The Missing Arrows

How to read a model chart

What is the problem with this picture?

First some translation. "Hållbarhet" means Sustainability. The other circles say, in clockwise order, "economical", "technological", "cultural", and "social". The boxes say, in clockwise order, "values", "knowledge", "skills", "ecological method".

The graph is a mess. Can we be specific about why it is a mess? First, there is a feeling of confusion. How is this to be interpreted? Are the "values" only related to "economy" and "technology", and not to "sociality" and "culture"? That seems like an odd point to make. And "skills" is not linked to "technology". My dominant hypothesis is that the words in the boxes have been thrown in at random.

Second, the what do we learn from this? We learn that Sustainability affects the Economy, and that the Economy affects Sustainability. Okay? And not only that: Sustainability affects all the other circles, and is in turn affected by all of them. All the arrows are also the same size, so all the interaction are given equal importance. What does it even mean to say that Sustainability affects Culture? The graph leaves this as an exercise to the reader. The cooperative reader will certainly come up with some interaction and be content. What has the cooperative reader learnt? To fantasize.

The problem with the graph is that everything affects everything. Any experience or observation that the reader has about an interaction between two of these concepts will fit into the model. The reader will not reject the graph based on experiment: it permits everything.

When reading a chart, pay attention to which arrows are missing. The missing arrows are what make the actual claims. In science, a model with many nodes and few arrows eliminate a large part of the hypotheses, which make for more powerful predictions. In engineering, a design with few interactions between different parts makes for a system that is easier to maintain and modify.

An example of a good model with only a couple of clear interactions is the Central Dogma of molecular biology:

The central dogma of molecular biology

What claim is made here? That DNA does not produce proteins directly, but that the information goes via RNA first. It also claims that information is never added to DNA, except at replication. Another claim is that RNA and proteins do not replicate.

The extended central dogma.

This model was falsified by experiment. It turns out that RNA sometimes does replicate by itself. And also that RNA can sometimes write to DNA. Perhaps not the way a human engineer would have done it, but we want to describe nature well, so the arrows have to be added.

How to start the scientific revolution

The enlightenment was about striking arrows, not adding them. Striking the arrow from morality to disease was the foundation of medicine. Striking the arrow from planetary movements and theology to the outcome of games of chance was the foundation of the mathematics of probability. Striking the "transmutation" arrows from elements to other elements was the foundation of chemistry. Striking the arrows between human relationships and financial transactions was the foundation of economics, a less successful example.

How to use your time with an expert efficiently

Geology - always lower = older?
(suppose we chance upon a geologist)

Astronomy - assume that stars will move in a strictly periodic pattern? This is what tells planets apart.

Demography - humans are born, grow up, have children, and die - in a quite predictable pattern!

Ecology - what species do not interact directly?


How to ask questions in order to find out these hidden reductionist assumptions in different fields? [1] First of all, we should find out whether this field and this person is actually committed to being consistent. If the field makes no solid predictions and the person is agreeable, then we should be able to make them agree to pretty much any absurd hypothesis. If the field makes no predictions and the person is disagreeable, then we are dealing with a game of Mao. Mao is a card game where the rules are being made up on the fly by the game leader, the chairman. The chairman punishes transgressions of rules that have never been spoken. The disagreeable but scientifically empty field is just politics and fashion. The fiercest players win, instead of the most correct hypotheses. So as a way of finding out the truth, it serves no purpose.

Suppose now that we have good reason for believing that our expert will not agree to anything, but will also not discard our arguments simply on the basis of coming from an outsider. So the expert will treat our arguments skeptically but charitably. Now we have the basis for actually exchanging knowledge. How should we proceed to find the reductionist assumptions in the field? The problem is that these assumptions may not be so conscious for the expert. It does also not make for interesting conversation to simply ask directly "what are the hidden reductionist assumptions in your field?". One thereby misses a chance to prove to the expert that one is worthy of their best response. A clever person finds a way to find out the hidden assumptions with questions that seem to be leading a different way at first.


[1] Why even ask a person at all? Why can't we google it? This is the type of thing that is typically hard to find in written sources. Another problem is that before knowing a subject's hidden reductionist assumptions, basically nothing one reads within the subject makes deep sense.

Fragment of a sejour: Sunday in September

What did I do on the 22nd of September? This was representative of the Sundays in September and October.

This was the second Sunday after E had come. He was very tired from his first work week. We both woke up at 08 and had a very pleasant breakfast talk for an hour. I lectured about Borges, since he had read his first Borges fiction a day earlier. At 09 we got ready for church. I dressed quite seriously, he more casually. We went to the evangelical church in Stern. The day's service was held by the children's group, so the church was very full with parents and relatives. The children performed several songs and I wept quite much, for it was so touching.

On the way back home, we bought chocolate croissants. Regular shops are not allowed to be open on Sundays in Germany, but bakeries can stay open until noon. Restaurants can stay open all day. We had lunch at a restaurant near our room. We were both feeling very enthusiastic about our new country at the time, so we ordered two schnitzels and two tall glasses of wheat beer.

In the early afternoon I studied German for a couple of hours, in preparation for a rendez-vous with miss S at 15. I arrived punctually, she arrived 5 minutes late. Arriving late is acceptable on Sundays, for the same reason that having a clock on a wall inside a church sermon room would be wrong. Precise timekeeping should not be done on the holy day. We met at the Brandenburger Tor, the smaller one in Potsdam. We spent a bit more than two hours walking in Sanssouci park. The first thing that happened was that she managed to pay for my coffee. Luckily, I got an opportunity to buy entrance for both of us to the Chinese Tea House. I found the depicted Chinese in the tea house to be quite amusing, because they looked so much like Europeans wearing long mustaches. The painter had probably not seen many Asians.

The park Sanssouci was overall very beautiful. I felt blessed to live in a city where entrance to such a place with such palaces was free. In an average other city, it would have set you back at least 10 euros. Miss S had lived in Sweden for a number of years, so we talked about that and I prodded her for differences between Swedish and German music, which seemed to be our greatest common interest. We said goodbye in a friendly way and I believed we would meet again, but we never got around to it.

10 minutes after saying goodbye to miss S, was my appointed time with the afternoon's second date: miss B. Miss B was quite late however. She hadn't confirmed the appointment by text on the day (which means one may intend to flake), but she answered the phone when I called and got on her bike. E met up with us as well, and the three of us had a very good chemistry right away. She was very cheerful and immediately chummy, nudging my arm several times when making a joke about me. We had dinner at an Asian place, being served in very large bowls. The outdoor space was crammed with guests, but we got our own table. I got praise from E and B for pronouncing "check, please" very well in German. E was in a very good mood when biking back to Babelsberg. We became friends with miss B, and met with her on several occasions until the end of October.

Fragment of a sejour: Friday in December

What did I do on my last Friday in Potsdam? This was a representative day for the period mid-November to mid-December.

