Choice and Depth

In college, I was quite the tinkerer and hacker of computer systems and computer software.  It was late 90s, and though we had a local area network, we did not have internet access.  We didn't even an internet email address.

Operating systems were installed from floppies, some newer systems had CD drives.  PC magazines used to come with free software CDs and those CDs contained not just games and Windows shareware, but also free software such as the Slackware Linux distribution, or Cygwin (GNU tools for Windows).

Since we did not have internet access, we pried open, figuratively speaking, each software that we could get our hands on and explored every nook and cranny of it.  We explored all the settings, the various flags, limits, "GNU extensions", and we tried to compile it on unsupported operating systems.

I remember being introduced to perl and zsh, at that time still new things.  Perl was authored by Larry Wall, and zsh was written by Paul Falstad, a student at Georgia Tech university.  I read almost their entire man pages, and came to understand the philosophy and the interesting features in them.  I was intimately familiar with their capabilities, the differences they had with other languages and shells, and what differences existed in one version vs the previous one.

Linux was still new, and most free software with source code supported many Unix-like operating systems.  In our institute, we had access to HP-UX, SunOS 5, Solaris, IRIX, and SVR4.2, among others.  It was a lot of fun trying to make the GNU toolchain and compilers and libraries work on these varied Unix systems.

I remember that even in a limited operating system as MSDOS, we looked at almost all the system utilities and what they did and why and how.

Similarly, because the computers were much less powerful than those of today, it was both necessary and enjoyable to exploit whatever hardware capabilities were there.  With only 4MB of RAM, and 64MB hard disk, one had to be very efficient at storage and memory allocation.

That period set the tone for my professional career, as I, after a brief stint as a software engineer, veered back into system administration and network engineering.

...

When I look at the capabilities of computers and networks today, I find that there is nothing I cannot do or find anywhere in the world, but my curiosity in what I have already on my system is thereby much reduced.

The systems and software that I have on my personal computer are absolutely remarkable, and I sometimes mourn my disinclination to explore them more.

It is also true that systems have gotten more complex.  Tinkering with a simple engine is perhaps far more enjoyable than owning a complex piece of machinery which is more capable but less accepting of amateur exploration.

As an analogy for this situation, consider a man who lives in a village all his life.  He probably knows all the little ponds, the birds and their mating calls, he can identify cattle and horses, and he experiences life, dare I say, with more depth.  Each experience is deeper because of the familiarity one has with the context and the contents of that experience.

On the other hand, a man who has been given a boon to be teleported anywhere in the world will probably not find it easy to give deep attention to any one place, to any one thing, or to any one person.  He will always be going here and there, and it will be impossible for him to call any place home.  The attraction of novelty will not allow him to be bored, and boredom is, I think, essential to experiencing anything in depth.

The real learning starts when the novelty has worn off.  But if another novelty then takes its place, then the learning will remain facile.

The absence of boredom, and commitment, that an unlimited choice bestows on oneself is therefore a boon as well a curse.  It is the boon of freedom, and the curse of never delving into anything deeply.

In Defense of Cognitive Biases, contd.

Earlier essay: In Defense of Cognitive Biases.

Recently I came across this very good video on the cognitive bias related to "Loss Aversion".

A famous science popularizer asks many people whether they would take a bet with an expected return of $10, and many say "No".  He criticizes their bias, gently, but does not go into the value of having this bias.

Can this bias be explained?  Why does this bias exist?  What is the survival advantage in having this bias?

Let us ask the question in the video in another way so as to make it more obvious why the bias makes sense.

Let us assume, as is supremely reasonable and rational, that you value the life of your infant child.  Let us say a genie suddenly appears and offers you the following proposition:

If you toss your infant in the air, I offer you two possible outcomes: Your infant will die, or it will have double the lifespan that it is currently fated to have.

What would any normal individual do?  Of course they would choose to NOT participate in the bet at all.  The loss of their child is a far bigger tragedy than the joy at having the child live twice as long.

