Some thoughts and photos - by nikhil bhatla

A Reflection

nikhil — 2008-09-28T15:23:48-08:00

"I sometimes ask myself, how did it come that I was the one to develop the Theory of Relativity? The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think abour problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought of as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up. Naturally, I could go deeper into the problem than a child..."

- Einstein (quote found in Robert Rosen's Life Itself)
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Why I won't vote, and why I will give more to charity

nikhil — 2008-09-27T11:43:06-08:00

I'm not going to vote in this upcoming election. I am not registered to vote, and I don't plan on registering. This may come as hearsay, and who am I to avoid the controversial, so on with the explanation.

I don't like either of the candidates. They both feel like fake people to me, almost people without minds of their own. They're chimerical hodgepodges of the current fad, the current "crisis", or the current paycheck - $1B in campaign financing would change anyone's mind about pretty much anything, and how many favors does that add up to? You might feel indebted to someone if you owed them $20 bucks for dinner - Imagine how you would feel if you owed them $1 billion? You'd basically be their lifelong slave. I truly shudder to think.

I just can't imagine sitting down in a room with either Barack or McCain and having a good, honest, no-bullshit conversation. I hate interacting with salespeople, with paternalistic pricks who just can't level with you, one person to the next. And that's exactly what both of these people are. Becca was watching the debate last night, and based on what little was said and the fact that the two men just wouldn't talk to each other, I only believe this more.

I don't really know what either of them *actually* believes, but I guess that's what makes a good politician. Perhaps more importantly, even if I did know what they believed I wouldn't know how they would take their idealism to the practicial world. It's one thing to think that federally-funded social programs should be expanded, but it's another altogether to consider how to do this in light of a national debt that's headed for $11 trillion by 2009 (esp. if this ridiculous $700B handout goes through). And he also wants to cut taxes for 95% of people? Who is this fool trying to fool? It's like saying, oh, you owe your bank 3x your annual salary, and oh yeah, you lost your job - go on a spending spree! Bankruptcy, anyone? Or maybe we've forgotten that if it's too good to be true...

This man is a dreamer. And also apparently OK with murder. Why would I vote for someone who just basically said he wanted to kill Bin Laden (pretty much a direct quote)? Why would I vote for someone who condones murder? No one deserves to die, no matter how terrible the crime might be. Come on, Christians, what the hell would Jesus do?

Oh wait, we're playing the game of politics - oh yeah, just say what you think people want to hear...

OK, now on to the old white guy. He wants to freeze the budget (that actually sounds good, given our debt) yet expand defense spending, which already consumes ~$500B of our ~$3T annual budget? Must the fear-mongering continue? He is also blood-thirsty, which is repulsive.

One might argue that if I don't like these 2 choices, I should vote for someone who I do like. Maybe I should vote for Becca (but that sounds nuts, cause no way in hell do I want to hang out with these slimy politicians if she gets elected). Back to earth: I've voted for the Green party for executive positions since I was legally allowed to vote (since 2000). And you know what, it didn't do a damn thing. And in hindsight, I don't know if they would have been any different. The fear-mongering is especially high amongst the environmentalists (as it has been for centuries, at least back to Malthus), so I'm certainly not voting for the Green party again.

But you have to vote for someone! No, I don't have to. The bottom line is that the federal government, and even state governments, have far too much power. I don't think the federal government, way out in Washington, knows what's best for people. To know what's best for people, you have to be there, locally, in the flesh, living the life, not living some political corporate rock-star fantasy in Washington (or any other state capital for that matter).

So I'm done with hotshot politics, and any involvement with them. I could easily just ignore it all. But the thing that bugs me, though, is that I pay taxes every year, and I'm unhappy with how that money is spent, by and large. I don't want to pay for bullets to kill people in faraway lands. I don't want to pay for a $700B bailout of a bunch of rich schmucks who screwed up, but who have paid so much to the government that they're finally calling in the political favors that they're owed. I don't want to pay for stupid laws that illegalize things that shouldn't be illegal (e.g. drugs, gay marriage, abortion, etc.). No one entity should have that much power, and the federal (and state) governments have far too much power. People should just mind their own business. And when it comes to social interaction, it's pretty simple: Just do to others what you would have them do to you.

One form of dissent is vocal non-participation. That is the form that I choose.

So what to do? I'm pretty much done supporting a system that as far as I can tell is doing a ton of things wrong. But I do believe that government, even given its flaws, also does some amazing things that really help people. But they're just too far away to know what really matters. Reality for one person can only be imagined by another. People should be empowered to change their own lives in the ways that they see best, not in the ways that someone who is out of touch in a faraway place imagines is best.

So what to do? How can I reduce my tax payments in a legal way? Obvious: give more to charity. Though there are limits on how much you can deduct (between 20-50% of your income), if you are able, I think giving to local charitable organizations is definitely better than giving to big government. I really do think people, and communities, should take care of themselves. On the charity front, I think education can change a person's life unlike anything else, and I think I'm going to reducing the amount of money I send the feds by giving more to local charities that increase the availability of education.

Often when I make the "people should take care of themselves" argument, I'm misinterpreted. I'm not arguing for a super self-centered, selfish, uncompassionate existence. People should take care of the people that are around them. If people did this simple thing, I thing the lives of people would improve substantially. One common counter-argument is that poor communities can't help themselves. I'm not sure that this is true, but even if it is, it's neighbors should help them out. Case in point: Palo Alto (where Stanford University is) is one of the wealthiest cities in the country, and it sits right next to East Palo Alto, which is one of the poorest. Even if EPA can't help itself, Palo Alto certainly can, and it's up to them to decide whether they should or should not. I'd like to think that if I was mayor, I would, because I'd think it was the right thing to do.