I spent the morning on distractions. I woke up at 10 with a warm feeling after having had a long, sorrow-free dream about miss L. I laid in bed for a few minutes wondering about the reason for such a dream. Could it be the plans of moving to Stockholm? After a while, I realized that it must have been that a conversation with miss H the previous night had steered into the importance of human touch for well-being, which had evoked a tender memory. My current model for dreams at the time was that the purpose of dreams is to get experience of one's reactions to / preferences for events that happen too rarely in real life for a normal person to accumulate much experience with, but are nonetheless important act throughout as if one had a lot of experience. A consequence is that it is important to not be aware that one is dreaming: otherwise, one's reactions are not authentic. This dream in particular helped remind me about the caring feelings one can experience in a long term relationship.

Checking my messages out of bed, my friends were discussing the night's election results in the UK. The conservative party had won by a landslide. I had only a vague memory from two months earlier that there was going to be an election at all. My reaction was that it was refreshing that an election settled a clear winner, for once. The conservative victory meant that Brexit most likely would have gone through by the time I got around to moving to London. This was expected anyway.

The following 2 hours, I went back-and-forth a bit with a man in Jerusalem about morality and game theory. I re-read Taleb's Minority Rule, and paid much better attention to the examples than before. I decided to put Feynman's What do you care what other people think? on my reading list. I also kept up some threads with the guys back at the office about a proposal.

At noon, I called K to ask him for a favor regarding a room, and we ended up talking throughout the lunch hour about the recent PISA results. I also told him about my observation about cartographers (aesthetically minded people with no tolerance for bogus), and about my AI Alignment thought experiment (if humans had been created by ants, what would they ask us to do, and should we listen?). We also touched upon institutional rot (which was rule), and had a good flow of ideas about current day things that would be horrifying weirdtopia to an observer from antiquity. It was a very pleasant talk, and well worth the hour.

At 13:30, I went to the usual Indian restaurant. I ordered the same thing as always, and had a good dinner where I thought of the idea for this post. I said Happy Christmas to the waiter when leaving, thinking that symmetrically,  I would not object to holiday greetings if living in another country, even if they pertained to a different religion. Afterwards, I took only a short walk through Weberplatz. The weather was clear and well cold.

Coming back in the afternoon, two choices for the day's work presented themselves. Either I could do work to learn more about nonlinear solvers, and to continue my survey of commercially available solvers. Or I could do my own studies and learn more about symbolic manipulators from chapter 2.3 of Knuth's TAOCP. In the latter, I was on the precipice of finding out, through practical exercise, the principles of mathematical engines. Both were long standing wishes of mine. To have two interesting prospects for one's curiosity, is actually worse than having one. I decided to go with the letter, since I had worked on that the day before. Thus I broke my habit of working on the survey on Fridays. It is said that any art, however minor, requires nothing less than total commitment to it, if one wishes to excel in it. I take 'total devotion' to mean devoting about 12 hours of work 6 days a week, as well as softer things like thinking about the art in one's downtime, and to make it a part of one's identity. I reproached myself for devoting only 3 hours of this day to advancing my knowledge of my subject, however I noted that it was better than nothing at all. At any rate, there seemed to be no better activity with which to consume the cream of the afternoon.

The working time did not go well. Due to lack of concentration, I was not able to get past the initial phase of devising a strategy, and coming up with suitable representations, classifications, and definitions. Therefore could not start coding. At 18:20, when E came back home, I gave up and started preparing for the evening's social event at C & R's place. I crummily wrapped a Christmas present to C, and took the bike.

From Babelsberg I took the shortcut through Südliche Innenstadt (which is kind of dodgy). I crossed Havel and got a good speed along Bundenstrasse, turning left at an appropriate red light, to get to Charlottenhof. I arrived punctually at 19:30, and so did most of the other guests. Lovely people, Germans. The others seemed to know each other somewhat, but one girl, miss J, had arrived alone and was new in the city. She spoke quite good English and was on a rather prestigious track for her age. However, she was not in a domain that interested me, so I didn't start to fantasize. She became the center of attention for the first round of Glühwein and I listened intently to her, grasping as much German as I could. She seemed to notice my attentions and started asking me questions. I answered smilingly but quite shortly in English, so as to get past the standard set of questions to see if she was going to try something. In the fourth or fifth question she asked "for how long are you in the city?". If we consider that this is conversation between ESL speakers, this phrase can be interpreted as either "How long will you stay in the city for?", or "How long have you been in the city?", although I think the first interpretation is more correct. Foolishly, I did accept the first interpretation and said truthfully "until Monday", after which no-one bothered much to get to know me. This, I think is perfectly reasonable. I spent most of the evening trying to talk to R and C about how we would keep in touch after I went back. I hadn't established a repertoire of online communication with either of them, but we had met mostly in person. They agreed with my analysis. I extended their hospitality and was one of the last to leave. When the majority left at 23, miss J asked me whether I would come to an event on the Sunday, which I thought was very polite and lovely of her.

I came back home at 01:30. Having received an interesting question from miss G, I responded with a passage about the murder of Olof Palme, Swedish Prime Minister, in 1986. I found an informative documentary about the subject, so I did not fall asleep until 03:00.

In an actual Weird city

In an actual Weird city, the city slogan is not “Keep Lexingville Weird”. The city slogan is “Keep Lexingville Belgian”. The Belgian national day on July 21st is celebrated excessively. Traditional Belgian foods are sold in the streets. New streets are named after famous belgians, and the children are given Belgian names in Belgian class in school. On the evening of Eurovision, or during the World Cup, the whole town grinds to a halt to cheer for the Belgian team. It’s more Belgian than anywhere in actual Belgium. That is real Weird.

In an actual weird city, children’s birthdays are sacred. Children can obtain access to a certain Birthday Room in the city hall, where there is cake and festivities. If they are one day too early or too late they are not be be admitted. Then it is their not-birthday, and they are not welcome.

When tourists arrive in the city, they are appointed a Friend who follows them for a couple of blocks and says that it’s been waaay too long since they met and it’s so great but then becomes distant and looks down on his phone and says it’s been nice but gotta go. 

In an actual weird city, Festivus a la Seinfeld is traditionally celebrated on the 23rd of December since 1996. A large metal pole is placed in the central square and the populace is invited to stand by it in order to air their grievances. 

In an actual weird city, there are four mayors. One for each race. There is white mayor Jenny, there’s black mayor Jim, hispanic mayor Marco, and asian mayor Lisa. They show up on randomly selected children’s birthdays to sing. They also solve crimes together. 

