MIND READERS DICTIONARY : Mind Readers Dictionary

The podcast is back. Click the buttons above to have this article read or sped-read to you. My writing drives some people crazy because I make big jumps from one topic to another. One minute I'm talking romance, the next I'm talking the origins of life. I aim to edit for smooth transitions but there's a bigger problem than prose styling. I've invested decades in research that trains my mind to follow abstract patterns. I'm doing what the anthropologist Gregory Bateson described as solving for patterns. The details become background; the abstract patterns become foreground. In this article for example, I'll make a connection between love, unemployment, genetics and our changing attitudes about God. Some readers will think I'm comparing apples to oranges to shoelaces but there is method to my madness or at least my colleagues and I think so. You decide for yourself. Abstraction has a bad reputation. I remember once early in this work I described it to a real estate developer friend. He said "sounds very abstract" and I assumed he was being critical. He said no, he meant it positively because "there's nothing so practical as a good abstraction." Pursuit of practical abstractions has a long history. Take the 2,500 year old Tao Te Ching, which Alan Watts once described as an attempt "to know the patterns, structures, and trends of human and natural affairs so well that one uses the least amount of energy dealing with them." In other words, if you recognize patterns with greater accuracy, you make fewer mistakes, which frees you to enjoy life more. Solving for pattern is itself enjoyable. Familiarity with the abstract patterns can make your life more like art, a microcosm for the cosmic. Art exposes the abstract patterns that show up across arenas. Think of the way we savor the calligraphy of music or the metaphors in poetry and fiction. They satisfy a natural human desire for what I'll call pattern sensuality. As a pattern sensualist cultivating pattern fluency, I get to read my life like good fiction. No matter whether I'm winning or losing, hurting or happy, I'm always harvesting abstract insights into the patterns and structures of human and natural affairs. A friend claims I saved her career once by drawing cosmic parallels. She's an intellectual property lawyer and about ten years ago was thinking about quitting because the work was so dry and soulless. I laid out the ways her work addressed one of the meatiest toughest judgment calls in all of life, the question of when to be open. I drew parallels between her work and central themes in evolutionary biology, romance, politics, friendship and warfare. The conversation inspired her. She thanks me to this day. Indeed, here's a Christmas gift offer from me to you. If you find yourself feeling flat about your career, I'd do the same for you. Just respond here with a short description of your work and I'll write you back something about its relevance to profound abstract patterns. I've long wanted to write a series of books on the meaning of life as revealed through different career paths. Accounting as a source of general wisdom--that sort of thing. Still, I don't let my friend's gratitude go to my head. That's because of the pattern I want to talk about today. My cosmic re-description of her law work may have helped her stick with it for a few months at most, but I've watched her over the years and her commitment is less about the meaning of her work than the immediate incentive structure built into her daily interactions. People expect things of her that she succesfully delivers. She is like a reciprocating engine. She produces; clients demand more; she produces; clients demand more. She may occasionally wake up to doubts about her work, but by the time she gets to work, she's just in it. As with all of us her self-motivation is less a p

The podcast is back. Click the buttons above to have this article read or sped-read to you. My writing drives some people crazy because I make big jumps from one topic to another. One minute I'm talking romance, the next I'm talking the origins of life. I aim to edit for smooth transitions but there's a bigger problem than prose styling. I've invested decades in research that trains my mind to follow abstract patterns. I'm doing what the anthropologist Gregory Bateson described as solving for patterns. The details become background; the abstract patterns become foreground. In this article for example, I'll make a connection between love, unemployment, genetics and our changing attitudes about God. Some readers will think I'm comparing apples to oranges to shoelaces but there is method to my madness or at least my colleagues and I think so. You decide for yourself. Abstraction has a bad reputation. I remember once early in this work I described it to a real estate developer friend. He said "sounds very abstract" and I assumed he was being critical. He said no, he meant it positively because "there's nothing so practical as a good abstraction." Pursuit of practical abstractions has a long history. Take the 2,500 year old Tao Te Ching, which Alan Watts once described as an attempt "to know the patterns, structures, and trends of human and natural affairs so well that one uses the least amount of energy dealing with them." In other words, if you recognize patterns with greater accuracy, you make fewer mistakes, which frees you to enjoy life more. Solving for pattern is itself enjoyable. Familiarity with the abstract patterns can make your life more like art, a microcosm for the cosmic. Art exposes the abstract patterns that show up across