Constrained Bliss Point

General Petraeus gave a talk at Georgetown in late January. I decided to go, since it’s the first time I had a chance to hear a four-star general give a talk. He seemed really cool. I mean, never mind the fact that the guy has an absurd number of awards, honors, and distinctions — being a general with a PhD must be awesome.  Oh, he’s also the Commander of CENTCOM, meaning he’s in charge of thousands of men in twenty countries. But I digress.

But in spite of (or because of) his awesomeness, it seems like a large group of people make a sport out of being a dick to General Petraeus. I cannot understand why. At his presentation, there were at least a dozen student sleeper agents in the audience who would interrupt his talk by reading the names of people killed in military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m all for non-violent protests, but this was egregious and poorly targeted. Essentially a group of rabble rousers perverted free speech to their twisted ends, not to mention infringed on a lot of peoples’ good time.

I don’t know why General Petraeus is constantly a target for blind hatred. From his Wikipedia article, it seems to me like he made a bad situation way better in Iraq, and helped save a bunch of lives. Also it’s not like this guy embodies the military industrial complex. If you don’t like that we’re in Iraq, go heckle George Bush or Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney. Generals don’t make those sorts of decisions — not least of all generals who weren’t in charge of things at the time. David Petraeus is a gentleman and a scholar, and attacking him only makes you look like an r-tard.

When you decide it’s imperative to be a dick to someone, at least make sure you’re targeting the right person.

What am I going to do when I finally live in one place?

I’ve moved more than a few times in my life. During my early years I moved within New Jersey, one time that I can’t remember, and five or six that I can. Actually most of those moves were within the same town. Then at some point I went off to college, where moving in and out of one’s dorm room each year is part of the natural ebb and flow of semesters coming and going. Nowadays I find myself living in DC for some reason, and I have the feeling moving will be commonplace for the foreseeable future.

I kind of like moving around. That’s not to say I don’t like staying in one place — because I do. But there is no better way to get one’s material possessions in order than to pack them all up and head on out. One reason college is awesome is that you can pack up all your worldly belongings into a car and then drive away. There is something liberating about living with as few possessions as feasible. Then again, unpacking thereafter is a necessary consequence. I think I still have some boxes still packed in my basement from younger moves, and that’s been quietly nagging at me for years.

The truth is that packing up clears my head. There are never enough opportunities to fit the world so neatly into little boxes with cleanly demarcated edges. Some day I might live in the same house for years at a time. I think at that point I’ll need to take turns every few months boxing up a whole room and then unpacking it into a different configuration.

Caffeine. It comes in a liquid form (dissolved, really), but personally I prefer my caffeine as pills. Now, if my real-life conversations are representative, about half of you will be thinking “that’s a little messed up” and the other half will be thinking “that is pretty cool”. Here are a few reasons I consider pills superior: they are cheaper than coffee (~$.10/ea), caffeine dose is precisely metered (200mg, can be cut in half), no calories nor excess liquids are consumed, you can’t scald yourself, and you can’t discretely carry around a coffee in your backpack and then consume it midway through your 3hr marathon Friday morning macroeconomics lecture.

I stopped taking caffeine pills regularly when I stopped needing to be alert or freed from the effects of sleep deprivation — pretty much when I graduated college. The most interesting thing I have noticed about caffeine is how it makes me want to do things. My natural state is kind of lethargic, to be honest. Even when I’ve had plenty of sleep, I can just sit around and feel like doing nothing. I look at my to-do list and feel apprehensive. Thinking about doing any item is an unpleasant experience — my mind wanders and I do nothing at all.

When I take caffeine, I feel the opposite way. When I take caffeine, I have an intrinsic urge to do things. I look at my to-do list and suddenly the next few hours are a flurry of productivity. Aside from early morning exercise, I have found no close substitutes for the productivity enhancement I experience when I take caffeine.

I spent four years of my life in Troy, NY, attending RPI. I would not recommend living there. RPI is a fine school, and while I have some serious issues with its leadership, my experience there was positive. That said, I have written about my feelings for Troy, and they are not positive. (I should clarify that when I referred to the “community” in my previous post, I really mean the city and area taken as a whole; some people are pretty fabulous, but downtown Troy is not.)

I did not expect to be thinking about Troy today. I was a bit shocked to learn that President Obama made a speech at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy. Initially I was incredulous — my first thought was “Troy? Why Troy?”. Later it made more sense: he had to visit Governor Paterson to give him a talking-to.

President Obama says that the United States needs Troy. I am inclined to disagree, but otherwise willing to hear him out. Now, some caveats: I freely admit I am being too hard on Troy. It is not a terrible place, just below average in some important dimensions. What does it in, in my opinion, is the opportunity cost of spending time in Troy. There are so many better places to be. It is no accident I got out the hell out of dodge as soon as I had my degrees in hand.

There are a few webcomics I read daily. My current list is: xkcd, Questionable Content, A Softer World, Dinosaur Comics, Enjuhneer, Penny Arcade, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and Cyanide and Happiness. I highly recommend all of these, and also a late addition called T-rex is Lonely Comics, because I am such a fan of Dinosaur Comics (and I do really like Garfield Minus Garfield but find it too depressing to read regularly).