Anyhow, there's more from where this came. In light of all the political bullshit and hubub, I just needed to get this down.
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]]>omar: nikhil, you sound like ron paul, in some ways. i remember reading an interview with ron paul where he said something like "if your neighbor is polluting your area, then you go and talk to your neighbor and work it out, and use the courts to deal with it." naive. especially in this globalized world, where pollution/green house gases need to be dealt with globally. there's one area where you need federal commitments. now, onto healthcare. this country needs a federal mandate that everyone should be insured. it's ridiculous right now that healthcare, for most people, is tied to their employer.. and buying individual healthcare for oneself is just too expense. i suppose local communities could band together to provide healthcare for their residents (something SF is trying to do) but i really think that you only get reasonable on obama's finance plan: you should read about where he plans to get the money for his spending initiatives. he isn't proposing spending more without taking in more, though tax receipts will almost certainly be lower this year so of course there will be issues. on the bailout: it's too simple to see this as a blank cheque for wall street. unfortunately, if people/companies can't get credit, then the economy is going to stall. right now, banks aren't doing much lending. money markets aren't buying up short term issues from companies. these are issues that go beyond the wall street cronies, who are nevertheless partly to blame (as are people on main street for taking up these ridiculous mortgages, the people who sold them, the politicians who got rid of regulations, the regulators who didn't regulate, etc..). of course, i don't think we have an example of a modern financial crisis like this where the government didn't really step in, so it's hard to know what would happen if they didn't do anything, but i don't think we want to engage in that experiment. right now it's about getting the terms right -- for instance, if taxpayers are bailing out these companies, they better get some sort of equity stake. as to your bigger point: i can understand your frustration with the candidates. i feel the same way. they both seem like poor options in my mind.. and they certainly are playing the political game -- there's no change in washington. it's a frustrating time. btw i'll be in cambridge starting 10/6 or so.
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Knowledge

nikhil — 2008-08-28T10:16:11-08:00

I've come to realize something. For much of my previous life, I read for enlightenment. I believed that, somewhere out there, someone knew a truth that would be exactly what I was looking for, would satisfy the search and change my life. I believed that there was a "lost" truth, hidden in the wilderness, discovered long ago but since forgotten; the enlightened primitive civilization, the truth we were too stupid to recognize as priceless, that beautiful thought that slipped through the cracks of the collective conscious. That fountain of youth. Such a search was blended with a sort of nostalgia, an irrational fondness of a simpler time, where truths were there, obvious and undistorted by the hubbub of modern civilization. Why do I hate/love modernity so? Why do we think it's so damn important, yet simultaneously recognize that in the things that matter most (love, children, family) it doesn't have much to offer?

Why do I seek truth in the written word, the wise man, the priest, when what I seek is neither available nor understandable in such forms? Just because something's really old doesn't mean it's right. Just because something's a tradition, a convention, the way it's always been done, doesn't mean it's better than new ways of thinking and doing.

In fact, I would argue that the truth many of us seek is not and has not been known by anyone this side of NOW on the timeline of time.

Why do we think that some ancient civilization knew the answer that we seek? If the problem had been solved we probably wouldn't have forgotten about it. I guess it's more comforting to think that someone else already knows the answer. To think that no one in all time has ever known the answer is a frightening, lonely thought indeed.

I think what I seek is there only in experience. Not in the story. Someone can tell you only so much; to really get there you have to go yourself, move full body and soul. True understanding is only the product of personal experience. And I guess after 27 years of searching, I've realized I can no longer expect to get the truth from others. They don't know it, and I should stop expecting them to. I can't rely on them for what I'm looking for, that much I recognize now. This has become a deeply personal quest, so personal that the thoughts of others seem less relevant as the days progress. Those thoughts, so frequently lacking in analysis of the contingencies that my mind has already trodded, easily discarded. Especially post-survival school, my worldview is so altered that deeply important messages from the outside are scarce and getting scarcer. Signal to noise is plummeting. Of course, there's entertainment, distraction, but not much more. It's an instinct of the mind, to find that which is meaningful in every little act, to extract the significance of every event. Doing science is making this more ingrained, as the task du juor is staring at data and extracting a story, squeezing out the juice. So many ways to squeeze, yet how few yield...

This probably doesn't make any sense. This is probably one of my most abstract, poorly articulated writings in some time. Yet I write anyway because I think, somehow inside there somewhere, is something important. I'm not quite sure what I'm trying to say. Maybe it isn't communicable in written form. I dunno. What I do know is that it's gotten harder and harder to find people I can truly communicate with. And I know now that I'm probably not going to find what I'm looking for in someone else's writing. I might, but I doubt it. It's up to me to figure it out on my own.

I see my path, so few are the fellow travelers. When they cross by, so often are they restricted in the possibilities they imagine.
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]]>Leggett: Makes plenty of sense Nikhil... thanks for sharing.

omar: makes no sense nikhil, but when are you coming out to sf so we can go drinkin! woo ;) add "friends" to that love, children, family paren, and then start enjoyin your friends and bloggin less. and start droppin ur 'g's
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I Know You

nikhil — 2008-06-22T11:10:29-08:00

Off the train, riding the escalator, reading my PCR.

An older guy, maybe 5' 5", playing his harmonica. Glance up, then back to my PCR. Make eye contact, he stops playing.

"I know you."

"You do?"

"Yeah, I know where you're from."

"Where am I from?"

"Syria."

"Nope."

"Where are ya from?"

We get on the second escalator, side-by-side.

"Guess again."

"Somewhere in the Middle-East."

"India."

"Huh...I knew a guy from over there. He was my buddy 2000 years ago. You seen him?"

"Who?"

"Jesus. You seen him?" He pats my chest with the back of his hand, a quarter of the way to a shove.

"No."

"What ya studying?"