arenas. Think of the way we savor the calligraphy of music or the metaphors in poetry and fiction. They satisfy a natural human desire for what I'll call pattern sensuality. As a pattern sensualist cultivating pattern fluency, I get to read my life like good fiction. No matter whether I'm winning or losing, hurting or happy, I'm always harvesting abstract insights into the patterns and structures of human and natural affairs. A friend claims I saved her career once by drawing cosmic parallels. She's an intellectual property lawyer and about ten years ago was thinking about quitting because the work was so dry and soulless. I laid out the ways her work addressed one of the meatiest toughest judgment calls in all of life, the question of when to be open. I drew parallels between her work and central themes in evolutionary biology, romance, politics, friendship and warfare. The conversation inspired her. She thanks me to this day. Indeed, here's a Christmas gift offer from me to you. If you find yourself feeling flat about your career, I'd do the same for you. Just respond here with a short description of your work and I'll write you back something about its relevance to profound abstract patterns. I've long wanted to write a series of books on the meaning of life as revealed through different career paths. Accounting as a source of general wisdom--that sort of thing. Still, I don't let my friend's gratitude go to my head. That's because of the pattern I want to talk about today. My cosmic re-description of her law work may have helped her stick with it for a few months at most, but I've watched her over the years and her commitment is less about the meaning of her work than the immediate incentive structure built into her daily interactions. People expect things of her that she succesfully delivers. She is like a reciprocating engine. She produces; clients demand more; she produces; clients demand more. She may occasionally wake up to doubts about her work, but by the time she gets to work, she's just in it. As with all of us her self-motivation is less a p

The podcast is back. Click the buttons above to have this article read or speedread to you. Meg, a single woman in San Francisco had her habits and routines. She did yoga after work pretty much every day. Some nights she got together with friends; other nights she stayed home and watched DVDs or read. Her friends introduced her to Mark, a single guy from Oakland about ten miles away. Like Meg he enjoyed spending some nights out, but he insisted on practicing guitar every night. They dated and time together felt good.  They liked being out as a couple among friends.  They liked cuddling at one or the other’s apartment watching DVDs or reading.  When one was feeling down the other was usually up so they balanced each other’s spirits nicely. Each felt stronger with the other. Now they’ve been together about four years. Mark moved into Meg’s place and now pays half the rent. They have a new dog, Beano. They never wonder whether they belong together, but of course there are incompatibilities.  Meg likes Mark’s guitar playing, but sometimes they stay home so he can practice when she would rather go out. Mark is glad Meg is so fit but sort of wishes she didn’t insist on going to yoga after work because it means he has to come home right away to walk Beano.  “Love takes work,” Mark says, “but it’s worth it.” Freud said “Love and work…work and love, that's all there is…love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles said that love and strife were the primary moving factors not just for humans but also for the whole universe. I’m single again and dating, thinking about what it takes to make a couple. And I’m also still part of a research team working on the emergence of life from non-life (the field is simply called “emergence.”). Between these two activities I find myself agreeing with Freud and Empedocles.   Love and work are the cornerstones of humanness but they’re universal too.  If you’ll work with me, I think I can explain the connection. Things, living and otherwise have their habits, the behaviors they spontaneously produce. A billiard ball on a table will just keep sitting there.  A ball rolling down an incline will keep rolling.  As singles, Meg does yoga after work; Mark practices guitar at night. Those are their habits independent of new outside influences. In Meg and Mark’s case we’d say they do those things because they love them. In our emergence research we’re calling this “orthograde” behavior.  Ortho- means straight and -grade means incline. It’s what things are inclined to do if they do what is normal or “straight” for them.  Orthograde behavior is spontaneous or internally-generated behavior. Things with different spontaneous habits or orthogrades come into contact.  The rolling ball hits the stationary ball. Meg and Mark meet and move in with each other. In interaction the balls change each other’s behavior.  The formerly-stationary ball moves; the rolling ball’s path changes.  Likewise, when Meg and Mark move in together, they change each other’s behavior too.  Behavior under a new influence is called “non-spontaneous.”  It’s not that it’s un-natural.  After all, interaction is natural.  But it’s non-spontaneous with respect to what the balls or people did before interaction. We emergentists call the interaction between two orthogrades a “contragrade.” Contra-, of course means against. Contragrade interactions change behavior. In fact, that’s the physical science definition of work. Work shifts behavior from spontaneous to non-spontaneous, from what things would do on their own to what they do under each other’s influences. If, one morning you noticed that your parked car had a new dent in it, you would not think that the car had

