I have never known precisely what moment I might die. There has been times when I knew it was drawing closer than at others. For the most part subjective life is book-ended between a definite moment of birth and a moment of death that lies in the indefinite future. By that accounting I am now starting out on my third life. There has been two times in my life when death approached me closely and relentlessly - then relented. (That does not count all the foolish high-jinks of my youth.)
Both times I consented to take the actions needed to ward off my fate, although not without thought. Each time there was a price. It was a much higher price the second time. I firmly believe that there are some things worse than dying. The bargain I made with myself in 2018 involves accomplishing a great deal in the duration of whatever reprieve I receive. It may be that that is worse than dying, nor is that the total price I paid.
There are probably half a dozen projects that I would like to accomplish. If I do not say what they are then it is only up to me to beat me on, to apply guilt - whatever it takes to get me up in the morning, to make me productive. Some scientists working on the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" deny that there is a problem ("it's all in your head and therefore irrelevant"). I like Marcus Aurelius and was reminded of that when I saw this article:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/05/20/marcus-aurelius-meditations-mortality-presence/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Fair warning: there are ads in this series of "messages from God".
The Buddhists seem to agree with the "it's all in your head" school of thought. I think that getting on the hamster wheel of the mind ultimately leads to this conclusion. Pure objectivity is so much more appealing and beautiful than accommodating a model of mind that might lead one into empathy, resonance, and eventually the likelihood of crucifixion.
No matter how hard we try we all fall short of the infinite glory of God. It does not matter whether our sin is anosognosia, solipsism, or malice. Naturally the list of sins is not complete (not even the eight deadly sins). We must also recall the "sins of the fathers" and "original sin", which we can now safely identify as at least partially genetic. It is (for me) an open question whether we can be absolved of the genetic component of our sins. Christian thought holds otherwise, yet not absolutely since Jesus died for our sins.
In religion, symbolism IS reality. In the mind, symbolism is meaning, which is the only reality. (This is not the solipsism of the self/ego, but it comes close.) I once wrote that meaning is a relationship between truth and ontology. What could that possibly mean?
Well, back to work.
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Candidate Music for Bob's Memorial
Nothing really deep here. Poor Wayfaring Stranger may be the best choice.
Topology 10 with Howard Schwartz
Being kind is not particularly easy, especially when the object of my kindness turns out to be me. Still, I will say the kind thing. I have always been a dilettante, a dabbler pursuing all the interests that I ever felt without much method. Sometimes, even the smallest amount of dabbling, however, can have a lifelong impact and a deeper understanding of the world.
As a sophomore at UCSD I was hanging out with my roommates looking at potential class schedules for the upcoming quarter when Howie Schwartz discovered the Topology 10 class. I had read the usual topological conundrums about the difficulties of turning a doughnut (or a coffee cup) inside out. I thought that I was clever. It fit a gap in our schedules and it looked like it would be fun without being too challenging. Howie and I signed up.
The instructor had a lot of doubts. Howie and I were pretty far out of our depth. Topology is the sort of math that requires a special combination of in-depth mathematical expertise and geometric intuition. It is as advanced as any branch of mathematics out there and ordinary human beings need every advantage to begin to grasp what is going on. The instructor was not sure that he would even be able to bring a few basic concepts down to our level. The whole class was like an experiment for reasons of his own. We had a lot of fun and we laughed a lot. At one point I acquired an old inner tube and conducted a practical demonstration of what happens when a doughnut is turned inside out.
One fundamental principle is "continuous mapping", i.e. without discontinuities. Is this even relevant to anything at all? It is pretty obvious that any wormhole in space is a topological analogue of a doughnut. A wormhole cannot be continuously mapped to a standard Euclidean flat space, or even a space with a simple curve mapped to it. I cannot go into a lot of detail about this partly due to my ignorance and also due to a lack of space for the little bullshit that I do know.