"Neuroscience."

"What ya studying in neuroscience?"

"Worms."

"Neurons?"

"Worms."

"Neurons?"

"Yeah, neurons in worms."

"That's good. Good for you. You going to medical school?"

"No."

"You do this on your own? Where do you do this?"

"MIT."

"Gotcha."

"What do you do?"

"I'm a Greek Macedonian."

"You're a what?"

"I'm a Greek Macedonian."

"What's that?"

"I was born 3 blocks from where Alexander the Great lived 2500 years ago. You know where Alexander the Great was from?"

Shake my head.

"He was a Greek Macedonian. Have you heard of Alexander?"

"Yeah."

Through the turnstiles, up the third escalator, side-by-side.

"So why you studying neuroscience - you want to help people?"

"No."

"Why you doing it?"

"I want to figure out what consciousness is."

"Heh - I know what consciousness is. I can save you a lot of trouble."

"You do?"

"Yeah, I've known it since the first day of my life."

"You know what consciousness is like, but you don't know what consciousness is."

Out the doors, onto the street.

"You know, most people don't think animals are conscious. Just last week, you hear the story about the monkeys?"

"I dunno - no."

"You hear the story about the monkeys?"

"No."

"Monkeys are the closest animal to humans, you know that? Turns out, if one monkey attacks another monkey, then... then... then... the other monkey... the other monkey... the other monkey..."

"You going this way?"

"Sure."

Crossing the street.

"From the same group."

"Yeah, from the same group. He'll go over and hug the beaten monkey, kiss the beaten monkey. People think only people do that sort of thing."

"I believe it. I think worms might even be conscious."

"OK, so what's your theory."

Stare.

"Come on, give it to me."

"OK. So you take a person, and sit them down in a room. Every time you play a flute sound, you puff them in the eye with air. Pretty soon everyone learns to blink when they hear the flute."

"Cause they don't like the puff of air."

"Exactly. Interesting thing is, they learn to blink whether they're aware or not. Many people don't even know why they're blinking."

"I see, I see." A smack on the chest.

"So learning alone isn't equal to awareness. Just cause you can learn something doesn't mean you're aware or conscious. That's just the control. The real experiment..."

"Man, I like that," grinning at a girl walking by.

"So learning isn't the same as awareness."

"I gotcha, I gotcha... But the monkey... I'll tell you something... You know the people who are paying for you? You know they might be controlling you?"

"Maybe."

"You know, you know about the butterfly? One night I dreamed I was a butterfly, the next day I was a human again. How do I know that I'm not really a butterfly dreaming to be a human?"

"You don't."

"So someone could be controlling you right now."

"It's possible. But unlikely."

"Why?"

"There's no evidence for it."

"When you do your experiments, you come to conclusions, right?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because there's evidence. If you do something one way, you get the same result. But if you change something, you get something different."

"So why do you believe it?"

"Because there's evidence."

"I dunno."

"I gotta run - see ya 'round."

"Hold on." Grabs me. "You keep doing your studying, I like that. I like that."

"Thanks. See ya."
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]]>Garry: I really enjoyed this. There's something about conversational style writing like this that is always incredibly approachable.

Anonymous: this is the best thing i've read in a while. seriously.

sam: i am additionally impressed by your ability to remember that whole conversation (what i am assuming is) pretty much word for word.

nikhil: yeah, I'm sure the conversation above is not super-accurate, but it was such an unusual conversation that i immediately started playing it back in my head when it was over.

Anonymous: I felt like i was right there, thanks for sharing. I like how you asked him what do you do and he said, I'm a Greek Macedonian. There's some hilarious truth to that statement.

Harpoon: The anonymous comment above is by Harpoon (just in case any Greek Macedonians want to join with any Aramean Syrians ;)
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Brave New Mescaline

nikhil — 2008-06-14T15:14:04-08:00

I just finished reading Aldous Huxley's double-book, "The Doors of Perception" and "Heaven and Hell." It was a welcome break from all the academic papers I've been reading lately. Basically, the book is about Huxley's experiments with mescaline (also known as peyote) in the 1950s. Mescaline is a drug that is known to cause vibrant hallucinations for up to 10 hours after being ingested, and Huxley experimented with it because he wanted to study the consciousness-expanding properties from the inside out. I'm not sure I would actually recommend reading this book, though I did find portions of it somewhat profound. I've included those below. One interesting link that Huxley makes is between the experience of a mescaline taker and that of a schizophrenic - the schizophrenic has an unending hyper-perception of the world, with both positive and negative valence, while the mescaline taker has a finite 10 hours of hyper-perception, so if it's a bad trip you know it will eventually come to an end. The schizophrenic has no such glimmer in the vast darkness.

Mescaline has a somewhat dubious legal status. Apparently it is legal in the US to own a cactus that produces mescaline (e.g. San Pedro), but it is illegal to use its clippings to make mescaline. To get a sense of what it's like to be on mescaline, I recommend watching "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". Jude and I watched it about 6 years ago, and its bizzarity is permanently etched into my mind. Bats, bats, everywhere!

