Who is the Man with the Name that Rhymes ?If the name don't rhyme it ain't mine.

I just finished reading an interesting book called The Logic of Life. Much in the same manner of Freakonomics, the book covers a number of various insights gathered from academics in the field of behavioral economics. The book does a good job of explaining some big concepts in the field without going into too much jargon. Like with Freakonomics and its summary of The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (argues that the significant drop in crime in the 90's was the result of Roe v. Wade), The Logic of Life contains bold and controversial views offered by economists' work over the years. 

Its expansive view attempts to explain many parts of life in terms of behavioral economics: prefrences for different types of sex, poker, marriage, office politics, city neighborhoods, racism in hiring prefrences, the growth of cities, politics, and the development of civilization. It definitely can be said that the book's information is more wide than deep. The author also admits various times that the views explained by behavioral economics are a simplified view the world; the goal is to create a simplied model of the world that can be used to gather data which then can be used to test against hypotheses. 

I liked the book for the interesting perspective it provided. Data in terms of numbers, if gathered correctly and accurately, can provide information that isn't distorted by perspective or bias. In reality, life is never as simple as some math formula; there are just too many things going on at once to make sense of everything. Sometimes we used intuitions to make sense of things. Other times, we can narrow our vision to gain insight on discrete details. It's difference between describing in words how gravity slows down a ball's ascent then forces to the Earth versus a mathematic equation that describes how the ball will move under certain circumstances. Same phenomena, just described differently.

It seems like all I ever blog about these days is odd-ball metaphysical, meta-cognition, arm chair philosphy stuff. As much as I love talking and writing about that, I'll change it up...This time, I'll start off with some candor about my life, ramble on about some other subject, then I'll blog about some odd-ball metaphysical stuff. Sounds good? Let's beginning.

This week was pretty good for the man with the name that rhymes. I finished a long standing project at the job. I'll spare people boring techno-babble, and just say it was a momentous effort that made various things easier (from a maintenance perspective), more secure, and, if I say so myself, a damn good professional job given the time crunch and a huge mix of various complex details of hardware and software. That might be over-simplifying but I'll leave it at that. So anyway, that means a lot of props for me at work, starting from my peers and all the way up the chain of command save for the C.E.O. So that's an ego booster.

I usually just nonchalantly ignore stuff like that at work; I'm always thinking about the next big thing, a project that will essentially be all the complex parts mentioned above but also something that will entail changing the work-flow of our software development. If I had to compare it to something tangible for my non-tech savvy readers, think about it as if I was designing an assembly line process. The only difference is the process isn't for manufacturing, it's for creating, testing, and deploying code or, in our case, web site/programs. It will employ not only a lot detailed, technical solutions, but also have to fit a natural work-flow for all the members of our team. It should be a fun challenge, and I look forward to starting it soon.

Amidst the props was a comment I found rather funny, someone called me a sarcastic beer-hunter. I think that was the term, I might be one word off...I imagine people take my sarcastic, sometimes irrated, sometimes nonchalant attitude offensively. It might be bordering on the anti-social if I said half the time I don't pay attention to my coworker's attitudes/feelings and that I don't care. That isn't true, of course, but that's sometime how I feel; it's the nature of how I work and how my brain works. When I'm thinking high level like that, I'm focusing completely on all the details and that's it. Therein lies my rub with having to work in a job focusing on computers; I love the challenges, but hate how anti-social & left-brain focused it makes my mind.

Following into the weekend was nice. It started off with celebrating a friend's birthday. The night was fun but it left me wore out for some odd reason. I didn't really party hard so it left me confused why I was so lethargic the next day. I chalked it up to all the things—the house, the car, work, etc— I have cooking at once and the stress I put on myself trying to balance it. So many details, so little time. That dragged me down for most of the Saturday until I finally made my way over for Harvest Homecoming. That picked me up for a while. A nice diversion in New Albany always helps until I have to come down and make my way back home. Sunday was a good day to rest in, take it easy, get some more things done around the house.

