John G. Messerly's Blog, page 22

Summary of “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist”

I recently read an article in The Atlantic by Tristan Harris, a former Product Manager at Google who studies the ethics of how the design of technology influences people’s psychology and behavior. The piece was titled: “The Binge Breaker” and it covers similar ground to his previous piece “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds—from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist.”

Harris favors “technology designed to enhance our humanity over additional screen time. Instead of a ‘time spent’ economy where apps and websites compete for how much time they take from people’s lives, [he] hopes to re-structure design so apps and websites compete to help us live by our values and spend time well.” (For more see “Screen Time Statistics: Average Screen Time in US vs. the rest of the world.”)

Harris’ basic thesis is that “our collective tech addiction” results more from the technology itself than from “on personal failings, like weak willpower.” Our smartphones, tablets, and computers seize our brains and control us, hence Harris’ call for a “Hippocratic oath” that implores software designers not to exploit “psychological vulnerabilities.” Harris and his colleague Joe Edelman compare “the tech industry to Big Tobacco before the link between cigarettes and cancer was established: keen to give customers more of what they want, yet simultaneously inflicting collateral damage on their lives.”

[I think this analogy is weak. The tobacco industry made a well-documented effort to make their physically deadly products more addictive while there is no compelling evidence of any similarly sinister plot regarding software companies or their products deadly. Tobacco will literally kill you while your smartphone will not.]

The social scientific evidence for Harris’ insights began when he was a member of the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. “Run by the experimental psychologist B. J. Fogg, the lab has earned a cult-like following among entrepreneurs hoping to master Fogg’s principles of ‘behavior design’—a euphemism for what sometimes amounts to building software that nudges us toward the habits a company seeks to instill.” As a result:

Harris learned that the most-successful sites and apps hook us by tapping into deep-seated human needs … [and] He came to conceive of them as ‘hijacking techniques’—the digital version of pumping sugar, salt, and fat into junk food in order to induce bingeing … McDonald’s hooks us by appealing to our bodies’ craving for certain flavors; Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter hook us by delivering what psychologists call “variable rewards.” Messages, photos, and “likes” appear on no set schedule, so we check for them compulsively, never sure when we’ll receive that dopamine-activating prize.

[Note though that because we may become addicted to technology, and many other things too, doesn’t mean that someone is intentionally addicting you to that thing. For example, you may become addicted to your gym or to jogging but that doesn’t mean that the gym or running shoe store has nefarious intentions.]

Harris worked on Gmail’s Inbox app and is “quick to note that while he was there, it was never an explicit goal to increase time spent on Gmail.” In fact,

His team dedicated months to fine-tuning the aesthetics of the Gmail app with the aim of building a more ‘delightful’ email experience. But to him that missed the bigger picture: Instead of trying to improve email, why not ask how email could improve our lives—or, for that matter, whether each design decision was making our lives worse?

[This is an honorable view, but it is extraordinarily idealistic. First of all, improving email does minimally improve our lives, as anyone in the past who waited weeks or months for correspondence would surely attest. If the program works, allows us to communicate with our friends, etc., then it makes our lives a bit better. Of course, email doesn’t directly help us obtain beauty, truth, goodness, or world peace if that’s your goal, but that seems to be a lot to ask of an email program! Perhaps then it is a case of lowering our expectations of what a technology company, or any business, is supposed to do. Grocery stores make our lives go better, even if grocers are mostly concerned with profit. I’m not generally a fan of Smith’s “invisible hand,” but sometimes the idea provides insight. Furthermore, if Google or any company tried to improve people’s lives without showing a profit, they would soon go out of business. The only way to ultimately improve the world is to effect change in the world in which we live, not in some idealistic one that doesn’t exist.]

Harris makes a great point when he notes that “Never before in history have the decisions of a handful of designers (mostly men, white, living in SF, aged 25–35) working at 3 companies”—Google, Apple, and Facebook—“had so much impact on how millions of people around the world spend their attention … We should feel an enormous responsibility to get this right.”

Google responded to Harris’ concerns. He met with CEO Larry Page, the company organized internal Q&A sessions [and] he was given a job that researched ways that Google could adopt ethical design. “But he says he came up against “inertia.” Product roadmaps had to be followed, and fixing tools that were obviously broken took precedence over systematically rethinking services.” Despite these problems “he justified his decision to work there with the logic that since Google controls three interfaces through which millions engage with technology—Gmail, Android, and Chrome—the company was the “first line of defense.” Getting Google to rethink those products, as he’d attempted to do, had the potential to transform our online experience.”

[This is one of the most insightful things that Harris says. Again, the only way to change the world is, to begin with the world you find yourself in, for you really can’t begin in any other place. I agree with what Eric Fromm taught me long ago, that we should be measured by what we are, not what we have. But, on the other hand, if we have nothing we have nothing to give.]

Harris hope is that:

Rather than dismantling the entire attention economy … companies will … create a healthier alternative to the current diet of tech junk food … As with organic vegetables, it’s possible that the first generation of Time Well Spent software might be available at a premium price, to make up for lost advertising dollars. “Would you pay $7 a month for a version of Facebook that was built entirely to empower you to live your life?,” Harris says. “I think a lot of people would pay for that.” Like splurging on grass-fed beef, paying for services that are available for free and disconnecting for days (even hours) at a time are luxuries that few but the reasonably well-off can afford. I asked Harris whether this risked stratifying tech consumption, such that the privileged escape the mental hijacking and everyone else remains subjected to it. “It creates a new inequality. It does,” Harris admitted. But he countered that if his movement gains steam, broader change could occur, much in the way Walmart now stocks organic produce. Even Harris admits that often when your phone flashes with a new text message it hard to resist. It is hard to feel like you are in control of the process.

[There is much to say here. First of all, there are many places to spend time well on the internet. I’d like to think that some readers of this blog find something substantive here. I also believe that “mental hijacking,” is a loaded term. It implies intent on the part of the hijacker that may not be present. Yes, Facebook, or something much worse like the sewer of alt-right politics, might hijack our minds, but religious belief, football on TV, reading, stamp collecting, or even compulsive meditating could be construed as hijacking our minds. In the end, we may have to respect individual autonomy. A few prefer to read my summaries of the great philosophers, others prefer reading about the latest Hollywood gossip.]