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Quotes from Huxley's "The Doors of Perception":

- "From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes." (13)

- "I took my pill at eleven. An hour and a half later I was sitting in my study, looking intently at a small glass vase. The vase contained only three flowers - a full-blown Belle of Portugal rose, shell pink with a hint at every petal's base of a hotter, flamier hue; a large magenta and cream-colored carnation; and, pale purple at the end of its broken stalk, the bold heraldic blossom of an iris. Fortuitous and provisional, the little nosegay broke all the rules of traditional good taste. At breakfast that morning I have been struck by the lively dissonance of its colors. But that was no longer the point. I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence." (17)

- "I continued to look at the flowers, and in their living light I seemed to detect the qualitative equivalent of breathing - but of a breathing without returns to a starting point, with no recurrent ebbs but only a repeated flow from beauty to heightened beauty, from deeper to ever deeper meaning. Words like "grace" and "transfiguration" came to my mind, and this, of course, was what, among other things, they stood for." (18)

- "My mind was perceiving the world in terms other than spatial categories...The mind was primarily concerned, not with measures and locations, but with being and meaning." (20)

- "That which, in the language of religion, is called "this world" is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language." (24)

- "[On mescaline] (1) The ability to remember and "think straight" is little if at all reduced... (2) Visual impressions are greatly intensified and the eye recovers some of the perceptual innocence of childhood, when the sensum was not immediately and automatically subordinated to the concept... (3) The mescalin taker sees no reason for doing anything in particular and finds most of the causes for which, at ordinary times, he was prepared to act and suffer, profoundly uninteresting." (25)

- "To other again is revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence, of the given, unconceptualized event." (26)

- "However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for." (29)

- "The artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time. His perception is not limited to what is biologically or socially useful." (33)

- "For if one always saw like this, one would never want to do anything else... How could one reconcile this timeless bliss of seeing as one ought to see with the temporal duties of doing what one ought to do and feeling as one ought to feel?" (34-35)

- "But now I knew contemplation at its height. At its height, but not yet in its fullness... It [mescaline] gives access to contemplation - but to a contemplation that is incompatible with action and even with the will to action, the very thought of action." (41)

- "From the first, my own case had been different. Mescalin had endowed me temporarily with the power to see things with my eyes shut; but it could not, or at least on this occasion did not, reveal an inscape remotely comparable to my flowers or chair or flannels "out there." What it had allows me to perceive inside was not the Dharma-Body, in images, but my own mind; not Suchness, but a set of symbols - in other words, a homemade substitute for Suchness." (45)

- "In the inner world there is neither work nor monotony." (46)

- "Today the percept had swallowed up the concept." (53)

- "Most takers of mescalin experience only the heavenly part of schizophrenia." (54)

- "The schizophrenic is like a man permanently under the influence of mescalin, and therefore unable to shut off the experience of a reality which he is not holy enough to live with, which he cannot explain away because it is the most stubborn of primary facts, and which, because it never permits him to look at the world with merely human eyes, scares him into interpreting its unremitting strangeness, its burning intensity of significance, as the manifestations of human or even cosmic malevolence, calling for the most desperate countermeasures, from murderous violence at one end of the scale to catatonia, or psychological suicide, at the other." (56-57)

- "I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as "being in one's right mind."" (62)

- "Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul." (62)

- "We now spend a good deal more on drink and smoke than we spend on education." (63)

- "The need for frequent chemical vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will undoubtedly remain." (64)

- "We must preserve and, if necessary, intensify our ability to look at the world directly and not through that half opaque medium of concepts, which distorts every given fact into the all too familiar likeness of some generic label or explanatory abstraction." (74)

- "But when it comes to finding out how you and I, our children and grandchildren, may become more perceptive, more intensely aware of inward and outward reality, more open to the Spirit, less apt, by psychological malpractices, to make ourselves physically ill, and more capable of controlling our own autonomic nervous system - when it comes to any form of non-verbal education more fundamental (and more likely to be of some practical use) than Swedish drill, no really respectable person in any really respectable university or church will do anything about it." (76-77)

- "Systematic reasoning is something we could not, as a species or as individuals, possibly do without. But neither, if we are to remain sane, can we possibly do without direct perception, the more unsystematic the better, of the inner and outer worlds into which we have been born. This given reality is an infinite which passes all understanding and yet admits of being directly and in some sort totally apprehended. It is a transcendence belonging to another order than human, and yet it may be present to us as a felt immanence, an experienced participation. To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness - to be aware of it and yet to remain in a condition to survival as an animal, to think and feel as a human being, to resort whenever expedient to systematic reasoning. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves. Meanwhile, however, there are gratuitous graces in the form of partial and fleeting realizations. Under a more realistic, a less exclusively verbal system of education than ours, every Angel (in Blake's sense of the word) would be permitted as a sabbatical treat, would be urged and even, if necessary, compelled to take an occasional trip through some chemical Door in the Wall into the world of transcendental experience. If it terrified him, it would be unfortunate but probably salutary. If it brought him a brief but timeless illumination, so much the better. In either case the Angel might lose a little of the confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning and the consciousness of having read all the books.

Near the end of his life Aquinas experience Infused Contemplation. Thereafter he refused to go back to work on his unfinished book. Compared with this, everything he had read and argued about and written - Aristotle and the Sentences, the Questions, the Propositions, the majestic Summas - was no better than chaff or straw. For most intellectuals such a sit-down strike would be inadvisable, even morally wrong. But the Angelic Doctor had done more systematic reasoning than any twelve ordinary Angels, and was already ripe for death. He had earned the right, in those last months of mortality, to turn away from merely symbolic straw and chaff to the bread of actual and substantial Fact. For Angels of a lower order and with better prospects of longevity, there must be a return to the straw. But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend." (77-79)

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Quotes from Huxley's "Heaven and Hell":

- "When worshippers offer flowers at the altar, they are returning to the gods things which they know, or (if they are not visionaries) obscurely feel, to be indigenous to heaven." (104)

- "And here we may note that, by its amazing capacity to give us too much of the best things, modern technology has tended to devaluate the traditional vision-inducing materials... The fine point of seldom pleasure has been blunted." (115-117)

- "..the art where "denotation and connotation cannot be divided", and "no distinction is felt between what a thing 'is' and what it 'signifies'."" (124)

