Author: manuscrypts

  • It’s not the destination, it’s not the journey…

    Some would say kids are spoilt these days. I’m not going there, but kids are definitely spoilt for choice when it comes to chasing their interests, academic pressures notwithstanding. But what’s a deep interest and what’s a fad? What’s a passion and what is a routine that has overstayed its welcome?

    I thought it was an excellent reminder that not all childhood interests need to become lifelong pursuits. Maybe a reminder for adults too – both influencers suffering burnouts as well as us standard mortals. For those interests that are staying beyond their shelf lives, and for those that haven’t seen the light of day, because they are dictated by habit/self image/identity?

    I wrote this on LinkedIn in the context of a Hyundai ad that ended with “Never give up on finding what you love. There’s joy in every journey.”

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  • Having and Being Had

    Eula Biss

    If I had to sum up Having and Being Had, it is Eula Biss having a conversation with capitalism -trying to understand its origins, its ethos, and its insidious and pervasive role in our lives. The only hint of structure are broad sections – consumption, work, investment, and accounting. But really, everything flows into everything else. I made up the narrative that she has ‘consumed’ her home (or the other way), she needs her work to pay for it, but also needs to make investments for her future – each piece complex in itself, their mutual relationships, and their relationship with her, and this is her account, and she has to account for everything. Everything is connected by capitalism. Having and Being Had reminded me of God, Human, Animal, Machine, which was reflections about consciousness itself.

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  • Lucky Chan

    I have to admit, the original choice was Burma Burma, who wouldn’t take a reservation on Saturday. We weren’t lucky enough to get a table without a 1 hour waiting time, so we walked to Lucky Chan, which we had anyway considered. Since it was still early in the evening, we managed to find a table easily.

    Lucky Chan manages to mix a certain zest with the comfort and cosiness of a local diner. Overall it was a perfect ambience for us. We didn’t catch a glimpse of the conveyer belt sushi, but that is anyway quite a ‘dangerous’ thing as we discovered in Kyoto.

    Lucky Chan
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  • The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes

    Donald D. Hoffman

    Before getting to The Case Against Reality, we need to talk about my favourite read this year – “Being You“. The second half of that book has some reality-shattering theses. One of them is ‘We perceive the world not as it is, but as it is useful to us.’ Reality is thus an interpretation, and the entire process is not optimised for accuracy, it is designed for utility. A mechanism of making it seem real so we respond to it. Not to know the world, but to survive it! The end of the book also brings up the fascinating FEP (free energy principle) and specifically how it applies to living systems and consciousness. In this context, it boils down to this – being alive means being in a condition of low entropy. Any living system, to resist entropy, must occupy states which it expects to be in. Biology meets physics. Why am I bringing this up? Because The Case Against Reality touches upon both of these aspects I was fascinated by.

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  • Not the detachment I was looking for

    The story thus far is reflected in three of my posts. I referred to the Marshmallow Mind late last year in Marshmellowing – how I have been optimising my life and decisions for optionality. Placing myself such that circumstance/environment doesn’t cause a decision I’ll regret. Identifying with the ‘Ozark’ credo that “People make choices. Choices have consequences.” I still do, but I also see secondary consequences, and this post is about those.

    Identity

    As I wrote in Marshmellowing: The Prequel, my marshmallow mind is the result of ‘responsibility’ winning. It comes with costs. The marshmallow mind continues to plan the future and make predictions. That creates and reinforces an identity and a bunch of problems.

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