Concluding Reflections – I begin with a disclaimer. I know almost nothing about software product design. But I did teach philosophical issues in computer science for many years in the computer science department at UT-Austin, and I have an abiding interest in the philosophy of technology. So let me say a few things.

All technologies have benefits and costs. Air conditioning makes summer endurable, but it has the potential to release hydrofluorocarbons into the air. Splitting the atom unleashes great power, but that power can be used for good or ill. Robots put people out of work, but give people potentially more time to do what they like to do. On balance, I find email a great thing, and in general, I think technology, which is applied science, has been the primary force for improving the lives of human beings. So my prejudice is to withhold critique of new technology. Nonetheless, the purpose of technology should be to improve our lives, not make us miserable. Obviously.

Finally, as for young people considering careers, if you want to make a difference in the world I can think of no better place than at any of the world’s high-tech companies. They have the wealth, power, and influence to change the world for the better. Whether they do that or not is up to the people who work there. So if you want to change the world, join in the battle. But whatever you do, given the world as it is, you must take care of yourself. For if you don’t do that, you will not be able to care for anything else either. Good luck.

Kurt Baier “The Meaning of Life”

[image error]

Kurt Baier (1917 – 2010) was an Austrian moral philosopher who received his DPhil at Oxford in 1952. He spent most of his career at the University of Pittsburgh, authored the influential, The Moral Point of View: A Rational Basis of Ethics[image error], and was one of the most important moral philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century.

In his 1957 lecture, “The Meaning of Life,” Baier claims that Tolstoy’s crisis of meaning would have been incomprehensible to medieval Christians who thought themselves the center of the cosmic drama, and for whom the meaning of life was to gain eternal bliss. However, the modern scientific worldview conflicts with this medieval view. The earth and humans are not at the center of the solar system and the cosmos is billions of years old, not a mere six thousand.

But the conflict runs much deeper. In the Christian view, god is “a kind of superman… [who] acts as a sort of playwright-cum-legislator-cum-judge-cum-executioner.” This god writes the play, makes the rules, and punishes misbehavers. According to this view, all is for the best even if it appears otherwise, and humans ought to worship, venerate, praise, and obey the creator. But with the rise of science, the universe is explained better and more reliably without gods, leading many educated persons to reject the Christian view and conclude that individuals and the universe are without meaning.

Explaining the Universe – In response to this apparent conflict between science and religion, one might argue that the two are in fact complementary. Science, it might be said, gives precise explanations of small parts of the universe; religion gives vague explanations for the whole universe. The devoid-of-meaning conclusion comes about only because one is confusing the two explanations. Scientific explanations tell us how things are but not why they are. The ultimate explanation is that which explains the purpose or the why of something. While both types of explanations are needed and work well in their own domain if we are looking for answers to the ultimate why questions we need religious answers.

Baier argues instead that both scientific and religious explanations involve an infinite regress—they are both equally incomplete. Saying that gods caused the universe merely raises the question of what caused the gods; saying the gods are the reason there is something rather than nothing just raises the question of why the gods exist. Thus scientific explanations lack nothing that religious explanations possess; neither type of explanation explains completely. Scientific explanations differ from religious ones by being precise, capable of falsification, and amenable to slow improvement. These considerations lead Baier to the main conclusion of the first section: “that scientific explanations render their explicanda as intelligible as pre-scientific explanations; they differ from the latter only in that, having testable implications and being more precisely formulated, their truth or falsity can be determined with a high degree of probability.”

The Purpose of Existence – Despite the conclusion reached above—that scientific explanations are better than religious ones—it might still be argued that scientific explanations lead to the conclusion that life is meaningless. After all humans and their planet are not at the center of creation, the universe appears doomed, humans were not specially created, and the entire universe is a hostile place. In such conditions, humans try to seize a few moments of joy until their lives end in death. Science explains such a world but what meaning does it find in it? Whereas the medieval worldview provided purpose, the scientific worldview does not. Or so it seems.

Baier responds by distinguishing between two different senses of purpose. 1) Purposes that persons and their behavior have (to build factories to make cars) and 2) purposes that things have (the purpose of a car is to provide transportation.) People do many things without purpose or meaning, pointless labor for example, but the scientific worldview does not force us to regard our lives in this way. Instead, it provides better ways of achieving our purposes. As for the other kind of purpose—the purpose of things—to be used this way is degrading and it is implied by the Christian worldview, viewing a human as a divine artifact here to serve the purpose of its maker. Moreover,  those who reject the scientific worldview because they think it renders life pointless from the outside, forget that life can still be meaningful from the inside. They “mistakenly conclude that there can be no purpose in life because there is no purpose of life.”

Baier notes that many long for the medieval worldview where a gentle father watches over and cares for them, but he stresses that rejecting this view does not render life meaningless. Rather one can find meaning for oneself; one can become an adult and stand on their own feet. The Christian replies that being part of a god’s plan assures that life is meaningful, that life is moving toward an end that transcends the individual. What then is this noble plan or end for which the gods have created the world?

Two problems immediately confront us: 1) how can the purpose be grand enough to justify all the suffering in the world? And 2) the story of how the plan is brought to fruition involves morally objectionable concepts. The whole story of a taboo on the fruit of a tree, the punishment given for violating said taboo, blood sacrifice, sacraments and priests to administer them, judgment day, and eternal hellfire are all grossly objectionable. Baier concludes “that God’s purpose cannot meaningfully be stated.” And even if it could be stated coherently it requires humans to be totally dependent on the gods, which Baier finds inconsistent with humans as independent, free, and responsible individuals.