Most days are pretty good. It is definitely a solid source of entertainment. Some days are better than others, of course. And today was great. Let me show you why:

First, xkcd referenced Ender’s Game, which kind of needed to happen at some point since the blagosphere is a thing now and it’s significantly different from the book series’ conception of the nets. Then ASW was beautifully morbid. It really says something about the frailty of existence, and deriving humor therefrom. As if on queue, DC was all “Today is a good day I think for somber realism!”. Mr. North also posited the existence of several coffee mugs which I would really, really like to buy (a “Maybe Mondays Aren’t The Problem; Maybe I’m The Problem” mug would be truly fabulous). And to top it off my friend Jenny’s webcomic had a link to one of her projects: a video tribute to xkcd. The video is fantastic, you should stop what you’re doing and check it out right now.

Why do people place so much value on consistent systems of beliefs?

In a formal system, sure, you want consistency. If a formal system is inconsistent then you can use it to prove anything — it’s effectively useless. But our minds are not formal systems. Humans don’t exist simply to prove things (unless you’re a mathematician I guess).

Let’s say you believe two contradictory axioms. What’s to stop you from voluntarily relaxing one or the other as the situation demands? I suppose then you aren’t being “principled”. Your choice may seem arbitrary, and lead to arbitrary results. But it could be that you don’t know what you should believe, until you’re faced with a difficult situation that stretches your belief system. Life is full of gray areas. Sometimes you just do what you think is best, and reform your belief system later to compensate.

Many consider hypocrisy a vice. I used to feel the same way, until I questioned that assumption and couldn’t provide a good justification. Let’s say I get mad at a house mate for not cleaning up his dishes, and then I go ahead and leave my dirty dishes in the sink. He has every right to get mad at me, assuming he doesn’t like dirty dishes left in the sink. But should it be any worse that I’m violating my own rules, in addition to his? I am not so certain.

I’m very willing to hear counter arguments, though.

I am a big fan of leftovers. When I go out to eat, the win condition is bringing some of my food home with me. I love knowing that there’s food waiting for me in the fridge, ready to be eaten at a moment’s notice.

Why is that, exactly? Well, I like to eat. I also like not having to wait to eat, especially when I’m hungry. And I don’t mind cold food. I think these are all reasonable preferences. So that helps explain why, say, a take-out burrito is much more valuable to me than the same amount of cheese, tortillas, salsa, beans, etc. that are not already assembled. It takes time to make a burrito — I can’t eat ingredients right away and get nearly as much utility.

From this I’ve started using the concept of pre-food. Food is stuff you can eat. Pre-food is stuff you will be able to eat, but not yet. A cupboard full of canned soups and vegetables, dried rice and beans, boxes of pasta and jars of tomato sauce is rife with pre-food. Pre-food is better than no food, of course, but I’d rather it be ready made and sitting waiting for me to eat.

Sometimes, as I’m wandering down the supermarket aisles, I think to myself: “Wow, look at all this pre-food.” It’s a useful distinction to me, anyway.

I have an awesome name. You may not realize it at first, but it’s true. I’ve pondered my name a lot over the course of my life, and it may just be that I have one of the coolest names ever. Here’s why:

First, I’m one of a select set of people whose first, middle, and last names are all the same number of letters. I have five. My friend Rob is a part of this set, with six, and I don’t think I’ve met anyone else to satisfy the criterion yet (although some people come close).

Second, the number of syllables in my names exactly match my birthday. My birthday is January 23, or 1/23. One syllable, two syllables, three syllables. I believe there are only a handful of people in the world who can satisfy both of these conditions.

And just the other day, I recognized one more point: the number of vowels in my names is also 1-2-3. I rule.

I am looking forward to a time when Google (or some other massive know-it-all search giant with all my personal data) can record and index video of my entire life in real time. Yes, I know there will be insane privacy issues. I’m not worried about them yet. I am worried about having conversations that I can’t reliably reference at indeterminate points in the future.

Freezepop has a song called “He says, she says” which accurately portrays the sorts of situations arising when we don’t have the above Life Indexer. Imagine how useful it would be to go back and accurately rebut: “No look, I actually said this, not that.” I believe it would be insanely useful.

My biggest issues arise from data sources I can’t look up on Google or Wikipedia. When I make a commitment with someone, I can only search through the mementos I write myself stemming from the social interaction we had that generated the commitment. That means when we disagree, it’s my word against theirs.

You can’t do science on unfalsifiable statements.

My previous post described peoples’ aptitude to anchor themselves and their expectations to one particular perspective. This post explores a consequence of this aspect of the human condition.

I believe people have a comparative advantage in giving other people advice. That is, when you need to shift your perspective, it’s almost certain you’d do better to elicit someone else’s help than to try doing it yourself. A consequence of easy acclimatization is a difficulty in shifting one’s perspective.

Do you ever feel like you’re stuck for some reason, like you’re in a rut, and then you have a really good conversation with someone, and suddenly you’ve found a new direction? And then maybe you think back to the advice, and you realize that it was just appropriately-timed platitudes. You probably would have given your friend the same exact advice if he were in your situation. You just needed someone else to step outside your box, look inside, and tell you what they saw.

You could probably even build a platitude machine and program it with a good enough algorithm to give you all the perspective you need. If the machine responded with the right truisms in the right order, you’d have instant perspective. Until we engineer something that awesome, I guess we’re stuck with people.