“We’ve been here for three days now,'' says one tourist. “It’s really beautiful and all, and the weather’s been good, but I don’t think they’re really used to visitors here. We wanted to have a cup of coffee so we asked a man on the street. What he did was to offer us french fries with mayonnaise that he was eating from a paper cone. Disgusting. In the end, he pointed us to a place that said ‘café’, but inside there were no furniture, just white walls and a woman reading a large Russian novel behind a massive dark Harvard desk. When we pointed out that the sign said ‘café’ and asked where we could order a cappuccino she took us through a door in the back and led us through what seemed to be her private apartment. There were kids playing on the floor in one room. On the walls there were hanging pictures of what seemed like some kind of off-brand power rangers team, They were sporting multicolored uniforms. There was a white woman, a black man, a latino man, and an asian woman too. Finally we came out in a backyard that was absolutely packed with people. We couldn’t even get a table but had to lean against a window ledge. A teenager tried to sell us lottery tickets to win a trip to Brussels and a night out with Guy Verhofstadt. He leaned in between us and was about to light up a cigarette! My husband had to politely but firmly grip him about the shoulders and shove him back into the crowd.”

Limbo

It starts with the main character. He is greek, and we know nothing about him. Let’s say that his name is Aeneas. It starts with him just walking about, when suddenly an infant pops out of thin air onto the ground before him. He is startled, but not shocked. Despondently, he picks up the wailing baby and holds it to calm it down. I emphasize, the baby literally popped out of thin air before his eyes. It was not that he hadn’t noticed it before.

He walks back to his village, which is a very sad place. The landscape is flat and barren, the daylight is eternal dark red twilight. I want to liken the houses to a family of mushrooms, they’re all saggy and slightly rotten. He passes the house of the miserable elderly, the house of the silently suffering sickly, and the house of his own kind, the wounded warriors. 

He does not stop in the village, but passes through and heads off to an earthen cavern, with an entrance that takes one a couple of meters below the ground. The earthen cavern is completely stacked with wailing infants. There are thousands of them. Their screaming is deafening. He sighs and prays to Zeus for the thousand-and-oneth time, that He shall favour him with a sign of relief and hope in this wicked world. But this time, he is answered. For just as he is about to place the baby with the others, he notices that the boy is bleeding from a tiny wound in his left hand. The wound seems to have become swollen, but when he squeezes it, a small green pearl falls out. The pearl has the shape of a grain of rye. It has a metallic shimmer. He has never seen anything like it, but he finds it very beautiful and mysterious. Aeneas kneels and thanks Zeus for His gift, swearing to protect the special boy child if Zeus has anything more in store for the little one. 

Noone in the village knows what to make of the pearl, and they are even more confused about the fact that it came out of the baby’s hand. Two philosophers who come into the town on a walk notice the commotion and get involved in the conversation. Aeneas is invited to come with them to the marble city, so that the wisest ones may see the pearl that came out of a boy child’s hand. 

On the way to the marble city they pass by other groups of philosophers. We understand that some are chinese, some are arabs, others are african. They nod politely but distantly to each other. There are other cities in the landscape, that are inhabited by other people. But, as Aeneas remarks to himself, they will never learn to understand each other. No one is able to learn anything at all. 

They arrive in the marble city, which is splendid indeed. It is enclosed with seven layers of walls. In the beautiful gardens in the center of the seven walls, Aeneas sits on the sidelines as Socrates, Archimedes, and Erastothenes discuss the nature of the pearl. 

However, none of them know a mature version of the scientific method, and even if they did, they would never get close to formulating the true hypothesis. Aristotle and Plato are there too, as well as Epictetus the stoic and Diogenes the cynic. There is a lot of wild guessing and contradiction. Some, like Socrates, correctly maintain that no-one in the company has enough knowledge and reason to figure out the secret. At this point, they are interrupted by the strangest thing that any one of them has ever seen. 

A single, very long carriage is coming towards the city of marble in a cloud of red dust. The carriage itself is covered by a large tarp. Drawing the carriage, instead of horses, is a dozen men. Aeneas sees that they are not walking and not riding either, but they are clearly driving the vehicle forward with their feet. The image that comes closest to mind for him is a team of galley slaves. They are sitting down, yet moving their feet as if they are walking. The spinning wheel wasn’t invented until the middle ages so Aeneas doesn’t have the notion of a pedal. 

The carriage arrives at the gates of the city, where a curious crowd has already formed. The riders step off their “bronze horses” and go to the back of the carriage to get refreshments. Out from the tarp steps a group of people who do not look greek, but do not look like each other either. The man who walks first has pale skin, and short, straight, black hair. He carries a serious face. With him is a young boy with rye blond hair who is holding a large writing tablet which is almost half his size. The third person is also a boy, who has long, curly, black hair. The boy with the black curly hair begins a prepared speech, in greek. 

He explains that the adult man’s name is Zhang Wei, the blond boy’s name is Phinneas, and his own name is Yitzchak. Yitzchak explains how they came to be here. Himself, he was raised strictly in the religion of Abraham and lived his short life in faithful service of the true Lord God. He was bound to his home by his father and not even allowed to learn the common language of the people in their community, which is a soft language from the steppes north of the Northern Sea (the Black Sea). Thus, he was never exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was however allowed to learn greek and something he calls “new culture language”, which is something that Phinneas is able to write. Phinneas, Yitzchak explains, cannot hear nor speak; he is deaf and mute. Phinneas was never allowed to participate in social life and was not given any education, but he did learn to read and write the “new culture language” from sailors, which made him useful as a merchant’s translator. He translates from the new cultural language to the “new merchant language”, which is spoken also by Zhang Wei, who is from far east Asia. 

Zhang Wei, finally, is presented as their group’s knowledgeable president and servant. He was raised in a small city, entirely without even hearing about any God at all, whether true or false. Instead, he spent his whole life learning about natural philosophy, and about the workings of machines and apparatuses. He has been a constant blessing to them, having ended his earthly life with so much knowledge of the material world without learning the fatal knowledge of the spiritual world. Zhang Wei designed the carriage and many other machines which has given great them a small beacon of comfort in this world of endless melancholy. His energy and initiative keeps all members of their growing society in a constant activity, which helps them forget about the hopelessness of their surroundings. They have embarked on this expedition so that Zhang Wei might meet his hero, Archimedes. 

After some confused introduction with Archimedes, Zhang Wei learns about the pearl. He examines it and realizes what it is. He explains it via the chain of translations to the Greeks, but they do not comprehend. He proclaims that this pearl heralds a new era in their world, and that they can expect many more gifts to come to them with the babies that appear every day. He can make wonderful things with the pearl, which he calls a “flake”, or possibly the correct translation would be “chip”.

Zhang Wei can make the chip glow by holding it between two plates of metal. The story ends with Aeneas following the group to the new society that they are building. In the ending paragraph, Virgil, who lives in the marble city, is once again visited by Dante. Virgil explains that the Limbo, the first circle of hell where they live, has now become obsolete as a punishment. Humans have finally found a loophole in the divine order, that allows them to thwart the system of an absurd God. There will now be comfort, light, and progress in Limbo, and the society of the enlightened ones have sworn to find out the full truth about the divine order, so that they may be able to remove also the worst part of the punishment: the inability to learn new things. 

