Prot Asks: Eric about free software, art, religion, and cosmic consistency

So, >> uh, start recording. So, hello there. >> Thank you for joining me. >> Yes, round two. >> Round two. So, you've been here before and I will include a link to the first uh video. Uh, but for those who haven't been here before, uh, let's start with a brief introduction like >> who you are, what is your name and what do you do in broad terms and then we see what we do from there. >> Yeah, perfect. So, hello there. My name is Eric. Um, I am I guess a software developer and a musician and I do some writing and different things. I kind of have my website which you can see in my name here, mfred.com. That's kind of a hub for a lot of the different things I do with, you know, music and writing programs and everything like that. I recently graduated from college um with a degree in computer science and then I went out to I'm I live in Minnesota now but for a few months I went out to Ohio to work my first job in software de development and then a few months ago um I came back home for the holidays and uh am now looking for more work as a software developer uh either remote or around the Minneapolis area. So, I'm just kind of um in kind of that in between period where I'm just kind of doing some some self-study and some uh kind of personal growth time and things like that and uh doing fun things like talking to PR here and uh yeah, enjoying the um the warming Minnesota winter. It was very cold for a while. Now it's starting to warm up, but uh yeah, that's kind of a brief overview of of what I'm doing now. >> Very good. Very good. And do you have any particular interest when it comes to programming? like any area where you are more excited to work in? >> Yeah, for sure. I really enjoy uh anything to do with programming languages, um parsers, compilers, domain specific languages, things like that. Uh that's kind of my favorite discipline, functional programming generally. I like stuff like that. That ties into Emacs and Emacs list, which is the original reason I found out about prompt. And um yeah, that's definitely my favorite kind of programming, but I guess I kind of consider myself a jack of all trades, too, where I I can do low-level stuff. I can do um you know shell scripting. I can do um you know web programming. I I did all the you know front end for my website and everything like that and the back ends. I did everything for my website. But uh yeah I kind of like all types of programming but any kind of thing to do with languages or or functional programming is kind of my favorite. >> Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. And um have you been involved in uh free software software? >> Yeah. Yeah. So, I've I've kind of interacted with the um I have a couple commits in the Emacs master branch. Uh they're just documentation fixes. They're not any kind of serious code commits, but I've you know interacted with, you know, the mailing list there obviously to submit patches and stuff. Um longtime Emacs user. Um and then I've also interacted a bit with the u the Git mailing list because I wanted to submit I was trying to do a bug fix for this issue in Git Stash at one point. I didn't end up finishing it, but I want to circle back to that. Um but yeah, so I've interacted a little bit with some different open source communities. um got a couple commits in Emacs, but I want to do even more even more stuff going forward because open source software and the way the development works and the way the mailing list work is something that's really fun for me. >> And I imagine it's a different world than what you would get uh when you are a contractor or when you work for a company. Yeah, it's totally different. And one of the things I like about it is that so one of the things and I've heard this from my friends who work in software development too is one of the things um about working in that kind of environment is there can be a lot of inefficiencies happening with um kind of the way that like work is planned or the way that like meetings happen to where people are trying to figure out what they want to work about and work on. And sometimes there are these frameworks like um with sprints and different goals and things like that where it can feel like there's a lot of kind of uh management detail overhead and things like that. One of the things I really like about the way that um the open source projects work is that you submit patches to the mailing list and then those get reviewed and everything, but no one's really going to look at anything that isn't um that hasn't already been formulated to a high standard. It won't be taken seriously. So my point is that one of the thing I like the most about it is that discussion only happens in-depth discussion only happens once serious work has taken place and I think that that makes it so much more uh efficient than a situation where people are scheduling meetings and trying to figure out what to work on. Not not that that can't ever be useful but I just kind of like the way that things are done in open source. And there was a moment um maybe it was uh around like a year ago at this point where I um emailed the uh git mailing list and I was like, "Hey, I'm kind of new to the open source." It was such a it was such a beginner type of email. I was like, "Hey, I'm kind of new to the community. Like, is there any like task I could work on?" I was almost like trying to treat it like a normal job. I'm like, "Hey, what can I work on? What's on the docket?" And the uh the lead maintainer of Git, um Hunio Cammano, I think is his name. um he basically sent me this email which I didn't quite understand immediately but he basically said uh the phrase he used was uh scratch your own itch and I had to think about it for a second but what he meant is that uh what you should do instead of looking instead of gaining a specific task from us or instead of hearing about a specific task from us what you should go off and do is just explore the software see if there are any um bugs that you can notice or want to try to fix any test cases that you can improve any feature you want to add go off explore and scratch your own itch by adding to the software what you would want to be there. Like if you could if you could if you could design the software, which you basically can do, right, since you have the source code, just add whatever you think needs to be there and then if you get um if it works out, then send it to us and we'll review it. So I just kind of like that workflow. I like that kind of philosophy. >> And then of course that also has the added advantage that because you care about it, so you're scratching your own itch, you also have an intuition of what it should look like. >> Yeah. and and therefore you already are working towards something and you need less of um a guidance or a nudge to move in that direction. You are more selfdriven. >> Yeah. And I I feel like that feeds back into an inherent desire to kind of be ambitious and to kind of do something which really um kind of improves the software in an ambitious way. And that's one of the things I think also psychologically at least for me how it's different from uh working in uh more of a normal job environment is that sometimes um at least in the job that I was working on I felt like if I were to try to conceptualize some kind of bigger uh improvement to the codebase or something it might be uh it might kind of be rejected because people would think it might be a waste of time or something like that. Um I kind of like obviously the circumstances are different but in the open source world it feels like there's kind of an um an inherent uh almost challenge to be ambitious and to do something really cool and that that at least that activates for me personally that activates my creativity and activates my ambition and I feel like that just makes a lot more fun >> and even when it's not solo even when you want to work as a team this idea of well bring a patch or generally bring some code and then we talk >> I ultimately focuses the discussion as well. So it's not like let's meet to discuss the possibility of future discussions on topics to be discussed. >> It's like here it is. Let's see where that leads us. >> Yeah. Exactly. And because I also think because it's a volunteer system, I think um that there's kind of there's an inherently nononsense attitude kind of going on there because sometimes when when work is being paid for when hours are being logged and that's determining compensation and things like that, people have almost an incentive to to do hours of work that aren't necessarily they have an incentive to um record the most hours of work, but not necessarily to do the most work. But in a volunteer situation, people are there because they want to be there. And that inherently is just a more it's just a more it's just they have a more streamlined mindset because they're they're just there of their own valition. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Of course. That's good. Um if you get to do more of that of course you will see that um there is you hinted at it already but there is like a social aspect to it where it's like well I want to gain ambition be more confident uh that sort of thing where it's not about software anymore it's about >> character building let's call it where you develop a sense of how should I behave in the world how should I deal with other people how should we manage image a shared resource and I think that's also a very nice part of the experience. >> Yeah. And that's one thing I know I was inspired by that too in my interactions with the the Emacs development mailing list for example. I noticed just the standard of quality in the communication not the standard of writing the standard of how people interacted with each other was just was just very high. And that was that was definitely um really cool for me that that made me think oh I want to I want to dig more into this. I want to become more of a part of this. Mhm. And yeah, of course, also the style of communication plays a part in it because if you reduce it to something that is really easy and really brief and really low effort, what happens is that first the you lose the the quality of communication and what follows is the quality of the contributions because >> now nobody needs to put any real effort into it and >> it it sort of sets the expectation Like if you send an email and you get a loweffort contribution back, a loweffort response already you feel at least subconsciously that you can get away with loweffort contribution. >> But if the feedback you get is already of a high standard, you feel that oh I have to live up to this standard and even surpass it. >> Yeah. And I think there's also an idea going on there with the mailing list since they're archived. the idea that uh the whatever you're communicating, whatever you're sending to the mailing list and the responses from maintainers that come back will be in the archive. So it's it's an idea of you know we want to produce quality communication because when we're answering a question for example that answer can be uh searched for by later people who might want to have that question answered. So we want to provide that high quality. It's essentially this ongoing documentation type of thing. you know, providing this repository of high quality information which is just sort of emergently developing as as you know, new mails are sent and as they reference old mails and things like that. It's it's a really effective system, I think. I mean there there is sort of like uh almost like an archaic sort of nature to it where people might think that oh you know since it's a mailing list or since the mailing list archive website looks like it's kind of old like that might um kind of that might seem uninviting to some people but once you once you dig into it like um it's it's it's very simple and it's very usable and it's very effective I think >> and that's actually the the community building part of it which is like uh we are not just writing programs. We are not just writing lines of code but code is the focus of a community of people. So ultimately this community has to be a place that is conducive to writing that code. Mhm. >> And >> yeah, and I think that >> and I think you see that um like to use Emacs as an example, I think you see that um that kind of level of quality or that level of like a camaraderie sort of leading to quality. I feel like you see that in the way that the manual is written in just the way that Emacs itself is developed, the way the documentation is. One of the things about um about using Emacs is I really love uh reading the manual because I just think it's so well written and it kind of has inspired me to try to write uh my documentation better for my personal programs and things like that. And I just really love that it makes you it really makes you for me as a user of Emacs, it makes me really um it has made me really stick with Emacs and continue to be excited to learn more about it and to continue improving my workflow and things like that. Mhm. Mhm. And on this note, there is this uh idea uh like uh code, good code speaks for itself, like you don't need to document it, which I think makes sense. But when you're building a community, having documentation and having code that is kind of self-explanatory or at least easy to reason about if you don't quite get the code part >> helps with bringing in newcomers. So it's basically like a community a pro-social uh initiative. >> For example, when I started email using Emacs, I didn't have any programming experience, let alone lisp experience and somehow I found my way to the source code of a function >> and >> by reading the English and the comments and all that eventually I was able to reason about it. I couldn't tell the finer points, but I was like, okay, I understand what this is about. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's like you you had a sense of like, you know, this is this is comprehensible. I might because the thing about Lisp is due to the simplicity of the language, you can sort of like I feel like it's it's a good first language. And I I feel like I'm now remembering an anecdote that MIT used to teach lisp in their intro programming class. Uh it makes sense because it's such a it's such a language that it's a language that has really minimal syntax features in it. the language is is super simple. It's basically just made out of lists. Literally list list processor. Um and um I feel like that makes it um a good a good starting point for someone who's just trying to start reasoning about code and things like that. And um I also love that about Emacs too. The idea that when you um ask for documentation, there's this inherent like you know when you do control HF for show me a function, it like there's I forget exactly where it is in the help buffer, but there's some place where if you press rat on it, like it literally takes you to the function definition. I use that all the time. There's this idea, that's another thing I love about Emacs, the idea that um it's kind of like uh holding your hand to go look at the code. It's like go look at this, go check this out, go modify this. And of course, the fact that you can eval it to redefine it and then get new behavior right there on the fly. Like that's I feel like that makes it so it has this inviting uh character to it which I feel like makes it really user friendly. >> Exactly. So then there is this synergy between Okay. So this is free software in the sense that you have the freedom to use it and all the other freedoms to share it etc. But also it's readily available and invites you to be a part of the community and thus effectively to you also contribute to uh the proliferation of such a software at least to help others use it. >> Yeah, exactly. And I compare it to I I just thought of this analogy. It's almost like um like you I'm I'm a really big coffee fan so I like going to different coffee shops and and trying their espresso and everything like that. >> Sometime there's coffee shops where you just walk into them and you just get a really good feeling and often that corresponds to the coffee being high quality. But there are some coffee shops where you just really want to go back to them just because of that kind of community feeling or just because of that kind of um really kind of uh because of that layer of polish that's somehow just kind of in the air in terms of the way that people run this coffee shop and everything. I kind of compare Emacs and the and the Emacs community to that. It's like this feeling of even if you only have a brief interaction where you just get one little latte or something, you you are left with this positive sense of even if you go on the mailing list to just read about one little thing or even if you just make one little change or something, you you are left with this uh feeling of friendliness that almost makes you want to return to that place. And that's why um you know even after the the couple contributions I've done to Emacs, I'm still like um you know so excited to go back and try to do more contributions because I just I was left with that good feeling, left with that friendly feeling. >> Oh yeah, that's I like that. I like that image. And of course uh it's exactly that. So if you have like a a good environment, a good coffee shop. Exactly. Even if you have one coffee, you have good memories and then you're like, "Okay, looking forward to uh revisiting you." >> So, in this analogy, you would be like the equivalent of like a master barista who's doing all kinds of fancy latte art with your theming package and everything like that. >> Exactly. >> I was going to ask actually on that subject, I I had a question that I was thinking about asking you the other day when I was thinking about doing this meeting. Um, I was going to ask last time we met we talked about uh your F themes and your Doric themes and your different theming packages and you were talking about um uh sort of considering the color harmony and the different types of color harmonies and how that um how that obviously needs to factor into your development of a visually appealing theme. I was going to ask you um how did you um educate yourself about that different kind of visual design and color theory and things like that because that's something I'm personally interested in and I'd be curious to hear about your journey in that process because it's obviously had good results. >> Yeah. So maybe it's surprising but I actually um was inspired by walking. So if you walk around and you pick a so for example here in Cyprus. So I'm walking around and I am observing the landscapes >> and I'm like well if I were to tell you here are five colors tell me which place this is. >> So I had this idea where you would you be able to do it. So it was like if I give you an abstract abstract representation of a place can you actually uh see what the concrete version of that is? And then I was like, oh look like >> in this landscape for example the the constant is the oh color the the color of the soil basically it's the oer which contrasts with a deep green color >> and there are some hints of yellow like very small hints of yellow and then a blue sky for example. So I'm like okay try to do that as a color scheme and then uh see where that takes you and then you have to adjust. So I start with that. I start with that and then little by little I start understanding colors like >> if you start with the three primary colors in the computer which is red, green, blue and these are different by the way if you do painting by hand. So then it's a red yellow uh red yellow blue I think. Yes. Red, yellow, blue. But the point is if you start with the three colors they have inherent properties to them >> like the the green is inherently brighter than the blue >> and the red is in the middle of those. So once you combine each of those so once you have uh pairs of those so uh green and red gives you yellow and so you take a very bright color with a medium bright color what does that give you? Then you have red and blue that gives you magenta. What does that mean in terms of luminance and so on? >> So tying it back to programming almost there's a kind of algebra to the way that the colors work out. >> Yes. Yes. Uh for sure. And then the thing with with algebra of course is that and mathematics in general is that of course it's in our head in a sense we are just making it up but actually it's all out there like 1 + 1 equals 2. In a sense that's abstract. In another sense it is everywhere. So it is inherent. It's embedded in the very fabric of the cosmos. It's like in the nature of things, >> right? Because for example, if you had two stones, you could think of one and two as words that describe quantities. If you put two stones together, you