The Meaning of Life – But how can life have meaning if all ends in death, if there is no paradise? In the Christian, worldview life has meaning because, though it is filled with the suffering that follows from the curse the gods sent after the fall, it is followed by a paradise after we die. However, if we accept that life is filled with suffering but deny the afterlife, then life appears meaningless. Why endure it all if there is no heaven? According to Baier, if we reject the afterlife, then the only way to find meaning is in this life.

Of course, we do not normally think life is worthless, a thing to be endured so as to get to heaven. If we did we would kill our friends and ourselves quickly in order to get to heaven, but the gods forbid such acts so we must accept the pain and suffering that accompany our lives. As for murder, most of us think that it does deprive persons of something valuable—their lives. And how do we decide if our lives are valuable? Most of us regard our lives as worth living if they are better than the average life, or closer to the best possible life than the worst possible life.

By contrast, the Christian view compares life to some perfect paradise, promises believers that they can enjoy this paradise, and denigrates the pleasures of this life as vile and sinful. Baier elaborates on the point: “It is now quite clear that death is simply irrelevant. If life can be worthwhile at all, then it can be so even though it be short. And if it is not worthwhile at all, then an eternity of it is simply a nightmare. It may be sad that we have to leave this beautiful world, but it is so only if and because it is beautiful. And it is no less beautiful for coming to an end. I rather suspect that an eternity of it might make us less appreciative, and in the end, it would be tedious.”

The upshot of all this is that the scientific worldview helps us see meaning in this life since the worth of this life needs no longer be compared disfavorably with a perfect idealized afterlife.

Conclusion – Baier states that persons who reject a traditional religious view often assume that life is meaningless because they think there are three conditions of meaning that cannot be met given the scientific worldview. These conditions are: 1) the universe must be intelligible; 2) life must have a purpose; and 3) human hopes must be satisfied.  For Christians, these conditions can be met, thus one must either adopt a worldview incompatible with modern science, the Christian view, or accept that life is meaningless. But Baier argues that a meaningful life can be lived even without these three conditions being met. Life does have meaning in the scientific worldview—the meaning we give it—and besides there are multiple reasons for rejecting the Christian worldview.

Summary – Science explains existence better than religion. Christianity, if it were true, might give purpose to existence but does so in morally objectionable ways. So although there is no objective meaning to life, we can give subjective meaning to it. A religious worldview hinders our doing this by its emphasis on an idealized afterlife, thereby belittling the beauty and meaning of this life.

___________________________________________________________________

Kurt Baier, “The Meaning of Life,” in The Meaning of Life, ed. E. D. Klemke and Steven Cahn (Oxford University Press 2008), 83.
Baier, “The Meaning of Life,” 110.
Baier, “The Meaning of Life,” 101-102.
Baier, “The Meaning of Life,” 103.
Baier, “The Meaning of Life,” 109.

My Wife and I Survived Covid

[image error]

I first tested positive for Covid on Saturday evening, September 3. I had been feeling terrible the previous 24 hours. I got progressively worse over the weekend—I could barely move, ached all over, coughed constantly, felt as if my throat was being cut with razor blades, and ran a fever of 103 (my normal temperature is about 97.)

Based on my age and symptoms, I was fortunate to receive an infusion of monoclonal antibodies. My fever broke within 24 hours and I felt a great reprieve from the worst symptoms yet my fatigue and cough lingered for about 10 more days. My wife, who contracted the virus a few days after I did, also had severe symptoms but was greatly helped by the antiviral Paxlovid.

Again neither my wife nor I are overweight, neither of us takes a single prescription medication, neither of us has diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, weakened immune systems, etc., and both of us eat a whole food plant-based diet. Moreover, both of us have had 4 covid vaccines and are vigilant about mask-wearing. All of this shows that while you can influence your health you can’t completely control it.

I don’t think it farfetched to think that without vaccines, antivirals, and monoclonal antibodies either one of us or both of us could have died. This is consistent with what happened throughout human history before modern medicine. For example, you contract a bacterial or viral infection, your body heats us and tries to kill the invader, and … either it does or you die. That was life before antivirals and antibiotics.

My advice to my readers … try to avoid covid. True there is no foolproof way to do this but take precautions if you don’t enjoy being sick. I wish you all the best.

The Basics of John Rawls’ Moral Theory

[image error]

John Rawls’ “Hypothetical” Contract

The Harvard philosopher John Rawls advanced a contractarian moral philosophy in his  A Theory of Justice, the most influential philosophical ethics book of the past fifty years. Rawls’ contractarian approach differs radically from the approach of either Gauthier or Harman because it finds its inspiration, not in Hobbes, but in Locke, Rousseau, and Kant.

Rawls begins by considering the original position where parties deliberate about the rules of right conduct that will be universally applicable in society. In the bargaining position, parties are impartial, that is, everyone’s interests count equally. This is guaranteed by the so-called veil of ignorance that hides from contractors any knowledge of themselves. You do not know your race, sex, social class, or nationality from behind the veil of ignorance. Although parties are self-interested and want to establish rules beneficial for themselves, in reality, the veil of ignorance rules out self-interest because behind it one cannot differentiate their interests from the interests of others.

The rules agreed to by rational bargainers behind a veil of ignorance are moral rules. Also, contract theory can account for the rules favored by ordinary moral consciousness since the veil of ignorance assures us that impartial rules will result. However, by mitigating the role played by self-interest, this type of contract radically departs from the account of morality given by Hobbes and the neo-Hobbesians.

It is important to keep in mind that the agreement that stems from the original position is both hypothetical and non-historical. It is hypothetical in the sense that the principles to be derived are what the parties would, under certain legitimating conditions, agree to, not what they have agreed to. In other words, Rawls seeks to persuade us that the principles of justice that he derives are what we would agree on if we were in the hypothetical original position and that those principles thus have moral weight. It is non-historical in the sense that it is not supposed that the agreement has ever, or indeed could actually be entered into as a matter of fact.

Rawls claims that the parties in the original position would adopt two such principles, which would govern the assignment of rights and duties and regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages across society. First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others. The basic liberties of citizens are, roughly speaking, political liberty (i.e., to vote and run for office); freedom of speech and assembly, liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, freedom of property; and freedom from arbitrary arrest. It is a matter of some debate whether freedom of contract can be included among these basic liberties.