- "To sit, with eyes closed, in front of a stroboscopic lamp is a very curious and fascinating experience...When the lamp is flashing at any speed between ten and fourteen or fifteen times a second, the patterns are prevailingly orange and red. Green and blue make their appearance when the rate exceeds fifteen flashes a second. After eighteen or nineteen, the patterns become white and gray." (146) [I'd like to try this]

- [Recounting a psychotic/depressive/schizophrenic state of mind] ""The men and women around me," writes Carlyle, "even speaking too with me, were but Figures; I had practically forgotten that they were alive, that they were not merely automata. Friendship was but an incredible tradition. In the midst of their crowded streets and assemblages I walked solitary; and (except that it was my own heart, not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also as the tiger in the jungle... To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam Engine, rolling on in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb... Having no hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it of Man or of Devil. And yet, strangely enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear, tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not what; it seemed as if all things in the Heavens above, and the Earth beneath, would hurt me; as if the Heavens and the Earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring Monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured."... To both, again, all is significant, but negatively significant, so that every even is utterly pointless, every object intensely unreal, every self-styled human being a clockwork dummy, grotesquely going through the motions of work and play, of loving, hating, thinking, of being eloquent, heroic, saintly, what you will - the robots are nothing if not versatile." (184-185)

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What Now

nikhil — 2008-05-26T01:24:35-08:00

(Written on Jan 13, 2008, after getting back to MIT after Christmas)

What now - I don't know what I'm doing. Somehow I left my desire somewhere, and now I cannot find it. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by distractions, but that's not quite right. I go through moments where I don't live in the present because it's moving too fast, it's changing so quickly I don't know what to hold on to. People move so fast, talk so fast, I can't really keep up. And if I do keep up, I trade my consciousness for it, because to be in control takes time. To give in to reflex does not. Maybe I just need to laugh more...

I was imagining a life with fewer distractions. A single barren room, with a fire in the center. A place to lie down. A place to be. There is this urge for productivity, this instinct for restlessness - we can't sit still, we can't not move, we can't just be. The events of the future are predicted, the current moment is gone. I don't know why, but the repetition, the predictibility, is paralyzing me. I have so little desire to talk to some people, so little motivation to have that same old conversation. Maybe I've just given up. Damn, I've got something going on. Survival school has officially worn off...

Maybe in my search for no desire I've lost social contact, I've isolated myself in a very lonely place. The conversations are so damn predictable - we feel the need to fill up the silence, but I'm not really sure why. Maybe it should just be there, left as is. I'm taking the frivolty too seriously. I'm starting to confuse myself with others, and that needs to stop.

As I age, am I just slowly becoming aware of fixed action patterns I just didn't notice previously? And is that awareness leaving me as a slower version of my previous self?

I've lost it - I've lost it all. I've lost all the appreciation I had earned at survival school, lost my experience of experience, it's just disappeared. I'm back to feeling superficially. Where do I go to feel feeling again?

I wonder if this would be different if we lived alone, just Becca and me. Becca may be less happy, though.

Again alone in a room. Simple and pure. Warm. A place just for me, maybe that's what I need.

I feel like my consciousness is fighting my nonconsciousness, pushing through a new plan for control of my body. Maybe it's the tension that's leaving me confused? I'm in a week-long bad mood...what to do, what to do.

Ancient religions don't know, at least not like they think they do. Why do I hurt myself? Why am I so weird? Why can't I just appreciate what I have and ignore all the rest. I think I may need to live alone. I don't know what is happening...
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]]>george: you are trying to hold and understand everything way to tight. Buddy, you have got to just lighten up. Could I make a simple suggestion? Quit looking for some reason, ideal or whatever. Quit thinking so dern much!!! Its time to just grind. Go towards the finish line for whatever that may be, graduate school completion....whatever. and quit trying to figure out the why. Trust me. You want to know the answer to all the mystery. The answer "thinking man" is so simple I don't know if you'll ever stop to understand it instead of trying to analyze it. The whole silly thing, creation, being, conciousness, human condition is all so simple. Its about family. Love the thing that God breathed into us that no other beast on the planet has. Thats it, whole nine yards. Everything else just is. When you hold your first child, you will understand, when you fully understand what it means to not be first in any way, shape or form. That someone on the planet comes before you, your thoughts, your creative philosophical ramblings, every single time until they are no longer a cub. You probably know it in a fashion with your mate, but you hold something back for you. walk up to your home in the still of the night (winter is best), look through the window and see what you hold dear. That my friend is what it is ALL about. If there is no one in there? Then you have something to dwell on. Good luck my friend

Harpoon: If you want to ask me, you should practice Taiji, or more contemplative forms of motion. The exercise of focusing intently on following a physical pattern, i.e. no competitive or cognitive objective like traditional sports. It may sound ridiculous but the simple act of moving yourself through space will, through dedication, become a processes of renewal for you. I know it sounds like indoctrinated hogwash, but, then why does one assume that something seeming so simple such as relaxing should come so easily? It's a skill that takes a while to master, 2 - 3 years you can get some hang of it. Standing meditation is also an important exercise - it seems utterly futile to most people at first, but there is something going on worth studying. I believe if you want to study consciousness then why not keep a log and try to conduct experiments of such claims to compare with your own claims of "method to remove distractions"
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Trading Consciousness

nikhil — 2008-05-24T09:05:59-08:00

(Written on Dec 13, 2007, after finishing my first semester @ MIT, on the plane ride from Boston to LA)

To be productive, or not? That is the question.

Each of us has been blessed with the opportunity to *feel*, yet we so often act like machines, churning out productivity with the utmost efficiency. At least I feel that way so often. I felt that way at Google, and I'm feeling that way again in grad school. It's the endless grind, the inevitable rat-race. It pushes on, grinding down, the pace-setter for a life. It suppresses my conscious experience, and I don't like it.