My little piece of bullshit pops out at strange moments, like when I realized that it is perfectly possible to map an infinite volume into a finite volume [of space]. Is it cheating to use a hyperbolic function? Probably, but I am not operating within a rigorous system here. I live in a world of wonder where wiser and more boring minds prevail. The real point may be that when volumes are remapped and distorted the passage of time is also remapped and distorted. I sometimes see evidence among some science writers that the consequences of this are not well appreciated.
"So time, space, and energy remain these three; but the most poignant of these is time."
There is more than one way to silence someone. There is the actual physical inability to communicate. There is the understanding that what one has to say is totally lacking in interest to the audience. There is the need for decorum/discretion. There is the consciousness that what one has to say will do far more damage than could ever be justified by speaking out. I have spent my whole life not saying much about my work at Boeing. My theories about reality are pretty much equally unwelcome. The majority of the people I have known now exist in little hidden pockets of random memory within me.
Out of kindness, I avoid all expressions of despair. Little by little over the years I have developed a mild form of Tourette Syndrome. My usual vocal tic is a small cry of angst. I started out trying to hide it, but now it is evident. It is always triggered by a memory - a different memory every time. Each little squeak amounts to a digression from what is going on around me. My mind spans the immensity of physical space and all of eternity, yet it is focused on my own tiny little inconsequential life. Sometime the tic reaches intelligibility: a cry for release. Then the "voice within" silences me and soothes with the words "Soon enough, Bob. Soon enough."
I can be patient. I can be kind. I can wait with my hands folded and a small smile on my lips. There is no balm for my wounds, none for which I would pay the price. Why do I cling to the tokens of cause and effect so tightly? Why do I care about "meaning"?
As a sophomore at UCSD I was hanging out with my roommates looking at potential class schedules for the upcoming quarter when Howie Schwartz discovered the Topology 10 class. I had read the usual topological conundrums about the difficulties of turning a doughnut (or a coffee cup) inside out. I thought that I was clever. It fit a gap in our schedules and it looked like it would be fun without being too challenging. Howie and I signed up.
 | |
| One of these people may have been my topology professor. Every one of these people had a story and a life. |
One fundamental principle is "continuous mapping", i.e. without discontinuities. Is this even relevant to anything at all? It is pretty obvious that any wormhole in space is a topological analogue of a doughnut. A wormhole cannot be continuously mapped to a standard Euclidean flat space, or even a space with a simple curve mapped to it. I cannot go into a lot of detail about this partly due to my ignorance and also due to a lack of space for the little bullshit that I do know.
My little piece of bullshit pops out at strange moments, like when I realized that it is perfectly possible to map an infinite volume into a finite volume [of space]. Is it cheating to use a hyperbolic function? Probably, but I am not operating within a rigorous system here. I live in a world of wonder where wiser and more boring minds prevail. The real point may be that when volumes are remapped and distorted the passage of time is also remapped and distorted. I sometimes see evidence among some science writers that the consequences of this are not well appreciated.
"So time, space, and energy remain these three; but the most poignant of these is time."
There is more than one way to silence someone. There is the actual physical inability to communicate. There is the understanding that what one has to say is totally lacking in interest to the audience. There is the need for decorum/discretion. There is the consciousness that what one has to say will do far more damage than could ever be justified by speaking out. I have spent my whole life not saying much about my work at Boeing. My theories about reality are pretty much equally unwelcome. The majority of the people I have known now exist in little hidden pockets of random memory within me.
Out of kindness, I avoid all expressions of despair. Little by little over the years I have developed a mild form of Tourette Syndrome. My usual vocal tic is a small cry of angst. I started out trying to hide it, but now it is evident. It is always triggered by a memory - a different memory every time. Each little squeak amounts to a digression from what is going on around me. My mind spans the immensity of physical space and all of eternity, yet it is focused on my own tiny little inconsequential life. Sometime the tic reaches intelligibility: a cry for release. Then the "voice within" silences me and soothes with the words "Soon enough, Bob. Soon enough."
I can be patient. I can be kind. I can wait with my hands folded and a small smile on my lips. There is no balm for my wounds, none for which I would pay the price. Why do I cling to the tokens of cause and effect so tightly? Why do I care about "meaning"?