The first principle is more or less absolute, and may not be violated, even for the sake of the second principle, above an unspecified but low-level of economic development (i.e. the first principle is, under most conditions, lexically prior to the second principle). However, because various basic liberties may conflict, it may be necessary to trade them off against each other for the sake of obtaining the largest possible system of rights. There is some uncertainty as to exactly what is mandated by the principle, and it is possible that a plurality of sets of liberties satisfy its requirements.

The second principle is that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that:

a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle).b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity

Rawls’ claim in a) is that departures from equality of a list of what he calls primary goods – ‘things which a rational man wants whatever else he wants’ [Rawls, 1971, pg. 92] – are justified only to the extent that they improve the lot of those who are worst-off under that distribution in comparison with the previous, equal, distribution. His position is at least in some sense egalitarian, with a proviso that equality is not to be achieved by worsening the position of the least advantaged. An important consequence here, however, is that inequalities can actually be just on Rawls’s view, as long as they are to the benefit of the least well off. His argument for this position rests heavily on the claim that morally arbitrary factors (for example, the family we’re born into) shouldn’t determine our life chances or opportunities. Rawls is also keying on an intuition that we do not deserve inborn talents, thus we are not entitled to all the benefits we could possibly receive from them, meaning that at least one of the criteria could provide an alternative to equality in assessing the justice of distributions is eliminated.

The stipulation in b) is lexically prior to that in a). ‘Fair equality of opportunity requires not merely that offices and positions are distributed on the basis of merit, but that everyone has a reasonable opportunity to acquire the skills on which merit is assessed. It is often thought that this stipulation, and even the first principle of justice, may require greater equality than the difference principle, because large social and economic inequalities, even when they are to the advantage of the worst-off, will tend to seriously undermine the value of the political liberties and any measures towards fair equality of opportunity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it appears that contract theory is viable to the extent that individuals are relatively equal in power when the contract is both negotiated and renegotiated. But, in the real world, this does not appear to be the case. We seemingly always have an imperfect contract that represents the interests of the stronger, more interested, or more persuasive parties. Whether an “equilibrium” can be reached in the bargaining process is problematic, inasmuch as individuals rarely encounter each other “on a level playing field.” So though it may be the case that morality is, as the moral philosopher Gilbert Harman supposes, nothing more than the result of bargaining and power-struggling between various groups, we can still ask whether this ought to be the case. Many accept the “is” but reject the “ought.” And if they do, then morality “ought to be” more than just a contract between rational bargainers—which is one reason for Rawls’ veil of ignorance.)

Finally, let us note how much of contemporary western civilization operates within a contract framework. We have contracts that govern our property, our mortgages, and our marriages. We have contracts that state who will speak for us if we cannot speak for ourselves and what kind of medical technology is deemed appropriate to sustain our lives. In short, we are a contract society. Whether this is for the better, only the reader can judge.

In Praise of Boredom

[image error]Joseph Brodsky (1940 – 1996)

In his wonderful blog “The Attic,” Bruce Watson, summarized Joseph Brodsky‘s views on boredom in  “IN PRAISE OF BOREDOM.” I share the post below with my readers and encourage them to visit Watson’s site.

HANOVER, NH, JUNE 1989 — On a bright, breezy afternoon, the green lawns of Dartmouth College were given over to graduation, graduation at last. There was the usual pomp, the usual circumstance, but the distinguished speaker was most unusual.

Stepping to the podium, Joseph Brodsky looked like any aging professor. Balding, portly, wire-rimmed. A dark coat, a weary gaze. Here it comes, students thought. The same boring speech — fame, fulfillment, saving the world. But Brodsky chose a different topic — boredom itself.

“A substantial part of what lies ahead of you,” he began, “is going to be claimed by boredom.”

Boredom. “Known under several aliases,” Brodsky continued, “anguish, ennui, tedium, doldrums, humdrum, the blahs, apathy, listlessness, stolidity, lethargy, languor. . .” Boredom is “the psychological Sahara that starts right in your bedroom and spurns the horizon.” Despite all your education, all your potential, Brodksy told Dartmouth’s Class of ‘89, “you’ll be bored with your work, your friends, your spouses, your lovers, the view from your window, the furniture or wallpaper in your room, your thoughts, yourselves.”

“If you find all this gloomy,” he said, “you don’t know what gloom is.”

Joseph Brodsky knew what gloom was. Grads were told of his Nobel Prize for literature, but few knew the price he had paid. After starving through the siege of Leningrad during World War II, Iosif Alexansandrovich Brodsky plunged into boredom. Soviet boredom. He worked in dull, droning factories, in a morgue, in a ship’s boiler room. Reading, always reading, he began writing poetry, poems of freedom that alarmed the Kremlin.

Branded a “social parasite,” Brodsky was put in mental institutions, in prison, in a labor camp above the Arctic Circle. Wherever authorities shoved him, he faced down the endless hours, “pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.” In 1972, Brodsky was put on a plane to Vienna, exiled for life. Coming to America, he became a professor, a citizen, a celebrated poet. Yet he remained fascinated by boredom because, he told grads, “boredom is your window on time.”

As boredom’s bard, Brodsky was in good company. “Against boredom,” Nietzsche said, “the gods themselves struggle in vain.” “Avoiding boredom,” wrote Susan Sontag, “is one of our most important purposes.” But in the decades since Brodsky spoke “In Praise of Boredom” this stifling state of mind has come out of the doldrums and into the lab.

Psychologists in Boredom Studies are learning the dangers and benefits of watching grass grow and paint dry. London now hosts an annual Boring Conference. (A redundant title?) Each summer in Warsaw, scholars gather for the International Interdisciplinary Boredom Conference. Studies of boredom might seem, well, bor-rring!!! but their conclusions are worth waking up for.