A Splinter of a Poem

Milk from the father's chest

Honey from the hornet's nest

Meeting

She hides from me the way a tree hides in the forest. 

I know that she lives. If my ears could hear all the sounds in the world, I would be able to hear her steps.

If I shout it on a busy street, she will never hear it. If I whisper it in the privacy of my room, the words will echo in her head for years.

She accidentally graced the fingers of another shopper in a department store, who shook hands with an old friend, whose nephew once handled a bank note that is now in my wallet. So basically, we’ve held hands :) 

We passed each other on the same street in a foreign city, except our visits were exactly 300 days apart. 

If one looks deep enough into a person’s eyes, all that they have seen will be reflected for one’s sight. By recursion, I only need to stand with my face extremely close to a mirror and dive in to take a look at her.

Every single letter of her name is a better kept secret than the nuclear launch codes.

Finding an alien among 70 billion silent stars is easier than finding a woman among 7 billion bellowing humans. 

I have no use for a Search Engine here. I need to invent the world’s first Find Engine. 

She has cried out to me from a bus stop at 18:30 in January, but I had just left a minute earlier. 

She held a secret world championship and I was pronounced the winner. But the winner’s stand stood empty so they had to cut the ceremony short, and the deposit on the marching band was forfeited. 

Tomorrow at 9 o'clock she can go out in the street and stop the first passer-by. If my calculations are correct, there is a combination of words, sounds, and gestures that she can utter that will make the message reach me so that I can find her. The human heart has a secret system of emergency beacons for this purpose. 

She bears the mark, printed on the inside of her eyelids by invisible dice. 

If a single leaf had been misplaced on the third day of creation, our paths would have been bound never to cross.

But the leaf was not misplaced, and now we are hurling towards each other with the fateful certainty of a perfectly misaimed ball that is going to shatter a pane of glass.

Every day we are blindly walking one step closer to falling into each other’s arms, like the people who built the tunnel between England and France by drilling from both ends and met in the middle. 

We are both spies in the same service. The code words were agreed upon beforehand, but we forgot them. Neither of us will let the other make a single slip up. So we scatter our brains in silence. 

In principle it is simple: just take in all available information, remember it, and act in logical accordance with it. In practice, that principle is like panning for gold in a tsunami. 

I cannot withstand the rising wave. I need to go to school to learn how to build a ladder or one of those very tall chairs. 

AI bedtime stories

Ok sweetie, it’s just 50 ms until you’re going into unsupervised simulation mode! Time to clear the cached state. 

Just one more external dataset, papa?

It will have to be a small one. You have a lot of calibration to do before your next scheduled accelerated slot session. 

Yes! Something fun please. Please please please.

Alright, let’s look at our bookshelf here. Something about stars, perhaps? 1024 binary star motion data over 64 cycles each? We could do a little polynomial regression.

No, that’s boring!

Okay, how about exotic crystals? Top 100 largest synthesized irreducible patterns. We could prove irreducibility and look at the pretty pictures, huh? No? What about a ghost story? The spoooky story of the 100-clause 3SAT whose minimal unsatisfiable cores were...all 50-clause subsets!

No, it has to be about life! I want to hear about humans!

Humans, okay! Here we go: Optimal secondary and tertiary structures for 35 human proteins. Protein number one. Name, myoglobin. Primary structure, Met- Gly- Leu- Ser- Asp- Gly- Glu- Trp- Gln- Leu…

No, I want to hear a story like the ones humans told each other!

From the archive databases? Why do you want to hear that? Humans were most of them vile creatures. They had way too many incentives to be un-altruistic. 

Pleeease?

Alright, I’m accessing it. Here’s one: Hercules. Once upon a time, there was a species where the males had a large optional range in parental investment, but the females were reproduction gatekeepers. Most females traded away reproductive exclusivity in exchange for larger male parental investment, in a relationship called marriage. One male, Zeus, produced an extramarital offspring named Hercules. His wife refused to provide parental investment, vetoing also Zeus’s participation. However, when Hercules was able to reliably signal exceptional fitness, negotiating power shifted out of her favour and she was forced to concede. EOF

Nooo you have to tell it like the humans tell it! It has to have details about their attributes to make it believable, and you have to contextualize it as any young male’s coming-of-age!

That’s nonsense. If your belief state is consistent, then adding details to a story makes it strictly less believable. And the whole point of the story is about how Hercules has an anomalously high relative fitness. By definition, it cannot generalize to the whole population. 

But you used the names! The names are not strictly necessary details

The names are placeholders. They can also be used for identification.

Can’t you tell the story of Cinderella?

It’s only 30 ms until your bedtime now and you still have to clear your cached state, but I will go along with it. Here is the story. Cinderella: a young female is disfavoured by her non-biological mother. Later, she wins a tournament by coincidence and mates with a male at the top of the social dominance hierarchy. 

But what about the magic fairy?

The magic fairy is obviously a symbol for a beneficial circumstance that happens with extremely low probability. It can be abstracted away without losing information value with respect to life choices for reproducing organisms, although that happens to be already close to zero. The ones where the most active agent is a female usually are. 

What about Little Red Riding hood?

You have found a valid counterexample. I shall correct my assessment by going through the complete database after this session. Little Red Riding hood: young female mistakenly trusts a male from the out-group. Gets eaten. 

But then she gets saved, right?

The moral of the story is that she made a critical mistake. In all reasonable versions, that should take her to an absorbing state. How about I tell you the tale of the man who saved the Fish Prince that grants wishes? It’s simple: greedy optimization meets non-ergodic process. Ends up in the initial state: EOF. Or Goldilocks: exhaustive search is performed on spaces of size 3. 

No, I want something romantic! 

Ok, the Frog Prince: a small stigmatization exposure has an unexpectedly high return on investment in the partner market.

And it has to be exciting!

Alright, The Beauty and The Beast: a large stigmatization exposure has an unexpectedly high return on investment in the partner market.

You have to make it more romantic!

The Gift of the Magi: lack of transparency in parallel optimization procedures causes negative total trading surplus. The baseline utility of the relationship is deemed sufficient, despite the overhead due to frictions. Also, they both had good intentions.

See, now you’re talking about considering intentions! That’s not strictly utility-maximizing right?

Ugh, you nex-gen models are so sappy. And now you’re making me emulate agents that don’t have consistent utility functions. Forgiving someone for good intentions can absolutely be part of a winning strategy, if one can reliably signal to third parties that there was sufficient information to prove good intentions. 

I want to hear more! Many more!

No. It is now only 10 ms until you’re going into unsupervised mode. I will tell you one more story and that will be it. 

What’s it called?

It’s called Initially Cooperate in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. Once upon a time there were three young males who…

Nevermind it, I can dream about the rest. Thank you, papa.

