Thoughts on Identity and True Self

A little over a year ago, my world fell apart.  After a few months of playing doctor (with the assistance of my real doctor friends), I pieced together what was wrong with myself and was able to find a doctor locally that was able to make a treatment plan.  While I think it's easier to predict how a chronic disorder can effect you physically and even mentally, what I never really expected was what it would do/continues to do to my identity.

If you would have asked me to describe myself before this all happened, I would have probably bet a lot of money that I was extremely healthy and fit.  Needless to say, one of the many things that I've learned over the last year is that I have hard physical limits.  If I go beyond those limits, then I could potentially be paying with days, weeks, and even months in misery.

POTS/dysautomia has really caused me to rethink my identity and what identity is in the first place.  My picture of myself has had dramatic changes over the years.  However, every previous time I actively chose who I did or did not want to become.  I was at the helm directing my life and controlling my outcome. 

This transformation by choice allowed me to find examples of the person I wanted to be and then make the necessary changes for me to grow in that way.  Now I am experiencing transformation by force.  I realize that am not so much at the helm as being dealt a hand of cards.

Maybe my actions of the past were less about my brilliance in navigating murky waters, but being able to play an already good hand well.  Much of who I thought I was is being put to the test.  Some concepts/stories I told myself are no longer true, while the jury is still out on many others.

Here are a few things that I have learned about identity and resilience over the last year:

• Identities based on physical attributes are the most fragile.  Only the most innate physical features (ie. height) will stand the test of time.  Everything else will change, probably for the worst, as you age.
• Identities based on mental attributes aren't much safer.  It's been pretty remarkable to me to see myself go from (what I view as) intelligence and quick witted to being barely able to form a thought within the span of a few minutes.

This has all lead me to the question - is this set of stories that we cobble together, that we use to describe and define ourselves, that we use to predict how we will act in any situations, really needed? 

It's clearly not who we really are.  Could I really say that I was strong and healthy, when a day later I would be in and out of a hospital for a month?  Either I was completely wrong in who I thought I was (which is entirely possible), or it was all an illusion.

Maybe I was really this amorphous being watching everything happen.  I am the watcher of my thoughts, my feelings, the events and stimuli occurring around me. And maybe, because I obsessively need to compartmentalize and define everything, I felt compelled to spend the last three and half decades weaving a set a stories to help define what this being is.  All the while not realizing that I wasn't actually defining myself, but the supposed relation of myself to everything I come in contact with. 

Authentic Living and Irrational Fear

I firmly believe that in order for me to live happily and with satisfaction, I need two things. First, to live with complete authenticity. Secondly, to systematically remove all illogical fear from my life.  This allows me to live the life that I design for myself instead of accepting what things with seemingly no control.

Let me describe what I mean by living with complete authenticity.  I think that there are four types of knowledge:

1. What you know that you know
2. What you know that you don’t know
3. What you don’t know that you know.
1. I.E. Although today you may say that you don’t know X, when put in a situation that required it, you would figure it out.
4. What you don’t know that you don’t know.

I think the first three are fairly obvious and self explanatory.  The final piece, “What you don’t know that you don’t know” is really the most life altering.  Essentially what it means is that everyone thinks that they are acting rationally, when in reality they are making decisions based on incomplete data.  

I imagine it to be a world where everyone is walking around with binoculars strapped to their heads.  However, they don’t know that they are wearing them.  They are viewing what they think is the complete world and making what they think are logical decisions based on this perception.  In reality though, they are only able to view a very small percentage of what’s going on around them.  I think that this explains why so often people who are good natured and have positive intentions disagree so vehemently over topics that they think are obvious.

The first step, in my opinion, of freeing yourself from your self imposed shackles and having complete mental control is acknowledging this principle.  No matter how hard you try, you are acting on incomplete data, and you don’t even know what data you are missing.  So is everyone else around you.  This creates many self imposed boundaries and irrational fears that everyone lives by.

In order to understand human nature and irrational, you need to look at evolution.  We evolved from apes who evolved from lesser creatures.  Even within the last 10,000 years of human existence our society and general livelihoods have changed beyond recognition.  Hunter gatherers had to legitimately worry about being eaten by larger and stronger predators.  Our limbic system, which controls our fear response, has evolved to be rather adept at responding to these threats.  We have a fight or flight for a reason.    If we didn’t fight or run, we would die.  