I went to grad school with the grand, non-unique goal of studying consciousness. Grad school seemed like the right place for this endeavor, as thousands of years of philosophy have given us some progress on this issue, but it seems to be mostly at a stand-still in terms of definitive results. What is consciousness? Why is there something instead of nothing? This is one of the deepest philosophical questions, and seemingly one of the most intractable. So what the hell, I'll give it a shot, maybe I'll come up with something. The best place to start would be the physical site of consciousness, the brain. Without it, no more consciousness, but with it, what wonders of experience we behold.

But now here I am, in grad school. And the grind plunges on. Maybe I take too many classes, do too many readings, study too much, but it's beginning to wear. I feel like in my quest to understand consciousness, the major sacrifice necessary is my very own consciousness. Because when I'm grinding in deep productivity, I'm not really there. I go away, my brain does its thing. Working on a problem set can be a trip to another place, the abstract nether regions of perception and experience. I go there, deep in focus, and the world around me might as well not be there. "Tunnelvision", some call it. But this is not a clear place - it is a place wrought with confusion and abstraction, nothing sits still, nothing is solid. I emerge several hours later, with an answer to the question, my efforts of lunging harpoons into the dark eventually snagging on something, the right something. I get something out, but I've auctioned off those conscious moments to the tyranny of productivity.

Maybe instead of an external pace-setter, I should let my natural curiosity set my pace? Instead of doing a problem set the night before it's due, maybe I should do it at the pace that supports my interest and understanding best? If I do that, my consciousness is not bartered, though my overall productivity would drop precipitously. So what? Maybe that's OK. What do we have if we don't have the satisfactions of our own conscious experience? Is the trade, consciousness for productivity, really worth it?

I think it's time to slow down. But I just can't. I have this opportunity to learn so much in grad school, so I seize it. We have the entire month of January off between semesters, and if you include Christmas it's a whopping 7 weeks off. But what do I do? I've signed up for 5 optional classes during January - I'll probably drop a few of them, but not until I have to. Why do I do this to myself? I feel like I have 2 wills inside me - on the one hand, I want to be productive, *need* to be productive, yet on the other I just want to enjoy the brief moment of life that we the living still have. This is the tension that is tearing the fabric of my mind (OK, I couldn't help myself with that melodrama-soaked metaphor :)

Ultimately, though, it's the physical that seems the most real.

Maybe I'm just burned out - this was my first semester back in school in 5 years, and though I finished 2 finals, it's not quite over (I have a paper that I'm not going to finish due tomorrow). I love what I learned in the past 15 weeks, and I learned a lot. I came in wanting to study nothing but the phenomenon of perception, but after doing a ton of reading I've been confronted with the unfortunate fact that we still lack some of the most basic principles of how nervous systems work. How can we possibly understand the mechanisms underlying perception if we don't even know what neurons are even doing? We like to refer to the "computations" that neurons do, but this is more metaphor than anything else. I still remember when I was in 12th grade and thinking about college, I went to visit my 11th grade history teacher's friend who was a neuroscience professor at Caltech. I still remember one thing he told me: that we always seem to compare the brain to the most advanced technology of our time. He said that ancient societies used to think of the brain as a series of interconnected irrigation ditches (their most advanced technology), and we today think of the brain as a kick-ass computer (our most advanced technology). They were wrong before, so who's to say we've got it right today? We don't even know what "matters" in most neural circuits: if the neuron fires a few milliseconds early or a few more times than before, does this *mean* something in the brain? We don't even understand the most simple of nervous systems, that found in our tiny nematode friend, C. elegans. A worm only 1 mm long, every C. elegans has exactly 302 neurons in its ~1000 cell body, and yet we still don't know what each neuron does and how it affects behavior. We have a historical map of the cell lineage (we know how every cell came from the organism's first cell), and we even have an anatonmical map (we know where every cell, where every neuron, is in the body). And this is pretty invariant from worm to worm, generation to generation. Yet our understanding of the system is extremely rough. Nematodes actually have somewhat complex behavior, but how the organism's nervous system creates the behavior is still unsolved for the vast majority of behaviors. All this with only 302 neurons - how do we ever expect to understand the human brain, with its 100 billion neurons, if we can't even understand an organism with only 302? With what right can we bluff such hubris? Confronted with this truth, it seems like it may be necessary for me to put my search for the mechanisms of consciousness on hold, while I study the mechanisms of behavior in general.

I'm planning to do a research rotation studying C. elegans starting in January, which pretty much means I'll work in a lab for a couple months, and if I like it, stay in the lab for my dissertation work.

Back to the issue at hand, I'm concerned that now I'll be trading my consciousness not even for an understanding of consciousness, but for the understanding of a tiny worm. Is that worth it? Understanding the worm seems like a prereq for understanding consciousness, but maybe I should just give up now and focus on enjoying the bounty that is life? Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't forsake productivity altogether, I would just use my pace-maker instead of someone else's.