Individual Agency
Let us assume that I wish to live forever. This really is a somewhat baseless assumption since I have thought about this and read about this from a variety of angles, including the religious angle. Still, let us make the assumption. Is it possible that eternal (or even mortal) life might not be worth living?
This question has been raised many times, from Hamlet's soliloquy to the many religious visions of hell. We may be approaching a time when we would be able to challenge the aeons on our own terms. That too raises the same question, and several dozen more about continuity of identity. In other words, if every single element of one's existence has been changed or rendered only by equivalence, can we even claim to be the same person? Would we even want such an existence? What is the danger that we would come to represent some agency that is antithetical to who we started out to be?
My view is that the tides and fluxes of life are impossible in the static perfection of eternal paradise. Nor are we allowed (biblically) even the least vision of that "afterlife".
If I were to choose to live on indefinitely, what would be the bare essentials of my identity that I would mandate? It would seem that my bladder is not on the list. There is an extensive list of other bodily organs that are not on the list. Sexual function is also on the chopping block. That is a huge blow for me.
What is left? What I want is the opportunity to contribute to something of substance that is much greater than myself. I do not ask to be allowed to fix/save the world, although I would instantaneously sacrifice everything for that opportunity. I am content to make my corner of the world a little more happy, a little more beautiful.
Since that is the greatest expression of my "individual agency", it turns out that everything is on the chopping block, including my mind and my personal well-being, so long as the sacrifice does not threaten my ultimate goals. Every achievement or salvation has a greater or lesser price. So we find ourselves shopping in the Department Store of Heart's Desire - a marketplace.
I knew someone at work who was deeply involved in a religious organization. At some point he mentioned that his goal was "salvation". I was so stupid as to ask what he wanted to save. The answer, of course, was himself. That seemed pointless to me. Is it even possible to save oneself by starting out with the goal of saving oneself? What about our loved ones? Can our lives have any meaning independently from the meanings in the world around us?
I see my error. I am assuming that salvation has something to do with meaning. I am assuming that if your life is meaningless nothing will change if you never existed. Furthermore, I am assuming that meaning has something to do with the world. I tend to believe that if a meaning is not written in the world's story, then it does not exist.
I suppose that implies (means) that I am starkly materialist - in my funny spiritual way. So if salvation has nothing to do with meaning, as in the meaning of your actions or at least the meaning of your faith, what is the point (meaning) of all these self-improvement exercises? There I go again. For me it all comes back to "meaning" and especially the meanings, from a physical point of view, in the world around us. The perception of truth... The perception of beauty.
42: The answer to life, the universe and everything (*)
Michele's Memorial
In 2018 my cousin Michele MacKinnon Elliott died and a significant part of that side of the family gathered for the memorial service and a social gathering at her daughter's house in northeast Portland, Oregon. During the service various musical selections were played, some of which raised questions in our (Barb's and my) minds. "The Pretender" by Jackson Brown was the most interesting but it turned out to be a favorite of her husband, maybe. I liked "Sweet Caroline", especially when many of those present joined in and sang along for the refrain.
As I now re-listen to "The Pretender" I realize how appropriate it is for a memorial service, especially the opening lyrics. Then I see the second cut on the album, parts of which is the actual version we heard at the service. Both cuts together are the music one only hears with the album at home - never on the radio and certainly never at the memorial service. I could see and feel the pain in her husband at the memorial reception. We carry on but the pain remains.
I loved Michele among the people of this world and among my cousins. Not inappropriately, of course, but as someone who was a pillar in her universe and who certainly never deserved to live as hard a life as she had. I had a special bond with her since we shared a love of books and my love of books was sufficiently indiscriminate to include the romance novels that were her favorites. I can remember knocking off a couple of her romance novels at Crooked River during the time we spent there. Her mother made a point of having me join them more than once on those weekend trips to their cabin at Crooked River.
I can see her in both of her daughters, each in a different way.
Memories...
I could write endlessly about her life and how she was related to me and how I saw her. Much of the relevance of that falls away with the death of her parents and the lessening of the common roots reaching back to Hopkinton, MA. The relevance remains for me but the people reading this blog entry are unlikely to care.