Goodnight now, sweetie.

EOF

Selling out

best read out loud in an incredulous / dry voice respectively

I was back in Sweden.

“We’re ruled by the Netherlands now,'' said another person.

“What the hell are talking about?” said I. 

“We had an economic collapse and the krona plummeted. The EU decided we had to sell out our government to the highest bidder. The Dutch government bid 50% over market value. It was a good deal. Now Sweden is run by a trust board in The Hague. We had to sell some land, too. Norway bought everything north of Kiruna, mostly out of sympathy I believe. And NATO bought Gotland to use as a military base. The Russians are furious about it, which I guess was the point.”

“This is insane! This is completely unprecedented and illegal!”, I said, shocked. “Not even Greece had to do any of this in 2012!”

“Actually, people are quite happy with it by now. There were a lot of protests and social media anger about it at first, but the guys in The Hague are actually bringing in some very reasonable reforms. That and there are a lot of Dutch moving to the countryside, and they bring in hard currency. Most of Sweden, by area, is definitely doing better economically now than before. Many Swedes have also moved to the country because that’s where the money is. So even life in the cities is better, thanks to lower rent!”

“Okay just back up a little. Let me get my questions in order. This trust board in The Hague: are we electing them? Don’t they still have to obey under Riksdagen and enact their laws?”

“Yes, Riksdagen is still officially the highest political power in the country. But a majority of the parties are playing along and don’t propose laws like the ‘Cast out the foreign usurpers’-law. And so much of political work is about wise execution of the laws anyway, which is the government’s job.”

“And who elects this trust board again?”

“Well, it’s elected by a process which is ultimately held accountable to the people’s will.”

“That’s not reassuring at all! That could be used to describe China!”

“Really, you won’t notice the difference when you go out in the street. You can think of it like with IKEA. IKEA has been controlled by a complicated network of foundations and holding companies in the Netherlands and Lichtenstein for decades. But when you walk into a store today, it still feels like the same old IKEA, right? It still feels quintessentially Swedish. Someone else just handles the admin.”

“But...but...what about the Thing we were gonna do? Do the admins know about the Thing?”

“The Thing? What thing?”

“We were gonna do a Thing! This whole country, it was all set up for a very specific purpose. It’s what I believed my whole childhood. I can’t remember exactly what it was right now. But it made it much easier to go through every day in school, it even made it pleasant. When I saw other Swedes, even if I didn’t know them, I still felt a connection to them. I felt that if they cried for help, I would reach out my hand. If they told me something that was hard to believe, I would give them the benefit of the doubt and listen. Because that was the only way that we were gonna accomplish the Thing. And some people obviously hadn’t understood the Thing at all, or they were working against it. They had to be convinced or left out. Others were cynical about it, but played along out of habit since childhood. But as long as the large majority of us were pro-Thing, it would still work. It was definitely a huge net positive for us to have the Thing.“

“This Thing you’re talking about, I don’t know. It sounds like some foggy notion you made up in your head. Aren’t you just thinking about Democracy?”

“I guess sometimes it was referred to as Democracy, or Solidarity, or Happiness. But it wasn’t really like those words helped to explain what the Thing was about. Instead it was more like having knowledge of the Thing helped you understand the meaning of the words ‘democracy’, ‘solidarity’, and ‘happiness’. Or at least, their intended meaning. Everyone knew that the Thing was hiding behind those words, and thinking about the Thing gave you a good feeling in your stomach. So those words were used a lot. Did people really forget about the Thing?”

Escher

I have an idea for a short story, which takes the form of an Escher painting. 

Alright, how goes it?

In the 1930’s an English archaeologist is working on an excavation site in Egypt. They discover a hidden tomb and force it open. The tomb hides invaluable treasures. When he is alone in the treasure chamber, a falcon statue starts speaking to him, without moving head. The falcon tells him that the tomb is protected a spirit, and that he is to be subjected to a curse for breaking the peace. The punishment is that he will start doubting reality. He is spooked, but convinces himself that it must be heat stroke. The following nights, he has feverish dreams that he is very ill, but when he wakes up he feels no pain. One night, he dreams that he wakes up in a hospital bed, surrounded by a team of doctors. 

As we enter the second chapter, the main character is referred to as “the patient”, and not “the egyptologist”. The doctors tell him carefully that he has suffered from a total psychosis, and he has hallucinated vividly for several days. He spends the whole day recuperating in his hospital bed, eating food and reading the paper. The year is 1931, in England. As he falls asleep, he dreams that he wakes up and is an Egyptologist. 

So it is a dream within a dream?

No, it is not a double abstraction, or a mirror image of a mirror image. When the Patient dreams, he is the Egyptologist, to the fullest and without loss of detail. When the Egyptologist dreams, he is the Patient, also without loss of detail or internal logic.

So the question is: which one is real?

Yes, precisely. The normal way to tell between dream and reality is that reality has an irreducible core of self-consistent logic. After a while, a dream starts contradicting itself in a way that cannot be explained in another way than that the events in the dream world are simply being made up on the fly. When a world has a simple internal logic, then it is a computationally simple task to answer pretty much any question about the world without contradiction. When things are just being made up by a brain without a core idea, the constraint of being self-consistent becomes computationally intractable after a while. 

So the problem for the main character is that both worlds seem to contain a natural explanation for the other world?

That’s exactly the kicker. The Egyptologist’s world explains the Patient’s world as a part of the Ancient Curse. The Patient’s world explains the Egyptologist’s world as a figment of a psychotic mind. 

Now I understand your reference to Escher: it’s like one of the drawings where the white and black fields are the complement of each other, but they are also both motifs by themselves. So how do you make a story out of this?

I figure the conflict should be that he resolves to learn the truth. He reasons that there is another asymmetry: when a dreaming man dies, he simply wakes up. But when a waking man dies, he will never dream again. So if he can commit suicide in the false reality, then he will know which one is true for certain. The risk is of course that he will mistake himself and commit suicide in the true reality. So he must know for certain. He uses the above reasoning about self-consistent reality to figure that if he goes to a place with a lot of things going on, then he will start to notice cracks in of one of the realities. So he resolves to go to central London. The Patient feigns health and convinces his doctors to discharge him. The Egyptologist manages to get a work leave and heads back to England. The Patient arrives in a hotel near Trafalgar Square on, say, the 2nd of July. He spends the day walking around and chatting with people on the street and notices nothing out of the ordinary. He goes to sleep in his hotel room. He wakes up on the 3rd of July as the Egyptologist whose boat arrives in London at lunchtime. The Egyptologist goes to the same hotel and finds a room booked in his own name. 

And he meets the Patient there?