Of course, as with most choices, this is a false choice. I think I need to find the right level of structure, as well as train my mind to not take school too seriously. Deadlines, schmedlines, that should be my attitude. Understanding is what matters most of all, after appreciating the pleasure of my consciousness.
]]>Comments:
]]>Garry: What's your opinion of Csíkszentmihályi's work around flow? He seems to posit that perhaps flow is a desirable / good state, one that brings us a step closer to self actualization. But is that the same thing that you experience when studying hard or working hard, when consciousness gets traded?

nikhil: I read his "Flow" book a few years ago, but I think what I experience when studying is something a bit different. What I experience is an absence. You may experience something similar when you're giving a presentation. Esp. if you're a little nervous and you've practiced a lot, once you get into the preso, you may have a feeling that your words and movements are not in your control. Afterwards, you may even feel like you've "blacked out", because you have very little memory of exactly what you said and did. It just goes by in a blur, and like that it's over. I think of flow as a different state, one where your level of perception and awareness is quite high, perhaps even peaking, while you're working or doing something else that has a clear path ahead. My problem sets often don't have a clear path ahead, instead being shots in the dark that hopefully eventually hit. So no, I wouldn't describe it as flow. Flow may be a good state. But since it seems to require a clear path (in my experience), I question whether it's not just the easy road ahead. Perhaps shots in the dark, while uncomfortable and risky, are a better/more exciting/more unpredictable/higher pay-off, though rougher, avenue through the wilderness. But, depending on your persuasion, maybe such avenues are better avoided...

neha: how are things going now, nikhil? i think many grad students struggle with the balance of the rat race (need to have concrete accomplishments) and free time to think and explore. maybe you just need to find the way you work best -- if i left myself to go at my own pace, i wouldn't get anything done :) i've realized after the fact that when i've learned the most is when i felt like i was running on a hamster wheel. sometimes it's not a bad thing.

george: simplify, problem is that when you look at things in an intellectual state, you are looking to solve something that may not be a mystery. You've sat alone in the dessert, you already have the understanding and knowledge of what you seek. You have known conciousness. Don't lose the forest because can't see past the trees.

Harpoon: I think you hit the nail on the head toward the end - Do you want to study consciousness or do you want to experience it? Perhaps to experience, we have to give up on studying it in a lab, and vice versa. My rather unscientific views on consciousness are that you can only go a very short distance to study it in a lab, you can only pinpoint where it isn't. The brain is a physical object with physical properties and consciousness is metaphysical. That is to say even after you have fully documented neurons and their phenomena, you won't ever be able to describe in mathematic, linguistic, or biological terms something purely conceptual such as "love" , "pleasure" , or "suffering". It's like poking through the software for a game with a hex editor, and trying to locate where the "fun" is. Furthermore, what if consciousness exists not as a process of the brain, but as function of interactions between individual and society? How can you ever hope to control what the environment has done to your subject, in a lab setting?
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Death

nikhil — 2008-05-22T20:06:04-08:00

(I wrote this on May 24, 2007. It may sound suicidal, but don't worry, I wasn't. For the past year I've debated with myself whether I should post this. With summer imminent and time for blogging back again, it seems only right to post some things I've written that have been sitting on the edge. A few more back-dated posts will follow, then fresh writing will begin anew.)

A eulogy that I would read at my death

Sometimes I think about fast-forwarding to my death. Not because I want to see how I'm going to die. I'd just like to get it over with. Sometimes when you know something is about to happen, you just want it to happen so you can move on. It's not clear to me how I would move past my death, but it's a constant spector. Maybe it's because I've gotten bored with this life. Maybe it's because I've taken too much for granted. It's the numbness that alters me, that makes me envision my own car crash, or makes me try to make my heart stop (so far with extremely limited success). I've spent too much time thinking about driving into the center divider, or taking the turn a little too fast to see if my car will flip. If only something unpredictable would happen, then the ability to feel would come back.

I'm not sure when this started, but I remember walking around the dorm trying to get my friends to slap me, so that I would feel again. That was senior year in college. It was a bit of a game, but it foretold more of my life than anything else I can recollect. Even then I had begun to stop feeling. I thought it would go away, but it's extended over me the past 5 years, to the point where I rarely feel anymore. I could blame my life, the fact that it's safe and dull, but all I really have is myself to blame.

It's too bad really - trying to push my mind through the funnel of my thoughts.

Today I gave up on to-do lists. I erased all the to-do items from my whiteboard, and I've decided to do only those things that are worth remembering. I will no longer be ruled by the tyranny of the list - it seems that I've gone from the work list to the home list, but it is still the list that rules all. I've decided to be more impulsive and spontaneous, in an effort to bring feeling back. If feelings in the future are what mute the feelings of today, I'm done with the future.

Of course, one of the major problems seems to be the fact that I'm home alone all day. Social interaction, while frequently annoying, is one of those things that makes me feel alive. It can work both ways, depending on the people and my relationship with them. But if you're with good friends and you're having a good time, the numbness can be numbed.

That and movies. It's that feeling when you just leave the theater, and your mind is still in the film. The reel's stopped spinning, but your mind hasn't yet caught up. The carpet, walls, and people are much more vibrant - it's as if the movie amped up your awareness, and you're still peeling from the high.

It's that vibrancy, that acute awareness, that reminds me that I'm still alive.
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The Beginning of Survival School

nikhil — 2007-08-12T15:04:50-08:00

For people who visit this blog in a web browser and want to read my survival school journal from the beginning (instead of in reverse), here's a quick link: Day 0 of Survival School. Enjoy.
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Survival School: Day 28

nikhil — 2007-08-11T22:41:26-08:00

Final Day

Woke up early, only ~5 hours of sleep. Steve came, & rushed us into the van. No idea where we were going. No sign yet of 2nd 28-day group [there were 2 separate troops who did variants of the 28-day course @ the same time - I was expecting to see them back at BOSS HQ too]. Drove for 30 min - up hill, feels like cheating [because we don't actually have to work to get up the mountain], so surreal to be back in a car after 1 month. Got to Kiva Koffeehouse, drove in, & parked & went in! Other group is there, eating breakfast! Bean chili, followed by salad w/ citrus+honey dressing, w/ blue cornbread. So weird to be in a building & being served fancy food. Very healthy food. In a bit of a daze, not really talking to anyone, just observing & absorbing. So bizarre.

Food was excellent, topped off w/ cup of hot chocolate. Mmm good, so good. Butter w/ cornbread, even got small extra helping. Savoring & slow, eyes closed & focused. Newspapers! Checked Google & Apple stock, read a bit, but so useless & irrelevant to my life. Also very poorly written - USA Today.