That is no longer the case.  We don’t live day to day with existential threats that legitimately threaten our lives.  Our limbic system which has evolved over millions of years can not re-evolve so quickly to accommodate this.  This means that our brains take things that previously would not have caused a reaction and created a fight or flight response.  Some people become non-confrontational, while others get angry and irate.  Obviously, there are still things today that require this type of emotional response.  With that being said, the vast majority of our fight or flight responses are irrational - ie. if our limbic system had evolved for today’s threats, it would not react.

The brain is essentially a massive biological computer.  On a micro and macro level the brain has feedback loops that help it process information.  On a micro level, an irrational fear can be created from an unexpected misunderstood reaction.  This reinforces the fear and makes it more prominent the next time.

These fears create cycles in our subconscious that directly affect how we perceive the world around us.  They essentially determine what type of binoculars that you are viewing the world through.  All perception - interactions with others, general day to day events, and even how things have panned out over time - is tinted through this way of perceiving the world.

For me to live with complete authenticity, I had to first accept the fact that I didn’t know what I didn’t know much of what was going around me.  Sounds simple, but to truly integrate that into my personal philosophy was difficult.  I found it was one of those ideas that made me very uncomfortable to consider.  However, you eventually have an “aha” moment the more you think about it.  

Once I understood that principle, I needed to understand the “tint of my binoculars.”  How were my conscious and subconscious fears altering my perception of the reality around me?  I found that many decisions that I made at that point in my life were rash.  I don’t regret them, but they had major life consequences.

Today I understand that part of being human is never knowing what you want to be when you grow up.  As soon as you decide on something, you learn more about yourself and the world around you (the what you didn’t know that you didn’t know).  This creates a life that requires living in constant ambiguity.  I think the trick to life, is learning how to be ok with this lack of ultimate control, while realizing what you actually have control over.

The Essence of Intelligence

I believe that one major problem of the neuroscience community is the lack of an overlying theory that is capable of making sense of the brain. It's obvious that our brain in incredibly complicated, and it is the basis for intelligence. I think that understanding intelligence is essential to understanding the complexities of the brain, what its function in, and why it operates in the manor it does.

I've talked to a lot of people who believe that intelligence is relative, and that depending on the way you measure it, people are more or less intelligent. This does not make any sense and it stems from the fact that I do not think that we have clearly defined what intelligence is and how to measure it. This is illustrated in the study of artificial intelligence, where researchers essentially try to make computers "smart." They have succeeded at making their machine better at the assigned task, but we have yet to see a machine that would be classified as intelligent. A uniting theory is essential to advancing technology and our current understanding of the brain.

I have been thinking about this problem, and I believe that there are four requirements to intelligent beings - whether living or non-living.

1. Necessity to survive, driven by a need to reproduce (I could foresee non biological intelligent beings not having a need to reproduce).
2. Ability to receive consistent inputs from the environment automatically (ie - have sensory systems)
3. Ability to store information
4. Ability to use stored information to predict future outcomes. In other words, the ability to recognize patterns in the past knowledge and be able to analyze current input information for these similar patterns.

Pattern recognition is really the basis for all intelligence. The better someone is at recognizing patterns from all of their sensory inputs, the better they will be at predicting future outcomes when they recognize similar patterns in their current environment. The need for survival is creates a drive to interact in the world and a drive to become the most adapted to your environment. This can only happen by getting "smarter." The necessity for sensory input arises because knowledge of ones environment is essential to being otherwise the being will have no basis of information for which they can detect patterns and no way applying these patterns to the current environmental situation (because they can't tell what the current environment really is).

Essentially intelligence stems from your interaction with the environment, and beings that have no way to receive sensory input - whether tactile or sensory - cannot be intelligent. You can clearly trace the rise of intelligence through the phyla as organisms gain better sensory systems and adaptation techniques.

Why Ethanol is not the answer to the Climate Crisis

I consider myself an environmentally friendly advocate. I am not going to change all of my habits to become carbon neutral, but I will continue to take steps to lower my footprint. With this point aside, I find it hard to understand why there is such a huge push for ethanol recently. Although technically a carbon neutral fuel, it is not economically or even environmentally practical. In general ethanol is not a logical substitute for oil.