The podcast is back. Click the buttons above to have this article read or speedread to you. Meg, a single woman in San Francisco had her habits and routines. She did yoga after work pretty much every day. Some nights she got together with friends; other nights she stayed home and watched DVDs or read. Her friends introduced her to Mark, a single guy from Oakland about ten miles away. Like Meg he enjoyed spending some nights out, but he insisted on practicing guitar every night. They dated and time together felt good.  They liked being out as a couple among friends.  They liked cuddling at one or the other’s apartment watching DVDs or reading.  When one was feeling down the other was usually up so they balanced each other’s spirits nicely. Each felt stronger with the other. Now they’ve been together about four years. Mark moved into Meg’s place and now pays half the rent. They have a new dog, Beano. They never wonder whether they belong together, but of course there are incompatibilities.  Meg likes Mark’s guitar playing, but sometimes they stay home so he can practice when she would rather go out. Mark is glad Meg is so fit but sort of wishes she didn’t insist on going to yoga after work because it means he has to come home right away to walk Beano.  “Love takes work,” Mark says, “but it’s worth it.” Freud said “Love and work…work and love, that's all there is…love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles said that love and strife were the primary moving factors not just for humans but also for the whole universe. I’m single again and dating, thinking about what it takes to make a couple. And I’m also still part of a research team working on the emergence of life from non-life (the field is simply called “emergence.”). Between these two activities I find myself agreeing with Freud and Empedocles.   Love and work are the cornerstones of humanness but they’re universal too.  If you’ll work with me, I think I can explain the connection. Things, living and otherwise have their habits, the behaviors they spontaneously produce. A billiard ball on a table will just keep sitting there.  A ball rolling down an incline will keep rolling.  As singles, Meg does yoga after work; Mark practices guitar at night. Those are their habits independent of new outside influences. In Meg and Mark’s case we’d say they do those things because they love them. In our emergence research we’re calling this “orthograde” behavior.  Ortho- means straight and -grade means incline. It’s what things are inclined to do if they do what is normal or “straight” for them.  Orthograde behavior is spontaneous or internally-generated behavior. Things with different spontaneous habits or orthogrades come into contact.  The rolling ball hits the stationary ball. Meg and Mark meet and move in with each other. In interaction the balls change each other’s behavior.  The formerly-stationary ball moves; the rolling ball’s path changes.  Likewise, when Meg and Mark move in together, they change each other’s behavior too.  Behavior under a new influence is called “non-spontaneous.”  It’s not that it’s un-natural.  After all, interaction is natural.  But it’s non-spontaneous with respect to what the balls or people did before interaction. We emergentists call the interaction between two orthogrades a “contragrade.” Contra-, of course means against. Contragrade interactions change behavior. In fact, that’s the physical science definition of work. Work shifts behavior from spontaneous to non-spontaneous, from what things would do on their own to what they do under each other’s influences. If, one morning you noticed that your parked car had a new dent in it, you would not think that the car had

The podcast is back. Click the buttons above to have this article read or spedread to you. A Holiday gift for someone thoughtful in your life? Consider the New York Times Best-selling graphic novel Logicomix. It's a beautiful story about the death of the 2,400-year-old dream of creating a system of logic that wasn’t founded on the shaky ground of intuitive assumptions. The central character is Bertrand Russell. Though he failed, his Herculean effort did contribute to the invention of the computer. It also led to mathematician Kurt Godel’s major revelation: It wasn’t just Bertie’s logic system that failed. No matter how they’re built, any and all systems of logic will be built on shaky unprovable intuitions. In other words, it is possible to build great sturdy towers of thought, but they’ll all have loose foundations. The philosopher Richard Rorty applies this to everyday life. If some smart alec responded to every assertion you made by asking “yes, but why?”, within the limits of your patience you could reason your way to answers: Why do you work? Because that’s how I earn a living. Why do you earn a living? Because that’s how I pay for the things I need and want. And why do you pay for the things you need and want? Because it’s good to have them. And why is it good to have them? ... At some point you would be unable to explain. Your response would be tautological, in other words circular, where the answer is just a restatement of the question: “It’s good because it’s good!” Rorty calls this your “final vocabulary.” At the edge of your powers of explanation, you’ve got no logical traction. What you say is unfounded and yet final. All you can say is, “It just is.” With Godel’s discovery of logic’s limits, a final vocabulary isn’t optional. We all have one. Every great scientific theory has