Final heart circle - most talked about the group social experience (which I found pretty irrelevant) - I talked about deprivation, starvation, & appreciation, & trying to get the appreciation to last past the 2nd meal [in the default world], & not regressing back to pre-school days. Must focus on not taking pleasure & love for granted.

Used bathroom - amazing, comfort of the toilet & not having to squat, TP OK, actually not that exciting as it's so not necessary. Running faucet - my own personal river... contacts in, hot clothes off, new T-shirt on [they gave us each a BOSS alumni shirt]. Back on bus, still in awe. Feeling hardened - can eat & drink anything, survive anywhere - confidence. Back to BOSS, packed up, talked to Becca & Mom & Pops. Almost cried on phone w/ Becca, but kept it in. So much love.

Group photo @ the end of the course. Top row: David (guide), Abe, Nic, Pinky, Crit, Nick, me, Ben, Steve. Bottom row: Hannes, Cliff, Rob, Ted, Leland, Jeff.

5 hour ride back to Provo - Everyone so excited @ first stop, loaded up on junk food. I just watched, didn't buy anything - people's eyes so wide, so appreciative, but eat way too fast. 2nd stop was Dairy Queen. People even more excited now - bacon double cheeseburger finally a reality [people had been talking about it, imagining it, for the whole course]. Blizzards & ice cream -> more fattening food, so much pleasure, though appreciated, consumed too quickly. Sad watching everyone else [non-course survivors] there - just the bare minimum of awareness going to the delicious food, just enough to get above the threshold of pleasure, perhaps even a non-conscious threshold - eyes & minds elsewhere, desensitized to the huge pleasure potential right in front of them. So unaware... No more multi-tasking while eating, no reading while eating. Only closed eyes & attention to the smells, tastes, & textures. Minimal conversation.

Back in Provo Travelodge - glorious shower, no more sand in hair or beard, hot water on demand. Wonderful bed - so giving of the weight & shape of my body.

Self-portrait on day 28, back in the default world (at long last)

Self-portrait on day 28, in the shade

Dinner w/ Hannes @ Smokehouse BBQ & Pizza. Eyes bigger than stomachs - order 8 garlic twists (fried garlic bread balls w/ parmesan) & 18' 4-cheese + jalapenos + sun dried tomato pizza. Had to savor salt, honey mustard, honey ketchup, & honey BBQ sauce condiments on the table while waiting. Garlic knots were astounding - ate @ half-speed of Hannes, closing eyes. Said silent thanks prayer to start. Bread had been missed, fried goodness, garlic & parmesan :) Only problem was that we were full on the appetizer - ate 1 slice of pizza each, which had gotten cold because we ate so slowly. Pizza wasn't so great - too complex flavors mushed together. Each took 3 pieces of pizza to go - so full.

Walked through Provo suburb - I have a new awareness & curiosity w/ trees, want to know what each one is, learn what its qualities are, learn why it's meaningful to me. Found walnut tree, got walnut which I ate later @ home -> not ripe, but so tasty, almost like fresh garlic. Hannes went to Amtrak station, forgot scrub oak walking stick, I brought it to him. Watched a bit of TV - so much unnecessary motion, so much shitty news, so shitty overall - even worse than before, clearly has no meaning or relevance in my life. Hour w/ Abe, Leland, & Cliff in their room. Abe has gorged himself, & is feeling sort of miserable. Breakfast + snacks + DQ Blizzard + DQ Flamethrower + 8' pizza + fried ice cream - he's nuts. Gut is all backed up. Also drinking beer & liquor - Cliff & Leland couldn't eat much today, stomach shrunk like mine. They're realizing that they're eating too much, & that maybe it wasn't as good as they expected it to be. I've realized that, w/ my current stomach, quantity is meaningless & I can get more pleasure in 1 apple piece if I focus on it than an entire pizza - I never would have thought that possible. I'm also realizing that there is so much more distraction in the default world - people, cars, noise & sounds, news, billboards, TV, everything trying to draw your attention for commerce or someone who'll just listen. Everyone & everything is so desperate for attention, & not the quality but the quantity. "Look @ me, I'm here!" everything is crying out. Really need to control my attention, focus on the stuff that matters - #1 loved ones, #2 food pleasure, #3 brain & understanding, #4 superfacts & social improvement. Course money is also always there in the background. If I'm spending more time on things not on the top 4 list, or spending more time on lower-ranked items than those above, I'm living my life wrong, plain & simple. If email, phone calls, conversations, shopping, entertainment aren't contributing to the 4, they should be drastically cut down to consume less time. If I can spend 80% of my time on the top 4 things, I'll be living the happiest life I know how. This much is clear.

Slept very well on my bed - woke up to pee @ sunrise, dreamless overall.

(written on 28+1, on the flight home)
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]]>george: you have your priorities in order. Life will be sweet. Note - when we came in from final challenge hike, had quick gathering then straight on bus for Provo. They did stop for us in a grocery in the first town we hit, I think it was Boulder. LOL, our group was I think 36 total, turned loose in a grocery straight from the dessert. It was a sight, what those folks must have thought with such a band of stinking dessert refugees in awe, laughing and crying as we took it all in. I don't think we had near the food rations you did. I am speculating about half from what I could calculate. I went through in 1980 I think it was, may have been '79. Only pooped once at beginning. They would issue seven squares of TP each week. I finished with mine. But you had the full experience physically and mentally I believe, except for near death from thirst, and I don't wish that one on anybody, but boy it still leaves a mark. Wife still doesn't understand why I don't throw out old water in bottles, cups, etc. :-) says I'll drink anything. well has been wonderful getting to know you. MAy your path be smooth and all down hill.
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