literally have two stones. Like it's it's somehow it is somehow within the nature of reality. Yeah. Exactly. >> Exactly. And for example, something which may be a little bit more advanced to somebody who doesn't um know programming. For example, you mentioned algorithm, right? And you're like, "Oh, no, no, that's what programmers do. I have no idea." >> And then you're like, "Have you ever prepared a coffee?" >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. >> Well, there's step one, step two, step three. That's already an algorithm. >> Can you? >> Yeah. And there have been times because I I was a TA in college for programming. There are times where I would be explaining programming concepts to people who are new to it and I would always um kind of um describe that with the um kind of with the frame of them with the frame being that they already understand these concepts. They just need an analogy. So for example like um if you if you are uh running your oven to bake something and it's on a timer and the oven goes off when the timer stops. That's a loop that's running with an exit condition, right? The oven stops when the timer hits zero. So I I I I like describing uh programming concepts to people that way because they already understand the abstract nature of these systems of logic and everything. They just need to kind of see how that maps onto the the kind of the text of the the code on the page. >> Correct. Correct. And what you just described works in nature as well. For example, if there is uh water flowing from a certain spot that there was no water before. Uh now what happens is that grass will grow where the water flows. Once grass grows close to the water then there is more humidity there. So more grass will glow further away from the water and then there are exactly the same feedback loops where so if the water stops flowing then the grass disappears and that kind of thing. So you may think of that as a life cycle but you can also think of it in terms of >> uh loops of cause and effect which can also be described as loops of communication signals. Hey this happens therefore do that. Mhm. Yeah. Exactly. So, just to return to your point point for a second, so you were talking about how um you were perceiving these colors in your natural environments and you were kind of thinking about how to distill certain environments into almost a a visual signature or chromatic signature that describes that environment. And then I'm guessing next you started to try to implement um color schemes based on those ideas and kind of explore that process and see how it worked out. >> Yeah. Yeah. So the idea is first what I wanted to do is answer the question of is there a common in the multitude. So I am observing a landscape of the mountains of Cyprus. If I were to tell you in few words or in few colors what is the common in the multitude here? What can I do to the same I would do if I were to talk about a theory. So I will observe a lot of phenomena and come up with a theory that describes all of them. >> So basically the same what is the common in the multitude and then >> the heart of the landscape essentially. Right. >> Exactly. And then that effectively uh bled into uh coding. So uh let's do that in the text editor that I was using and let's see how that looks. And little by little I learned a lot. And have you have you read uh formal um uh descriptions or formal uh things about color theory or things like that or or has it been mostly your own exploration? >> It's mostly by experience and then I have read a few things but not much. Um it's all based on what I have observed and what I have experienced and then playing around and seeing what works in practice. Mhm. >> Like for example, you can have different color harmonies such as um a color harmony where you combine magenta, cyan and yellow. >> So what you are doing >> meaning mix them or or put them next to each other. >> Uh next to each other in that case >> of course you will have to control for the relative luminance. So assuming they have like something where one doesn't really pop out and the other is really deep. But yeah, >> basically similar levels of luminance like these go well together because they contrast well. >> And they contrast well because for example yellow is a combination of green and uh red whereas cyan is a combination of green and blue. So cyan doesn't have red and it means that it will never look similar to yellow. Yeah, >> that sort of thing. And so by putting them side by side, you have three colors that um complement each other. Uh so they work together, but they are also different than each other. >> So that's one of many harmonies that you can have. And this is a harmony that if you put it if you already think of the three colors as a triangle and then their three colors as the other triangle. So now you have uh six points right >> the each triangle is a color harmony already >> of complement of colors like that that work together >> and then you can have colors on opposite ends. So for example, blue with yellow, that's a very common uh combination. Like if you look at the posters, for example, of movies, it's very common to see bluish colors with orange. If you observe it, like >> a a dark cool kind of blue with a bright warm orange. Like it's really cool. >> Yeah. Okay. >> So, of course, now as you're talking about harmony, I can't help but think of musical harmony, which is sort of the I guess it's my equivalent to kind of your exploration of color, my exploration of, you know, I've been uh playing piano for about 10 years at this point. I've recently started um playing guitar as well, and I also do music composition, production, things like that. There is a deep and my focus in my uh my main um interest in music u performance and composition has always been harmony. That's always been what I've been most attracted to. And I there's kind of an analogy there between how uh mixing certain colors or setting certain colors next to each other. Uh there's this whole uh language of um of the effects that it can have and of kind of the ways that you can develop preferences and then kind of compose those into a piece of art essentially that that that same pattern occurs exactly within music. Like for example, if I take the note C and I mix it or I play at the same time the note G, I get a very open sound. We call that in music a perfect fifth. um the interval between those two pitches in the 12 tone equal tempered system. So if I have a C uh singing out uh on a a violin or a guitar or anything doesn't matter voice and then I have a G next to it, I get this very uh open clear kind of translucent sound. It sounds very stable. You could build more harmony on top of it. But for example, if I have the note C and then I have the note B um you know kind of right um below the C an octave up then I would I would create an interval called a major 7th and that would have a very it has a much more dissonant sound to it which means the ratio between the pitches the frequencies is more uh complex. The perfect fifth ratio is 3:2 which is a simple ratio but the ratio of I forget what a major 7th is in our system but some kind it's it's going to be like you know um it's going to be like 53 over 27 or something like that. It's a much more your ear hears it as much more um much more kind of spiky and much more dissonant. But that dissonance has its own kind of color has its own kind of tone color which can have an emotional resonance. Like for example, in my personal playing like you would find on some recordings on my website. I use major 7th chords a lot like that. For example, I might have a C and a B and then I might put an E on top of it to create this sort of the E the major third against the C creates a much warmer sound. kind of like that orange that you were talking about against the cool dissonance of the major 7th. It creates this beautiful simultaneity of uh warmth and it creates this beautiful simultaneity of like warmth and richness um a juxtaposed but in the same simultaneous moment. That's what's so cool about musical harmony juxtaposed with this sort of um unstable kind of bright unstable dissonant kind of um sound of the major 7th and that creates this amazing chord which uh in jazz theory you would just call a major 7th chord. And um there there are many different chords of that variety. You can do the the algebra of moving the notes around in any different way creating so many combinations. And one of the things I love is that as you play an instrument or as you experiment with colors, you develop you kind of as you experiment with different sounds almost like trying many different kinds of foods and flavors, you develop your personal palette and you develop your personal taste and you develop a sense of the harmony which feels most uh exciting or which feels most true to you in a sense and that can sort of inform your style as an artist. So yeah, that's just that that came to mind when you were talking about color harmony and and how I think for you, I'm guessing it ties um intellectually and emotionally into your relationship with your surrounding nature. For me, music also kind of ties into my relationship with sort of like the sounds of nature and sort of how I experience the world through sound. I would guess I would consider myself a very auditory person at this point. But yeah, I'd be curious for your further thoughts on that and how it relates to your understanding of things. I think if we were to take a step back and abstract away the particularities, we would be saying the same things because uh fundamentally you can think of visual stimuli as stimuli that affect the ear because there is intense, there is subtle, there is a color that is prolonged, there is a color that is short, there is plentiful, there is scar scarce uh And so you can think in terms of pitches, you can think in terms of tonality, you can think basically you can make the same kind of harmonies in a more abstract sense. >> And um that's why there are many harmonies as well whether we are talking visually or in terms of music. It's not just there is one harmony and you just follow that. So you can have harmony where things are close to each other like for example to to talk in terms of color like a a gradient of green like you have a deep green leading to a brighter green but you can just as well have a harmony of contrasting colors like a green with a purple kind of color. Of course specific shades that work together but you can have that as well. So um it's not that one is more harmonious than the other is what are you trying to um communicate and what kind of emotion ultimately are you trying to elicit? What kind of response do you want to get? Mhm. And this reminds me and what you were saying about taking inspiration reminds me of a quote uh from one of my favorite uh musical composers Arnold Schberg which I think he leads off his theory of harmony textbook with where he says that um he he he makes an attempt at defining art and he says that um art is an imitation of nature and in its sort of more primitive form art is just maybe a direct imitation of nature like a a direct landscape painting or whatever. You can also think of art going to more abstract levels as being imitations of the nature of things. Um and so one of one of the things about um I think trying to create um art type things like you know the color schemes or music pieces or things like that is that you can use uh sounds or colors or things from the natural world as sort of case studies almost like pieces of art that emerge naturally through nature and they can often be uh very instructive um uh with providing inspiration. Like for example, I've done I recently did a piece of music called Flying Home, which is based on uh manipulating these different recordings of bird calls, these different public domain recordings of bird calls and playing them back at different audio rates like at double speed or half speed or normal speed to create these sort of harmonies or these chords. This sort of impossible time warped um magic garden of birds that are all around your head singing at different pitches and then there's also piano in the mix and things like that. The idea of creating this impossible space is very attractive to me. But I'm also thinking about for example your um color schemes that are based on fruits like for example F orange one of the recent ones is based on the colors within an orange and it it has a very inherently pleasing in my opinion effect just because of I think I think there's something to be said for using naturally occurring objects or landscapes as case studies because that ties into our experience of what we find beautiful because those are the environments that we've been perceiving for our whole life. >> Correct. Correct. And back to the point of uh beauty is think of uh looking at um an a landscape. For example, there is a pond or a lake where you are and maybe there are some ducks and you can hear the birds and there are a few trees and in the distance there is a mountain range >> and maybe there are some clouds. That sort of thing, right? >> And maybe you're feeling the breeze. >> Exactly. Exactly. Complete multimodal experience. >> Exactly. And it gives you a sense of peace and you say, "Oh, this is beautiful." >> But you can also go to a place that is really intense. For example, you can go and stand at a precipice >> and of course it's dangerous, right? And you can see the rocks below and you're like, "Oh my goodness, this is where it all ends." >> Yeah. And uh at the base of it, you see a river and in the distance you see a dense forest or whatever and that's also beautiful but that's not as peaceful anymore. Or you can uh if you if you have ever been at sea, I don't know if you ever done that but at sea when there is a storm and now there are waves and they are hitting you and you are not sure what is going to happen. You don't see anything in the distance. It's all dark around and it's raining heavily and that's also beautiful because you are like wow look at this even though it's uh intense there is a sense in which I admire it so that's the experience of awe >> so awe is when you admire but also are afraid in a sense of something >> and awe also engenders in us a feeling of wow this is Beautiful. Of course, it's also scary. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The closest probably I've ever been to that experience was when I went um kayaking on Lake Superior, which is a it a massive uh cold cold water freshwater uh lake in, uh northern Minnesota. Also goes into other states, but um I went kayaking one day and it was a little bit it was a kind of choppy water that day. And uh the thing about being in a kayak, which is sort of like a it's sort of like a more streamlined version of a canoe almost, but like you're sitting there very close to the water kind of paddling, you just get the sense of like being completely at the mercy of the the movement of the water and you get a sense of the the enormity of the the water and its power and its kind of power over you. Like of course we were you know equipped with you know safety you know you know flotation vests and things like that but still you know if there if a big wave comes in or if you somehow capsize or something you could obviously be in a a world of trouble. So like yeah I do a lot of one of my key inspirations throughout my life has been water the sound of water the the flowing uh nature and the feeling of it and things like that. Like I' I've always loved fountains and things like that. And uh yeah, I think there's it's amazing how that that pattern of of uh of flowing of you know fluid motion of water for example can be expressed in the most peaceful way like a little lake or a river in a garden or something but it can also be expressed in the most amplified the most uh grandiose possible way if you look at a storm in the ocean or something. It's amazing that talking about gradients and talking about you know different kinds of you know kind of turning the dials up or down in experience which I I think is one of the things artists try to do. I want this to be more intense. I want this to be more subtle. We also have that pattern to learn from in nature where nature contains the most simple things and the most peaceful things. It also contains the most enormous uh and the most kind of um the most um kind of grandiose possible things in a sense. And if you continue with the analogy of nature which you then want to apply to art, if you think of the intensity of nature and um put it in terms of our own ability to cope with it, you're like, well, I can cope with these waves for a little bit, but not for too long, right? >> And I think that is a little bit like what we do with art. Like if you give me all the intense colors or all the high pitched sounds all at once that overwhelms me like I cannot live in that world. >> But if you give them in smaller doses or in a more controlled way then I'm like ah we can reach those heights >> or we can experience that intensity but in a manner that is sustainable and it works for nature it works for art. >> Yeah. Exactly. And and continuing with the analogy even further, people can the more time they spend in those kind of environments, they can sort of develop an expertise or a sort of sense of navigation to where they can actually feel more comfortable in that environment. Like for example, um I over the past few years, I've I've gotten into more like um intense kind of like harsh like noise based music like using electronic um kind of noise textures and things like that. And originally when I first heard it, it just sounded like noise to me. But then as I kept listening deeper, I kept hearing subtleties and I kept getting more and more like engaged in it and and and now I feel like that those kind of it it's the equivalent of like a journey to a harsh landscape. It's the equivalent of, you know, going to um hike through the the high mountains or something where you're kind of in this like environment that's kind of it's very intense. It might be very overwhelming, but as you learn to um get comfortable in that place, you can learn things which you wouldn't be able to learn elsewhere. And then once you go back home to a more comfortable environment, you can almost kind of bring that sense of bring that memory or bring that experience of the intensity back with you to sort of kind of um more fully inform your perception of nature and your perception of the contrasts and things like that. >> Yeah. Yeah, that's a very good point. And this is also why it makes sense to go in depth in experiences in general, not just in breadth or let me experience as much as possible kind of thing >> where it's like if you experience only as much as possible, you experience it superficially. What's the expression? A mile long and I don't know an inch deep. >> A mile long and an inch deep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas if you go a bit deeper, you get to see what you otherwise or to experience what you otherwise wouldn't have experienced, which is exactly these nuances because now you get accustomed to that world and you see the finer points whereas before you just see the the first impression of it. It's a little bit like when you wake up from 10 hours of sleep and it's very dark in your room and you open the window and you don't see anything. It's very bright and you're like, "Oh, no. This is just a flash of light." >> But then if you give it some time, you start observing all the patterns. >> So it's a little bit like that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. >> And for me it's really amazing like the more you explore the world how fundamentally there is consistency like we can pick any subject. We could be talking about music or about cooking or about programming and if we abstract away a little bit of the specifics effectively we are always saying the same things like I can uh have a discussion about cooking which ultimately applies to what you do with music and from there we can take it and talk about sport and that would still apply >> if we abstract away the details. >> Yeah. And I feel like those resonances or those similarities kind of expose like the uh when you start to perceive them, it starts to sort of uh furnish your understanding of like kind of like um the kind of core aspects of our experience and the core aspects of our psyche like how we experience reality, how we create patterns because our brains are kind of like pattern recognition machines in a sense. So conversation is this amazing tool where we can we can kind of talk about um disperate experiences and we can develop connections between them and then we gain so much understanding of like ourselves and of the other person and of course that generalizes to to so many different things. So yeah that that um that that journey of going to understand more and more I is so exciting. >> Correct. And then what happens is that for example language is how we can communicate ideas with each other. But language as we said earlier with the examples is like an if else kind of statement where it's again a feedback loop. And what happens is after a while if you are paying attention to one area that's what I was trying to say earlier if you are paying close attention to one area of life >> then you can effectively learn about other areas of life faster or easier >> because you have understood the mechanics of that >> that you are focused in and then you are confident in those applying elsewhere because of the consistency. of the world. >> Of course, applying with what the Latins say, mutates mutantis. So, while changing the things that need to be changed. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Exactly. And I think colloquially people might call that like kind of learning how to learn or learning and sometimes with my musician friends we talk about like learning how to practice and kind of those patterns of like you know doing um doing focused practice on um a particular uh passage of music or doing many repetitions of a certain thing and then you know spending only so much time on that and then moving over to a more general view of the piece as a whole. Like you know things like that could apply to literally anything. that could apply to, you know, carpentry or programming or or any any kind of thing like that. And yeah, I love that um what you what you brought up there about the fact of the underlying consistency of the world. Like that's something, you know, that's something that um obviously is is it's like the deepest property of our reality. Obviously, we kind of take it for granted, but it is this kind of like beautiful um ground which all things stand on and which things can be arranged on top of. And it's it's kind of fundamental, I think, to like like it makes you wonder like could the world be any other way? like could things be any other way? Is this how they have to be you know? >> Yeah. Yeah. It's of course an interesting question and the answer is we don't know unless we experience it fundamentally. But this consistency also has another aspect to it which goes to u this what you mentioned earlier like this ambition or this sense of well I want to try things I want to learn things. uh because fundamentally it gives you a sense that well if I go deep enough then there are skills that I can carry with me and take with me and apply elsewhere. It's not like I start from scratch and therefore I cannot possibly keep up with everything because there's just so much to learn. But there is there is a sense where for example let let me be concrete here like I learned how to um program and I learned how to make contributions to free software and stuff but this now inspires me to think in terms of how can I solve other problems which apply to the physical world and eventually I'm like well how can I make my life in the mountains here work. So now I have a a prior experience in the world of programming which applies to the world of building a place to stay and then planting trees and then uh maintaining the land in a good condition and dealing with soil erosion and controlling for floods etc etc which ultimately is a programming problem in the sense of well have you considered those edge cases right? >> Yeah. Yeah. in real world in the physical world >> and if you have confidence in your skills in one area then what I'm saying is you can have them in other areas as well. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and I like that too because as you as you go deep, let's say you go deep within one area, not only do you develop not only do you sort of cache these patterns and these these um kind of units of understanding that allow you to um progress more quickly in other areas, but also like there's this thing which happens which is as you go deeper and you sort of find uh more rarified materials, you can sort of use those to make new tools which allow you to go deeper. Still, it would be the equivalent of like, you know, you're mining and you you originally mine and you're just mining with stone tools or whatever you find. You could almost think of it as analogy with Minecraft where like you're originally using stone tools and then you find some iron and then you can make an iron pickaxe and go even deeper. Like there are certain things where um and you see this with the progression of like I see it in the progression of music composition like European music composition across the 19th and 20th century for example which is something I kind of know a lot about like um as um as new um kind of um systems of um uh musical composition and structure were developed. they enabled people to work within those systems to kind of dig deeper into more and more um more and more kind of rich and more and more kind of mystifying and strange little uh internal worlds and like I think that's so interesting right that's that's one thing that's so exciting about um >> one so let's keep there because >> I have to open the door to the puppies they are playing there with >> yeah please go ahead please go ahead >> one sec let me do this and then we continue because this is fascinating one >> please go ahead take yeah take your time Actually, come. >> Sorry about this. >> No worries. That was a great little intermission. I enjoyed that. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so usually this is the hour where we go for our uh night walk and of course they get excited. They don't think in terms of oh you have a meeting what is that. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. >> Let's go for our adventure. >> Um but yeah back to what you were saying it's exactly this where >> you have developed the the structures, the tools and also the the prior art as it were to build them. And then what happens is >> uh you are effectively mapping the terrain >> and uh by because you have to think of music in this cape in this case as the equivalent of a landscape and that's why we also use the metaphor of a soundsscape right so >> yeah yeah exactly >> you have to think of in terms of well we have sort of a general idea but then of course we can go and explore further and see the finer points and continue with the details and see where those uh lead us and then there are experiences to be had there and for me that's really impressive how it works and then >> what also happens is that uh what you said now it also inspires um go doing the alternative which is like well you went down that path I will go down a different path >> and see what I can find so I will explore something completely different than what you are doing. >> Yeah. >> And for me that's also fascinating. I don't know enough about music to give examples but I'm sure that works. For example, in painting where I have read a bit more. Uh >> you will have a tradition that is more realist right it tries to represent things as they look and then somebody's like well why should we be realistic? Why can't it not be an impression of it? So you have an impressionist movement and then somebody's like well why should it be an impression and not be an abstraction >> and so then you have abstract art and so on but then from the abstraction somebody might as well say well I am bored of this what if we do something realistic. >> Yeah. >> So it works that way as well. And at at the beginning of each of those uh movements and visual art that you mentioned, there was controversy uh where people uh needed time a like the the sort of public needed time to um sort of um think about and sort of sink their teeth into this new aesthetic because you know for example with impressionism like it was kind of a revolutionary aesthetic and people were originally like many people in the public weren't really on board with that. They thought it was kind of a degradation of uh the previous tradition of art. But then um and I kind of think of artists that way in a sense like kind of mapping out new territory like one of their jobs of the way they function within society because since artists like since artists exist they must uh in a sense be survivable or they must contribute to the survival of the human species or else they would have probably been phased out. Um I think one of the ways that artists um make one of the things that artists contribute is that they kind of map out these strange places where originally someone might think well I don't really want to go there because it kind of looks weird. I'm not used to that. But then as they become more familiar with it or as they kind of read the map a bit more, they see, oh, there might be things here which I can actually really appreciate, which might be able to add beauty to my life or add utility to my life in various ways. And and I think that's um you see this pattern as usual you see this pattern like at all levels all around you where like for example you think about the development of machines and how that went into the development of like you know electricity and then now computers that we have and that developing an entire new language like obviously programming stands on top of that sort of mountain of layers. And so you just think of the the fruits of exploration are are so um are so uh all-encompassing all around us and like we're constantly using those those tools. And it's just so interesting to think about kind of the line of of where we've gone to with our explorative nature at the core of the human at the core of the human is this sort of explorative nature and that has uh developed. We've developed this kind of like massive city around us. You could think of it as of the the fruits of exploration and then we're it's it's fascinating to think of where that line would extrapolate to in terms of where we can go next. Mhm. Mhm. And on the point of the artist being the explorer, >> you can think of people simplifying of course, but you can think of people being on a spectrum in terms of their behavior from where at the one extreme uh they want to preserve what they have >> and at the other extreme they want to discover something that they don't know >> and >> which may invol which may involve jeopardizing things you currently have. Right? It's almost a game theory type of thing, >> which of course could mean your own undoing. If you think of it in terms of a of an explorer, like I board the ship and I go to the ocean and I embark on this journey, I have no idea what I will find. Maybe there are dragons out there. Maybe I will just find some distant land with some exotic fruits. I have no idea >> unless I go there. So, but the same is true for uh artists. So uh there will be artists on this spectrum of let's say preservation and exploration where you will have those that exactly will be the avonga right so they will be at the forefront trying to discover new things and then of course in a sense we cannot all be there because then that is not viable so there will always be a few who are the forerunners and in a sense they are weird because they are doing something that not Everybody's doing >> right. Exactly. >> But weird in a good way here, not in a judgmental way in the sense that they do that which is not ordinary. And um of course that's one kind of artistic expression. And then at the other extreme is art which is um recreational. It recreates that which we already have. And there is of course inherent value to that as well. >> Yeah. with like reinforcing um cultural understanding or with creating sort of uh signifiers that people can subscribe to and that people can talk in terms of like I think about religion as kind of one uh um expression of that, right? It's kind of the system. I almost think of religions as works of art in a sense where they might have texts, they might have key symbols, key signifiers that are used within that religion and they kind of have a social cohesion effect where when people start to kind of subscribe to those or when people start to kind of um use them kind of bring those into their minds, bring them into their lives like that can create um it's almost like a a campfire that people can gather around to a certain extent. And I think that's another utility that art can have is the idea of a compelling story. Not only can it encode um useful understanding, but it can also be a common ground where people who know that story can use it to sort of um be socially cohesive and can use that to then communicate. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think this is exactly how it is because if you think of of religion as um as a group of theological propositions uh that should be just talked about then you are missing the point of religiosity. Like if you if you see the fact that every society that has ever existed has had religiosity so some kind of religious experience then you are like okay what is what is the again the common in the multitude here like what is it that we can see that exists throughout the millennia everywhere no matter the specific theological propositions or maybe they don't even have a theology they don't even they can be religions without a god And then you're like, okay, what is and ultimately it's this. It's uh the narrative art and then of course the community aspect of that what it means in just people uh hanging out together and people understanding each other and then uh that inspiring us to collaborate and to do things and >> yeah it's really amazing. >> Yeah. And religions this is interesting too. religions themselves or systems of ideas, let's say, they evolve uh in the same way that other organisms evolve where they evolve to sort of be survivable. Like, so for example, one thing I think of is that in some religions, there's an idea of like an underworld that someone might go to if they live a bad life. And you could think of that as um a kind of uh feature within the religion that um kind of um promotes um social flourishing by encouraging people to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing. But also you could think of it I almost to some extent think of it like um like um like spikes on a porcupine for example that makes it harder to attack like if if um there's this idea in a in a religion for example that people who don't believe in the religion or who reject it might gain some or might um might get some kind of um extremely frightening punishment. That's almost like the spikes on a porcupine to where it makes that religion harder to that organism of that system of ideas has grown this feature onto it which makes it harder to attack. And that's another interesting thing is these ideas develop uh to be survivable as well. >> Correct. And part of survivability is if you also think in terms of uh organisms like people or animals is uh to be able to adapt or to be able to go places >> and the way that would work with ideas is well to propagate the idea. So an idea that you tell me about like a story you tell me about. >> If it's a compelling story, I will go tell my friends, hey, Eric told me this >> such an amazing story. But if you tell me something that is extremely dull, I'm like, okay, >> who cares? I won't say I won't tell my friends about. So an idea that is a compelling idea ultimately is survivable because also it can go places >> and it can thrive in different environments in that regard. >> Yeah. And I that's interesting too because there's something about uh things that are memorable that sort of um that sort of elucidates a part of the nature of our minds and what we find most memorable. It kind of best fits the contour of your of your psyche to some extent. Like in music we talk about melodies being catchy. What does it mean when a melody is catchy? It means it's very memorable to you and it means it sort of um fits nicely within within your brain. It kind of lodges in your brain like an earworm. We talk about that. And you could also think about stories being memorable. And then you could think about how the stories that we have, the stories that have been most preserved through time are kind of the most memorable stories and things like that. And and then you could think of them as being kind of the most useful stories in a way or at least there being something very useful about them. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that's why um myth is at the center of the experience. There is this modern phrase where it's like oh let's do myth busting where of course you understand what they are trying to say. Let's let's uh speak facts you know let's talk about the facts which of course is interesting but if I give you a report from the ministry of financial affairs with all the facts >> you won't remember anything after five minutes. If I tell you if I describe a myth, if I tell you a story, you will remember it for the rest of your life. >> So a good story, a good myth in this case is one that encodes or encapsulates messages that of course they are not just interesting, they are useful. >> It's stories that are relatable and stories that are metaphors for things that are happening out there. It's just a matter of connecting the dots. >> And so when you think of a myth, you think of basically ancient technology, >> which is like let's compress a world view into a story >> and let's share that and that will survive >> and people will never forget about it. Uh, and ultimately it's these stories slash myths slashnarratives that compel us into action and inspire us. And it's a little bit like a catchy tune. You'll never forget about it. >> Yeah. And it's the same idea too which you mentioned before of not having to start from scratch because you already have this understanding that has been already kind of refined and that you can sort of um take in as this more refined uh kind of version of of you know kind of gaining the understanding quickly like a shortcut. This is reminding me too of how uh things that are highly memorable or things that are that catch our attention can also be used uh sort of as a tool for misinformation as well and for people to kind of spread their own uh spread their own things or to try to um exploit people by getting them to buy products or things like that. Like you sort of have to be careful. Maybe that's one of the ideas of like myth busting too is like the idea of you know we want to clear away the cobwebs essentially. We want to clear away the junk and clean up our space and things like that. And of course that that opens up a conversation about well um you know what uh exactly should be attacked and what exactly should be supported and things like that. Obviously that's an ongoing conversation but like um I also think of that what you're saying kind of reminds me tangentially of like >> um in in the age of like AI generated content at this point. You can see like there there are these different things I've seen on the internet where it's like a little AI generated song or something and it can like basically people have these um tools of mechanizing uh the creation of uh of songs or of little memorable catchy things that they can use for their own purposes and those purposes might not be might not be good overall you know so that's that's another thing why you have to be careful about being on the internet nowadays. >> Correct. Correct. Uh though you we already discussed the survivability of things and the viability of things which works for ideas, the way it works for art, the way it works for experiences in nature. >> And uh if you think of a a a an urban myth as we say nowadays, you know, like some >> urban legend. Yeah. Yeah. >> Urban legend. Something that is completely wrong, something that is a falsehood but which sells well. ultimately that cannot be selling well for too long. So maybe it's a fad, maybe it's something that works short term, but whether it will stand the test of time remains to be seen. And um basically the idea is that it will not stand the test of time, it if it is not viable biologically, it will not be viable intellectually either. Like if there if there is this idea that I don't know if you drink a certain potion you have the elixir for youth and you will live forever and then you drink that and you die. Well at some point we will understand that this is nonsense and we will stop doing it even if there is like a a trend of everybody drinking this potion nowadays. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. No, it is comforting to realize that that the the the um the junk will eventually kind of fall off at some point and kind of the only the most useful things will survive >> because you see the the connection between uh biological viability and the intellectual viability. So if something doesn't work in terms of biology, it will eventually not work in terms of ideas as well. Of course, then you get into areas where it's not clear like when we are talking about things that are partially true or are true in certain cases or right if you have made some preparatory work and that sort of thing where then it gets of course much more tricky >> and then it's also what you said with AI which is okay so if you have people who are generating their own uh patterns and and their own things or who are using machines for that then what are the implications of that in terms of >> truth or in terms of viability and I think that's an open question ultimately >> yeah this this whole conversation about myths and everything is reminding me I know I know I've heard you uh talk at different points about Greek myths and Greek uh traditions and things like that I wonder was that ever was that ever considered like a um like a religion proper or So is that more just considered a system of myths and kind of different passed down knowledge and things like that? >> So the Greek religion is separate from the Greek mythology. So okay the Greek mythology for example Homer you know the Iliad and the Odyssey. So the two epics Homer is a poet. He's not like a priest the equivalent of a teacher of the religion. But he uses uh the heroes and the gods in a way that tell a story. So the gods are kind of the superheroes of that era, right? So today we will say, okay, it's the X-Men, but back then it's like, oh, this is the Olympic gods kind of thing and they are doing these amazing things, but they have frailties of character and they are not perfect and there is this back and forth. So ultimately uh it it has kind of um a a religious undertone to it but in practice it's not religion proper. So the Greek religion itself is not mythology but then of course because um it is lost in time these uh distinctions are kind of blurred and you read poetry and you're like okay this was their religion whereas it's not exactly like that. But the religion in uh in the ancient Greek world wasn't uniform either because the ancient Greek world wasn't politically uniform. It was a patchwork of independent city states uh often at war with each other and in one place they would have certain beliefs about uh I don't know the here we have bears and bears are sacred or whatever in another place they would be like you know what we are fishermen here we have no idea what the bears are doing so we just care about the sea and we are sailors that sort of thing. Mhm. So would it be accurate then to say that the Greek gods that we talk about nowadays like Poseidon and Zeus and things like that were would it be accurate to say that those gods were never formerly worshiped? Were they only kind of passed around through stories and in this sort of superhero way or were there groups of people that we know about who actually did treat those as their primary gods? >> So they would be woripped as well. But um you you can think of it in in terms of what is also happening nowadays. For example, uh there is Santa Claus, right? >> That's that's St. Nicholas, right? So there is an actual St. Nicholas that people believe in the sanctity of, right? >> Yeah. >> So that's a real saint in the religion, >> but Santa Claus, even though it's the same character, right, isn't really a religious figure, right? It's like, oh, it's this uh benevolent grandfather who brings toys to all the kids, >> right? And he's he's using these reindeer and they fly in the sky and they have all these things and there is the tree and the tree has all these uh fancy lights on it, blah blah blah. >> Mhm. >> The character is a religious figure, but ultimately the story has nothing to do with the religion. Like nobody really says that, oh, this is St. Nicholas. uh the same St. Nicholas that uh we care about when we do our Christian rights and so on, right? So I think it's a little bit like that where there is Zeus and then there is or Poseidon or whomever and then there is Zeus the character, you know, in the myths. >> Yeah. Oh, very interesting. Okay. And it's interesting too because you could think of it as people kind of worshiping Santa Claus when they do things like, you know, leave out cookies and milk for Santa. That's a tradition. Like there's an idea that he'll come down the chimney and then have the cookies and milk. And of course, it's a game that parents will play with their kids where the kids will set out the milk and then the parents might like drink it in the night or something and the kids will believe that Santa Claus drank it or something like that. But you could think of those as like religious offerings to a certain extent or it's at least isomorphic to that. >> And it's interesting how that that can appear at at sort of these different levels of seriousness where for example the Santa Claus myth is kind of just for fun uh and it it can have a socially cohesive effect because everyone gets excited about Christmas and things like that but then there can be a more serious simultaneously there can be a more serious worship of the actual uh figures behind uh the Christmas story and like the Christian tradition of like you know um of like you know Jesus and things like that and kind of that more serious dimension to it. So it's interesting how we have you know I think to humans play is so important and I see that with like my dog too like how much he loves to play. I think that's important for mamalian brain development actually is play like we kind of have these different levels of seriousness with which we engage with these stories and myths and things and sometimes something will be appropriate uh in one moment and it will be another it will not be appropriate in another moment and then we can have sort of a a harmony between these different levels of these different levels of seriousness or or somnity of engaging with these different with these different myths and stories. >> Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. The point though here is that you understand this gradients from seriousness to play and back and forth and there is no contradiction. That's the thing like uh you can be playful and you can be serious and be the same person and have the same system of beliefs >> but you understand the context. Now what happens if you let's say some calamity strikes and now we are finished our civilization collapses and then 2,000 years from now uh people find uh hints of what we were doing and they were like oh they believed in this flying grandpa figure what is that about right >> so it's a little bit like that where you have to imagine that people had exactly that same levity to understand that okay now things are serious But okay, we can also be playful now. And uh there are levels to it. >> I feel like that's a really subtle point and that's something I had actually never thought about before. Um because like yeah, like when you read the the the transcript or the historical um just kind of like readback of what we know about like ancient Greek culture for example, you see like it's kind of this one-dimensional version where it's like these were the gods that they had, these were the stories that they had. that that layer of context and that that layer of things being on a gradient from this is more playful to this is more serious. I feel like that um can get lost because it's not necessarily something that it's so obvious to people who are living within that culture that it's not necessarily documented and spelled out. It's kind of just passed down. Like when I was a kid, for example, >> actually this is a funny story. When I was a kid, I thought that Santa Claus was real like you know when I was very young and then I I eventually found out that Santa Claus was not real. And I was kind of heartbroken by that because I I felt like I was I was trying to of course kids they try to develop their understanding of the world. At the time I felt like I had the idea in my mind that lying was bad because I had been taught that lying was wrong. >> And then I was presented with the fact that my parents had lied to me about Santa Claus which was something that felt important to me. So I was presented with this contradiction it seemed like. >> And I had to and I feel like moments like that are how people you know humans who are growing up how they discover the idea of that that gradient for example. something where you kind of in order to keep the consistency of your world, do you you need to sort of discover oh there's this way in which things can be different. There's this axis of variation which I didn't understand before but now I'm gaining information about I'm perceiving things about how my parents treat me and about how everyone else is behaving and I sort of generally understand that pattern and then of course that gets passed down further. I remember there was a moment where um my I remember my mom tells this story. It's that when I was younger um and my sister who was five years younger than me, my mom was telling my sister about Santa Claus soon after I found out that Santa wasn't real. And I was telling my mom like I tried to have this like serious conversation with my mom like please don't lie to Lauren about this. Like this isn't real. This is wrong. Or I actually got upset about but then like I was saying then I eventually developed the understanding. So it's funny how that can work out. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And uh of course uh that kind of contradiction is how you are introduced to nuance where it's like well you shouldn't lie but here there are some important qualifiers where uh we are also raising a child and what matters here is not just the truth but it's a matter of uh building up its skills and let it explore its own world and let it face the contradiction of this world, the contradictions of this world. And then >> little by little start having a sense of where certain precepts apply literally, where they apply uh figuratively and where they don't apply at all. In other words, uh judgment uh where should something uh be applied or not? And that ultimately is what um elevates us where we don't just follow the rules or apply the rules but we develop a sense of when is the time or the situation where the rules must be sus suspended. the application of the rules has to be suspended. And that is um a right of passage as it were where now you have grown out of uh mimicking or following mindlessly what has been uh said and actually now being in control of that knowledge of that body of work. And of course that takes time but it's ultimately a culturation. It's ultimately the upbringing of people and the initiation in the culture and then uh if they are they have the skills to eventually be able to make their own contributions to culture. >> Yeah. Yeah. And what what you're saying there reminds me of the the difference between sort of the the difference of approaches almost from a game theory perspective of like rigidity versus fluidity when you're thinking about how you want to behave uh in a group of people. Because for example uh if you create um like uh a defined uh system of um a defined system of like uh like a system of law for example or a system I mean some some kind of encoding some kind of um system of of um precepts about the way that people should behave there's always going to be uh things missing or there are always going to be little edge cases there little exceptions to the system which might occur which the system can't fully account for. So then you need to sort of balance like how does our group or how does our society want to treat like you know um kind of the rigidity and the predictability of like sticking to our system and feeling security because security feels important to us. But then how do we want to also have enough fluidity in there to where when situations arise we don't have to cram things uh to fit the system and then lose is like a prouristian bed where you cram things in you might lose information you might chop off a piece of something that was actually important to handle in another way. um have to balance that as a society that that um that kind of trade-off between rigidity and fluidity or between security and uh flexibility to some extent. >> Yeah. And this is fundamentally the central problem of human society. The central problem of social organization is exactly how to balance between uh stability which you can call predictability and then of course initiative which you can call freedom or creativity. So how do we balance between those two? Because at one extreme you give everybody the freedom to do whatever they want but then that is not a viable society. Like if you have neighbors that start playing heavy metal at 3:00 in the morning, >> well you cannot go to work the morning after, right? So ultimately there has to be some kind of rule where it says no you play heavy metal until I don't know 10 p.m. or whatever. So it's exactly this kind of trade-off and what happens if you take a big picture view of history you can effectively see societies oscillate between the extremes where it's like oh no now we are feeling really confident because also there is like economic growth so we feel like we are enlightened we are sophisticated there is this inexurable progress of history and there is this moral progression towards ever higher higher um nuances and understandings and so on. >> And then there is an economic collapse which coincides with a regression to oh no we need stability, we need the safety, you cannot just do whatever you want and no you are not allowed to express yourself however you feel. You have to follow uh a certain playbook etc etc. And basically we go through these uh ups and downs and uh it's fascinating how that maps to feelings of safety versus initiative or creativity but also material conditions of uh scarcity and then of affluence. >> Right. Exactly. And that's another situation where the the patterns within a certain person are expressed at the the group level. The individual level kind of resonates with the group level. So um you know as an individual person I might go through periods in my life where I feel like uh I'm going out to meet lots of different people. I'm going out to explore things. Maybe over time I get uh psychologically tired out by that because I'm consuming so much new information that I want to I want to spend a weekend just kind of in my house like you know you know sitting at my desk or laying in bed and and watching a show or listening to music or something like that. Like you see that happen at all those different levels >> and and it's exactly that. It's exactly again the consistency of the world. What applies to society, it also works for individuals where it's ultimately what you want to be doing is a little bit of both like you want to have a of course where exactly is the balance depends on the person but ultimately you don't want to be on either of those extremes. There has to be some kind of stability in your life. some things that are there which give you an idea of how tomorrow will look like but it cannot be too stable like there has to be room for exploration and for creating something new or for uh being with people experiencing things and so on. >> Yeah. And this is I think this is something I would be really interested to ask you about. But I think you have an interesting perspective on kind of living your life in relation to these polarities because a few of the blog posts that I've read on your website um feature sections where you talk about um kind of the way that you at least in in my interpretation of it and the way that you sort of um find balance in your lifestyle by living in a way that's kind of close to nature or living a way in a way that's simplicity in a in a way that is very um in a way that's not divorced from the natural rhythms of your environment. I wonder if you could talk a little more about that because I'm very interested in that one. You seem have a very balanced lifestyle. >> And so, of course, it has to do with rhythm and it goes back to what we were saying earlier about music or about experiences like in the in the canoe or whatever. Like, >> if you have intensity the whole time, that's not viable in the literal sense. It's also not beautiful in the artistic sense, right? Like you cannot just have intensity. You have to have moments that are less uh stressful, less intense and then >> tension and resolution. Yeah. >> Exactly. Exactly. So >> there is a a rhythm to life that will be viable and then there are rhythms that are not viable. >> So what I experienced in the city life I used to have is that >> ultimately the city disempowers me. A city as a setting disempowers me because its rhythms are different than rhythms that I can tolerate over the long term. So I of course I can go to the city but to stay there to live there long term is something that is difficult because the pace of change is such that I cannot keep up with it. I don't feel that I follow I feel that I am left behind or I feel that I have to rush. Um so there is this idea of I have to find harmony again and harmony in a sense is what is in the natural order of things like in the natural order of things there will be moments of tension, moments of conflict, moments of intensity but they are not persistent. It's not always intense. >> Whereas city life will tend to be always intense. There is it's always busy. It's always noisy. >> Yeah. If you also follow the news cycle, >> there is imminent catastrophe at the next breaking news. So you feel that the world is collapsing. You feel that you are at the brink of calamity. Whereas if you take a step back of all that fast-paced life and you're like, "Okay, let me slow things down." What happens is that you eventually find harmony all around you, but that ultimately becomes harmony within you >> because now you're operating at a pace that is viable, a pace that is beautiful. In other words, if we were to liken that to art. And now what happens in practice is that you are operating from a position of control because I no longer feel that I am being left behind and I must rush to catch up with what others are doing because there is no catching up to be done. >> That's the thing. So everything flows from my own initiative. Everything flows >> when it should flow, when it is ready to flow. So everything comes about organically which is exactly how things happen in nature. So if I plant a tree today, I cannot force it to grow tomorrow. I have to wait for a few years. >> Mhm. >> So when will the tree be ready? Well, when it's ready. >> Mhm. >> Whenever that happens. And this is kind of uh how life is experienced. And that's a life that >> never puts a drain on you. >> Like you can keep doing it and you never feel like, oh, I need a break. A break from what? from something that is beautiful already like what do you want? >> Mhm. >> Of course now I describe it in abstract terms but it also connects to what we have been talking about. >> Mhm. So so so an interesting point there. So you said that um living the the city life uh in your past kind of made you feel uh left behind or it made you feel like things were moving at too fast of a pace. As you were saying that, I was kind of thinking, could you possibly analogize uh the city or the nature of life in the city to kind of like a white noise type of signal where white noise um for those who don't know is a type of um audio signal where every single frequency is present at the same uh amplitude or at the same intensity. So you could think of the city as a place where uh everything is kind of happening all at once. there are places uh of very high intensity, but you could also think of the city as maybe containing some peaceful places like parks and things like that. So, could you as a as a counterpoint to what you were saying, could you think of the city as a place where you don't necessarily um could you think of the city as a place that's actually providing you sort of more options for how to live your life and that that can provide stress because then you have more choice and you might get more decision fatigue. But um to your point about uh feeling uh overwhelmed by it, could you say that that feeling of being overwhelmed is actually something that is within your control and that if you sort of properly uh acclimatize through that life then you could sort of have this option rich sort of uh banquet of possibilities at each moment where if you find the right way to navigate it you could live an internally peaceful life even in a city environment. >> Uh probably yes probably you can do that. It gives you options though there are some things that are inherent in terms of the constraints. for example >> uh in of course when I say city I don't mean your average town I mean like a big uh city >> uh so what happens there there are some things that are constant like the noise level is constant for example if you if you come to this place like