Survival is the prime directive.  For survival, avoiding situations which contain risk, pain and duress is important.  If you have a house, losing that house is going to have a drastic impact on your well-being, but being gifted another house is not going to matter as much.

Coming back to the offer in the video above, an individual has a certain amount of money.  They have that as an assurance that their immediate needs will be fulfilled, and that, as an example, they will be able to buy a bus ticket for back home, or have a meal.  They have sufficient money for that.

When offered a scenario in which they can lose that money, their loss aversion is rational, sensible and reasonable.  They have something to gain, but they were not counting on that gain, and they don't know what that gain will get them.  But they do know what that loss will mean to them.

And even if offered multiple chances to play the bet, with each bet having the expected value of $10 to them, a reasonable individual could still rationally refuse to play.  Why?  Consider that it is possible that you can lose the first few rounds and be down $40, and have no more money to play the game.  Yes, eventually you will come out a winner, but will you survive till then?

If you value your survival, and have a limited amount of resources -- and the limitation of resources is almost always a fact, and is hard-wired into our brain -- it is rational to avoid needless betting of your resources.

Most people choose safety, and wisely so, over speculation.

(And of course, the weird scenario of a stranger offering you an easy way to make money triggers the scam alert in our brain.  Instead of investigating the alert and marking it as a false positive, it is a good idea to ignore the scam altogether, especially if the scam scenario is not important to you.)

Music for the Spirit

When I was in college, I happened to pick up an audio cassette for the soundtrack of Chariots of Fire, composed by the recently departed Greek composer Vangelis.  I had no idea that that would be the start of a long joyous journey into music which calms and uplifts the spirit.

When I first came to the US, my roommate had a CD of Enya's The Memory of Trees, and listening to it on his Bose AM-10 speakers continues to be a fond memory.

I grew up in Punjab, an agricultural region not known for slow or lilting music.  I found Vangelis and Enya as I stepped out of Punjab, and on my long drives through deserts and canyons, their music was my friend.

Over the years, decades rather, I have had the great good fortune of being exposed to music which had Enya and Vangelis as the initial milestones.  In the late 90s and early 2000s, it was the other works of Vangelis and Enya, the Benedictine Monks, the Canadian singer Loreena McKennitt, the mix-and-mash of Enigma (which is retrospect I consider inferior in spirit) and Arvo Pärt.  And not to leave behind the music of India, some somber ragas sung by Pandit Jasraj and Kishori Amonkar.

Some of that music has stood the test of time, and is still very dear to me.

If you visit a great vista and are speechless at the sight of a mountain peak, that is alone, ancient and silent, you wish that those who you love also one day witness that glory.  Similarly, there is the desire to share a great composition with your friends.

Music these days is less "eternal".  Songs and compositions grow in popularity quickly, and then die of disinterest.  The market rules.  There is little patience in understanding and appreciating the nuances of a composition that has a certain mood and depth.

In recent times, music as therapy has caught on.  On YouTube, one finds 8 or 10-hour tracks of what they call "binaural beats", and thousands of renditions of ancient chants or prayers.  I am sure they help alleviate the stresses of modern life.

Just today, I have started listening to the the artist Chuck Wild's compositions in his "Liquid Mind" series, and that is a great introduction to this kind of music.

Rather strangely, I have not found it beneath me to admire, at times, what is otherwise called trance music.  That music is mostly electronic, and aimed at a young audience ready to party on the beach, but some of those compositions can, I believe, hold their own against a Pandit Jasraj.

Here are some tracks from the last few decades that I would love you to listen, and enjoy, and treasure:

Enya's Hope has a Place

Loreena McKennitt's The Mummer's Dance

Vangelis' Eric's Theme (from Chariots of Fire)

Vangelis' El Greco Movement I

Cliff Martinez' And Death Shall Have no Dominion (from Solaris)

Angelo Badalamenti's Mysteries of Love

Above and Beyond's Flow State & Sunshine in your Eyes

Joe Satriani's Rubina's Blue Sky Happiness

Mahakatha's Om Namaste Asatu

There are so many more, but I hope starting with these, you will find your own path in this kind of music.

