Hey hey!
Back this week with 3 pieces for you.
Finding balance. Balance is elusive. There are long-term aspects and immediate aspects to be looked at. Signals are delayed. And yet, balance is important. What can we learn from how ecological balance works?
How do some people make things look easy? Is it just easy for them? Are they lucky?
On miracle diets and fixes, yet again. Coz it is always a question.
Let’s get to it.
Finding Balance and Pillaging the Earth
Earth 1.0
One of the chapters in Following Fish follows the story of the hilsa. Samanth's search for the best hilsa leads him to various eateries. Everyone has an opinion of the best hilsa, where to find it, how to cook it, etc. A section I found particularly interesting was the handed-down instruction of not fishing for the hilsa during the winter. Today's fishermen are of the opinion that the elders were lazy/idiots and that there is hilsa to in the winter.
Duh! Of course, it is there, you nitwit, until there's no hilsa in any season.
The human race, in its infancy, lived in ecological balance. The right balance between prey and predators. The right amount of fishing and layoff to allow the rejuvenation of the environment. The interplay between the Grizzly and the salmon, and how the Grizzly eats the salmon is vital for the continued ecological balance. There are thousands and thousands of beautiful balances at micro and macro levels.
Today, we are in a race to fuck up the Earth. And the plan is to get the fuck outta here before it becomes untenable.
How depressing and deplorable is that?
The human race seems to think it is the focal point of the story. The idea is to ensure that it survives. No one (country) seems to want to go first and take a stance - zero pollution, zero plastics, zero oil or zero whatever. Why? Coz someone else will overtake it. Classic game theory and well, the human condition playing out.
Earth 2.0
The solution touted is that we will zoom off into the stars and continue our story elsewhere. First up, does a civilisation that cannot take care of its home and other inhabitants deserve that kinda status? But that's also throwing the baby out with the bathwater - the human race has done some awesome shit.
The better solution might be to figure out the ecological balance on a planetary scale and get there. Let there be forests and lions and tigers. Let there not be humans everywhere. Let there be enough water for everyone and food. To get there, we need to think on a planetary scale, one would assume.
Since we cannot even stop wars from happening yet, the odds of an organisation/coalition forming and doing that are zero. If you haven't seen Don't Look Up, do check it out.
AlphaZero and AI
Watching and reading about AlphaZero and DeepMind let's one get carried away with the potential of a new overlord.
AlphaZero is an AI program that has learned to play chess at a level not seen before. Not only has it proven unbeatable by any human, but it has also beaten top chess programs. It is also playing chess in new ways, not conceived by human grandmasters.
The amazing thing is AlphaZero taught itself chess. Given the rules, it played against itself and figured the game out in a few hours. Of course, chess is 64 squares and limited pieces, and the universe of possibilities is mapped.
But, what if, we write smart AI programs which will write smart AI programs to govern the Earth. In my head, scenarios closer to that path seem to be the only possibility of Earth 1.0 recovering itself and not ending up in Wall-E like scenarios.
Making sense of my tangential thinking
Earlier in the week, I was speaking with 25-35 year-olds about why fitness needs to be fun and sustainable. The reason is simple - you have to do it for the long-term and the only way to do that is by looking forward to it.
One needs to be in balance. One needs to have good short-term effects, as well as learn to put aside instant gratification for the longer term. You need to do what you need to do, regardless of what your friends or family want to do. At the same time, you cannot be a recluse and reject society. Well, I guess you can if that's your balance point.
When you focus only on one aspect or metric, you lose sight of the whole picture. In the past 100-ish years, from the Industrial Revolution, the human race has been caught up in its own bullshit and pillaging the planet and going forward. Is forward at any cost moving forward at all?
Likewise, is working unreasonable hours with stupid stress the right thing to do? Putting aside your instant gratification for a better tomorrow. Or to live as if today's the last and to heck with tomorrow.
Balance. Whatever that means.
It means everything.
Making it look easy
You know how some people make things look so easy. They seem to have all the time in the world to socialise and party. They seem to have ample time to watch TV and the latest shows. And they are on point with their work as well.
Nothing is easy.
They work on it.
They work on it primarily with two methods. One, the things they are not doing is everything else. They are not wasting their time on things they do not want to do, nor are they trying to do everything. It just looks that way to us. Two, they work on it! Actively.
To us, we see only the end product and it looks pretty easy.
It is not impossible, of course. It is not easy.
Why that person’s miracle diet didn’t work for you
You hear this all the time. Especially today, coz apparently this is news. See how this person miraculously lost weight. It immediately makes you wanna drop everything you are doing and do that thing. Coz what you are doing is too hard or not working or not working fast enough or coz you have the attention span of a Golden Retriever in a squirrel park.
You are looking for something. You want social proof. The objective thinker, the "Show me the facts" person in you might not fall for it. But we all have moments of weakness and send that fellow away to the back room.
Well, it doesn't work. Of course, it doesn't.
Or worse yet, it works. And you think that was the right thing to do.
It could simply be that your dedication and consistency helped. Going from eating 3 candy bars a day to 1 might be all the change you need to make. In 2 months, that will add to significant weight loss, all else being equal.
Deal with the uncomfortable but important lesson that there's no secret. There's no magic.
There is only consistent hard work.
Sure, there are quite a few intricacies in the science but for 80% of it, the 20% you need to know and do are the same.
Don't be scammed.
Re-align. Do the work!
And that’s it from me this week. Thank you for your time, and I’ll see you right here next weekend.
April 10, 2022