Everyone knows boredom leads to addictions —drugs, gambling, smart phones. But who knew of boredom’s blessings, among them — creativity. Subjects given a repetitive task just before a creative one come up with far more responses than those who, without the dull intro, just try to be clever. Boredom also sparks action. “It is this signal to explore,” says neuroscientist James Danckert, “to do something else. That what you’re doing now isn’t working.”

Joseph Brodsky did not need a lab to teach him about boredom. His advice to grads? If you chase constant change, boredom will have you forever on the run. Money? “Most of you know first hand that nobody is as bored as the rich, for money buys time and time is repetitive.” “Detective novels and action movies” provide some relief, but “avoid TV, especially flipping the channels: that’s redundancy incarnate.” Brodsky saw just one way to handle boredom — embrace it.

As “your window on time,” boredom teaches the plodding rhythms of the universe. In its grip, one learns the lessons of time, a deeper wisdom that can make you kinder, more patient. So “when hit by boredom, go for it. . . Let yourself be embraced by boredom and anguish, which anyhow are larger than you. No doubt you’ll find that bosom smothering, yet try to endure it as long as you can, and then some more.”

“Above all,” Brodsky concluded, “don’t think you goofed somewhere along the line. . . This awful bear hug is no mistake. Nothing that disturbs you is. Remember all along that there is no embrace in this world that won’t finally unclasp.”

It was a short speech. Some grads glanced at watches, others at green lawns. In the decades since, the Class of ‘89 has gone through the window of time and on to. . . what? Fame? Fulfillment? Saving the world?

But those heeding Brodsky’s advice learned what boredom can teach. For boredom “puts your existence into its perspective. . . If we learn about ourselves from time, perhaps time, in turn, may learn something from us. What would that be? That inferior in significance, we best it in sensitivity.”

 

Reply to “Is Life Boring?

Luigi penned these thoughtful replies to my recent post about boredom in life.

”Do particular activities that were once fascinating later become boring? Yes.”

This was also explained by Schopenhauer in a letter he wrote to someone, about how the the older one becomes, the less pleasure he will take in doing things that were once exciting, etc, because the longer one lives, the less everything will have an impression on him, and the weaker these impressions become as one ages.

”Does my boredom say something about me, or does it say something about these activities? Maybe I bore easily, or perhaps these activities were not sufficiently stimulating.”

I believe the latter, in your case. You were simply trying out stuff. That can’t be a bad thing. At least early on….

”I have never ceased to find the pursuit of knowledge interesting.”.

We are lucky. Schopenhauer would have agreed with me, I am certain. He saw people with no ideas or people obsessed with worldly stuff like money, etc, as disabled people.

My thing is music, although I wish I had started learning about philosophy, much earlier on. The word ‘philosophy’ seems pompous and exaggerated in my case….I simply try to be less dumb I was a while ago. Always a worthy pursuit.

”Fortunately, some activities are more stimulating than others.”.

S explained that the ‘lower’ the activity one finds stimulating, the younger they are, or if they are no spring chickens anymore, the more dumb. He REALLY despised people who played cards  Why? Because ‘intelligent people will ask themselves how to SPEND the time, whereas the fools, how to PASS it’.

”Yes, I grew bored teaching introductory college ethics classes for the one-hundredth time—literally.”.

This, I believe, is completely normal for creative people like you. Most known famous composers, all hated teaching music…..Schubert, Chopin, you name it.

”How about people? I have known people….”. This paragraph I find magnificent. This explains why S believed that the more one is ‘people savvy’ and ‘knows the ways of the world’, the more ‘vulgar’ they are. By ‘vulgar’ I believe he meant the same thing you mean as ‘boring people’.

And so, S explained, one either has to end up alone, or he’ll have to lower himself to the level of the boring people. It comes as no surprise that Wittgenstein hated talking about the weather, although I believe this is common to all philosophers.

Schopenhauer was known for being the ‘black sheep’ in the ridiculous social circles which he mockingly dubbed ‘the bon ton society’. Don’t talk about death, talk about the weather! Ha ha….who can blame S ?

”Here’s my advice. If you are almost always bored and you find your friends or lovers boring, it’s probably your problem.”.

I completely agree. It is unfair to blame others for our own poverty. This was also examined by S: the more two people have in common, the more they’ll agree even on the smallest things. Conversely, the least they have in common, the least they’ll agree about anything. And since most people are shallow-minded, if you aren’t like them, you’ll end up alone. Or mostly alone.

”But we can’t walk two paths at the same time. We must choose.”. I am actually obsessed with the scope of this concept, I think about it all the time.

”Another problem is that it is impossible for us to really know ourselves; for we are too close to ourselves.”.

Regardless: it is our job. We’ll never do it perfectly, and maybe not even adequately, but so what? At least we aren’t complete idiots :). Knowing oneself is the journey of a lifetime, and the landscape is so vast that it will never completely travelled in its entirety. But as Bruce Lee said about martial arts or Jean-Philippe Rameau about music composition: ‘You’ll never understand all of it, but you must keep at it.”.

But look at how bad is the state of mind of most people……very few really understand anything about themselves, constantly spinning in a sort of hamster wheel. At least we are aware of these things.

”Should I try something or someone else? Do I deserve better? ”.

I have little compassion for people who hang with people who treat them badly. It’s very easy to leave and burn bridges. I have done it myself (both being treated badly, and burning bridges,) and I never regretted the latter.

S also addressed this problem. Most people can’t bear to be left alone, they are like children. I think I already wrote about this before, elsewhere, so there’s no need to repeat it (although I am sure I repeat things a lot, which I cannot help as I think of them all the time).

”The best thing we can do is ask others who know and love us what they think.”.

I don’t believe that, at all. This betrays, in my view, any real knowledge about ourselves, but I respect your view. Other people cannot know us, for they only see the surface. We do the opposite: we miss the details of the surface, but we know best what’s inside of us. Those capable of doing so, anyways. I am not of course saying that this is an easy or short term job, but do you really think that you, a philosopher, can know yourself less well than your wife or your sister or friend can do? I really doubt it.