The Wisdom of Suffering

This is in continuation of the last essay, Wisdom and Suffering.

People consider physical pain to be reasonable, but mental and emotional pain ("suffering") to be somehow "wrong".  The teaching of many a spiritual or spiritualist teacher is to move toward and eventually attain the "end of suffering".  That is misguided, to put it mildly.

To make this essay more interesting, let us annotate a particular expression of this teaching, as contained in "The two arrows - Pain and Suffering — ShamashAlidina.com".

You are walking in the woods and suddenly you get struck by an arrow (someone fires an arrow at you) and it hits your arm and it really, really hurts - it's very painful and you feel that physical pain in your arm, and it's bleeding. And then immediately your mind starts to think - "Oh my god, what's gonna happen? What if I bleed to death? What if this is infected and I can't walk back properly? Or I lose energy and I can't get back to my family? What's gonna happen to my family? What's gonna be happening to my husband / my wife / my children? What's gonna happen to me or what’s going to happen to their future, how will they be doing?”

Firstly, humans have the amazing capability to look beyond the immediate.  The physical pain is there.  But it would be infantile to just respond to that.  

To continue in the vein of the story, the thoughts of a reasonable man may be: Why did someone fire that arrow at me?  Should I protect myself from further arrows?  Is it possible that I need to seek medical attention?  Is this life-threatening?  If so, do I need to not just seek medical help, but also perhaps worry about my family?

Of course, one can be unreasonably scared, but the mind is hardly perfect.  It is perhaps only in hindsight that one can evaluate whether all the worry was justified or whether it was an overreaction.  With experience, one can learn to overreact less.

The Buddha describes the first arrow as the physical pain and the second arrow is what your mind does - it starts thinking about the worst scenario that can happen. And he says "be warned of the second arrow." 

What is wrong with what the mind does, the "second arrow"?  The mind is doing its job.  Trying to quickly and crudely respond to a threatening situation with a bumble of thoughts.  A trained soldier will respond less crudely, and perhaps know of tourniquets and how to camouflage himself to be safe from further attacks, etc., but a normal individual has no such training.  If in addition to a lack of proper training, one is foolish enough to be guided by the spiritualists to not engage the mind as it furiously scans the scenarios and possible outcomes, one is not likely to survive.

The mind evolved as a survival tool.  It is because of our mental prowess that we have been wildly successful in outclassing all other species on this planet.  Spiritualists are the sworn enemies of the mind and the intellect, because their goal is a thoughtless bliss, and not an increase in wisdom and understanding.

The first arrow is represents the pain - the actual physical pain, and the second arrow represents what you call suffering.  So we distinguish between pain and suffering. 

Mental processes are not per se, suffering.  They are the human response to a situation.  The mind utilizes its collection of learning and instincts to respond to a challenging situation.  These responses are usually far more optimal, but to give up on the mind is an even bigger mistake.  One can train the mind, but to be only in the "here and now" is an invitation to living as an animal or an infant.

Which worry is reasonable, and which worry is imaginary?  You cannot know except by experience.

Consider the response of the passengers in Flight 93 on Sep 11, 2001, a flight doomed to crash and kill them all.  They fully expect to die, and are faced with fear, and thoughts for their family.  Many of them called their loved ones on the phone to send a last message of love.  One can imagine some of them telling their wives of a document in their bedroom drawer which details the various bank accounts.  Would the Buddha have called his wife, if he was on Flight 93?

Pain is something that's inevitable, we all experience that. But the suffering is something that we actually create. But we don't realise that. 

Even pain is subjective, and is created because of a living being's response to a stimulus.  Similarly, our thoughts and worries are our responses to a situation.  This second category of response is not all fantasy.  Our thoughts and worries are usually reasonable.  Can they be unreasonable?  Sure.  

Even simple pain affects people to different degrees.  An infant screams and cries at hitting their toe, but an adult can usually act with more restraint.  Someone can enjoy a cold shower, while another may regard it as a cruel and unusual punishment.