As I now re-listen to "The Pretender" I realize how appropriate it is for a memorial service, especially the opening lyrics. Then I see the second cut on the album, parts of which is the actual version we heard at the service. Both cuts together are the music one only hears with the album at home - never on the radio and certainly never at the memorial service. I could see and feel the pain in her husband at the memorial reception. We carry on but the pain remains.
I loved Michele among the people of this world and among my cousins. Not inappropriately, of course, but as someone who was a pillar in her universe and who certainly never deserved to live as hard a life as she had. I had a special bond with her since we shared a love of books and my love of books was sufficiently indiscriminate to include the romance novels that were her favorites. I can remember knocking off a couple of her romance novels at Crooked River during the time we spent there. Her mother made a point of having me join them more than once on those weekend trips to their cabin at Crooked River.
I can see her in both of her daughters, each in a different way.
Memories...
I could write endlessly about her life and how she was related to me and how I saw her. Much of the relevance of that falls away with the death of her parents and the lessening of the common roots reaching back to Hopkinton, MA. The relevance remains for me but the people reading this blog entry are unlikely to care.
Monday, February 4, 2019
Preparing for Surgery
On January 2nd I went into the University of Washington Medical Center to catastrophically change my life forever. This is not the first time that I have seen changes in my life in such "earth shattering" terms. When I was about six years old medical authorities dragged little Bobby Dunning kicking and screaming from behind a door at the clinic at Barber's Point in Hawaii in order to give him a polio shot. There would not have been such a team of thugs this time to rescue me from myself. Nor did I hide screaming behind a door. The "animal" is not allowed to prevail much in the person that I have become during the sixty-five years since we all lived in Hawaii.
The night before, Barb and I rented a room in a hotel in the "University District" so that we would not face a long drive in traffic on the morning of January 2nd. It turned out that there probably would not have been much traffic because they told the patient to deliver the victim to the facility at 6:30 AM. Lately, I have repeatedly been delivering the victim to various facilities for medical procedures that undermine his health under the theory that the eventual results will be much better. I lay in a bed at the Valley Medical Infusion Center sixteen times while they infused poisons into my veins. There were two other procedures where I lay on a table while teams of experts performed amazing techniques on my body. I am not retired anymore. My career is now medicine.
So Barb and I went to the "Surgery Pavilion" at the UW Medical Center where we were soon ushered into a small cubicle. I was told to remove all my clothes, put on the usual (maximum access) hospital gown and make myself comfortable on the little rolling bed. There I presided over a parade of professionals asking questions and otherwise preparing me for the events of the day. This was not to be considered a minor or even a medium difficulty surgery. I have been informed that it is a technical "tour de force". It takes a very long time, a long working day starting at 8:30 AM.
Two anesthesiologists came in to install an epidural for purposes of controlling pain after the surgery. They had me sit on the edge of the bed and poked me with (local anesthesia) needles as they probed between the vertebrae in my back and ran a tube into the epidural space in my spinal column. I only felt one minor tickle/twinge as they did it.
Later, after the surgery, this was where opioids were infused whenever I pushed a button. I stashed the button and its cable in one of the convenient (maximum access) holes in the chest of my gown. After a few days of rolling around in the hospital bed after surgery the epidural tube came loose and they had to switch back to infusing me with analgesics via an IV. I still had the "port" in my chest, I still have the port in my chest, so they were able to eliminate some IVs and use that device instead while I was in the hospital.
There was more discomfort from itchiness with the epidural than with the IV drugs. The IV drugs I thought were more effective. I also got the feeling that the pain doctors were feeling their way with the dosages on the epidural. I did not experience a lot of pain after the surgery. The worst pain that I can remember felt like gas in my intestines, but they really messed with my intestines so it may have been something other than gas. It is not the missing organs that hurt.