If you’d tell me that you use drugs or that you drink a lot, or that you are out of control, then I’d agree, other people can know you better than you do. Because their minds are healthier than yours (if that’d be really the case, which would have to be looked at in detail). But you are a philosopher. I am pretty sure you don’t care about drugs or getting wasted on beer :).

”but they can be more objective about us than we can—for they stand outside of our subjectivity.”.

Their ‘objectivity’ is likely to be a lot worse than your subjectivity. Almost always the things THEY see are related to conformism, i.e. if you don’t do things like the majority of them, you are ‘weird’. The likely fact is that if your subjectivity might not be 100 per cent accurate, their objectivity is as fallible as an almost blind darts player trying to win an international match.

You aren’t perfect, but you are light years beyond them. While they were wasting their time watching TV, you were learning both about yourself and others. That, I believe, is as much as anyone can possibly achieve.

”So ask those you trust, those who care about you”

My view: if they really love you, you don’t need to ask them anything. And if you did, what are they going to find out about themselves if they asked you? They would probably be horrified. Unfortunately, I know this for myself. I have some people who always loved me but I don’t really tell them what I think about them: they would be devastated, and I would regret it for the rest of my life.

For example, I have read quite a lot about the Holocaust lately (including an incredible graphic novel about Anne Frank), and when I tried to say to someone who loves me, how sad it was that entire families like ours have been done all that harm, she said: ‘Yes, but that happened so long ago.’.

That was really hurtful, I literally felt as if someone had struck me. I had spent many hours imagining what I had been reading. Had they have been someone else, I would have destroyed them, brutally, just by using logic, not insults and the like, of course.

I would have made her cry, for my arguments would have been devastating, and brutally factual, which I don’t need to go over here. For example, how selfish it is to sob and cry all your damn life about something that has happened to you, but if it has happened to someone else, we come up with stuff like ‘it happened so long ago’, the unstated conclusion being ‘why should I care?’.

Or that how Primo Levi opens one of his books with a devastating statement, which I’ll never forget, it goes somewhat like this: ‘If you are aware of the terrible things that happened during this period, and you will not care, may you and your family die.”.

It’s not that I think no other evils happened other than the Holocaust, but just that it is so widely and well documented that it is the perfect topic for understanding that really most people are too stupid to understand.

But instead I said nothing, and I have promised myself to never talk to her about this again. For this person really loves me, and I was not silent to save myself, but her. I have no problem being alone, but of course to know that some people loved you, or love you, it is heartwarming. But after all it is not absolutely necessary, except for the people Schopenhauer described in his writings, the ones who cannot bear to be left alone.

But as Schopenhauer advised: we should be tolerant with people, even with the worst types.

And I add: we should be VERY tolerant with our friends and family. Truth to be told, they might be as dumb as any other stupid person in the crowd. But this is the person I grew up with, etc. They did something nice for me, and they deserve special treatment.

Otherwise I would have been devastatingly brutal, like Levi. I understood his pain.

Is Life Boring?

Do we get bored with everything? Do friends and lovers, work and play, and even life itself eventually become dull and tedious? Does dissatisfaction with people and projects always set in? If so, should we quit what we are tired of, and try something else? Or should we accept the familiar because that’s our duty, or because we know that what’s new will become boring too?

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who I’ve written about many times in this blog, (here, here, here, here, here, and here) famously thought that boredom was the essence of the human condition, which we experience when life is devoid of its usual distractions. We keep busy so as not to experience this essential boredom. But are we bored because life is boring or because we are bores? Some are bored by everything, others find simple things fascinating. So boredom is not inevitable, nor is it essential. Schopenhauer was wrong.

Do particular activities that were once fascinating later become boring?  Yes. As a teenager I played competitive table tennis; after a few years, I was bored with table tennis. Later I played high-stakes poker; within a short time, I was bored with poker too. Later I learned to play golf; once I played reasonably well, I found golf boring. (Although I still enjoy the exercise.) Does my boredom say something about me, or does it say something about these activities? Maybe I bore easily, or perhaps these activities were not sufficiently stimulating. I know that stimulating persons need stimulation, and both our minds and bodies will atrophy without it.

Fortunately, some activities are more stimulating than others. I have never ceased to find the pursuit of knowledge interesting. Yes, I grew bored teaching introductory college ethics classes for the one-hundredth time—literally—but if you master philosophical ethics to your satisfaction, then find another topic. Don’t worry. There are plenty of things to do and learn. Might we eventually know everything and get bored? I don’t know. If I become omniscient I’ll let you know.

How about people? I have known people who have few thoughts, and others who have shallow thoughts. Such people ask few questions. And they already have their answers—usually the first ones they were exposed to. I find such people boring. By contrast, people on a journey are interesting, they are evolving. With them you never encounter the same person, they are as petals unfolding. They are like ships that sail in the ocean rather than being stuck in dry dock. How can you tire of their constant surprise?

Still, you may find yourself disappointed with someone you previously respected, or discover that someone is not as good or as interesting as you thought they were. What then? This is a difficult question and relates to a previous post about “settling,” especially for intimate partners. If your expectations for such partners are too high, you are bound to be disappointed; if your expectations are too low, you will settle for a bad partner and be discontent or even traumatized.

Here’s my advice. If you are almost always bored and you find your friends or lovers boring, it’s probably your problem. If you are usually interested in people and you find your friends or lovers boring, you should probably find more stimulating friends and lovers. If we could live multiple lives simultaneously we could discover which friends, lovers, activities, and projects were best. (A theme explored in Milan Kundera’s novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.) But we can’t walk two paths at the same time. We must choose. As Sartre’ said we are “condemned to be free.”

Another problem is that it is impossible for us to really know ourselves; for we are too close to ourselves. We don’t know if we deserve better friends, lovers, or jobs, or if we are lucky to have our current ones. The best thing we can do is ask others who know and love us what they think. Should I try something or someone else? Do I deserve better? Or should I be satisfied with what I have? Those who love us can’t know with certainty the answer to these questions, but they can be more objective about us than we can—for they stand outside of our subjectivity. In some ways, they know us better than we know ourselves. So ask those you trust, those who care about you, and ask yourself too. Then listen.