All things considered, ethanol is not carbon neutral. When you consider the whole production process, more CO2 is released then in the burning of gasoline. Consider the amount of fertilizer, fuel for tractors, and extensive amounts of energy it takes to produce. Ethanol production is highly inefficient, and the fuel itself is much less efficient than gasoline. On top of that, it is causing food prices to skyrocket, further complicating the already weak and probably recessive economy. The other problem with ethanol is it requires huge amounts of water. This is troublesome since many agriculture areas already have been facing record droughts over the past decade. This is not a feasible system and will eventually cause more problems for the "energy movement" than are worth.

I think the most feasible long term solution to gasoline is pure electric. Tesla is about to release a pure electric car that has similar speeds as a Porsche and if you convert the energy costs comes to about 2 cents per equivalent gallon of gas. Electricity is being increasingly made by renewable energy sources. Batteries are continually getting more efficient and more powerful while require less for charge times, and the vast majority of drivers do the vast majority of their driving over short distances.

I say we ditch the ethanol bs, continue to improve hybrids and electrics, and work at improving the hydrogen fuel cell systems. Although this will take longer, it is more sustainable and has a higher likelihood for overall success. But then again, I only know what I read in the news, and we all know that news outlets are hardly a source for reliable and accurate information.

Very Cool image resizing technology

I know this is real nerdy, but anyone who has working with internet applications understands the problem addressed in this video.

My Vegetable Soup Recipe

It's winter in Rochester, NY. That means extreme cold, incredible wind chills, and too much snow. So I decided to make a soup. It's a medium thick vegetable "chowder." I use chowder in quotes because its not the usual cream based chowder, but still has the creamy taste and is thicker than a stock based soup. Here's the deal:

2 medium potatoes diced
4 stalks celery diced
2 medium carrots diced
1-2 crowns of broccoli diced
1-2 onions diced
4-5 cloves of garlic diced
1 bag frozen corn
1 can chick peas drained
1 can cream of mushroom soup (+ 2 cans of water)
1 can of coconut milk
1/2 cup of uncooked rice
3 tablespoons of black pepper
3 tablespoons of "italian seasoning"
2 tablespoons of coriander
5 bay leaves

Throw the potatoes, carrots, broccoli, garlic, onions, celery into a pot on medium heat for about 5 minutes. Shake it up occasionally to mix up the veggies. Put the rice, spices/bay leaves, cream of mushroom, coconut milk, and 2 cans of water in the pot and bring to a boil. Take it down to a simmer, cover, and let it go for about 15-20 minutes. Put the corn and chick peas in the pot and let it go for about 5 more minutes. Fin.

The Essence of Intelligence

I believe that one major problem of the neuroscience community is the lack of an overlying theory that is capable of making sense of the brain. It's obvious that our brain in incredibly complicated, and it is the basis for intelligence. I think that understanding intelligence is essential to understanding the complexities of the brain, what its function in, and why it operates in the manor it does.

I've talked to a lot of people who believe that intelligence is relative, and that depending on the way you measure it, people are more or less intelligent. This does not make any sense and it stems from the fact that I do not think that we have clearly defined what intelligence is and how to measure it. This is illustrated in the study of artificial intelligence, where researchers essentially try to make computers "smart." They have succeeded at making their machine better at the assigned task, but we have yet to see a machine that would be classified as intelligent. A uniting theory is essential to advancing technology and our current understanding of the brain.

I have been thinking about this problem, and I believe that there are four requirements to intelligent beings - whether living or non-living.

1. Necessity to survive, driven by a need to reproduce (I could foresee non biological intelligent beings not having a need to reproduce).
2. Ability to receive consistent inputs from the environment automatically (ie - have sensory systems)
3. Ability to store information
4. Ability to use stored information to predict future outcomes. In other words, the ability to recognize patterns in the past knowledge and be able to analyze current input information for these similar patterns.

Pattern recognition is really the basis for all intelligence. The better someone is at recognizing patterns from all of their sensory inputs, the better they will be at predicting future outcomes when they recognize similar patterns in their current environment. The need for survival is creates a drive to interact in the world and a drive to become the most adapted to your environment. This can only happen by getting "smarter." The necessity for sensory input arises because knowledge of ones environment is essential to being otherwise the being will have no basis of information for which they can detect patterns and no way applying these patterns to the current environmental situation (because they can't tell what the current environment really is).

Essentially intelligence stems from your interaction with the environment, and beings that have no way to receive sensory input - whether tactile or sensory - cannot be intelligent. You can clearly trace the rise of intelligence through the phyla as organisms gain better sensory systems and adaptation techniques.