Then Dr. Dash came in with a young man he identified as his "physician's assistant" (with all the correct praise for said person's skills.) They informed me that they were going to use robots to perform the surgery. My faith in technology is such that suddenly I felt much safer going into this procedure. The doctor left and I was shortly afterward rolled down the hallway trailing after them. Barb kissed me goodbye with a surprising intensity before they rolled the bed out of the room. As we rolled down the hallway, I asked the attendant how many operating rooms they had at the UW Medical Center and was suitably astounded by the answer. She also mentioned the number of hospital beds (570). Big Bob had little Bob firmly by the hand as we rolled into the operating room. The sedatives probably helped too.
The operating room was relatively large with a large number of people standing around in it. I mumbled something about robots and they agreed and pointed at huge silvery machines mounted in various corners of the ceiling of the operating room. They said that Dr. Dash would be at the controls and I tried to visual the console and the command and control system involved. It would seem, however, that I was not there for a guided tour of the premises. Things started moving quickly. There is a discontinuity in my stream of consciousness after that.
next: five days in bed at the hospital.
The night before, Barb and I rented a room in a hotel in the "University District" so that we would not face a long drive in traffic on the morning of January 2nd. It turned out that there probably would not have been much traffic because they told the patient to deliver the victim to the facility at 6:30 AM. Lately, I have repeatedly been delivering the victim to various facilities for medical procedures that undermine his health under the theory that the eventual results will be much better. I lay in a bed at the Valley Medical Infusion Center sixteen times while they infused poisons into my veins. There were two other procedures where I lay on a table while teams of experts performed amazing techniques on my body. I am not retired anymore. My career is now medicine.
So Barb and I went to the "Surgery Pavilion" at the UW Medical Center where we were soon ushered into a small cubicle. I was told to remove all my clothes, put on the usual (maximum access) hospital gown and make myself comfortable on the little rolling bed. There I presided over a parade of professionals asking questions and otherwise preparing me for the events of the day. This was not to be considered a minor or even a medium difficulty surgery. I have been informed that it is a technical "tour de force". It takes a very long time, a long working day starting at 8:30 AM.
Two anesthesiologists came in to install an epidural for purposes of controlling pain after the surgery. They had me sit on the edge of the bed and poked me with (local anesthesia) needles as they probed between the vertebrae in my back and ran a tube into the epidural space in my spinal column. I only felt one minor tickle/twinge as they did it.
Later, after the surgery, this was where opioids were infused whenever I pushed a button. I stashed the button and its cable in one of the convenient (maximum access) holes in the chest of my gown. After a few days of rolling around in the hospital bed after surgery the epidural tube came loose and they had to switch back to infusing me with analgesics via an IV. I still had the "port" in my chest, I still have the port in my chest, so they were able to eliminate some IVs and use that device instead while I was in the hospital.
There was more discomfort from itchiness with the epidural than with the IV drugs. The IV drugs I thought were more effective. I also got the feeling that the pain doctors were feeling their way with the dosages on the epidural. I did not experience a lot of pain after the surgery. The worst pain that I can remember felt like gas in my intestines, but they really messed with my intestines so it may have been something other than gas. It is not the missing organs that hurt.
Then Dr. Dash came in with a young man he identified as his "physician's assistant" (with all the correct praise for said person's skills.) They informed me that they were going to use robots to perform the surgery. My faith in technology is such that suddenly I felt much safer going into this procedure. The doctor left and I was shortly afterward rolled down the hallway trailing after them. Barb kissed me goodbye with a surprising intensity before they rolled the bed out of the room. As we rolled down the hallway, I asked the attendant how many operating rooms they had at the UW Medical Center and was suitably astounded by the answer. She also mentioned the number of hospital beds (570). Big Bob had little Bob firmly by the hand as we rolled into the operating room. The sedatives probably helped too.
The operating room was relatively large with a large number of people standing around in it. I mumbled something about robots and they agreed and pointed at huge silvery machines mounted in various corners of the ceiling of the operating room. They said that Dr. Dash would be at the controls and I tried to visual the console and the command and control system involved. It would seem, however, that I was not there for a guided tour of the premises. Things started moving quickly. There is a discontinuity in my stream of consciousness after that.
next: five days in bed at the hospital.
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