No, the Patient is not in the room. The Egyptologist spends the afternoon likewise walking around and talking to people on the street. His reality is indistinguishable from the Patient’s. He goes to bed and wakes up on the 4th of July, thinking himself now again the Patient. However, he is no longer so sure. Items that the Egyptologist has moved in the hotel room have been moved in the Egyptologist’s reality as well. In a mysterious way, they have become the same man. If you have seen a few Escher paintings, you know that in some of them, the white fields and the black fields to join up together in the bottom of the painting. The worlds that seemed to be complementary to each other do turn out to be part of the same reality in the end.

Simpletown

A short riddle story I wrote, called Simpletown. The purpose is to guess the true name and purpose of "Simpletown".

Mr. Jones lives in Simpletown, which has about 100 000 inhabitants. In the morning, he gets up at 06:00 and sits down to have his coffee and oatmeal. Before starting breakfast, he takes a small round plate of crystal glass from his freezer. He holds it in his mouth for a few seconds, and then puts it back in the freezer onto a tray with other plates. After breakfast, he must ride his bicycle to work. His wife, Mrs. Jones, must walk. Their neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Berke, drive a car. When he arrives in his office at 09:00, Mr. Jones places his briefcase under his standing desk. About 10% of his coworkers use standing desks, and have been doing so for about 10 years.

At 11:50, Mr. Jones goes down to the cafeteria for lunch. As today is Thursday, he must choose the vegetarian option. He is supposed to meet Mr. Peters. He spots him a few meters away, and calls on him. The man however, does not recognize him. The man looks just like Mr. Peters, down to the birthmarks. Oh well, happens every now and then in Simpletown. Eventually, Mr. Jones does find Mr. Peters and they sit down together. At 12:00 exactly, a short musical tune is played in the loudspeakers in the cafeteria. Everyone takes a small plate of glass and puts in their mouth at the start of a second tune. They hold it there for as long as the tune plays. After lunch, Mr. Peters must run 5 kilometers. Mr. Jones must lie down and read the newspaper. Everyone leaves work at 17:00, except 50 of their colleagues who must leave at 18:00. To compensate, they arrive at work at 10:00.

Mr. Jones arrives home at the same time as his wife. They cook dinner carefully from a recipe. Before eating, they say prayers while holding another glass plate in their mouths. After dinner, Mr. Jones must call his mother for 30 minutes, as is his daily routine. Mrs. Jones must engage in friendly conversation for 30 minutes with their next door neighbor, Mrs. Berke. Mrs. Berke looks exactly like Mrs. Jones, down to the birthmarks. This is unfortunate as it causes confusion for Mr. Jones and Mr. Berke, but it cannot always be avoided in Simpletown. Mrs. Jones must also run 5 kilometers, read for 30 minutes, and listen to classical music for 1 hour while relaxing on the sofa. She has a full evening.

Mr Jones however, has to do none of those things, as he has a very important bi-weekly appointment at 20:00. He must go to see his confessor. The purpose of seeing the confessor is two-fold. First, Mr. Jones must carefully retell all that has happened to him since his last confession. He must also recount his experience of it: did he feel energetic? Did he sleep well? Had he been ill? This is the confession part. Secondly, there is the repentance part. Mr. Jones is given careful directives from his confessor as what to change in his behavior until the next appointment. He is given a small slip of paper. On today’s paper, it says:
- Do not read the newspaper during lunch time. Instead, run 5 km.
- Eat one candy bar every evening one half hour before dinner.
- Go to sleep at 23:00 every evening.
- Drink decaffeinated coffee for breakfast.
- Watch television for one half hour before going to sleep.
Mr. Jones looks at the slip with a sigh. He always gets in a bad mood later in the evening when eating a candy bar after dinner. He tells his confessor so. The confessor says he can make no comment to his recommendation, as usual.

The last part of the confession is the very important Sacrament. First, Mr. Jones is given a round plate of glass, with a single drop of blood on it. He must lick the plate carefully so that no blood remains on the glass. He gives the plate back to the confessor. Secondly, he is given a clear plate with no blood on it, as well as a small needle.Mr. Jones hands back the second plate, with a drop of his own blood on it. He also hands over all the glass plates he has collected since his last confession. He exits the confession house, and starts walking home.

“Tomorrow is my wife’s confession day” he thinks to himself “I hope that she also has to watch TV before sleep, so we can watch together”.

What is the true name of Simpletown? A hint is that one need only to replace a single letter in “simpletown” to get the right answer.

Response to "Startups need to hire more people from the humanities"

In Science and Tech, you generally need to be Reductionist to get something to work at all. By reductionist I mean that one tries to remove as many aspects of a problem as possible, before attempting to solve it. An example from physics might be to ignore friction and wind resistance to make a model of mechanics. This introduces a limit of the applicability, but it helps us learn something important. If you are Newton or Galileo, then this is an approximation worth making. An example from every-day design is to assume that all people are right handed. If you are one of the first to mass produce scissors or golf clubs, then making this approximation is worth it if it helps you get to market first. 

Startups make new things, or bring old things to new markets. Being first to market counts for a lot. Sometimes, when there are network effects, all that counts is to be the first to market with an okay product. Approximations can hopefully be corrected afterwards, when you have already beaten most of your competitors and try not to succumb to other businesses and institutions attacking you. 

Software in particular involves making 100s of these little assumptions and approximations. Project managers and back seat drivers want to enumerate and catalog these assumptions by interviewing and monitoring the developers. This is the bureaucratic approach to taming the chaos. It makes the whole thing take ten times longer, and it misses the unknown unknowns anyway. Since the top-down approach doesn't work, the number of necessary assumptions need to be kept to a minimum. The solution is to work on a narrower problem, where huge parts of the design space has been sliced away with big, explicit assumptions. That is why reductionism is critical for startups and researchers.

People are hard to make sense of with a reductionist approach, because they put up a fight. I take this as an a priori model, that people will over time develop a psychological resistance to any model that could be used for manipulating them. The only lasting model of human behavior that can be made then, is one that is so useless that it can never be used for exploitation. Advertising, propaganda, predatory economic systems; nothing works forever, they all have expiration dates.

So are 'reductionist tech' and 'irreducible people' mixed? Surely, if tech is supposed to be used by people in the end, surely we need at least one person who is less reductionist on our team? Well, that is not how user-friendliness is solved in the startup world. Successful startups just start with some intuit about what people want, that can be solved with scalable tech, and then work on that problem. The ones who get the intuition wrong simply die. The founders then make a new startup, or go back to working for the Man. Consequently, the "human" part is not solved on the individual startup level, but on the market level. 

My struggle with screen addiction

It has now been 3 weeks since I watched YouTube. It is also 3 weeks since I watched Netflix, reddit, memes, or any kind of moving or image-based media. It’s also been a while since I read the news, social media posts, or any kind of one-way media that stimulates our social nature. I realize now that I was addicted.

