Newsletter

Human Limitations

Giraffe-sized Asteroid

We live in a vast universe that spans enormous scapes in time and space. But humans have only evolved to understand information in quantities that they can easily relate to — human scaled. We can conceive landscapes mostly in chunks we can easily walk and connected loosely by strands of distances we can drive comfortably. We live in the now, but relate to the future in terms of the past that we don’t remember well. We can make plans just within a very narrow scope of time — days, perhaps week. The future is always elusive and vague. And we are really just able to maintain a web of a few dozen relationships. Time, space, and human interactions are super limited for us. We don’t process and thus truly comprehend information of large or very small scales. It’s not who we are. This is why it is easy for us to fall for logic traps that equate our family organization with country-wide system of laws, for example. And it’s one of the reasons we need lawyers and scientists, people who are trained to think non-colloquially about the world — we are not nimble at figuring out all of the restrictions…

Extravagant

Free Science Fiction

The Latin root of the word extravagant means “to wander outside or beyond.” Clearly the meaning changed somewhat over the years, but wandering in unfamiliar places exposes our senses, and thus our brains, to new experiences. Our senses are hit with novel sights, sounds, and scents. We are getting something “extra” out of life when we venture beyond the familiar. I remember the first time I travelled to a tropical destination. The aroma, as I stepped out of the airport, was overwhelming; it was almost a physical wall of fragrance. There was no doubt that I was entering some place new. Novel sensual experiences impact how we think and remember, putting on a new track our normal train of thoughts. Wandering the world creates wonder. Changing our perspective in this way is a main reason to seek out new experiences. When we think, we don’t do so in isolation. Our minds are not soaring and thinking up ideas in an empty space. We think with our bodies and senses as much or more than we do with our minds. The sensory inputs we get as we move, work, and problem solve, feed us information and clues as to what to…

In-the-Moment Experience Versus Memory of Time

San Francisco Pride Month Laser Show by Bruce Andersen 2023

Time really does fly. It marches like an unstoppable force. But our memories of the past events and our perception of time are not so immutable. In-the-moment experience and the memory of such are so very different. Our memories are problematic, at best, and completely fictional at worst. But we can choose what we remember; we can shape our own history.

Imaginary Children

April Giveaway header

Tamagotchis, AI companions, cars, and even rumbas have people that are heavily emotionally invested in these inanimate and abstract things, giving them pet names and interacting with them as if they were invested with souls. Perhaps humans jump to anthropomorphism inanimate objects faster than other species. But we are not alone in attributing life in this way. I wonder if intelligent life that evolved on other worlds possesses this trait as well? Is it a sign of higher consciousness or is it just an Earth thing?

Quest for Immortality

The Fountain of Youth (1546)

Whenever it comes, death seems very unfair, and humans have been hard at work on combating this scourge for as long as we can remember. After decades of self-investment via education, relationships, employment, children, hobbies, travel and experiences, who wants to just give it all up? We hate death when it comes at an old age, when it cuts short life in its prime, and perhaps particularly when it gets the young before they had a chance to live. Humans have longed to extend their lifespans or, barring that, the memory of their existence for as long as we have records of humanity.