There’s a sense of resistance to it - not accepting it, not allowing it to be there and accepting the reality of the situation. We fight with the reality of the way things are right now and so we turn the pain into suffering or we add suffering on top.

"Fighting with the reality of the way things are right now" is the very definition of life.  Only a stone does not fight.  The very process of survival is to manipulate the "reality".  One can, and would be wise to, accept things that one cannot change, but to accept everything "as it is" is supremely foolish.  As a rather crude example, if you feel a pressure in your bowels, you need to find the toilet, not just accept that pressure "as it is".  If you don't find a functioning toilet, you need to find a bush.  Not accept the absence of a toilet "as it is".  And once your bowels are emptied, you need to find a way to clean yourself, not accept the "reality of the way things are".

The more that you resist or deny or fight or argue with the pain- which is already there;, the more suffering  you experience.  

The fight with a pain is because we want to lessen it.  We fight it in many ways.  We try to find its cause, we try to soothe the injury, we try to find help, we try to protect ourselves from further injury, and so on.  "Pain" is the nerves' response to an unusual state, not conducive to one's well-being.  To just wish for the pain to go away is as childish as accepting it.  The mature response is to want to lessen it and to heal it.

That's a useful story to remember whenever you have any kind of difficult situation. It could be the difficult internal experiences - there could be a difficult emotions like sadness, or anxiety, or frustration, or anger, or it could be to do with difficult thoughts; it could be difficult sensations like literal physical pain or chronic pain. 

Consider a mother whose child has just passed away.  That mother feels immense sorrow.  We hope that her sorrow will lessen and heal with time.  

Should she, when she first receives the news, act as a robot, and process the news merely as a new factoid?

Her sorrow is in a way sacred to her.  It is the other side of her immense love for her child.  Someone who tells her not to feel sad will be called insensitive or worse.  The only way she can avoid that kind of sorrow is if she holds no love or affection for the child to begin with.  

For some mothers, the sorrow can be overwhelming, and they may think of ending their own lives.  But they rarely do.  And in such cases, where the emotional reaction has veered into dangerous territory, the community tries to help.  There are other mothers in the community who may have lost a child, and they know what the mother must be feeling.

Consider "difficult emotions" as first-order emotional responses to a situation.  The second-order response of an adult might be: "No I cannot accept that I am sad", or it can be "Why am I sad, why am I angry," etc., or it may be "I need to accept that I am sad".  It is generally therapeutic to accept the first order response but not to act unreasonably on it.  If one is angry, to accept that one is angry, but not act it out by breaking things in the house.  Even better, to figure out what the trigger was and whether it was reasonable to get angry and what can one do to fix the underlying situation.

"Anger" is a four-letter word on most spiritual paths.  "Anger" is a strong emotional disapproval of a situation and wanting to urgently do something to re-establish an agreeable or a fair state.  It may involve adrenaline and increased blood flow.  Spiritualists will likely say that it is never reasonable to get angry, or sad.  But if we consider anger and sadness as emotional responses to a situation (just like pain is a physical response, and thought and worry are mental responses), as an adult we will seek not to eliminate those emotions, but to act on them in fruitful ways and not in unwholesome ways.

Moreover, as I detailed in my essay on Suffering, affective reactions are "rough and ready" responses when a more considered solution is impractical.  An angry scream at someone bullying and beating a helpless kid is likely to be effective.

Similarly, on witnessing a poor woman being robbed of her savings by an unscrupulous criminal, or learning of how your tax dollars were diverted into the coffers of the corrupt, the emotion of anger is reasonable.  Hopefully, that anger translates into a useful course of action and not in a reckless one.

A man without emotional responses like sadness or anger, is likely also without affection for another human being, and lacking the instincts for justice and fairness.

Wisdom and Suffering

 After reading an old post about "Signs of Inner Growth", a friend asked:

I noticed that you did not mention "less suffering" as an outcome of increased wisdom. I am curious if it is because:

a. This is obvious to the extent of being tautological. 

b. Not a worthy goal to pursue

c. Wisdom is independent of reducing suffering

d. None of the above

It is a good question, and worthy of a nuanced response.