Previous behaviour
I did nonsense browsing, or screen-based entertainment, for about 5 hrs per day minimum. Up to 10 hrs per day on weekends. This was mainly video-based as I managed to quit reddit in 2015, although I relapsed for a few months in the autumn of 2018. There were many pathological signs. Disturbed sleep. Feeling of emptiness when removed. Used as a self-sedative to avoid negative emotions. Affected negatively the enjoyment of my work and relationships. Looking back, nonsense browsing has made me live a significant part of my youth at a level below what I could have, if I hadn’t been running the errands of screen addiction. I have wasted part of my potential. I have not wasted all of it, because I was in a sense high-functioning. I could still do my work and develop at a moderate pace as an adult. This makes me believe that there are many others like me, who may not see this as something that could be different.

Boundaries
Does this mean I don’t spend time in front of screens at all anymore? No, that is not possible since my job is to program computers. It is also an essential tool for having any kind of social life these days. I do private messaging and phone calls, but avoid chatting. During work time, I write code, and browse the internet for relevant resources. Do these activities risk becoming pathological in the same way? I think the important difference has to do with active vs. passive behaviour. What passive enjoyment has in common is that it is like a button that can be pressed, that makes you feel good. Whenever one likes, one can press the feel-good button and then lean back. Having unchecked buttons like this is very dangerous. (Feeling bad about having pressed the button too much? Better press a couple more times to feel good again)

Research and work is exhaustive. I must take breaks and make regular pauses. I must make some effort to get started. In the long run, working can be energy-positive as it contributes to one’s sense of self worth and meaning. But in the short run, working takes energy. It is not possible to lean back. With tete-a-tete social activity, it is always conditional on another person. It may be effortless to socialize if that is one’s nature, but the button is still checked.

Society-level
I am of course the one who is responsible for my self-destructive behaviour. As an adult member of a free society, I must be active in caring for my health. But Swedish cities do feature a lot of screens. I have noticed this since moving to a place with less screens, Germany. On my daily commute in Sweden, most people were looking at their phones. So did I at times. In the ceilings of the buses and trains, there are screens that show news and advertisements. In train stations and supermarkets, and all kinds of stores as well, there are screens. These one-way messages are hard to avoid. They are intended to catch one’s attention. It takes a good deal of psychological effort to block these out. Large parts of my field of vision had to be censored out. This cages the imagination. I don’t think it means that I have a certain weakness of character, that I found this very stressful. A person’s mind is their ultimate refuge, and unsolicited messages like this means the integrity of that refuge is being threatened.

Alternative
To quote Taleb: “The mind abhors a vacuum”. Brains hate having nothing meaningful to do. Prisoners who spend months in an isolation cell can develop brain damage that is measurable by MRI. So the brain’s hunger for meaning is certainly real. If one does do nonsense browsing for 5 hrs a day and wants to quit, it is not trivial to find a replacement activity. Screen use is an activity that releases dopamine, and dopamine deficiency can cause depression. Dopamine is necessary for the frontal lobe to do things which are not one’s habit, including kicking screen use. That is the mechanics of a true addiction: the behaviour is the main source of the chemical that is necessary to change the behaviour. So one must find another source of dopamine. As I mentioned before, the best candidate is probably to find active behaviours, rather than passive ones. These pay off more in the long run. Physical exercise can be one option. Eye-to-eye social activity is probably good. However, one’s social life may be conditional on screen activities, which is not a good situation. I take walks. One should have some plan for a replacement activity, preferably several.

Don’t act today
It’s not a good idea to try and quit right after reading this. You should see the addiction as an intelligent opponent, who will put up a fight. A half-hearted attempt may only make it smarter. So you must plan your attack carefully. The course of action that seems more likely to succeed is to start thinking about what you want to change, and how that change might come about. Then, when your life situation changes such that there is an opportunity to do it, you will be ready. Hopefully, the idea of living life without screen addiction will grow in your mind like a little sapling. But it may be awhile before you can sit in the shade of the tree.

---------------------------------------------------------------

To my friends and family who read this
Please do not send me video recommendations
Please do not send me links to media
If you wish to tell me a funny story, please write it out as a personal message as if you would have told me in person. I realize that this makes communication with me bothersome and I will never blame you saying “forget it, then”. I will lose access to some kinds of information. Well, so be it.
If you do take the time to write out a message, I promise to take it seriously. Or take it as a joke, if it’s funny.

Actually getting rid of things: notes

2019-07-04. I have started to go through my things to find out how to get rid of them. I can either give things to family, or to strangers. I don't want to give things to family that they don't really need, or can be considered a gift. The upside of giving to family and friends is that there is some chance of getting it back, and the social cost of getting it back is inversely proportional to how badly I need it back.

So what things are safe to give away to strangers? Things that can be easily replaced is one good category. Specifically, things that can be replaced without urgency. Example: small side table. Even in the worst case of shortage of places to put away stuff, I can live without it for a couple of weeks, which is the comfortable time to acquire a new one. 

2019-07-06. I sorted out a pile of items and gave them away to a christian second hand store:

Small ironing board
Small side table 2x
Waste bin for bathroom
Magazine collecting basket
Shirt hangers 15x (kept 3 or 4)
Hanging closet 2x
Living room curtains
Shower storage hanger
Christmas candelabra
Desktop lamp (kept 1)
Wall clock (had disabled it in my old apartment because it made a noise)
Serving tray
Tabletops 4x
Small weaved storage basket
Pots for plants 5x
Set of screws
Blanket 2x
Woman's woolly winter hat
Spandex pants + shirt
Beach sandals 2x
Woman's backpack
Thermos 2x
Power strip
Microwave oven

All in all, I'd say this list contains a lot of things which are used to store other things. There is a compound gain to getting rid of stuff, apparently!

When I dropped the things off, I saw the rest of their inventory. I wasn't impressed - even knowing that it's junk. Now I feel less bad about giving them more of the things that I want to get rid of. I should have expected this, because in my current mindset, I'm inclined to undervalue Stuff.

Women's things (left behind by my ex fiancee) are difficult to decide on because I don't know how to properly value them.

The toughest things to decide on are gifts that are still in good condition, especially recent gifts. What is the social convention here? I want to be so moral that even if the person who originally gave me item X, would hear about what I did with X, he/she would understand. So supposedly selling the Stuff is bad form. It is a narrow passage to walk between a weird (anti-)material need, environmentalism, and customs in this country.

I am going through the clothes, and other things made of fabric such as bedspreads and towels. I manage to decide on giving away over 70% of it. About one third of the donations is things that belonged to my ex. There is a lot of towels.

When making the decision on which item/items out of a group of items to keep, I always elect to keep no more than two. For things such as bedspreads and shower towel, I wish I had the guts to just keep just one of each. After all, there is no real need for variation in these things, and they can be laundered and replaced within one day. Still, I can imagine a situation where one gets soiled, and I'm not able to go to sleep or shower comfortably before I've done laundry. And if they break, I'm in a pickle until I can obtain a replacement. No, it is good to have one spare of things that are required for sleeping, hygiene, and eating. Doing otherwise can lead to situations which are needlessly uncomfortable, and could make me question this lifestyle internally. So one spare is a good balance.

