw my uniqueness. They never really existed in the first place.

Uh ... hey.

You haven't been here all this time have you? ...

oh...

uh ... oops.

I'm opening the blog-box to show you that I am alive. My blog been both alive and dead for the past little while, but now it's just alive. Less fun, but more reading material. (Less interesting, but more interesting)

Well, as you must have noticed, I'm back. Where have I been? I've been all around, so we've got tons of stuff to get caught up on. Let's get going.

Firstly, I've been creating. I have an application in the iPhone/iPod touch App store, and another under review. I've spent months on this shit, and it's finally one-point-oh.

If you want to know about CurlBook, check out www.curlbook.com.

Secondly, ah, never mind. If anything of real interest had happened to me over the past couple months, I probably would have written it here. (I have put a ton of stuff on the Twitter though)

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Pause

While writing, I've just bought this album:

Alexi Murcoch, Time Without Consequence
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=154164042&s=143455

Check it out.

Resume
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Where was I?

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Pause again

I just created a smart folder (if you use OSX you ought to know what that is, if you don't, never mind) for all .xcodeproj files. Why didn't I think of that earlier?

Okay, resume. I mean it this time
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I’ve made some advances on the coffee front since we last spoke. I was given the extremely generous gift of 15 bar pump style espresso maker, and an automated conical burr grinder. YEAH! Espresso seemed like a logical progression from (with) coffee. It’s just like coffee, but with a better delivery system.

I’ve been using a french press for a long time, but I’ve had to have my coffee ground at time-of-purchase to use it. Obviously, this is less than ideal. Now (thanks to the new grinder) my grounds are fresh, and course enough to make proper sludge-free coffee.

I have also purchased a box of empty tea-bags, and am filling them with coffee grounds. Now I can make coffee with no mess/effort when I’m away from my lab (that’s what I’m calling my coffee-equipment area). I call these (wait for it ) coffee-bags.

On a completely unrelated note (but on the Schrödinger theme), I'm planning an experiment for the coming week (Monday through Sunday). I'm going to turn off ring-tones and vibration on my phone. This way, I will only become aware of new messages/emails/missed calls when I decide to check (Schrödinger's phone). At any moment, I will have friends and be important, while at the same time have no friends, and not be needed by anyone. Should be interesting.

These days we’re expected to treat our online/phone people with more urgency and respect than people we’re with at any given moment. I hate this, but I also hate knowing that my phone has a message, and not looking. Curiosity I guess. As I said, it should be interesting.

That’s all for now, but there will be more. I promise.