I have written earlier about suffering (and I recommend the reader go through that essay first), but let me address this pointed question here.

Suffering is essentially the recognition and response to a disagreeable state of affairs.  One's response to a disagreeable state can be a mix of physiological, intellectual or emotional/affective distress.  As long as one is alive, there will always be such states of affairs.

The state of affairs may pertain to a narrow realm: to one's health, financial security, or one's family.  Or it may be about a wider realm: about the poor, about the exploited orphans, and in general about the state of the world.

One's response is also not set in stone, and one can train oneself to be stronger (physically, intellectually and emotionally).  A physically stronger person will be able to endure a long walk while the same walk will cause distress in another.  An intellectual quandary or uncertainty (how to save taxes, how to prepare for retirement, how to shield one's children from unwholesome influences) can be distressing to someone without the inner or outer tools to resolve it.  And of course, there are degrees of emotional health.  One can be a reactive, short-tempered, angry individual, or one can be patient and empathetic.

Many forms of trainings are available to become stronger physically, intellectually or emotionally.

As one expands one's intellectual and emotional horizons, it is quite possible, nay, almost certain, that one realizes that one suffers more than before.  One may become more aware of others' suffering, one may realize alarming facts which are unknown to many, one may become more acutely conscious of the need to do something, one may form new goals which hold no charm for others.  "Ignorance is bliss" is indeed true in many ways.

A fit individual may decide to climb the north face of K2 and die doing so.

An intellectually advanced man may spend years and decades and die looking for a solution to whether P=NP.

An emotionally advanced individual may leave a well-paying job and spend years creating a new kind of painting or sculpture (as was depicted in Maugham's "Of Moon and Sixpence").

You may say that the artist suffered in a 9-5 job, and so his leaving his job is not really a sacrifice, that it is a reduction of his suffering.  That will be a simplistic reading of such a situation.  The artist is not looking to reduce his suffering, he is willing to suffer for something that is meaningful to him.  

Consider Buddha's leaving of his family.  Did that cause new kinds of suffering?  Was the Buddha assured of his goal when he left his palace?  Did he carefully weigh which path was less prone to future suffering, for himself or for his family, or for humanity?  

Or did he follow his instinct, and his prodigious passion, to do something that he felt was impossible in his palace.

There are many such Buddhas around us.  They sacrifice the popular and easy pleasures for the rare and long-winded ones.

To want to suffer less is natural, but it is not the goal of human life, as we observe humanity.  The quickest and most effective way to end suffering is to commit suicide, but we know that people live, and want to live.  They endure pain and suffering for achieving something that is meaningful to them.  A mother faces immense risk and pain to give birth to a child and to care for it, but the love for one's child (the bringer of suffering) is almost universal.  An inventor or an entrepreneur plunges himself into uncertainty and possible ridicule because of his ambition.

To avoid extreme suffering is essential to human growth, and a distinction has already been made between "distress" (harmful stress), and "eustress" (beneficial stress).

If you find yourself handicapped by your distress, by all means reduce it.  And use wholesome tools to do so (rather than tools which harm you in other ways).  And then move forward.  The goal is not to be free of distress.  That is just the beginning.

And similarly, it is noble and worthwhile to want to reduce others' distress so that they may also pursue their meaningful goals.

The goal is not merely to have a shiny, smoothly-running car.  That is just a prerequisite for your journey.  

The car is washed and serviced.  Where should you go?  There is no one answer.  The world is wide-open for you.

Similarly, once your mind is free from debilitating distress, that's when you can truly begin to evolve and achieve.

So what is the relationship between wisdom and suffering?  Wisdom is to understand things more deeply, and therefore, a wise man understands his suffering because he understands himself.  He may accept a disease, or being alone, or being poor, or the corruption in politics, in ways which seem inexplicable to others.

He could be immune to certain kinds of suffering, but he may choose other, new kinds of suffering in furtherance of goals that his wisdom has now revealed to him.