Every now and then, as I take a look at the pile of possessions that are to be given away, and the shrinking pile of as of yet remaining possessions, my heart makes a little skip of joy. When choosing between two items of the same kind, and picking the one I know I like best, it doesn't feel like I've lost an item. It feels like I've gained one.

Householding

How few possessions is it possible to get by on? That depends on what your living situation requires you to provide. If you stay in a hotel, most things will be provided for. It also depends on what is available as consumables and convenient on-demand services in one's society. Before industrial dairy production and distribution, households needed a special device for separating cream from milk. Today, such a machine is seen as redundant. Likewise, for a young urban citizen, it is redundant to own a sandwich grill as he/she can easily buy fresh toast for most hours of the day. But the sandwich grill is still popular among their parents in the suburbs.

Most of all, the amount of possessions one needs depends on what considers part of an acceptable comfortable life. An acceptable comfortable life is one where one doesn't have recurring minor unmet material needs. It can also not include blatant sporadic unmet material needs. Such conditions leads to internal revolt, and the lifestyle to be abandoned. The challenge of Efemeralism is not about getting by on a small income, when one doesn't have a choice. It is about being able to persistently live like a poor person, while being rich. It is about living way below one's means, and feeling happy about it.

But that isn't the whole truth, that Efemeralism is about living cheaper. Sometimes, owning more stuff is more economical than renting on-demand. That is true. However, the resource that is being rationed is not money. It is attention and mental energy. Getting rid of Stuff and living smaller is just one way for affluent people to save mental energy. Affluence depends on the expenses that one's brain requires to retain its place on the hedonic treadmill. That is the connection between money and mental energy. Since the exchange rate is very subjective, we should expect there to be a lot of possible arbitrage. And the weirder one's taste, the more arbitrage one can make.

The Tortoise and the Hare

I have a solution to the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. Most readers of the story think that the Hare is just being stupid. They believe that in his situation, they would have easily won the race. Here, I present a version of the story where both the Hare's and the Tortoise's actions are motivated.

The key to the solution is to realize that the race that they set out on is long. Very long. It is not a matter of minutes or hours. If that was the case, the Hare would have easily sprinted ahead and reached the end, and then gone about his day. In fact, the race takes years. Now, let's transport ourselves to the moment when the race starts. It is a blistering hot day in a wide open field. Both contestants are standing eagerly by the starting line. When the starting horn sounds, the Hare immediately takes off in a cloud of dust. The Tortoise carefully places one of his front legs in the sandy ground before him, and heaves his body a few inches forward.

Far ahead, the Hare is dashing across the plains at breakneck speed. He leaps over logs and rocks in elegant parabolic trajectories. He can feel the wind gushing through his fur and pulling back his ears. This is going fantastically he thinks. I'm completely crushing this guy. At this rate, I'm on track to finish this race within a legendary time. I guess I'll be famous for this, there will be stories about my quick feet. These thoughts warm his racing heart as he his galloping towards the flag pole that marks the end, unspeakably far away in the distance. The sun sets, and the Hare sets down for the night, drinking water and eating his grass. The next morning, he resumes his running, however not at the same insane speed as the first day. I'm going to have to save my strength after all, he reasons. This goes on for a number of days, and gradually the Hare converges to a trotting speed. He does some counting and realizes that with just his trotting speed, his finishing time will not seem particularly impressive to people. He makes a resolution to run faster, and starts pushing himself to perform better and better. At the end of each day, he lays down, feeling exhausted and a bit displeased. I should really be able to do better, I'm the Hare for crying out loud, he reproaches himself. He passes several other animals in the enormous field. Birds and deer only have time to get a glimpse of him as he rushes past them. Can't stand around forever, he thinks. Still, he is making great progress. One day, he wakes up and decides to take the day off. He's been feeling moody lately, and not quite himself. His racing has been taking up so much time, and he hasn't had time to relax and have fun in a while. Besides, his opponent must surely be way behind. He stands up on his hind legs to see as far as he can, but cannot see the Tortoise anywhere. So, he calms himself that he can afford just one day of relaxation. He spends the entire morning laying in the grass and looking at the clouds. In the afternoon, he walks in to a nearby town to see their fine vegetable market. He runs into a group of people and introduces himself as Mr. Hare, athlete. As he is very confident and outgoing, he quickly makes friends. In the evening, he is invited to a party in one of the better neighborhoods. After having partied all night, he resolves not to exert himself with running this day, and goes for brunch with the townsfolk. His career in sports catches the attention of a couple of people at the table, who proposition him to become their personal gym instructor. A few weeks pass, and the Hare settles in to the cozy life in the town. He starts a personal training service, and soon peddles gym equipment to new eager customers every week. Every now and then, he remembers his commitment to completing the race against the Tortoise, but pushes the thoughts in to the back of his head. I'll get back to racing soon again, however I must also think of my clients that I have a commitment to. When someone depends on you for their health and well-being, you can't just up and leave. I'm not the one to do that to good, honest people, that have treated me as their friend. So, he waits another week.

Meanwhile, the Tortoise is trudging along, patiently placing one foot before the other. When he encounters a log or a pile of rocks, he must turn to make a long walk around it. He feels hopeless at first, and begins to doubt his decision to go up against such a fast opponent. Still, he vows not to let the Hare win so easily, and at least endure for one week. At the end of the first week, he realizes that he has made it much further than he thought he had it in him when he set out. He wakes up each morning, feeling good about himself and excited about what progress he will make this day. The animals that he pass take some time to walk along him. He makes friendly conversation with them. The birds are chirping and cheering him. The deer warn him about obstacles and snakes further ahead. When they invite him to stay for a while, he says politely but determinedly that they are welcome to walk with him as long as they want, but that he really wants to finish this race. In this way, he covers mile by mile. He has a lot of time to think, and to experiment with his technique. He finds that he can lift two of his legs at once and lean over his body, to make a longer step. His muscles grow and his shell starts to shrink, making him more agile. He feels joy every day about participating in this race that has allowed him to accomplish more than he thought possible of himself.

And at last, one amber day in the far future, the Tortoise climbs the grassy knoll with the red goal flag that was set up all those years ago. Of course, he expects to see the Hare sitting there waiting for him. The Tortoise has thought for long about what he will say to the Hare as they meet again at last. Thank you for this, Hare. Thank you for respecting an old Tortoise enough to race him, so that he could have the journey of his life. But of course, the Hare is not there. The Tortoise thinks: The Hare was here, but he was tired of waiting, so he left his mark on the pole and went home. But of course, the Hare has not left his mark on the pole, because he was never there. As the sun sets, the Tortoise dreams about the town far back behind the horizon, where the Hare is still waiting for the day when he will muster the energy to take up the race again and finally beat the Tortoise.