Unfortunately, this is not a complete answer, since we can never know for certain which road to travel. In the end, we don’t know which life is best, either for ourselves or others. Perhaps this is what Viktor Frankl had in mind when he wrote:

What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.

I’ll end by leaving my readers with some advice I received long ago from Walt Whitman:

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

More Comments on Meaning

[image error]“Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” by Paul Gauguin

My recent post, Why Does the World Exist? elicited some extraordinarily thoughtful comments from readers. I published those comments in my last post and this has elicited more insightful comments from readers which I reprint below.

Lilly wrote,

The reason I find the intellectual pursuit of “meaning” to be, uh, um, well, meaningless, is because a healthy life requires holding the tension between meaning and meaninglessness – sort of what Hegel was going on about, but from the standpoint of one who experiences both the crushing weight of pointlessness and the effervescent joy of grounded participation on a daily basis. For me it’s experiential rather than philosophical – I just happen to notice the back and forth, along with the all too human judgments, hopes, desires, and assumptions that go along with struggling to hold that tension. I dance and feel happy; I catch my finger in the hinge of the trolling motor, ripping skin and sending blood dripping everywhere, reminding me of my mortality and fragility; I bake zucchini bread and joyously accept the gratitude of the recipients; I look at the clock, see it’s now 11:00 at night, and feel like I did nothing with the previous hours but deliver myself one day closer to my eventual death. It’s all cycling through, all the time.

And while in the past, I would attempt to stop the cycle or at least control it by focusing my attention and my thoughts, so as to grasp its underlying point, that is no longer the case, seeing such a choice as being an indulgence brought on by fear and arrogance. Quarks and I are both merely fractals of the universe and as such moving within the truth that we cannot be observed directly without altering our trajectory. (I typed, “tragectory,” before catching the error – but I love that cynical idea that life is a tragedy in motion; I totally get that. But I also get that we are the Goddess, and the Goddess resides in each of us, and as such we are the light of possibility and beauty. To look at one aspect is to miss all that’s happening with the other – which is why it’s a matter of willingly holding the tension, out of respect and appreciation for both.)

And Cornelius shared these thoughts,

There is no meaning to life. Nothing concrete that is universally programmed within us. Common motivations are those seen in Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, which extends to all individuals. Meaning could perhaps be entirely explained through the history we share through thousands of years of evolution. Once upon a time we walked the great plains and had to assert meaning to things we saw in order to survive. We had to communicate this meaning too. When humans looked upon the footprints of some unknown animal, we had to use our imagination (a powerful tool) to construct a story or apply meaning to it. This was done in order to avoid certain death. Imagine then, if we had not used this trait that grew out of natural selection. We would all surely be dead.

It seems that the great questions are not so great after all. They really only symbolize our inherent need to assert meaning to meaningless things and see patterns where there are none. Even being aware of our inherent need to see patterns where there are none, I can’t help myself. My journals are filled with diagrams, drawings, and explanations that I hope will unravel this uncanny feeling always following me.

Human beings are social animals. If one were to glance across various psychological studies one will observe a pattern (oh no, more patterns). During the lockdown, we saw the negative effects of social isolation. We can read about the damaging effects social isolation can have on our bodies. Some claim it shortens our life considerably. A recent study spoke of how we should contact old friends because it will have a positive effect. Even though we sometimes think it would not. The positive effects of being social and having close relationships are tremendous. It seems like the meaning, if any, would be to think of our most dominating traits as human beings, which is that we are highly social. Thus the meaning itself reflects our human nature. To live a meaningful life is to have meaningful relationships and to build social intelligence to guide you through.

Think about this blog as well. It is a social process. We read your articles and give responses in the comment section. Ask great questions and intelligent individuals give their opinion in the comments. Pull it all apart to the bare bones and we have social processes that are the basis of everything. That is why it seems to me that maintaining these relationships might be as close to a universal meaning as it gets.

It seems that all the poetry and grand analogies are connected to our social life. What is a grand analogy if you can’t share it? What are great thoughts in isolation?

I again thank Lilly and Cornelius for taking the time to think about these topics and for sharing their thoughts with me and my readers.

 

The Past, Present, and Future of The Meaning of Life

My recent post, Why Does the World Exist?, elicited some extraordinarily thoughtful comments from readers. Kevin wrote

Been through the desert on a horse with no name searching for answers in places called metaphysics and epistemology. Even passed through W. James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience” and found as much comfort in Joseph Campbell’s myths as I’ve found in the Big Bang theory. Does it matter if I believe the Universe is a huge mind, dreaming us into existence every 15 billion years like Vishnu and Brahma, and whose synapses are light years apart?

In the end, I arrive back [at] …  understanding/overcoming that First Cause. Maybe it’s a problem with our linear thinking that wants a beginning and an end. Perhaps we’ll eventually round off Pi and come up with a unified theory, and maybe not. In the meantime, I’ll appreciate what I discovered when I left the shadows in the cave and experienced the aesthetics … the only reality I know. This, alone, has made my search rewarding. If we’re the stuff made in stars then that’s where I want us to return, to stop building walls and fighting interspecies culture wars. I believe the best is yet to come if we don’t annihilate ourselves first.

Kevin is right. We will live and die in a world we hardly understand but we can, hopefully, enjoy our journey. And I also hope, with Kevin,  that the cosmic journey we are embarking on will be better than the past.

The relationship between the past and future also arose in a comment by Samuel Halpern who wrote,

Rather than responding to the question “Why?”, I challenge its unstated assumption, I.e., that existence requires an explanation or reason. Perhaps the question “why” is only a form that takes shape in the human brain— against the fullness of cosmic time, a temporary phenomenon.

I read that red dwarf stars may continue burning for trillions of years and that the James Webb telescope is seeing back merely to nearly the Big Bang, some 14 billion years ago. But that past—14 B — is an infinitesimally paltry amount of time compared to a future of Trillions. On this scale, the human mind seems an extremely primitive phenomenon.