one. Our thoughts and conversations are thus like explorations around an expanse of blacktop surrounded on all sides by sand. We have traction up to the edge, but if we go over our wheels spin. In this context, a debate can become like a game of chicken, with two people trying to drive each other off the edge. The smart alec asks question after question until you fall onto your final vocabulary. She can then say, “Look at you. You’re a joke. You believe things without a strong foundation. You’re making assumptions!” Socrates is remembered as a humble, inquiring man but he famously confronted self-certain Athenians with their own final vocabularies. By question alone he drove his fellow citizens into the sand. A few of his students became infamous smart alecs. By imitating Socrates, they made others look dumber and themselves look smarter. Two ended up with so much confidence in their own assumptions they became tyrants. Socrates himself meant well. He believed that with more inquiry comes more careful thought. Inquiry is how you build out the blacktop to where you have traction everywhere in all directions. When I say that the dream of building a system of logic not founded on shaky ground is 2,400 year-old, I’m dating it to Socrates. And now that dream is dead. But the smart alec isn’t. Plenty of people still use what I’ll call the ad laxus (against the looseness) fallacy: It’s the smart alec’s fallacious assumption that because she can drive you into your own traction-less final vocabulary, her own reasoning must be solid. You’ve got to watch out for that. Don’t let anyone take you down saying, “You don’t know that for sure.” No one knows anything for sure. And as with all fallacies, this one has an opposite: Just because nothing can be known for sure, it doesn’t necessarily mean your assumptions are as good as hers. In my next article I’ll suggest a way of thinking about how to evaluate ideas

The podcast is back. Click the buttons above to have this article read or spedread to you. A Holiday gift for someone thoughtful in your life? Consider the New York Times Best-selling graphic novel Logicomix. It's a beautiful story about the death of the 2,400-year-old dream of creating a system of logic that wasn’t founded on the shaky ground of intuitive assumptions. The central character is Bertrand Russell. Though he failed, his Herculean effort did contribute to the invention of the computer. It also led to mathematician Kurt Godel’s major revelation: It wasn’t just Bertie’s logic system that failed. No matter how they’re built, any and all systems of logic will be built on shaky unprovable intuitions. In other words, it is possible to build great sturdy towers of thought, but they’ll all have loose foundations. The philosopher Richard Rorty applies this to everyday life. If some smart alec responded to every assertion you made by asking “yes, but why?”, within the limits of your patience you could reason your way to answers: Why do you work? Because that’s how I earn a living. Why do you earn a living? Because that’s how I pay for the things I need and want. And why do you pay for the things you need and want? Because it’s good to have them. And why is it good to have them? ... At some point you would be unable to explain. Your response would be tautological, in other words circular, where the answer is just a restatement of the question: “It’s good because it’s good!” Rorty calls this your “final vocabulary.” At the edge of your powers of explanation, you’ve got no logical traction. What you say is unfounded and yet final. All you can say is, “It just is.” With Godel’s discovery of logic’s limits, a final vocabulary isn’t optional. We all have one. Every great scientific theory has one. Our thoughts and conversations are thus like explorations around an expanse of blacktop surrounded on all sides by sand. We have traction up to the edge, but if we go over our wheels spin. In this context, a debate can become like a game of chicken, with two people trying to drive each other off the edge. The smart alec asks question after question until you fall onto your final vocabulary. She can then say, “Look at you. You’re a joke. You believe things without a strong foundation. You’re making assumptions!” Socrates is remembered as a humble, inquiring man but he famously confronted self-certain Athenians with their own final vocabularies. By question alone he drove his fellow citizens into the sand. A few of his students became infamous smart alecs. By imitating Socrates, they made others look dumber and themselves look smarter. Two ended up with so much confidence in their own assumptions they became tyrants. Socrates himself meant well. He believed that with more inquiry comes more careful thought. Inquiry is how you build out the blacktop to where you have traction everywhere in all directions. When I say that the dream of building a system of logic not founded on shaky ground is 2,400 year-old, I’m dating it to Socrates. And now that dream is dead. But the smart alec isn’t. Plenty of people still use what I’ll call the ad laxus (against the looseness) fallacy: It’s the smart alec’s fallacious assumption that because she can drive you into your own traction-less final vocabulary, her own reasoning must be solid. You’ve got to watch out for that. Don’t let anyone take you down saying, “You don’t know that for sure.” No one knows anything for sure. And as with all fallacies, this one has an opposite: Just because nothing can be known for sure, it doesn’t necessarily mean your assumptions are as good as hers. In my next article I’ll suggest a way of thinking about how to evaluate ideas