 As I mused about Sunday, I was thinking about something I wrote a while back, the 3 acts of life, and the start of my 2nd act. Memento Mori, the phrase and the short story I've mentioned a number times from this blog, is a sort of reoccurring theme here. Coming to terms with your own mortality is a tough subject. Some people sugar-coat it up to end, some never consider it until their blindsided by it, others ignore it until it smacks them in face. I like to take the rational approach; know that it's coming, prepare for it, kick back and enjoy the ride until it comes to a complete stop. Or as I often say...Life is an experience, not a race (and even if it was, you certainly wouldn't want to win it).

Enough dime-store philosophy though...I'm off to the next experience. Til the next episode...

I'm getting near 30 years old. It sure doesn't feel like it. My mind feels as sharp—no—actually more sharper than it's ever been. I'm more aware of who I am, what's going on, where I at, why I'm doing it, and how I'm going to do it, than I've ever been before. Maybe that's wisdom talking, or it's hubris; I leave it to the reader to decide that one.

Bodywise, I feel like I'm probably been in the best shape I've every been as well. That does come with some caveats however. My body is definitely slowing down, that's for sure. I don't feel it too often, because I've always caried myself about the same, using my body more for endurance than peak output. However, I've noticed the changes in my metabolism. I'm certainly not the drinker I used to be too. The weekend at Purdue a few weeks ago was great, but these days a night of heavy drinking will put me down for a day or so. Not that I really miss it though. I'd prefer my balance of smart/somewhat heavy drinking without getting stupid/forgetful drunk over heavy drinking; it's a better balance.

Getting back over to the world of the mind, I've noticed over the last few years I've been really able to really focus my thoughts to pinpoint percission. This has been incredibly helpful since I've taken on my various computer-related jobs (web, software developer, etc.) over the last few years. Especially since working with  modern computers, inherently multitasking machine these days, can be as distracting as it is productive. There's been a ton of news out there about how the brain isn't built for multitasking and it just makes us perform each task worse. Let's call it the mental equivalent of being a jack of all trades, master of none(thanks Wikipedia for more obscure knowledge!).

When dealing with computers, the more complex computer systems you have, the more chances occur for something to screw up. This also means while you try to fix things, you have more chances you'll be presented with false leads and dead ends. Thus, making all the more important you don't get distracted or lead off path with superfluous, or irrelevant, details. In order to achieve this hyper-focal thinking, I often have to mentally shut off my senses where I'm completely enveloped in one feeling, that of thought.

In this state, I try to jack into (I'm not one for cliche cyperpunk phrases but this is the best thing that comes to mind to describe it) the mind of the computer to understand what's going on, using a kind of theory of the mind for the computer brain. You see, computers are completely linear, left brain, thinking machines. While the complexities of computers make it seem, at face value, that they don't operate that way, but they do. Each action a computer takes is the result of some series of instructions, a script, an algorithm. If you can see the script, or source code, you can figure out what the computer is doing. This however is complicated by modern computers that have many different instructions going on in different places. You have to figure out what which scripts are interacting with which. It's not an easy task; it's near immpossible for the brain to conceptualize everything running on a modern computer at once, the best you can hope for is to minimize interactions and isolate different parts that are relevant to each so that you can gain insight on what's going on.

As useful and intersting as this sort of hyper-focal thinking is, I think it puts a toll on me. Not in the sense that it wears me out; mental exhaustion isn't something I feel too often unlike physical exhaustion. It's more about the consequences of thinking one particular way. It disorts my thinking, like I'm thinking in only in one dimension with the left side of my brain. That probably isn't completely true, but it feels like it sometimes. I don't think I'm a very fun person to be around when I'm in that perspective. I don't joke as much, I stick to whatever task I have at hand, and tend not to focus on the bigger picture. I could on about this particular topic, but I'm going to put it down for now. There's a lot of ideas & thoughts I've been sitting on for some time that is related to this. I'll revisit it sometime later.