So the very question “why” may eventually be deemed an archaic relic as the universe continues to unfold over unimaginably vast vistas of time.

So not only are our best answers unsatisfying, but our questions themselves may be trivial or incoherent. I have written many times about how primitive our minds are compared to those that “have been, or are being, evolved.” For our descendants, or for other more evolved beings in the cosmos, our questions are those of simple minds. Humans today may be like dogs and cats trying to understand relativity and quantum theory when it comes to asking and understanding possible answers to big questions. This should humble as all and in response, we should have epistemic humility. As I have previously written regarding any of my supposed insights,

My thinking is slow, my brain small, my experience limited, and my life short. Yet the universe moves incredibly fast, is inconceivably large, unimaginably mysterious, and incredibly old. We are modified monkeys living on a planet that spins on its axis at 1600 kilometers an hour, hurls around the sun at more than 100,000 km an hour, as part of a solar system that orbits the center of its Milky Way galaxy at about 800,000 km an hour. The Milky Way itself moves through space at more than 2,000,000 km an hour and the galaxies move away from each other faster than the speed of light. (Although nothing can move through space faster than light speed the space between galaxies expands faster than the speed of light. That’s why in the far future we won’t be able to see other galaxies.)

But there’s more. Our galaxy contains more than 100 billion stars and there are more than 100 billion galaxies in a universe that is nearly 14 billion years old and almost 100 billion light-years across. And we can only see a part of the universe—the observable universe. Some galaxies are forever beyond our observation because they are receding away from us faster than the speed of light—their light will never reach us and we will never be able to see them. Moreover, there may be an infinite number of universes, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics may be true, we may live in a computer simulation, or …? Needless to say, most of this is incomprehensible to my simple mind.  

Given this immense backdrop of speed, space, time, and mystery shouldn’t we be humbled by our limitations and apparent insignificance? Who other than the ignorant or delusional would claim to know much of ultimate truth? I make no such claims; I am fallible. My philosophical ideas emanate from a limited perspective and they are, at best, applicable only to a certain time and place.

I would like to thank Kevin and Samuel for taking the time to comment on my blog. We are stimulated and enriched by the encounter with other good and thoughtful minds. I’m lucky to have encountered their deep and thoughtful minds. My sincere thanks to them both.

John Messerly, August 2022, Seattle WA.

Derek Parfit on Why The World Exists

[image error]Derek Parfit 1942-2017

A reader asked me to clarify Derek Parfit’s distinction—made in my last post—between a local and a cosmic possibility. Here are Parfit’s exact words on the distinction:

“It will help to distinguish two kinds of possibility. Cosmic possibilities cover everything that ever exists, and are the different ways that the whole of reality might be. Only one such possibility can be actual, or the one that obtains. Local possibilities are the different ways that some part of reality, or local world, might be. If some local world exists, that leaves it open whether other worlds exist.” ~ Derek Parfit, “Why Anything? Why This?” London Review of Books, Vol. 20 No. 2 · 22 January 1998, pages 24-27

This distinction doesn’t seem completely clear. The local could refer to a part of reality—like a planet—and the cosmic to the whole of reality—the universe. Alternatively, the local could refer to a particular universe and the cosmic to all the universes or the multiverse. I favor the latter interpretation. Either way, the cosmic possibilities are what is most important.

As I said in my previous post regarding Parfit’s position:

The cosmic possibilities range from every conceivable reality existing (the all worlds possibility) to no conceivable reality existing (the null hypothesis). In between there are an infinite number of possibilities such as: only good universes exist, only 58 universes exist, only worlds that obey string theory exist, only bad worlds exist, etc. Of all these cosmic possibilities at least one of them must obtain. So the question is, which one and why?

… Parfit concludes that the null hypothesis is the simplest, the all worlds hypothesis the fullest, the axiarchic hypothesis the best and so on. Now Parfit wonders if a cosmic possibility obtains because it has a special feature like fullness or simplicity or goodness. What if that feature chooses reality? If it does Parfit calls it a “selector.”

… Of course this raises the question of whether there is some deeper explanation of why there is one selector rather than another. Is there a meta-selector and a meta-meta-selector ad infinitum? Parfit acknowledges that the ultimate selector would have to be a brute fact—to stop the infinite regress—but that this is better than no explanation at all. But Parfit also believes that the simplest explanatory possibility at the meta-level is that there is no selector! This does not mean there would be nothingness—that would be a special outcome best explained by simplicity as the selector. Rather, no selector leads to a mediocre universe with nothing special about it—the way things turned out would be random. “Reality is neither a pristine Nothing nor an all-fecund Everything. It’s a cosmic junk shot.” (Holt, 236)

If it wasn’t clear from our previous post, Parfit thinks our reality is most consistent with there being no selector. And at the meta-level the no selector hypothesis is most likely because that’s the simplest hypothesis. So simplicity -> no selector -> lots of generic possibilities.

Here is how I would summarize, in the simplest way possible, the issue of why there is something rather than nothing.

Reality either has a cause, reason, or explanation (CRE) or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t have a CRE then reality is unintelligible, a brute fact or eternal. If it has a CRE then either it is its own CRE or its CRE is something else. This something else—god, aliens, other universes—is in turn either its own CRE or its CRE is something else, ad infinitum. So this chain of CRE is either infinite or something is its own CRE. As for reality being infinite, this is consistent with reality having no CRE, being its own CRE, or having its CRE be something else. So whether the reality is beginningless or not doesn’t affect our question.

Think of it this way. If you are told that reality has no CRE are you satisfied? No. You think there must be a CRE because normally things have CREs. If you are told that reality explains itself are you satisfied? No. Because normally things don’t explain themselves. If you are told that reality is explained by something else are you satisfied? No. Because now you need an explanation of that thing. For of that thing you can always ask “what is the CRE for that?” And the only answer to that question is: a) it has no CRE; or b) it is its own CRE; or c) its CRE is something else. And then you are back where you started.

In the end, our minds can’t seem to penetrate this mystery. And so we go on living.