people who are not used to this will be like oh this is eerily quiet >> but it's not really right if you pay attention it's not actually that quiet but you are used to this noise in the background ground and you're like, "Oh, there is no noise. What is happening? I can actually hear the birds. I can I can actually hear the wind and the leaves moving in the wind." That sort of thing. But then there is the other thing which is all the stimuli in a city are amplified such as lights. >> Lights in a city are more intense than lights that you will ever experience while you are on a walk in the countryside. >> Yeah. >> Um motions motions are much more fast-paced like there are cars driving uh and uh there is noise together with the motion and these you cannot just get rid of. So >> of course the city gives you options and you have things that you cannot have if you live in the middle of nowhere and that's great and that's empowering. The tricky part is can you reach a point where that is viable for you long term or is it just oh I have options therefore that's good but that's just in your head that's just a rationalization but not how you actually feel >> do you feel in control not whether you have options of course so of course that's something that will depend on the person I'm not saying that well everybody should move to the mountains and become a But what I'm saying is that each person has to be introspective and find the rhythm that is viable for them and for each person will be different of course >> but just to add another point a small point on this is like uh there are many people who are like you know what I I learned about this mindfulness meditation and these Buddhist monks and they are doing these amazing things >> and now I will be doing the same and I'm Like sure, good luck. But bear in mind that these monks also live in pristine environments where >> the environment also contributes to that sense of mindfulness and uh meditation. So you will be trying to do that in an environment that is not necessarily optimal. So >> yeah. >> Yeah. Exactly. And that's another context thing where sometimes the context can get lost in just the the sort of transcript of the direct uh precepts or things like that. Now I'd be curious on the point of this I'd be curious how do you feel that your um your sort of internal state and your sort of internal feelings or the the kind of uh the the character uh of your daily life? How do you feel like I'm assuming it's better now than it was when you lived in the city? I wonder how you would describe that difference because for me like I'm thinking about I'm at an age where I'm kind of thinking about oh where do I want to sort of uh go with my life or kind of what environment would I like to live in one day. I would be curious for your experience about how uh you feel differently uh now as opposed to when you were living a more chaotic uh life in a city. >> In one word it's control. >> I feel that uh what happens happens from a position of control. I feel that what happens in my life of course happens from a position of initiative where I don't feel like I was dragged into this. Oh and I am not prepared for it. I feel like I made this happen. I am I am the driving force and uh what I am experiencing now matches what I am prepared to experience because of this organic dimension to it that I mentioned. So whenever there is an experience I am ready for it and it's an experience that doesn't unsettle me and doesn't disempower me. It's an experience that is fulfilling. It's an experience that is enriching and it's an experience that is in other words viable. It's an experience that is sustainable. I can keep doing that. But if I am always caught in a situation where I am not in control >> ultimately I will rationalize that as well I am not good enough or uh well others are good at this they are competent or whatever they are skillful I am not I am just a failure and uh then you internalize what is effectively a mismatch of rhythms you internalize it as well I am defective I am a lost cause and whatever and basically you beat yourself up for a problem that is systemic but you turn it into a problem that is individual. It's like, oh, it's my fault. >> When in reality, it's an issue of the environment of many contributing factors. And if you change the environment, you can change yourself. In effect, >> it's a little bit like the fish which is out of water and beats itself up saying like, "Oh, I am not good at this walking business." >> Like, sure, but that doesn't mean that you are useless as such, that you are not good at anything. >> Yeah. And it reminds me of how you can think of it as us absorbing our environment. Like when you're in when you live in the city and there's there's chaos around you, like you kind of you pay the price of that by that the fact that the chaos sort of almost seeps into your mind. And it's also reminded me of how there's this um there's this um kind of reality of city life, at least for me, where you sort of you're in this situation of having to be on alert all the time because like for example the um the fast-paced nature of the city. Like for example, if you think of cars on the highway um going through the city, you think of the the fast-paced nature of that as creating a danger and then your danger sense as a as a human is kind of activated by those those fast moving or for example those loud uh stimuli. So you kind of have this pattern of of needing to be on alert. Like for example, when you're driving on the highway somewhere, you need to be constantly watching all around you at a high level of alertness in case someone is merging into your lane or in case someone stops suddenly because it could be it could result in a fatal collision. >> But if you're for walking through the hills, you're walking through some natural area, you don't need to be I mean you might be generally aware of your surroundings, but you don't need to be looking all around you all the time at a high level of alertness. And I feel like a consistent lifestyle of being on that level of alertness leads to a stress, you know, an underlying um it's like a price that you pay for being in that kind of environment. >> Mhm. It's exactly this. And when it comes to the stimuli we get, it's ultimately what influences us. Like we know about food for example, there is this saying like, well, you are what you eat, which may be simplistic, but ultimately there is truth to it, right? >> Yeah. But isn't it the same? Like you are what you absorb in terms of information, in terms of stimuli, like you are what you hear, you are what you see. >> You are what you keep processing in your brain. Why would that be any different? Because that is not just a process in the brain and it has no further consequence. That is a process in the brain which creates a cascade of uh effects that ultimately condition you in a certain biochemical way like there is a mechanism there. It's not just I thought of it. There is no such thing. I thought of it therefore something happened. >> Mhm. >> Physically something happened. So um in the same way we want to be careful with what we eat or drink or breathe. it wouldn't be any different with what we process in terms of ideas or stimuli at large. >> Yeah. And I think that ties into the idea of the the harmfulness, the potential harmfulness of blaming yourself for uh your patterns of behavior when in reality you might be an environment which is just not conducive to healthy patterns of behavior. Like I was talking to a friend of mine recently and I was talking about how often I struggle because I don't feel like I have enough energy or I have enough motivation to do certain things. And and basically he was kind of consulting me and he was saying well you know if you consider uh the patterns your environment if you consider different uh facts about your sleep schedule or your diet or things like this like you could be in uh unhealthy patterns or unhealthy rhythms which make it basically extremely difficult to function in certain uh productive ways. So like there could be a situation where uh instead of it might be more effective to say instead of you know it's my fault for being too lazy or for being too tired or something like that you could more just say I have through the course of things ended up in a situation where I'm in certain unhealthy routines and just in an impersonal way I can acknowledge that and say these routines are unhealthy. It would be better for me to change my routines and develop a position where I'm uh my body is able to function more naturally because I'm in a healthier rhythm. So I feel like that can be important because over the years I've had different times where I've been uh very hard on myself for certain things and that always that was never a productive time. That was always a time where I just kept feeling bad about myself and then I wanted to comfort myself by by resting more by by receding from things. I feel like it's it's generally been more effective for me to just say to just kind of impersonally acknowledge what's happening and then sort of try to move um and then you can sort of move from a position of strength because you're not sort of injuring yourself psychologically. Mhm. Mhm. And then uh to add to this, there is of course a connection between our mental state and our physical state. And this is something I experienced uh through the sleep cycle for example where let me put it a little bit differently. If you think that everything is a function of willpower like oh if I truly believe it it will happen then you are wrong. You are simply wrong. So I experienced this with the sleep cycle where I was like >> I need to sleep better. I need to sleep continuously. I need to sleep well so that I wake up and I am energized and ready to go. Uh so what happened is that I learned through experience that exposure to the sunlight actually regulates your sleep cycle. It helps you sleep better. And uh I'm like I would have never think about this. I would be like, "Oh, okay. I just don't have to drink coffee in the evening or something." >> So, which of course is a good idea, but >> exposure to the sunlight like you cannot just think about that and now that's your will and the strength of your volition will make it happen. No, just expose yourself to an environment that is appropriate and that will already be benign for you. So that's a very simple thing which has farreaching consequences because of course if your sleep is better your mood is better. >> Uh when your mood is better you have more energy as well you are more creative when you are more creative you feel empowered to do more things you feel good about yourself you're like oh look at me I do all these wonderful things I make things happen >> and of course that has a domino effect. >> Yeah. And of course, your relationships are better when you're in a better mood and you're a more happy person. Like you sort of um there's a saying which is like kind of like um you get what you put in basically. You get you get back what you put in and that definitely helps when you when you put yourself in a more positive position where you're just living a healthier lifestyle. You can then be a more positive uh you can play a more positive role in the lives of like the people around you as well. >> Yeah, it's exactly that. And the same is for the experiences you will have with other people. Like >> once you are in a certain state without even saying anything, you communicate a certain vibe as they call it. But we have this intuition of what another person is thinking of what goes through their head. If you are really stressed, >> the others can feel it. Maybe they they are not well attuned to it, but they can feel it. So what happens is that >> if you are stressed you elicit in others a stressful response that may be um an agitation of some kind. They may be angry more easily or whatever. So ultimately your experience will be a negative experience and then that creates a vicious cycle. Whereas if you are in control of your emotional state slash your mental state ultimately that brings in more positivity and it creates a virtuous cycle. >> Mhm. >> So the communication which is non-verbal. >> Okay. So on the subject of that on the subject of of kind of being in a positive position where your lifestyle is matching natural rhythms and you can be a more effective contributor to your own life and to other people's lives. I'd be curious about this because you've produced you have produced so much quality work over the years, a lot of it for free. And I'd be curious just um as a question to you like is there anything because this is something I'm thinking about in my own life as well. Like is there anything that you feel like you're searching for like when you imagine yourself as the hero of your story? Like do you do you see any kind of um goal, any kind of special island that you're sailing out in search of? Or do you more just think of yourself as going about your life in the way that feels best for you and the things that you're doing are just kind of natural products of that process or do you feel like they're organizing or working towards a particular singular sort of large goal? Mhm. Mhm. uh the way I approach this and again it will depend on the person but the way I approach this is that in a sense I am on a quest for self-discovery and self-realization like who am I or who can I be but not who can I be in terms of well let me fake something but through the continuous effort who can I actually become >> right >> and in so doing of course that will have consequences for my surroundings for others in the world because if let's say I discover uh myself as somebody who writes useful articles let's say >> then these articles are of use to other people so what I did is to discover the fact that I can do this what others get is the side effect or the byproduct of that exploration which is oh there is this thing now which is the article that we can read about and have some further thoughts on so >> even though it's introspective or might seem like selfcentered endeavor in practice I think it is pro-social because this introspection is not about what will others say about me so it's not about seeking validation not oh let me do what is the most popular thing right now. Let me do it well and that will bring me plaudits or accolades or friends etc. rather it's let me do that which is inherent to me but let me do it as best I can >> and through that I will be the best version of myself which can then maybe be of use uh to others but it's not about being of use to others that's a just a happy coincidence that's just nice that it happened >> yeah I like the way you describe that I would probably end up describing a similar thing if I were asked the same question. Uh, one of the reasons that I think I left my previous job is that the work I was doing just didn't feel like it was helping anyone like you know the software like yes I was working to make this piece of software better but it it just wasn't a piece of software where I could see any kind of positive impact on anyone's life and I think that's one of the things that made me um kind of leave that situation and go back to a situation where you know I'm living you know I'm living close to my family so I can help them or I'm living in a place where I can uh have more time to develop my music and so on and so forth like and and one of the things is I feel like uh as a person who's trying to develop themselves and everything you run into these you have to sort of try to identify the um consistent elements that per that um pervade across many different kinds of experiences. One thing for me is that uh in my in my life and just in my experience probably like many people I experience these juxtapositions these sort of harsh juapositions of experience which can lead to almost a confusion and it can be a skill to try to find the experience within that. So for example or to find the consistency through it. So, like for example, like one night I might be out playing music at like a jazz club or I might be playing music at some kind of public place where I'm feeling very positive and I'm feeling very connected to people around me and my music is having a very positive effect on people. I can see people getting excited. I can see people clapping. I can tell that I'm adding to the happiness and to the social beauty and to the social experience of this moment. So, I feel very almost complete in that moment, but really inspired by that. But then maybe the next day I run into a situation where um let's say I sleep in too late and then I wake up and I feel tired all day and then I'm feeling bad about myself and then I'm trying to do something later in the day but I uh am not able to. I try to write some kind of program but I end up just getting stuck or I don't make much progress. I I think one of the things we encounter as people are these very are these juxtapositions between feeling very effective and feeling very complete and then maybe even the next day feeling the opposite, feeling pathetic, feeling bad about yourself. And I feel like it's almost like being it's almost like being on choppy water. It's like being on a storm in the sea. Going back to that thing you said earlier where you're kind of being tossed around and it can be disorienting or nauseating to be in that kind of rhythm. And I feel like one of the things I'm trying to do in my life is find a more consistent rhythm or a more healthy rhythm in my life so I can have more predictability and just kind of lead a more healthy lifestyle. And that's why I was so interested by some of the things you were saying about about rhythm and about control and a feeling of initiative and things like that. Mhm. And this also is what we were saying about predictability stability and then uh the initiative or the freedom or the creativity which is for example you say I sleep late and then I wake up late and now I want to do stuff but I'm tired or I don't feel like it. >> So for example that connects to something that is a basic routine which is the sleep cycle. Like if I have like a stable routine in that regard, in a sense it's boring, right? >> But in another sense, it's what empowers me to do the non boring things. >> Yeah. >> Which is exactly to be creative and to do all that. Whereas >> if I don't get the basics right, then it's hard to get the others consistently, >> the more demanding kind of tasks. So that's why it's important to be mindful of your own condition. do this introspection where it's like what is the rhythm that works for me >> and that's my baseline and now from a position of control slashstrength I can now do what I really want to do which is all the creative endeavors I have >> and of course there can be trade-offs there too because like for example let's say I want to play at a jazz session um on Wednesday night for example it might start at 10:30 it might I might be playing until past midnight and then it might be hard to maintain that sleep schedule. So there can be trade-offs, but I feel like ultimately, yeah, it would be it is super beneficial to just have that consistent schedule, to have that baseline >> to build on top of because if you try to I feel like if you try to reach for um if you try to reach directly for good results without building a good foundation, you might get some good results, but you'll also get some negative swings or some negative compensation sort of as a pain for that. And me this is something I understood from an early age by doing sport >> and um so football in this case soccer. So with any kind of of course this applies to anything again but with sport no. So >> what you want is to go play you you don't want to do the boring drills >> right? >> But if you do the drills right you will always play the game at a higher level. There is no chance about that other things being equal. If you skip the drills, you will never be good at the game or you will never be as good as you could be. So the drills in a sense are boring, but it's those boring details that ultimately empower you to do the fun parts. And it's really that like uh to uh be able to invest uh time and effort into the basics into the foundation and build a strong foundation. And of course what that means concretely will depend on what you are doing what sort of lifestyle you have but you ultimately want to have a foundation that is rock solid. And again because we are talking about this theme of consistency that is no different than building a house. You cannot build a house that doesn't have a solid foundation. It's as simple as that. >> The ground level has to be movable and then you build on top. If if the ground level is shaky, whatever you put on top might work for a little while, but as soon as there's there is a strong wind or an earthquake or whatever, it all comes down crashing. >> Yeah. >> You cannot have a fair weather construction. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And uh and if you don't I feel like if you don't have a solid foundation or if you're lacking one, the first step to to creating one is it would be acknowledging that you don't have a solid foundation. And that can be psychologically difficult because that kind of ties into ego. And I've been thinking about this recently and I think that uh a person's ego in the sort of uh in the sense of the word egotistical uh a person's ego is kind of this almost this shell that forms around the insecurities that we have. And it's this kind of protective shell that prevents the insecurities from getting hurt. But that can be that shell can that protective shell can turn into a barrier when you try to then investigate those insecurities and acknowledge them uh as part of a pursuit of of fixing them or in pursuit of getting better. you kind of run into that ego layer and you see this with people when sometimes if you make a valid point about someone or if you ask them to do something differently you might uh sometimes you'll get a response which is positive but sometimes if someone's ego is uh shelled up around that area you might get a very harsh response you might knock into that barrier and it might create um it might create a dissonance there so I feel like also like kind of part of this part of the result of like kind of exploring and living in this uh initi in initiativeized way is like kind of like shedding those layers ego and everything and just kind of being open to being wrong about things, being open to recognizing when um your foundation is not strong enough and when you need to put in time, when you need to put in that time to build it back. >> Yeah. And um of course that is difficult especially to get started because fundamentally what has to happen is that you have to be overpowered by something that is clearly superior to you. Because what happens with the ego at this defensive phase is that >> you think you are the real deal. >> Of course you know that you are faking it but you think you are the real deal like you are untouchable. >> Yeah. But uh once you experience all once you experience that which is clearly superior to you in every way once you see that there are greater magnitudes then you start admitting to yourself that well actually I'm not as strong uh or as important as I think I am >> and actually there are layers to this. There are levels to this >> and so you gradually let go of that and then you can ascend. But if you maintain the view that well I am the real deal, >> you won't be for much longer. And this also applies to for example those um actors that are superstars at the age of 15 or whatever and then they disappear after a few years. >> It's because you think you are the real deal and everybody will always love you and then years go by and you haven't actually put in any effort. You think you are the best. So what happens is you are not actually the best. So eventually you are left behind and people don't care about you or you were let's say a celebrity and now you are I don't know 60 years old and again people don't really care about you. You are not the new hotness anymore like it doesn't matter. So unless you are able to actually look at the mirror and say you know what I am not that special. I am not as special as I think I am. Once you reach the point where you can say that that is the point where you start actually growing um spiritually let's say or as a person and then you are really empowered to uh kick things up a notch or two. >> Yeah. And that's another uh trade-off situation because I feel like that uh belief that we sometimes have that we are uh this powerful highly capable being that's is another mechanism which actually helps us to be ambitious and to pursue things which might uh be out of our current scope of abilities. It might give us inspiration to believe that we can actually do it. Like certain things like for example when you think of um aviation like airplanes and stuff that's something which obviously would have seemed impossible um if humans didn't have the sort of wild ambition to try to create flying machines and everything. I was actually I visited um aviation museum recently and there were some funny uh political cartoons in the museum which were actually denigrating the those early flying machines making fun of them saying that investment in them was a complete waste of time that they were just ridiculous. uh mimics of birds and things like that, but then you see how that ambition can obviously lead to an amazing result. So I feel like that's another situation where within within the within the individual you have to find a balance between your ambition but also your realism and your recognition that there are things which are out of your control. And then the the bridge between those two is exactly honesty is exactly to say of course there is ambition in the sense of where I want to go like I want to fly >> and then where I am right now which is of course I don't actually have the capacity to fly >> so you recognize where you are and then you can move towards where you want to be but if you don't have that uh honesty you will never move forward because you think you are the best. You are impeccable, >> right? You might think you're already there, for example. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And then it's like, well, that's not the case. >> Mhm. >> And then um this is something that also you see with uh people where that people that have depth and you're like, well, you are simpler than I thought in the sense that well, you are cool. you are a cool guy or whatever, right? And part of that is because you don't think that you need to show that you are the real deal >> because you're like, well, I reached this level, but actually I know that there are more levels to it. So, in the grand scheme of things, I'm still not that good. Mhm. >> So of course there is more for me to learn, more for me to develop >> and of course that keeps you grounded in a sense that you are a nice person but also concretely it keeps you grounded in this sense of urgency which ultimately has a creative potential because you are not complacent and you keep going. You are like well I'm not done here. I have to produce more and more and better and I will keep doing it until I am not abled. >> Yeah. And it also keeps you open to new experiences, right? Like I was telling I was telling a friend of mine that I was meeting with you um like today and they were like um oh how did you get a meeting with him and I'm like he'll meet with anybody. I just emailed him. And they kind of couldn't believe it. They thought I I told them that you were this really highly respected software developer and everything but I feel like that openness is so important. And if you notice like um if you notice I feel like I can think of um times where I've been studying sort of like great artists and things like that because I'm obviously interested in art and everything and they have this almost um this this consistently fresh perspective on things where they're not they're not bored by things. They're not arrogant about things. They're interested in even uh the most um the most seemingly insignificant detail. And I feel like that openness just keeps it keeps information flowing into you. And of course you are what you absorb. So that can keep you as as kind of fresh and enriched as possible. >> And a word that comes to mind now based on what you said is play where it's like of course you want to you have you want to keep things flowing which in a way is in a way of saying well you remain playful. You want to continue to explore and play around and see how that works which necessarily means that you don't take yourself/achchievements too seriously. You're like, well, of course they are what they are, >> but it's not like the center of the world. There is more to it, >> and that's why you are open to exactly play with new things. >> Mhm. Yeah. And that relates to a solution which I know is there, but sometimes I just don't I just don't take it up all the time. like it basically um when I because a lot of the um a lot of my um goal as a musician uh which I spend a lot of time doing is to create a good discoraphy like good good EPs, good albums, things like that. And one of the things that happens is that I'll create a piece of music which I think is quite good and then it will make it so much more difficult to create the next piece of music because I think I want to keep one uping myself. I want to keep topping myself, keep creating better and better music that goes further. And sometimes you reach in the leveling war with yourself, you reach a sort of ceiling where you're like, well, I can't really I'm kind of at the limit right now of what I can conceptualize. I can't really I can't really guarantee to myself that I will make something better than what I just made because what I just made was sort of at the max. Yeah, I was firing on all cylinders when I was doing that. And that can lead to what some people would call writer's block, which is where you basically don't feel motivated to create more music because you feel like, well, the next thing I create might just be worse. And that's obviously a psychologically difficult feeling. But the way out of that, which just requires some actuation energy to get going, is just to play around with new materials. Don't have any expectation. I I once heard a writer call this writing for the waste basket. Like write with the intention that you'll probably just throw it away. Um you know, just create create music with the intention that you're just playing around. You're just exploring ideas. And that's how the best music often gets made is just through natural conversation and then natural exploration because the subtleties that emerge from that are not too designed. They're not too worked on there. They're just naturally emergent. >> And you do that. Exactly. You have this openness to playing with new ideas, to creating for the waste bin. >> Exactly. Because you don't take yourself too seriously. Like if you take yourself too seriously, you're like, well, what I have is unassailable. We should never touch it. We should never question it. We should never ever deviate from it. So of course if you have that kind of attitude towards your own self or your own works then it is impossible to ever treat your works as potential trash. >> Mhm. Yeah. >> So by having that sense of play that sense of well I don't take myself too seriously then it's totally okay. It's part of uh the process to have work that is potentially waste. But when you do that actually it's never wasteful actually you may not publish it in so in that sense it's for the waste bin but it has always contributed something you have learned something you you are inspired to explore something further and that again puts you in a certain flow and I think that is really a creative endeavor ultimately like it cannot be for nothing. >> Yeah. And of course, when we talk about creativity, like creating something is inherently unpredictable. And unless you're making a replica, you know, if you're creating something new, you just you just don't know what it's going to be yet. And if you try to um kind of jump to the conclusion of feeling good about yourself because you think it's going to be great, that's ultimately a limiting um you're you're just kind of funneling yourself down into this uh serious mode where you're like, I am creating something good. But uh in actuality you just it's best to not worry about how good or bad something might be. Just just do stuff and then eval you can always evaluate it later. You you can still evaluate your work in a serious way. You can just do that after. Kind of two different mindsets. Creating and evaluating could kind of be different mindsets >> because when you try to mix them you eventually end up with cognitive overload and then you your creativity is inhibited. And what also happens there is that you develop a criterion for judging slassessing your work which is no longer yourself where you are like well what will others think about this? What will others enjoy? What will others appreciate? And then when that happens is now well you cannot know you are not others. You are not them. So what effectively takes hold then is your insecurities >> because you're like well the worst case scenario that is what will govern your thoughts. So whereas if it springs from within where it's like you know what I will do what I feel like what feels right to me >> like I want to play with this uh concept with this idea see what happens because that feels good to me. I don't know if others will like it but that's something that we will know in retrospect >> if I try to anticipate it because I am not the others >> then I am just putting obstacles and of course these obstacles are in effect my fears >> and of course that's what the audience loves as well in my experience of music and playing music for people love to see someone just being themselves and doing what feels good to them and then often people can enjoy that and they can get invested in it and then back and make them feel good. People don't tend to like being pandered to and people don't like trying to be, you know, like spoonfed something that they like because then it becomes this awkward situation where like, for example, if I try to play uh a piece of music for someone based on like what I think they'll enjoy the most, that makes it awkward for me because then I'm not doing what's natural for me. And it also makes it awkward for them because they might be able to sense that I'm trying to impress them. and then they have this awkward situation where they're kind of like feeling like they have to judge it or they have to say what they think of it or something like that. It's so much more free and so much more exciting if I just am at the piano or whatever and I'm just doing whatever feels completely natural to me authentically expressing myself and then someone can tune into that and kind of hear that natural uh kind of flow of like my ideas and then they can not feel any pressure to to react to it. They can just experience it and often that will produce by far the most like positive reaction from the audience. Mhm. And it's that exactly. And then it also is well that's the only viable way because you always have a sense of how you feel about things but you don't have a good sense of how others feel. So of course you might anticipate what somebody will like because it's your friend or whatever but you cannot anticipate what a stranger will like. So ultimately either you will limit your experiences to the realm of the known like just your friends and nobody else >> so that you always get positive feedback or you will be like okay it springs from within. I am I have to feel good about it and then that means that you also open yourself up to others and then to other experiences. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And and sometimes, like for example, there have been situations where I'm playing music for someone. Let's say I'm playing at the student union at my university or whatever. I'm just playing somewhere and someone will often ask me like there have been times where I've been asked like, "Oh, um, do you know this song or can you play this song?" And sometimes like maybe I could try to play that song, but I don't really know it. It would kind of be not the best version. I'll say I often say to them, "Well, instead how about I just um create something for you completely spontaneously. I improvise something on the spur of the moment, something fresh, something exciting." it often and then I'll often invite them to play with me like oh you know press these notes and it'll sound cool and everything that to me I think people have a sometimes people have an a sort of they they come in with the idea that they'd like to hear something they know but actually it might be much more exciting for them to hear something that they don't yet know because then they have a fresh experience. So sometimes you have to like kind of introduce that to someone and then they're actually they often get on board with it and then you have a great time together. >> And it's and it's cool too because it's something that if you improvise a piece of music like what like that's what happens in jazz or in my personal style where I improvise in kind of a almost like a style that uses impressionist harmony and things like that. It's when you improvise something it's similar to the conversation we're having now. It's a conversation that's never been had before in this exact way and it probably will never be had again in this exact way. So it's it's it's that uh uniqueness of you know the the kind the kind of fruits of that process being so special in that moment. It's like only privy to the audience who is there unless it's unless it's being recorded of course but still that first performance uh retains its specialty even amidst recording. So that's another exciting thing >> is always being in the flow. This is one thing I try to do with music in the flow of creating new stuff and trying things out because sometimes because music is a muscle memory thing, it can be easy to get caught in playing the same patterns, playing the same chords, playing the same kinds of um structures and often it can be you need to freshen your experience by getting out of that and that will lead to the most exciting results for you and for the audience. >> And I imagine part of that is to try to develop more muscle memory like more patterns which you do through play through experimentation. and through practice. Yeah. Like for example, I'm going to practice I'm going to practice the all these different scale patterns in all 12 keys, for example. Uh it might be really boring, but then later when you're playing around and just kind of freely experimenting, you'll have muscle memory to do these things uh which you couldn't do before. So less of the territory is blocked off. Like when you're kind of a beginner as a musician, let's say you only practice in C major. When you're trying to wander the landscape of creativity, it's like you're on this narrow road where everything else is blocked off. you can you can still move around and you can do a lot of patterns, but you can't you can't go anywhere. But when you develop muscle memory for all the different possibilities or for all the different little um kind of um what would you call them like like little generating ideas like scales and and arpeggios and things like that then you can just sort of go anywhere. It exponentially expands what you can play with. You have more toys essentially. >> And then of course more combinations between them. So it's an emergent game >> word. Exactly. Exactly. And so much of composition in my experience is just the ability to to kind of um to kind of develop a path through that forest of options, you know, because there are so many options available, especially if you're creating music with computers, as I sometimes do, you can you can create literally any sound, literally any sound signal. You it it becomes you need to develop sort of a curator's ear for what kind of sounds you want to create. And in order to create a coherent piece of music, you often want to have specific incircle back to them. You often want to do the same thing at piece of music. >> So you kind of need to develop this ability to kind of develop a conversation or to develop a little language of certain themes where it's like I'm going to kind of start I'm going to start debuting this theme and then I'll take it in some new directions and then I might introduce a new theme later but then circle back to the old one. That's often what creates a that ties into the narrative aspect of how we hear and understand things. We hear that story which you know if you're going through the story of your life or a story of a book or something there will be recurring characters and that's what allows us to feel emotionally invested in the story. >> And then what you are saying now connects also to this uh discussion about I am at a certain point in my life where I have to make decisions. It's a little bit like that because um if you think of life as basically all the noises, all the signals that can be produced, right? Of course, there are all these possibilities and what do you do? It doesn't really matter. What matters is that you go a certain way and you develop certain patterns. So, it's a matter of >> commit to that and uh proceed and see where it leads you. Mhm. And I feel like the results of that process is something which we might call wisdom colloquially, right? Like someone who has who has taken their due diligence and taken their time to invest themselves within a certain path or path or to have certain focus in their life and then they develop like we were talking about before that general understanding that can transfer to other areas and often of course we consider older people to be usually wiser because they've simply had more time to carry out that process. >> Yeah. And I think this is the case. And what is also the case on on that is that you will find wisdom in people that you would least expect in the sense of what I mean is that nowadays we have uh this idea that of course there is science. Uh there are all these experts and people who know stuff. So if you are to find wisdom you will find it in there in those circles. But the reality is that you can find it in your barber or a farmer or some person that you would never associate with wisdom >> because of the consistency of the world. Because what they have done is they have understood a part of the world of the world in depth which allows them to relate to other parts and uh that is ultimately what gives them this uh feeling that oh they actually have depth to them and well they are wise. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that reminds me of one of my favorite quotes which is from my favorite my favorite author James Joyce. He said that um there's no such thing as a normal person. >> There's each each each person has unique um has a obviously a unique life experience and they have unique um understanding that's emerged as the result of living through that life experience. So that's why conversation is so fascinating to me. You can and I feel like you probably share a similar view of this like you know you'll do the pro ask series where you'll talk to anyone about anything essentially and that enables you to explore uh all these all the uniqueness of these different people who might email you and reach out to you and things like that. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's exactly that and it's about being able to like through discussion being able to get a sense of what the world is like through the words of this other person. It's in a way a a gateway to another world for me >> and for anybody who engages in conversation. So listening in that regard is essential. Like somebody who doesn't listen, of course there are a lot of people who actually don't listen. Like you say something and they didn't actually pay attention to what you said or maybe they got one small part of it. But listening ultimately is how you can learn more about the world. how you can learn more about others as well and then how you can learn more about yourself ultimately through uh this synthesis that you will do where you are like okay there is this and I feel that and what can I learn about this what are the lessons to be drawn what what is the truth to be had from this >> yeah and that also relates to a sort of ego breakdown in my view because like sometimes we have this egotistical idea where in addition to thinking that we are maybe a great hero of our story and everything. We also might think of other people as we might group other people together and think these people are all the same or these people are following this idea which I don't agree with and you end up you end up generalizing and and kind of squishing down and compressing that the idea of that group of people and that can close you off uh to conversation. So that's another openness thing is like of course it's a commonly known idea that if um you know people who maybe disagree with each other online or something if they have a conversation in person they might actually resonate with each other and they might become friends and they might find common ground and things like that. I feel like conversation in addition to being useful for gaining information is also like a sobering tool where you realize well this person who I maybe thought was so different from me I actually I connect with them or we're much more similar than we are different or something like that. And of course, in a time where there's so much um so much uh disagreement and so much uh seemingly uh intense disagreement between political parties and things like that, at least in the United States where I live, like uh conversation and open conversation is is so important. It it sounds like a cliche at this point because that point has been made many times, but I think it is true. And I think part of the reason you see this kind of breakdown in in terms of well people are either in one campochamber or another and there is no discourse. Uh is because the communication we have is through text and what we lose is the emotional component of it because >> we like to think that we are rational agents which we are not. There is a component, there is a side of us, a facet of us which is rational but we also have an emotional side which we cannot decouple from the rational side. It is always there. >> And when you reduce everything to text you don't communicate the nonverbal aspects. you don't communicate uh how a person looks at you and you don't communicate this sense of vulnerability or you don't communicate any kind of emotional state. So if you send me a text message all I see is a text message and I have to then extrapolate >> an emotional state based on some words. Mhm. >> But then of course I do that without seeing you, without experiencing you. I do that >> using my imagination. And what will happen then? Projecting my insecurities onto the text. And now you said something which is not there. >> And >> of course that is what creates uh conflict and that is what ultimately destroys uh trust, reason and simplicity. like it we should be able to be casual but we cannot. >> Mhm. >> And part of that is because uh we communicate in a way that is not meant uh to be the standard way. It should be the exception not uh the norm. >> But of course it's so convenient that in a way it's become the norm. Right. It is convenient and it's also uh what also connects to the fast pace I was telling you earlier because through text of course you can like you log into any stream of information and there is just text flowing >> and you cannot physically keep up with that like everywhere you go there are all these thousands of comments and you don't have connection to thousands of people. Mhm. >> You have connection to thousands of comments. >> But then what happens is you develop an impression which again is a projection of your own mental state. And it's not like oh I got to experience a thousand people. I got to experience an amalgamation of these which is ultimately my fears that latch on to certain expressions and certain pieces of text. fears or biases or um like the parts that I want to see basically validation and what happens is that ultimately it's one misunderstanding that feeds into another misunderstanding >> and that creates at the social level of course creates conflict but individually as well you are actually feeling maybe you don't verbalize it yet but you feel that you don't belong there like just as the others are snippets of text with no face or person attached to them, >> you are the same. You are just a snippet of text. You are nothing. >> You don't have feelings. You you are not flesh and bone. >> Yeah. And that same uh projection of things onto someone or that same kind of missing information about someone's actual intention that can also happen in person, but it's just much more uh it's it's much more likely to happen more and more quickly uh when you have that kind of uh information deprived environment of the text and everything. But that pattern of projecting uh insecurities onto someone else that can be that can be uh very invisible to to to you if you haven't noticed it yet. uh are very invisible to someone if they haven't noticed it yet. And it can happen in person too. And and this thing I was thinking what what you were saying about text makes me think about something I've thought about before which is like kind of the limits of language itself because even when we're in person talking langu our language has a certain nature to it and it's it's developed in a certain way and it's it's the tool we use to communicate. It's a very rich tool but it also has certain almost assumptions that are built within it like um I forget who this quote is from but there was some maybe philosopher who said that if you if you speak a language you already have beliefs like that is already kind of a belief system that you're already holding. So there are certain um kind of things that come along with that. And I've often thought before how um it can be hard sometimes. I feel like at different times in my life, I've had this inherent desire to sort of fully elucidate or fully explain myself and fully explain my feelings to other people. And there was sort of a pain that happened when I realized that the language that I had to do it with. Obviously, it could be a skill issue as well, but it's almost like it almost can feel like trying to communicate something complex or communicate feelings. can feel like trying to squish a um trying to squish like a entire um trying to squish an entire city into a mailbox or something there. Only a small amount of information can get through that little pipe of communication. So I feel like of course in person is so much richer and I always prefer that but like there are also I'm interested in in the limits of what's possible to communicate as well because our internal states if you think about the full internal state of the person there is no clear way to communicate the totality of that you know >> and uh this is why rationality is just one of our facets because you are like well I'm trying to explain a certain emotion um can you actually describe beauty can if somebody hasn't experienced it. Can you actually engender in them a sense of beauty without them experience it? Can you actually describe awe? Or to put it differently, how does a child that doesn't have the intellectual capacity of an adult in terms of knowledge and um whatever they use to argument to argue and make a persuasive point. How does a child experience awe and you know they have experienced awe like oh look at this bird >> like for the first time >> and you're like there are certain things is my point that cannot actually be communicated in that way. So there are things that have to be experienced and um we have to recognize that we cannot be reductive in the sense of let's um bring everything down to a reasonable communicable uh kind of package because that is a so we we say it's reductive exactly because it reduces >> from what it actually is so it takes away from it. So if I tell you oh beauty is just something that happens in the brain well that's reductive and it reduced from what actually you experience. >> Yeah. >> So basically what I'm trying to say is that eventually we have to recognize the limits of language but not as a way of saying therefore we cannot continue. Therefore, we have to have experiences that are also of another level that are not just verbal. >> Mhm. >> And for example, a dance a dance is no longer about if I have the right words for it. >> And I don't even know what you will experience like the other dancer or what I am experiencing if it's the same as you >> and ultimately doesn't matter. >> Yeah. Exactly. And there's sort of that inherent I feel like an understanding of that leads to the sort of inherent error margin within communication where for example if we're both looking at the color red and we both say oh you know this look at this red color here like we might you know it's hard to know like what our experience of even that simple stimulus is like it might be totally different on the interior or not totally different but at least somewhat different but there's this inherent like it's there's this kind of situation where it's close enough to where we can talk about different experiences and it's close enough to establish a a communication that can flow and that can transfer information, but we're not we're not sure ex of course what the actual contents are for each uh for each interlocutor. But as you said, it doesn't matter. It's sort of a natural variation um on each side. And that variation ultimately can inspire different people in different ways. And as long as we can communicate enough, then we can we can make progress and we can communicate with each other. Mhm. And by putting ourselves in the situation of trying to communicate, of accepting that there is a margin of error >> ultimately means that we won't be um belly cos we won't be creating conflicts. >> Of course there will be conflicts. It's not that we will live in an angelic world but it won't be the default. It would be the exception. Mhm. Now, on the subject of communicating, uh I'm really a big fan of the poetry that you write on your website. I think it's really fantastic. I even um Thank you. >> I even quoted uh one of your poems in one of the articles I wrote on my website. I wrote this program called uh HMS, which is essentially a command line time calculator. You can do calculations with hours and minutes and things like that. I use it to um keep track of how long the albums that I make are, the audio file lengths. But um there was this wonderful quote you had. I I quoted one of your poems which was on the subject of time but uh I'm curious because I also al I also do creative writing myself uh on the subject of communicating something. How do you uh how does the process of writing work for you as a creative outlet and how do you think about communicating because because your poetry has a very kind of refined simplicity to it. How do you think about communicating uh an idea or an inspiration that you get? I get the sense that a lot of your inspiration comes from nature. What is the process like of communicating that in language? uh the process is it starts from introspection which is like well how do I feel about it whatever it is like how do I feel about it and then >> is what I have called alap prima it's a method of trying to capture the feeling in the moment it happens in one go >> so the idea is I won't write let's say one paragraph day and then next week another paragraph and then one month later eventually there will be a publication. No, because then what happens is >> I don't have the same uh emotional state. >> I have to disconnect and try to reconnect or or recreate it. But then it's fake. I'm I'm not really feeling it anymore. >> So what I try to do is it's a little bit like riding the wave if you are doing wave surfing. Well, you you don't have a wave on demand. It's there. It's now or never. That's the idea. So, I have this emotional state. I am there. I am surfing on this emotional state. And now, while I am on this, I want to express it however it comes up. >> And then it's like I am not trying to write for an audience. I am trying to capture that which I feel. And if there is an audience, well, that's a happy coincidence. And again, this connects to what we were saying earlier. If I am thinking of, oh, what will the audience say? I have to imagine what is even the audience. Uh what is their background, who they are, uh what do they look like? Like I have to make all sorts of assumptions which ultimately are immaterial. And again, it it it impedes the experience of the moment. The experience of the moment is me here feeling this and trying to put that into words. >> Interesting. >> And of course, you reach a point where it's easier to do it because you do it for long enough where things just flow. But at the beginning, it starts with the ability or the effort rather you put into trying to describe what is your immediate reality. Like I am standing here right now. I am talking. I am feeling a certain way. This is an interesting discussion and I have learned so many things and the dogs are there and here is the light and it's a night outside etc etc right not to belabor that point >> but the idea is that you start by describing what is the immediate reality and in so doing you develop a habit of being able to have situational awareness and situational awareness ultimately becomes comes self-awareness but self-awareness not in in the negative sense of oh I am self-aware and now I am what's the I am insecure >> self-conscious >> self-conscious self-conscious not in that sense but in the sense of >> I can communicate what I am experiencing what I am feeling and because I understand it therefore I can talk about it it's it's a little bit like you can only teach that which you know well or you Oh well that which you can teach right >> so it's a little bit like that by understanding yourself by being conscious mindful of who you are what your state is >> then you are in a position to create based on that >> yeah and what you're saying I I think my writing process works in a similar way it makes me think of a quote from I can't remember who this is from it was one of the Latin um one of the famous Latin writers it wasn't Virgil but it was like that kind of figure uh and it was brought up in the context of a discussion I was listening to about um about a favorite book of mine and um which is uh called Ulyses by James Joyce and the the quote is um I forget what the Latin is. It's like rema verb sequentum or something like that but the the translation is grasp the thing and the words will follow. So the idea is that you and this this is what I try to do when I'm trying to describe an inspiration that I had or something. You just focus you almost um you completely immerse yourself in that emotion. you completely submerge yourself in that feeling and then you just try to describe what you're seeing essentially what you're feeling and then the the the product of that is basically because when I'm trying to write for for example let's say I feel inspired and I try to write a piece about it or I feel some kind of emotional comp complex emotional state like some kind of um state that I'm trying to convey in writing I want to exactly like you said I want to fully explore and understand that state of emotion so that I can communicate it and Um, this is interesting too because um in um one of my favorite writers, Joyce, who I was talking about before, he he kind of had this um innovative technique where in his book Ulyses, he never describes what the main character looks like. The main character's uh visual appearance is never described. But there's this funny phenomenon which readers of the book talk about where um even though uh the main character Leupold Bloom is never described, people have this very specific sense of what he looks like. um even though his his description is never given in the book. So there's that that's that's a grasp of the thing uh idea where Joyce has he through his words he's communicated this character to such a level of detail that things which even aren't directly literally described by the book are kind of filled in for the reader and their experience of that character because the the grasping is it's such a tight grip. And so that's that's kind of a way because one of the things I try to do in my writing in my more artistic writing is to try to say a lot with very few words to try to communicate lots of stuff but in this very um short way or not not not necessarily short like intentionally brief but short like efficient. I feel like that's kind of one of the things poetry does is it uses few words to communicate a very uh high amount of things. And so that's uh one of the things I'm interested in too and I feel like that's one of the things your your poem does. Sometimes I've read works of yours which are like three lines long, but they send me on an entire journey of thinking about something. And that's one of the things I love about poetry too is it's a way of workshopping kind of more effective ways to use language in a sense >> because sometimes language can become uh bogged down by cliches. And I feel like one of the things that creative writers do is they find ways to freshen and to imbue language with new life. Mhm. Mhm. And also part of language in this case poetry is not to describe the truth but to inspire you to think about well what does this mean to you? >> Uh so ultimately it's an invitation to create your own world. So here is an impetu >> rather than well here is something you just accept it and you don't think about it. >> Yeah. And this is also what I like because another thing I do on my website sometimes is I write interpretations of songs usually >> and it's like a Greek songs where which I translate into English and then I comment on >> and what I usually say is that of course art doesn't have one truth. Mhm. >> There are many truths and part of this process is to ultimately use this as an inspiration to talk about something that I could have done anyway, but now I have uh something that focuses my attention. >> Mhm. >> And I'm like, okay. And here it is. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And sometimes when you read a really good uh when you read a really good poem for example like each word almost feels like an entire like sentence in and of itself. And it also exposes the musicality of language which is another thing I'm interested in. Um, you know, because my interest in music really translates to language as well because some of the material which has inspired me most to create music has actually just been like poetry of some of my favorite writers like Wallace Stevens for example who has an incredible way of of um of using words in such a way that they're just absolutely bursting with color and just bursting with sensation. And that that's what um that's what I love about that kind of writing is just it really elucidates the uh sensory possibility of of of language because some there are so many different ways that we communicate. You know, sometimes we'll be communicating uh like we'll be texting or we'll just be talking about something very simple like oh I need this or you'll be checking out at the grocery store for example and you'll say oh I I um I need to uh can I get paper instead of plastic or something like that. That's a completely different register of communication than in a poem for example where each word matters so much. So it's just so it's so amazing talking about consistency uh of the world. It's also amazing the flexibility of the different tools that we have and in a sense the more abstract a tool is like language is inherently abstract the more flexible it is >> in that sense. Language is easily one of the most flexible tools that we have. >> Yeah it's exactly that. And then uh also on the point of musicality or of uh that aspect of language again there are different levels to this where you can have a poem that is really austere and really spartan as it were like it's really serious and really brief and doesn't give you a sense of playfulness. Uh but that also still has a certain musicality to it where it's like where it's like a more bass kind of sound. It's not as playful. It's not as exciting, but it's still there and it also has a role to play. And then of course you have the more colorful >> uh poems as well or language in that regard. >> And ultimately we uh need a little bit of everything. Mhm. >> Because there's this idea like, oh, we should always do it like this and then you have something that is formulaic and formulaic is another way of saying ultimately it loses its value. It's like well we have seen this before. Yeah, that's tired. We need something else. We need variety. >> Also, in a sense, wouldn't formulaic also mean that it can be reduced to a formula? I.e. it's not uh it's not um condensed enough. It's not compressed. It it doesn't have as much a quality per word. Essentially, if something is formulaic, you means it could express it through a short formula, which means it's sort of it's sort of cruff in a sense. It's like kind of uh kind of more of that a low quality lowquality per word type of information. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's exactly. >> Now, I have a question. I have a question for you uh regarding your Alip Prima technique because this is something I've read about on your website and now I heard you say it again just a second ago. I wonder and this is this is not a criticism because I feel like your work for me is is very is very um obviously well written but I wonder in the same way that you work over code for many revisions to create many revisions of packages have you ever felt inspired to do that with a piece of writing for example to write over it for many revisions create more this portrait style of of more more depth more refinement again not saying your writing isn't refined because it's very refined but I wonder have you ever felt inspired to do that with your pieces of writing with a poem with a with an article things that >> h the answer is I can't it's or let's say it's very difficult >> it's very difficult because with code there is an important distinction which is uh first of all uh the function is usually self-contained or anyway there is a subset of the program that is self-contained where I to make an edit I don't need to know every line of code so that I can make that edit like I can I can change for example example, what is the return value without having to also think about what else is the program doing generally like the >> which is a sign of good code also >> also also but in a sense here it means that this thing lives in itself it has a life of its own whereas uh with a piece of writing there is an emotional aspect to it which for me it's very difficult to recreate at least the kind of writing I do if I do another uh kind of writing that it's not riding the wave as I was explaining earlier then yes I will be able to iterate on that because I don't have this preerequisite of having to connect to a certain emotion a certain state of mind >> and of course uh that also speaks to maybe an inability to do that so I'm not saying that well I'm not doing it because it's not good I'm not doing it because maybe I cannot not do it. So there is that and maybe I do the alap prima because ultimately that's what worked for me and it's not like a technique but rather a technique on top of what is my condition kind of thing. >> So there is that as well. >> The thing though is that there are different kinds of refinement. There is refinement in a piece of work like you write something and it's self-contained and basically it stands the test of time and that's one kind of experience like you are uh talking about Ulysi. So there is this book and you read the book uh and that's an experience in itself. But then you can also have an experience which is like you read a series of blog posts. >> Mhm. >> Which now describe a person in a certain state of mind through certain experiences which now is a different view of the world. So if you take that and you reduce that to a book in a sense it's a different experience now. Yeah. >> So then we are talking about the different levels of refinement as it were or different levels of well what are we talking about or what are we communicating? What are we trying to encapsulate in words >> and there is that and of course in everything we do and you say this this is not meant as criticism. I think actually that's criticism I think is good. Uh let me say this because even if you say look what you do is not refined enough. I think that's actually good because if you tell me of course why right it's good because then you are telling me well I care about you I checked and this is what I found. >> So >> because I care right because otherwise it's not criticism it's just dismissive and we call it criticism but it's like oh I didn't pay attention and I don't like it. That's not criticism. >> Criticism is I I care because I paid attention. I actually checked and here it is. So for me, criticism is good because it gives me insight into something that I may be taking for granted or may not even be noticing and now I can be introspective or I can go and revise that and maybe I will have something better as a result of that. So um part of what I do with the ala prima is exactly this to admit that there is room for growth because I'm like look there is there are errors here and many times this is especially true for my videos where I will make mistakes in language for example I will say something like sitting on the table instead of sitting at the table and when I listen back I know that I made a mistake >> but in the moment I don't realize it. Like I continue talking, I don't even realize it. >> Yeah. >> But it's on record and I don't feel bad about it because me seeing that is basically me criticizing myself like, hey, you made this mistake >> and now I am inspired to try and do better next time. >> And it's also authentic, right? It's an authentic record of you at that time. It's not edited and things like that. Mhm. So it's not ultimately Arama is not really a a judgment of well if you didn't do it in one go therefore it's not good. It's not that. It's like >> this is one way of doing it to communicate one kind of experience that uh we have in the world which is the beauty of the moment if you want to say but it's not like the only thing we have. >> Mhm. Yeah. And I feel like all of Prima can be a good way talking about sort of writer's block can be a good way to just get out of it's kind of related to that writing writing for the waste basket idea. It's kind of related to just make something try to do it right now because >> in in our lives we have so many things that we need to do that if you if you say I'm going to do it later. >> What does that really mean? It might mean that you'll just never even get to it. It's like you're putting it off. It's it's onlogically demoted to the status of something that might happen that might happen instead of something that is happening. So if you want something to be created then just make sure that its creation is happening by just doing it all a prima doing it in one go and then it'll be there and then you can at least have a record of what you did even if you're not completely satisfied with it. It's a you're leaving a paper trail as you progress towards uh what you're working towards. And that's obviously more useful in a situation where one thing I've done before is I've been trying to like there's a situation where I've been trying to create like my next piece of music for example and I keep thinking about well maybe I'll do it like this and then I think well no I I'm not really I don't think that would really be the best way and then later I'm in the shower and I'm thinking oh I start thinking oh this would be a great way to do it and then I kind of forget about that idea and eventually I've been trying to progress toward I've spent a lot of time working towards this goal but I don't really have that much of a record of that time it's just kind of maybe it's stored in my memory somewhere somehow, but it's not really immediately. It's not really imminent. I can't really go and and look at it. So, I like that. I like all prima for that reason because obviously you can mix these approaches, right? Let's say you're trying to create something that's very refined and very worked over uh in a sort of a in more of a book sense. You could do a bunch of alip prima sketches as they're called and then you could later go back and from a different kind of mindset kind of uh pour that into the mix that more curators mindset and kind of compose those kind of cut and paste or collage those sketches into something that's more like more concentrated. >> Yeah, it's exactly that. And this also ties into um what people uh do which is oh I had this great idea let me write it down. >> Yeah. >> Before I forget. And for me, of course, that's good. If you have a record, that's good. But if you always try to capture what springs to mind, ultimately you are capturing too much >> because of course uh the mind is like a spring and you cannot just capture all the water. You just have to let something some water flow. So what I do is for example I will go on a walk >> and I will have this idea that I think oh it's a good idea. >> What I will do is >> let it this idea occur again >> and then I will write about it >> because if it doesn't occur again then it doesn't have a sticky quality. Something is not right about it. It's sort of >> it's like a firework. It's impressive, yes, but it won't be here for love. >> So, I'm like, okay, if you show up again, then I will give you my attention. Undivided attention. But if you don't show up again, then okay. >> I like that idea because it's a filter and it's useful in that way, but it's not arbitrary. It completely It's completely natural in the sense that ideas which recur are, you know, you sort of you sort of know that they're stickier, that they're more useful in a sense, so then you only pay attention to those. I like that a lot. Mhm. And then this ties into al prima in the sense that when you finally commit to doing something, it's something that >> at one level you know, at another level you are about to discover. >> Yeah. >> Because you are sort of working out the details as you go. >> Mhm. >> And uh for me that's fascinating. So it's not like, oh, I just draw without any end goal in mind, without any idea in mind. I like I draw with a certain idea in mind, but I haven't figured out the details yet, but I will get there kind of thing. Or with music, you can think of the same. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. One of my favorite filmmakers, David Lynch, analogized the um the nature of um of having ideas as being kind of like catching fish. like you're seeing all these fish swim by. And the kind of the longer you let your eyes adjust to the water, the the kind of deeper you can see and then you can see these more kind of glittering, more mystifying fish at the bottom. But ultimately, when you plunge your hand into the water to try to catch something, you know, you can't be constantly doing that or else you're going to scare away all the fish, right? You have to in a sense let the water be still, have a calm mindset where you're perceiving, and then eventually you make a decision. Uh you make this infrequent decision to make a catch. And then once you have the fish, of course, you don't want to waste it. You want to use the fish. >> Yes. Yes. Oh, no. That's a very good analogy. Yes. And it's exactly how it is. Like if you are capturing every idea, it's like trying to go after every fish, >> right? >> It's exactly that. So eventually it doesn't work. You won't capture good ideas. >> And this is also a problem that connects to the feeling people have of, well, I'm not creative enough. I'm not productive enough. I'm not doing stuff. Well, yeah. >> Part of the problem is because we have great tools to capture everything. You can record an audio, you can write a note, you can have a video of something like we have all these great tools, but we don't have the training which is the training of character as it were. We don't have the training to know when not to capture or not to capture early, that sort of thing. So if we just capture everything then we are just overwhelmed. >> Right. Exactly. And it feels like it inherently devalues the meaning of each individual artifact because it's just less scarce. It's just surrounded by uh it's like looking in your notes app like maybe you have you know a thousand notes and one of them's like you know uh oh like make sure to get to my flight on time and the next one the next one might be something deep but it doesn't really feel like that because it's amidst this sea of stuff that's sea of croft essentially that's just been captured. >> Exactly. So the the thoughts that haven't been considered carefully crowd out those that have. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that's why it's cool to have these kind of this kind of um this kind of striation of different spaces where you're like, well, you know, here's my um here's my composition notebook. In this one, I'll write down ideas which are meaningful to me. But on my phone, I can maybe text out ideas like, oh, make sure to get to the grocery store before 5:00 p.m. or something like that. >> Yeah. And uh that's how you create a separation between uh what you may consider like the ephemeral to-dos like make sure to be there on time and then ideas slashnowledge that stand the test of time. They they don't just live and die in the moment like they will be there tomorrow and then three months from now and three years from now and so on. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like for example in Emacs like I'll often write down little transient ideas like in a scratch buffer for instance but then I'll use denote and make a new note whenever I want to write down something important. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's exactly that. But if you are using it to write down everything then well how do you retrieve that which has value? How do you find that which has value? >> Exactly. Yeah. >> Very good. I think we should call it a day because what's the It's 2:04 for me, which I think means What time is it for you? Is it 10 p.m. for you? >> 10. Yes. >> Okay. 10 p.m. Yeah. Well, this was a wonderful conversation. I think we >> I think if I remember correctly, we ended up more than doubling the length of our previous one. So, >> yeah. Yeah. So, when I started doing this, the idea was let's keep it to an hour. Of course, arbitrarily said, I was like, one hour should be plenty, right? But then I realized that well one hour we didn't even cover the basics. What can you say in one hour? >> Yeah. Well, I'm so thankful that I got to be a guest again because I think your show is absolutely wonderful and I' I've kept up with many of the episodes so far and I've learned a bunch of things. Just to mention quickly, there was an episode with a guy, I can't remember his name now, but he talked about a note-taking system called a Zetelcasten. >> Um, and I I ended up looking more into that. >> Yeah. >> Yes. Yes. I ended up looking more into that and I actually use that myself now at this point. I think that's a super useful note-taking system and I use your um what is it called? Denote sequence package to keep track of the central cost and sequence numbers. So yeah, I I think this series is super useful and I hope that someone who watched this episode if they made it all the way through. I'm impressed and I hope they got something out. >> This was a super fun conversation. Thank you, Pro. >> You're welcome. You're welcome, Eric. So I wish you good luck with everything and yes, >> we will have round three at some point. >> Yes. Yes, round three at some point. Maybe in the summer we can do round three. How about that? >> Uh, sounds good. Sounds good. >> Yes. Okay. Awesome. >> Very well. Very well. So, I will now stop recording and then uh we call it the day. So actually let me stop recording and

In this near-3-hour video I talk to Eric Frederickson about a broad range of issues that can be summed up under the theme of "cosmic consistency". We start with a discussion about Eric's endeavours with software development. I ask about Eric's experience with free software and open source contributions, which makes us consider not just the programming side of things but also how there is a community-building component to the whole process. The development of GNU Emacs is a case in point. We explore how participating in free software is part coding part character building due to the social skills/interactions involved. Our next big topic is art and creativity. Eric is a musician and has a keen interest in the artistic experience. Over the course of our talk we comment on ways to be creative, the different forms of expression we find from conservation to exploration, and how harmony is experienced. Many finer points here involve the sense of awe, how aesthetics cannot be reduced to words, that text alone disturbs us because we do not connect to a person's emotional state, and more. Eric asks me what I think about the rhythm of life, also with regard to my way of choosing to live in the mountains and how all that underpins my creativity. We share how myths and catchy stimuli play a key role in religiosity, as well as how religion cannot be reduced to a system of propositions: it also has a social aspect to it and a function of social reproduction. Our attention is focused on how people understand when not to take themselves too seriously. Examples we expound on involve Santa Claus and the Greek gods. In this regard I explain how Greek religion and Greek mythology are distinct, even if the latter draws inspiration from the former. At many points we draw parallels between matters of human creation, such as art, and the natural order. For example, there is a way in which an idea stands the test of time when its application leads to viable results. Eric has appeared before in this series: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2025-07-23-prot-asks-eric-emacs-lisp-music-aesthetics-minnesota/ ## Links from Eric - My program "hms", a featureful CLI time-duration calculator: https://emfred.com/programs/hms. - My piece of music "Flying Home", which features recordings of birdcalls at various playback rates: https://emfred.com/audio/sbp4-05-Flying-Home.mp3 - My collection of music which includes "Flying Home", called "Sketchbook, page 4": https://emfred.com/sketchbook/pg4 - And finally, in case a listener would like to contact me: https://emfred.com/about/contact ## About "Prot Asks" In this video series, I talk to anybody who is interested to have a video call with me (so do contact me if you want!). The topics cover anything related to Emacs, technology, and life in general. More here: https://protesilaos.com/prot-asks.